So I could wax lyrical for ever about wonderful, wonderful Rome. A decade in this city doesn’t even touch the surface!
This trip though we are just skidding through, taking the opportunity to see BB who is at La Sapienza doing her masters. As we are driving we picked some where slightly off the beaten track out of town. We found a ‘castle’ run by an ancient Roman family with more blue blood that an octopus – The Pellegrines. From the photographs it was more theatrical depiction of a castle, more huge folly than fortress, all very intriguing.
To be fair, the reviews had been mixed so we weren’t entirely sure what to expect.
Eccentric and quirky doesn’t even begin to capture the ambiance. Scooby-doo meets Las Vegas meets the
We hadn’t known when we would arrive so had an arty interlude watching a curtain buffer back and forth in the breeze at a nearby bar (which had the best walnut and apple sauce tart ever) while we waited for our suite.
Then BB came over and we went to dinner at Sandro’s at Ka.Sa. This is an Italian play on words as ‘Casa’ means home in Italy. No menus. We had white beans with shallots and tuna, cheese with honey, crostini, grilled melanzane, crude and melon by which time I was stuffed to the gills- or as the Italian’s say – Full as an egg. Then GS and BB had the stuffed ravioli with burrata and chingiale, swished down with homemade limoncello.
Sandro chatted to us after supper and we chewed the cud, how it was during Covid, how it was so instantly forgotten. He told us there is a wonderful Medieval Borgo just 5 minutes up the road…..
The locals were belting it out at the karaoke bar opposite, and I was definitely up for a howl at the full moon ( A red full moon) but GS and BB wanted cocktails instead. We had walked past a cocktail bar earlier with an outside terrace covered in jasmine.
We are so proud of all our kids, but BB here in Rome is something so personal for me.
She as born here, we left when she was a tot, and to see her back here, flourishing, dancing until dawn in her mum’s vintage rags, it makes me so proud. All of us grasp life, squeeze it till the pips squeak. For me deep down there is just a hint of melancholy for the nights that I was here, dancing like the world was going to ending my thirties. And then it kind of did..
We have two family mottoes
‘It will be fine’
and
‘Don’t do anything if it doesn’t make you happy.’
