Playing host (day 5)

It’s the final full day that Daphne, Serene and Nick are spending in Rome and in the morning, we went off to the Palatine hills. This area used to be the location of a huge imperial palace.

For me, it was interesting to see the ruins up close and I tried to imagine how grand the area would look like originally. I think it’s worth spending time to look around here, besides the entry is included here as well as for the Colosseo.

By the way, I realise only later that I didn’t take much pictures there, but you could see more of it in the video at the end of the post below.

Cart and I then took our guests to Genzano, which is slightly out of Rome to have lunch at one of our favourite places to eat – Trattoria Dei Cacciotori! This is a small, family run restaurant where they specialise in game.

We’ve been here several times, like Valentine’s day, or Ferragosto or with Jerrick, not to mention Sayanee and Chinmay too. The irony is that Cart is vegetarian and I’ll only eat seafood when I’m out so we’ve never tasted their specialities.

Like the cold appetizers of assorted cold meats below.

Right in the middle there, the orange looking bits of string was horse meat. Serene and Nick were game to try it, but poor Daphne looks traumatised.

This was Daphne’s papadelle (egg pasta) with hare.

This was Nick’s wild boar which he claims to taste “boar-ry” and Serene had partridge.

This was Cart’s ravioli with ricotta and spinaci and he was showing everyone that the right way of having the filling is to have just a little bit of spinach to the ricotta cheese so that it would not be overwhelming.

And this was my gnocchi with asparagi!

I’d usually order the Piccantine ai funghi porcini, but for a change, I thought that I’d try something different and I found out that I totally LOVE my gnocchi. It was creamy from the cheese, sweet from the asparagus, and the combination gave me an almost orgasmic sensation and I kept giving an appreciative “Mmm!” till the end of the meal.

And our meal, we drove off to Nemi, a small town which is famous for it’s volcanic crater lake and also of their wood strawberries.

It was such a beautiful day in Nemi. Serene was especially enamoured with this town till she proclaimed that she wanted to marry a pastry chef here so that she could eat strawberry tarts whenever she wanted.

After exploring Nemi, we stopped for a bit at a designer outlet called Castel Romano since the three wanted to do some shopping. I admired this pretty and elegant Valentino dress.

No, I didn’t get it. I was just posing with Serene’s purchases.

After our quick stop we then ended the night over at Squisitò which is a restaurant which I liked for their seafood. This is the same place where Cart and I met Mr Karaoke for this year’s valentine’s day. I thought that we could cook something for the trio but since they offered, we would never say no.

And so, here was what we ate :

Bruschetta with tomatoes and mozzarella.

Fried mozzarella

This was Cart’s pizza with cheese (I think was mozzarella) and cherry tomatoes.

This was my baked dory fish hidden underneath baked potatoes which I shared with Daphne.

This was Serene’s seafood risotto which is to die for! You can taste the seafood in every bite. I think I’ll have this the next time I visit 🙂

At this point of time, I think we were too stuffed to have dessert but Cart finished off his meal with Pastiera Napoletana.

And the trio shared among themselves a babà – which is a type of cake stuffed with cream and sometimes any toppings you want.

Like strawberries.

Or nutella.

I was so amused when Nick posted this up on his wall :

I think we did eat quite a lot this time round and I was totally horrified to see the scales shooting all the way up to 68 kg the next day!!!  And to think that just about 5 years ago I was complaining that I was so heavy at 56kg.

Nevertheless, Cart and I really enjoyed hosting the trio and accompanying them around. We had fun! And hope that they had fun too! And we hope to see them really soon, be it in Rome or in Singapore 🙂

Check out my video montage below for day 5!

Music by Girovaghi Noturni