As we are approaching winter with the temperatures dropping, my ears are starting to feel frosty whenever a breeze approaches. I was regretting for not getting the cute strawberry earmuffs while I was in Cameron Highlands. But it so happened that Claire and I were walking around bancarelle and I spotted tube scarves or various colours being sold for 3 euro each. They looked pretty much nondescript, but I was intrigued and got one for myself, just to cover my ears at least.

Indeed, after wearing it for couple of hours, it did kept my ears and my neck quite warm. And with a simple pull, it can transform into different styles! Let me show you in this quick video below.

I never thought that I would like it so much.

The interesting thing about this brand is that the name changes depending on the country that you are at. In Asia, it’s called Olay but while in Italy, it’s known as Olaz instead. I wonder why the change.

By the way, I wanted to show you a picture of Danielle Graham,  the ambassador for Olay (I suppose) who was on the pack when I bought my moisturizer. I think whoever took this picture needs to go back to photography school … she looks like a creepy psychopath! Which is such an injustice as she doesn’t look like that normally

But coming back to my pump dispenser, knowing that there was still a little bit of moisturizer left in the bottle, and me being a cheapo, my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to open it up to scrape up the last bits and also to see how it functions :

Wow, I’m definitely not throwing it away! This will be great for travelling, no?

If you like the picture above, let me show you how with this ridiculously easy to do tricolour nails

Sidenote : In case you were wondering, that groovalicious song is called La Pantera Mambo by Orquesta La 33!

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 in here, but you could see more of it in the video at the end of the post below.

Instead, I took more pictures of … ahem … food.

Cart and I 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 :p

The irony is that Cart is vegetarian and I’ll only eat seafood when I’m out so we’ve never tasted their specialities. But that doesn’t mean that other’s couldn’t :p

Like the cold appetizers of assorted cold meats below.

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

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

This is Nick’s wild boar which he claims to taste “boar-ry”

While Serene had partridge, but I forgot to snap a picture of it and it had already bite marks on it :P

This is Cart’s ravioli with ricotta and spinaci and he was showing everyone how 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 is my gnocchi with asparagi!

THIS IS JUST LOVE LOVE LOVE! OMG OMG OMG! I usually order the Piccantine ai funghi porcini, but for a change, I thought that I’d try something different and I totally LOVE my gnocchi. It’s a creamy from the cheese, sweet from the asparagus, almost orgasmic sensation and all the while, I was going mmm … till the end of the meal.

Le sigh. I got to bully Cart into making them for me about a week later after the guests have left and I still love it! I’ll love anyone who makes me this!!! Too bad asparagus season is over

And then we drive 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

Again, no much pictures here, but do check out the video I took at the end of the post below :-)

Oh if you were wondering what this picture is doing here … we stopped for a bit at a designer outlet called Castel Romano since the three wanted to do some shopping.

And I was admiring this pretty and elegant Valentino dress.

And this is me AFTER buying my Valentino dress! Look at how happy I look!

Marina? Are you sure? That bag sure looks small for a dress. And indeed, you are correct, for 1. I didn’t buy a dress  and 2. That paper bag isn’t mine in the first place. But I was just sharing the happiness in touching a high end designer item

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

Initially I thought that we could cook something for the trio but since they offered, we would never say no

And so, here are what we ate :

This is the bruschetta with tomatoes and mozzarella.

This is fried mozzarella

This is Cart’s pizza with cheese (I think it’s mozzarella) and cherry tomatoes … How many times did I type mozzarella so far? :p

This is my baked dory fish hidden underneath baked potatoes. Daphne had one too! It’s suspiciously similar to the one I had during Valentine’s day this year :p

This is Serene’s seafood risotto which is to die for! You can taste seafood in every bite. It’s that generous. I think I’ll have this the next time I visit :-)

At this point of time, I think it was still too stuffed to have dessert but Cart finished off his meal with Pastiera Napoletana, which by the way, we tried making them earlier last month.

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 :

Hehehe! But 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 68kg the next day!!! Yikes!  (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 the trio had fun too! And we hope to see them really soon, be it in Rome or in Singapore :-)

Check out my video montage below (which took forever to edit and upload) *guilt trips you*

Music by Girovaghi Noturni

We then made a quick stop at Pasteccerie Giovanni Cecere which is a pastry shop full of wonderful confectioneries. I had such a heavenly cream cone. The crust was extremely light and the cream was luscious but not have a thick feeling.

Sigh. I want more. It was so good, I forgot to take a video of us trying them out!

We then took the tram and took a quick detour to Largo Argentina (Not sure why it’s named that way, where there a lot of Argentinians here previously?) There is a cat sanctuary here and since Daphne and Serene are animal lovers (And Nick is a super talented animal photographer) we went to take a look.

There is a very strong smell here (Kind of like Janet‘s kitty litter but 10 times stronger) but if one is a cat lover, one just tolerates it! Because there are so many pretty cats here! I almost didn’t want to leave. There was even one orange cat which looked very much like Nadnut’s baby boy

We then did a quick stop at Cafffè Camerino (the 3 f’s are not a typo!) and then to the Pantheon, walked along the streets to reach the Spanish steps (it was raining by then unfortunately) so we stopped in Macdougals in the hopes that the rain would subside.

Daphne seems nonplussed

We then went to probably the best known monument in Rome, the Colosseo.

We were quite lucky even though there were a large number of people queueing up to enter, we managed to wait for only about 15 minutes or so. It is extremely grand inside and it made me wish I could be able to visualise what the colosseum looked like when it was newly built. Cart said that it was originally covered in marble. Woah ….

We then walked to the Roseto comunale in Circo Massimo. But unfortunately for us … It was closed on that day!

And here is Daphne and Serene posting updates on their facebook profiles about it.

But nevertheless, we took the chance to walk to the Orange Gardens where we were rewarded by the most beautiful sight.

A glorious sunset. Wah, so romantic. A perfect making out scene … ahem

And after spending time in the piazza, we finally headed back home to fill ourselves up with a nice bowl of home made minestrone!

Check out some of the interesting things we spotted in the video below

Music by Gemarc – Diario di famiglia

Sidenote : I just noticed in the video that someone screamed potato chips and I gasped … That was so random

This is one of my favourite gelateria …  I love pretty much all of the flavours here and in my opinion, no trip to Rome will be complete without eating one of this! 

And then we continued to our journey to Piazza San Pietro. Being a Saturday, the place was really crowded with people, moreover with the recent beatification of the former Pope John Paul II.

There were busses all around IN the square – something that I’ve never seen before. The entry to the basilica was really long, and so we decided to visit the Vatican museum first.

There are so many things to see here at the Vatican Museum – You can see statues, artwork on the walls and ceilings, as well as contemporary art from Botero and Salvatore Dali! I’d recommend all visitors coming here to wear comfortable walking shoes – to see everything here needs at least 4km of walking! I kid you not!

It was so tiring! But we still had to head back to San Pietro to see the basilica … And here is Daphne and Nick posing in Piazza San Pietro.

Bleargh

Luckily, there wasn’t such a long line by this time and we were able to get inside pretty quickly and we were able to see a live mass going on.

By the time we were finished, the sun was still out, and it was a lovely day, so I thought that we should spend the remaining daylight on the open bus. Moreoever, it was a chance to rest our feet for a bit

We managed to spot out two couples getting married while on the bus, what luck! I was amused when some of the other passengers on the bus started to cheer out loudly, their congratulations … hehehe!

By the way, since the day was 18th May, which was an international Museum day and entrance would be free, so we planned to go to one of the museums, however the line was scarily long (you can see it in the video later) and we had to abandon the idea.

But anyway, we ended the evening in Trastevere where we had dinner and walked around to see the night street performers

And then when we reached home I had to soak my poor aching feet in hot salt water!

Check out my video montage!

Music by Walter Mazzaccaro – People in the beach

Tomorrow we’ll see Italian pussies

The next day, we woke up bright and early to head to Piazza San Giovanni Di Dio which is a wet market – not a typical place to sight see, but interesting nevertheless to see the local foods which is in season.

Cart decided to use the fresh ingredients that we’ve bought to be cooked for lunch. He was very lucky as he had two lovely ladies (Daphne and Serene) to assist him, while Nick and I went to the closest gelateria to get some fresh cream for our strawberries and I had the strangest conversation :

Seller : Which size container which you like? How about this one?

Me : No, the first one was fine

Anyway, after our sumptuous lunch, we went off to take the metro (which is an urban train) to go to the city center for some sight seeing. I noticed someone looking very much like fellow blogger, Ntt.

We took the open bus which in my opinion, though at 20 euro is not that cheap, but is a nice way to see major monuments in Rome in a leisurely  manner. For 48 hours we are free to take the bus and hop at which ever stop we liked.

We walked to the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain and Piazza Navona.

Oh! I spotted out something interesting … A subway is opening in Rome! By the way, have you watched this Singaporean Subway commercial about their Italian sandwiches? I noticed it while watching the live streaming Singapore elections. Cart was offended and said a bad word after watching it. I should have recorded his reaction

We ended the evening to have dinner at one of our favourite pizzeria, Il Secchio e l’olivaro! One day, I hope to be a mayor (of foursquare) there! This place is interesting as they only have 6 different types of pizza but, they are all oh so good!

Watch our adventures here!

Music by Walter Mazzaccaro – Artificial Lights

Seems like we’ve been eating a lot