Italy, September 2024 (Part 1 - Rome If You Want To)
Rebuild
It’s been a minute since I’ve had anything to write about on this blog, in fact my last post announcing my promotion to Executive Chef of three restaurants in Downtown Boston is the primary reason I haven’t had much to write about in the last year and a half.
Suddenly and unexpectedly thrust into this position, I spent the last 12 months much like the New England Patriots: in a full blown rebuild.
Younger talent with potential was developed, veterans past their prime were moved on from, and a new culture was established and anyone that didn’t want to buy in was free to leave. The team I was left with was pretty green, but if I can hype myself up a little…I think I did a pretty good fucking job with what I had to work with and with the amount of support I had.
Once we made tangible progress in our “rebuild,” ownership finally got me the help I’d been begging for. My new Sous Chef Steven has really let us move onto the next phase of tightening up the foundation and beginning to build as we get ready for the busy season of 2024.
Now that I finally have a more-than-capable second in command who can help keep standards in my absence, I was able finally able to plan a vacation after almost a year and a half since my last one.
Christa
The previous 18 months were some of the most hectic in my life; between finalizing my move from Oregon, to starting my new job, to suddenly and unexpectedly getting promoted, to having to completely rehaul the kitchen team, I had little time and even less energy to do much of anything, at one point having worked 45 consecutive days from when I took charge on July 1st.
Even once things got settled and the new team was trained up at their respective stations, we found ourselves neck deep in the busy season so the majority of my waking moments were spent at the restaurant. It sounds rough, but that’s showbiz, baby.
There turned out to be one silver lining to being at work so much: meeting Christa.
Christa works as a Graphic Designer but did some moonlighting at the “Wig Shop” as a host. One fateful night after having to double back to the restaurant late at night because I forgot my keys, Christa and I got to chatting, yada, yada, yada, we end up dating, yada, yada.
Dating Christa folded me into into her friend circle of like-minded yuppies by osmosis. Coincidentally, a bunch of us were planning on going on vacation around the same time, so the idea came up to go together as a group so we could more easily afford an awesome cliffside AirBNB villa in the Cinque Terre in Italy’s western coast.
I’ll be honest, having visited Italy back in 2018, I had some reservations about going to a place I had already been to before but honestly, my last visit to Italy was done as a broke 20-something but now I was being presented the opportunity to travel with adult money so, in the words of Young Thug:
Fuck it, we ball.
Along with our friends Heather, Alex, and Josh, we planned a group trip across the country, highlighted by a 3-night stay at a beautiful cliffside villa in Corniglia, one of the five towns that make up the Cinque Terre on Italy’s west coast.
Lounging Around
Airfare booked, hotel rooms reserved, train tickets purchased, away email message scheduled.
Flying to Rome via United Airlines gave us the best value for our trip; even though it wasn’t the cheapest option, paying a little more would save us money in the long run thanks to the perks I have by being a United Premier Gold MileagePlus member.
The best perk by far was that we got access to the United Club lounge which came in very handy during our six hour layover in Washington DC.
Comfy seats, complimentary mediocre food, free unlimited cocktails.
We blew through the TSA line at Logan with the same speed that my morning Dunks blows through me, so we had time to visit the United Club lounge in Boston which has definitely gotten a facelift since the last time I visited years ago. The big windows overseeing the taxiway are a plane spotter’s wet dream so it’s nice to see the lounge doing a little more to match the impressive views outside.
The week leading up to my vacation was really busy as I got things ready to minimize the impact of my absence from the restaurant and I completely lost my chance to exchange my cash for Euros at my bank. Our long layover in DC was therefore a great chance to get completely screwed by the International Currency Exchange people at the airport who can get away with offering you a pitiful rate because what other choice do you have?
With my Euros in hand, I enjoyed my free booze at the lounge to dull the blow of getting ripped off until our flight to Rome later that night.
My Roman Empire
Our red-eye flight landed just after 1 PM local time and after grabbing an Uber into the city, we got to our hotel, the Royal House Hotel, which was LITERALLY across the street from the Colosseum.
Not much to look at today, but it's still insane to think I'm sleeping next to where Gladiators trained, fought, and died thousands of years ago.
Our room looked out over the Ludus Magnus, the largest gladiatorial school in Rome.
It’s not much to look at nowadays, but it was still insane to think that I was going to be sleeping quite literally next door to history thousands of years old. Christa and I both knew that the best way to get acclimated to would be to force ourselves to stay awake until a “normal” local sleeping time so in order to stave off sleep, we freshened began to freshen up to maybe walk around or something.
By sheer happenstance, while Christa was showering first, I got a message on Instagram from my friend Mara.
Like some quirky side character that pops up sporadically throughout Sex and the City that makes you say, “Oh, it’s that person,” Mara has made cameos here and there in my life. Having first met in Antarctica, we were part of the same group of friends and hung out so it was really funny last year when we ran into each other when we were both at the Houston Intercontinental Airport at the same time on my way to Peru last year.
Mara, once again by coincidence, was also in Rome for that day with her partner Jesse and was hoping we could meet to get coffee or something and we were able to coordinate some plans quickly to meet for late afternoon drinks at a restaurant around the corner from our hotel.
Mara and Jesse were about a 30-minute walk away from us so while we waited we took the chance to stroll around the perimeter of the Colosseum to take in the history. As an avid fan of both history and numerous different flavors of sportsball, it’s crazy that stadium design has just been some kind of play on this since pretty much forever.
What’s even crazier is when I would stop and think about how this was all accomplished almost 2000 years ago without the benefits of modern tools and equipment. I know that’s not a particularly profound thing to think about, but seeing this marvel of the ancient world standing in stark contrast among the backdrop of the modern city built around it, it’s kind of hard to think about anything else; this triumph of human mind and might standing the test of time, it’s easy to see why so many dudes take an interest in the Roman Empire in lieu of developing an actual personality.
We eventually caught up with Mara and Jesse at the Martini & Rossi Caffe near our hotel. We chit chatted about our recent travels and our flight into the city that morning and talked about finally being optimistic about America for once before having to go our separate ways to fulfill other obligations; Mara and Jesse were off to see his parents and Christa and I had a reservation with our friend Josh at the restaurant on the terrace of our hotel which, again, had incredible views of the Colosseum.
(Ex-)Catholic Guilt
There was one thing that Christa could not leave Rome without seeing: The Vatican. As two former Catholics, the Vatican is one of those things you’re just expected to see even if you don’t really believe what it represents, kind of like our own version of a Birthright Trip.
Vatican City is one of the most visited tourist spots in the world and the crowds are insane. Unless you want to wait for hours in line to get in, your best bet is to do what we did and buy a spot on one of those guided tours operated by a third-party company that allows you to “skip the line” to get into the Vatican. You’ll be able to find these all over TripAdvisor and they all cost roughly the same amount ($100-$120 per person).
Our tour wasn’t scheduled to meet until 1:30 in the afternoon which gave us time to get some breakfast and take a leisurely, three-mile walk from our hotel to the tourism company’s office just outside the walls of Vatican City.
We passed the ruins of the old Roman Forum before stopping to get a light lunch by the Monument of Victor Emmanuel II, honoring Italy’s first king. It was at this point, now that we were 24 hours into being in Italy, that I started to notice some things that were beginning to irk me about the service standards in Europe (or lack thereof).
Afterwards we swung north to see Trevi’s fountain which was, unsurprisingly, packed with tourists. I couldn’t believe how many people were out and about considering how hot it was, and since so few places in Italy seem to have air conditioning, the 90 degree heat (32 C) was pretty brutal. As the time was drawing near to meet our tour group, we made our way west towards Vatican City, stopping at a small restaurant outside the Pantheon to escape a torrential downpour that came out of nowhere along the way (this would become the theme of the day and arguably this whole trip).
The rain stopped just in time for us to leave the Pantheon and make it the last stretch to the Vatican. Even though we met at 1:30, our tour group still took over an hour to get into the Vatican itself, just in time before the rain started falling on us outside again. For reasons that weren’t fully clear, we couldn’t continue with the tour so the guide just…showed us a bunch of pictures of the stuff we would see and explained it to us which was…thrilling.
We eventually did move on to the meat and potatoes of the tour, getting to actually go into the Musei Vaticani, or the Vatican Museums.
Not trying to be mean but the tour guide was not the best so Christa and I pretty much just broke away from the group for the most part and went at our own pace. The paintings and statues and tapestries are incredible, yes, but it’s hard to put into words the feelings that get conveyed when the entire building, down to the individual room you find yourself in is part of the presentation. The room itself is an art piece almost as old as the pieces it’s housing.
