November 17, 2010: Li-Villa-ing It and Lo-Villa-ing It

This morning our new friend Layla picked us up, navigated through the typical crazy morning traffic of Rome, and took us outside the city to the town of Genazzanno, up in the hills. Her family (and my Aunt Toni's) is from this town and we were the lucky recipients of a very personalized tour.

We started off at the family villa, up in the hills. Overlooking the valley, you could never believe we were only 45 minutes away from the bustling city of Rome. We got a tour of the villa, met some of Layla's cousins, and then took a walk around the grounds to admire the view. The villa is just beautiful inside, and the multitude of olive trees, persimmon trees, grape vines, and fig trees made us consider saving up to get one of our own villas one day...

After some tea and a short walk, we got in the car and drove into the center of town to check it out. We walked around the town's castle, the adjacent public park, and along the main street through the town. Genazzanno is a great town, and it was really nice to finally visit somewhere that didn't show any signs of being a tourist-destination. On our walk we caught a glimpse of what its like to live in a small town in Italy. I compared it to being Norm on Cheers. Here are the people that we ran into that knew Layla during our 10-minute walk through town in the middle of the day when there was almost no one out:

• the woman who pulled-out the parking space that we took
• the woman standing in front of a grocery store
• a guy that was just getting out of his car, who's mom happened to have some dried herbs for Layla's mom

Then we went to have lunch at a great restaurant with views of the valley. Any restaurant that serves homemade pasta is hard to beat. With wine, pasta, salad, cookies, and amaretto - you can conclude without a doubt that we had a tasty and relaxing lunch. You can also conclude without a doubt that we are not so sure about how we're going to adjust to this "work" thing.

After lunch we visited the Ninfeo di D. Bramante (a sacred place built near a natural spring). At this point its basically a ruin but is perfectly situated in the grass and brush. We walked around and took some pictures, which was nice because we were able to walk around freely (nothing was blocked off like they are at many other sites we've visited on this trip).

Then we took a small detour through an industrial town to drop off Layla's cousin, and then started back on the road to Rome (here, most actually do lead there). On the way we stopped off at the Fashion District, which is actually a large outdoor factory outlet mall. (East Coasters: think Woodbury Commons). We walked around a bit feeling a little like we were back in the US - except for the large roller coaster that was being assembled across the street (for the new amusement park "Rainbow Fairy Land" which is rumored to be the biggest amusement park in Europe when its completed).

We made it back to Trastevere, tried to resist eating too much of the kilo of cookies that Layla surprised us with, and then went out for some dinner. We walked around some, bought some gelato, and called it a night.

Gelato Gusti per il Giorno:

Mike - Biscotti e Stracciatella

Aviva - Just worked on the cookies

To view pictures from our day, click here.