Ladispoli & Roma

I have spent the last eight days in Ladispoli, a beach town outside of Rome, with some family and family friends.

What have these days comprised?
Mainly... food, of course.
Most meals were a celebration of abundance of good quality food. One night we went to an Ethiopian restaurant (my grandparents were working there at the time when my mother was born, and we were in the company of other people who had lived there), where I fell in love with a new dish - Kitfo - of barely cooked spicy meat. Another dinner was of home made pizza. I guess I didn't feel the need to hold back ;)

Beach and sun. Mostly the latter, because the beach in Ladispoli has iron sand.. it's normally thing but it's black :/ so I mostly visited the beach for morning runs after dinner overdoses. But I'm rather tanning may I say. It's nice to skip the 'red' phase from the harsh Australian sun.

ROME.
Rome...
Roma.
What can I say.
I'm not sure if I can do her justice.
I'll introduce this fascinating city with some pictures.















I spent many many hours walking around the city, often feeling like I'd been transported to another era... having interesting encounters with Romans (rather less cool than the Milanese)... NOT getting lost (applause please!) and hearing more French and Spanish spoken anywhere than Italian.

Rome was more than I expected, it was charming and beautiful to a mind-blowing point.


I stayed by myself in a double room in a very comfortable bed&breakfast, and made friends with the host (yes, officially, as can be verified on Facebook :p).

I was happy to notice I missed Milan...
I think I can relate to this interesting article!
http://travel.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/travel/17milan.html?smid=fb-nytimes&WT.mc_id=TR-SM-E-FB-SM-LIN-HIF-041711-NYT-NA&WT.mc_ev=click">

I got home with big hugs from Mary, who cooked me a lovely lunch, including a smoked salmon entree and yummy tiramisu! After more sweets, we layed in the sun for a bit, and off she was again (she's going to Sicily for a week) - we got to see each other just this half day in the whole of April!

On Tuesday I am off to Vienna.
I'm visiting a few ridiculously nice Austrians met in Perth.
It's gonna be legend... wait for it...
...
;)