Day 4 of the Imaginary Italian Fim Festival -Giorni e Nuvoli at the Giulio Cesare

I studied Italian in Rome at the ScuolaLeonardo Da Vinci(the one from Eat Pray Love, the book) and in one of my classes we were talking about our dreams – I said that mine was to move to Prati, a neighborhood in Rome.

“That’s not a good dream”, said my young teacher. “Only old people live Prati.”

So I have an old person’s dream – I want to live in Prati. I know Rome pretty well but I know Prati the best. It’s the area around the Vatican and it means “fields” – that area used to be Rome’s farmland. It’s relatively modern, the streets are wider and tree lined, and it’s my favorite. And that’s why a lot of the movie theaters that I like are in or near Prati – I just spend a lot of time there.

You’ve already toured the Vatican museum, right? (And nobody needs to do that more than once.) If you haven’t spent time in the Vatican itself you should do it today – it’s just amazing. See Michelangelo’s Pietà and all the Bernini scultpures and go up into the cupola.

It’s worth getting up early and going into that neighborhood for the market:

All around Piazzale degli Eroi, particularly Via Andrea Doria there’s a daily morning market – you’ll miss it if you show up at noon. It is SUPER COOL. The fish, the pasta, the vegetables, the bread…it has everything, even clothes and housewares. I swear if I lived in Rome I’d buy everything there. There are cute little restaurants everywhere or you can get stuff for lunch on the street.

Margherita Buy in Giorni e Nuvole

La Balestra – Via Simeto

Whatever you decide, we’re meeting not far for from the market for our movie – at Cinema

Giulio Cesare -on Viale Giulio Cesare. Today we’re seeing a movie with one of my favorite Romans,

Margherita Buy in Giorni e Nuvole – click HERE to queue it up for instant viewing, and her HERE to read my review. Remember to sit in your correct seat – it’s assigned. I was scolded at this theater for disregarding the seat number on my ticket.

And for dinner lets have pizza – Roman pizza. I know that Naples pizza is supposed to be the best,

and it’s good, but I like Roman better. It’s really thin and crispy and it doesn’t puff up on the ends.

You get your own – there’s no sharing of pizzas in Rome.

There are only about a thousand good pizza places in this city but let’s go to one out of the neighborhood. Let’s grab a cab and go to a neighborhood northeast of Borghese Park called Salario. It’s a little out of the way but I’m dying for a pizza from La Balestra. Don’t let the waiter scare you here. He only looks like he wants to kill you – he’s really a very nice guy.

Tomorrow we’ll see a funny movie in a great theater. It’ll be our last day in Rome – have you seen the Pantheon yet?