We woke up early to head over to the Roman Colosseum. I knew the lineups
would be long so we wanted to get there before 9 am to beat the crowds. Okay,
it was still crowded but we didn’t have to stand in line for too
long. It was my first time there and I was in such awe of how
magnificent it looked. It was incredible to be in a place where people once
used this place as a real Colosseum.
Then we walked around the Roman Forum. I loved seeing the House of Augustus and
imagining what life was like during this time. I had downloaded an audio tour
App from Rick Steves on the Roman Forum so I enjoyed my time walking around with
earphones and listening to the history and description of each area.
After spending the full day site seeing and walking, we were very
tired and not overly hungry. Both of us looked at each other and said, let’s do
a picnic with charcuterie and a bottle of wine! This is something we
often do when we are at home when we don’t want to cook, or when we want to
have a light meal. We go to our favorite deli and bakery and load up on cheese,
salami, prosciutto, jams, olives and bread. So to have this as our meal in Rome
was just like being at home but this time we were getting our charcuterie right
in the heart of culinary heaven.
We headed to a place called Volpetti in the Testaccio area of Rome.
We had read about this place in
one of our guidebooks and also researched it on the internet and heard great
things about it. We walked in and immediately one of the people
behind the counter asked if we wanted a sample of cheese. Yes please we both
said with a big smile. When you walk into Volpetti, you see fresh baked goods
on one side, a wonderful section of cheeses, meats and terrines in the centre area, and a
section of jams, wines, truffles, mushrooms, and other fine foods
in another area. I immediately gravitated towards the beautiful brown truffles
that were just sitting on a table in the open and took a whiff of that heavenly
scent it gives off with my eyes closed.
Look at these beautiful black truffles! It smelt like heaven. |
When it was our turn to order our items, we had a really nice man behind
the meat counter help us choose our prosciutto and cheese. I mean, there were
so many different types of prosciuttos and the selection was a little
intimidating, so we asked the man which one his favorite was and that’s the one
we went with.
I remember seeing Volpetti on an Anthony Bourdain episode, he said it was a Roman institution. Is that Jamon Iberico Bellota in the last picture? It looks dark to be prosciutto.
ReplyDeleteYes, you are correct. :) In addition to the prosciutto, Volpetti also sells Spanish jamon iberico bellota so we just had to buy some. It's so hard to get in Canada.
ReplyDelete