Working Girl Does Rome

Let's be clear what kind of "working girl" I am... the Melanie Griffith 1980's kind, you know, before the reconstructive surgeries and tattoos.  Definitely not the Julia Roberts kind.  So, in my business suit (remember, Melania Griffith) with my boss and our Italian co-worker, we hopped into our Ford Mondeo station wagon at 0600 yesterday to head up to Rome for a meeting with the Italian military.  To say I was intimidated at the thought of this meeting understates intimidation.  "They speak English, but if there are questions, I'm going to jump in and explain it better in Italian" my co-worker assured me.  Our meeting started at 10, so the idea of leaving at 6 seemed both foolish and overly cautious.  As it turned out, it did take exactly 2 hours to get to the highway outside of Rome and 2 hours and 15 minutes to go the last 21km to the meeting location.  Expletives were flying around the Mondeo.  I wished that I had remembered to add more money to my Vodafone, which was sadly without internet or phone calling capabilities.  Drat!

Then we did work stuff.  (I'll save you all the boredom of reading about my job.  It's government wonk stuff and hardly worth mentioning, aside from the fact that it allows me to live overseas and go to meetings in Rome once in a while)  Fast forward about 5 hours, we were done!  Wandering around Rome with two men who could both be my father was significantly different from wandering around with my husband, whose hand I normally grab and whom I also normally hug and squeal "Tommy!  Aren't you having SUCH a good time in ROME!"  Doing this to my boss, whose name is not even Tommy, would undoubtedly be awkward.

Post meeting (which was supposed to be in English but was about 95% in Italiano, thus allowing me time to do some reading for my grad school), we wandered through the Piazza del Popolo, down the Via del Corso and towards the Spanish Steps to find this ristorante that our co-worker had been to before.  On the way, we wandered and we wandered and we looked at things we couldn't afford and then we began the search for this amazing ristorante. 

At long last, we found it!  Oh my heck, it was totally worth it!!  Palatium (Trip Advisor link included for anyone coming to Rome any time soon.  Go here, seriously!) is a ristorante that is sponsored by the agricultural society (or something like that) of Lazio, the region which Rome is part of.  Everything sold or on the menu at Palatium is grown, produced, sold or typical of the Lazio region.  We began with a delicious bottle of wine (I bought a second to take home and it was only 7 Euro!) and antipasti.  I got zucchini parmigiana to start and then pasta alla carbonara for my primi.  It must be noted that yesterday, Italy's prime minister announced that he would step down and my co-worker and our waiter quickly bonded over how they would celebrate the end of their prime minister's reign.  They immediately were besties.  And he was the most attentive waiter I've had since arriving in Italy.  He laughed and made jokes and dropped of bread and more bread and even heckled my boss for being the only one to not clean his plate with the bread.  It's called "scarpetta" and means "little shoe."  You use your bread like a little shoe to mop up the remaining sauce on your plate when it's so delicious that you can't bare to miss any of it! 

Everything was delicious and to finish off, we got a caffe on the way back to the car.  Even my caffe was laced with Roman deliciousness!  The 3.5 hour drive home did, I grant you, suck a lot.  And upon returning to my office, I then had another 30 minute drive back to my apartment.  Alas, I was quickly asleep, dreaming of pasta alla carbonara and the machiatto that I'll order the next time I get the chance.  Bella Roma was just as lovely as ever, even if we were only there for a few hours.  Ciao for now!