It’s Friday. We slept in until 10am this morning then went to the store to pick up bread and copa for lunch. I also grabbed a couple bottles of iced tea and wine for Cinzia. The copa here is pretty good and the variety of breads is wonderful. We still have a couple small balls of mozzarella di bufala in the fridge, so we came home and had a good lunch. The grocery store, Billa, was finally out of their €2,99 panettone – we must have eaten 10 of them. The Billa in Rome is located below the Coin department store. You enter the department store, walk into it a short way, and then take the escalator down to the basement where there’s a huge grocery store. It’s kind of like putting the Publix grocery store in the basement of a Macy’s.
The plan for today is to hop the metro to the Circo Massimo stop on the blue line. That will put us near the 3 churches we hope to see today: Santi Giovanni e Paolo, San Gregorio Magno al Celio, and Santa Maria in Cosmedin. We’re hoping that the churches will all open around 4pm and stay opened until 7pm. That puts us just across the Tiber from Trastevere where we have dinner reservations at 8:30pm at I Vascellari. This is our last GroupOn. After dinner it’s a 20 minute walk home. I’m just guessing that we’ll make our way to a gelateria during the day sometime.
In the meantime I’m sitting at the kitchen table typing away and watching Italy’s 24-hour poker channel on the TV. They serve up the standard tournament coverage you get back in the States (WSOP, WPT, Poker After Dark, etc.) but the announcers are very excitable. They cheer, scream, laugh, and even sing at times. They especially love to repeat what the American player are saying even though you can still hear the original sound track in the background. Hearing them call the action is funny as well. The only difference, besides the Italian names for each suit, are that Jacks are still Jacks, but Queens and Kings are not Regina and Re, but Donna (lady) and Capo (boss).
Other TV choices are Italian news channels, 70's American TV series dubbed in Italian, current American crime shows, also dubbed, or MTV. There are two MTV stations. One is all music and the other is full of reality shows, like Jersey Shore. These only have subtitles, so we can listen to the show in English. I think we’ve now see every episode of the current Jersey Shore – the one where they’re in Florence. We recognize a lot of the street scenes. Just another bunch of loud, inconsiderate, drunk kids giving Americans a bad name overseas.
Cinzia just finished her shower and decided to lay down for a nap. It’s 2:30pm and we won’t head out until 4pm. I guess I’ll log into MSN Games and play a little poker. I've run my account up to $379,300 by playing $500 heads-up matches. Too bad it's not real money – that's a lot of gelato.
In the meantime I’m sitting at the kitchen table typing away and watching Italy’s 24-hour poker channel on the TV. They serve up the standard tournament coverage you get back in the States (WSOP, WPT, Poker After Dark, etc.) but the announcers are very excitable. They cheer, scream, laugh, and even sing at times. They especially love to repeat what the American player are saying even though you can still hear the original sound track in the background. Hearing them call the action is funny as well. The only difference, besides the Italian names for each suit, are that Jacks are still Jacks, but Queens and Kings are not Regina and Re, but Donna (lady) and Capo (boss).
Other TV choices are Italian news channels, 70's American TV series dubbed in Italian, current American crime shows, also dubbed, or MTV. There are two MTV stations. One is all music and the other is full of reality shows, like Jersey Shore. These only have subtitles, so we can listen to the show in English. I think we’ve now see every episode of the current Jersey Shore – the one where they’re in Florence. We recognize a lot of the street scenes. Just another bunch of loud, inconsiderate, drunk kids giving Americans a bad name overseas.
Cinzia just finished her shower and decided to lay down for a nap. It’s 2:30pm and we won’t head out until 4pm. I guess I’ll log into MSN Games and play a little poker. I've run my account up to $379,300 by playing $500 heads-up matches. Too bad it's not real money – that's a lot of gelato.