Earlier this week I talked about some of my favorite thing about winter in Rome. I left one pretty important thing out. I didn't forget. I just think that hot chocolate deserves a post of it's own. These are some of my favorite places to have hot chocolate in Rome.
I recently got an email that signed off with the exclamation Happy Winter! (what does that mean in Rome?) I feel kind of bad about the answer to that question. While my son in Boston is buried under historic amounts of snow and my mother and brothers are freezing in eastern Tennessee, I see pals Instagrams of icy New York and the Chesapeake Bay and I feel a teensy twinge of guilt about the bright blue Roman sky and the leafy trees heavy with oranges that I pass on my walk to yoga in the morning. Here is a little secret. Winter in Rome is pretty wonderful.
Before Noah left for college everyone said with an emphatic sigh, oh wow your life is going to change! The statement made in the same way people offer that advice to you right before you have a baby; Tinged with a slightly ominous tone. Yes they are right. Our life has changed. The house is much, much,(much) quieter. There is way less laundry. But the biggest change has been our going out on "school nights" We go to friends for lively and delicious dinner parties. We go see movies on a Wednesday evening. Earlier this week we went to fantastic art opening and since we were already out and now with pals, we decided to stay out and have dinner. It had been a long time since any of us been over in the Prati neighborhood and no one had any good ideas of where to eat so Mark led the way.
I love film. And I love fashion. Add a free winter morning and I am in heaven. I had tried to see the exhibit I Vestiti dei Sogni (The Clothes of Dreams) a few weeks ago but was met with a hastily printed sign declaring a strike for the afternoon. Happily on my second try the palazzo was open and blissfuly empty.
Having lived in Rome for more than a few years now I have learned a few secrets from the Romans about how to enjoy life. One of these secrets is the weekend getaway. Usually it is to a nearby spot in the countryside or by the sea, but every now and then the desire for something a little different strikes. Luckily all it takes is a some time spent on a low cost airline site and boom a winter escape is in the works.
Paris is a sentimental destination for Mark and I. Paris was one of the first places outside of Africa that we explored together and we would spend our days there searching for Mexican food and films in english. Paris is where I bought all of my maternity clothes and most of the stripey outfits that made up Noah's first wardrobe. Noah is in college and I have been back in my skinny jeans for a while now. It was time for another visit.
We revisited old haunts, saw friends we haven't seen since before children and walked, ate, shopped and walked some more. Here are some of my favorite things in Paris.
I like to cook. While I may sometime grumble about the Sisyphean task of feeding my family every night in truth I like the daily chore. I like the planning and the shopping. I enjoy the chopping and baking. I love presenting my labor on the pretty plates that I have collected (and Mark has hauled across oceans) in Morocco and Positano and Zimbabwe using the silver from grandmothers chest. But here is a little secret. I know I live in Rome and I buy pretty much only locally sourced and produced products, I rarely cook Italian food. There are a couple of reasons for this. Most importantly my mother is a francophile, which meant more gratin than pasta on our family table growing up. My first cookbooks were Julia Child and Laurie Colwin. I really learned how to cook in Niamey where ingredients were shipped in from Paris weekly. So my basics are more French and American home cooking than Italian. Add to that Mark and Noah often have a plate of pasta for lunch at work and school so they rarely wanted another one for dinner. Now I know how to cook pasta. I just don't do it all that often. But practice makes perfect so when Walks of Italy invited me to a pasta making class in a beautiful palazzo of course I said yes.
I am headed to Paris for a few days. You can follow along on Instagram or check out one of my very first posts about my favorite things in Paris. Back when Gillian's Lists really was just lists.)
