Campo De Fiori and the Open Air Market

Salve tutto, I know I said yesterday probably wouldn't be all that exciting of a blog, but apparently it was a hit, getting over 115 hits, more than 30 over my next most viewed entry. So I can guess a few things, and both may be true, and neither may be. It seems like people like to heat about things that aren't just monuments and such, and that maybe more about my daily life, trials, and tribulations may be cool. If either of those things are true, then today's blog is going to be another hit.

Last night, I went to a Roman Country Club, or a really nice athletic club with our landlord, Gianni, who's about 55 and like American kids and he took about 16 of us to his club (in his 10 seater van, oh yeah. No seatbelts in Italy) and we played soccer for an hour at night under the lights on a outdoor pitch and it was really, really fun. A guy in the program is a little too good, but I had a lot of fun. It was still about 75 at around 8:30, so it was still really warm, but I had a really, really nice time out there.

I got up this morning, talked a little AIM and got up for class. It felt pretty cool this morning (relative to the past mornings, so it was like under 70) and hoped today would be a bit cooler (it hasn't been). Today marks a week that I've been in Rome, and it's been over a week that the high has hit at least 31 degrees celcius, or about 88 fahrenheit. With high humidity, mind you, so basically it's been really, really hot and I have a bit of a farmer tan going.

Anyway, I got out and went to class to learn a bit more Italian, which was bene, or good. After we got out of the first two hours, we got a fifteen minute break where we saw this INSANE pigeon lady feeding some pigeons and she had them all over her and was having a bit too much fun. They ate out of her hand. She encouraged them to land all over her. I could only think of bird flu.

But after that bit of ridiculousness, I went to the Campo de Fiori, or the scene of an open air market with a bunch of Italian, organic fruits, vegetables, meats, cheese, spices, alcohol, breads (I could seriously go on all day. Do not provoke me.) We went as a class and checked it all out. It's about a 10 minute walk from the study center, and when we got there, I was much impressed. The Ferie, or holiday, is still going on until Sunday, and there were still a lot of stands up and not a lot of tourists, so it felt pretty Italian overall. I like authentico. And I like food. And boy was there a lot of delicious food there today, man.

First came the beautiful fruits and vegetables. The produce was beautiful, green, and leafy, and slightly expensive, yes, but not too bad. It looked awesome, and fresh. You can see the prices for most of this stuff if you enlarge the pictures, just remember, a chiligram (or kilogram) is 2.2 pounds, and a euro is about 1.5 dollars.

The fruits were delicious, and I just bought and orange for the sake of doing so and ate it as I walked around, careful not to juice my camera with all of the citrusy goodness. And hey, if juicy fruits aren't your thing, they even had a gorgeous dried fruit section to it that was so colorful and inviting, the free sample just didn't seem like enough, although it had to be since I wasn't 'ripe' with cash (I know, I'm a comedic genius. I hear it all the time).

But yes, if you enlarge that picture (and why wouldn't you? It's really, really pretty and appetizing) and look to the back-center of it, it's the carneria, or literally, meat place. It was impressive and had just straight meat cuts, not dried, cooked or anything, just the full rack of lamb, giant pieces of beef and pork, and steaks, etc. One interesting thing to note: eggs and chicken products in general are really, really not easy to come by. Same with butter. When you do find eggs, they're organic and they aren't refridgerated at the store, you have to refridgerate them yourself. Weird.

But after that, I went over to the pinnacle of deliciousness in my opinion, which was the dried meats, like Prosciutto, Salame, etc, and Parmaggiano Reggiano, Pecorino, Monzzerrella, and tons of other cheeses. I went into the market not planning to buy anything today, but I ended up getting some salame (singular salami . . . basically, all nouns end in o, a, or e if they are singular and have an i or e added for plural, so yeah, weird spellings not actually so weird anymore. Coca-cola becomes Coca-Coli pluraled, which I think sounds like a disease). The lady was really nice to me, offered me a sample, and I talked some Italian with her and seriously had to bottle my excitement. I could not have done that 2 days ago. She asked me how I was and I responded, asked her, and she offered me salame, I thanked her, liked it, and asked how much it was. She told me three Euro for a little loaf, and I couldn't turn her down. She offered me salame and suffered through my Italian, it was the least I could do.

After that purchase, I checked out the spices. Now, spices here are a big deal, and they're sold by bags and bottled at home, and the spices are fresh in buckets, mixed that day, and then sold in a clusterjam of insane yellow signs that made me feel a little overwhelmed, but it was so cool to see. Enlarge it to see the names and see which ones look similar. It's kind of fun.

But after that, I was offered alcohol by the guy behind me, and Limoncello, or pretty much vodka steeped with Lemon zest and sugar then diluted with sparkling or non-sparkling water to be sold as a liquor. I was intrigued. I accepted and it was very good, but homemade limoncello is very expensive, so I didn't buy anything, although some friends did as a group for their apartment, but I didn't have any apartment mates to split it with me, so I just shuffled away and met up with a group who was heading home, which brings us to now.

Anyway, that's the open air market, which I am a big fan of. I will go back eventually, and document further, but until then, I hope this showed you my food buying and shopping options and explained my daily life a bit more.

Ciao.