"Are these underwear yours?" DIS Viking Italian Sojourn 2018 TR *COMPLETE* 10/14 New TR Link!

Amazing pictures - and so many churches it is hard to keep them straight! The Santo Bambino statue is really neat!

I can only imagine what you were thinking when you saw that huge staircase when your feet were already sore! Glad you felt it was worth it

We were in the 5pm food tour and our guide too was trying to figure it all out as to how we knew each other, etc.
 
@khertz - Continuing to be blown away by all the photographs, and grateful you're sharing this all with us. Can't wait to hear about my always-favorite thing - FOOD! I figure with your hubby's gorgeous photos, I better eat a big meal BEFORE I read though, or I'm gonna get hangry, for SURE!! :)

I'm so happy to share! I'm just glad there are people interested in reading along. ;)

Yes, the food pics will likely make you hungry!! I'm getting hungry just thinking about it, and we just had dinner. lol

Gorgeous photos! Thank you for the report. Trish and I did the same thing to go to Trastevere. I had preprinted a map before leaving just in case I was having phone issues and google maps wasn't working but we had done so much walking I needed a rest for a bit so we got a cab.

Looking forward to you Eating Italy!

We walked everywhere in 2014, so I was thinking we'd do the same, but I had a much more difficult time with all the walking on this trip. I don't know if it was the shoes I had brought or what. The cab was such a good decision!

love the photos. those churches are lovely.

Thanks! It's really hard to take a bad picture in a Roman church. They are all so beautiful and intricate!

What an amazing trip so far and gorgeous photos. Thanks so much for sharing. After hearing so much about the cruise, I can't wait to see it unfold.

Thanks for reading along! I'm excited to get to the cruise portion. We had such a great time on the ship!

I am sure your feet were really hurting! Those stairs look like no joke! I'm glad the hike was worth it, the pics are beautiful!

It was exhausting climbing to the top. I can't imagine doing that every week if it was my regular church to go to Mass!! But thankfully it was worth the climb.

Amazing pictures - and so many churches it is hard to keep them straight! The Santo Bambino statue is really neat!

I can only imagine what you were thinking when you saw that huge staircase when your feet were already sore! Glad you felt it was worth it

We were in the 5pm food tour and our guide too was trying to figure it all out as to how we knew each other, etc.

Yes, I usually make DH take a picture of the name, because when we would visit a lot in a row, it was hard to tell sometimes where one ended and the next one began.

I'm so glad it was worth the climb, or I would have probably had a mental breakdown. lol

I'm sure it was very strange for them! Our guide was totally fascinated, as it came up several times during our tour. Our guide really kept talking up your guide!
 
Day 2 Continued: Friday March 23rd

When I last left off, we were ready to head out on our Eating Italy Trastevere walking food tour.

Our guide’s name was Domenico, and he told us to call him Mimo, like that movie, “Searching for Nemo.” I couldn’t help but find that REALLY funny, as he had no idea he was talked to a group of Disney fans and misnaming a Disney movie! He was originally from New Jersey but has lived in Italy for something like 10 years maybe. Throughout the tour, he proved to not only be very knowledgeable, but also incredibly funny!

Since it was a Friday during Lent, as a Catholic I had to abstain from meat, so I asked about that at the beginning if the tour. He said he would make sure that I got a vegetarian substitute where possible.

After some introductions, we were ready to head into the beautiful neighborhood of Trastevere to start our tour. We passed the river again and Mimo pointed out to us how high the water was.


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Our first stop was Da Enzo, the same as we had visited first on our last tour. Here we again had their specialty, the deep fried artichoke with some Prosecco, only this time we had the addition of mozzarella and tomatoes to enjoy with it.

Again, this one was not my favorite, but I knew we had some great stops coming up, so I didn’t worry about the fact that I didn’t eat much of it.

Our next stop was another repeat, Spirito di Vino, the restaurant with the awesome wine cellar where we went down to get our next bite. It used to be a Jewish temple.


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There’s Mimo with our wine.
Although this was a repeat location, the menu was not the same. Last time we’d had a small salad and really delicious meatball, but this time they had a pork stew for us. DH decided to try it, but it was the only meat dish he ate for the rest of the night. I had some kind of soup that looking back, Mimo didn’t tell me what it was. But someone in a later group who also got the soup said she thought it was maybe some kind of pumpkin or squash soup. I didn’t even think about what it was, I just ate it and it was really good!


I’m not a wine drinker but I had a little bit at this stop and it was pretty good. DH really enjoyed it and even had a second glass.

Next up, we went to the place both DH and I had been looking forward to, the bakery!!


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Again, we got to sample three different types of cookies, a lemon one, a shortbread dipped in chocolate, and a hazelnut and vanilla one.


Our next stop was a deli, but a different one from the one we had visited last time.


Here we again got to sample some pecorino Romano cheese, but in addition there were crackers with gorgonzola cheese and also a slice of pizza topped with pork.


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They also gave us a sample of some beer.

Someone was kind enough to show off their pizza topped with pork for a photo.


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For DH and I, we had just the plain pizza (which was really just like a crispy bread) and some fresh ricotta topped with honey.


Continued in next post...
 
Day 2 Continued: Friday March 23rd

Our next stop was one I had been looking forward to… I Suppli! They had just fried them so they were piping hot, and they gave us some marinara pizza to tide us over while they cooled off enough for us to eat.


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I had so been looking forward to trying suppli again. They are fried risotto balls stuffed with a hunk of cheese. BUT…when Mimo came out with them, he pointed out two to me and DH and said, “These are yours, they are potato croquettes.” Turns out suppli are made with meat, but I didn’t realize that. :sad: This was probably the only thing all night I was bummed to miss out on because of Lent.


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Not as tasty as the suppli, but the croquette was still pretty good. We poked our head insides to say thank you, but they were packed.


At some point while walking, I was near Mimo and he finally asked me how it was we didn’t know each other but were going on a cruise together. So I tried to explain about the boards and how we have all interacted online and gotten this group together for the cruise, but many of us were just meeting in person for the first time. He was really intrigued by this!

We made it to our sit down stop for pasta, but this was a different restaurant than we had done last time. It was smaller and seemed more like a family restaurant, but we had basically the same pastas.

Mimo had the servers laugh at us as we tried to pronounce Trastevere correctly and failed.


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The servers came around with large bowls and served each of our plates from it. The first pasta looked like it had meat in it, but I didn’t say anything and just tried to eat around it.

Then Mimo realized they had served us this pasta and had not served two people down at the other end of the table because they thought they were the ones not eating meat. :laughing: So they got us another pasta with tomatoes instead. Plus my favorite from last time, cacio e pepe pasta, which is just fettucine with cheese and pepper. So good! We even made it for the first time at home this past week, and while not as good as in Rome, it still brought back memories!

During the meal, Mimo really got down to business with the message board idea, and wanted to know more. He asked us if we used our real names or fake ones, so we all started telling our screen names and where they came from. He really got a kick out of DH’s being DDuck4Life! He was just fascinated with the whole idea and it sparked a really fun and interesting conversation.

Mimo had also decided a member of our group, Chuck, looked a lot like a famous Italian singer named Gino Paoli so he kept pointing that out to people in Italian and they would crack up laughing. He even had the owner of the restaurant take a photo with him to pretend he met the real Gino!

Finally we made it to the very last stop, and the one and only time DH and I had gelato while in Rome pre-cruise, Fatamorgana!

I had stracciatella and milk chocolate.


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DH went with stracciatella and lemon.


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Mimo was talking to the owner of the book shop next door and trying to negotiate a price on a stack of Disney magazines for a member of our group, Trish. Then he hollered inside to DH, “Hey, DDuck, we found something for you!” because the shop owner had a Donald Duck magazine. :rotfl:

From there, the tour was over so Mimo called us a few cabs. DH and I shared one back to the Bernini Bristol with Chris and Chuck, and within about 20 minutes we were back at the hotel.

Right when we got back, I decided to shower and get ready for bed. But DH wanted some pictures of the Colosseum at night without all of the scaffolding he had encountered in 2014, so he went right back out. I had a mini panic attack when I went to watch some episodes of The Office on Netflix while drying my hair (the hair dryer at the hotel barely put out any heat and didn’t blow the air very well at all, so this was a looooooong process on my thick hair every time I had to use it) and couldn’t find it!! I was hoping it hadn’t been removed from Netflix, but then I figured out it was just because I was on the international server which has different offerings.

Meanwhile, DH was out and about enjoying some Roman sights at night.


On the way back, he made another stop at the Trevi Fountain.


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And got one of the hotel.


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I had been a bundle of nerves for some reason this time, even though he had gone out on his own last trip in Florence and Venice. I think maybe because Rome reminds me more of New Orleans so whether true or not, I felt like there may be a higher chance of something bad happening to him here on such a long walk back and forth to the Colosseum at 10 pm. So I was really starting to worry because I had thought he would get back long before he did at nearly 11:15 and I had no way to get in touch with him since we both had our phones in airplane mode to not use any data while overseas.
Once he was back, I could settle down and go to sleep after taking a few minutes to FaceTime with DS and DD. It was just as well, because we had one last early morning in Rome coming up before we would be getting on our cruise ship!

UP NEXT: Early Morning at the Vatican
 


Love the report about the food tour!!! I remember several of those stops from our previous trip. Yummy.
 
Haha! I just googled Gino Pauli. It's Chuck!
I'm so happy you remembered that singer's name. He came up here and there for the rest of the cruise, but no one could remember the name.
 
I was right, I'm hangry! :) Thanx, @khertz for continuing to share your wonderful story, and @DDuck4Life 's glorious photography with us - especially the stunning night time/Colliseum pics! Seems like Mimo took great care of you! I can relate to the whole "online boards" thing. Used to happen to me/my big group all the time when we'd meet with around a hundred or more of us at WDW., usually once a year. And meals would be resssie's for groups of 30 or more - used to get all KINDS of questions ad looks! And we used to wear homemade badges to identify each other before all that was a "thing" and commonplace!
 


That is me with the pork topped pizza!!!! And I wish that I had known for all of these years that I was married to a famous Italian singer. :rotfl2:This continued even once we were on the ship. One of the bus drivers on our excursion grabbed Chuck as he was getting on the bus and told him that he looked like Gino Pauli..... If we ever retire he can hit the road as his look alike!!! This trip report is really making me want to go back to Rome.... Again great job Dustin, I always forget that I really don't need to take pictures since I can relive the trip through your trip reports.

Chris
 
Love the report about the food tour!!! I remember several of those stops from our previous trip. Yummy.

It was a lot of fun to do again! We got to do some of the same places as last time, but it was nice having a couple of new places this time around. Everything is just so good. Having to abstain from meat worried me, but it turned out to be interesting to get to try different offerings when available.

Haha! I just googled Gino Pauli. It's Chuck!
I'm so happy you remembered that singer's name. He came up here and there for the rest of the cruise, but no one could remember the name.

Right?! Once I googled him, I finally felt like I was in on the joke! lol Our guide kept telling people he knew that we passed on the street, and everyone seemed to be getting a good laugh about it. Now I know why! Chuck definitely took it in stride.

I was right, I'm hangry! :) Thanx, @khertz for continuing to share your wonderful story, and @DDuck4Life 's glorious photography with us - especially the stunning night time/Colliseum pics! Seems like Mimo took great care of you! I can relate to the whole "online boards" thing. Used to happen to me/my big group all the time when we'd meet with around a hundred or more of us at WDW., usually once a year. And meals would be resssie's for groups of 30 or more - used to get all KINDS of questions ad looks! And we used to wear homemade badges to identify each other before all that was a "thing" and commonplace!

Those pictures make me so hungry every time I see them and remember eating those delicious dishes!

It's funny how it's so normal to us, yet so difficult to explain when someone asks about it. :rotfl: @christannj tried to get us a dinner for 16 on the ship one night, which seemed to freak out the hostesses!

That is me with the pork topped pizza!!!! And I wish that I had known for all of these years that I was married to a famous Italian singer. :rotfl2:This continued even once we were on the ship. One of the bus drivers on our excursion grabbed Chuck as he was getting on the bus and told him that he looked like Gino Pauli..... If we ever retire he can hit the road as his look alike!!! This trip report is really making me want to go back to Rome.... Again great job Dustin, I always forget that I really don't need to take pictures since I can relive the trip through your trip reports.

Chris

I thought it was, but didn't want to misname anyone!! lol Thanks for modeling it for the purposes of a complete TR. :thumbsup2

He can definitely learn some of Gino's songs and hit the road on a cover tour. That would be a fun way to see the world!!
 
What an amazing food tour and how great they were able to accomodate you without any meat. I know you didn't care for it, but those artichokes look like a thing of beauty. Of course they are my most favorite food on the planet.

Your husband's night time photos are absolutely gorgeous, though I can see how you would worry when he didn't return back to the hotel quickly.
 
The food tour sounds like it was a hit again! Glad you enjoyed it and had a good guide!

DH's nighttime pics are beautiful! I probably would have been worried too though!
 
What an amazing food tour and how great they were able to accomodate you without any meat. I know you didn't care for it, but those artichokes look like a thing of beauty. Of course they are my most favorite food on the planet.

Your husband's night time photos are absolutely gorgeous, though I can see how you would worry when he didn't return back to the hotel quickly.

I was a bit disappointed to miss out on the suppli, but otherwise the meatless options were actually really delicious! So I'm actually kind of glad it worked out that way because it let me experience a few different options. Plus a lot of the stops offered some kind of pork, which is not my favorite anyway. If you like artichokes, you would LOVE this!

It's a bit frustrating not being able to communicate when you're so used to being able to communicate with each other any time of the day or night. I don't know what we ever did without cell phones! But the photos turned out beautiful.

The food tour sounds like it was a hit again! Glad you enjoyed it and had a good guide!

DH's nighttime pics are beautiful! I probably would have been worried too though!

It was great, and really fun to experience some things we enjoyed from last time but with some new options and a fantastic guide!

The photos did come out beautiful, even though I think I ended up with a few extra gray hairs that night. lol
 
I'm so glad I found this TR! I recently read one of your comments on a Disney TR and realized you had started this! I still have your 2014 TR bookmarked :surfweb: How wonderful you were able to do another trip to Italy. Really enjoying reading about it and seeing the beautiful photos. Especially like the nighttime pictures of the Colosseum - stunning! We're taking our first overseas flight in Sept. and appreciated your tip about packing some things to freshen up with. That never occurred to me. We land in Amsterdam mid morning and will sightsee most of the day before boarding our river cruise ship. Looking forward to reading more!
 
Great recap of the food tour! I was not a very good Catholic that day (well, at least for the food tour, I was better during the day) and did have the meat options. In fact, at the deli stop they started just cutting off prosciutto and other meats and handing them out to us - I mean, when in Rome I guess ;)

Judi did avoid the meat since she normally doesn't eat beef or pork anyway so she had a lot of what you did - and it was definitely a pumpkin soup at the wine cellar stop

Did you all try any of the more exotic flavors of Gellato? I know they had a tobacco one and one that had ginger and horseradish (and other stuff) which I tried (and you could taste all the flavors in it!)

Overall Sprito de Vino was my favorite stop - for the food and the history (our guide said the floor we were standing on was excavated and was 80 years older than the Coliseum)

Speaking of the Coliseum - those are some pretty spectacular photos @DDuck4Life got! Though I can understand you being nervous without having cell phone access to him - especially given that the Coliseum wasn't just around the corner from the hotel or anything!
 
I had been a bundle of nerves for some reason this time, even though he had gone out on his own last trip in Florence and Venice. I think maybe because Rome reminds me more of New Orleans so whether true or not, I felt like there may be a higher chance of something bad happening to him here on such a long walk back and forth to the Colosseum at 10 pm. So I was really starting to worry because I had thought he would get back long before he did at nearly 11:15 and I had no way to get in touch with him since we both had our phones in airplane mode to not use any data while overseas.


Lets just say @khertz was less than thrilled when I actually showed back up to our room. You would think someone worried about my safety and making it back in one piece would be happy to see me, but seems she was just happy I made it back so that now she could kill me herself for keeping her up worrying. :rotfl::rotfl2::lmao:

I should have know better than to under estimate my time. But there's always that just one more shot, try a different angle or oh let me walk over here to see how it looks from this perspective. So that one more 5 minute shot turns into another 30 minutes. I should have added some buffer time but thought I could be efficient as I knew the spots I wanted to take the pictures from. The problem was I kept adding to the list.

There was one point where I knew I was short on time and started jogging back to the hotel but all that did was buy me some time to stop in the piazza in front of the hotel to get a few shots of the hotel at night. :rotfl2:
 
I was not a very good Catholic that day (well, at least for the food tour, I was better during the day) and did have the meat options. In fact, at the deli stop they started just cutting off prosciutto and other meats and handing them out to us - I mean, when in Rome I guess ;)
There's something semi-amusing about being a Catholic in Rome (and so close to the Vatican) and having meat pushed on you during a Friday in Lent.
 
There's something semi-amusing about being a Catholic in Rome (and so close to the Vatican) and having meat pushed on you during a Friday in Lent.

I agree - there definitely was no "well, it's Friday in Lent so let's adjust or take into account many people won't eat meat" or anything (not just for the Food Tour but in general, and including while on the cruise)
 
Just read through all your Rome updates. It was so fun seeing your photos and reading about the sights you visited now that I've been there myself. During your ABD report, I kept thinking about how amazing it all appeared and this time around it was making me wish I could return!

I bet the Trevi fountain at sunrise was beautiful. I can't imagine it not being swarmed with people, though!

Glad you were able to tour the Colosseum more in-depth than the last visit.

Loved your recap of the food tour. Your guide sounds like he was quite the character. I can only imagine his reaction when he tried to wrap his head around the fact that you all had met via the internet. It sounds kind of crazy in theory but I don't think any of us here find it the least bit odd.


I had stracciatella
That's the best! It's my husband's absolute favorite flavor.:love: I'm not exactly sure why, but we have a ton of Italian restaurants/gelato shops here, so during the summertime whenever we're out and about we hit a stand up a get a scoop of stracciatella for 1 Euro. It's wonderful.


but then I figured out it was just because I was on the international server which has different offerings.

Ugh, the struggle is real over here in Germany. When we went home in April, I was SO excited to see what shows and movies were being offered on American Netflix. :rotfl2:
 
I'm so glad I found this TR! I recently read one of your comments on a Disney TR and realized you had started this! I still have your 2014 TR bookmarked :surfweb: How wonderful you were able to do another trip to Italy. Really enjoying reading about it and seeing the beautiful photos. Especially like the nighttime pictures of the Colosseum - stunning! We're taking our first overseas flight in Sept. and appreciated your tip about packing some things to freshen up with. That never occurred to me. We land in Amsterdam mid morning and will sightsee most of the day before boarding our river cruise ship. Looking forward to reading more!

I'm so glad you found me! Our first Italy trip was a dream come true...getting to go again just a few years later was simply amazing!! And definitely very unexpected.

I saw a lady do that with her kids on our ABD trip when we flew overnight to Rome. It was definitely a great idea!

Are you doing a Viking river cruise or another line? We really appreciated the great service and beautiful ship with Viking. I'd love to do one of their river cruises one day.

Great recap of the food tour! I was not a very good Catholic that day (well, at least for the food tour, I was better during the day) and did have the meat options. In fact, at the deli stop they started just cutting off prosciutto and other meats and handing them out to us - I mean, when in Rome I guess ;)

Judi did avoid the meat since she normally doesn't eat beef or pork anyway so she had a lot of what you did - and it was definitely a pumpkin soup at the wine cellar stop

Haha It was tough to be a good Catholic on this trip!! Fasting on Good Friday was the WORST. It's so hard to fast when you're surrounded by delicious food options...and gelato!!

I thought she had said pumpkin but I wasn't sure! I'm glad I had her to tell me because I had never had pumpkin anything before, so I didn't recognize the flavor. But it was really good!

Did you all try any of the more exotic flavors of Gellato? I know they had a tobacco one and one that had ginger and horseradish (and other stuff) which I tried (and you could taste all the flavors in it!)

We did not. It was too adventurous for me. I like sticking with the classics!! lol

Overall Sprito de Vino was my favorite stop - for the food and the history (our guide said the floor we were standing on was excavated and was 80 years older than the Coliseum)

Speaking of the Coliseum - those are some pretty spectacular photos @DDuck4Life got! Though I can understand you being nervous without having cell phone access to him - especially given that the Coliseum wasn't just around the corner from the hotel or anything!

Spirito de Vino was a favorite both times we have done this tour. And both times we wished we would have gone back there for a meal during the trip but never had the time!

I think that was what freaked me out the most. It was a decent hike over to the Colosseum, and at night in a foreign country it had me on edge not being able to keep in contact with him.

There's something semi-amusing about being a Catholic in Rome (and so close to the Vatican) and having meat pushed on you during a Friday in Lent.

Very true!! The guide seemed surprised when I said I wasn't vegetarian, just Catholic. :rotfl:

I bet the Trevi fountain at sunrise was beautiful. I can't imagine it not being swarmed with people, though!

It was incredible to see it with hardly anyone else around AND at sunrise! It was worth getting up crazy early on vacation just to see that.

Glad you were able to tour the Colosseum more in-depth than the last visit.

Taking this tour was a great decision. We both loved having more time inside of there.

Loved your recap of the food tour. Your guide sounds like he was quite the character. I can only imagine his reaction when he tried to wrap his head around the fact that you all had met via the internet. It sounds kind of crazy in theory but I don't think any of us here find it the least bit odd.

It was so difficult to explain without sounding incredibly strange!! lol I'm sure it's hard to wrap your mind around it unless you are in it. It seems so normal to me. When I try explaining it to people at work, it's like, "Well there's these people that do a Disney podcast..." :rotfl2:

That's the best! It's my husband's absolute favorite flavor.:love: I'm not exactly sure why, but we have a ton of Italian restaurants/gelato shops here, so during the summertime whenever we're out and about we hit a stand up a get a scoop of stracciatella for 1 Euro. It's wonderful.

It's SO good!!! I miss good gelato...

Ugh, the struggle is real over here in Germany. When we went home in April, I was SO excited to see what shows and movies were being offered on American Netflix. :rotfl2:

I can imagine!! I guess I just always figured Netflix was Netflix until then. I wonder if they would have shown up if I had downloaded some episodes to watch off of wifi? :confused3
 

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