Dinner with strangers

 Highlights today included, unseasonal weather, visiting a villa, having a lovely lunch, getting rained on at the colosseum, mastering ATAC (Romes's bus network) and having dinner in a stranger's house.

The villa we visited was Villa Farnesina, on the other side of the river. An impressive building that also presented us with the history of Rome, the History of the river, how the river was changed and embankments were created. 

The villa consisted of gardens outside and inside, and a number of rooms which were decorated, both downstairs and up. 

From here, we caught the bus over to the colosseum and managed to rise above the crowds for some photo opportunities also got a little rained on. 

Lunch was close by, and even though we weren't expecting much, we were surprised.  We have found places that make pasta fresh makes a big difference. 

As the rain continued, we headed back to the apartment, watched a little TV, washed some clothes and then prepared for dinner.

We had booked a dinner "With Locals".  This enabled us to have a home-cooked meal and learn about local life in the City of Rome. We caught the bus to a pickup point and, on time, were collected by Gianluca and Claudia, who drove us away from the city to their apartment. We had a lovely couple of hours with them with a pasta and ragu dish, a meatball and tomato sauce dish with steamed and fried cabbage and finished with Tiramisu. 

The food was lovely, and the conversation was interesting too. At the conclusion, they drove us back toward the city, where we could walk only a few minutes back to our apartment. 

Another great day in the city of Rome