12.31.19
I did a poor job of planning things for us to do on this trip, especially in Rome. So at the last minute I had messaged a winery outside of Rome that I read about on-line to receive a message back that they were closed until January 3rd. Lucky for us though, they shared their experience on AirBnB, which led me to find a pizza making class and wine tasting at a small family owned winery in near by in Frascati, a 20 minute train ride outside of Rome.
We met Jack at the taxi stand as we exited the train station, and our small group was off to the farmhouse.
We arrived to find a beautiful room set up with all the ingredients to make what we though was our our pizza, only to be escorted into the “garage” where we would actually be cooking. We were taught by the local Pizza Maestro, and Jack translated the lesson. Unfortunately we did not get to use our own dough, as it has to rise for 24 hours. After we made our dough we took a tour of the vineyard and property.
We then made our way back inside where we received a history lesson and cellar tour from the owner and wine maker. After our tour we were served vino and appetizers while each of the groups created their pizza. We each made one pizza and shared with the group. The wine was good, we ended up purchasing a bottle of their white to bring back with us.
After the train ride back up Roma we found a small wine bar by our apt where we grabbed a drink and a bite before walking over to Circus Maximus to check out the festivities. They weren’t letting anyone in until 9 pm so we just walked as far as we could and then decided to turn back to head to the apt to rest until it got closer to 12 pm. Nick also wanted to do some more research on the nights can celebration.
Around 11:15 pm we made our way back towards the Colosseum, there were crowds but it wasn’t until 12 pm that it really got crazy. We had the irrefutable spot near the Colosseum to watch the fireworks that were to be set off near Circus Maximus only to see nothing! There were at least 20,000 people around and no show to be found. We had read in several places about the awesome celebration they have in Roma to witness none of it!
At least we did see some fireworks that were being set off by kids. Exhausted we made our way back and listened to our neighbors setting off fireworks and cherry bombs (which are very loud and scary by the way) off until about 1:30 am.