Lost my Little Black Book

This morning I woke up earlier than everybody in my room, so I picked up my iPod, and rambled on north of Medag. Nobody has really gone up there at all (most/nearly all of the city is south of us and east of us), so I decided to check it out. I actually really liked the area, but it is almost nearly residential (4-5 story apartment buildings). Also, it's very hilly. However, some non-residential stuff I found included some really really cheap Chinese restaurants. Maria Younes, our envoy for ND students, said the Chinese restaurants are the best deal. I can see why: everything was like 3/4 euro. I saw one place had fried frog. I'll bring my camera when I eat that.

After that, we headed out to the open air market five minutes south of Medag. Lots of cheese, meats, fish, fruit, etc. there. There are also some cheap clothes there to buy. Anyways, I was pretty much in heaven. Delicious food (I bought a pound of salume for like 3 euro, some ricotta that was like 1.30 a kilo, some delicious parmaggiano, and some seeded grapes. All were fantastic), and it was a very cool sociological/econ thing. Nearly all locals, so I got to practice my Italian (a lot of the vendors seemed surprised to see a Irish-white boy in shorts asking about their favorite meats). Also, it was cool to see how all the prices of the meats/cheeses/fruits were all very, very cheap and around the same, and the places that had "rare" goods seemed to jack up their prices. For example, there was only one place I found that sold nuts (cashews, peanuts, etc). It seemed pricey. I was bothered because that was the first place I saw, and I was disappointed that the market was going to be so expensive. Once I went to a cheese place, though, I realized what was up.

So then we walked down to JCU to sign up for a few trips. I signed up for two hiking trips at five euro a pop (subsidized!) and an unsubsidized day trip to Tuscany with wine tastings and a three course meal prepared on the countryside (75 euro). Then we went to look through Trastevere, and as we went south past Santa Maria in Trastevere I was noting all the places in my Little Black Book that looked so good. Well, Dan and I decided to go West to go up into a park-like area (Rome doesn't really have parks as much as the Villas of the families that used to be really unbelievably rich that are very plush and green) in Trastevere, and it was fantastic. You go up a hill there and have a terrific view across the city. Sadly, somewhere along the way, I lost my Little Black Book. Now I'll have to find good restaurants on my own. And that's a huge pain, because there are, like, none of those anywhere around this city.