Continued from Rome Day 2 Part 2.
After a long day of sightseeing, I made it back to the hotel and spent the next few hours writing up this diary and resting. Eventually, made plans with my friend A to meet her and her roommate(she had moved from hostel to house where the family rents out rooms) for drinks. Before meeting up with them, I had to get some dinner.
The hotel recommended this restaurant a block away because they were known to be quick in serving food.
Please note that my table is actually fully on the street. Cars would drive by me and get within a couple feet of my table.
My dining companion.
The food. Let’s just say this place was only recommended because it was fast, and not for anything else.
Spy photo. While dining, this guy came by and tried to hard sell some wood carvings. I saw another guy hustling similar products at another street corner later in the night. It’s apparently a whole syndicate running the same scheme.
Street musicians. What’s the first song that they play? The Godfather’s theme. I cracked up when I heard that tourist trap.
After dinner and some more diary writing, it was time to meet up with the girls at the bar that they were hanging at.
USA Crew has no class.
Saw another one of this. Now, I know they are not just broken faucets. I wonder what’s the historical significance of this because it just runs nonstop.
Odd to see this here.
Getting closer to the restaurant/bar that I am looking for.
LA, stay classy. What’s the c after USA?
Found the place. It’s a place with a Japanese name that serves Italian food. Strange…
My friend A’s roommate is a Korean girl who lives in Germany and speaks German. That’s interesting. One of the first questions that I had to ask her was if she’s ever met an Indian person with a thick Indian accent who spoke German. I’ve always wondered how that would sound because both languages have such strong accents. She didn’t know of an Indian who spoke German with a thick Indian accent though.
What’s up with these stubby cigarettes? Stubby cigarette on left and normal cigarettes on right.
We sat in the sidewalk seating area and just drank and chatted for a while. Then we decided that we wanted to go to a real bar. Our waiter recommended an Irish Pub, of all things, to recommend to us. Sure, why not.
Santa Maria Church. Walked by this in search of the Irish Pub.
They have really small trash trucks over here. It’s barely bigger than a sedan.
Don’t know what this is, but it’s pretty cool looking.
Found it! Its called Fiddler’s Elbow and was really obscure, hidden away in a residential street. It was the only business on this entire street.
Cheers! Time to get my drink on.
The bartender had a shaker that was stuck shut. It took him a good 2 minutes and various methods to finally get it to open.
Success at last.
Many bathrooms here have foot operated faucets.
Keep those drinks comin’.
OK!
Tequila shots it is then.
Unfortunately, the bars here in Rome also close at 2AM like they do in Austin. Most of the stores have closed as well so you can’t buy alcohol. We were looking to keep on drinking and we asked the bartenders if there were any other way for us to keep on going. He mentioned that there were these member’s only drinking clubs that serves alcohol until 8AM. The membership is free, and there is one a couple blocks away.
These member’s only drinking clubs have no signs, but the bartender said to look for a light like the one that they have(in picture below), and there’s a buzzer for us to ring. When we ring the buzzer, someone will open the door and let us in. Sounds a little crazy and fun, so we were all for it.
We are looking for a light similar to the light on the left.
LOL!!! Not 100 feet after leaving Fiddler’s Elbow, we saw this guy passed out on the hood of a Fiat. LOLOL!!!! I had to wake him up to make sure that he was ok. He was.
On the way to the secret bar, we also ran into these girls from Mexico(I had met them at Fiddler’s Elbow) who were here for some sort of tourism training. They were a fun bunch and also knew about the secret bar, so we confirmed the secret bar’s existence. I do have to say, if you’ve met one rich privileged Mexican from Mexico in your life, you’ve met them all. They all speak and act the same. The girls also mentioned that it was Mexico’s Independence Day(It’s actually not Cino de Mayo), so that meant tequila shots.
OK, we think this is it. We see the light and the buzzer.
Holy crap! It works! A guy opened the door and we told him that we wanted to drink. He said that we needed to be a member, but it was free to join and we just had to fill out a really short form. Sure, anything!
The infamous buzzer.
Even before ordering a drink, we asked the bartender if we could buy cigarettes since we had run out. He said that everything was closed, except for this self service machine around the corner. Then he said that we couldn’t buy it because we didn’t have this Tessera card(I guess ID card). Then he thought about it for a second, reached into his wallet, and handed me his Tessera Sanitaria card to use. Talk about trusting a complete stranger!!
Here’s the card that we used to insert into the machine to buy cigarettes. I blurred out his name for privacy.
The machine had English language option, but was still very difficult to use. True to form, I accidentally pushed the wrong thing and I got this printout instead of actual change returned to me. Asshole!
After getting some cigarettes, we happily returned to the secret bar.
When we got back, the bartender had short little forms waiting for us to fill out. It was essentially name, birthday and some sort of area code. I just put down my zip code.
Bartender filling out our info into a ledger for members.
Here’s my membership card!!(name blurred out). I am a card carrying member, bitch! Time to drink!
It was so nice outside so parts of the night we just sat on the quiet street drinking.
Party on. The bar was filled mostly with locals but we did met a few other travelers. A few guys from LA, who were going to Oktoberfest and a few girls from Australia, etc.
My body feels as tired and drunk as this picture would suggest.
What’s up with these US plates.
OK, I think it’s time to stop. The night started at 10 and now it’s almost 6.
We had stayed out so late that businesses were starting to open up, for breakfast. Saw this pastry shop open, and figured that we’d get a snack to eat before stumbling on home.
We were in a dark bar for so long, these fluorescent colored desserts looked really trippy.
Fruit custard for me.
The end of the night for us, and the beginning of the day for most. I parted ways with my friends after eating dessert and stumbling through the empty streets of Rome back to my hotel.
Rome, as seen from the crack of dawn.
What Rome looked like during twilight.
What Rome looked like to me during twilight.
Alright, time to go to bed. What a badass fun night full of debauchery. I’ll pay for it tomorrow, but it was well worth it.
To be continued at Rome Day 3 Part 1.