BELLA ROMA	09.20.08

Well I am officially way behind with my blogging but I do have an excuse for that…I’m still on Vacation. Instead of spending hours on the computer, its nice to travel, spend time with family and eat way too many gelatos in Rome.

If you follow my status updates on Twitter or Facebook (even by clicking the small “t” icon) than you know about some of the experiences we have had. Perhaps we are too picky about food, but we had a hard time finding great Italian food in Rome. We did find a few amazing places after talking to insiders and locals. Candace has a detailed post on her blog about food and restaurants we found. We went to Rome for 2 main reasons. To try the food and to take pictures (obviously). I am not so much the kind of guy that goes to the touristy attractions and takes pictures of himself standing in front of every attraction, It’s not my king of bag.

Back to the food, avoid eating near attractions, stay away from places with waiters in the street asking you (in English) to come in, if you hear people talking English or any other language than Italian…get out, run if the menu has pictures of food and it’s in English, if you sit in a coffee near the Colosseum and you see a group of tourists on Segeway’s pass by than you know your espresso will cost 5x more than it should. Capicse? If not forgetaboutit.

Not everything was bad, we had an amazing hotel in the center of Rome, all locals we talked to were very friendly and helpful, amazing picture perfect weather and we saw De Niro and Pacino at a red carpet premiere of their new movie Righteous Kill. Vito and Michael Corleone in Italy…how cool is that?

We found the good places by asking locals and by walking AWAY from the beaten (popular) paths. With all the eating we did and trust me it was way more than we do at home, we managed to lose weight by walking 20-30 miles. After 7-8 gelatos I am good for a long time. Stracciatella and Hazelnut were my favorites.

Anyway I have over 2000 images to look at so here are just a few teaser images for now but I will prep a very cool slideshow once I am back home behind a computer working 10+ hours again, yey. Have a relaxing weekend, turn that computer off…. but first check out these teasers.

The “Carabinieri” Italian police


Twilight shot of the Colosseum. I think it was worth waiting for this.

Italy premier of Righteous Kill just 2 blocks from our hotel. I pushed myself through with the paparazzi




I had about 7-8 of these beauties.

Colosseum

St Peter’s Basillica


Castel St. Angelo

We saw at least 3 weddings on a Tuesday near the Colosseum. Let me know if you want to get married in Rome… we travel ;)


Candace checking out the Colosseum from our tour bus


Italians love to take lots of breaks from work

Nice flair shot of the Colosseum


Small streets off the beaten path were my favorites to see and shoot.

Check out these “knockers”

Nice back light and flair on this shot of my favorite wife


Piazza Venezia


This one is probably my favorite image. It will look great in my studio on a canvas.