Category Archives: My Favorite Places to Eat

Autogrill

Driving in Italy can be stressful. People drive fast. City driving is not recommended. Restrictions on city centers driving make it a lost cause. But… I love driving along the highways and the Auto Stradas. I love stopping at the Autogrill places. This past month I drove with a friend of mine from Rome to Ortisei, high up in the mountains of the Dolomites. And in between two funny things happened. My friend was driving. He ran out of gas. And there we were on the bush stretch of Auto Strada and we had to call in for a tow to the Herat Autogrill gas station. We were 6 km away. But it took a while for the guy to show up and then we remained in the car while he hauled us onto his tow truck. Was quite an adventure watching the world go whizzing by us while we sat in the car on the tow truck as it poodles along enroute to the gas pump. A funny experience.

Anyhow on to my next point. These Autogrills are quite a phenomenon. They sell everything. From the regular auto stop necessities like coffee and a sandwich to the spectacular. It’s a full on delicatessen, a fabulous self-serve restaurant with amazing regional dishes and clothes and toys and anything you may have forgotten on the road. We saw 4 trucks of firefighters from Romania buying the place out as they were heading home. It’s a supermarket with fabulous food. And the prices are amazing. Each Autogrill has different specialties depending upon the region. Oh. And you can get gas there too! Thank goodness! 😅

In my travels I love stumbling on the unusual places that don’t necessarily fit into a regular itinerary. Recently while driving through the Dolomites area I got to see the beautiful towns of the Sufvtirol. The Sufvtirol was formerly part of the Austrian Hungarian empire. In a classic land grab after the First World War, Italy apportioned itself the Austrian border towns and created the region Sudtirol. It’s a wealthy beautiful area. The unusual Dolomites with their rust colored dramatic rock towers above beautiful valleys and the largest prairie in Europe. The alpe di susi. In the winter it’s a skier’s paradise. In the summer the lifts keep rolling and skiers are replaced by walkers and bikers. The Dolomites are wide open unlike other alpine ranges. Lots of sun and places to stay on the high mountains. The food is very different. A mix of the best of Austrian and Italian. Wines are very good. Especially the whites. The local delicacies like speck, a type of prosciutto, and the delicious cheeses plus a whole variety of pasta makes this one of my favorite culinary stops. Towns like Bolzano and Ortisei and the glitzy Cortina are a short distance from Venice or Verona.

Tiramisu

Rome

I love Rome.

From the moment I jump in the cab, there is a sense of gradual transition as you journey into this incredibly beautiful city filled with dust, cracks, and occasional garbage bags. It’s all here.

For me it begins as we pass the Sheraton Hotel. Out in the distance is Esposizione Universale Roma (EUR), a 1930’s modernist vision community of how Rome should be in the new world. It didn’t really work out that well but it left us some interesting buildings and now a trendy neighborhood with parks and metro access to both the beach and the center of town. That’s the other thing about Rome – it’s a beach city. The Roman port of Ostia is connectible by metro from the beach resort through Acilia and trendy living areas of Rome to the Colosseum.

Then for me the real transition begins. The first sight of any significance is the white marble Pyramid of Cestius outside Porta San Paolo gate. Then you make that turn up the Aventine Hill with the Palatine Hill facing you. Residential palaces in pink Roman stone look down on the vast field of grass that is the Circus Maximus, one of the largest arenas in the world during roman times.

It becomes frenetic and exhausting at this point with ancient fragments popping up every second it seems. The right turn at the bottom of the hill takes you by the Bocca della Verità (The Mouth of Truth). Opposite from that there is a Greek temple then a Roman temple and as the roads start to move around, you start to see what looks like the Colosseum but in fact is Marcello’s amphitheater, the Teatro di Marcello. Behind that is Octavia’s portal and the Jewish ghetto. On the right side lies the most glorious juxtaposition of stairways anywhere. There is the very subtle Capitoline Hill Stairs, the Cordonata, right next to the severe and steep medieval stairway that leads to the Basilica di Santa Maria in Aracoeli. On the right hand side beyond the stairways is the slightly incongruous, but ever faithful tourist site for lost travelers, the 19^th century wedding cake built to commemorate the unification of Italy in 1870 named the Vittorio Emanuele monument.

We are now in the Renaissance period with the Piazza Venezia with Trajan’s Forum on the right and I have disappeared into Rome before even my first cappuccino.

Rome Pietro Place Peter Jones Rome Steps Pietro Place Peter Jones