Rome, Italy — Via Appia Antica

We had big plans to walk along Via Appia Antica, which the Lonely Planet rates as one of the top highlights in Rome. There's a few catacomb sites to visit along the walk too. It's another nice break from the usual tourist sites. We debated taking transportation to the starting point, but ended up walking because it was through different areas of Rome that we hadn't seen yet.

It's about an hour to the starting point. Unfortunately the gates to the park were closed, so we had to take the road, where there's not much sidewalk. Finally we got to Catacombe di San Callisto, which is closed on Wednesdays :( So walked down to Basilica of Saint Sebastian Outside the Walls, which also has some catacombs. They were closed on Jan 2 because of repairs to the electrical system :( we weren't having much luck today! (the name 'Outside the Walls' is a reference to the ancient Roman law forbidding burying of the dead inside the walls)

So we walked back into the city. We realized we had walked right past Terme di Caracalla on the way in, cause we saw it on our way back. Looked it up in the Lonely Planet but it didn't sound interesting enough and we were hungry and tired and cold so just continued on.

We went back to the cosy little place in the turtle fountain plaza. Same as last time, the lady was overwhelmed at times with customers. We had a soup and chicory torte with a red wine. It was still overly busy so went across the plaza to have dessert and an espresso. Realized they had craft beer (we had read that same as everywhere else now, there's quite the craft beer scene in Rome) so I tried a witbier (Seta, by Birrificio Rurale). It was pretty good.

They had wifi (pronounced 'wiffy' here too, maybe it's a European thing) at the bar so we searched around for a place for dinner. Made a reservation at DanEl Tavernae based on the tripadvisor rating.

DanEl was more experimental with food, and very big into instagrammable plates. Had the tuna tartare for the starter (the tuna, as with all the ingredients here, was excellent), carbonara for pasta (which turned out to be deconstructed), and almond-crusted veal tenderloin for the main (served with about 15 ingredients in the presentation, but really just needed the veal, crusted almonds, potato slices and greens). The espressos were good too.