La Notte Bianca
If you’re ever in Rome at the beginning of September, be sure to check out La Notte Bianca, which is where the whole city stays up all night downtown for food, drinks, entertainment and fun! Literally translated, it means “white night,” but basically means an all-nighter. Many bars, pubs, restaurants, gelato shops, etc. stay open very late on this occasion. And there are performances, musicians, and all sorts of entertainment around the city in the big squares. The one down side, though, is that the city is PACKED! People were all over the place! Romans, tourists, visitors from nearby cities and countries, all come out for this festival. It took forever to move from one place to another.
My Notte Bianca started with dinner in Parioli, which is a neighborhood near mine where some of my friends live. Katherine and I met up with our classmate Dan for dinner before we headed into the city. We found a place called Pastarito, which we discovered was actually a chain restaurant around Italy. We got some pasta, which was good, although the service was super slow. We normally wouldn’t mind the more relaxed Italian pace, but we were anxious to get downtown to meet with our friends for Notte Bianca!
Once we finished dinner, we headed for the metro, but that turned out to be MIA, we decided after waiting for over 30 minutes for a train to arrive. So, we went to the street and caught a bus to get to town. The bus couldn’t even go to the end of its line, in Piazza del Popolo, because there was too much traffic and masses of people blocking the way. So, he stopped a few blocks away, and we walked into the utterly packed square to meet our classmates.
After pushing and squeezing our way through the crowd in La Piazza del Popolo, we finally met up with our friends who had struggled through the streets from La Piazza da Spagna. We found a restaurant in La Piazza del Popolo to get drinks, and then headed up towards La Villa Borghese. We got to the top, overlooking the piazza, where they had music playing, and we talked and hung out for a bit. We tried to go into the park at one point, but the stairs leading up that way were too jam packed for us to get through. So, we headed down into the square and made our way down one of the streets leading off of it to a bar and pub to hang out for awhile. We wandered around the packed streets as well, and eventually headed back home via taxis. As we passed through La Piazza del Popolo on the way home, there was an acrobat performance in the square, which we stopped to watch before catching taxis.
|
