Roma: Day 2 - Morning

My B&B manager, Raul, informed me when I checked in that breakfast is from 8-10am. So I set my alarm this morning for 7:15am, took a shower, got dressed & went to breakfast a little after 8:15am. Besides Raul (who makes breakfast for us), I was the only person there for a little while. So we spent the morning talking (in Italian) about the first day in Rome & what I did. He turned on the news and we spent the morning watching the news - all in Italian. 

Raul & I discussed what we were watching - mainly news about the economy. How high gas prices are in italy - which is 12 euro al litro. There was also a ton of news about soccer (calcio) which didn't interest me at all. There was news about this woman Merkel, who has apparently been named the world's most powerful woman. Second is Hillary Clinton. There was news about the wildfires in Italy and the weather, which is EXTREMELY HOT. I think that summarizes what I watched this morning. 

I asked Raul what Italians eat for breakfast. He said a pastry of some kind and a cappuccino. Instead of a pastry, since I told him I can't eat bread, he brought me some cheese & prosciutto. I asked him the name of the prosciutto and he told me that it depends on the color mainly. Prosciutto rosso, prosciutto rosa. Red meat, pink meat. The slices were small, like bacon, except they weren't crunchy. The pink prosciutto was thinner and tastier than the red prosciutto. The cheese was white, wrapped in plastic. Like Kraft single slices. Except they tasted like real cheese, not that gross oily stuff in plastic. And I had 2 little cups of cappuccino, which were good. A basic Italian breakfast. Una colazione buona! 

During breakfast, a man & woman came in to eat. They were from Ireland, outside of Belfast. They came for the woman's birthday. I also met a young woman from Australia. We spent a while talking to each other about traveling. She told me she was from Perth and was leaving today to fly home. She told me she spent 6 weeks traveling, 3 days in Rome. She told me how she went to Croatia before coming to Italy. She explained how much she loves to travel. She said she's been to Asia, Indonesia, and South America. We talked about languages and she told me that in school, they learn Indonesian, which I think is strange. She never had a choice of choosing a language to learn like I do, choices between French, Italian, Spanish, etc. She was taught Indonesian in school but told me it's useless because most of the people, mainly in Bali, are Aussies (which sounded like Ozzies when she said it, but then I caught on). She told me that she's planning to travel to North America & the US next year so I told her where to go. She hopes to drive cross country through the US next summer - one of my goals in life, but not during the summer I think. 

When talking about Italy & Rome, she was completely jealous that I was living here for 4 months. Her mother is Italian and Italian was her mother's first language so this young woman learned some of it, but it was entirely dialect. So it's difficult for her to use in Italy. But she was really sweet. I wished her luck in her travels.