Rome 3

Since I was a very young boy, machines of all types have fascinated me. On the automotive level, Rome is full of interesting vehicles. Size is an important design feature and the streets are full of mini cars, often having a just about square footprint. That means you can park one almost anywhere and that is exactly what happens. Some of the streets are not even big enough for the tiny cars and they are for two wheel vehicles only. Much of the local commerce runs on tiny three wheel trucks, basically motor scooters with a tiny truck body. Most are very old and overloaded, the most basic of commercial transportation.

3 wheeled Roman workhorse

Tiny 2 cylinder diesel

Bicycle tire vending machine

The next level up is the Piaggio mini truck. They appear to be a left hand drive version of the Suzuki mini truck, which I have at my home in California. They come in a variety of different configurations from dump truck to furniture box truck and they are everywhere. As with the Japanese model, the same configuration comes in increasingly larger versions. The drivers that I saw were courteous and careful. As long as one made their intention clear and didn't hesitate, there were no problems. We did not see any traffic accidents in two weeks of walking the city streets on a daily basis. There were bicycles too, but not so many. Thankfully, the air did not smell like diesel or two stroke engine exhaust, even though there were plenty of vehicles using both diesel and 2 stroke gas engines.

Piaggio Dump Truck

Piaggio Furniture Truck

It's time to talk about food again. Directly across the Via del Pellegrino from our building is a small passage way. I can't really call it a street, it's more like an alley that connects our street to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. One day, we stumbled on a small "restaurant". It was basically counter service with tables. The proprietors were Syrian/Italians, so the food had elements of both cultures. They had pizza sold by weight with creative toppings that were beyond delicious. They also had meat and chicken stews that were served over rice. And then there were the Arancini. Arancini  are stuffed rice balls which are coated with breadcrumbs and fried. Arancini are usually filled with ragù (meat sauce), tomato sauce, mozzarella, and/or peas. They are soooooooo delicious.  The photo below is the menu. The pizza prices are euros per 100 grams.

Arancini

This little gastronomical gem was right on the corner of the alley and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II so we merely had to walk a few hundred feet for some of the best simple food in Rome. The pizza was far beyond any other pizza we had in Rome or anywhere else.

I used my pigeon Italian to tell the counter person that they had the best pizza in Rome. It seems that praise is easily interpreted, no matter how bad the speakers grammar is. The photo below is our favorite place. Just to the right is the alley that leads to the Via del Pellegrino. I found this picture through the wonders of Google Earth.

Best Street Pizza 

Pizza by weight with Aracini top right