Rome, Italy

We've always liked being in Europe so we thought we'd pop in to say goodbye ahead of the UK's impending move to the comforting continent of nostalgia for a Britain that never actually existed (Ed. are we trying to reduce our already limited readership??).

We liked the idea of doing something totally different to finish our trip and so we had searched cheap flight options and these revealed Rome. We emerged blurry eyed from the airport at about 7am and took a commuter train into town, it was pleasingly mild and sunny and we knew we had done right.

One thing you rarely get in Asia is great pasta. Rome is all about peasant food so think beautiful pasta, simple generous sauces and (normally) small flavourful cuts of meat. Here are some of the great pastas we had:

-Cavatelli in a spicy pork cheek ragu
Tonnarello spaghetti with an awesome bite with, variously, generous cheese and pepper and hunks of pork and beef meatballs in a creamy tomato and white wine sauce (I couldn't eat for hours after this mammoth meal, it was very inconvenient)
-fettuccine in white beef ragu and nduja and orecchiette cheese, bacon and chicory at la meridionale
-rigatoni amatriciana (pork cheek, pecorino and tomato) and gricia (more pork cheek in a black pepper and cheese sauce) at Enzo, who incidentally, did a tiramisu that was so good it beggared belief (I'm a long time tiramisu sceptic), flakes of dark nutty chocolate that oozed out of the cream
-boar ragu parpadelle and, our one desertion of pasta, a slow cooked super succulent veal chop at la tavernaccia by Bruno

As you'd expect we accompanied all of this with lashings of red wine and aperol spritzes, blue and goat and smoked cheeses and when we needed some sustenance after a morning at the Vatican found a cured meat sandwich shop; after a wander around the Colosseum we got jewish style artichoke. The rest of the time we wandered the beautiful twisting streets, admiring the pastel buildings layered with wooden shutters, the island in the Tiber, the old town of Trastevere and the climb up the hills above with the view across the city and whilst we wandered we spotted landmarks like the Spanish Steps and the Trevi fountain and the Pantheon, stopping for the odd coffee along the way.

It was eat and drink what you want bliss and the perfect final stop on the perfect trip.

Thank you for reading, love Anna and Rich