Thompson's European Adventures 2011: Campo de Fiori

NINA Before we arrived in Rome, I imagined I would walk to Campo de Fiori every morning to buy our breakfast of breads and fruits. It turns out it's a little bit farther from our apartment than I thought so I was very excited to spend the morning there, along with Noel and Stefan, who arrived the night before. It took a lot of restraint not to buy everything I could get my hands on, but the short visit was fun for everyone, from sampling truffles and fruits to having delicious pizzas from Forno (thank you Katie Parla) at Piazza Farnese.

We're going back for this porchetta for lunch tomorrow.

Don't let anyone get in my way!

ERICA Campo De' Fiori provides an amazing market everyday except Sunday. A market filled with goods of all sorts: dips, candy, blocks of cheese, various types of vegetables, and interesting and fun tools. These are just a few of the many items they sold there, but these stood out to me the most. Candy because, seriously, who doesn't like candy? Especially me, an eleven year old.

The dips because of delicious samples they gave out, that lead us to buying a batch. The huge blocks of cheese that they sold because I love Parmesan cheese (Parmiggiano Reggiano), and I just wanted to stuff my face in it, and bite a chunk out of it. The various types of vegetables because they were all over the place, filling the market with color, and scents. But most of all, the tools.

A man in his later years was selling these tools that he made that can do really cool things with fruits and vegetables. He had this tool that was like a stick, with a rubber and removable handle at the top, and two twirly circles at the bottom. If you stick the tool into a vegetable and turn and push, you end up with a swirly "cut out" of the vegetable! If you want to, and you do it with a potato for example, you can stick a carrot up the hole and cut it up to make a combination of the two fruits! Another tool was the lemon squeezer. It is sort of shaped like a funnel, and if you stick the straight end into the lemon and squeeze the lemon, a ton of juice comes out and into the cup part of the tool! It also comes with a cap for the cup part, so that you can stick it in a fridge or leave it somewhere without the juice coming out! There were other tools to make chips, different shavings of the vegetables, a slinky fruit, and more! He was really fun to listen to.

Next to the market was a restaurant called Forno, a pizzeria that also served sandwiches and desserts. They had pizzas ranging from plain (no topping) to out of the way flavors like potato with rosemary (so good!). My mom got a dessert that was shaped like a quiche, but the outside was like a puff, and the inside was a rice and custard mix -- delicioso! I had a really great experience in Campo De' Fiori, and it was really fun.

(We also figured out how to work Rome's water fountains. It's just like a faucet that runs full time, but it turns out the spout has a little hole at the top. So if you plug out the main part of the faucet, it comes out of there to turn into a water fountain!)