I ate a raw egg and other tidbits from a random Thursday

November 15th started as a regular Thursday, except this time when I left for work, I had a friend laying in bed sleeping off the changing of multiple time zones. Having landed from Hong Kong the day before following a 15 hour flight, she was allowed a few extra hours of zzzzzs. I quietly got dressed, wrote a note with a list of places to visit, left guidebooks, an italian language book, a cell phone and my keys, in hopes of seeing her for lunch. That never happened.

Around 3pm, having heard nothing I dropped an “Are you alive?” email, to which she promptly replied yes, I just woke up. Sadly she had missed nearly all of the daylight hours during her first full day in Italy, but what would come in the evening made up for it.

She met me at my job and we headed to H&M to check out the Maison Martin Margiela collaboration that launched in the morning. Having arrived eight hours after the launch, all that was left were hangers swinging on the rack and beautiful pumps for women with the shoe size of a child. After the brief disappointment (read relief, as I was still on my shopping freeze), we strolled down Via del Corso in search of black knee high boots for me. Yes, the purchase of boots would break my shopping freeze, but I honestly felt that I NEEDED black knee high boots to get through the winter. I ended up with a pair of brown boots. 🙂

While in Zara we ran into my friend Marco and that shifted the course of the evening. My friend and I took a quick stroll to the Spanish Steps, snapped a couple of photos then met Marco at Gusto, which is a trendy bar which offers a very good aperitivo, but the service is awful. We drank, ate and laughed then moved on to the Trevi Fountain that my friend was dying to see. While walking to the fountain we ran into two other girls that I recently met who were on holiday in Rome. They joined us on our excursion to the fountain then I put them on a bus to Colosseo as they had yet to witness its mammoth beauty.

Marco played tour guide as we walked through the streets of Rome with my friend shrieking in delight at the beauty that popped up around every corner, in every alley. Once we arrived at Pantheon she literally exclaimed, “What the f*** is this s**t!!”. Don’t worry. She meant it in a positive way. While my friend wanted to snap pictures of Pantheon, Marco grabbed her phone and covered her mouth and said, “Just enjoy it”. Something that Italians are very good at is enjoying life, be it food, site seeing or a glass of wine, they know how to appreciate it in that moment. I have a lot to learn still. I have stopped taking as many pictures as I used to but I am still learning the art of la dolce vita.

We decided to show my friend a very popular club, Shari Vari, so she could get a feel of Roman nightlife. I am not a huge fan of Roman clubs or nightlife in general but Shari Vari is the one place that I don’t mind going. The club which has two floors and a variety of rooms is always full of beautifully fashionable people. The music often leaves a lot to be desired, but we had a good time.

To end the night, we went to my absolute favorite bar in Rome, Jerry Thomas. Jerry Thomas is a speakeasy and as such is hidden from people who are not looking for it. It sits on a tiny street in Centro Storico and blends in with the other apartments. When you ring the bell you have to give the password. We rang the bell, someone peeked out of the door, I gave the password and we were in. We were sat at the bar, as those were the only open seats but it was great because then we got to talk to the bartender.

While chatting the bartender was making a drink using an egg. I had never seen this done. Following my curiosity, he placed a raw egg in a beautiful egg holder and placed it on the bar. By this point I had had a few too many drinks, so something inside of me said, “Hey, I’m going to drink this raw egg.” My friend laughed at me and pulled out her camera and I swallowed the raw egg. It was the perfectly random end to a perfectly random evening.