A Dying Population

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh, but I've heard that Italy's birth rate has decreased and thus, their population has decreased. I think I know why. . . these people are ugly. Is it possible that all the attractive Italians have met each other and now all the ugly people are left? Can't that happen with any population? Seinfeld claimed that half of the population is undateable. . . undateable! The fashion is weak as Julie said and people don't do much for themselves to attract one another. Hopefully, they work on this.

Anyways, today we had a no plans. We woke up with no agenda except to eat. Who knew that would be so difficult. We tried to have the concierge make reservations at the restaurant we wanted to go to the night before. Of course we had no luck. We set off for another place near the Campo de Fiori that was featured on "No Reservations" with Anthony Bourdain. Surprise, they were closed. Now the debate began as to whether we should risk eating at a place we know nothing about or go somewhere we knew would be good. We chose the latter and went back to Pizzeria Fiametta, already a reliable place in the Lanier family. Julie had an excellent risotto and I had some linguine with anchovies and some veal scallopine. Both were delicious. Next we headed for some ruins. As Julie has famously said, "Look some more old stuff." There's a lot of old stuff here. Some wonderfully aged and some that looks quite decrepit. We ventured near the Colosseum, but not quite there. We wandered around, took some pictures and had our first official gelato (which was as good as we remembered). We caught some Z's at the hotel, and headed out for dinner. We opted for a recommendation from the hotel and lost horribly. Yet another weak restaurant. This place had way too many movie star's photos on the wall, and they spoke English too well. Plus, there were too many Americans. The crappy bread was placed on the table and with our first dish, prosciutto and melon, we knew we were in for it. The melon was not ripe and had zero flavor. A forgettable meal that ended with us in the hotel lobby with some incredibly loud Americans. Why do people hate us again? Perhaps it's because we have obscenely loud conversations about who was in Tin Cup.