Yo,
I haven't had a chance to do a proper update since getting back from Rome, so I will likely just roll up a May/June update into one at the end of this month. Short version; May went really well. Won at like ~9bb across stakes at zoom and made around $7.2k there. Also, between SCOOP and a few other little binks along the way, won around another $9k in MTT land (about 65% of which I ended up having). So yeah, best month financially in a while!
Rome was a blast too. I haven't had time to get the photos off the SLR camera and touch them up, so I'll just steal the ones off of Aimee's Insta instead. Basically we did a **** load of walking and site seeing, ate lots and lots of nice pasta, pizza, anti-pasta and tiramisu. We did all the big sites; Pantheon, Coliseum, Roman Forums, Circus Maximus, Piazza de Popola, Vatican City, St Peter's Basilica, Fontana de Trevi, etc. It's such a fkn beautiful city that I actually started to get incredible building fatigue by the end of our time there. The streets are so narrow and crowded, and because it's quite a condensed city centre then every building is like 4/5 stories tall. So you have very little visibility of what's around the next corner, which leads to quite a lot of "holy **** where did that come from?" moments.
We also did a couple of fine dining tasting menus at
Zia and
Perpetual. Zia was brilliant, lots of really unique tastes and textures and just generally very delicious. Perpetual was pretty rubbish tbh, which was a real shame, as I'd heard great things about it. Basically nothing on the menu was standout, and like zero umami flavours in any course. It definitely felt very style over substance. Finally we joined a pasta making class on our second to last night. It was me, Aimee and then an American family of 12 who were over for a wedding in Florence. Pretty bizarre setting, but it was great fun. The chef trainers were both excellent and the pasta and sauces we made were delicious. We made a ricotta, burata and courgette flower ravioli with a sage and lemon butter sauce, and then a standard fettuccine with a pork cheek and tomato ragu type sauce. Once we have a bigger kitchen I'll definitely be buying all the gear for making my own pasta!
I will say that it's not a very relaxing holiday. It's the kind of break you come away needing another holiday to recover from. I also think that I've basically done Rome to it's fullest, so probably won't be heading back any time soon. There are just hoards of people absolutely everywhere, so you either have to get up super early, or enjoy feeling like cattle when traversing the city. Some pictures below:
Pantheon
St Peter's Basilica
Pasta Making
Tasting Menus - Perpetual and Zia
Thanks for reading, PZ