I can’t seem to get enough travel in lately. Despite being in Berlin every week, I flew to Geneva to get to France for skiing only to return to the UK for a conference I was presenting at. Before flying to Berlin for the weekend, I ended up in Rome for the weekend to watch Italy versus France in the six nations. It was a good opportunity to try out the travel lens I bought which is both wide angle and had a really long zoom. Despite being quite far back into the crowd, I was quite pleased with some of the shots such as the one below.

Going with a number of Italians was a great way to go to Rome. Firstly it’s good because they know more places than I would ever. We went to a couple of great place for the evening aperitif before settling in for the very Italian style (i.e. late) dinner at 10pm where we indulged in some really awesome Italian food and wine.

Here’s Toni, Luca and Simone as we walk around town.

And me outside some of Rome’s amazing historic buildings.

Although Italy isn’t well known for its talent in rugby, plenty of people turned up. The French supported turned up wearing berets and other costumes (like the pink bunnies below), and a number of scotsmen made themselves visible dressed in kilts.

The game was really quite tight with Italy the first to score. Although I wouldn’t say it was the best football played by either side, it was a great match because it literally went down the wire.

Even more surprisingly, Italy beat France by a single point with only a few minutes to spare.

The crowd went wild and everyone celebrated into the night!

We stayed in these really nice apartments, and ate at some good places including La Cabonara as recommended to one of our party and Giggetto al Portico at which we ate a lot of Roman cuisine. Surprisingly this includes a fair number of fried things including Carciofo (Jewish Artichoke) that turns out nice and crisp. Another different thing we ate a lot of during this weekend was a strange looking green called Puntarelle that turned out to be some sort of chicory root. It’s hard not to enjoy Rome. Surrounded by good food, wine, plenty of history and a good atmosphere from the winning 6 nations, it was definitely a worthwhile trip.