Six People, Six Miles, and the Best Fettuccine of Our Lives

Six People, Six Miles, and the Best Fettuccine of Our Lives

We had one day in Rome. Six opinions on which way to go. Six miles of the most beautiful city in the world. And at the end of it, a bowl of fettuccine Alfredo so good it made the whole journey worth every single wrong turn.

One day in Rome is not enough.

Let me say that clearly, before we begin. One day in Rome is an injustice — to Rome, to yourself, and to the concept of doing justice to a place. One day is a crime against Italian culture and we committed it anyway because we had a reservation we were absolutely not going to miss and a ship to board the next morning.

One day in Rome, six people, and a mission.

The mission was fettuccine Alfredo. The authentic version. At the restaurant that invented it. We would walk there. We would see as much of Rome as we could on the way. We would not get lost.

Dearest Reader, we got a little lost.

The GPS Situation

Six people traveling together means six smartphones with GPS applications, each of which has a slightly different opinion about the best route, the current traffic conditions, and the estimated time of arrival at a destination that is, ultimately, a bowl of pasta.

The first ten minutes of our Roman adventure were characterized by what I can only describe as a democratic navigation process. Suggestions were offered. Counter suggestions were made. Someone pointed one way. Someone else pointed the other way. Two phones agreed on a route that a third phone found deeply questionable.

It was, if I am honest, completely chaotic and quietly hilarious and entirely typical of what happens when a group of people who love each other try to navigate anything by committee.

And then Victor took over.

Victor Takes Over

Victor simply picked a direction and walked in it with the calm authority of a person who has decided that the time for discussion is over.

The rest of us followed.

This is, I want to say, one of the most valuable qualities a person can have. Not the GPS. Not the planning. The willingness to simply commit to a direction and go. Victor's direction turned out to be correct. Of course it did. In Rome, if you walk with confidence, the city seems to arrange itself helpfully around you. The wrong turns lead somewhere beautiful. The detours reveal something unexpected. You cannot really go wrong in Rome. You can only go less efficiently.

With Victor leading, we went efficiently. Mostly.

Our Navigator and Brother From another Victor and his Soulmate Ileana

Six Miles Through the Most Beautiful City in the World

We walked six miles through Rome.

I am telling you this not as a complaint — it was magnificent, every single step of it — but as context for the fettuccine that came at the end, which tasted, in part, of six miles of cobblestones and summer heat and the particular satisfaction of having truly earned your lunch.

Rome does something to you when you walk it properly. The scale of it hits you differently on foot than it does from a taxi or a tour bus. You turn a corner and there, simply existing in the middle of the street as though it were perfectly ordinary, is something two thousand years old. We stopped at the Spanish Steps and did what everyone does at the Spanish Steps: took photographs, and felt, briefly, like people in a film set in Rome.

The Little Bars and the Aperol Spritzes

Here is something Rome does that no other city does quite as well: it makes stopping for a drink feel not like an interruption to the day but like the point of the day.

We stopped at small bars — the neighborhood kind, not the tourist kind, though the line between them in central Rome is sometimes blurry. Someone pointed out “hey I stayed at that hotel the last time I was in Rome and they have a great bar.” So we stopped for Aperol Spritzes in the afternoon heat and wines that were deep and soulful and tasted of somewhere specific in a way that only Italian wine does.

The Aperol Spritz, for the uninitiated, is the perfect walking-around-Rome drink. Cold, slightly bitter, effervescent, the color of a Roman sunset. It says: I am in Italy and I am not in a hurry and everything is fine.

We were in Italy. We were not in a hurry. Everything was fine.

Between bars we walked and talked and argued mildly about which plaza was more beautiful than the last and stopped for photographs. We felt joy, the particular joy of a group of old friends in a magnificent city with a whole afternoon ahead of them and a reservation at the end of it.

Il Vero Alfredo

Il Vero Alfredo has been on Via della Scrofa in Rome since 1914. It was here that Alfredo di Lelio created the dish that bears his name — originally, the story goes, to tempt his wife's appetite after childbirth. He made pasta. He added butter. He added Parmesan. He tossed them together at the table with golden cutlery that was later gifted to him by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, who ate here in 1927 and were, apparently, as undone by the fettuccine as we were.

We arrived, all six of us, six miles behind us, exactly on time. Because we are, beneath the chaos, fundamentally capable people.

The Fettuccine

The waiter came to the table with a large bowl and pasta, butter and Parmesan cheese and proceeded to make our fettuccine Alfredo in front of us, at the table, with the unhurried expertise of someone who has done this ten thousand times.

The butter and Parmesan are tossed together until they become something entirely their own — not butter, not cheese, but a sauce pure perfection. The pasta, fresh and handmade, is silk. Actual silk. The kind of pasta that makes you reconsider everything you thought you knew about pasta.

And the smell.

The smell arrived before the bowl. Butter and Parmesan, warm and rich and completely enveloping, the kind of smell that reaches some deep, ancient part of the brain that recognizes: this is food, this is the best food, everything about this is correct.

We ate in the kind of silence that descends on a table when everyone is too busy tasting to speak. Then we looked at each other. Then someone said what we were all thinking. "We walked six miles for this." "Worth every step."

It was, without qualification — worth every step, every wrong turn, every GPS disagreement, every Aperol Spritz along the way. Worth the whole improbable beautiful day.

One Day in Rome: What We Learned

One day is not enough. We established this. But if one day is what you have, here is what we now know:

Walk. Don't plan too rigidly. Let Rome happen around you — because Rome, given the slightest opportunity, will absolutely deliver.

Find your Victor. Every group needs someone willing to simply pick a direction and commit to it. If you are traveling solo, be your own Victor. Point yourself somewhere and go.

Stop at the small bars. The neighborhood ones. Order the Aperol Spritz. Order a glass of whatever the person behind the bar recommends. Sit for twenty minutes. Keep walking.

See the Spanish Steps, because they are magnificent and the view from the top is worth the climb. Then move on quickly because there is so much else.

And at the end of the day — at the end of the six miles and the beautiful plazas and the fountains and the churches and the wine and the general overwhelming miracle of Rome being Rome — go to Il Vero Alfredo and order the fettuccine.

It will be made at your table. It will smell extraordinary. The pasta will be silk. It will be, without question, the best bowl of pasta you have ever eaten.

💬 Have you eaten at Il Vero Alfredo? Or do you have a Rome restaurant that changed your life? Tell us in the comments — and if your group has a Victor, we want to hear about them too.

Part of The Rebel Roams: A Travel Adventure series on The Rebel Age