Alright, you piqued my curiosity! My curiosity about where I stayed. None of my photos included the hotel. In my daily email journal home (2010, remember), I just said "the hotel." Google maps of the area did not initially help. I did remember that direction we walked from the train station to the hotel. I also remembered the direction we walked from the hotel to the metro, but I could not remember the metro station. Then I found a journal entry that we went to view the tallest obelisk in Rome, located in Piazza di San Giovanni, JUST PAST OUR SUBWAY STOP!!! So by triangulating the San Giovanni subway station with the train station and the rough area of our hotel on google maps, I found it! We stayed at Hotel Eurostars Roma Aeterna. Great hotel.
And now I found the pizza place nearby! Holy Mackerel! This pizza place was awesome. We got there about 5:30 one evening. The whole inside and outside was empty. Not one patron. About 120 empty seats. We asked for a table; when the waiter said he would talk with the manager, I laughed out loud, thinking it was a joke. It wasn't. They discussed and pondered for a couple minutes, then decided we could have two seats at an outside table far at the end. A few minutes later, they turned away another couple. Fifteen minutes later, there were over 100 people dining. No group more than six people. Completely off the beaten path, not a tourist destination in sight, not in any guidebooks. This place is the real deal locals' favorite pizzeria, and we stumbled on it by accident. Here it is: Pizzeria Fiaschetteria Al grottino. Located at Via Orvieto 6.
Also, if you were to walk the 1 to 2 miles from the train station to the hotel, roughly following a trolley line, and ducking under a highway, you would see a bakery with no name and the wall covered with graffiti. You should really grab a pastry from here.