apache 2.2 - wordpress in subdirectory apache2 without browse index and .htaccess

Sorry if this has been asked before but I looked through other posts and couldn't find my answer.

Wordpress is up and running inside /var/www/wordpress/
However when I browse to www.mysite.com I get a listing of files & folders like the following:

Index of /

Name    Last modified   Size    Description

index.html  12-Mar-2013 18:31   177  
wordpress/  08-Jan-2012 17:01    -   

Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) Server at www.mysite.com Port 80

If I click on the wordpress directory, I am brought to my site.

I asked a friend and he said modify .htaccess but there is no file with such name in /var/www/

How do I get apache to set my default homepage/directory to /var/www/wordpress/(index.php) ?

I tried uncommenting
ServerRoot "/var/www/wordpress"

But this led to errors trying to restart apache:
-cannot find ports.conf
-cannot find conf.d
things went downhill from there...

Do I modify sites-available/default?

Do I modify apache.conf?

Do I add an .htaccess file?

Also, since this is a new setup, how do I secure the installation which I read a lot of people use a specially crafted .htaccess file?

Thanks for your help!

Contents of sites-available/wordpress:

    ServerAdmin myemail@gmail.com

    DocumentRoot /var/www/wordpress/
    
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
    

    
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    

    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
    
        AllowOverride None

        Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel warn


    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

Contents of sites-available/default:

    ServerAdmin myemail@gmail.com


    DocumentRoot /var/www/
    
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride None
    
    
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride None
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all

    

    ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
    
        AllowOverride None
        Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    


    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

    # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
    # alert, emerg.
    LogLevel warn

    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

Contents of sites-enabled:

root@ip-0.0.0.0:/etc/apache2/sites-enabled# ll
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 20 19:58 ./
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Mar 20 19:29 ../
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   26 Mar 12 18:31 000-default -> ../sites-available/default
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   28 Mar 20 19:58 wordpress -> ../sites-available/wordpress