Venice
Venice has been on my travel list for a while - mostly out of curiosity because it's supposed to be so unique. It certainly doesn't disappoint! Yes, it's busy with tourists. Yes, it's easy to get lost in the maze-like streets. But the colorful old houses lining the blue canals are stunning and completely worth a special trip.
Venice is all about wandering around and getting lost and so that's what we did. We'd meander through the narrow passages and then pop out on a plaza. The small alleys and plazas hid endless gelaterias, bakeries and bars. We took advantage of lots of window shopping too - but no purchases. I'm beginning to think that Brian's preference for the backpacks was also a shopping budget strategy too.
We love that Venice is such a pedestrian only. Actually, we've enjoyed all the pedestrian-friendly areas in Europe. I wish the US cities weren't so parking-dependent that they could convert more of their streets to pedestrian plazas.
The weather was a little if'fy to grab a gondola ride so we watched the other crazy tourist jockey through the canals in their rain gear. I guess we'll have to come back to cross a gondola ride off our travel list.
The sun peeks out for a bit- right at happy hour - perfect timing! So we scamper over to have a couple of italian cocktails by the canal. A great way to finish our stay in Venice.
Bologna
It's a quick train from Venice to Bologna and an easy walk to our hotel. Our favorite thing about the architecture in Bologna are these cool porticos. They make for a very classy window shopping experience! Bologna is home to the oldest university in Europe so the city is very lively and surprisingly reasonably priced. Anyone that has college age kids should definitely make a school visit here.
Bologna is not heavily touristed which leads to a more authentic feel in the trattorias, gelaterias and markets. That's great because we feel like we're wandering around with the locals. That's not so great because the menus have zero English. Luckily, we find a little traditional trattoria where the friendly matriarch guides us through exactly what we should have for dinner. Always take the recommendations from the matriarch!
Bologna sits in the middle of one of the great food regions of Italy. The area is home to Parmesan cheese, prosciutto ham, balsamic vinegar, mortadella and of course ragu bolognese. We specifically stopped here so Brian could immerse in the food culture and make traditional pasta in Italy. The pasta making class included a tour through the market. Even late in the season, they had some great looking tomatoes. Imagine the tasty sauces that can be made with these.
The market also featured lots of homemade pasta in case you didn't have time to make it yourself. Us tourists will take no such shortcuts today.
Brian definitely wanted to smuggle some of this prosciutto and parmesan through customs. Just look at that! Alas, there wasn't room in the backpack for both clothes and contraband.
Then knead it and roll it out. I think I'm going to spend my retirement becoming an Italian nana.
Then roll up the sheet of pasta, cut it into ribbons and shake out the noodles.
Or if you're making filled pasta, pinch the shapes together.
Ta da! Tortelloni!
Look for the finished results in the food section. A tasty way to complete our visit to Bologna.
Rome
We pass through rolling hills and cute vineyards on our train ride from Bologna to Rome. Our expectations for Rome are a little low because this will be our last big touristy city of the journey. Wow! Are we pleasantly surprised at how much we like Rome! Rome has magnificent old buildings and ancient sights scattered everywhere. We begin checking off all the cool sights.
First up is the Pope's house: St. Peter's Basilica. Very impressive and probably more so if you're Catholic.
And great timing on our part, they just finished renovations on the famous Trevi fountain yesterday so we get to enjoy this site scaffolding-free.
And of course, the iconic Colosseum. It wasn't entirely scaffolding-free but there still sections where we could get a clean picture.
And it got even more dramatic as the sun set and the lighting took effect.
Just like many of the European cities we visited (especially Moscow and Budapest), Rome was even prettier at night. Here's the Pantheon.
Buonasera Italy! You were a gorgeous and delicious part of our journey!
Tomorrow we'll catch our 15-day Atlantic crossing cruise that will take us from Rome to Florida (with a couple of stops in the Mediterranean along the way). We're too cheap to spring for the flakey internet package on the cruise so it'll be a couple of unplugged weeks until our next blog post.
"The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience." - Eleanor Roosevelt
Italian Food & Drink
I think we might have came to Italy more for the delicious food than for the historic sites. If you know us at all, that shouldn't be too surprising of an insight. And so this section is going to run a little long (ok, maybe a lot long) with Italian food pictures. You might need to upgrade your data plan if you're reading this via mobile.
Breakfast: In Italy, the day is usually started with a shot of espresso or cappuccino taken at a stand-up cafe. If you're looking for a little nibble with it, you'll find several different variations of pastries and cornettos (croissants). Brian isn't a big coffee drinker and even he had a cappucino every day working his way up to a shot of straight espresso by the end of our visit. He thinks he's a very manly Italian now.
Pizza Lunch/Snack: A small little cornetto isn't much for breakfast. So around 11:00, you might have a little slice of pizza to tide you over until a late lunch which is usually around 12:30-1:00. Sometimes we just had another slice of pizza for the late lunch to save our appetites for the main dining event later in the day.
We had a very hard time resisting pizza displays like these while we wandered between city sites. Resistance was futile.
After all those street kielbasas in eastern Europe, Brian was very happy to switch to street pizza.
Brian had a little bit of a food orgasm over this pizza. This is now the standard by which all other pizzas will be judged (sorry Little Ceasars). The crust was perfectly blistered, slightly chewy and delicious. The sauce was light and fresh. And then it was topped with just a little bit of cheese and real-deal thin-sliced prosciutto. Amazing. He had a hard time not ordering another one for dessert.
Aperitvo: Let's have a little late-afternoon drink and snack. Just a little crostini or something. That should hold us until dinner. Italians call this happy hour time 'aperitvo'. We definitely want to respect their food traditions so we sip an aperitif and nibble on cicchetti - tiny open face sandwiches. They also charge $2 for using their table but that means you can sit back and monopolize that table for as long as you want.
We had these Italian spritz cocktails everywhere. They are a shot of slightly bitter liquor (the orange is Aperol and the red is Campari) topped with prosecco and perhaps soda water. These are definitely going on heavy rotation when patio seasion comes around again next summer - although we might come up with something a little more creative than potato chips to serve with them.
Or maybe you'd rather add some gin to that Campari to make a little stronger Negroni.
How about a little snack to go with those cocktails? These are cicchetti with mortadella and pickle, smoked tuna and cream cheese, roast beef and cream cheese.
These plates in the crostini display case are empty because we decided to just keep having crostini for dinner this night. The locals thought we were silly and completely unrespectful of their food traditions. We didn't mind breaking tradition a bit for crostini as tasty as these.
This case of little sandwiches were also attacked during our crostini dinner.
Another bar and more crostini snacks to eat with apertivo cocktails.
Delicious pumpkin and prosciutto crostini paired with prosecco and a (very large) Campari spritz.
Antipasti: What would you like for your starter course at dinner? A little something to kick off the evening? Perhaps a salad or a small appetizer or one of the best damn meat and cheese boards you've ever had?
Here's a simple salad with artichokes, greens and fresh burrata cheese. Hooray fresh food!
Zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta and parmesan. Light and fresh (despite the oil that is collecting on the plate in this photo).
Figs with gorgonzola and prosciutto. We made these in class and they were great - but not quite as pretty after they were baked in the oven so you get to see the before shot.
This antipasti spoke to everything that was great about the food in Italy. It was very clean and simple: crunchy artichokes, parmesan shavings and balsamic vinegar. But every component was top-notch and worked so well together. Just perfect.
Primi: This is why we came to Italy - fresh pasta! I think we had pasta every day we were here. Here are just some of the highlights.
A simple dish of fresh tagliatelle pasta, prosciutto and asparagus. We really had to recalibrate our idea of how much sauce goes on pasta. The fresh pasta here is *very* lightly sauced so that you can appreciate all the work that went into the pasta.
Here's spaghetti carbonara. Nice try Italy, but the best carbonara we had was in Seattle - kudos to Diane!
One of the results from our pasta-making class. Tortelloni stuffed with butternut squash and lightly sauced with sage butter.
Another result from our class. Tagliatelle tossed with tomato, eggplant, ricotta salata and basil. Another fresh and simple pasta.
The ubiquitous pasta in Rome: Cacio e Pepe. Translates to cheese and pepper in English. It's made with cheese and pepper (shocker!). Another very simple but incredibly tasty dish and one that will make the recipe box when we get home.
More cheese and pepper pasta but this time topped with bacon. Bacon!
Secondi: This would typically be the main course for the meal - usually some type of sauteed or stewed meat dish. But we were always too full from the pasta to ever order a second course. We saw several couples who split one secondi dish between the two of them. I think I would have rather just ordered another dish of pasta if I was that hungry. But I'm sure that would have been a major faux-pas (or however you say that in Italian). So instead of any pictures of secondi courses, I give you MORE PASTA!
Red wine tagliatelle with sausage and a parmesan frico.
Tortelloni stuffed with ricotta and parmesan sauced with traditional Bologna beef and pork ragu. Are you hungry for some pasta yet?
Spaghetti with clams.
Tagliatelle with porchini mushrooms and tomatoes. That's the end of the pasta pictures but not the end of our pasta research. We'll definitely continue our exploring at home.
Dolci: After all that pasta, dessert was fairly light for us - usually a scoop of delicious, intensely flavored gelato. But sometimes we mixed in another little something just for variety's sake. All in the sake of food research.
Here Dawn is patiently waiting to dig into a cappucino gelato while Brian takes the picture.
And the classic pistachio - wow! My personal favorite.
Another gelato glamour shot... this time dark chocolate with Grand Marnier.
We got suckered into this one. "Must try in Rome" & "Don't miss" our scouting sources said. "Harrumph" we say. Just a ball of chocolate gelato rolled in chocolate chips and then topped with pretty stuff. Should have just spent our euros and calories on more cones of gelato.
Marscapone cream topped with a bit of chocolate sauce. Simple, small and tasty - a great way to end a meal.
Vanilla panna cotta topped with wild (yes, wild!) strawberries. While I doubt we'll ever see wild strawberries at Safeway, we definitely need to find a source for that delicious vanilla bean paste we used.
A fresh ricotta cannoli. Now I've got to figure out a recipe for home-made ricotta. Add that to the ever-expanding food To Do list when we get home.
Can't visit Italy without some tiramisu. This was as good as we've ever had, but we learned that the secret is to portion the tiramisu in individual cups. That way the tasty coffee boozy liquid collects at the bottom so it can be slurped up at the end. sluuuuuurrrrrp!
Or maybe dessert could be just a little more prosecco while we enjoy the cafe's patio and watch the Italian evening fade into night. Saluti from Rome!
