Ok, I have to take a second and rewind a little bit here. I realized recently that I totally forgot to mention how incredible the food in Italy was, so I will do that now.
The first night in Italy I was a little place called Siena, it's a great little city up in the hills that has a lot of medieval history and buildings, great place. Anyway, after a fairly late night of touring around the city, I was ready for a nice slice of Italian pizza, and I found it. It was only a little shop, nothing special, with a small standing bar to each a slice and leave. But the assortment of pizza was incredible and I had no clue what any of it was. I ended up getting a slice of cheese, a slice of cheese and hotdogs, and a slice of something that I don't even know, but it still tasted amazing. This pizza was the best pizza that I have ever had, at the time, so good that I actually told my professional-pizza-loving uncle that pizza in the states will never be the same. It's true, there is not a single pizza in the states that will ever compete with Italian pizza, unless it's a pizza shop owned by people who moved there from Italy and fully Italians and have lived in Italy for x number of years and know exactly how to make this pizza. But lets face it, there are a lot of variables there, plus their ingredients would still be American, still wouldn't be the same.
The place in Siena sold the pizza by the slice, but there were a few places I went to in Rome that sold it by the kilo. Ya, they had big rectangle pizzas and you went in and told them how big you wanted them to cut it, they would cut it and weigh it and thats how much you paid. Additionally, they cut the pizza with scissors instead of the traditional pizza-cutter that we more commonly use in the US. I thought that was interesting.
Ok, enough about pizza, I could talk about it all day... plus it's making me a little hungry. Lets talk pasta, not that it will make me any less hungry. So the first night I was in Rome it was my mission to go to a restaurant and get a real Italian meal of spaghetti and meatballs, of course this did not happen as I planned. After finding a restaurant that I found to be good quality with a good price, I sat down to observe the menu, which contained nothing about meatballs. Broken hearted, I opted for the lasagna. I was shocked by the prices of a pasta dish, the most expensive dish was maybe 11€, and it had shrimp in it, then I received my lasagna and realized why it was so cheap.
So apparently pasta is like a first course meal in Italy, then you order the more expensive main course. In front of me sat a large, but not meal size, slice of lasagna that was suppose to serve as my entire meal because I did not order a main course. Needless to say, it was a very inexpensive and non-filling meal. But still delicious.
From that point on I learned to order some bruschetta to go along with my meal. Overall the meals was delicious and the pasta is more amazing than the pizza. There is so much to the pasta that makes it better, and they are all better! The pasta is cooked better, the sauce is, well it's just unbelievable, the meat is just an extra bonus to an already perfect dish. If I lived in Italy for an extended period of time, I would have a hard time eating anything other than pizza and pasta... which I already have a hard time with but that is only cause it's quick and easy to make. And anyone who really knows me well, knows that I can eat the same meal over and over again for months... maybe even years.. I don't know.
Anyway, all this food talk has made me ridiculously hungry... so that needs to change. I'm feeling Döner Kebab. Which is a good segway into my next blog; my parents arrived safely friday evening and I took them to a restaurant to introduce my father to the world of Döners, check it out later.
Oh ya, one last thing about Italy... sweet Ducati's!
Ok, I'm gone, Tschüss!
