Roncone -Day 2 08/13/2010

Aside from sleeping in till 10:30 because it was raining and we accidently left the shutters closed which made the room pitch black, we had a pretty productive day here. (Although, in all fairness, I probably would have slept until noon if I had the chance so I suppose I shouldn’t be making excuses about shutters).

We walked around the town and even though I ‘know’ that everywhere closes from 12-3 in Italy so people can have lunch, I was still caught by surprise when everywhere was closed. Fortunately, because it’s a big tourist month here the bars were still open and we went to Diana’s Bar/Pizzeria in the center of the town and had my first real ristorante-made Italian pizza since we got here. Last time I was here in 2004 all I ate was Margherita pizza (cheese pizza) but this time I branched out a little and got Carcoffi pizza (artichoke and cheese pizza). Here’s a pic of what you get and yes I ate all of it in one go. Oops.

After lunch we were supposed to just go back to the hotel but Gramma decided to visit a cousin (forgetting that they would be in the middle of lunch) and the host quickly deduced that if she didn’t like the answer Gramma gave she would look at me and nod and I would automatically say “Si.” We almost had to eat another 5- course lunch. We escaped (literally) and took a nap back at the hotel and walked around again at 4 when everything was open. We visited the cousin again at a more appropriate time and spent about a half hour drinking coffee, eating desert, and arranging for an actual lunch this time (despite the fact that we spent 10 minutes trying to say no. I kept my mouth shut this time but I probably would have saved time by just saying yes because resistance was futile. I’m now looking forward to gnocchi for lunch on Tuesday. The lunch instead of dinner was probably the only concession we got.)

After walking around a little more in the rain we got back to the hotel and waited for dinner. Now that I’m not eating at a person’s home I feel ok taking pictures of the meals so you’ll get to see what we ate. The menu was in Italian and I’m tired so you can translate it yourself ;). The food is in the order that we got it and I ate everything except a side of mushrooms. The first item, the apertif, was a green fizzy drink that I didn’t think to take a picture of. But it was bright green and fizzy and served in a champagne glass.