Ditching before Dining

Rise and shine for the first day of classes! From 10-1 we were at the Institute for our Italian language grammar-based class with Paola. The "advanced" group of me, Anna, and Brittanie were pulled out to work with Professor DiFabio for the last half hourish of class; we got the novel we're going to read (Tra due mari by Carmine Abate, an Italo-Albanian author I read in class this past semester) and talked about logistics for the class. We're going to be doing more museum visits and making up activities for the other group, and we do translations from the novel and from our textbook. Hopefully it'll be good but not TOO intense because in all honesty, I want a little bit of relaxation this summer! :P


During our break in between the language class and the culture lecture, I went and got gelato (keep reading to find out the flavors!). I probably should've gotten something caffeinated though, since I had a really hard time staying awake during the lecture. Fortunately, it's the only lecture we have with that particular professor, but it actually was somewhat interesting when I wasn't zoned out. It focused on ancient Roman eating habits and the the culture of food. Turns out the ancient Romans used to eat meals reclining on their sides. Now that's livin' the good life. Can we do that at home, Mom? ;)


At night I took Anna out for her belated birthday dinner. We couldn't decide where to eat, so we were walking around checking out menus. We went down an alley to this one cute place and looked at the menu, then we saw a sign further down for another restaurant so we figured we'd go check that out and compare the two before deciding. The prices at the second restaurant were MUCH cheaper (like, sketchily cheap), but we sat down anyway. Kinda reluctantly. We weren't sure if we were going to stay but the waiter came over and just stood there, and even when we told him we needed a moment to look at the menu he would NOT leave. So finally Anna ordered water (they charge for water here... what is up with that?) and he went inside and we frantically debated whether the suspicious $6 advertised steak dish + the sketchy waitstaff + the fact that there was literally NO one else in sight coming to dine there or dining there or leaving after dining there OR anywhere in the whole alley at all were just cause to leave before the water got there... and we did. We literally ran through the alley and past all the customers at the other restaurant and all the way back into the square. Then we finally found a restaurant called Al Mangiar Bene that was situated allllll the way down a long flight of stairs and decided to go there, a) because the menu looked good, and b) because we figured the waiter wouldn't be able to find us there. Sigh.


So then we got to the bottom of the long staircase and of course, we were the ONLY ones in the restaurant, yet again. But the food ended up being DELICIOUS - Anna got eggplant parm and I got ravioli in a tomato and basil sauce (plain and classic and always yummy) for first course and then we split a rosemary meat dish with really really good potatoes and green beans. And there was actually some half decent bread! Oh yeah, and we also split cake... Yum yum yum. The only difficulty was in paying, largely because the waiter and I had some communication issues. We were speaking Italian but mostly gesturing with the money and not really getting anywhere, and then he started trying to speak English (darn it, I HATE when people realize I'm American!) except I didn't realize that's what he was trying to do because his English was really bad. When I finally picked up on it, I told him he could speak Italian and he was like "Ah, va bene!" and proceeded to say something along the lines of "Sdlfjklsjflrrrrrr skldfjiosej alsfjlsfjlsl ewiuoouwlks!" To which I responded with a clever, "...Si. Ciao." Lol.


Day's Recap:
Classes taken: 2
Number of times zoned out (and maybe dozed briefly) in class: 1... possibly 2... apologies in advance to all my teacher relatives, I promise it won't happen again! 0:)
Restaurants ditched: 1
Restaurants dined: 1
Gelato flavors tasted: Fragola (strawberry) and cioccolato ... think chocolate covered strawberries :P