Friday, December 19, 2008

Italy, Day 12, 6/26/2008

  • breakfast: pastry with raisins
  • lunch: roll with spinach; stromboli-like thing with tomato, mozzarella, and ham
  • dinner: prosciutto and melon; trofie (worm-shaped pasta) with pesto and zucchini; ravioli with lobster

We bought breakfast at a trendy pastry shop in Bologna. Giovanna had a croissant stuffed with hazelnut cream, which was as good as it sounds.

We had an hour layover in Parma on our way to the Cinque Terre, five towns within walking distance of each other on the Mediterranean coast. We found a shop selling focaccia and other things resembling pizza. We got a roll that looked like a Chinese pork bun. It actually was kind of similar, but stuffed with spinach flavored with a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar.

We arrived in Corniglia, the middle town of the Cinque Terre, and we walked down the coast to two other towns. Things got more and more touristy, but it seemed appropriate for such a beautiful coast to be a little bit touristy. The restaurant we ate at was half good, in unexpected ways. In our prosciutto and melon, the melon was perfect, and a perfect melon is a surprise even in Italy. But the prosciutto was bad, which for Italy is an even bigger surprise. The ravioli with lobster were outstanding, though they were actually ricotta-spinach ravioli in tomato sauce with half of a little lobster on the side. On the other hand, the pesto dish was terrible. It had mushy strips of zucchini with the same texture as an overcooked potato and about as much flavor too.

The coast around the Cinque Terre

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