Pasta and Pizza and Gelato, Oh My!

I've had some pretty amazing dishes and meals so far in Italy, but this weekend I had 2 of the best meals I've ever had (only a few I've had in Italy prior to this trip make the top of the chart).

Meal #1: On Saturday, our program had a field trip to Ravenna. You might be thinking "last time she was in Ravenna, she was partying on the beach" and this is true. However, this trip to Ravenna was for educational purposes and I didn't even see a beach. We visited Dante's tomb, Basilica di San Vitale (with gorgeous mosaics!), the tomb of Galla Placidia (a really powerful woman in Medieval times), and the Mausoleo di Teodorico and everything was explained to us in Italian. Needless to say, by lunchtime, we were tired and hungry. We had made reservations at a restaurant that serves typical Ravenna dishes and you could watch women making fresh piadina (a type of bread that is thicker than a tortilla, but similar in shape), which was later served to us with meat and cheese. But our first course was the one everyone fell in love with. We were served this incredible pasta with a light, creamy tomato sauce and cooked cherry tomatoes that burst in your mouth. It was all we could do to keep from shoveling it in our mouths because we were so hungry but we knew that we had to savor a dish like that. It tasted like heaven...there are no words to describe how happy that one dish made us! We all wished that the next few courses would just be more plates of that pasta.

Mosaics on the floor of San Vitale...

...and mosaics on the ceiling of Galla Placidia's tomb.

Our delicious pasta!! Makes my mouth water just looking at it.

Snack: That afternoon, before we took the train back to Bologna, we stopped to get gelato (naturally). I'm sure by the end of the year, I'll be a gelato snob and know where to get the "good" gelato and where to avoid the "not-so-good" gelato. But right now, most of the gelato I've had has been quite delicious, including this one in Ravenna!

Maia and Natalie in front of the gelateria.

Meal #2: Sunday was another long and tiring day. In Bologna, there was a children's festival in a park where there were all these booths and tables set up with activities for children and organizations directed toward children learning English. I volunteered for one such organization (P.A.C.E). Several of us in my program volunteered to make "instruments" (water bottles with colored rice inside and drums made out of cardboard cylinders with a balloon top) with the kids. We were instructed only to speak to the kids in English (and a lot of parents want their kids to take extra English classes or have a babysitter who speaks English), and so for the 4 hours I worked at the table, I must have said "Do you want to put the bluuue rice in the bottle? The bluuue rice? Or the greeeen rice?" hundreds of times. It was really fun to feel like a part of the festival and it made Bologna seem more like a community since there were families with little kids running around all over the park. Ok, so now here's the food part. That night, Allison, Allison's visiting friend Kourtney, and I went out to dinner with my cousins (Claudio, Luciana, Elio, and Anna). We went to a restaurant that serves typical Neapolitan pizza (which is some of the best pizza in the world). And I ate a whole pizza. Granted, the crust is thin and everyone else also ordered their own pizzas and finished them, too (because they were so incredibly good!). But wow, I woke up this morning and was STILL full. Then, of course, we had to have dessert. The dessert I ordered was fried dough covered with white and powdered sugar and topped with Nutella. So I basically ate 3 donuts for dessert. After eating an entire pizza. I probably should have gone on a run this morning...but I was too tired and needed my 10 hours of sleep. Oops... Maybe tomorrow...!

The pizza...ahhhh soooo good!

Allison, Kourtney, and I in front of the restaurant.

Baci e abbracci per tutti!  :)