First up: Cousin Matteo graduated from Scienze della Comunicazione at the University of Bologna (which I believe is the equivalent of a Masters Degree). So of course there was a celebration dinner. For these dinners, Allison and I are picked up in Bologna's center by either Matteo or Claudio and taken to some restaurant out in the hills, from which we would never find our way home if it weren't for Matteo or Claudio giving us a ride home. We're always just along for the ride and enjoying the experience! And this graduation dinner was lovely. They had rented out a whole restaurant and one of Matteo's good friends, Daniele, is an up-and-coming chef and he cooked the entire meal for us. We arrived at the restaurant, we were handed a glass of wine and we saw a table filled with homemade bread, meats, cheeses, tomatoes, salads, more bread, and more cheese. That was the first, all-you-can-eat course. The second course was pasta with salmon, and then dessert consisted of 2 different types of cakes and a puff pastry. I only had room for part of a piece of one cake, one puff pastry, and a taste of the 2nd cake. Matteo had about 35 of his friends and family there, and of course toward the end of the evening, cousin Elio brought out his guitar and people were playing and singing all together. It was so wonderful to be included in the celebration!
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| The food. |
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| Me, Matteo (with some kind of traditional hat?), and Allison |
Second item of business: heaven on earth. Also known as a chocolate festival here in Bologna ("Ciocco-show"). It happens once a year, and for 5 days in Piazza Maggiore there are 2 huge tents plus many more rows of tents containing tables and tables covered in chocolates. As Tarn termed it when I told her about this mouth-watering event, it was a "glimpse of heaven." The first day I went with my friend Maia, and we were so overwhelmed by all the different types of chocolate and the fact that they were all in one place. We chose to buy a few select items (which were eaten immediately) and then to return in the following days because we needed to mull over what we wanted to buy. We decided that if calories weren't a problem in consuming massive amounts of chocolate, then the amount of money spent on this chocolate wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, these chocolates were fairly expensive and calories do add up. I ended up returning twice more to this paradise, but limited myself to buying only 1 or 2 small bags of chocolates at a time (and I didn't feel guilty about getting chocolate-covered strawberries).
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| Only one of the many, many tables of chocolate. |
Last but not least: Fleet Foxes concert with Allison and Maia! We were joined by some other good girlfriends and we all took the bus out to the venue, just outside the center of Bologna. I hadn't listened to Fleet Foxes at all before a couple months ago when Maia and Allison introduced it to me. We all thoroughly enjoyed the concert, including the opening act (aside from the 10 minutes we spent dealing with a rude, drunk Italian woman trying to push her way to the front, elbowing us purposefully, thinking she could overpower me by leaning against me because I was standing my ground, slurping her empty drink in Maia's ear--into which Maia promptly flicked her hair--and calling us bitches in Italian when we wouldn't let her stand right in front of us). After the concert, we were able to catch the bus back into town after waiting for 30 minutes in the cold and thick fog for a taxi, but as soon as we saw our bus pass us and stop just down the street, about 20 of us stampeded toward it because we didn't want to miss it!
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| Allison, Maia, and me at the concert. |
Another blog post coming soon! I'm almost caught up now... :)
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