Ciao or Chow?

The above is a sunset view of Amelia, my little Italian home. This is the view on our way to the outdoor bar we hang out at (blog to follow).

So across the street from my stairs there is what looks to be a small bar/pizzeria. One night Lauren and I did not feel like trekking up the monstrous hill to go to our favorite pizzeria, so we hesitantly decided to try this place. We got a classmate of ours, Catherine, to join us on our culinary adventure.

Every dinner in Italy is a culinary adventure. They take (on average) about 4 hours start to finish. Sometimes menu's aren't provided, the chef just starts talking to you (which isn't a good thing as we just started our Italian lessons yesterday) and you fumble your way through ordering dinner. The only good thing is that EVERYTHING you order in Italy turns out yummy. I have yet to have something I did not like, and I have ventured well beyond my normal culinary borders. For instance, lunch yesterday was polenta with wild boar ragu. Sounds weird, tastes fantastic.

Ok, so back to trying the new pizzeria. We walked in and the fun started immediately. You apparently have to choose between the pizzeria menu and the restaurant menu, we choose the pizza menu. Right after being shown to the table the waitress asked us if we wanted antipasto, we said sure. (Side note: NEVER go to a restaurant in Italy hungry. It will take about an hour to get your appetizer, another hour or so to get your meal, etc. You get ravenous and angry if you didn't eat ahead of time.) After getting the antipasto we made sure to point out ONE antipasto for the three of us to share... or so we thought. THIS is what was brought to our table:

Apparently she thought we meant one antipasto for each of us, she brought three. We can't imagine what she was thinking, but we also think she must have thought we were crazy. The language barrier is killing us. Here is the receipt for our mistake, 30E for antipasto. Usually dinners are pretty cheap, 5E for a pizza. Lesson learned.

Speaking of language lessons, we started our Italian lessons yesterday and I am fumbling through them. I am hoping to get better over time. My main issue is that EVERYONE lied when they said French would help you learn Italian, lies all lies. French completely kills you when you try to learn Italian, mainly pronunciation. I read the words like I do French words, and that does not work. Oh well, hopefully very soon I will get the hang of it. :-)

Ok... so I started working on this blog because I thought I had already posted by Rome blog, but I didn't. One day you might get like 4 blogs so I can catch up. :-) I hope you don't mind.