Breakfast: Completely different from what I am used to. In the morning I typically stick to something relatively high protein and with whole grain carbohydrate. At the B&B where we stayed, the breakfast provided every morning was basically a croissant with cream filling in the middle, along with strong espresso that I got to make every morning in the espresso maker that was in our room (awesome ;). Anyway, I was glad that I had packed 3 boxes of kashi bars for snacks and breakfast, because I just didn't want to eat those croissants every day lol.. On our last day, my boyfriend and I were rushing through the Rome airport trying to find something.. Anything other than pastries for breakfast, and it just wasn't happening. And then we found Mcdonalds. I have never been so happy to order from there (I just got a egg and cheese muffin). Sad, I know, but I just could not eat another simple carbohydrate breakfast! (and there's the dietitian coming out in me)
Lunch: Pasta. Lunch in southern Italy is eaten around noon, and is the biggest meal of the day. It usually consists of pasta first, followed by meat, and then fruit and coffee.
Here is a delicious tomato-based pasta dish we had for lunch the day we went to Pompeii. The noodles are of much better quality than you usually see in the states- they have a moist quality to them.
On the Isle of Capri, we got a traditional caprese salad and also a caprese pizza. They were delicious of course! I was happy to be eating some veggies.
I was worried that on this trip I might gain weight, since I'm not used to eating that way. However we were both pleasantly surprised to see that neither of us gained weight. It must have been all the walking that we did.
Dinner: Southern Italians do not eat dinner until about 9 pm! That is not normal for an American like me, who typically eats around 5 or 6. My boyfriend and I would eat about that time, and then get invited out for dinner by my friend and the others who were there for the wedding about 9. We were like.. oh man, we already ate! But we still went and hung out. It is also of mention that in Italy between 1 & 5 pm, almost all shops shut down. You are basically forced to take a break, and then people go back to work between 5 and 8 or 8:30. I would say there are two ways to eat dinner: the casual way and the 7 course dinner way. My friend whose wedding I was there for said that dinner is a smaller meal, and usually consists of meat, potatoes and sometimes salad.
The casual way may also consist of pizza, and we had a lot of that!
We had this pizza with mozzarella di bufala in Naples. Naples is apparently where tomato sauce was created, and one of the traditional Neapolitan pizzas looks about like this- lots of red sauce and moist mozzarella. In the small town we were staying at the majority of the time for the wedding, no residents knew ANY English because we were not in a very touristy area (the southern point of the heal). The first night we were there, we walked into a Pizzeria and tried to order two slices of pizza with lots of vegetable toppings-- we made idiots of ourselves and they almost made us two huge pizzas instead of just two slices. Wow did we learn a lot.
On nights that are not so casual, you would typically go out to a restaurant, and I know that when we did this, we were served 7 courses of food, for only 30 euro. Italy has a lot of seafood dishes- it makes sense, because the country has so much coastline. But I don't think Americans typically think of Italian cuisine as containing a lot of seafood. Also at the wedding, there was the 7 course dinner again. The first course were appetizers consisting of meats, cheeses and crackers, among other things, followed by a pasta dish that contained mussels from Calabria, a ravioli pasta dish, a seafood dish that had fish and shrimp, and I believe there were more pasta dishes, followed by wedding cake for dessert, of course. I must say I was very impressed by these elaborate dinners, but it was just so much food!
Pasta with mussels- delizioso!
The fish dish
Dessert: Gelato! There were so many gelato shops around. I had to stop myself from eating too much- but hey it's vacation! Right? ;)
Gelato at Valentino's on my birthday
There are so many varieties of gelato to choose from, and you are typically expected to pick at least two flavors to go together, so Trevor always got strawberry and lemon, and I got chocolate and coffee flavors. Yum. We also ate some tiramisu while in Naples.
I wish I could just blog about this whole trip, but that would take forever! We had such a great experience there, between experiencing the culture and seeing all the amazing sights Italy has to offer. Can't wait to go back!
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