6/15 Would you like pasta with your pasta?

Ahhh, Saturday in Italy.  I really thought the week days were pretty laid back, but they do not compare to the weekends!  Lexy and I rolled out of our apartment at about 1pm, gotta love summer break!  Last night I want to point out we were successful at going to a little pizzeria by ourselves and ordering exactly what we want, by ourselves.  Let’s ignore all the pointing we had to do...  Apparently our accents are pretty bad.  However, we now know “canto” means check.  We made it home at about 10pm, which by the standards here is early.  I was lucky enough to fall right asleep, however Lexy had a harder time, hearing all the singing going on in the Piazza right outside our apartment.  I got up at 8, played lazy girl for a while, then we adventured out.  We were going to hit up the Saturday market, but for all their ruckus till the wee hours of the morning apparently they are serious about their markets.  They were packing up when we got there!  We’ll try that one again next week.  Luckily the Sigma (grocery store) was in the neighborhood, so we stopped by to pick up some sugar and salt.  Let me just say, spices are pretty hard to find in the little shops.  Where do you go for those!?  Of all the spices in this apartment are very asian, but no salt.  Meh, we have it now!

While I’m on the topic of grocery stores, let’s discuss this Sigma store.  So you walk in, and it’s pretty much one way.  Space is hard to come by, so I’m really not surprised.  However, the assortment of stuff on the shelves was very amusing.  The entire first aisle in this store is all cookies.  Course, not chocolate chip cookies, but more basic cookies.  Wafer cookies, little shortbread cookies, chocolate cookies with white stars on them (we got these), lots of cookies!  At the end of the aisle is the toast.  I need to try this stuff, apparently it’s the big item for breakfast.  Pre-toasted toast.  Looks boring, but hey, when in Roma right!?  There was a small section in this aisle of Nutella and jams.  My son would be pretty sad to discover there is no peanut butter...  You have to go to the stores that are aimed at Americans for that.  Then there was a small meat section, small packaged cheese section, then a small produce section (none of this surprised me, there are the little shops for these), then an entire aisle of drinks.  Should I list all the drinks???  Do we have time for that???  OF COURSE!  Coke, sprite, diet coke, fanta, sparkling water, beer, and wine.  Done.  No Mountain Dew.  No Pepsi (wait, there my have been one row...)  No juice, no vitamin waters...  And the soda portion of the aisle was roughly a fourth.  Then the beer which was another fourth, then all the wine.  Complete with box wine.  So funny!  Then there are a few small items, like bandaids, nuts, candy, then the check stand.  But wait, I didn’t discuss the upstairs!

Ok, the upstairs made me laugh soooo hard.  About as large as the bottom story, but arranged differently.  You have your choice of instant coffees, spaghetti sauces, paper towels, toilet paper, and PASTA!  Seriously, pasta.  Lots and lots of pasta.  So downstairs there is little to no meat, cheese, or produce, but they stock lots of pasta.  Granted, this isn’t the fresh stuff.  It’s exactly what you are thinking.  They even have Barilla.  I just couldn’t get over how much boxed pasta they have in Italy!  If I had the choice of eating fresh pasta or boxed stuff, well, that just seems like a silly question.

Now I know this is just one store, but let’s really think about it.  This store is within the walls of Viterbo, and these are obviously the items they must stock to make money.  I’d still go with the fresh pasta...

Wow, did I really go on that long about what they stock a store with?  Oops..  Sorry...  After we bought our sugar and salt, we went wandering around.  There is a beautiful park just outside Porta Florentina we visited.  Lots of statues of men, lots of beautiful trees.  They even had a monkey puzzle tree!!!  (Ok, side note.  I’m sure many of you are like, hey, cool, tell us more about the statues.  Well, all the darn placards were in italian, so when we get a chance to ask an Italian, I’ll maybe get back to you.  If you are nice to me.  Till then, deal with my tree fascination.)  Well, there were actually two.  Very cool trees.  After the park we walked back in Porta Florentina and grabbed some gelato.  Today’s flavors of choice were (drum roll please): Stracciatella and Ricotta e cannela.  That was kinda like telling you I painted my walls “Scotland Road,” huh?  Chocolate chip and Ricotta with cinnamon.  That last one, absolute favorite so far.  SOOO good.  Beats out the cioccolata bianca.  Wonder what those two would taste like together...  

Whew.  Ok, dinner time in a few.  I’m feeling like pasta...