Day 4 Saturday June 7

Yesterday we had beautiful scenic breakfast on the balcony at Hotel Belvedere. I said scenic, so as not to confuse that with the bad food we were offered for breakfast. Breakfast, like I said before, is usually continental and generally always comes with the room. It was cheap yucky food, kind of what you get at a Fairfield Inn, but European style. Everything was packaged and nothing was fresh. We didn’t care though because the view was gorgeous, the weather was sunny, and Brit & I were having fun being together.

Brit does not like to get stuff on his fingers. It’s funny because his whole family is that way. They don’t like their fingers to be sticky or dirty. So Brit doesn’t like to touch his food or eat anything messy like ribs or fried chicken. I finally after all these years captured the look he does when this happens. He kind of looks at his fingers, rubs them, and then wonders how he can get whatever is on off. It’s a classic look.

Another ritualistic habit of Brit’s happened this morning. At home he always eats everything with the smallest spoon he can find. He would eat off of a child size spoon if we had them in the house. Sometimes when I want to annoy him, I give him a the larger spoon in a silverware set to eat his cereal or pudding. So this morning at breakfast the guy gave him a spoon for his yogurt and wow, can he even get that spoon in his mouth? Open wide; this might require surgery to extract.

Since we ate so late, we slept in until 9’ish. Josh, my brother sent me a text and said he and his family, had left Milan in the morning and were going to Bologna. They asked us where we were and when he heard we were closed he said to meet up in Parma. I said okay because I wanted to go to Parma and Modena to taste and see how the Parmagano-Reggiano cheese was made and the world famous balsamic vinegar.

It was about 45 minute drive up through the mountains which was pretty. But it is freeway driving so you just don’t get the quaintness as you do if you take the back roads, which is always my choice. Brit fulfills my requests to do this because he knows my desire is to enjoy the journey not just get to the destination.

We were supposed to meet in Parma but Josh and Hiedi missed the exit on the toll road and there are only exits every 20 miles or so. So they didn’t want to drive all the way back so we ended up meeting them in Modena instead. We met for lunch. I have a really great book called Osterie & Locande d'Italia: A Guide to Traditional Places to Eat and Stay in Italy. It is like a Michelin Guide, but has never led us astray. It recommended a great place for lunch called Trattoria Aldina.

I texted the place to Josh and he put it in his GPS and we met there. As we were walking to the restaurant we could hear Mavis, our 3-year-old niece, calling us. We looked up and saw her in the window above. She was eating her lunch, a big cucumber. The restaurant was located on the second floor and full of locals. There was no menu. The owner just recites what is on the menu and you tell her what you want. She waited all 30 tables by herself, and everyone is just patient and enjoys the wait.

Some meals can take as long as 3 hours to get all your courses. That is just how it is in Italy. And, you have to ask for your check, otherwise you might sit there for hours waiting for the bill. They think it is rude to give you your check unless you ask. It would be like them asking you to leave their home and you might not be ready to go yet.

At lunch the meal is a little shorter. But here all the pasta was handmade and you could tell it was a real home cooked meal. The food was so cheap but more importantly so fresh and tasty.

Their roasted potatoes were so moist inside, but had the best crusty outside. Brit really liked the cheese ravioli with speck. The cannelloni stuffed with spinach was so good and light. It is almost like their pasta noodles are so thin so you can really taste the flavor. It also means that you don’t fill up with lots of pasta dough. The sheets are almost as thin as Kleenex. Now I can see how they can eat pasta just as a first course or “Primi Piatti” and then have a whole “Secondi Piatti”.

The lasagna was the same, so good the noodles were so thin. They must make a very big square and then free form fold it, adding the sauce as they go. I noticed too that they don’t add a thick layer of anything. It is all really thin and light. The tortellini in broth was so fresh also. The tortellini was stuffed with a moist heavenly ricotta cheese, flavored with sage. The tagletelli was good, but not as good as the other items. We got a pork leg and also some veal medallions, but the star of the show was the lasagna.

Dessert was okay. The crème caramel was good but we figured out now that we don’t like the Zuppa Inglese. It is just cake soaked in some kind of red alcohol and then placed in pudding with whipped cream. The chocolate cake was so moist and amazing. They always serve dessert with the fork or spoon stuck into the treat. They are definitely not concerned about the appearance of the dish, just how it tastes.

The meal was so inexpensive it ended up being $72 Euros for all that food. Another tip…no pun intended, you might see “pane e coperta” on your bill. This is because some restaurants charge a nominal fee for bread and service. Most of the time we were never charged for this but on occasion it does show up.

As we left, we window-shopped on the way to the market. Mavis stopped to look at the shoes; she definitely like me. The market was still going on when we got out of lunch so we headed there. It is usually located in the main piazza. The food was amazing there. We bought cherries and grapes there. It is pretty standard that you can sample something like cherries or grapes, usually if you are truly looking to buy some, they will offer you a sample so you can taste how ripe it is. We sampled olives and cheese and showed Mavis all the huge octopi they had there.

There was really fresh garlic there. I had never seen green stems on garlic at the market. The figs were so large, almost as big as my hand and so perfect. They had tons of rice and legumes too. The butcher was chopping all the chicken heads off as we walked by and saving them on a ring. We were curious so he held them up for us to see. I wonder what they do with them? After the market, we tried to go to a few places that supposedly made balsamic vinegar, but our information let us down and the addresses didn’t add up.

The boys wanted to go to the Ferrari Museum so we headed for that next. Brit went into the actual museum and I stayed with the kids and played. While Brit was doing the tour, we were figuring out what we would do next. Brit took pictures of everything for Tyson Hummer who loves those cars and Brit bought him some stuff there. We realized that if booked it to Ravenna, went to see the mosaics in the Duomo there. It was about an hour drive to the eastern coast of Italy. Ravenna is a beautiful port town and seemed like a vacation spot for many Italians.

We have a good friend Phil that is a religion professor at BYU. He takes tour groups over to Italy and told us to make sure we went to Ravenna and to specifically look for the LDS symbols that are shown in the mosaics. There were found in these three places and are pretty obvious once you see them.

The Arian Baptistery—mosaics by early Arian Christian show immersion baptism.
Basilica of San Vitale—mosaics of processions special markings.
St. Apollinare Nuovo—paladium that will mean something to LDS—clearly Temple significance!

These pictures of Mavis are so cute lighting the candles in a church. We went to see the Basilica there. The mosaics were beautiful and this was what others have said about them. “The half dome is partly filled with a green pasture, at the bottom of which twelve sheep, symbolizing the Twelve Apostles, march in single file on either side of the orant [a figure with outstretched arms in the posture of prayer] Saint Apollinaris, wearing a purple chasuble ornamented with gold. Above him, against the gold background, a circle of jewels encloses a giant disk of blue sown with gold stars, on which floats a golden cross studded with gems, as if appearing to the saint in a vision.

On either side of the disk Moses and Elijah, depicted to the waist only, are surrounded by clouds to indicate that they, too, are visionary apparitions. Below them among the trees three lambs look upward. These figures in the upper part of the apse symbolize the Transfiguration and portray that moment when Christ, who had climbed to a mountaintop with Peter, James, and John, was suddenly transfigured in raiment “white and glistening” and Moses and Elijah were miraculously revealed in conversation with him. Christianity, no longer a new religion, has created its own language of symbols in which it can address the faithful with complete confidence that it will be understood. The mosaics of the triumphal arch, which show sheep emerging from Bethlehem on one side and from Jerusalem on the other before Christ flanked by the symbols of the Four Evangilists, were added in the seventh or eighth century.” (Hartt, Art. 324)

We missed the baptistery because we got there to late. We bought some postcards that showed some of the mosaics. I think like many things in life, the mosaics are really a matter of interpretation. Would I drive all the way to see them again, probably not? Would I go to Ravenna again? Yes, the church mosaics are beautiful and it was a pretty fun town to see. We ate gelato, since we hadn’t had our daily dose yet. I saw a cute children’s store there that was decorated really nice. I knew Hiedi would like it so we wandered in and I took a lot of pictures.

Mavis and I chased each other on the street. I got some fun pictures of her with her hat on. She was being very photographic today. Usually she doesn’t like the camera, another trait I have. There was what looked like a cool market and we went to check it out. It was called the Plenty Market. We looked around and I saw pork rinds and some meringue that looked good and I wanted to try. I love pork rinds, but the Italian version was gross.

Josh wanted to go have seafood so we decided to try a restaurant out by the water. No one spoke a lick of English. They had a translation guide for fish but it wasn’t that helpful, we had a hard time distinguishing specific fish types. No matter, everything ended up being excellent. First we had a assorted sardine plate. Then we had fried calamari with balsamic vinegar. After that we had tortelli with ricotta and spada e porcini alla salvia, which was excellent. The ravioli with ricotta and sea bass with zucchini and shrimp was heavenly. We also got risotto del pavese. Our grilled fish platter was good and we also got the brocatto braised eel, which wasn’t good.

It was getting late so Josh left to start making his way back to Bologna. Hiedi still had to feed the baby so we waited for the last dish. Some guy got a huge trough like plate taken to his table, he could tell we were bug eyed about his plate and so he brought it over to show it to us. It was a grilled special it looked really good.

The best dish of the night was the grilled eel. It is funny because I have seen that dish at so many Chinese restaurants but have never been brave enough to try it. But she said that was the best dish she served and she was right.

Josh texted us that they had other rooms at their hotel so we decided to drive back there. We had a hard time getting to our hotel in Bologna. After driving the same path a couple of times, we finally saw Josh’s car. They were still in it and had been trying this whole time to get to the hotel too. There were hundreds of what looked like wild kids hanging outside and we were a little weary of what hotel Josh was staying in, and on what side of town.

What Josh didn’t know is that the road you have to go down has path blockers that look like they are permanent but when you know the code there is a box you punch it into and the street pillars disappear and you drive right in. Kinda James Bondish. Then when we pulled up to the Hotel there was a riotous crowd of people that was kind of scary. I hadn’t seen anything like it since I was in East Berlin in a scary place. Josh went in to see where we parked because we couldn’t find where the guy said. It ended up being behind two big gothic style doors that opened, but you couldn’t see it behind the riot.

The hotel guy came out and we parted the sea of black dressed, weird looking people with our car and drove into a huge courtyard that seemed pretty secure. It was funny because we were very uneasy about the whole area. We got our luggage out and went up to our room. We had seen a really yummy looking gelato place on the way there, actually we saw every time we drove in the circle and decided to brave the riot and go try it. Josh stayed with the kids and Hiedi, Brit and I went.

As we walked out we figured out why there were so many young adults around. The bar “Transylvania” had just opened. It was like 12:00 pm. Now we understood why everyone was so garbed up. It’s funny because when we drove up, there were just the rolled type of garage doors down and locked and when we went back out the façade totally changed and a decorated trendy bar was there. I got marscapone gelato it was good. The chocolate though was the best we have ever had in Italy. We went back to the hotel and Josh was still awake so we gave him a bite. He was mad that we didn’t bring him more. To our defense we thought he would already be asleep, he was beat.