Montecatini has officially been declared our favorite spot so far. Of course we would find out riiight after we checked out, that they were having their summer street festival that night.... after we were talking about staying an extra night yesterday. So sad to leave without experiencing that. But nonetheless, we headed to Rome!
The rest stops along the highways here are much more fancy than ours. In hopes of getting Nick a burger, we chose to pull off at a stop that had an “Autogrill.” To our (somewhat expected) disappointment, there were no burgers... well, there was, but it was by no American standard, a real burger. Nick swore it was meat, but I wasn’t so sure. In need of something edible, we resorted to panini’s (of which we are completely burnt out of at this point in the trip)... and mine was hardly considered edible. But at least we bought chocolate!... But that sad pitstop sparked a whole analysis of our food experience thus far, which goes a little something like this....
Italy is kind of a big disappointment when it comes to food. It’s fair to say that we both had high hopes for delicious pasta and pizza. They do in fact have pasta and pizza, but it is certainly nothing mind-blowing. Let’s just say, I wouldn’t mind running into an olive garden here. Maybe we just haven’t been going to the right places, but we’ve hit a pretty extensive range of restaurants in terms of quality and price. I would hope that we don’t have THAT bad of luck to have managed to choose the worst places every time. Not that any of it is bad.... although their meat is pretty awful (with the exception of Nick’s veal)... but there is an extreme lack of variety. Carbs for DAYS. Breakfast and lunch are non-existent. You just eat pastries and or panini’s (which is fine, until you’ve had them for both meals, for multiple days in a row). Panini’s are ham and cheese, or tomato and cheese (delicious, but again, VERY repetitive). There is NO such thing as condiments here. That one completely boggles my mind. No mayonnaise, ketchup, mustard, or anything similar. Salads don’t have dressing (at least the pre-made ones). From what I have observed, most dinner menus have the same 10 or so items... so it really doesn’t make much difference where you go.... Pizzerias, Bars (pastries/panini’s), and Gelaterias are all over the place, but it’s hit or miss when they open and when they stop serving food. We’ve been too early and too late multiple times. We’re still not sure that there is any consistency in the timing. Still paying for what we consider overpriced food (still paying an average of $2.50 euros for bottled water/coke), and lacking in fruits/veggies/meats, we have basically made it a new mission to find any kind of international food. Teriyaki is our current dream.
Continuing with our journey.... we managed to get lost again. This is the second time that our directions have been incorrect, and our map has proven to be completely useless. It seems easy enough to simply turn around when you miss what you think was the correct exit. But it’s not. Not when every exit off the highway, is just an exit onto another highway, and there are crazy Italian drivers trying to run you over. There roads/exits are not clearly labeled. We aren’t exactly sure how we made it to our hotel... but we somehow found our way! The more I think about it, the more I’m impressed with us... haha we were so lost... but we figured it out. We’re smart :)
Being experienced with driving and knowing how stressful it was going to be, we planned on just hanging out at the pool when we got there. Which was a great idea. Our next plan was to get to a grocery store to buy milk and cereal (since we have a mini-fridge and we could have something else for breakfast). Go figure that the supermarket closes at 8:30pm..... we got there at 8:32pm.
At a loss of what to do again... and getting hungry, we saw an amazing thing! The golden arches off in the distance!!! Yes. We went to McDonald’s. In Italy.... shame on us. But I don’t think I’ve ever been so satisfied with gross McD’s mayonnaise...(their fries are better here though). And can I just say, McDonald’s was CRACKIN! EVERYBODY was there! There was a traffic jam in the parking lot because there were no spots open. Apparently that’s the place to be at 9pm on a Wednesday night. We waited in line for 15/20min... it was ridiculous. But so worth it! We fulfilled Nick’s burger craving!
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