Food: Absolute Best Meal Of All Time

Josie and I are spending the weekend in Palermo and today we went to the Piazza Mondello which is the piazza of Mondello Beach. The beach is absolutely gorgeous and while walking around we found a great restaurant with a sweet deal. It was a bottle of water and a bottle of wine, six appetizers, two first courses, one of two choices for a second course, a choice of either orange or melon for desert, and either coffee or some drink we never heard of all for 25 euro! Every single dish was phenomenal and unlike in Rome everything was not subtitles in English, so we took a gamble because we did not know what half of the things were, but the gamble definitely paid off.

The staff there was incredibly friendly, and catered as best as they could to us barely speaking any Italian. The appetizers were, a seafood pasta, which consisted off octopus, shrimp, mussels and calamari. Then a plate of fried calamari (exquisite), then a plate of mussels, a plate of salad in a garlic-lemon seasoning with shrimp, then a plate of (it is hard to explain because I have never seen this before) fried mashed potatoes and bruschetta, then a plate of the absolute biggest oysters I have ever seen in my life. After that it was time for the first course, which consisted of rice and clams in this sauce that I could not quite put my finger on, but it was great all the same. Then a plate fettuccine in blush sauce with shrimp. Then for the second course we got a fish (head attached and all) with four huge prawns. We could barely finish everything and actually had to leave some of the plates unfinished. Then we wrapped everything up with a cantaloupe and the drink we had never heard of which turned out to be a shot that tasted somewhat like a lemon drop.

All in all, if you want the best meal for the best price, then go to Sicily...in specific, this restaurant in the Piazza Mondello.

(Will be posting pictures up later of the meals and the establishment)

Food: The Black Duke Restaurant/Pub

While meandering around the city looking for something to eat Josie and I stumbled across the Black Duke, which was an Irish establishment, but had a mixture of Italian and American/Irish food. The prices there were very good, as well as the food. They have several "menu" selections in which you can pick a meal (usually either 2 courses and an appetizer with a course) and a drink for a predetermined price. For 15 euro I got lasagna, a chicken cutlet with french fries and a drink (the menu Black Duke). Both of the courses were very good, so if you are ever in the mood for a little taste of home, and a little taste of Italy the Black Duke is where to go. They also have great appetizers that you do not see anywhere else, like deep friend broccoli and cheese poppers. Aside from the menu deals, their individual dishes are priced well and portions are much better than what I have encountered with the local Italian places. For the two of us to eat and get drinks (and left stuffed) it cost about 30 euro, which is a sweet deal for me because to leave one of the Italians places as full as I left the Black Duke I could probably spend 50 euro+ easy. For anyone interested the Black Duke is about one block north of the Pantheon, if you are looking at the front of the McDonald's, follow the path going north to the right of it and you can't miss it.

Cars: Traffic Patterns

Over the days that we have been here I have slowly adapted to the fiasco which is called traffic in Rome. I have noticed that one tell tale sign that someone is a tourist is how they act when trying to cross a street. The looking into the drivers eye approach has worked for me very well, and I encourage anyone that is not doing that yet to get on it. I want to try and soak in as much of the culture here as possible, so if it means stepping out into oncoming traffic, then so be it. Someone also informed me of one interesting tid-bit of information regarding pedestrian and automobile relations. If you get hit by someone when you are on foot, on top of having to pay for your medical expenses, they also have to pay you 45,000 euro. Once I found this out I have been taking crossing the street much less seriously as I had previously. Now I am not jumping out in front of moving cars trying to get hit, but I just make sure that if I do cross a little more recklessly than usual that the vehicle is not moving fast enough to kill me if they were not to break. I figured that all of the natives cross quite sporadically, so I might as well join in with the culture and at the same time take a gamble at making 45 grand (by the way that comes out to $70,650) with an estimated exchange rate of 1.57. So get out there and jump in to some money, by jumping into traffic!

Piazza Navona: Clown Performer

The other night we saw a silent clown performer doing a bit on the south side of the piazza. I am not much one for clowns (especially silent ones) but he was actually pretty funny. It was a fresh thing to see for once instead of the same caricature artists and musical acts which play the same songs that everyone in the world knows. The clown first started things off by grabbing a kid from the audience (probably five or six years old) and made him put his fingers up by his head to represent horns. He then pulled out a red cloth and motioned for the child to charge him, he did this several times in the fashion of a matador, but for the final one he placed the cloth right in front of one of the metal trash cans. The child actually did charge him but the clown stopped him before he struck the other side.

He also thought quickly on his feet because he adapted to the crowd around him and the passers by. At one point a person was walking by with a tiny dog, and next thing you know he's got this novelty sized plastic bone and throws it to the dog. Unfortunately though he also did not notice an elderly woman walking near where the dog was and the bone struck her. This was somewhat funny and horrible all at the same time and got a mixed response respectively. After that though before he got into his next act a couple attractive females were walking past and he immediately ran over to them, fell, and motioned for mouth to mouth. I liked this because he was not sticking to one planned out routine, but would drop what he was doing to do a quick little thing like that to mix it up.

For his finale he grabbed a female from the audience (late teens I'm thinking) and motioned for her to mimic what he was doing. So they go through a couple things, lift a leg, spin around, touch your nose, etc. His final motion though is him lifting up his shirt to get her to flash the everyone. She had on two shirts though and lifted up the first, which was unexpected and funny on her part. He then took out a fake gun and grabbed the kid he did the bull routine with, and put the gun to the kids head insinuating that if she did not flash him he was going to shoot the kid. All together it was a nice, new, and entertaining experience that you do not see too often (at least I haven't) around the piazzas.

Food: You Do Not Get What You Pay For

One thing that I am starting to realize in Rome is that you really do not get what you pay for here for food, in quality or quantity (especially quantity). I have had my fair share of touristy places and small local places where you could not find a tourist and they barely spoke any English. Believe it or not, I have found that you get the best deal with the touristy places because they know what kind of food we are expecting and cater to that as best as possible. The small local places give out the absolute worst portions. I am trying to figure out where the stereotype of Italians eating tons of food at their meals came from, because I have yet to see anything even remotely close to what I have been brought up to think. I am dying for a Maggiano's type dinner where you get obnoxiously huge portions that taste fantastic and are moderately priced. I have only had one meal here so far at a restaurant that left me full, but that also was probably because I had an appetizer and the bread with olive oil, and then my meal. I have a firm belief that there is absolutely no one plate meal in this city that could fill me.

Piazza Navona: Annoying Tourists

While I do recognize that I am a tourist myself but this surge of tourism is starting to drive me nuts. I heard that it is still going to get worse and that June will be the time for the most amount of them. The individuals touring are not that bad at all, but when they get into these huge groups or the guided tours is when it gets very annoying, very quickly. They make it impossible to walk around anywhere, and seem to do everything possible to get in your way or cut you off. I have observed that foreigners have absolutely no concept of other people when on foot also. They will be walking past you and then get right in front of you and then stop abruptly without a second thought. Another past time I have picked up on is that when they are walking side by side they will not break their line for anyone and if you do not get out of their way they will plow right into you. This gets annoying when you have three or more people walking shoulder to shoulder taking up the entire sidewalk coming at you. Americans may have a stereotype for being loud, fat, arrogant, etc. but at least we learned how to walk.

Cars: Vatican Car Show

So I finally got to see a couple super cars today, one was a Lamborghini police cruiser and the other was a Viper designed for circuit racing. These cars were absolutely gorgeous! I think that possibly the my best experience with the Vatican was on my way there and back when I had the privilege of checking out some fine automobiles. On the way back from the Vatican we passed by the Lamborghini again and I just had to get a picture of the engine. So I hesitantly approached the police officers who were in it earlier and now standing next to it and requested that they pop the trunk for me. I got the impression that they almost were not supposed to but they could not deny themselves the bragging rights so they agreed that they could just for a few minutes and the second they did the entire crowd came rushing over to get a look at it. So I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I did, but they do not do the real life vehicles justice. I wanted to get a better look at the Viper but there was not anyone around it that looked like they could help me with that. On top of the super cars on display they also brought out some antique Alfa Romeos, and some new military vehicle. All around it was a very cool experience.

Cars: Exotics

To put it mildly, I am sorely disappointed in the lack of exotic cars that I have seen thus far. Now I was not planning on Rome being the capital of Ferrari and Lamborghini but I had expected to see certainly better than this. Needless to say the dominance of Smart cars has left me somewhat perturbed. To date I have only seen one Maserati and two Bentleys, and Bentleys do not even look that good to the eye the only thing that makes them worth mentioning is the price tag. I was not hoping to see expensive luxury cars, I wanted to see cars that could melt the pavement. Naturally also the man that I saw driving the Maserati was middle-aged at best, and was reminiscent of the typical mid life crisis men you see driving around in Corvettes daily back home. Also, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and even Opel make some nice cars and it is driving me nuts that I have yet to see any. I have seen a couple higher end Alfa Romeos but the only people you see in those are the diplomats with their bodyguards. If anyone has seen any actual cars worth writing about, or if anyone knows of any hot spots for finding such cars please let me know as soon as possible. In the meantime I am going to have to say that my vision of Italy's car culture was sorely mistaken and exaggerated. On a side note you just do not see much custom work done to anybodies cars, every model just looks like a cookie cutter version of the next, I want to find out more about the culture here with that and would like to write about it later, anyone with incite on that feel free to respond.

Food: American Delicacy

Now I am not one for fast food at all, in fact until yesterday I have not eaten any fast food in many a year. But when I sunk my teeth into a McDonald's cheeseburger and fries my taste buds exploded! I am a man who enjoys eating dead animals. I have never eaten a salad and never will, but I eat a beef or chicken product at a bare minimum of one meal per day back home. As much as I love Italian cooking they just are lacking when it comes to the carne part of their diet. I usually try to order things with meat on or in them like paninis, pizzas or pastas and even though they do have some meat in them they do not know how to pile it high like we do back home. The two things that I miss most (besides family and friends) would be our style of food preparation and video games. Given the fact I can not get my fix of video games anywhere here I have to work on finding the places that serve food a little more my way. Unfortunately McDonalds is the closest thing to that, and I have to honestly say I am whole heartily enjoying fast food now. I am still eating Italian food a lot but I stop in and hit up the Euro menu every now and again when I need a quick fix. You can only eat pasta and pizza so many times before it starts to get old. So if anyone has that feeling when they crave some good old fashioned, steroid injected, gene altered, slaughtered animal then a McDonalds is your cure-all.

Piazza Navona: Standing Still Street Performers

While eating a meal in the Piazza I could not keep my eyes off of the standing still street performer people and wondered where they got the ideas for their outfits. One of which was a Statue of Liberty but for some reason was all white, the other being a pharoah wrapped in gold. There was a moving person who was dressed as Charlie Chaplin but he was not the most interesting out of them all. While watching the pharoah guy he never moved unless you put money in his bucket thing and then he would bow to you. It blew my mind how he had the control to not move whatsoever for such an extended period of time, I would get so incredibly bored doing that and he must have been boiling in that outfit because it was early afternoon and the sun was beating down on the piazza. His gold wrapping must have been functioning as an insulator as well and I could only imagine how he must have been sweating bullets. Oddly enough though after some time he took off the costume, picked up the money and walked away leaving everything behind. After about five or ten minutes another person (and it was definitely another person, different clothes, skin tone etc.) came in and took the place of the original guy as the pharoah. So we discussed then for a bit if they were employed by someone else maybe and not just self employed street performers. The reasoning behind that was that it seemed like it was a shift change, and if people were doing that in shifts then that would explain them behind hired to do such on a separate wage pay. Of course I guess it could just be two guys working together as street performers employed by themselves and they just give eachother breaks when necessary but that seems like a bit of planning just to be standing around motionless in a piazza dressed ridiculously.

Food: Service

I had my first altercation with an Italian at dinner...our waiter. When we sat down for dinner we ordered a salad for antipasti and then our entrees. The salad never came though and we just got our dinners and assumed that he had forgot about the salads. When we were done eating though we asked for the check and when he brought it out we were charged for the salads. We had debated for a bit whether to argue the charge or just pay it, since we felt we didn't speak Italian well enough to explain to him the situation. We ended up telling him that we did not receive the salad and upon hearing this he argued back that we did order it. Unfortunately there was a break down between the languages and he wasn't comprehending that we were agreeing with him that we ordered the salad but just saying that it never came out to us. To my surprise he started yelling at us and throwing a fit, I tried to call him over to explain it to him calmly but he stormed off and came back with the salad crossed off the bill. I felt bad since the entire scenario could have been avoided if we could have gotten what we were trying to say across, but needless to say we won't be going back there again.

Piazza Navona: Street Musicians

I was in the Piazza Navona again and the awesome guitarist was there as well. This time though I did watch him for a bit, but decided I should probably check some other things out and find something new. As I approached other people playing music I found that almost everyone had the exact same set list. Though obviously in different order, every musician inevitably played the classics that an American audience would go nuts for. On top of my expectations that their music was driven towards an American audience to get the most money since the Piazza was a pretty touristy place, I also realized that a relatively sized chunk of the listeners were not actually American but still knew all of the classics that we grew up with. I hope as the weeks go by though the set list of the performers will get a little remodeled or else I'm going to be listening to Stairway, Sultains of Swing and Hotel California every night (not that I'm complaining) it just does get a little repetitious eventually.

Cars: Camaro

So last night I ran into a guy that had a 1970 High Output 350 Camaro in beautiful condition. I asked him to pop the hood and we discussed the engine for awhile. For some reason he did not speak english very well except for when he was talking about the engine. It had a four barrel carb and the block was in immaculate condition. After this run-in with the Camaro I was pondering about my previous blog and how they had not heard of Pontiac or Firebird and yet here was this guy with a mint condition classic Camaro. Pontiac and Chevrolet are both General Motors companies, so therefore at some point I realized that GM made the conscious decision to market Chevy over here (because I have seen other Chevy models here) and exclude Pontiac.

Food

I have noticed here that the portions are much smaller than we are used to having back home. On the menus though they always say first course, second course etc. So I assumed that the smaller portions were due to Italians eating several courses for the dinner, though I have yet to see anyone else eating at these places order more than one course and even though the portions are a little smaller I don't think they're small enough to constitute ordering more than one entree. Also, they never really use any or much garlic at all, which was quite the opposite of what I had been expecting especially since I love garlic and my Sicilian side of the family puts garlic in absolutely everything. When they have meat listed also in platters such as pasta they barely even use enough to constitue having the word meat involved with it.

Piazza Navona

Almost every night you can catch me at the Piazza Navona between 9 and 11pm. Everything going on there is awesome and great to watch. There was this one guy who had an electric guitar hooked up to an amp playing fantastically, he was going nuts with the guitar and played some Stairway to Heaven, Pink Floyd, Tom Petty and the Eagles. In between songs he would shred some of his own solos which were as equally awesome as his set list. I've seen him there twice now so if anyone is interested head towards the Piazza Navona closer to 10 and you can't miss him if he's there. He also sells cd's which I am most likely going to pick up in the next time I see him.

Cars

The other night I ended up talking cars with a couple of Italian guys and I was pretty surprised by some of the things that I got from the conversation. The first thing was that I was trying to tell them what I drove (Firedbird Formula 350) and they had never even heard of a Firebird let alone Pontiac. They also kept inquiring me about automatic transmissions also and though I couldn't understand exactly everything they were saying, what I got from it was that they were under the impression that America either didn't have manual transmissions or that they were very rare.