Ciao Everyone!!!
We went out with our official sponsor on Saturday night. He moved to Napoli (I'm trying to use that instead of Naples to sound more authentic) from Japan. Everyone that I've talked to that has moved here at any time after living in Japan HATES Italy and Italians. I guess after living in such an orderly society, this would drive you to madness. Having lived in Southern California before moving here, it's kind of like when it rains in San Diego, everyone goes crazy. Except it's kind of all of the time here. Constant state of San Diego rain.
We drove to his place in Vomero, which I love! His apartment is 450 SF and costs 2000 EURO a month! It's crazy! My basement apartment in DC might have been bigger. At least his utilities are low! From there, we walked around the streets and into Fnac, a Best Buy meets Borders type of store that was absolutely packed! From there, we wandered some more, saw a street performance by a break dance troupe (Italians break dancing in a Magic Johnson jersey to old school 90's rap is kind of awesome...) and arrived at our dinner location. From our walk and window shopping I have determined that 1) Italians love to make out in public 2) I need to buy a pair of wedges to fit in.
We went to this place down a back alley where I actually thought we might get hit by a Vespa or a pack of rabid wolves and got to our dinner location. Again, I have no idea what the name is. I ordered asparagus and calamari for antipasti and about 5 minutes later the waiter came out and said "Asparagi, no!" "Recommendi?" "I bring." Hmmmm..... We ended up getting the biggest plate of cold, cooked spinach I've ever seen. It could have fed a family of 12. And then a big plate of calamari, but not the ring type like you see in the states, it was all the top of the calamari. Fried. No sauce. So, I kind of failed at ordering antipasti.
For primi, Tom and Jesse (the sponsor), got pizzas and I ordered gnocchi and pasta alla genovese for the table. Again, the waiter came back and said "Genovese, no. Bolognese, si." "Oooooo, si." I don't know what pasta alla genovese actually is, but I know Bolognese has meat in it. So, we got the meat one. Everything for dinner was very good, very simple.
Our whole bill, including a 4 Euro bottle of wine, was 55. It was crazy! We had 3 courses! Italian food is so cheap! Jesse also told us that the way to butter up your doorman, parking attendant or maintenance guy is to buy American cigarettes and give them 2 or 3 every once in a while. He said the parking guy actually cried when he gave him a box as a Christmas present. I thought he was just a crazy big smoker, because he had 2 cartons of Marlboro Reds in his entryway. We get limited on how many of those things you can buy per month, so he said he buys the max every month and slips them to his guys every once in a while so they like him. Good tip!
After more wandering, we came to the Heaven of Gellato. Oh my sweet nectar of the gods.... Ordering gelato is like ordering caffe, you have to pay the register first, get a receipt and put that with your change on the top of the freezer until someone comes over to make your order. I got a medio coni with "kinder" and nutella flavored gelato. Kinder is apparently, I found this out from posting it on Facebook, like a Kit Kat with more stuff in it. And then they put a little extra cone on the top of your big cone so you can scoop the gellato out with it. Good to know!! Tom is convinced that the girl behind the case thought he was cute because his nutella cone came with the biggest chunk of frozen nutella ever. And, because he is forcing me to put this in the blog verbatim, "shaped like a shark fin."
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