A Fish Out of Water: October 2012

On the third day of us being in Sona, Pablo showed us how to make pasta. Pablo is in hotel school and is an excellent chef (must run in the family ;). First you measure out some flour and make a volcano with it (as Ben says), which you then fill with eggs.

Then you must knead the dough until it becomes supple and easy to manipulate. Pablo said that the dough was a lot more difficult to knead than it should have been but after about 20 minutes of him and Ben working at it, the dough was finally ready for the next phase. (A couple of days later Flavio said that the reason it was so difficult was because the eggs that are special for making pasta were not used this time. He could tell because the color of the dried pasta was lighter than usual.)

Xenia and Michael joined us for this next part where we flattened out portions of the dough.We slowly adjusted the thickness of the dough and sent each portion through about 6 or 7 times. I now appreciate how much work has to go into making pasta! A lot of elbow grease and time. We then used the other side of the machine to cut the pasta into ribbons.

Ben being his silly self... playing with food :D

Here is the finished product!! We filled two of these containers with pasta so that it could properly dry before we would eat it.

And here we are at dinner that night having a great time and getting ready to eat the delicious apple torte that Franco and Ben made together. All of the food that we have eaten here has been wonderful and the company has been great as well. Regardless of what time dinner would begin it would always end at 11, so plenty of talking and laughing :D

This picture is from a couple of days later when we cooked the pasta that we made. There is Michael stirring the tomato sauce and Pablo getting ready to put the pasta in.

We went to a hot springs facility that had just opened nearby called Aquardens. It was indoor and outdoor. It was beautiful, relaxing and quite reasonably priced.

On the way back from Aquardens, Falvio picked the three of us up and took us to an area that is famous for its Aramone wine. In the above picture, you can kind of see red writing on both sides of the door. This graffiti dates back to WWII, which says in a rough translation end war / begin peace. How wonderful it would be if this could be true all over.

This church was built on the ruins of a Roman temple that had been torn down by the Church. In fact, you could tell that some of the stones that were used to build the church were taken from the abandon Roman engineered stones because they were smooth and obviously of higher quality. The two thousand years-old stones were in better condition than the stones that had been made more recently. Amazing! This was also the church where Cristina and Flavio were married :)

Here we are sipping some of the famous wine from this region in a bar next to the church lol

Here is the city center of Sona

Ben and me trying to imitate the funny road markings :D

Here all of us are at a restaurant in Sona celebrating the return of Michael's wallet, which had been in Sicily and took a week for the car rental company to send to Sona.

Ben and I made american pancakes for everyone and they were a hit! Though I am not sure how chocolate, banana and apply pancakes would not be thoroughly enjoyed.

Here we are getting ready to head off to Verona with Michael and Carlos, our guide :)

Here are views of the only Roman arena that is still being used for performances.

Yet another gate into the city.

This was found on the side of a building from the legend of the boy Romulus, founder of Rome, and Remus, his brother, being raised by a she-wolf.

Here is Juliet's house made famous by Shakespeare. If you look closely at the gate in the back left of the picture you will see thousands of padlocks attached to the grating. These locks are placed by a person who wishes 'lock' their love, with their significant other, so that it will last forever just as the love Romeo and Juliet for one another will be forever remembered. (Juliet's house was just teeming with people while when we walked past Romeo's house, no one was there. hmm...)

Dante's Square

Beautiful views of Verona :)

Here we are having ice-cream and gelato in Bardalino on Lake Garda. The lake is beautiful with clear water and a lot of ducks swimming around. I can only hope that the next time we come to Sona that we can make it to the lake before sunset.

Here we are walking around Valeggio, a city that has been around since the middle ages, in the market and outside of this incredible church with a really old olive tree near the entrance.

Here we are in a pasta shop where Cristina spoke with the owner and found out that the pasta that she makes was being served at a convention that only occurs once every year, which happened to be this particular day that we were in Valeggio. Needless to say about an hour later, after picking up Michael, we made our way to this farmer's convention :)

Here is an herbalist shop that we stopped in. Ben was very interested and talked to the owner. Her grandfather founded the shop in 1890 and they have three generations of herbalists.