Italy
Rome and the countryside
22.02.2009 - 04.03.2009
50 °F
Hi Everyone!
It's official - Jill and I are cowboys lol! After spending two days in Rome, visiting the Vatican and Trevi Fountain and mangia-ing lots of pizza and gelato, we headed to a small town about 2 hours south of Rome called Sora and we hung out on a family run farm for a couple of days. The farm is run by this guy Antonella and his mother and father and assorted volunteers. For those JWU people reading this - picture Spencer and you have a good idea of what Antonello was like.... For those non-JWU people, just picture a crazy, dirty hippie. Voila!
The first day on the farm we had a traditional European breakfast; bread, cheese and meat, coffee and my favorite thing yet, homemade pumpkin jam. So yum! After breakfast we hiked into town to get some supplies. We stopped at the pharmacy where we met Giuseppe and Mario (or Luigi Mario.... we're still not sure what his actual name is), two little old Italian men. They speak no English and we speak no Italian but they thought we were the best thing since sliced bread. They invited us to lunch the next day which was just too funny to pass up, but more on that later...
When we got back to the farm we headed to a ranch with Antonello and Gunther (a volunteer from Austria) and Christine, one of the other guests for some horseback riding. My horse was all white and her name was Mary. We rode for about an hour throuh the countryside. Along the way we forded a river twice that was deep enough that we all got very wet and very cold! The only casualty to the river was my sunglasses when Mary stumbled - a small price to pay to have not fallen into the water myself!
On the drive back to the farm Jill tried her hand at driving a stick shift. Unfortunately, the police didn't think she was doing a very good job and they pulled her over after about 10 minutes lol. It didn't help that she only had one shoe on (the other was soaked from the river still) but luckily Antonello somehow talked the officer out of giving her a ticket. We think that's what happened anyway. We really have no idea what was said since we speak no Italian.
When we got back to the farm we got cleaned up and then it was time to learn how to make egg noodle pasta. I'll totally try to recreate it when we get home. It was super easy, just a little time consuming. Very yummy though! We toasted our accomplishments with farm fresh limoncello by the fire. It was a pretty perfect day all in all lol.
Our second day on the farm began at 5am with a trip to the local sheep farm to learn how to make Peccorino and Ricotta cheeses. It wasn't a factory set up, it was literally a cellar-like room with a fire, a sink, a couple calderons and the sheep milk and rennit (don't look this up if you have a sensitive stomach). Once the curds were ready the farmer's wife put them into the forms and then Jill and I pressed the cheese in the forms to create the wheels. It's a super easy process but my stomach hasn't recovered enough to eat Peccorino or Ricotta just yet!
We spent most of the day on the farm soaking up the sun and seeing the property. Then we headed back into town for our lunch date with the litttle old men. We were totally hoping there would be grandsons present but alas, no. Giuseppe cooked us pasta and we spent the afternoon trying to figure out what they were saying and laughing over the situation in general. It was a very interesting afternoon to say the least...
We headed back to Rome the next afternoon. Antonello basically assaulted Jill when we said our goodbyes. Apparently he had a little crush on her lol. We got to Rome later that night so we kept it pretty lowkey. The next day we did some more sightseeing though at the Colisseum. We caught a train to the port in Civitavecchia to catch the overnight ferry to Barcelona, which is where we are now.
I'll write again in a couple days when I've had more adventures in Spain!
Posted by kgately 04.03.2009 4:25 AM Archived in Italy Comments (1)
