More Adventures in Eating

Food has emerged as the dominant cultural phenomenon of this trip and I am happy to report that we are ambassadors with a seemingly unquenchable capacity to consume.

First of all, the internet connection is very, very slow tonight, so I will be saving this with text only and adding pictures after the fact. If you read it without pictures, come back later and it may be updated with pictures. I will also provide pictures of the other minigroups' day, but it is almost midnight and we have sent the students to bed, so I have no one else's pictures or stories to tell yet.

We walked to dinner, about a 15 minute walk ending in a dark, dank alley. Behind graffiti cover walls we entered a restaurant in lurid red, looking like a cave or the bowels of hell. We entered through the bar which had numerous couples ensconced on cushy sofas. We were escorted to the restaurant side of the establishment and, sadly, told that all of the tables, but none of the sofas, were reserved for us. Let the dining begin.

Our meal began with a Caesar salad with chicken. That was followed by a series of tapas - a chicken kabob served with a spicy sweet and sour sauce, a bread with garlic/olive spread, and goose liver pate topped with figs. OHMYGAWD!!

Our choices for entree were a tuna dish, a risotto, or curry chicken. I didn't try the tuna, but the risotto and the curry were amazing. Students were laughing and having a great time, as were the chaperones. Dessert was strawberry soup served with lemon sorbet.

We then walked back home after convincing our tour guide that we would rather walk off dinner than ride the Metro again. It will come as an enormous surprise, I am sure, to learn that about a dozen of our fine culinary ambassadors decided that they needed to have gelato before we ended for the night. Eventually I will have pictures of dinner and the gelato. We have now found the best gelato by everyone's agreement. The servers are the best looking (enhances the experience, apparently) and they shape the serving into roses. John A. decided to celebrate his second or 3rd gelato of the day by ordering the 8 scoop serving. Eight scoops, you say? Why eight? Apparently because they didn't offer anything larger.

That's all for now, I'll post this and then try to add pix.