My First Week in Italy

Hello bloggers!

It's only been a week, but I feel like I've been missing for a lifetime. I haven't read or commented on any of your blogs, and I probably won't get to that for a while, but I do miss reading them.

Some of my meals here have been spectacular, others have been so so. The first few days I exclusively ate out because the meals at my hotel hadn't started yet. (For those of you that don't know, I'm working in a hotel in Italy this summer, which I live in. But don't worry, even though the hotel is a five star hotel, my room looks and feels like a regular dorm room because it's in staff housing. I do get meals in the "mensa" three times a day.)

This post is going to rather picture heavy, so bear with me.

You had to preorder vegetarian meals, which I didn't, so I just ordered the chicken, since the other option was beef and pasta and I figured the chicken would come with some veggies. However, the picture isn't even worth rotating...

L'insalata con pere e nocce (or in other words, deliciousness. The pecorino cheese was delicious, and I'm not a big cheese eater). Coming from a girl who normally eats no cheese or bread, I've had a heck of a lot of both during my time here. Oh well...

Grilled veggies without seasoning, so I added some pepper and salt. A little olive oil would have been great too, but that didn't occur to me at the time, haha...

My breakfast at one of the hotels (not mine): tomatoes, cucumbers, some kind of soft cheese (see, there I go with the cheese thing again), nutella, a pear, fruit salad, and reconstituted (or stewed) prunes. I was stocking up because I knew I wouldn't have a big lunch that day.

Polenta con funghi...the mushrooms were absolutely delicious, but the polenta was so-so. Surprisingly, it wasn't creamy enough.

Around 5:30 my Italian friends and I had an appertivo, or a before dinner drink (mine was non alcoholic as I don't really enjoy the taste of alcohol often). A really nice thing that goes on in bars (which are less trashy than American places...they tend to sell good quality snacks and coffee and stuff like that) is that during this time they have a lovely spread of food. It's not at all like bar food in America; it's like legit food, such as tomato and mozzarella skewers, fresh fruit, pasta dishes, potatoes and dip, and so on. On my plate I had the tomato and mozzarella, potatoes, grilled zucchini, various tomato salsas, fruit, and nuts.

My friend's salad at McDonalds...it was actually quite fresh looking and came with breadsticks!

Did you know: McDonalds sells pineapple on the euro menu? Weird...

The bread looked pretty good so I had some. The olive oil in Italy tastes so much better than here in the States. It's much more fruity and light.

I saw a woman at a nearby table eating this and I knew I had to order it...

These potatoes were perfectly cooked: steaming and crisp on the outside, creamy on the inside.

At the Piazzale Michelangelo after a bus adventure at night.

I hope you enjoyed this deluge of pictures!

Question: What's one "ethnic" food you've always wanted to try?