Tuesday was Silvia’s birthday and some of her friends and staff came to the villa for lunch. Since the students are gone, Cristina, the cook is off until the new group arrives on Jan 7th, so it was nice to have a delicious lunch at the villa one more time before departing for Ohio for the holidays. Lucia, the housekeeper prepared the lunch, which consisted of trofiette pesto, a traditional Genovese pasta dish, a delicious salad with balsamic and strawberries and roast beef and cheese. Even though these are most things that we eat while Cristina is around for some reason this seemed a little fancier 😉 After lunch and a delicious gelato cake everyone broke out their Natale (Christmas) gifts to exchange. We received a very nice gift from the villa staff, some chocolates and a traditional Genovese Christmas bread.
Before departing for the holidays we made one more trip to Casteletto to get Nick a haircut and then to San Nicola for some meat and cheese to take home, here’s hoping customs doesn’t confiscate it!
Thankfully Anna and Luca called and invited us to dinner, as they had a package they needed for us to deliver to the states. We met them at Maniman for what is to be one of the most memorable dinners we have had while in Genova. Nick and I shared an eggplant antipasta and I had a pesto gnocchi made with sweet potatoes, it was amazing. We then shared a delicious tiramisu, I am not a big fan of this in the states due to its strong coffee flavor, but here in Italy it is completely different!
As you can tell it was terrible 😉
What a lovely way to end our semester in Genova, today we fly to Ohio for eleven days and of course our trip was not without incident. We thought we would attempt to take the bus to the airport (to save money) but quickly changed our minds when the bus schedules didn’t line up. Silvia called us a taxi and we were off, however right before we exited the motorway we came upon a little old couple driving the wrong way in our lane, luckily our driver saw them quickly and they backed up the motorway out of the way, and I pray got pointed in the right direction! I have no clue how they even got as far as they did! We arrived safely only to find out Luftana’s check in desk was closed?!?! Last time we arrived too early, now this time too late, I am so confused, we were there at 10:00 for an 11:05 flight, but the agent kindly checked us in, and our luggage was under weight, woo hoo. Unfortunately, security was not as smooth, apparently taking a mortar on board a flight is forbidden. I didn’t even think twice about it as I was concerned that it would break in my checked luggage, it was the mortar and pestle that we bought at the marble quarries in Carrara, so no way was I giving this up! Thankfully the staff was kind enough and let me run downstairs to put it in my checked bag. Multo Gentile!!!! This is Nick demonstrating the action that the security guard told me I could do with my mortar, I guess beat someone over the head – lol!
