Oh, Saturday. How I long for the weekend. While longing for the weekend is not the same as a long weekend, this day was long in every sense of the word.
Once again, we arose at the crack of dawn. At least we enjoyed a Nutella croissant and a glass of orange juice for breakfast. I’m convinced that there’s no better way to start a morning than with Nutella.
Our first stop was at Vannullo buffalo mozzarella farm. We toured the production process and visited some buffalo. Fun fact: Young male buffalo are worthless to these farms, so you can purchase an entire buffalo for five euros. We learned that this all-organic mozzarella was made fresh daily and sells out quite quickly. If there is an excess of cheese at the end of the day, it is smoked. Whatever you do, don’t put fresh buffalo mozzarella in the refrigerator. It makes the cheese hard and ruins the flavor. They treated us to freshly made buffalo mozzarella balls. The milk poured out of the buffalo cheese balls. Yet again, it was super fresh.
We then boarded the bus to visit an herb farm. Why did we visit an herb farm? That’s a great question with no reasonable answer. Jane and I (both very afraid of snakes) had to walk over a dead one to get to the farm. That didn’t bode well for the rest of this side trip. They showed us various herbs (that ironically can also be found in the U.S.) and showed us the process by which they turn the herbs into oil or dry them out. They offered each of us a lavender plant to take home, but we politely declined, as airport customs could not surely be happy about that.
We boarded the bus and took it to Acciaroli, a quaint town on the Mediterranean. I grabbed a bite of lasagna and headed down to the beach to get my feet a little wet. The water was ice cold, but somewhat refreshing once I got used to the temperature and the sun came out.
We then left the beach to visit Improsta farm, an area set aside by the government to host all plants specific to that particular region. The property was covered in plants bearing lemons, olives and cherries. We toured the farm from the bus, which was super convenient. We were all tired and the farm was very large. At one point, we got off the bus to try some cherries. They were very sweet—and endangered.
Yes, there are such things as endangered cherry trees and we were eating the fruit from the nearly extinct plants. There were only three trees left of that variety in the world, so why were we encouraged to pick the cherries was beyond me. A fellow student spit out the cherry because it had a “bone” in it. He had only ever eaten maraschino cherries and was unaware that the unprocessed fruit had a pit in it.
We took a quick break in the hotel and headed two blocks down the street for a traditional Mediterranean diet—but there was nothing typical about our meal. I have absolutely no idea what’s so special about the pizza, pasta, buffalo mozzarella balls and strawberries we ate, but apparently it’s supposed to help us live longer. The food was all very delicious, but it could not compete with the entertainment.
The owner of the restaurant set up a karaoke machine and treated us to Italian song after Italian song. You would think that we’d know more words than “Volare oh oh, cantare oh oh oh,” but we don’t. My personal favorite song of the evening was “Hey Jude.” At least we could sing along to that one. The night ended on a high note to the ever-popular “Old McDonald Had A Farm.” I couldn’t think of a more appropriate song to end the day with.
Because we didn’t eat enough buffalo mozzarella for the day, we ventured over to the town’s Buffalo Mozzarella fest. By the time we arrived, most of the stalls had closed down. We left without trying some cheese, which was fine by us. There’s only so much cheese one can eat in a day and we certainly surpassed that limit. We were off to bed for a long Sunday return to Rome.
No comments:
Post a Comment