One aspect of Italy that we are all thoroughly enjoying here is the food! Everyone’s love for pasta, gelato, coffee, and wine is starting to become evident by our tightening pants sizes. Luckily we walk most of it off touring our way through Italian cities on field trips – it’s a hard life over here.
Some of our favorite places to eat out in Ariccia include BBQ (don’t be fooled, they don’t serve barbecue) where the program hosted the welcome dinner our first night here, and a small family owned restaurant across the street with delicious red sparkling wine.
This is just the start to the delicious welcome dinner at BBQ our first night in Ariccia.
What we love even more than eating out though, is the delicious food we can make at home thanks to our weekly cooking lessons with Mary Lou! With her expertise and guidance all twenty-two of us can now make carbonara, mushroom risotto, tiramisu, and much more! She has been very patient working with all our gluten, dairy, onion, and other allergies.
Allison and Emily are all smiles as we learn to make mushroom risotto with Mary Lou.
With Cinzia and Sandra’s help we have learned enough Italian to successfully shop at the local grocery store, butcher’s shop, and frutteria. Everything we need to make a traditional Italian meal in the palace kitchen!
When we are looking for a quick snack or pick-me-up, the go-to is gelato or a cappuccino. Luckily for us, there is the cutest coffee bar right across the street from the palace where the sweet owners draw chocolate flowers on our cappuccinos and have even gotten plastic cups so we can have “take-away”.
The chocolate flower is the perfect touch to a delicious cappuccino.
As far as gelato goes, it’s hard to go wrong. The cheesecake gelato we found during our class trip to Florence is pretty hard to beat though.
Allison and I are all smiles with our gelato in Florence.
No better way to immerse yourself in Italian culture than through delicious food!
Christy Rolf