My first trip to Italy started way down south in the toe of the boot. We stayed at a time-share resort near the small mountain town of Camigliatello – just over an hour from the coast town of Paolo and 30 minutes from the bigger city of Cosenza. We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for!
Because southern Italy is not as touristy as the north, they do not cater to foreign travelers. There are pros and cons to this. Pro: you truly get to experience the old-world Italian culture. Con: if you don’t know the language and the customs you will be challenged. Our first evidence of this was the strict adherence to local dining customs in regards to mealtimes. Second, we also discovered that almost nobody spoke English and that there were no English translations on restaurant menus. Since none of us spoke Italian we tried to get by with an Italian phrasebook. Third, we learned that with the emphasis on fresh food in restaurants, you needed a backup plan to your first menu choice as chances were the ingredients were not on hand for your initial request. This last often left us scrambling to make a second choice after using the phrase book to verify what we wanted in the first place. When a server would come to tell us (in Italian) that we could not have what we had ordered, we did not have time to go through the phrase book, so would often choose something else on the menu that we thought we understood.
We ran into this situation in a little restaurant in a small town on the coast. After my son and I were informed that neither of our initial choices was being prepared that day, we looked at the limited menu and both settled on risotto marinara expecting that we would get some sort of rice dish with a tomato-based sauce. Were we wrong! When our meals arrived, we were stunned to see a plate of rice topped with an amazing variety of seafood, some of which we were unfamiliar with. It turns out that “marinara” means seafood (la mare is the sea). Pomodoro is the Italian word for tomato. We enjoyed our meal even if it wasn’t quite what we expected. Lessons learned – be flexible and learn some of the language.
More stories on travels in Italy are also available. Enjoy!
