Thursday, February 9, 2012

Just around the corner...

So, I can walk to Italy.  The border is about a half-hour walk, but to get to the next actual town, Ventimiglia, takes about 3 hours walking.  So we generally opt for the train (but walking there is still on my to-do list!).

Every Friday there's a market in Ventimiglia for local farmers and vendors.  We went last Friday, and had some time to check out the town as well as the market.

How cool to see truffles fresh from the countryside!

I think my parents have been worrying because I haven't been posting enough about food.  Last time I was in France it was all I talked about.  The big difference is that here I have to make my own food.  I'm not so good at that.  But after Ventimiglia I made an eggplant parmesan-style dish, just without parmesan and with Toma Cunese and fresh mozarella substituted in.

 I also found these surprisingly hot dried red peppers... I thought they were sun-dried tomatoes when I bought them, but not complaints about what they turned out to be!  They went really well with the eggplant concoction.


 We went after class, so the sun was just starting to set over the Mediterranean.

There was the most hilarious dichotomy between the view of the inland and the view of the sea.  When I looked inland, I saw mountains and snow:

When I looked toward the sea, I saw palm trees and flowers:


With France so close, the Italian flags on the mountain were actually useful in demarcating territory...

However, the swans on the river made me think not of France, but of Lucerne in Switzerland...


These flowers, leading to a WWI memorial, were so pretty that I couldn't help but buy a pot of them for me room back at Villa Jasmin (the girls' residence).


 What else do we do in Italy but drink coffee and eat pastries?  More Marocchinos, and a sinful cannoli.

Thea and Claire did actually sleep at one point on the (15min) train home, just not while I was trying to get their picture.  But Thea's face was presh (#jokessss).

Tomorrow we're going to Antibes!
Hopefully it'll look something like this:
*Found this photo online---not mine!

2 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Have you walked to the border yet? There's a really cute pâtisserie/salon de thé along the way that looks promising in the yummy food department.

    ReplyDelete