Our honeymoon: Part 1 (wine & pastries)

Drinking wine every night and eating pastries every morning. Sometimes it was a strawberry pie, like in Rome, where the Hotel Cavalieri presented the most outrageous and elegant breakfast spread you’ve ever seen. Rooms upon rooms of everything you could ever imagine. Nevermind the rows of cakes, pies, cookies and croissants, there were also rooms with fish and meats, a station to make mimosas, and of course, for the Americans (I’m assuming), a room of eggs and bacon.

Sometimes my breakfast pastry was a chocolate-filled croissant, like in Paris. Where I decided I loved espresso. Silly me for asking for coffee on my first day there. Coffee? Sure, they said, but they had to bring it out to me. Espresso, now THAT was everywhere. Tiny and cute and amazing. Espresso in France can blow Starbucks out of the water any day. I loved it so much. I vowed to drink it on a street corner while we were there, to do as the Parisians do. I finally did, while we were in Versailles, at like 3 p.m. And then I began to figure out why I was having so much trouble sleeping in Paris.

In Tuscany there was tea. Tea every morning. I felt I didn’t need coffee, or espresso. And the pastry? A homemade cake every morning. Light like pound cake, but with berries on top and chocolate chips in the middle. A staff member, donned in an apron and a smile, pushed through the doors from the kitchen holding this cake. It was like you were right at home. And little cookies with stars on them. And the dogs, Josephina and Pasquelina, would sit at your feet while you ate and stared at you, hoping for a little piece of food.
In Tuscany, where we stayed, at Borgo Argenina, you didn’t need makeup. The sun gave your face a natural glow. Being, just BEING in Toscano, gave you a natural glow. As much as I loved the hustle and bustle of Paris and Rome, Tuscany was more my pace. Tuscany was where I blossomed. Maybe it was because of Borgo Argenina, or just being out in nature in the middle of nowhere, but Tuscany was where I was in my element. Rolling hills. Not a sound for miles. Just birds chirping. And the barking sounds of Josephina and Pasquelina greeting new guests. But I didn’t mind the barking. They barked at every new person, as to protect the villa, and then once they got to know the guests, they would follow them everywhere, making sure they felt loved and right at home.

On our first morning at Borgo Argenina, as Sean and I headed out the door of our cottage, or what Elena calls the “honeymoon house,” our feet crackled on the rocks and there was a slight breeze as the sun shined down upon us. From our patio you could overlook miles and miles of vineyard and Tuscany. And I said to Sean, “if this isn’t heaven, I don’t know what is.”

As much as I try, there are really no words to describe Tuscany, Italy. You could look at pictures all day. But it’s MORE beautiful in real life. My camera isn’t special and I didn’t edit my pictures. The colors really are THAT bright, that clear, that vivid. The green hills are really that green, the sun that red, the wine THAT good. My eyes went into shock every day there. As if I was looking at a painting every time, of colors I never knew existed. Everywhere I looked, my breath was taken away. As I said in my previous blog post about Borgo Argenina, it doesn’t take long for you to FEEL it. Bite into a fresh apricot. Feel the sun on your face. Cook with Elena. Eat real Italian food.

There is nothing more intriguing than the culture of European people. Beautiful French women ride their bicycles, without helmets, into oncoming traffic in leopard high heels. In Siena and Rome, there are more “roundabouts” than you can count; cars coming from every direction. But unlike in America, there is very little honking. Everyone is just used to nearly crashing into each other. And in between these cars coming from every direction, there are beautiful Italian women riding mopeds with their high heels on.
In Europe, the people are so much thinner, yet they eat so much more, and so much BETTER. Almost every menu we saw, in both France and Italy, had choices for an appetizer (antipasto), first course, second course, sometimes a cheese course, and then dessert and coffee (or espresso). We felt silly only ordering one thing. People would eat for hours. And they don’t start dinner until late. Some restaurants don’t even OPEN until 7:30 or later. And lunch? Sean and I were often waiting by the door of restaurants at noon. They weren’t open yet, and when they did open, close to 1 or 1:30 p.m., we were the only ones there.
In France, they eat their main dish first, and then the salad, and then a course of cheese, and then dessert. In Italy, as Elena taught us when we made dinner with her, the “most important” course is the pasta (lasagna, tortellini, pici, etc.) Then comes the meat, followed by salad. And then dessert.
I ate very, VERY well in Europe, as I promised myself I would. Fish nearly every night, duck, and plenty of pasta. The few times I ordered just a salad, the waiter or waitress looked at me weirdly, and then asked if I wanted pasta, or bread, AT THE VERY LEAST, to go with.
If you know Sean, you know he is a picky eater. He sticks to what he does like. And for as long as I’ve known him, whenever I’ve asked him if he is enjoying his meal, or he liked a certain food, he’d say “it’s OK.” With me, on the other hand, it’s usually: “Omigoodness this is the BEST thing EVER.”
Numerous times in both France and Italy, Sean’s dish wasn’t just “OK.” If he really liked something, he let out this little groan/ “urmph” sound as soon as he bit in. That’s how I KNEW the food was good. One time it was the Kosher steak at Kavod in Paris. A few times it was the gnocchi or pici in Italy. And a lot of times it was the Italian gelati.
We decided we loved the pici, which is a pasta that looks like spaghetti but is thicker. The first time I had it, I just ordered it, not knowing what it was. I decided to do that a few times in Europe: just order something and hope for the best. My first pici dish was at a restaurant we came across by accident in the little town of Castlenuevo in Toscano. We were actually looking for another restaurant but got a little lost and ended up in this town. We asked a local woman where “Osteria” was – which was part of the name of the restaurant we were looking for. We quickly learned “osteria” literally means “restaurant” after she pointed in many different directions and said they were all “osteria.”
One time I ordered a salad, or what I thought would be a salad, but was really just, as Sean described” a few leaves and some tomatoes.” It literally was just a few leaves and some tomatoes. The woman sitting next to us said to me how impressed she was that I could eat JUST that for lunch, and that she wouldn’t be able to survive on so little food. I just smiled. Instead, I wanted to tell her I had no idea what I was ordering. To make up for it, I had chocolate cake for dessert.
And the wine in Italy. Oh wow. I’ll admit, every day we were in Tuscany, I drank wine. (don’t judge me, I was on vacation.) I also promised myself I would do this, just as I promised myself I would allow myself to EAT while in Europe. But the wine is natural there: no preservatives or sulfites. So you can drink it and drink it and drink it and never get a headache or hungover.
When I think back at my “pre-Europe” days to when I would order a glass of chardonnay at dinner, I laugh. In Italy, people drink wine by the bottle at lunch, and then again at dinner, and then well into the night. A glass of wine? Pish posh. They get the whole bottle. At every meal. And their meals last long. (Sometimes 3 or more hours, like I said), so sometimes there’s another bottle of wine.
A few times when we told our waiter we wouldn’t be having wine with lunch or dinner (we had plenty leftover at the villa), he looked a little puzzled. One waiter, (this was our last night in Toscano), said, “no wine? We have martini,” like we were so silly to not be ordering alcohol.

Water in Europe is either “still” or “with gas.” You can guess that “still” means regular mineral water, which they serve by the bottle with tiny little water glasses (unlike in America where you get large, full glasses of water with ice, that are refilled every time you take a sip.) And “gas” water is sparkling, or bubbly. It’s one or the other. “Tap” water isn’t an option. I quickly figured out that the reason they give you such small glasses for water, and so little water to begin with, is because they figure you’ll just be drinking wine.