Monday 9 June 2008

Buongiorno Bella!

A lovely break away, which involved two lovely people getting married, with lots of other lovely people attending. The location was Formia in Italy, a coastal town in between Rome and Naples. Fortunately, there were no rubbish strikes :-)

The weather was lovely and the food was delicious. Some people informed us that they had English soup, which disappointed me as I think I would have loved it. We were in one restaurant, Ristorante Da Veneziano (I think that's the name) where the Chef (who worked with Richard Corrigan) came out and asked us what we would like, really really nice. I had spaghetti with a with seafood which was delicious and then a Mille-feuille for dessert, which was so simple and so tasty.

We went to Pompeii on a day trip. I was not expecting the ruins to be so large, I don't know why but I wasn't. Its a strange place, you get to appreciate a lot of the ingenuity of the builders, from using clay pots in the floors for extra amplication in the amphitheatres, to the planning of shops and houses. Then there is the brothel which had some paintings of couples in different poses. There was a very simple sign carved into the street pointing to the brothel for sailors coming up from the port, no marks for anyone guessing what it was.

We flew with Ryanair. There were lots of people checking baggage weights and sharing stuff to balance the weight limits, one forgets how little 15kg is. Then there was the constant sales pitch, relentless, from fecking ringtones or phone cards to scratch cards. As for the landings, how they get away with it I don't know. They must be wrecking the planes with the heaviness of the landing. The landing in Rome was bad, but the landing back in Dublin was the worst I was ever on. I was expecting it also, because the plane was delayed in Italy, so I knew they'd be rushing to get us in. Everyone's heart stopped I think with apprehension at the landing. Then to add insult to injury, they played some idiotic tune, like a trumpet blow, to say how good their time keeping was.

No comments: