Maintenance and Mangiare

Ahhhh...remember all that Italian food we were going to eat?  I had in mind pasta...with fungi and artichokes...and a double scoop of a dreamy flavor of gelato.  We had asked our host...yes, the woman whose intensity rivals that of Charro, where we could eat...mangiare.  She told us about a pizzeria that opened at 7.  We had started riding that way, but came upon a little bar that was having happy hour and decided to have a glass of wine.  The waitress spoke a little English and we lingered there, thoroughly enjoying ourselves.  We also asked her about dinner...and she pointed us in an entirely different direction from our host...5k to a ristorante.  Off we went...only to find it was closed.  It was now too dark to ride to the place our host had suggested, so, we rode back to the bar, had a second glass of wine and a few peanuts, and then rode back to the AgriTourismo to go to bed, tummy's growling.  Sigh.  This is the second time this has happened.  We are going to write a book and title it, "The Language Barrier Method of Weight Loss".

We had breakfast at 8 and it was a more varied menu that we have seen.  Fruit, toast and nutella or jam, rolls, bakery items, yogurt, cappuccino and several kinds of juice.  I think we are paying $23 a night here and that includes our breakfast.  I have paid more to camp without breakfast.

We cleaned the bikes, did some laundry, went for a 20+ mile bike ride, found an ATM to get some cash, and went to a grocery store where the water is about 1/4 the price we have been paying at the pizzerias. If you buy fruit, you weigh it on a little scale in the produce department and the scale spits out a price sticker which you give to the grocery clerk.  We are finding that the second day in the same place is pretty comfortable in terms of finding our way around.  We also stopped at that little bar again because it is only 1 km from our AgriTourismo and it has wifi.  The two times we have been there, other than the waitress, we have been the only women.  Men in Italy seem to congregate at the bar or pizzeria to talk, drink, play cards, and right now, watch soccer.

This area is full of wheat, corn, and what we think are soybeans.  We saw a lot of harvesting machines, a lot of big, round straw bales.  Patty thought it looked a little like North Dakota.  I know that our corn is supposed to be knee-high by the 4th of July...here it is already 6' high in places.

We crossed the Po river yesterday and again today.  It looks about the size of the Columbia River, but we see few boats along it...almost no pleasure boats.

We stopped at a ristorante to make sure they would be open for dinner at 7 tonight.  First we are going back to the bar and watch Italia play against Costa Rica.  Bravo!  We are going to see to it that we have our most often used phrases in Google Translate if we need to use them.  "Where is a bank?", What time are you open?", "How much is a single room with two beds?", etc.   I have been a little disappointed with Word Lens...I can seldom get it to work.  I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong.

We could have stayed here three nights, but we have decided to head northwest towards Este tomorrow.  We'll try out our "stop and get a room wherever we want to" travel option.  How hard could it be?