When in....

“When in Rome…” they say, but I tell you what, it’s hard to keep up.

Let’s start with the driving. I hired a car for the duration of my stay as I’m planning to drive up through the middle of Italy to see some of the countryside and knowing that driving alone would be complicated enough, I also hired a GPS so I wouldn’t have to be constantly checking maps. This was probably the best money I have ever spent as it saved me enormous amounts of time, but I suspect it cost more than I think it did since I’m not sure if it took into account all the areas of Rome (which I may or may not have driven into) which require special permits (which I’m fairly sure I didn’t have). So, if anyone at home is reading this and there is a pile of official looking mail from Italy, I don’t want to know about it ok? Romans make their own rules as they drive and the roads reflect this. In most cases lanes are not clearly marked and a road that would normally be three lanes wide contains five lanes of traffic all cross-crossing without indicators and it always seems to be peak hour. Surprisingly though, I very quickly felt comfortable driving in this environment and as the Lonely Planet guidebook puts it “As a general rule, worry about what’s in front of you, leaving those behind you to think about your rear!”

Breakfast in Italy is more about coffee than food. The traditional espresso is usually had standing up at a counter with a pastry, perhaps a cornetto (Italian croissant-type pastry often plain but sometimes filled with jam or custard) or a ciambella (doughnut), but the selection in many pasticcerias is far more extensive.






One important thing to note about Italy is that almost everything closes for several hours in the afternoon; this includes many churches and attractions, so if you’re a late riser you might want to consider changing habits while here. During this time, most people have lunch or a siesta or both. Lunch in Italy can often be three or four courses, consisting of Antipasti (Appetiser: Often cold), Primi (First Course: Carbs mostly – Pasta, Risotto, etc), Secondi (Second Course – Meat, fish, etc) and Frutti e Dolce (Fruit and Sweets). Dinner is the same, but who can do that twice in one day, or even once unless you don’t have anything else all day? So what can you have for lunch on the run that isn’t going to take 2 hours or make you lie down in the first available shady spot for a siesta?

One of the lunchtime staples is the perennial favourite – Pizza. Almost a never ending variety is available by the slice, but the main feature is simplicity and freshness with many having only two or three ingredients. One place I found, while obviously targeted to tourists showed quite a bit of pride in itself and I had to take this photo. As many of you know, if this was a sign in Melbourne I would have a great time picking on all the spelling mistakes, but this is Italy.

While they don’t have over 180 different varieties available at all times, the selection of the day is still impressive:

Since I love mushrooms on a pizza, I decided on the mushroom pizza, which has at least two different types of mushrooms as you can see and was delicious if a little oily.

Another favourite on a hot afternoon in Italy is, of course, Gelato. Every street has a gelateria or two, at least it seems that way. The list of flavours is endless and the quality is outstanding. My favourite flavour was Cinnamon, but I only had Gelato once, resisting the temptation is not easy.

I had the rare opportunity to have dinner with three beautiful women in Rome (met up with some friends from Melbourne), so we decided to make a night of it and head to one of the nicer restaurants. From recommendations and from Lonely Planet, we chose La Baguette, a rooftop restaurant. The La Baguette shop downstairs was closed for personal reasons, but access was available though the next door wine shop. We thought it was a different restaurant, but decided to try it anyway. The staff were very friendly, helpful and spoke English quite well. To begin with they served an amuse bouche of smoked salmon, and since I was having dinner with a vegan, a vegetarian and someone who doesn’t eat fish, this meant more for me.

As for main courses, unfortunately vegans are limited in their selection and will probably have to look to the Contorni (side dishes) instead. Helen chose the Green Salad and the Grilled Vegetables.

Vegetarian options are a lot easier and, in fact, I have been eating a lot of vegetarian food since arriving in Italy, which I guess is not surprising after Serbia. Monica selected the vegetarian pasta.

Nancy had the rack of lamb, which was perfectly cooked.

I chose the Swordfish with green pepper sauce and zucchini and mint sorbet. This was sensational, the coolness of the minty sorbet was an excellent foil for the spicy green pepper sauce and the swordfish, while not a strongly flavoured fish, was cooked to perfection and had a great texture.

For dessert, Nancy chose the crepe.

I chose the Crème Brulee, which was flamed at the table - it must have had some alcohol poured over it – and tasted delicious.

This was a great meal and I would definitely come here again if I come back to Rome. I loved Rome, but to be honest I wouldn’t come back here in a hurry since there is so much left of Italy to see and experience.

Montenegro Part 2

We are staying in a small town near Kotor, along the shores of the Bay of Kotor. This bay is surrounded by mountains and is not on the open ocean, therefore it is protected from severe weather, making it an ideal stopping point for yachts traveling along the coast. We have seen some amazing boats docked here for a couple of days before moving on with their travels.

Since this area is so driven by tourism, with very little farmland to speak of due to the mountains, the restaurants reflect a more international flavour with the majority offering mainly Italian food like Pizza and Pasta. Among these of course, there are better and worse varieties and the prices are considerably more expensive than in Serbia and the currency here is the Euro. In the pizza/pasta places, the prices are around 8 Euro for a pizza, or about $14 AUD. The first place we went to was along the beach and served frozen seafood on the marinara pizza and the base was quite disappointing. I chose the lasagna and that was fine.

During our walk along the shore we saw a whole group of people gathered around a small boat which was pulled up and had a net hanging over the side. It turns out that these fishermen had netted so many fish that they were unable to load them into the boat, so they brought the net in to shore and were filling up the bottom of the boat with fish. They were alive and jumping around, you can't get much fresher than that!

People were coming down and buying fish right out of the net.

The second night we went to the Old Town which is an ancient stone town built at the base of the cliff leading up to the ruins of the original Kotor, which is about a 1-2 hour walk uphill. No, I didn't go up there. The old town is a maze of very tiny alleyways and tiny shops (some as big as a bedroom) selling brand name clothes, shoes and other fashion items. Interspersed among these are courtyards with cafes and restaurants which you might walk around the town for an hour without ever realising they are there. I walked past a bar which could probably fit no more than about 10 people. There are several larger buildings in the town which are hotels with restaurants and bars and in the larger courtyards there are usually one or two larger restaurants with plenty of outside seating. We chose one of these for our dinner this night.

I had a delicious riblja corba (fish soup) to start and while we were deciding on mains, one of the waiters came around with a tray of raw fish for us to take a look at which they grill and then bring out to fillet at the table. The fish looked very fresh and while we were tempted, I decided on a pizza this day. This was better than the previous night, but not as good as I had in Sremska Mitrovica.

The next day was my mum's birthday, so I booked her in for a massage in one of the hotels in old town. Of course, I needed a massage too, so I booked myself in as well. I also had a restaurant in mind for dinner, which looked very nice and a little bit more fine dining than many of the other we had seen. The massage was very relaxing and well worth doing.

That night we headed to Restoran Galeon for dinner. It's right on the water with a gorgeous view out over the marina and the bay. It definitely looked more styish than the other restaurants we had seen and the prices were almost double, but still not more expensive than a decent restaurant in Melbourne. Main courses were around 20 Euro.

For appetisers, dad and I had Bouillabaise, a french seafood soup with a saffron broth. The plates were brought to the table with just the seafood in the bowl and the waiter poured the broth over the top. This had a fantastic flavour and some very nice seafood in it.


Mum ordered the antipasto plate, which is a good option in this region as they are well know for their prsut (prosciutto). This looked great, and the few tastes that I managed to steal were delicious.


For main course, the waiter brought out their fresh fish of the day and they all looked amazingly fresh and dad really wanted to try one, so we selected the sea bass. This is prepared for two people and priced per kilo so you can select the size that you want. They grill the fish and serve it with three dipping sauces on the side, one a delicious ailoi, one a chopped tomoato and the third was a pesto style sauce.


This fish was delicious. Very moist and well cooked, the sauces were very nice too. The vegetables were a dissapointment however as they were all boiled and uniform in taste and texture.

Mum selected the Grilled Prawns.

I didn't taste this, but since mum finished the lot and she usually doesn't eat more than one or two prawns, I'd say that's a good sign that it was great. The vegetables were as bad as those served with the fish.

Where this restaurant drops the ball in my opinion (apart from the vegetables) is in the dessert selection. They had chocolate selections and an apple crumble, but no local dishes.

Mum chose the dessert sampler which is a selection of three small desserts. This consisted of a chocolate rum-ball, chocolate icecream and a small biscuit-based chocolate cake with walnuts.


Dad chose the Apple Crumble (I would have selected this too, but there was only one serve left). This also had walnuts in it and the only compaint from dad was that it was way too big (but he managed to finish it).


And, even though I'm not a big fan of chocolate desserts, I went for the Chocolate Trilogy (their version of death by chocolate). Don't say I never do anything for all you chocolate-loving readers out there...


This is a dense chocolate tart topped with chocolate icecream and chocolate mousse. It looks very unappetising, but wasn't too bad and I'm sure chocolate fans would enjoy it.

The Village People

Once again thanks for the comments and emails, keep them coming!

This update has been a while coming, but there is a reason for it. We have spent the last week in the countryside of Serbia, mainly based in a town called Sremska Mitrovica. Mainly, this time has been spent catching up with family and friends I have never met (or met a very long time ago), but who are very important to my family.

I didn't feel that in depth discussion of each visit would relate to the subject of this blog and I know this would have had very little relevance to many of you. However, it has revealed many things about the hospitality of Serbian Villages and the food and drinks associated with it.

Firstly, some background info. From anecdotal evidence, the unemployment rate in Serbia is currently near 50% and this is reflected in a very big way in regional areas. Driving through the various villages and towns, I noticed a large number of older people and very few young people. There are very few jobs available in these areas and many of the factories that had previously supported the regional economy are now sitting empty and derelict. The pensioners who have lived here most of their lives are surviving on pensions that are roughly in the range of $200 - $300 AUD per month. This may be barely enough to sustain a minimal existence for one person, but often this money is being used to support a household of people due to the lack of jobs.

To supplement their incomes, many of the homes we visited raise animals to support some of their food needs. Almost everyone has at least a handful of chickens to supply eggs and some raise pigs, cows and/or goats either to sell for extra income or to slaughter for food for winter. Also many households have much larger gardens than we are used to in Australia. This is still barely enough to support families that are at or below poverty levels.

One more thing that is very different to the way we know things at home is that many of these villages are made up of farming families. They don't actually have residences on their farms in most cases as their land is spread out in various lots, not all in one place. They head out in the mornings to work their land and come home at night. This means that instead of being spread out like many of our farm families are in Australia, the villages are a concentrated population of people who work the surrounding farmland.

Having said all that, every single house we walked into, we were offered shots of Rakija (often made in that particular family), coffee and food - many times a full meal. As much as we saw how poor these people were, they were also very proud of their home-made foods and would not accept any refusal. I can't say I felt hungry once in the last week.

Sorry for the lack of photos, but I don't feel quite comfortable about taking pictures of people's cooking inside their homes. Some of the highlights were: Rakija (of course) in copious quantities and varieties and many people offered to pack a bottle for us to take home to Australia, Sarma (cabbage rolls filled with rice and meat), Kulen (home made salami), chicken livers and giblets, snails and the cakes.

I did eat out at the local pizzeria and tried the icecreamery and both were sensational. The pizza base was delicious and thin, just the way I like it and the local salamis, hams and bacon really work well. The local specialty seems to be a combination of the above with a topping of sour cream, I recommend it wholehearedly, but don't expect the sizes we have in Australia, the small is easily larger than most of the medium pizzas in Melbourne and the largest size is close to a meter wide! The only note of discord here was that the tomato sauce they use for the pizza is actually Ketchup and they serve their pizza with a side of ketchup to add onto the pizza as you eat. I tried this once to see what it was like, but never again. For anyone coming to the area, the restaurant I sampled was Pizzaeria XL which is in the mall in the centre of town and the beer is great, with local 500ml beers only costing 90 dinars (about $2 AUD). The icecreamery of choice by the locals is called Sport and is in the same area. If you don't understand the name of the flavour, just try it anyway. They won me over when I couldn't make up my mind and the server took a very small amount from each flavour so that each scoop had about 5 or 6 flavours. I have no idea which were my favourites, but as a whole it was great!

Another highlight of this week is that it is right in the middle of cherry picking season. Almost every house we went to had a cherry tree and many had more than one. On a 30 degree day we went out to help one of the farmers harvest cherries from their orchard. This involved a group of about 8 or 10 people loading into a trailer towed by a tractor over land that you wouldn't be able to take a normal car through. With no suspension, this was a fun, but painful journey while hanging on for dear life. When we arrived, most of the group went about picking cherries, while I and a couple of others worked on building a fire to grill the meat we had brought with us. The beer was placed to cool under a nearby flowing spring of cool, fresh, delicious water. After we had built the fire, we placed the grill on top to heat and got cooking. On the menu were cevapi, kobasice, various salads and lots of bread. Not to mention all the cherries you could eat. To drink we had - yes, you guessed it - rakija, beer and fresh water directly from the spring.


There are plenty of green lizards running around and someone did say they spotted a snake, but don't anyone tell my dad, ok? I'm not sure that we were a huge help harvesting cherries as we only spent half the day out there and there were still plenty left on the trees when we left, but it was a fantastic day.

New friendships were made:



And we loaded onto the trailer for the trip back.