Paula & Roberto

Friday, June 11, 2010 - We rented a car from Venice and drove to a small Italian village to meet up with Paula, Ana's next-door neighbor that she grew up with in Brazil. Paula now lives in Italy with her husband Roberto (who is from here), and their 2 kids Camila and Beatriz. We were greeted with hugs, kisses, and Roberto even gave me a few of those little Italian slaps on the cheek, which is so cool. When we drove into the courtyard of their house, Roberto was already preparing some righteous Brazilian meat on the grill (picanha), and Paula was preparing Feijoada, Farofa, and all kinds of other Brazilian culinary delights in the kitchen. Like all Brazilians, she couldn't wait to make us fat.

Really, after travelling for so long, a home-cooked meal - and by friends no less - is such a welcome, important thing. After porking ourselves fat we were given a little tour of their town of Udine. The town is actually very cool in itself, and is literally minutes away from both Slovenia and Austria. Who can say that about their town? We then left to meet some of their family & friends for a "light" dinner.. A restaurant that only serves prosciutto. Wow. We each got several courses of prosciutto, then we went to Roberto's mom's house for more food, dessert, and a digestif.

I always find myself fascinated that I'm able to communicate fine with Roberto even though I don't speak Italian and he doesn't speak English: we both speak Portuguese. He seems a great guy; of whom I am very fond.

The next day happened to be a special day in this area of Italy - you pay a small entrance fee (8 euros or so if I remember) to a vineyard and are then able to taste as much wine as you want not only at that vineyard, but any vineyard in this area of Italy. This only happens one weekend out of the year, and this weekend just so happened to be it.

This was a special couple days; a fantastic, needed tiny break from real travelling and to be around friends & family (even if it was theirs). We only wish we'd devoted more time to spend there.