Last Blog From Italy...

I finally feel better after more hours of sleep than I can count and a trip to the Italian emergency room. The flu is definitely the worst minor illness to get in Italy. (because you can’t eat anything…) I definitely was ready for something other than crackers so Laurie, Lauren and I decided to go to the nearby Fraschetta for some dinner. I got pasta Carbonara (delicious!) and had noticed that there were lots of little booths set up selling stuff like a little market around Ariccia. I walked down to one that was selling chocolate and the man let me sample each kind. Laurie and Lauren met me. The man, Williams, continued to offer us free tastes of everything. He made us free cannolis and gave us sips of wine. Finally I told him that I wanted to buy some things to take home for friends. He basically ignored me and a woman selling earrings next to us told me I could not buy anything because he only wanted to give me the things I wanted as a present. There were a bunch of us all around (Laurie, Lauren and I plus the Italian market man, his 2 brothers, the Italian woman translating for us and her boyfriend) They wanted us to all go to the pub together once they finished dinner. We had no intentions of going. I tried and tried to buy the gifts from him and use excuses like “I don’t want to carry it home from the pub so let me just bring it home now.” Which was quickly followed by, “I’ll carry it for you.” So we finally said fine and decided to meet them at the pub nearby. We rounded up a few more girls and went over to meet them. I got a text message in Italian, which I was sure was explaining to me that they couldn’t come. So after all of that I didn’t get the gifts that I wanted to bring home, but I did get free dessert and a good story. I will definitely miss the Italian way of wanting always to give away their products as presents. Free is my favorite number.