chow ciao

ok, i admit it. I was in italy. yes, last week. yes, when I said that I was just visiting my husband in beijing. Instead of taking flight from seoul to beijing - a mere 1.5 hours, I got on a plane that went to osaka instead. then I got on a plane to milan. this took 40 hours as I had to overnight it in osaka in the airport hotel. not an easy flight. the 12 hours from osaka to milan is an even longer flight than from beijing to san francisco. it's far.

from milan I got on a train, and then i got on another train which got me to perugia, a really small and quaint cobblestone village (from i don't know the 15th century?) on top of a hill. it looks exactly like what you think it looks like. it's so quaint it will make you cry. lush green trees, vibrant red poppies and travertine and stone houses easing in and out of the moutain crevices. from there i got in a car and drove around to some small towns and ended up in milan.

i ate gelato every day for 10 days straight. i ate all kinds of pasta, i ate pizza, i ate mushroom rissoto, i ate an amazing gnocchi. i ate heavenly salads and even had an italian mother feed me spaghetti and meatballs followed by grilled rabbit and potatoes. she insisted on grating cheese over my pasta after every 3 bites. i ate several carpaccios, procuitto, salumi and gulped at least two shot glasses of strong espresso a day. i drank copious amounts of fizzy mineral water and had a plate full of grilled salmon piled high with fresh arugula. i ate a dense chocolate cake that had a sweet and tart apricot puree spread between the layers. there was an apple cake with nutmeg and (maybe?) ginger. i drank red wine out of carafes and never bothered about the brand. oh and i even ate horse meat. it was ground up and and cooked in heavy spices. gamey but good.

but I wasn't completely untruthful. i said I was going to see my husband, and that was true. it just happened that he was in italy, on a photo shoot. so I went there to see him instead.

sorry.