Dinner with Alessandro and Antonia

It’s not often that I’ve been invited to anyone’s home for dinner so I was surprised when Alessandro invited me to his house for dinner. I met him through conversationexchange.com and we have had only one Skype conversation. He’s from Napoli (Naples) and it’s now a running joke between us that Napoli is the most beautiful city in the world. Actually he’s from a town near Naples. In any case he unexpectedly called me and invited me to dinner at his house. Everyone has told me that people from the south are warmer and more open. You can certainly say that about Alessandro – irrepressible would be a better word. So he came to my house to pick me up at 6:00 on monday and we headed off in the direction of his house 20km from Bolognaat about the midpoint between Bologna and Modena. The first stop was at the biggest supermarket that I’ve ever seen. He bought enough food to feed an army and a bottle of wine. Of course we found a bottle of white wine from Campania (the region of Napoli). Then we off again, driving at breakneck speed too close to the car in front. I think its the neapolitan style. 

Alessandro dragged me upstairs to show me where his town (Marcianise) was and where he has another house that he inherited. There’s another town nearby that I had never heard of called Caserta. He was using Google earth and showed my the royal palace of the Bourdon king of Naples there. I thought that I had seen spectacular palaces but this was beyond anything that I’d seen. I copied a photo from the web but it really doesn’t do it justice. You can see more of this spectacular place by clicking here.

Caserta Palace

Alessandro told me much of his life story and why he wanted to learn english (he’s a structural engineer) and it’s too much to note here but one thing he said cracked me up. “Noi Italiani siamo stronzi!” That could best be translated (I think) as “We Italians are assholes!” He was talking at the time about the educational system.

In any case at some point Antonia called for us to come downstairs for dinner. She had cooked, and we ate, the following: linguini with clam sauce, octopus, salmon, a whole fish (I don’t remember the name), swordfish, mussels, salad and small fruit tarts for desert with coffee. Whew! Alessandro said that he drinks no alcohol and Antonia drinks little but the wine didn’t go to waste. I’m glad that I’m walking a lot here. After dinner he drove me back home to Bologna.

Of course with all of this I totally forgot to take a picture of them. I hate it when that happens. They are going to their house in Marcianise for Pasqua (Easter) and I hope to see him/them when they return. I’ll take photos.

Update: Alessandro somehow found my post and provided corrections to the name of his town. He also provided photos of himself and Antonia. I’m not sure what she is cooking but you can be assured that it is something wonderful!

Antonia

Alessandro

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2014 at 8:51 am and is filed under Culture, Food, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.