Another Challenge

The lost luggage and hills weren’t the only challenges we had in Italy. The 3 staples in Italian cuisine are pasta, bread and wine. Since I have Celiac and therefore can’t eat pasta and bread made from wheat, that pretty much just left the wine. But, cycling on a full stomach of wine didn’t seem like a strategy with a positive outcome.

Fortunately in Europe, the continental breakfast is popular. That normally entails not only coffee and a bagel, but yogurt, sliced meats, cheese, crusty buns, dried and fresh fruit. All of our hotels and resorts offered a continental breakfast, so that’s how we started every day.

But, what about lunch? It’s not uncommon to take part of your continental breakfast with you, when you're on the go. So we often did, with a healthy meat and cheese bun-wich and some fruit. For me, the bun was just the vehicle to protect the meat and cheese until they became finger foods. Those needed to be supplemented of course, so in our morning travels we’d keep our eye open for a market to buy some tiny-tim tomatoes. The next stop would be a store to get a bottle of wine and some interesting sundries.

Speaking of wine, every convenience and grocery store was well stocked with very reasonable and great local wines. Some were as cheap as 59 euro cents or C$1 per litre, which was cheaper than bottled water. However, we didn’t get that brave.

As noon arrived and our stomachs called, we’d start looking for a quiet place for our picnic lunch. These varied from day to day, sometimes being on a shaded bench in a park or on a church step. Another time it was sitting on steps leading down to a Venice canal. However, on this day, it was overlooking the Mediterranean, in the shadow of a historic watch tower. Every lunch turned from a challenge into a fun and memorable event.

Click here for the next story in this series:
http://travellingwithsteveandmarlene.blogspot.ca/2011/08/powering-up-for-last-leg.html