Our final meal in Bologna was the fanciest - Ristorante L'Arcimboldo was traditional Bolognese food done with flair mere blocks from the train station, their Lasagne Verde spectacular and the final (successful) tick of my own Bologna gastrochecklist.
Cotoletta alla Bolognese ✔
Tortellini in Brodo ✔
Gelato
Tagliatelle al Ragù ✔
Lasagna Verde ✔
Astute readers will note the lack of a tick next to Gelato, and sadly I was too stuffed to cone strut after lunch. Food memories are always the strongest for me when on vacation - they evoke waterfalls of incredibly specific perspectives - of exact mood and headspace - the closest I've ever come to freezing time.
Gelato and Rome take me right back to 2010, when I played an active listening shoulder to someone else's aborted wedding and his heavy-hearted decision to still go on the prepaid stillborn honeymoon. During the scorching month of August we decided to bail on the endlessly long line at the Vatican and ended up pulling our take-a-ticket at Gelateria dei Gracchi. The staff were alternating annoyed and curt, in rapid-fire emotionally Italian intervals. I ended up with a double-helping of watermelon gelato with thick cream spread atop. The moment I put that sweet juicy grainy to my lips every part of my sweat-soaked, sunburned body felt at ease. It was the gelato dragon I would forever chase, my demands on this trip to revisit the Gracci left me watermelon-less, their still-delightful caramel-pear remaining a distant second-place memory.
Still, gelato and Italy will forever walk hand-in-hand - another important excess as part of living excessively.
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