Day 16

Rome 1 Boys 0

Or as John Keats put it:

Was it a silent deep-disguised plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence


No matter how you slice it, and here it's sliced pretty thin, the boys were whupped. Though they're happy hanging out until the wee hours of the night eating gelato, their little boy bodies need some serious Z's. We finally got them out of the sack with the lure of cereal and perfect weather.

Today was "back to work day." Scott had to teach his class and earn his keep, and Jenna had an EPIC grading day, in which she spent untold hours evaluating projects bad and good and listening to the buzz of scooters and buses outside the window.

This left the boys free to wander Bologna in search of biking gloves, cheese, and other interesting items. No luck on the gloves front, but we did happen into some excellent little cookies, a sampling of which we brought home to Jenna.

Once again, we encountered our fair share of hams. We saw hams in places that defied explanation. Walking down an otherwise hip, trendy street, we saw some hams dangling from the ceiling of a wine bar. "Want some ham with that Chianti?" (That's a meeting of the hams to the left.) In another store, we saw hams wearing little suits and ties. Just let your mind wander. Hams have been there, done that.

Daniela, the chairperson of the department, went to lunch with the boys and I. She took us to a Sicilian pizza place where the boys got children's coloring books that juxtaposed racy pictures of women and "find the differences in these pictures" pages.

Daniela also took the boys our for gelato, which was great. No one would have ever expected they were tourists what with their Italia sweatshirts!

The evenings of great Italian food will soon be no more. Tonight, we went to another sidewalk restaurant and the boys ate mortadella, pasta with parmesan, and a 2010 Fanta. Jenna and I traded dishes half way through so that we could each enjoy our share of a pumpkin tortellini all but swimming in a rich balsamic sauce (can pasta "wade" in sauce?) that resembled squid ink but tasted like pure heaven.

As none other than Pooh would say, we concluded the evening with just a little smackerel of gelato.