On Tuesday, 28 May, we headed back to the coast with an intended stop in Bologna before continuing to Ravenna for most of the afternoon and then a 3.5 hour drive down the coast through Marche to the seaside city of Pescara in Abbruzzo. The primary goal of the day was to see the celebrated Roman-era mosaics of Ravenna.
I had a plan to start the morning with a 1.5 hour drive to Bologna, park at the central Parcheggio Franklin Delano Roosevelt, have lunch at the Mercato delle Erbe, see the Piazza Maggiore, Basilica di San Petronio and Cassini's Meridian Line at noon, the Fontana del Nettuno, and the due torri, but the whole thing utterly failed because I could find no parking and the city was too congested to be able to look carefully. It's a great regret that we missed out on this important city, and I absolutely plan to return. Bologna is a foodie mecca as well as a city of architectural and historical marvels, and I cannot consider my culinary education of Italy complete without a proper visit!
So we drove another hour to Ravenna, where we were happy to have the extra time to explore the incredible Basilica di San Vitale and Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, lunch at the covered market or a piadiniera, the Basilica di Sant'Apollinare Nuovo, the tomb of Dante Alighieri, and the Piazza del Popolo: here's a walking map.
Ravenna is renowned for its stunning UNESCO World Heritage Sites featuring incredible early Christian and Byzantine mosaics. The mosaics in Ravenna are ancient, exquisite, and numerous. We spent a long afternoon, walking to exhaustion, because each site was more amazing than the one before, we just couldn't stop.
From a foodie perspective, Ravenna is at the eastern Romagnoli end of the region of Emilia-Romagna, with Parma at the western Emilia end, and Modena and Bologna are in between. The whole region is a foodie paradise, producing celebrated foods like Prosciutto di Parma, Parmesan cheese, and old Etruscan Lambrusco wine in Parma, the amazing, rare, and expensive Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale (Balsamic Vinegar) di Modena, (this area is also where Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, and Pagani cars come from), eastward to the mortadella and other carnivore's delights from Bologna, and finally to Ravenna, where you can find all of these and more to sustain you while exploring.
One thing that is characteristic of Romagnoli food but not seen so widely is the piadina, an iconic local flatbread traditionally made with flour, lard, salt, and water and stuffed with a variety of fillings from cured meats and cheeses to grilled vegetables and local squacquerone cheese. This is as quick and convenient as pizza, but different.
Romagnoli food that we see in New England's Italian neighborhoods and markets includes cappelletti, little pasta filled with cheese, similar to Bologna's meat-based tortellini, and passatelli, a soup or pasta dish made from breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and eggs.
We finally staggered back to the car. It was good to get off our feet for the three-hour drive down the coast to the Hotel Esplanade in Pescara, in the Abbruzzo region. We passed through the little region of Marche and beneath the tinier independent nation of San Marino, perched impossibly high above the much larger country that totally surrounds it.
Pescara reminded me of Miami beach, but with good food. It's a populous beachfront port city on the Adriatic. From our hotel we could see the beaches spreading directly north and south in straight lines as far as we could see, dotted with umbrellas and cabanas. There were the usual beachfront shops just like at home, and nightclubs and lively street activities. I noticed a number of fine menswear shops, more than for women, which makes me think it's a gay-friendly city, but we did not stay long enough to really get a feel for that.
It was late when we finally got dinner, a nice variety of traditional Abruzzese food at a casual but proudly locavore place called Toccaferro. Lorna and Melissa weren't feeling so adventurous; they were happy with their Margherita pizza and a Caprese salad with Mozzarella di Bufala.
I, of course was feeling adventurous! Abbruzzese food is very interesting and strongly tied to local ingredients. Of course the seafood dishes are pretty much the same along that coast, but there are local traditions too. There was more to try than I could eat, but I could sample some of everything that I might not see again. I had Abruzzese Salsiccia di Fegato (a grilled liver sausage), Chitarra alla Terramana (chitarra is a square cut pasta made by pressing a flat sheet of thin pasta dough across the wires of a box called a chitarra, or guitar), and Sagnette con Fagioli (sagna is a local flat pasta style typically served with borlotti beans, shown here).
As had been the case at a number of restaurants, the staff were thrilled that this fat American tourist recognized and appreciated their local pride and joy, and they kept recommending other things to try. But it was maybe four hours since we did all that walking in Ravenna and a long time sitting in the car had done nothing to increase my appetite; I was more tired than hungry. I did the best I could and I explained that I wanted to try everything on the menu, but we'd be gone southbound in the morning so this was my only opportunity. I do intend to dig more deeply into Abbruzzese cuisine this fall, but those hyperlocal ingredients will be hard to come by.