Clarence Enters the Evil Nuraghi and Pays the Price: Cagliari, Sardinia

So when we last left our travelers they were having an amazing time in Sardinia, eating lobster and smug in the knowledge that they had succeeded in their careful planning of the trip and assuming that nothing could possibly go wrong. They were getting along famously, having cultivated a series of running dumb jokes and finally bested the first rounds of mosquito bites from Corsica. The day in question began innocently enough. The plan: leisurely drive through inland Sardinia, stop at Su Nuraxi (ostensibly the mother of all prehistoric sites on the island), and arrive in Cagliari in the early afternoon to drop off the rental car and spend one night before flying to Sicily.

I knew we were in trouble within the first hour of driving. Despite being a breathtakingly beautiful road, I realized that reaching tiny towns on the map was much, much slower than we had anticipated, thanks to mountainous terrain and perpetual switchbacks that made driving over 20 mph nearly impossible. My penchant for carsickness when I’m not driving kicked in after an hour, so we switched positions. Soon B was carsick as well, but nauseous and cranky, we drove on. And on. And on. A trip that we had anticipated taking three hours in total gradually consumed the whole day. We couldn’t find anywhere to eat lunch, and were forced to stop at a terrible hotel restaurant where we ate something so pitiful that I’ve blocked it out entirely. And then we kept driving, and driving.

One nice detour came in Ghilarza, the town that is best known as the childhood home of the political theorist Antonio Gramsci. The town now houses the Casa di Gramsci, a small museum and research center. As we are theory dorks of the first order, we stopped and marveled at the small collection, which included many of the books Gramsci’s personal library:

Here you can see his signature glasses:

We especially liked looking at his old report cards from school:

After taking corny photographs of ourselves next to Gramsci’s portrait (geek love!) and chatting up the lovely woman running the museum, we bought souvenir t-shirts and postcards, brushing aside of the irony of buying consumerist clutter to commemorate one of the most important communist thinkers of the twentieth century. Pish posh. Revived, we began driving again.

Another seven hundred nauseous hours later, we finally arrived at Su Nuraxi. Now, I’m sure my dear reader already knows this, but Sardinia is literally chock-a-block with these enormous piles of rocks called nuraghi that were actually the dwellings of pre-Roman Sardinians. The largest of pile of rocks is Su Nuraxi, a prehistoric military fortress that was also used by the Phoenicians and the Romans. Dating from 1500 BC, it’s a massive archeological find and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Now, let me just say that this kind of thing isn’t particularly my bag. But B had been incredibly patient about all of the aspects of our journey that were important to me, including pretending that “second lunch” is a legitimate meal. And we had been largely daunted in our attempts to see cool prehistoric things until now. In Corsica, we were unable to visit Cauria without a car and the Museum of the Prehistory (sic) was like watching paint dry. In Sardinia, we were perpetually thwarted in our attempts to visit sites of archeological interest: the Nuraghic village we had attempted to visit near Oliena was closed, Tharros was obscenely expensive to visit and my boyfriend is cheap (sorry, that one slipped out), and the dolmen we tried to find in a cornfield based on a shitty road map was, well, nonexistent. I felt like I owed B this damn nuraghi. But I was tired and terse, and the winding roads we were forced to take to visit Su Nuraxi had easily tripled the length of the drive to Cagliari. After driving around in circles in the town of Barùmini like idiots for a half hour or so, we finally found Su Nuraxi. We quickly discovered that you can’t just wander around the thing unattended, but are required to take a guided tour. When B started to balk at the ticket price and the idea of a guided tour, I hissed at him that I didn’t care if it cost a hundred dollars and our tourguide only spoke gibberish if that was what it took visit this damn nuraghi. So we forked over fourteen euro and waited semi-patiently for our tour guide. While we browsed the gift shop and contemplated buying a neon nuraghi-shaped ashtray, B got to listen to my conspiracy theories about the site, namely that it wasn’t actually a prehistoric fortress but instead a canny scam built by a bunch of unemployed Barùmini locals after World War II. Of course he tried to contradict my (flawless!) logic with his knowledge of fancy things like carbon dating, but I was feeling petty and continued to pretend I thought it was hoax to get his goat. It worked.

After about twenty minutes we were joined by our guide, a sharp young archeologist. The tour was actually pretty cool, as you get to climb into the nuraghi itself and explore the various towers.  Our guide patiently and adeptly answered all of our questions despite her shaky English and our pathetic Italian. The only moment of embarrassment came when B happened upon a giant slab of granite and asked “Is this where the sacrifices happened?” Our tour guide didn’t understand the question at first, and so B decided to pantomime human sacrifice by throwing me down on the slab and air-stabbing at me Psycho shower-scene style.  While I’m sure it was a nice release of tension for B, our tour guide seemed horrified at the implication that the Nuraghic people were human-sacrificing barbarians, which of course prompted a long rant from B later about the European archeological disavowal of sacrifice in its early cultures. I don’t know much about these things, but I can say that I’m happy to not be a Nuraghic person. As far as I could tell, all they really did was haul giant rocks around and fight neighboring tribes. I can’t imagine that life for women was anything other than nasty, brutish, and short, a sentiment that I demonstrated in a series of hi-larious photos in which I pretended to be a Nuraghic person. But seriously, not to sound too hippy-dippy about things, but there was something really off about the way that some of the spaces inside of Su Nuraxi felt.  One tower in a particular gave both B and I a terrible vibe.  I attribute this to the pack of killer mosquitoes that descended upon me and nearly ate me alive. B attributes it to a “palpable feeling of evil.” Guess which one of us knows more about tarot and astrology? Either way, it gave both of us the creeps and while we were pleased to have successfully visited the site, neither of us wanted to stick around too long.

Returning to the Panda, I realized I was now covered in inexplicably bloody mosquito bites and we both were completely sick of driving.  But it was only an hour or so to Cagliari.  Our plan was to drop off our bags at our hotel, drive to the nearby airport to drop off the rental car, take a bus back into town, and explore Cagliari for the evening.  And while I guess that is basically the series of events that ensued, each step was so comically thwarted and difficult that the evening damn near killed us.

As we reached the periphery of the city, B discovered that somehow we had managed to omit the address of our hotel on our meticulously typed itinerary.  Initially we assumed we would see signs for the hotel, but quickly discovered that Cagliari was a properly chaotic Italian city, full of angry drivers, poorly marked signage, and an impossibly difficult layout.  It took two hours in a paid parking spot (expensive!  listen for it…), a visit to the tourist office (worthless! keep listening…) and an internet café (more expensive! keep listening…), and three passes on the most bizarre one-way street I have ever encountered to find our goddamn hotel (… and there it is!  the sound of our brains exploding with frustration!).  At some point in this narrative I morphed into the most annoying backseat driver in the history of time (my mother): clutching the armrest, squealing in fear or gasping in frustration with every single thing B did as a driver, and providing a running narrative of everything going on outside the car (“Oh my god, there’s two people trying to cross the street!  Oh my god, there’s a car in the left lane!  Oh my god, this is a one-way street!”).  While I thought this was helpful, I slowly realized that B was on his last frayed nerve and I was strumming it like a banjo.

After we dropped our bags at the hotel, we hopped in the car and with a minor amount of yelling arrived at the airport.  Expecting to find a gas station directly next to the airport, we had waited to fill up the gas tank as we needed to return the car full.  I was especially panicked about being charged some ridiculous fill-up fee, so I insisted that we follow the letter of the law on this particular issue.  Except…there wasn’t a gas station near the airport. Or anywhere near the airport. Cut to us driving around in an industrial park for a half an hour searching for one until we decided to head back into Cagliari to get gas. I was about to cry with anxiety and frustration, and B’s knuckles were white as he clutched the steering wheel. We finally happened upon a self-serve Agip outside of town. No problem, we thought. Despite the fact that we had only encountered full-service gas stations thus far on our trip, we both assumed that we could properly fill up a car given that we have both been driving for more than a decade.

Wrong wrong wrong. As I sat in the car waiting for B to fill up, I heard him struggling near the fuel tank. I got out of the car to find him drenched in gasoline and cursing like a madman. The machine, which only accepted Italian credit cards and cash, had already eaten ten euros and B had failed to even get the nozzle into the fuel tank. Cocky, I snatched the nozzle from B and attempted to fill up the car by inserting yet another ten euro bill into the machine, only to discover that the nozzle really didn’t fit into the gas tank when the gasoline gushed out and covered me as well. At this point we both entered the climax phase of our frustration.  I began yelling obscenities about Italy. B shut down into a terrifyingly silent rage. A kind guy who was filling up his own car observed our meltdown and offered to help, showing us that we were actually trying to put diesel in the car, hence the mis-sized nozzle.  After depositing another ten euro bill and some effusive thanks to our good Samaritan, we were back on the road to the airport. At this point, we were barely speaking to one another, as of course the logical thing to do when the world fucks you over is to take it out on your partner. When the location of the entrance to the Eurocar parking lot was unclear, B declared with rumbling rage that he would abandon the car in a ditch before he left the airport again.  I snapped back that it was easy to talk about abandoning the rental car when it wasn’t his credit card that Eurocar had on file, wasn’t it? We were near total emotional collapse. We managed to find the lot and the check-in counter, and at first everything seemed to be fine. The car was in perfect shape, making me regret the extra insurance that I had insisted we purchase from superego-induced dread, nearly doubling the cost of the car. It was only when I demanded a receipt that we discovered (wait for it!) that due to our many detours and hang ups, we had missed the return deadline and were going to be charged for an additional day. With our absurd amount of collision and theft coverage, this would total over a hundred euros.  It wasn’t the money, exactly, but the aggregated frustration from our afternoon caused me to double over under the counter and begin weeping. B launched into a loud and elaborate defense of our heinous attempts to get gas in the car, culminating in him thrusting his gasoline-soaked hand in the face the rental car employee and demanding that she “SMELL MY HAND!” as proof of our struggle. She declined, politely, and said that there was nothing to be done. We were in Europe, after all, where the customer is decidedly not king and nobody gives a damn if you threaten to never patronize them again.  She wished us a good evening and we left, B shaking with rage and me crying into my gasoline-soaked sleeve.

As we waited for the bus back into town, we slowly recovered from the afternoon and our first real fight.  After airing all sorts of anxieties and worries and hurts that had nothing to do with killer mosquitoes, long drives, lost addresses, or rental cars, we recovered and decided that we would continue the trip. By the time we boarded the bus, we were nauseatingly lovey-dovey again.

Returning to Cagliari, we were famished and exhausted, if decidedly happier with one another and relieved that the mess was finally over.  We decided that the best remedy was gelato. We had read about the enormous Isola del Gelato (Piazza Yenne 35) with greedy anticipation and agreed that we needed ice cream before even contemplating finding a place for dinner.  Isola del Gelato is a seriously enormous place, with whole counters dedicated to fruit sorbet, soy and other dairy-alternative ice cream, sour frozen yogurt, and semi-freddo (logs of layered frozen mousse and cake).  Perhaps most impressive (if unappetizing) is their fantasy counter, where giant mounds of gelato are decorated to look like a children’s dreams of mountains of candy and ice cream, complete with bubblegum avalanches and tiny chocolate mountaineers. I have no idea what flavors we chose, but I remember enjoying the experience.

After our gelato-and-rally, we strolled through town to Il Fantasma (Via San Domenico 94), which our guidebook described as having the best pizza in town.  While it was quite a walk, we enjoyed wandering through the hustle of dirty Cagliari, which I can now say resembles Sicily more than it does Sardinia.  Il Fantasma was a homey place with perhaps the worst wall treatment I’ve ever seen in my life.  The pizza was fantastic, however, and staggeringly inexpensive to our Paris-acclimated eyes.  Two enormous pizzas and four pints of beer set us back only twenty euros, which helped alleviate the pain of  wounds still smarting from the gas station and rental car counter.  It’s a great little restaurant and our evening made me wish that we had a bit more time to explore Cagliari.

That is until we returned to our seemingly innocuous hotel room and discovered that the central air conditioning unit made a buzzing noise the likes of which I’d never encountered. It was perhaps the single most annoying noise ever produced by an air conditioning unit:  loud, erratic, grating, and impossible to turn off. We tossed and turned in frustration, neither of us sleeping a wink until our alarm sounded at four-thirty a.m. so we could catch our cab to the airport, the very airport we had left just eight hours earlier.  I can’t say we were unhappy to put that leg of our journey to bed.

Next up:  We head to Sicily!  Get ready, the grungy part of our vacation is beginning. Palermo is just as bad as you’ve heard, maybe worse!  Stay tuned!

Nouvelle Cuisine

Last night, after a visit to La Bellevilloise for some whiney French pop folk and some parallel universe version of proper service in which we were aggressively instructed to change tables, despite having already ordered and received our drinks, I grabbed one of their promotional flyers for the space on my way out the door. Lo and behold, one of most creative versions of the English language I’ve ever encountered. Just in case it isn’t entirely clear, they are describing their in-house restaurant here:

Playing mixes with a gift for taste chronology, playing with fresh soup containers pipe, round phial of little dishes increased with fresh peach and eatable flowerets gathered from the entire world, soil products worked with fineness and a pang of mischeviousness in the meat treatment subjugated to its vegetables. Samia, former globe trotter, immersed herself in her host countries rituals. The result: wonderful and healthy dishes like beautiful art work, and as many invitations to a journey.

I want some of those subjugated meat treatments with a pang of mischeviousness right away!

I know it’s a bit petty to post something like this on the internet.  But seriously, you can’t throw a stick in this town and not hit a native English speaker, probably one who whose translation skills could be bought for a meal or some concert tickets.  And the minute that this Broseph in a fedora barked out that we needed to change tables and essentially pushed us out of the space we had been given by our server after we had already proved ourselves to be paying customers, well, let’s just say I was already formulating my blogging revenge. Now get me some eatable flowerets, stat!

I suppose you could link this series of non sequiturs under the rubric of “things you look at,” but it’s a stretch.

So if my most recent blurry (arty!) shots were bugging you as much as they were bugging me, you’ll be pleased to know that I have ordered a new camera! Unfortunately, the camera I wanted (Canon PowerShot SD780IS 12.1 MP Digital Camera) isn’t available in France and even if it was, digital cameras are a lot more expensive here. Just in case you were wondering, yes, all the best stuff does indeed end up in America.  Have I mentioned how much I miss Target?  Oh, okay, I guess I have.  Anyway, I’m using M as a mule to bring back my new camera from the United States, that is, unless she decides to keep my new toy for herself. It must get tiring having to think about depth of field and contrast and value all the time.  My new camera is apparently totally idiot proof and requires no thinking whatsoever.  It’s also has over twice as many megapixels as my current camera, so I suspect the images on Keeping the Bear Garden in the Background will be sharper in the future.  They will still probably suck compositionally, but hey!  At least I’ve learned to turn the flash off when I’m photographing food.  Baby steps to the elevator.

Last night we went to see Inception, which was pretty great!  I’ll admit here that I’m biased because I was really jonesing for a Hollywood blockbuster, as one can only watch so many thoughtful European movies without beginning to long for a car explosion.  I was amazed how easy it was to watch a movie in which everyone is speaking English! Since I’ve paradoxically been watching mostly Italian movies in the theatres for the past six months, I’ve gotten used to reading French subtitles and listening to spoken Italian.  I understand about ninety-five percent of the time, but it’s a lot more work and slows down suspending my disbelief (obviously, Pasolini isn’t really worried about suspending my disbelief, but that’s another thing).

Horrifyingly, however, they turned off the air conditioning about halfway through the film last night, rendering the packed movie theatre into a death sauna.  This seemed kind of ironic, because both B and I had both gone back into my apartment to fetch an extra layer, as we were anticipating a proper American multiplex freezer during the movie.  Instead, we were drenched in sweat.  B whispered at one point that he was contemplating taking off his shirt. The French seemed unbothered by this development.  They were also nonplussed by a public service announcement at the beginning of the film that depicted a child being brutally killed in a car crash. I was too paranoid that somebody was going to sit next to me (weird movie theatre phobia) to pay attention to the ad, but B gasped and said to me “So, apparently it’s all right to show a dead child on public service announcements here!”  The girl sitting next to B, who I’d already decided that I hated because she had taken off her shoes to sit cross legged and her dirty little foot was well within our space, decided to generously “enlighten the English person” and explain to an apparently dense B that it was an ad meant to shock and teach.  No shit, Sherlock.  B responded tersely in French that he understood the function of the ad, but that it’s content wouldn’t likely be shown in an American movie theatre and was jarring to him for this reason.  Apparently she still assumed he was still too slow on the uptake to understand, because she responded in English that “The death was just acting. It was not real!” Really? Thank you, kindly French person! I’ve been in America for so long that I’ve actually come to believe that advertisements on television are documentary reality! I assume everything is reality television! Are you saying it isn’t?!

Anyway, condescending people aside, the movie was good and totally worth a night away from my beloved Latin Quarter Art et Essai cinemas.  We both agreed that we could watch weightless fight scenes all day long.

On our walk home, B said, “You know, I think we’ve been watching Antiques Roadshow for long enough as a couple now…” To be honest, I don’t even know how that sentence ended because the first half sent me into a fugue state.  I hate Antiques Roadshow.  I hate the stupid, rambling, and often erroneous narratives that people give about their treasures.  I hate watching people wait in line to find out how much they can hawk their precious family heirlooms for. Most of all, I hate the smug appraisers, especially the supposedly charismatic ones that make bad puns. But B loves Antiques Roadshow.  I mean, sometimes I find him at three o’clock in the morning deep into Nashville Hour 47.  He has even woken me up in the middle of the night to see a particularly amazing item be appraised. This is especially ridiculous given that he isn’t watching these episodes on television, he’s watching them streaming from PBS’s website.  Meaning I could just as easily watch the clip of the amazing item in the morning. But I’ve been trying to humor him by watching it with him because he is incredibly patient with my atrociously bad, bottom-feeding taste in television.  No one should have to sit through an entire season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey against their will, but this poor guy has and without a single complaint. He even listens to my running unfunny commentary during these shows and makes a valiant effort to be a responsive interlocutor to my pop psychology. “Definitely Danielle is a delusional paranoid! Totally!”  So I feel obligated to try and like Antiques Roadshow, but man, is there something I’m missing?

Clarence Does the Rock Lobster: Bosa and Alghero, Sardinia, or, A Tale of Two Cities

For the next leg of our trip, we drove across Sardinia to spend some time on the Western coast of the island.  Our home base:  the beautiful town of Bosa.  We stayed at a gorgeous bed and breakfast at the recommendation of our friend S, the S’Ammentu (Via Del Carmine 55). What a charmer. Our room was especially romantic, with pink walls (inoffensively so!), tile floors, and a fantastic wood-beamed ceiling. The proprietor described it as the “room for lovers.” Cue a nervous laugh on my part. Seriously, though, it’s an amazing place to stay. The best part by far is the complimentary breakfast, which you take a few doors down in a rock-lined room with local art on the walls. There, two friendly women prepare your drinks from an espresso bar while you sample lovely local pastries, charcuterie, cheese, and fruit grown in their own garden, including a particularly tiny pear that is specific to the Bosa area.  Yum.

We explored Bosa a little when we arrived, but decided that it would be a good idea to take a drive up the coast to Alghero.  We had read that it was an amazing drive and that the old town of Alghero was particularly enchanting. So we hopped in the Panda and got on the road.  The drive was exquisite and I really wish that I had some pictures of it for you.  But B was driving and I was carsick to the max. We actually had to stop at a small beach along the way so that I didn’t barf in our rental car.

After a nauseous ride, we finally arrived in Alghero, which did indeed look dreamy from afar. Hell, it even seemed dreamy as we started driving around. But that sentiment soured quickly as we realized that we would have to pay for parking. Now, I personally don’t have any problem paying for parking.  But I might as well have asked B to slit his own wrists. Another travel-induced discovery about my boyfriend:  while he is remarkably generous in giving gifts and paying for expensive meals, boy oh boy is this guy loathe to pay for anything that he believes on principle should be free, including parking, access to ruins or other archeological sites, and beaches. After finally convincing him that we couldn’t outsmart the legion of parking attendants that roamed the streets of Alghero, he acquiesced and forked over six euros for the evening.  Par for the course by Los Angeles standards, but my Indiana born-and-bred B was smarting from the exchange.

The centro storico of Alghero is touristy to the max, meaning that while there are obviously a lot of interesting shops and probably some serious restaurants, there were even more souvenir shops filled to the brim with kitschy crap and pseudo-gelato shops that sell the Italian equivalent of Baskin-Robbins. Part of our problem was that we were still in low tourist season during our time in Corsica (I suspect that Bonifacio would be a veritable nightmare right now) and our time to this point in Sardinia was spent in rural heaven. Thus, we were a little culture-shocked to find ourselves among droves and droves of portly tourists buying vaguely racist t-shirts and faux-coral plastic crap for their friends back home.  We did enjoy looking at the architectural pastiche that reflects Alghero’s multifaceted cultural history, as evidenced in the Cattedrale di Santa Maria, an amazing fusion of late Moorish and late Baroque style, and the Campanili bell tower that shows the strong Catalan presence that still remains in Alghero.

We were celebrating a relationship milestone that would make you barf if I told you about it, but needless to say we wanted to have a nice dinner. After wandering around for a while, we decided to try Angedras Restaurant (Bastioni Marco Polo 41, Alghero), mainly for it’s lovely location of the top of the rampart walls overlooking the sea.  The menu seemed to be a kind of gussied-up take on Sardinian classics coupled with the traditional Catalan seafood preparations that Alghero is known for.

I hate what I’m about to write, because really Angedras is nice. In fact, I suspect that ninety percent of travelers would be over the moon to eat at a place like that. My critique of the restaurant resides more in the fact that I am turning steadily into that most dreaded of beasts:  the food snob.  But I’m worse than even your regular run of the mill French food snob because I also have a strong distaste for anything I would see as fussy or formal at the expense of flavor or character. And Angedras was just that – fussy, formal, geared entirely to a non-local palate, and consequently bland at moments when it should have shone.  This is not to say that it didn’t have strong moments:  B’s pasta of  fregola in zuppetta di pesce, crostacei e molluschi (an Egyptian couscous-like pasta served in a fish broth with assorted crustaceans and mollusks) was really quite delicious and my main course, the maialino al forno, finocchi croccanti e olive bosane (roasted suckling pig served with roasted fennel and Bosa olives) was a knockout with achingly tender meat and crispy skin.  But my pasta, a linguine al nero di seppia, gamberi e zucchine (squid-ink linguine served with crawfish and zucchini), and B’s main course, the pesce spada, verdure di campo e calamaretti croccanti (swordfish with sautéed greens and positively microscopically miniature calamari dotting the plate) were both bland city.  And honestly, it was too damn expensive, especially by Sardinia standards, for anything to be less than amazing. So, like spoiled children who have never encountered a moment of hardship, we were pissed. We were pissed about the food, pissed about the loud families around us, and pissed about our snooty waiter. It became pretty funny, however, as we started fantasizing about breaking our wine bottle and using it to attack our waiter and throwing our table into the sea as protest, a joke that lasted through the rest of our trip that I now realize isn’t actually very funny.  You had to be there, I guess.  Anyway, if you care about sampling local food and are interested in at least a simulacrum of authenticity, I’d avoid Angedras entirely. However, if you are the kind of American who really digs The Chart House or Ruth Chris Steakhouse (no judgment!), I’d say it is a must-visit.

Our evening improved slightly with a visit to Gelateria Arcobaleno (Piazza Civica 34), a well-stocked gelato shop with friendly salespeople that jab a lovely kind of almondy cookie into your mound of ice cream.  The only remotely good deal in the entire town.  As we were walking to our car, we happened upon large crowd who raptly were watching a demonstration of “traditional Native American” dances and giddily buying beaded bracelets labeled with the names of various tribes. I won’t get into my own relationship with Native American culture and jewelry besides to say that I know a fair amount about these things and this was probably the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.  We’re talking strobe lights and Enya blasting. B couldn’t even speak he was so horrified and incredulous at the spectacle. We both agreed that the “real live Indian dancers” (their words, not mine) were actually Guatemalan and I guess in retrospect if I were a Guatemalan immigrant who found myself in a tourist town with an obvious hunger for “authentic” cultural experiences, I’d milk it for all it was worth too. But it was the cherry on the top of a ridiculous evening, and I can’t say I’d even recommend you stopping in Alghero from my own experience.  I certainly won’t be going back.

In contrast (and this is where the tale of two cities bit comes in), we really loved exploring Bosa the following day.  The city has a beautiful castle at the highest point in town, the Castello Malaspina.  Each narrow, cobblestone street was more enchanting than the last, and the few shops specialize in really amazing local handicrafts, including ceramics and silver filigree jewelry. We witnessed a procession celebrating the Feast of Peter and Paul (the patron saints of Bosa) through the center of town, and it was really moving to see the entire community come to a halt for the sake of the ritual. In the afternoon, we drove down to Tharros to see the ruins of the Greek city and ended up spending a few hours on a local beach watching high school kids flirt with one another (one of my favorite activities).  Only an hour south of the tourist glut we encountered in Alghero, we were the only foreigners for miles.

For dinner, we went La Pulce Rossa (Via Lungo Temo Amendola 1), a local hangout near the Bosa marina that obviously does most of its business in huge 6 euro pizzas. But we had begun to suspect that while Alghero is famous for it’s seafood dishes, that seafood was actually coming from the Bosan fisherman.  Our charming waiter discouraged us from ordering more than antipasti, pasta, or main course, as their portions are huge and intended for sharing.  Turned on by this instant savings, we went ahead and ordered the most expensive things on the menu, which meant our paper napkins were swapped out for linen ones.  Look who’s fancy now!  We knew things were looking up when our server delivered our shared antipasti: a simple plate of marinated local sardine filets drizzled in balsamic vinegar.  Oh my god.  For a girl that basically lives for sardines, these salty, sour, sharp, and tender little fish were Nirvana.

Perhaps even more exciting was our shared pasta course, spaghetti alla bottarga.  Now what, you may ask, is bottarga?  Bottarga is salted, cured mullet roe that is found only in Sardinia.  To prepare this signature pasta dish, the bottarga roe is sliced thin and sautéed in olive oil until fragrant and golden.  It is then added to spaghetti and more bottarga is grated (as you would a hard cheese) over the top of the pasta. Knowing we were tourists, our waiter warned us that bottarga was “an intense taste, maybe difficult to like.” But we had been dying to try it since we arrived in Sardinia. I had expected it to be a forceful and saltier taste.  In reality, it is a delicate, but rich, mushroomy-like flavor that somehow tastes piquantly like the sea.  It’s exquisite.  It’s umami personified. I could eat it everyday and if you eat nothing else during your time in Sardinia, please give it a try.

While we both could have died happy after our pasta dish, the best was yet to come. In a moment of bombast, B had decided that we were going to take the plunge and order arogosta alla Bosa (local spiny lobster) for our main course. The chef had an especially large one (500 grams!) that our waiter suggested that we share.  Now neither B nor I are crazy about lobster. In fact, before this fateful evening, I believe B had described lobster as “basically tasting like shrimp” to him.  But spiny lobsters are the local specialty and the pride and joy of the Bosan fisherman who were eating with their families all around us. We almost felt like it would be disrespectful to stay in that town and not eat lobster.  Our giant red flea (which is what la pulce rosa means) arrived at our table in a light broth with celery and potatoes and was so beautiful and fragrant that our waiter hesitated for a second before he disrupted the presentation and carefully served it.  I suddenly realized that everyone was watching us, including the other diners, the chef, and all of the waitstaff.  We dug in and well, how do you describe these moments?  You know, those moments where you eat something and an ingredient is forever transformed and you realize with a sudden heaviness that you will probably spend the rest of your life dreaming about this one dish and never coming close to approximating the experience again?  It was like that.  And I don’t have a picture of it, because I forgot my camera. I won’t go so far as to make some corny statement about the fleetingness of life here, but if you ever find yourself in Bosa, can I just ask you to please splurge and get yourself the lobster?  Perfection doesn’t seem a nearly perfect enough description.

Fortunately “watching the Americans eat the lobster” was only the opening act in terms of entertainment that evening. A large extended family was having a dinner there as well, and the four couples that were assembled had between them a dozen adorable kids under the age of five, who ran around the restaurant like monkeys that had been kept in a cage for too long.  Their parents tried to keep them under control, but it was like herding cats. We ended up helping as one particularly sneaky toddler named Andrea tried to book it out of the restaurant and into the street.  It was great fun to watch them over glasses of myrto.  It might have been my favorite meal of the trip.  Well, maybe.

Stay tuned for our next installment, as a cloud falls over our idyll.  Evil prehistoric spirits, killer mosquitoes, and a rental car disaster are up next!

Clarence Beats the Heat: Grom and Les Banquettes

I’m kind of tired of writing about our vacation, so instead I’m going to tell you about what I’ve been up to since I got home to sad old dreary Paris. I have a remarkably difficult life, what with this seemingly endless summer vacation and all. I’ve spent a lot of these hot days sitting in front of a fan with my feet in a bucket of ice water. B, in fact, has started referring to it as “bucket time,” as in, “Is it time to go home for some bucket time?”

Other recent “beat the heat” Parisian-style strategies include:

1) Hiding out in air-conditioned movie theatres. One of my recent favorites is Action Ecoles, as they have been screening a Marcello Mastroianni series for the past month. Le sigh. This is how movie stars are supposed to be. I get kinda antsy when actors like Clive Owen and George Clooney are described as movie stars in the Old Hollywood kind of way. Bullshit. George Clooney couldn’t polish Cary Grant’s shoes. Likewise, they just don’t make ‘em like Marcello anymore. Poor B has been forced to listen to both mine and M’s audible swoons during both Matrimonio all’italiana and Divorzio all’italiana – though I suspect Sophia Loren’s presence in the former helped cushion the blows considerably. If you haven’t seen either of them recently (or like me, if you haven’t seen them before), I’d really recommend you check them out. They are funny, easy summer fare. It was also a lot of fun for us to try and recognize various Sicilian cities that we had just visited.

2) Making damn sure that we know where to get the best gelato in Paris.  And I’ll tell you what, I’m a little bit conflicted after our recent visit to Grom (81 Rue de Seine, 75006 Paris, Métro Mabillion). This Italian chain is a favorite among Parisian foodie bloggers, including He Who Will Not Be Named And Yes I’ve Heard of His Blog And No I Don’t Want To Read It Because How Smug Can You Be, Really. But Grom is a pretty cool gelato destination.  Standout flavors include their Crema di Grom (a vanilla gelato speckled with Battifollo (cornbread!) biscuits and Teyuna chocolate chips), Caffè espresso (a super-bitter gelato made with Guatemalan Genuina Antigua coffee – not for the faint of heart!), and the flavor of the month, Fiordilatte all’amarena Griotta (a heavy cream ice cream ribboned with candied sour black cherries).  They take a lot of care in scooping out their gelato and the company seems to have an excellent track record with the environment. So I’m torn, a little bit, away from my beloved Pozzetto. But Grom is all the way on the Left Bank, and Pozzetto is only three blocks away, so I think you can guess who wins that fight on a sticky day.  Still, should I find myself in St. Germain I won’t hesitate to stop by Grom, especially when oyster season starts again and I find myself conveniently in the neighborhood of Huîtrerie Règis more often.

3) Boozing with our friends and trying new restaurants.  I guess this doesn’t really constitute a “beat the heat” strategy as it’s basically what we do year round. But a couple bottles of cold rosé and shaded patio on a tree-lined street don’t hurt matters on a sticky summer evening. One such patio is located at the delightful Les Banquettes (3 Rue de Prague, 75012 Paris, Métro Ledru-Rollin), my first three marmite restaurant! The occasion was M’s husband AC’s final evening in Paris after a visit from Washington DC, M’s hometown and a likely site of Clarence on Vacay in the next few years. AC is as fantastic as his wife, and we had a great time getting to know him better during his stay. The four of us had two terrific meals, one at a Senegalese place that I’m saving for its own (forthcoming) entry, and one at Les Banquettes, which M had read rave reviews about.  And woah, ho, ho, was it yummy.  AC, M, and I all took the entrée of the day, a shrimp and salmon tartare served over an avocado mousse:

Which was bested by B’s entrée, a foie-gras and Roquefort terrine served with a dark chocolate brittle and a currant chutney:

Have I mentioned that I’m recently cursed with some bad food karma?  Not too bad, of course, but I’ve definitely been on a losing streak ever since I brashly declared that B was a terrible orderer who was doomed to be jealous of my plate? Well, pride goeth before a fall, and ever since my declaration B’s plates are looking better and better compared to mine. I guess I deserved it.  Here is his dreamy lamb en croûte and roasted tomato main course:

Fortunately my karma wasn’t too bad that evening and I ordered this (quite terrific) risotto with tiny squids in a port wine reduction.  It was heavenly. Bad karma or not, I suspect it would be tough to order a losing dish at Les Banquettes.

M and AC shared this beautiful cannette (duck):

And this amazing sea bream (?):

I wish I had more details about what we ate, because man oh man it was delicious. But we had taken AC and M to a Corsican bar beforehand so that they could sample our new love of Pietra, and then we somehow managed to polish off two bottles of rosé with dinner.  So to be honest, I was sloshed. I’m sort of amazed that there are even pictures to start out with. B, AC, and M, feel free to chime in here and correct my faulty memories of an exceptionally lovely evening.  Les Banquettes serves really wonderful, interesting versions of French classics and the guys that run it are super-charming.  Best of all, an entreé and main course (or a main course and a dessert) will only set you back 28€, pas mal for a place that has the kind of culinary word-of-mouth that this joint has.  At lunchtime, the 14€ formule comes with an entrée, main course, dessert, and a quart of wine.  Be still my heart!

So that’s what I’ve got in terms of beating the heat, kids.  Get yourself a bucket, good food, ice cream, and some lovely friends, and you’ll be set.