In Town

 

 

Besides going to the gym and the large grocery store in the center of town, we have not set foot on Borgo soil for longer periods than getting in and out of the car in said parking lots. For the last two weeks we have driven around the perimeter of the town trying to navigate to roads that would lead us home or lead us out of Borgo, but had not yet caught glimpses of any interior streets.

On Saturday, we decided to see more of the city by parking and walking along the streets that are too narrow for cars to enter and maybe finding a place to eat. What I saw was a small town within an already small town. But since it was close to 2pm, except for a few eateries, everything was already closed for the weekend.

If you’re not familiar with European towns or even some of the smaller cities, everything closes shortly afternoon noon on Saturday only reopening on Monday morning. But if you happen to be in a Mediterranean region you best not oversleep that Monday morning, because siesta will set in around 1pm, and shops won’t be open again until later in the evening.

If you’re familiar with my blog, you’ve read my earlier tirades about this topic. As a lifelong city girl, I can understand the sometimes quieter hours of Sunday, but after countless trips to Europe and 6 months of continual living in Europe I still can’t fathom the complete shut down of towns to the point that if you didn’t do your grocery shop in time you might be left to dine on some sketchy food on Sunday – including a stale pack of crackers from the back of your cupboard, questionable yogurt from the back of your fridge and you might just end up having a bowl of cereal for both breakfast and dinner.

Luckily Fritz did a bit of research and we ended up in a rustic little restaurant that has a wine shop in the front when you first enter. The early drop off of a bread basket on our table exhibiting four types of bread was already a good sign that we would be enjoying our meal. We dined on some starters consisting of a chicken liver pate and a potato with salami containing fennel and our primi dishes consisted of a sage tortellini and a purple potato ravioli.

After our meal, we decided to embark on a futile adventure of locating an open bakery for some fresh bread. While we did see a few pastry shops open, none of them sold any bread. We promised we would return to the center of town again at a more Borgo reasonable time to see shops open and signs of people. I will report back on that outing which will hopefully entail news about much sought after fresh bread.