Six minutes on the sweatbed

Up early in Milano, Mom, Dad and I headed to the train station. They were headed back to Pordenone and I was heading to the airport.

When I was with my cousins in the UK earlier in the year, we started talking about going away in the fall. I’ve been to Italy quite a few times but I’ve never travelled further south than Rome. I thought Sardinia would be a good location to meet up for a long weekend away (I was already planning to be in Italy) and so we started looking at cities that were reasonable from London. We decided Alghero would be our destination.

I was the first to arrive. I had booked a flat with multiple rooms before even knowing who would be joining me. If nothing else, we would have our own rooms and not have to share beds. It turned out to be a good thing because of how hot it had been.

I walked to the supermarket to pick up some basics (Prosecco, coffee and milk… and water!), had a shower, took some photos of the sunset to let my cousins know what was waiting for them and then anxiously waited for them to arrive.

And just like that, we were together again- the three mini Marias. We went for a delicious dinner by the sea with some drinks (Thanks, Aunty Lin!) spent some time catching up and settled in for our first night in Alghero.

I hadn’t picked up anything for breakfast so the next morning we headed back to the beach. The plan for the day was to wander. We would head to the historic city centre and see where our feet took us. Coffee and a view- that was our first order of business.

The beach was busy but not too busy. The weather was hot. We were definitely fortunate with the forecasted weather. There seemed to be more Italians than anything around which meant that I had a lot of opportunity to practice my Italian. I quickly realized it was even rustier than I had first acknowledged.

I had decided that I wanted to try to eat as much gelato as possible. Luckily my dear cousins were of a similar mindset so we saved room and made a stop. There was always a gelateria nearby.

We walked back and by the time we arrived at our place, we were all sweaty -unbelievably sweaty! and in need of a little rest and refresh before heading out for the evening. We had booked a Sardinian cooking class and meal for our first night.

We had just enough time to freshen up before we were off again. This time it was to the countryside, about 20 minutes out of town, to our cooking class with Irene.

What a marvellous night! First we each made our dough. Half of us made dough for tagliatelle and the other half prepared the pasta for ravioli. We learned to make gnocchetti, maccheroni, and cavatelli. We then turned some of the cavatelli into orecchiette- that was the hardest one of all. Luckily these were just for practice.

By the time we had finished learning how to make the different shapes, our dough had rested and we were ready to start the real work. Some of us were better students than others. Some of us needed to be checked by the teacher a few times. In the end, we all made tagliatelle and a ricotta-filled ravioli.

We left the kitchen pretty proud of our work and all went to sit down where we enjoyed a delicious meal prepared by Irene and her son. This included our pasta. Of course the next thing to do was check prices of pasta machines. We were hooked. How satisfying an experience! And how delicious! Thank you to Irene,

It was back to the house where we sat and enjoyed a little snack while discussing the day. We nursed our bug bites, marvelled at a newly appeared blood blister and made plans for future pasta making and the next day.