Sunday, July 15, 2012

Every Sunday and Monday there is a flea market that takes place along our street.  At this very moment the vendors are setting up their stalls and the amount of activity and the level of noise outside our building is about to increase dramatically, but not unpleasantly.  We have no plans for today and I think we may take advantage of that fact and just kick back and take life easy.

We spent a good part of the day yesterday running errands.  Susan made an early morning visit to the Central Market to pick up what she needed to prepare a couple of snacks for the Oberles who were coming over at 8:30 prior to our going to Ballando Nudi for dinner.  While she was whipping up what turned out to be some very delicious blue cheese crackers, I headed of to Miguel’s to pick up my new smartphone that I had purchased on Amazon.  It is a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc 3 with an 8-megapixel camera.  My old Samsung is just not cutting it and sending a text message without a keyboard is very painful and time consuming.

Once I had picked up the phone I then headed to ONO to tell them to go ahead and change my carrier from Orange to ONO keeping the same number that I have had for the last I don’t know how many years.  Having accomplished that task, I went to the market and picked up four bottles of wine.  We seem to be drinking more white wine these days and the better ones are a bit harder to find.  The supermarkets around here carry the less expensive brands.  However, the wine stand in the Central Market has an excellent selection with some of the best prices that I have seen here.

Our lunch was fairly light in anticipation of our meal last evening.  We each had a sandwich and chips and that was more than enough to satisfy us.  We took it easy in the afternoon and, a little after 8:30, Ofelia, Olivia and Brian rang our bell.  We gave them the tour of our new place and then we settled into the sofas in the living room and had a drink and some snacks.  At 9:30 we made our way to the restaurant.

The restaurant, at max, seats 35 and one of the four long tables was occupied by a party of ten.  We took our seats and Francisco came by to make some suggestions and to take our wine order.  We ordered a couple of appetizers – a creamed cod and a zucchini dish that was stuffed with high quality ricotta cheese – and three pastas.  We ordered the Bolognese again, a pumpkin ravioli, and a dish of corkscrew pasta with a wonderful spiced ricotta topping.  It turned out that one bottle of wine was not enough, so we ordered a second.  We shared a couple of desserts and finished our meal with a chupito.

We left the restaurant a little after 11:30.  Olivia hopped a cab to catch up with a friend at a bar called Portland.  The four of us then walked to our place where we said goodnight to the Oberles.  They had walked to our place from theirs and so they continued on their way on foot.  We were in bed soon after we walked through the door.