A Minestra (Soup), Generally Made Of Beef Or Veal With Vermicelli Or Macaroni In It And Its Never Failing Accompaniment In Italy, Grated Parmesan Cheese.

Then a lesso (bouilli) of beef, veal or mutton, or all three; next an umido (fricassee) of cocks' combs and livers, a favourite Italian dish; then a frittura of chickens' livers, fish or vegetables fried.

Then an umido or ragout of veal, fish with sauce; and lastly, an arrosto (roast) of fowls, veal, game, or all three. The arrosto is generally very dry and done to cinders almost. Vegetables are served up With the umidi, but plain boiled, leaving it optional to you to use melted butter or oil with them. A salad is a constant concomitant of the arrosto. A desert or fruit concludes the repast. Wine is drank at discretion. The wine of Lombardy is light and not ill flavored; it is far weaker than any wine I know of, but it has an excellent quality, that of facilitating digestion. A cup of strong coffee is generally made for you in the morning, for which you pay three or four soldi (sous), and in giving five or six soldi to the waiter, all your expenses are paid supposing you are spesato, i.e., that the vetturino pays for your supper and bed; if not, your charges are left to the conscience of the aubergiste, which in Italy is in general of prodigious width. I therefore advise every traveller who goes with a vetturino to be a spesato, otherwise he will have to pay four or five times as much and not be a whit better regaled. The vetturini generally pay from three to three and a half francs for the supper and bed of their passengers. As the vetturini invariably make a halt of an hour and half or two hours at mid-day in some town or village, this halt enables you to take your dejeuner a la fourchette, which you pay for yourself, unless you stipulate for the payment of that also with the vetturino by paying something more, say one a half franc per diem for that. In this part, and indeed in the whole of the north of Italy not a female servant is to be seen at the inns and men make the beds. It is otherwise, I understand, in Tuscany.

The whole appearance of the country from Asti to Alexandria presents an immense plain extremely fertile, but the crops of corn being off the ground, the landscape would not be pleasing to the eye, were it not relieved by the frequency of mulberry trees and the vines hung in festoons from tree to tree. The villages and farmhouses on this road are extremely solid and well built. We arrived at Alexandria about twelve o'clock, and after breakfast I hired a horse to visit the field of battle of Marengo, which is in the neighbourhood of this city, Marengo itself being a village five miles distant from Alexandria.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 123 of 291
Words from 64545 to 65044 of 151859