Chinese Food in Italy

This past Saturday, 3 friends and I went to a town on the Switzerland/Italy border called Ponte Tresa (which straddles the border on both sides). Getting there is sort of like going to Tijuana from San Diego. We took a 15-20 minute train ride to the Swiss side of Ponte Tresa and then walked across the border into Italy. The weather this weekend was gorgeous and Spring-like, with plenty of sun and temperatures in the 60s F. And the officers never asked for our passports going either direction. It was kind of strange. The Italian border guard was just talking on his cell phone as he watched us walk past him, and the Swiss border guards on the way back were too busy checking cars to care about 4 girls walking across with shopping bags.

The main attraction of the Italian side of Ponte Tresa is this open-air market that happens I think every Saturday where you can buy relatively cheap food, clothes, and other random stuff. There's even a booth that sells small pets, like turtles and birds. Needless to say, I spent my euros on fruit (3 kilos of bananas, apples, and kiwis for about $10 US) and a block of semi-soft cheese. People in this region really like their cheese. Besides the cheese we bought, we were given many more samples by the vendors. In fact, as soon as I told the vendor that I wanted to buy something, her handed me a second large chunk of parmiggiano. I hadn't even finished my sentence yet. "Vorrei comprare... ecco un altro, etc." So I couldn't complain.

After shopping, one of the regular students took us to this Chinese restaurant near the market, which was realtively cheap and had decent food. Not Ocean Sky in Eugene, but still good, especially for being in Italy. They even had vegetarian pot stickers.

So that was fun. Alas, the next morning, I woke up with a sore throat. I've caught the cold that's been going around. So now, I'm just going to class and really wanting to sleep. Being sick definitely took away any motivation I might have had to join the midnight Super Bowl party that was last night. But I'll be fine...eventually.