Friday March 25, 2011

So today, was a bit of a lay low day. Sort of. I had been promising Katie and Grace that we'd go out to have a looks at the shops, "just us girls", so this morning we set out. They showed me some things that they had seen in passing and we stopped to look in some places that had been too difficult to stop in with all of us. We took another look at their new favourite store, Monna Lisa, and looked at some other fun stuff. I was excited because there is a store that I love to go to in England called Accessorize (it's like Claire's only waaaaay better) and there is one here! It was great to take them because they always love the little bits that I get for them and I knew they would love the store. It's girl heaven!

After all that shopping, I thought I take them for a Ladies Lunch at the rooftop patio of la Rinascente, one of the department stores here. The view was MAGNIFICENT!!

Unfortunately, the service wasn't great. We hadn't even been acknowledged after about 20 minutes and the girls were getting hungry, so we decided to go down into the square for lunch and we had a great time!

Later that afternoon around 5, the kids were bored so I took them over to the park. Last time we were there, we were the only ones, but this time it was packed!

Katie and Liam

Grace's pebble puppy

Liam made some young friends playing soccer (that's him in the oh-so-cool fedora!)

The younger boys thought he was so cool!

Abby's pebble puppy.

That evening Chris and I had reservations for dinner. We had been looking online for somewhere nice to go and it turns out there is a rather nice restaurant about 50 metres down the street. It's called Enoteca Pinchiorri. It was voted one of the best restaurants in the world in 2005. How bad could it be?

Not bad at all!!! Oh my. So good! I'd go into more detail, but we ended up haveing about 12 or 13 courses each, included the 2 amuse bouche, the chocolate presentation, the almond ricotta cheesecake and the sorbet that came in addition to my 7 course tasting menu and Chris' 8 course tasting menu.

Some highlights were (for me at anyway) were my lobster crusted in chestnuts - it's just not 2 flavours I'd put together but it was so good, and my dessert - a hazelnut, lemon white chocolate concoction that, to me, sounded like a horrible pairing, but it was incredible. It was like the white chocolate was the mediator between the sour lemon and the bitter hazelnut and made everyone get along.

Also, the cheese course. We had a "cheese sommelier" (I don't know what else to call her!) present 24 cheeses that we got to pick from. There was a tray of milk cheese, one of goat, one of sheep and one of blue cheeses.

Easily one of the best dinners I've ever had!