Rotary GSE Italy Team 2010: Do you remember the time Tim ate two full plates of prosciutto?

amazing... AMAZING!

Okay, I am stealing this favorite line of Wendy's, but truly, our trip has been AMAZING.

*Note, this word will be used on purpose throughout this blog post*

So, day 6 was spent in the mountains:

Alessandro Lolli (Chairman of the Italian District 2060 GSE program) along with Giulio's friend Franco (el presidente del mundo!) met us at the Negroni's and Dave, Jess, Wendy and Tim packed into Giulio and Franco's cars while I took a grand trip in Alessandro's wonderful convertible. Soooooo, after dealing with motion sickness for as long as I can remember, I've decided I want a convertible! We were twisting and turning up the mountains for about an hour and a half and didn't feel sick once... AMAZING! Hear that Mike? We're getting a convertible someday! :)

Finally we made it to the town of Sauris in the Province of Udine. And in this town they produce the most incredible prosciutto, speck, lardo, salamis, etc. Very important, this family owned company doesn't give tours to just anybody... and we got a tour! Such a great experience to see the salting, smoking and resting process that all the meat goes through and then, the best part, the tasting of the meats! Prosciutto and lardo of such great quality and sliced so thin it melts as soon as it hits your mouth. And yes, I tried lardo for the first time and it was fantastic, just like butter! Of course you can't eat it all the time, though otherwise you'll be molto grasso! I think y'all got that one, right?

We were also fortunate enough to spend time with the wife of the Sauris Wolf factory owner, a wonderfully strong, kind Italian womyn who took time out of her day to tell us the story of how the factory came to be and how they don't expand because they want to maintain control of the quality of product. Quality, not quantity!

And as the title says, Tim was truly in his element at the factory. He was firing off questions to our tour guide and then when we got to the tasting, he finished one plate and then another. This is good living, y'all.

After the prosciutto factory in Sauris we headed back to the mountain to the casa de Negroni to rest before we got a tour of Tarvisio and hopped over the border quickly to see Slovenia. Giulio showed us the most AMAZING lake (lago). Truly, I hope to come back to camp there sometime. The view of the mountains was breathtaking.

When we returned to the house, the two playful labs (Astra and Scott) were romping in the front yard while Daniela was already in the kitchen at the helm of a magnificent machine that made polenta while also taking care to stir the porcini mushrooms (from their garden) in the melted butter (burro). Yet another AMAZING dinner with the our Camporosso famiglia - polenta, deer stew (cooked three hours to a point where it was tender as mom's pot roast), porcini mushrooms sauteed in butter, a multitude of different cheeses with cherry tomatos, fresh green salad, three kinds of gelato, various chocolates and then grappa to wrap up the meal. Don't worry about us starving over here!

Life with the Negroni's was absolutely phenomenal. We truly could have stayed there our whole trip and been content, they are our Italian mama and papa.

So as you can tell, we're trying to blog/talk about one day at a time, but we're a bit behind. So somebody else will talk about our AMAZING journey and introduction to Trieste later.

For now, goodbye our dear readers. We miss and love all of you dearly. Keep readin and we'll keep writin!

And now, some pictures for y'all :)

look, a mercedes benz garbage truck!