After 2 days in Naples I caught a train to Rome to meet up with my friends Stracco, Ed and Haythem. Haythem owns a house in Carbognano Italy, which is a small village of 2000 people about an hour north of Rome and an hour south of Tuscany. Carbognano was where we spent a majority of the Italy chapter of this trip. Admittedly, I was initially a bit apprehensive about spending so much time in a small town, but that quickly faded as it was such a cool experience. There wasn’t much English spoken there at all, the town had 2 restaurants, 2 bars and a cafe. And none of the locals could comprehend why us 4 “Americanis” were staying there but it seemed like Haythem knew about everyone in town and we definitely had some celebrity status. It’s also located in the heart of hazelnut country, all of the surrounding land is filled with Hazelnut trees and the largest Nutella factory is nearby.
Our first day there was coincidentally my birthday, so we got right to celebrating of course! We got an incredible meal at the best restaurant in town. Granted there isn’t a lot of competition, but I kid you not this was one of the best restaurants I’ve eaten at in my entire trip so far, and I’ve been eating very well throughout this trip, as I’ve documented on this blog if you’ve been following along.
I’ve been to Italy a couple of times before, but I’d never truly experienced Italian dining with Italians. Dinner in Italy is not just meal, it’s a full blown religious experience that can last up to 4 hours. You get your antipasta, then your primo dish (typically pasta), then your segundi (typically meat or fish), then dessert, then coffee, then a limoncello or grappa. And you may not leave until 1 am, as dinner time typically starts around 9 pm. We initially tried to push back on this ritual with our Italian friends, who were appalled at our desire to get in, stuff our faces, and get out of there. “You Americans are always in such a rush to do everything, dinner is the best part of the day why don’t you just sit back and enjoy it?” Also, I can’t forget about the wine. The wine was so good and affordable. We legitimately drank every bottle of wine for sale in the village, to the point that the owner of the local market came and knocked on our door when he got more wine in 😂.
We had a rental car in Carbognano, which was pretty much required given the remote nature of the city. It really came in handy as we took a couple day trips to Lake Vico nearby and also spent a day at the beach. Additionally, my friend Ed and I got a chance to play to 2023 Ryder cup course, Marco Simone, which is located just outside of Rome. The course was absolutely beautiful, with amazing views of old Italian castles and rolling hills of the Italian countryside and vineyards in the backdrop. The clubhouse however was one of the more bizarre things I’ve ever seen. It was like one of those big generic commercial office buildings you find in a business park, that they are planning to convert into a clubhouse for a world class golf course? They’ve got a whole lot of work to do on that in the next year as it’s current just a big empty building with a little makeshift pro shop selling some Ryder Cup gear. They didn’t even have a restaurant or proper bar in there. Luckily we were there to play golf, not hang out in the clubhouse and we had such an awesome time that were coming back next Fall to see the Ryder Cup in person and check out those clubhouse renovations. We also pretty much had the whole course to ourselves, we only saw like 2 other groups out there the whole round.
After spending a week in Carbognano (along with a couple nights in Siena, see my previous blog on the Palio di Siena) we went to Rome for a night and the following day caught a train to Milan for 2 days for one last amazing experience to close out the Italy trip. The main reason we went to Milan was to have dinner with the most famous rapper in Italy, Ghali. One of Haythem’s childhood friends is his music producer and had arranged the dinner. In full transparency, I had no idea who Ghali was prior to this trip, but he’s huge in Italy (think like the Drake of Italy) and people were walking up to him in the restaurant to ask for selfies and our waiters wanted his autograph. I also had no idea what we were walking into but assumed there would be like 40 people there. That wasn’t the case at all, it was the 5 of us, Ghali, his manager, and friend. It was such a unique and incredible experience. He was so down to earth and cool and we had such a good time. We went to a Milanese steakhouse and his manager handled all the ordering to ensure we had their best dishes. Milanese food is different than typical Italian food, which I didn’t realize. They still have pasta, but there is a lot of French influence in their cooking as well. The meal as well as the conversation were amazing. He’s definitely a true artist and talked alot about all the different music he listens to that influences his own tracks. He is also just a really good dude, he bought a boat to rescue African migrants fleeing to Italy that rescues 200 people per day out of the Mediterranean sea. He also told us about how he started a social media campaign to get the Italian government to ban blackface on Italian TV, which apparently was fairly common up until a couple of years ago.
Overall, the Italian leg was one of my favorites on the trip so far. Between spending 10 days with some of my best friends, the incredible food and the variety of experiences we had ranging from some world class golf, a medieval era horse race, meeting the most famous rapper in Italy, learning more about Italian culture from some locals, and some very fun nights, it set a very high bar. Time will tell if that bar can be raised in higher on some upcoming adventures.
