Ca’ da Frara

Friday 2 July, Ferrara

After a day in La Schifanoia (gasp-making), the Museo Lapidario (yawn-making, unless you’re the sort of person who enjoys escaping the heat to puzzle out Latin inscriptions, and you know who you are); lunch in a park (on a pickup piadina; Holt saw the sign stuck in “il famoso salame rosso” too late); a nice conversation with a girl named Chiara, who loved her home town and had studied in Virginia; then, the smaller scrappier museums: Palazzina Marfisa d'Este (mostly about the ceilings and a great barrel-vaulted “arbor”); and a quick pop into the main building of the University (only the doorway remains of the original building, but most importantly we found the bathroom, undoubtedly used by Copernicus himself), we sought out Ca’ d’ Frara (House of Ferrara in farrarese - not to be confused with Ca’ di Frara, the wine), a good restaurant. We asked about salama da sugo con purè di patate. Too hot, they said.

Holt confounded the nice waiter by (this time) ordering three primi! Even in the air-conditioning a red meat heavy meal seemed out of the question. So we ordered mussels and clams in a pleasantly spiced brodetta, with bread to sop it up.

The hit was tagliatelle in a white sauce (wine and oil only) of prosciuto: a festival of salty goodness. And for the “secondo”: a bollito misto with two cold sauces. The waiter and the waitress both referred to it as a salad, which confused the heck out of Holt, who was imagining a bowl of various boiled fishy things. Instead a salad as promised, attractively arranged, with something of a salad niçoise about it. Green beans and greens, we think, with one big prawn, several small shrimp, etc. but on the whole rather bland and we’ve already forgotten about it.