Who Saves the Most When Traveling to Italy

I’ve had a bad weekend. My new, super-duper computer with its 4 core processor came with a lousy piece of malware called BitDefender on it. It’s supposed to be an anti-virus thingey.

Yesterday it went berserk. It just started quarantining every goddam file on the computer. Luckily I stopped its runaway lunacy in time to restore things from the quarantine. Other folks who saw the notices got scared and did a system scan. Boy were they screwed. At breakneck speed BitDefender swept all the essential files it could into quarantine. If you had your preferences set to delete what was in your quarantine bin, well, better luck next time, kiddo, you got no operating system.

What’s happened to greedy American companies? How about a computer anti-virus that becomes a destructive virus when you update it? There’s an idea not likely to catch on. Don’t they test these things?

So I’m in a foul mood, as are thousands of other people with bricks as computers. But really, I started off in a foul mood.

I happened to eat at Enrico’s in San Francisco’s North Beach this week with some friends. Enrico’s has a fine history, from back in the beatnik era when folks didn’t care as much for money as they did for sex. People traveled, often to learn things. Banks paid decent interest on deposit and made loans for slightly more money instead of paying zilch for money then making a gambling game out of people’s mortgages to get rich fast or die. We didn’t vomit when folks mentioned regulation, it was part of what the government did to protect the people who owned it. The government I mean. Of, by and for. The people.

Anyway, back to Enricos. Decent food, decenter pizza. Then you come to the wine list. Pathetic. Least costly red out of a paltry list of maybe 8 reds set you back a whopping $38. This for crap wine. One interesting choice, but they were out of that one. Waiter says, “if you want a light wine I can recommend…”

Who wants a “light” anything? For $40 bucks I better get flavor that spills out my ears and bothers the other diners. Especially when that wine is on sale for 7 bucks at the liquor store.

My Italian neighbors make their own wine. They won’t drink the commercial stuff. It’s not even about cost. You can still get a bottle of decent plonk at the super for 1 Euro. They complain about headaches when they drink bottled stuff. They prefer their homemade wine. It’s not like it’s a compromise, like you need millions of dollars in temperature controlled stainless steel tanks to make wine. Wine makes itself. You crush. You wait. It ferments. That’s why it’s been around for thousands of years.

Anyway, to get to the title’s promise: if you are a couple contemplating a trip to Italy and you look at the miserable but better-than-it-was-a-while-ago exchange rate and say “gosh, hotels are expensive” then I will say to those of you who like to share a bottle of wine with dinner, “Go! You’ll make it all up on the wine prices!”

I’m always amazed at restaurant owners who always know were to get (or how to make) excellent wines. Ristorante da Remo in cute Monzone every year manages to come up with a 2 Euro per half liter red that is mighty yummy.

So really, come to Italy, rent a self-catering apartment or house or, for the less adventurous, a hotel and start saving money on your wine habit.

Unless you like overoaked Merlot. There’s a reason vanilla ends up in cookies and sweet rolls. It doesn’t belong in wine, which you’ll grasp once you try things the Italian way. You taste the grapes. Not a bad thing, really.

Who Saves the Most When Traveling to Italy

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