Food Allergies, WhAt ArE tHoSe?

Italy Travelog #19½
Chia, Sardinia - Wednesday, 28 May 2025, 2pm

Oops, this blog got lost in my backlog. I'll post it now, slightly out of order. Wednesday after our cave tour at Grotto Is Zuddas we were taken to a restaurant a few miles from the hotel where we were promised cibo tipico, typical (local) food. Local cuisine, according to two people I heard from earlier in the day and yesterday, surprisingly is not heavy on fish. That's surprising because Sardinia is an island so it's, well, surrounded by fish. But recall that historically, residents never settled close to the coast because of frequent raids by pirates and foreign powers. So it was a bit surprising when we sat down to a preselected menu that was all fish.

The all-fish thing was even more surprising because two people in our group of 8 had specified "no fish" on the planning form asking for dietary restrictions. Oh, and 1 needed gluten-free... and the menu was all fish and pasta.

Obviously something broke in the chain of communication from us to the organizer to the restaurant. But to make it worse, the restaurant had difficulty understanding why anything was wrong even when we communicated it repeatedly. I've read that food allergies are poorly understood/unappreciated in European countries relative to the US. I mean, there are still plenty of people in the US who think food allergies are bullshit but they seem to be a minority now, and restaurants pretty much all know how to handle dietary restrictions. It was morbidly interesting to see this play out in real life. The restaurants staff just didn't get it.

The first challenge we had to overcome was English-to-Italian. Only one staff member, the manager, acknowledged speaking any English. Next, the manager, when confronted with news the food allergies, initially was combative. He told us that the menu was already chosen and the food was already prepared.

We pushed back, noting that, "Hey, you're a restaurant, you must have other food you can serve us instead." After some discussion their counter-offer was pork chops instead of seafood. That worked for one of our no-seafood group members, but not Hawk— whose dietary restriction list began with "no pork, no seafood". Obviously they hadn't gotten that memo. Or they decided it was just bullshit from childish picky eaters who need to be taught the two options at the dinner table are "take it or leave it".

There was also the gluten-free issue to resolve. The restaurant did have gluten-free pasta, it turned out. Or at least a different-shaped pasta they said was gluten free. I'm skeptical about that because I watched the waiters scooping food from one plate to another and back again. If you know anything about food allergies, you know that transferring items from one plate to another with common utensils is a no-no. Upon seeing that I lost all trust in the restaurant's ability to take our needs seriously and advised anyone with allergies not to eat.

Somehow Hawk did have an allergic reaction. I think they served all of us half plates of gluten-free pasta. It was hard to tell what it really was. Regardless, something in the pasta or sauce triggered an allergic reaction for Hawk. Fortunately it was a mild one that she was able to treat by taking a Benadryl pill. But actually getting ill from the food at the table put the final nail in the coffin of having any enjoyment at the restaurant.

Taking it Easy at the Resort

Italy Travelog #21
Chia, Sardinia - Thursday, 29 May 2025, 2pm

We decided to enjoy a take-it-easy day at the resort today. That's a choice with consequence, though. What we've chosen to say No to is a catamaran and snorkeling trip! Alas, as much fun as being out on a boat on azure waters can be, and as much as I've wanted to snorkel since I was a boy, I've found out the hard way, by two failed attempts, that I'm not able to snorkel. Maybe I could with some careful instruction, maybe not. But I definitely can't with just, "Here's a mask and some fins, now jump in!" Plus, Hawk is reluctant even to try because swimming poses to much of a threat to her injured back. But hey, just because we're not going snorkeling doesn't mean we sit around our room swallowing our tears, there's a pool to enjoy!

Update, 6pm Thursday: The whole snorkeling trip was a fail. Due to high winds and problems with the boat, nobody got to snorkel. Now I'm so glad we stayed home and enjoyed the resort!



Ha ha, the joke was on us. That pool is cold. Like, seriously, the only people going in the water are the couple from Minnesota and the couple from Germany. All the rest of us dipped a toe in and said OH HELL NO! 😱

But again, there are more options here than go back to our rooms and swallow tears. There are comfy lounge chairs with beautiful views across the pool and to the ocean beyond.




Some lounge chairs, like the pair we got (photo above) are even in the shade and pair to form a day-bed for two.

Plus, a few minutes later we got drink service, so imagine that picture above with us in it plus a piña colada and a margarita. (Yes, we're drinking like we're in Latin America while being in Italy, but frankly all the Italian drinks on the menu look disgusting.)

We chillaxed on the pool deck for almost 2 hours, until we decided it was time for lunch. We placed an order at the little cafe over to the side. The host came to fetch us when our food was ready.



Apparently they don't serve food at the lounge chairs. I guess that makes sense because otherwise people'd generally make a mess of them. So we sat up straight and enjoyed our lunch at a little pool-side cafe table. Hawk ordered a bowl of spaghetti while I played the Ugly American card and ordered the hamburger. BTW these were two of literally only four entree choices on the menu, so it's like we skipped over all the cibo tipico to pick these dishes. Plus, we've recently been unimpressed with the island's cibo tipico.

After lunch we stretched out in our shaded day-bed for a bit longer before heading back down to our room. Hawk has now gone upstairs to the spa for a deep tissue massage— a mea culpa comped for yesterday's fuckup with cibo tipico. I'll join her up there after her massage for us to use the hot tubs together.

Taking it Easy at the Resort, part 2. Buttoh!

Italy Travelog #22
Chia, Sardinia - Thursday, 29 May 2025, 5pm

Early today I wrote about how we decided to take it easy at the resort today. We hung out by the pool from the morning through lunchtime. But there's more. More pools. More taking-it-easy. More. MOAR!

After Hawk was done with her massage in the spa I joined her up there for our "Spa Wellness Visit". It's an membership benefit I get as a Hilton Diamond elite. (The front desk agent at check-in told me there are no elite benefits, zero, at this property. She was so adamant there was nothing for us she refused even to enter my Hilton number in the computer. Another agent later, when we went to book the massage, inquired if I had elite status, took my number, and told us about this. 🙄)



The Spa Wellness Visit includes using the spa's hot tubs, sauna, steam rooms, and "emotional showers". I was amused by the term emotional showers. Like, what, the water drips out of the shower head accompanied by sounds of sobbing? 🤣 Alas, no, it's not quite that emo. It's just colored lights flashing and aroma-infused water.

Well, we weren't interested in the sauna or the steam rooms, and the emo-showers just looked silly. Oh, and the aromas were all mint, which Hawk is allergic to. We've already had enough allergy problems this trip. 😒 So we tried the hot tob, which is the main thing we wanted anyway.



We pressed the too-difficult-to-find button to start the jets and quickly found... the pool is running backwards. Or rather, the pump is installed backwards. The jets on the sides don't work. Instead, water comes jetting up from the middle of the floor of the pool, from what are supposed to be the return vents. 🤪

We gave up on the buttoh (hint: it's backwards) after a minute or two as a pool that just boils and bubbles like a cauldron of trouble is not very enjoyable.



Upon hearing that there are 3 pools to the resort's "Roman baths" I hoped for the classic trio of caldarium, tepidarium, and frigidarium. Hot, warm (tepid), and cool. The people at the spa were mystified when I used those three Latin words. I mean, this is part of Italy, and there are Roman ruins around. You'd think someone would be aware of what their ancestors figured out 2,200+ years ago. Nope. These are the clowns who put the Jacuzzi together backwards. Buttoh!

So it turns out all three of these pools are tepidaria. None of them are quite hot tubs. Though at the same time no two of them are the same temperature. So they're like plus quam tepidarium, tepidarium, and prope tepidarium. 😂

While the three of these pools were pointlessly different in temperature they were purposefully different in how their jets were positioned. One has lounge seats built in with jets in the seats; another has traditional hot tub benches with jets; and the third has a sequence of paired jets at different depths in the water. We used the latter to massage our ankles, calves, thighs, hips, and back and we waded around to different locations. After both amusing ourselves and massaging ourselves for a while we sat out on shaded lounge chairs to enjoy the afternoon warmth.

To Live and Let Dine

Italy Travelog #23
Chia, Sardinia - Thursday, 29 May 2025, 8pm

Eating dinner surprising takes a lot of planning in Italy. Especially as an American with American habits. Restaurants virtually all close after lunch and don't open again until dinner. And dinner is late. A few restaurants start at 7pm. Many don't reopen for dinner until 7:30. And you often need reservations. Especially for dinner, as most casual restaurants, the kind where reservations aren't required, don't even serve dinner. They close after lunch. So if you want dinner out, you've got to plan ahead and wait.

It's extra hard out here in Chia on the island of Sardinia where there aren't even that many restaurants. Other than the few onsite at the hotel, which are all expensive and have tiny menus— each has, like, one thing Hawk could eat— there's one other restaurant nearby. It's spendy and also has, like, one thing Hawk could eat. After that the next nearest place is a taxi ride away. Except there are no taxis here. And a private car costs €45. Each way. Even just to go a few miles.

We ended up buying a few things at the small grocery store a few minutes' walk from the resort and enjoying a picnic dinner on our patio. Oh, but we had to go quickly, because the grocery closes at 7pm.



The photo shows the two kinds of sliced meat I bought, sliced cheese, bread, and wine. The cheese is pecorino sardo, a local style of pecorino. The bread is focaccia. And the wine is Cannonau, a locally grown grape that is actually an ancient clone of Grenache/Garnacha. Most of it was pretty tasty. One of the two types of meat was overly dry.

On our way out to the store, when we were discussing the limited dining-out options with the hotel concierge, I remarked that waiting until 7:30 for restaurant seating was unusual to me because most Americans eat dinner earlier. She explained that Italians normally eat dinner as late as 9:30. To them, she explained, 7:30 dinner is early because people who work in stores only close up at 7. They have to go home and start dinner or go back out to eat.

It's an interesting explanation that points to a cultural difference. In the US we think of the service industry as there to serve us. In Italy it's more recognized that the service industry is "us"; that it's normal people working jobs in retail, and they need to live their lives, too.