Pasta Vongole

Vongole...Vongole...Vongole - this is a very cool word, exotic even. Especially when it's said in Albanian (or in Italian with an Albanian accent)...Who would ever think something that sounds so interesting would be so disastrous?

As I mentioned previously, the night we went to Durres and had dinner, V's husband talked me into trying the Pasta Vongole. Turns out "vongole" is Italian for clam...turns out clams and I don't agree too much...

So, starting at around 0230 while my darling husband was safe in snooze-land, I was at the beginning of a very long, arduous journey of "recovering" from food poisoning. Or at the very least a horrible collision between my delicate stomach and yucky, disgusting gray blobs that are loosely termed "clams."

While being sick is never fun, it's especially bad when you're stuck in a hotel room for one of only four days in a new country. Luckily, V had made sure we had reservations in a really nice hotel, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

I eventually realized that time wasn't on my side (as in, as the day was passing, I still wasn't getting any better) so the men went and got me some medicine. By early evening, I was able to go to the park for a short stroll with the others. We then went to their apartment for dinner. V made lasagna and her mother made another traditional Albanian dish (it looked good - yogurt, meat, cheese, etc...). Unfortunately, I could only pick at the lasagna and didn't even try anything else except for bread and water. Despite that, it was a nice dinner and we enjoyed spending more time with V's family. We had brought several small gifts for everyone so we presented them after dinner. It seemed as if everyone liked what we had chosen for them...

Most of the stuff we had planned to do on Thursday, the day I was sick, we moved to Friday in hopes I would be recovered enough to travel. Luckily, I was...I'll tell you all about it in the next post.