I went to the mall yesterday.  I mostly went there to give the housekeeper a chance to clean the room. But I soon found myself in an enormous store two or three times the size of the Real in Jettingen.  I wandered the aisles and ended up buying a decanter and two wine glasses from the Czech Republic… and, of course, I had to buy wine too.  If there’s one thing I noticed about this particular store, it’s that if you want to buy a lot of wine cheap, you can definitely do it there. You can pretty much buy anything you want in that store.  But if you don’t find what you need, you can wander among the other stores and maybe find something you can’t live without.

Italian mall, all decked out for Christmas.

Italian McDonald’s, complete with fancy ordering computer.

And its own birthday room and climbing wall… This ain’t your hometown Mickey D’s!

And a dentist office in the mall.  I probably shouldn’t laugh, since my Texas dentist was in a mall.

I saw maybe one or two bottles of wine that cost over twenty euros.  The rest were ridiculously cheap.  I had trouble determining which one I would purchase.  I brought one back from the South Tyrol region.  Then I went to lunch at the hotel’s restaurant.  It was quite fabulous.  I had lasagne and a glass of wine.  It was probably the best I’ve had in years.

Killer lasagne…

 

I paid 12,50 euros for lasagne, bread, and wine.  It was worth it.  So good!   And I could tell the locals like eating there, too.  Later last night, Bill and I went there for dinner and had a fantastic meal for 61 euros.

Bill had wild boar with potatoes and eggplant…

I had branzino, which was expertly prepared for me table side.  

No bones!  And delicious!

Naturally, we were talked into dessert…  This was some kind of sinful cream cake that Bill ordered.  Again, it was prepared table side.

And once again, I had creme brûlée.  It was prepared in the kitchen, probably because it involved fire.  Look closely at the picture and you can see that it was served flaming.

After dinner, limoncello… and it was delicious!  Look at Bill’s face!  Mine was also registering surprise at how good it was.

It was a successful stop… so successful that I had lunch there today.

 

I figured out that tipping is not a thing here.  The way things are organized in a lot of Italian restaurants, it kind of isn’t conducive to tipping, anyway.  It’s hard for me since I used to wait tables.  But anyway, I’m not gonna worry about it.  I’m just going to enjoy the food and wine.  If I can’t have a pretty view, I can have delicious lasagne, right?

Tonight, we will find somewhere else to have dinner.  But if we couldn’t, the hotel restaurant is pretty damn good.  One redeeming quality of this particular hotel.