Breakfast at the gas station

The Adriatic Sea. Photo by Katie Botkin.

A Letter from Katie Botkin in Rome:

Fatma arrives shortly after 6:30 for our trip to the islands and Alex proclaims gleefully that we have time to get breakfast. He stops at a gas station on the way south, which surprises me slightly, but I think, OK, I can make do with gas station food.

Apparently, however, gas station food in Italy is a bit different, because there’s a nice little bakery-café inside, where I eat the first sfogliatella of my life, along with a demitasse of excellent cappuccino. The sfogliatella is a multi-layered pastry shell filled with ricotta, and is mildly sweet. I wonder why I haven’t eaten these before — other than the fact that I’ve never seen them for sale anywhere that I remember. Then we continue our drive along the coast of the Adriatic for another hour, all the way to Termoli, where we buy tickets for the ferry to the archipelago of the Tremiti islands.