Fumane Cave: Neanderthal site

We drove up the valley one over from Negrar to visit an ongoing archaeological site where they’ve found both Neanderthal and Homo sapien artifacts. Grotta di Fumane. The tour was led by a graduate student who was writing her PhD on the site. The cave has been used by humans going back around 100,000 years. There was about 1000 years worth of time between the two species, so they never overlapped. It was pretty cool to see the layers. We saw a couple bones sticking out.
There was a Trattoria near the cave. We spied on the family before us to see what they ordered. The bartender poured some green stuff in a glass and added mineral water—apparently Italian sodas really are a thing here!—and she went into the back to cut some slices off a long brown thing. When she served it to the family I realized it was chocolate salami. A firm chocolate paste with little pieces of cookie in it. Anyway, we copied them. Annika had her first Italian soda. She tried it mixed with sparkling mineral water and natural. Turns out she’s not into sparkles with the mint.
On the way home to make dinner we stopped for gelato. We managed to get mom to get a flavor other than lemon.Read more