Everywhere the same

The smells were incredible all evening as we ate dinner at a small Italian restaurant in a quaint area called Aurelia, outside of Rome. Everyone eats outside in the summer in the garden, and they always eat dinner late, so it was a little after 10 p.m. when we were just finishing our meal. Across the street from the restaurant was a bakery that was in full swing. They were making pastries and baked goods to be sold all over the city the next day. No wonder it smelled extra good in the garden that night as we ate dinner.

As we waited for a taxi, my youngest son and I kept seeing people going up to the open side door of the bakery, where we could see a baker working. Each time the people would leave with a white paper sack and smiling like they just hit the jackpot. My son and I finally decided that we had to see what all these people were doing. It smelled absolutely fabulous, so we ventured over to the side door. It had long plastic strips hanging in the door and you could feel the heat. But what we saw was incredible. Trays and trays of fresh out of the oven croissants, and the baker was putting icing on them. He didn't see us as we stood in the doorway sniffing the aroma.

We don't speak Italian, and we weren't sure how many euros we had, so we left the bakery to see if our taxi had come back out at the curb. No taxi was in sight, but another woman had come and left with a white paper sack again. That was all it took. He and I counted our money and figured that sign language might work, and we headed back to the side bakery door. The smell was intoxicating.

We finally got the baker's attention and asked for three croissants. All he said that we understood was "cream or chocolate," and we smiled big and said chocolate. He motioned for two euros, and there we were with our white sack filled with yummy smelling treats leaving the bakery on a sleepy little street.

My husband was still waiting for the taxi, and was wondering what in the world we'd been doing going back and forth across the street. We just opened the bag and he took a whiff. I mean, fresh out of the oven, European chocolate, and they were just iced, what could be better?

He laughed and said, "when are we eating them?" We told him as soon as we got to the hotel, and just then, the taxi arrived and whisked us away to the hotel.

In our hotel room at 11 at night, we ate the best chocolate croissants I've ever had. My husband laughed, because so much for our healthy lifestyle choices. I told him, every once in a while you have to break the rules for such a treat. He said we had been breaking our eating rules this whole vacation, and he was definitely right. We had not exactly been following our healthy lifestyle habits while on our holiday. I mean, who can turn down homemade pasta with homemade sauce at 8:30 at night? And there was gelato on every corner, and it's the best I've ever tasted. And what about the Parma ham, Parmesan cheese, capresse, red wine and pastries every morning for breakfast? I would say we indulged.

But the thing that was so amazing is that we gained no weight while we were gone, and guess why? We walked everywhere. One day in Rome we walked over 10 miles. Another day eight miles. We climbed every flight of stairs in our hotels, and walked to the beach instead of driving. It's amazing how good we felt. Good food and lots of exercise, fresh air and good conversation, there's nothing better in life than that.

So go ahead and have a treat, it's summer vacation, but just remember to add on some extra exercise to keep the calorie count at bay. You see, it's the same all over the world, it takes work and planning to make healthy lifestyle choices no matter where you live, whether on vacation or not.

Sheree DiBiase, PT, is the owner of Lake City Physical Therapy, and she and her staff can be reached in their Coeur d'Alene office at (208) 667-1988, and in their Spokane Valley office at (509) 891-2623. If anyone has a good chocolate croissant recipe to share, please let me know. Sometimes we all need a special treat.