An evening with the Italian cousins

My cousin Milito and his son Davide came to pick us up at "La Casetta Rossa" (the little red house) - the place that we rented for the night. Even though my cousin has lived in Genoa his entire life, he had never been to this neighborhood - you have to park your car and walk down a winding narrow pedestrian-only walkway to reach the house. Milito and I hadn't seen each other in 30 years and our sons had never met. They took us to the apartment of another cousin in a distant part of Genoa where we had an incredible evening with them - there was very little English spoken with lots of Italian and a little Genovese dialect, but that didn't really hinder the conversation (actually about three overlapping conversations at any given time). The menu included casalinga (home cooked) cured anchovies and tuna, mushrooms, pasta al pesto, roast beef, an ice cream pie, wine, espresso, and grappa. We were totally stuffed before we had the dessert but our hosts explained that consuming ice cream wasn't really considered eating here in Italy but merely "refreshing of one's mouth". We look forward to both refreshing our mouths and cajoling them (our mouths) to speak Italian with another set of cousins tonight.