EAT it!

So recently I came back from my dream trip to Italy. Ive wanted to go back here for about 14 yrs. For the sights but mainly because of the food!!!!
I was blown away the first time I went - maybe because I wasnt expecting much... Pasta is pasta right? .... Not that time! I was like what is this??!? Can I take it home with me?
(Yea I get pretty friendly fast when I fall in love with food . har har)

So maybe this time around I had higher expectations.... Maybe it was that old age saying - "absence makes the heart grow fonder" ... and we begin to imagine that things were really much better than they actually were..... (I can extrapolate more about this but Im sticking to the topic of food...)

Our first dinner in Italy was in Venice. We didnt look into any guide books for this - we were just hungry and assumed all food in Italy was the bomb.
So we went into here:

And I ordered this:

And it tasted like this:

Not that I ever ate cardboard boxes, but you get the idea. Oh and throw in some huge chunks of salt and maybe some sardine fishbones that go crunch in your mouth.

It was supposed to be Pesto pasta. I couldnt finish it - because half way through the meal, not only did it taste bad, but my imagination started to run as to what on earth was the crunchy stuff.
We were in shock. We didnt say much only because we arent Italian and they were and Italians are supposed to know their pasta right?! Who were we to critisize? I think they knew it tasted like crap - cause they never came around to asking us how it was, they kept giving us the sketchy eye look and gave us a free glass of wine in the end.

So we were definately apprehensive for every meal we ate after that - consulting guidebooks for even the quickest lunch. Luckily it got better the more south we went. Maybe tops in Sorrento. But I was always in search of that pasta I had 14 yrs ago. Even when I was full up to the tip of my head with pasta pasta pasta - I even had hope with my last dinner in Italy in Rome. Even ordering the simple Bolognese pasta. AcK! It tasted like egg noodles.
WTF?
So I left Italy gastronomically unsatisfied and oddly enough my search continues at home. I dont know why I hope so much. That someday I will find what I once had. Maybe I never really had it in the first place. Maybe after all these years it really only existed in my head. Ughh... what was I talkin about again?.... Oh yea - food ha.
Anyhow, this is all running through my head as I sit here during work on my break searching though Yelp.ca for Italian Restos and reading the reviews and salivating over the pictures. I cant believe Im still looking for that delicious pasta.
IM SO HUNGRY!