Trattoria Locanda il Porticciolo

After the hike, we had all worked up quite an appetite. So, we decided to enter the main "center" of Manarola and pick a place to eat. The jolly pink wall color of Trattoria Locanda il Porticciolo drew us in and the seafood made us never forget it. In fact, we still talk about how amazing this meal was and I count it as one of the best I've had while abroad.

An interior shot of the happy, but simple Trattoria. 

The back wall was cute. 

It started off with a spritz. The orange drink contains prosecco, aperol, and soda water. As we had seen it in almost every town so far (and as we had heard that it's the drink of choice among locals), we decided to give it a shot. Personally, I was not a huge fan, but two of my friends were. To each his own, I guess.

Spritz!

After chowing down on some lackluster bread (the lack of salt in bread here is somewhat unfortunate), the main even arrived: seafood pasta.

I've been taking a kind of "go big or go home" approach to food here and breaking out of my picky/scared eater shell. At this point I only knew that I liked shrimp and fried calamari (and langoustines from Venice)...but I dared to order the seafood pasta and oh what a marvelous choice it was. It had octopus (mini-sized with all the legs still attached), clams, mussels, shrimp, and non-fried squid. Add whatever butter sauce was on it and you have heaven. Yum.