It is located at 495 Shirley St. which is the next street parallel to Winthrop Shore Drive and the Ocean.
The Romeos have now eaten at three restaurants in Winthrop all located near each other and the beach road. These restaurants are Rossetti, DePalma and now Alia all recommended by the Phantom Gourmet, our own Joe P.
However, Joe P. was not able to join us today since he had volunteered to help out at a ski clinic for War Veterans at Mt. Sunapee. What a guy! Joe is a busy man and one of the good guys. Since he was away skiing for the week I volunteered to pickup Steve W. in Belmont. Steve doesn’t drive now since he has developed vision problems but loves to join the group each month.
On my way to Steve’s house, I decided to test out two GPS devices and had both of them giving me voice directions on my way from my house in Wilmington to Steve’s house in Belmont. Of course there are several ways to get there, so there was a battle between my intuitive route and the two competing GPS units. I decided to intuitively take route 128 to Belmont and the GPS units soon redirected themselves so that we were all going in the same directions.
I recently bought a new Tom-Tom GPS for $55.00 at Amazon.Com and I am quite pleased with its accuracy. It is up to date and has life time maps. It also gives turn by turn directions down to hundreds of feet as you approach turns. It also announces the street names for those you are on and the upcoming turns.
I arrived at Steve’s earlier than planned but after a few minutes we were on our way from Belmont to Winthrop. I set the two GPS units and of course they wanted to go a different way than my intuition. I wanted to go Route 60 through Arlington, Medford and the Revere Beach Parkway near Suffolk Down and then along the beach road to Winthrop. However, being in Belmont and west of Boston, the GPS units want to go the Mass Pike to the Ted Williams Tunnel by Logan Airport, East Boston and then Winthrop.
After fighting with my intuition, Steve’s knowledge of the back roads of Belmont and the two GPS units we ended up on Broadway Somerville then through Medford and to the Revere Beach Parkway. The GPS units soon caught up with my way and were quite accurate afterwards. We arrived early at the restaurant and parked the car in a 2 hour lot next door. We decided to sit inside the restaurant but the door was locked and it was dark inside as I peaked through the window. Steve and I wondered whether the restaurant was closed or we had the wrong day.
In a short time others arrived and the restaurant door was open. We were the first customers and after talking with the owner we learned that there were very few afternoon patrons but quite busy at night. The owner/waiter was Moroccan (Muslim) and married to an Italian (Catholic) and had two young children. The youngest was having an upcoming Christening. The world is getting to be more of a melting pot each day. Those Romeos in attendance were Joe Lapiana, Steve Winter, Paul Girard, Ed DeSchuytner, Mike Zapantis, Mark Ryan and Jim Terlizzi.
Since the restaurant did not serve alcohol we all brought our own (BYOB). The owner/waiter soon opened them and set wine glasses all around. We poured the wine and toasted a good life. The waiter then brought hot bread and olive oil dipping sauce. We ordered two Italian Pupu Platters Appetizers for the table which consisted of calamari, eggplant and shrimp. The appetizers were quite tasty and the calamari done just right. We then each ordered a main entrée which was about $12.95 and consisted of either, ziti-broccoli and chicken, veal piccata, shrimp scampi and spaghetti. The meal came quickly and was very good.
The conversation was lively and bounced around the table. It was mostly politics as we discussed the Republican debates and the results of caucus voting in Iowa and New Hampshire. We all agreed that the dirt slinging amongst the republican candidates kept it away from Obama and the democrats. Jim T. reminded us all that it was Bush who started the Bank Bailouts and later was continued by Obama and sanctioned by world economists. Jim also said of all the billions borrowed, most has been paid back.
Mike then said he had given an iPod to his son for Christmas and was surprised at how it can also be used as a phone over Wi-Fi. We also talked about a bunch of other APPS with Joe Lapiana. Paul Girard recently bought an iPhone which has the same APPS as the iPod and he is having fun with this new gadget.
Mike was also curious about reading and sending PDF documents. Joe Lapiana then said you needed to use Adobe Acrobat Creator to create them which costs several hundred dollars. However, Adobe Reader is a free download and can be used to open and read PDFs sent by email.
I still use Word 2003 which has no PDF options but Word 2007 and 2010 do allow you to convert Word to PDF but not PDF to Word. To do this you need to buy Adobe Acrobat. However, there is a free open source program that you can download called OpenOffice.Org which easily makes the conversions. You can see info about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org . You can also see a discussion of other conversions at the link http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/converting .
The discussion then changed to trips where Jim is planning a trip to Santa Barbara, CA and some skiing in Tahoe. Joe Lapiana is also planning another river cruise in Europe. We will hear more about this later. The discussion then went to past book reps from Holt and Pearson with various names thrown around. We also talked about the old Addison Wesley building off rte 128 and rte 28 in Stoneham which has been demolished for redevelopment.
Ed D. then told us that he bought several Hillary Clinton Nutcrackers on eBay cheap and resold them for more money. He then went out to his car and brought in a sample. We all laughed at the Nutcracker and the hilarious sayings that went with the package regarding Bill Clinton.
I then went back to my car and brought in some hand painted decorative signs that I had made and advertised on eBay and my website MarksCrafts.Com. Ed saw the website and his wife bought a few signs which I gave him at the lunch. I also passed around a booklet showing some photos of my signs.
Joe Lapiana then talked about his JP role and said the demand for private weddings was down. However, he is now an Ordained Minister and is able to perform marriages out of state and is registered at the World Christianship Ministries http://www.wcm.org/?gclid=CJKpx_3cy60CFaIRNAodJTlhgg .
We then ordered coffee and some Tiramisu and talked with the owner about cappuccino. He said he didn't offer cappaccino since a real cappaccino machine would cost him about $4000 and was not worth the investment for him. We then talked about the next lunch and decided on Feb.21, 2012 at a restaurant in Beverly. Jim T. will email us all with details.
You can see some photos of the lunch at ……….. https://picasaweb.google.com/108806068200291783388/Romeo11112?authuser=0&feat=directlink
Comments always welcome … markryan82@comcast.net
