Verona ... Food Festival....Mangiamo!!!

This is one of the things I love about Italy, when you unexpectedly find a festival (large or small) in a town you are traveling through.   The vast majority of the time; it is in celebration of food!!!

Here in Verona - this weekend - is Le Piazze dei Sapori.





Piazze dei Sapori has for 13 years brought to Verona local food products from all over the country.  From 10am to midnight over 100 stalls of carefully selected producers come to Verona to represent all the regions of Italy.  Doc, Docg, Doc, Bio and lgp certified products can be found along with more unusual and lesser known, to awaken the taste buds and discover traditions from further afield.  (taken from their flier)

Seeing the old with the new!

And ... after a sudden downpour when you are about to go out for dinner ... what's a girl to do????  Make a picnic out of some of the samples you bought at the festival of course!!!  Not a thing wrong with that!

Last Thoughts of Venice

 If you have never been to Venice, just a warning; you have to get beyond this (picture on the left), as well as the hoards of people with their selfie sticks, the street gypsies selling selfie sticks and the ever present coming and going of people with luggage to really enjoy Venice and see the beautiful parts of it.   Be patient, during the day go to the more unknown area of Venice and you will find more peaceful piazzas and canals, one just as beautiful as the next.

Here is an example .. we were walking to the Jewish Ghetto, stopped to take a picture of this canal (since there weren't many people) .. and we suddenly hear a scream and a splash.  A teenage girl fell into the canal on the right side of the bridge you see here.  She was fine, but the gondoliers were quick to go over and check on her.

Evenings are wonderful.  The hoards of tourists from cruise ships and trains have left and only the residents and people staying in Venice remain.

The famous Florian Bar/Caffe - which is responsible for my
love of coffee!!

 

Rialto Market - Venice

Just beyond the famous Rialto Bridge is a more colorful and equally as beautiful site - especially for those who love food;  the vegetable, fruit and fish market.  Since 1097, Venetians have used this market for their daily supply of needs for their cooking.

Enjoyable to visit and to watch as local women shop as well as chefs from local restaurants pick up their "catch of the day".

A face only a Mother could love!!

Italian Fish Monger ... with a Bronx Zoo hat!!

Portable fruit and vegetable market on a canal in another area of Venice

Canals of Venice

There are one hundred seventy seven canals in Venice.  This day started early enjoying the view from the Rialto bridge before the crowds arrived and ended further down the grand canal over the Academy Bridge with enjoyable views of many of the smaller canals in between.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Breathtakingly Beautiful Bright and Bold Burano !!!

The Venetian Jewish Ghetto

Made famous by Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, this area of Venice is where all Jews were forced to live from the 16th to 18th century.  As a result of this isolation the word "ghetto" was soon used throughout Europe for neighborhoods of isolated minority groups.  The arrival of Napoleon in 1797 resulted in the disbandment of the ghetto.

Campo di Ghetto Nuovo

During the Holocaust, the Nazi's gathered Jews for deportation in this square.  On this wall are bronze reliefs by Arbit Blatas that show the Nazi brutality against the Jews.

 

"David's Shop" a store on the square that sold glass figurines made on the Island of Murano

A lovely window on the side of another shop in this area of Venice.

Cattedrale del Movimento - The Beautiful Milan Central Train Station

Ulisse Stacchini, the Rome architect who in 1812 won the national competition to design the city's first main railway station, called this train station the "Cattedrale del Movemento" -- Cathedral of Movement.

 Filled with beautiful architecture and detail which moves your eye from place to place, while around you people are moving, walking, running to and from trains which move people in and out of the city or to Milan as a crossing station to another place.

72 meters is the span of this main arch ... the largest ever constructed in Italy