Sicily - late March

Emilia-Romagna - early April

Ferrara Intro

Apartment

Museums

Rossetti

Eating!

Ravenna Hills 1

Ravenna Hills 2

Faenza

Tuscany, Florence - April 8

Umbria - late April

Trips into the Hills - Food Festival, Outdoor Paintings and a Parade

Brisighella's skyline is dominated by three rocky pinnacles, two of them capped with military and religious buildings from the late 13th century. On one is "La Rocca." Almost any city in central Italy that has a hill, has such a tower/citadel. This one was finished in 1310 and is quite striking. Another peak has a lovely clock tower built in 1290 (and I can't resist the opportunity to say that it is quite striking, too). On the third, a sanctuary from the 17th century. This is a particularly interesting area geologically with an open-air museum in an old quarry, healthful mineral water spa opportunities and veins of chalk all around. Since Cindy didn't know I was interested, she didn't plan any time for that. Maybe next time.

This time, we listened to the (no adjective out of appreciation for their hospitality, well, it was certainly local) entertainment and wandered up and down about 20 food and craft booths of the food fair, sampling lots of things: some of them fruit curds (lemon, strawberry, raspberry, delicious!); many of them cheeses (also delicious!); but most of them pig. Now, as a girl with heritage both in Indiana and South Dakota, I never thought I would say I had had enough pig. But it was:

Pig fat spiced
Pig fat cured
Pig fat straight up
Not shaken or stirred.

After all the pig fat tasting I concentrated on the wine for a while. At the same time, Dawn was ingratiating herself with the event organizers. Results later.

First, the "local lunch and wine-tasting." We were escorted to the local enoteca--wine (and everything else) seller. A table and chairs, salami, pecorino nero, a sheeps' milk cheese, which I found out later is called "nero," black, not only because of the black outer coating, but because it is made exclusively from the milk of black-faced ewes. Also, bread, olive oil (from Sre Ossani), and red wine--all we could eat and drink, while the other tourists (not very many) looked on jealously. Everything was marvelous, of course. After we were thoroughly sated, the charming proprietors brought out cookies and Ambra Passito, an amber-colored dessert wine, which is apparently made from raisins. THEN, the digestif, acquavite de uvo--STRONG liqueur made from olives, tastes like fire. Don't drink it.

Before they rolled us out of there, we bought a few things. I bought a kilo of salt, for example, and had to haul it around for weeks. I think Dawn sensibly bought linens. Then we went back to the booths to buy fruit curd and wine. The old farmer (well attractively Italian and about my age) who had let me taste a lot of wine was delighted at my return to make an honest man of him. I picked out one bottle for four euros. He was so pleased he gave me another one free AND tried to give me change for my five-euro bill. AND I got a kiss. This was my first experience with the Italian double cheek kiss--which can be great or very perfunctory. This set was great! In all the excitement I forgot to take his picture. Probably had a nice wife at home stomping the grapes anyway.

Meanwhile, Dawn was charming the event-organizers into selling us aprons commemorating the pig-meat contest (in Italian, of course)--Congrega Del Buon Salame. She tried to pay 10 euros a piece, but they would only take five. So now we have aprons from the Brisighella pig-fat festival. It's important to know that, in addition to the black-faced ewes for cheese, the Brisghella salami-makers favor black pigs. And showed videos of the very pigs you were eating at that moment. A more intimate relationship than most of us are used to with our food. But a nice idea I thought. (I have enhanced the lower right corner of this photo a bit so you can see the pigs. What they're doing with these videos is proving that their pigs are free-range and the epitome of a lean, athletic pig. In post-trip research, I found this page about black Italian pigs. This particular batch of pigs live in the region of Abruzzo, but I'm pretty sure it's the same breed in Brisighella.)

After Brisighella, we thought we had our money's worth, but Cindy wanted to take us to see Dozza, because she had promised. Well, Dozza is about the cutest village you can imagine. It wanders up and down on the top of a mountain, has incredible views, wisterias with 8 inch diameter vines, one of the official regional wine cellars of Italy in the basement of the15th century "La Rocca," (which was just closing because we spent so long at the fair). And one other defining characteristic. Every year they hold an art contest and the winner gets to paint/stencil/whatever their entry on some wall in the town. It's a town of modern art on ancient houses. Fantastic!

At this point, we were tired and thoroughly satisfied, so Cindy and Danilo dropped us at a rail stop and we chugged on home.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. When we took off for this trip in the morning, walking down the street to the rail station, there was a parade! It was Sunday morning, so we think the parade was likely associated with a church festival of some sort. But it was basically a procession of lovely young people, some of them musicians, all of them dressed in medieval garb, just passing regally for the peasants to cheer. Which we dutifully did. Coming home after dark, we got a little bit lost, but not too bad and there was no parade. But we got home safely with our purchases and fell into a satisfied sleep, sending grateful thanks to Cindy and Danilo and all of the wonderful folks in Brisighella.

p.s. I have made a slide show of the Dozza art and the Ferrara parade, but haven't figured out yet how to get them onto my website. So you can view them at the Kodak Gallery Gallery site. Here are the links:

Dozza Art (here is the official contest site, only in Italian)

Ferrara Parade