Gayle Brennan Spencer – sending random thoughts to and from South Austin
Above: Frascoli Bacaro
Let’s start with a bacaro. A bacaro is a food stop offering cicchetti with wine where it’s perfectly acceptable to stand around chatting while consuming both.
Cicchetti? Think tapas or pinxtos. A wonderful social concept, but I really prefer to consume a pleasant lunch sitting down. And the bacaros we sampled in Padua met that desire well.
Continue reading “Postcard from Padua, Italy: Pairing vini and cicchetti”
Above: Night-blooming cereus, or Queen of the Night, in the garden of La Casa de los Ladrillos
Late this past summer in Queretaro, shimmering jade-green pendants ringed with golden beads clung to patio walls of a casa particular where we stayed with a friend. Gleaming gems sheer enough to reveal the treasures growing within – golden wings emerging to flutter and feast on flowers before joining the millions migrating to nearby Michoacan.
Continue reading “Postcard from Queretaro, Mexico: Queen of the night, monarch gems and more”
Above: Dancers swirl around Plaza de Santiago in Casco Viejo on a fall night.
There is no nightlife in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not nightlife. That is delaying the day.”
Ernest Hemingway
Better leave it to Ernest Hemingway to explain Spain’s nocturnal habits, for I rarely witness late nights outside our home in South Austin or apartments when we travel. That’s why it was particularly pleasurable for the Basques of Bilbao to bring the party to a plaza directly under our balcony. If they did indeed stay up late, they were polite enough to pack up the accordions and finish the celebration elsewhere.
Below represents a random unpacking of snapshots from our stay in Bilbao – a city resuscitated by the reclamation of its riverfront from its industrial past and a bold, massive investment in art.
Postcards from Barton Springs 