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: “I Wonder if Iolanda (a Portuguese singer) Ever Notices Me…”
Oh dear, my posts truly lag behind our trips. The first installment of this appeared here more than a year ago. Trying to play catch up, and street art is meant to be viewed without explanatory words anyway.
Continue reading “Postcard from Palermo, Sicily: Street art stands on its own”
Above: Statue of Saint Agatha, affectionately known as Santuzza, in front of the Basilica di Sant’Agata in Catania
I wanted to do a “birthday” post for Saint Agatha (231?-251?), but recent world news knocked the wind out of my sails to the point I felt unable to complete it last night. But that’s not fair to Santuzza on her feast day, February 5.
Saint Agatha can’t be expected to solve all the world’s problems. The faithful turn to her for intercession so often; she already has a lot on her hands. The Sicilian martyr serves as the patron saint of victims of breast cancer or rape, and of wet nurses, firefighters, workers in bell foundries and bakers. Plus, Sicilians offer prayers to the Catania native for safety from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions of Mount Etna. The virgin martyr also is the patron saint of both Palermo and Catania in Sicily.
Continue reading “Postcard from Catania, Sicily: Path to sainthood painful, but it’s Santuzza’s day”
Postcards from Barton Springs 