Category: italy

Postcard from Catania, Sicily: Where’s the cannoli?

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Alt text for clams and mussels with orecchiette in pumpkin sauce.

Above: Clams and mussels with oricchiette in pumpkin sauce at Trattoria da Antonio

Loosen your belt because I’m squeezing our reviews of meals we consumed in Catania into one post. Alas, no more than one cannolo though.

The alphabetical list starts out with Bat il Trattore. Tucked away in the Monserrato neighborhood where few tourists would ever stumble upon it, we were the only customers on the simple backdoor patio who were not longtime acquaintances of the mom-and-pop owners. But they made us feel welcome.

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Postcard from Padua, Italy: Pairing vini and cicchetti

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A colorful Italian postage stamp featuring a bottle pouring wine into a glass surrounded by grapevines.

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.

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Postcard from Palermo, Sicily: Street art stands on its own

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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.

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