Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!

It's Snowing Somwhere . . .

So we still have no snow here in my neck of the woods yet Italy was blanketed with snow on Friday and Saturday.  This Youtube video shows some pictures of lovely Florence with a blanket of snow.

Ahhhhh Florence . . . lovely!

Photo Hunt - Curved

This week's Photo Hunt theme is curved. This once is hard because there are literally 100s of photos to chose from - curved roads, rivers, art, people . . .

In the end I went with one of my favourite curved buildings:

This is the interior of the famed Pantheon in Rome looking up to the oculus.

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Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere  
   

Photo Hunt - Music

This week's Photo Hunt theme is Music. Immediately I remembered that magical night two years ago when we stayed in Montisi, Italy with our good friends. Gail, of Gail's Great Escapes, rents a gorgeous villa in a dream location, and puts together a brilliant week of food, wine, history, art, and fun. One of the very fun activities is the Thursday night party. This event is memorable because it features amazing food, flowing vino, and live music preformed by local artist Liz Cochrane and Pino Teresi (who also serves as tour guide during the week).

Here Liz is in the background and the microphone has been taken by none other than Gail herself. Our friend Sandi sings back up chorus while Pino strums his guitar.

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere 
   

Photo Hunt - Twisted

This week's Photo Hunt theme is "twisted".  once again I traveled back to Italy for the inspiration for this week's theme. Venice to be precise and the lovely palazzo Scala contarini del Bovolo. This wonderful, and unusual, outdoor spiral staircase seemed to call out for this theme!

The Scala Contarini del Bovolo (also called Palazzo Contarini Minelli dal Bovolo) is a small palace in Venice. It is hidden away in an obscure little alley known as the Calle della Vida, near the Campo Manin, and was the palace of Contarini family.

The original structure was designed by Giovanni Candi in 1499. The main attraction of this palace is an elegant spiral staircase with a plethora of arches.

The family hired a second architect, Giorgio Spavento, to add the staircase to the original structure. The spiral is often compared to the snail’s shell (bovolo) and hence the palace got its name as “snail house”.

There are two small courtyards and several wellheads at the base of the tower.
Many of the wellheads belong to previous structures and are far older than the palace although one bears the Contarini family coat-of-arms and was probably added at the time of the palace’s construction.

Architectural elements of the first Renaissance merge to the building techniques Gothic-Byzantine, producing a harmony of forms, with a typical Venetian character, in a monument that is unique in its type.
From the dome of the belvedere it is possible to get a splendid and unusual panoramic view of Venice: the roofs, the bell towers, the domes of Saint Mark. It is, no doubt, a privileged observation point over the city

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere

National Chicken Wing Festival

One of the many things we adore about Italy is the sagra. A sagra is a local fair, usually a celebration of the bounties of the earth--meaning food, as in a preparation (sagra di torta di erbe) or a raw ingredient (sagra di pesce [fish]).

Attending a sagra is a way to get a taste of Italian country life. You order food to be cooked by locals with a passion for the local cuisine, then sit at communal tables to eat. Often there is music or some other sort of performance.

On the weekend we attended a sagra of a different sort - one where more than 30-tons of chicken wings were fried to a crisp, sauced, and served up to sweating fans.

The Buffalo, NY event stretches back to 1992, when Wing King Drew Cerza was inspired to start it by Bill Murray's junk food addicted character in "Osmosis Jones." Over the years, it's grown from a small competitive eating spectacle to a full-blown convention--hosting over 400,000 total people, generating over $125,000 for New York charities, and even serving as the site of a wedding.

God help me.

Buffalo Wing Festival organizers are fond of describing the spectrum of sauces as stretching from the mild to the suicidal, with dozens upon dozens of stands serving their specialties. The "Official Wing Sauce of the National Buffalo Wing Festival," Frank's RedHot, will be given away from a booth at the festival. There are also a variety of eating contests, including one that involves bobbing for chicken wings in a vat of blue cheese.

I am sad that I missed that display of excess.

Once you get inside ($ 5 entrance fee) food tickets are $1 each, with two tickets entitling you to 3 chicken wings. Soda and bottled water can be purchased for cash, as can beer.

We tried wings from a variety of vendors - discovering that a medium sauce at one booth was flaming hot at the next. We enjoyed the chicken wing aracini (an aracini is a fried rice ball stuffed with cheese - these were stuffed with bits of chicken wings). We also had some of the famous chicken wing mac and cheese.

If this wasn't enough Paul OD'd on peanut butter pie and ice cream.

How was it?

You could smell the grease as soon as you exited the highway. It was HOT. It was crowded. It was loud. There were people wearing huge hats shaped like chicken wings. It was brash.

 I was a wee bit shocked by the excess.

Sadly, the wings were mediocre - in fact, had we wanted to we could have had far better wings by going to Duffs. The worst wings we tried were from the Anchor Bar - BLECH

I can now say I've attended the National Chicken Wing Festival.

I'd far rather have been sitting around a communal table in a small Tuscan village toasting the local specialty under the stars.

Photo Hunt - Surprise

This week's Photo Hunt theme is "surprise".  This was a tough one at first - and then I remembered a statue from the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice. It is located in Peggy Guggenheim's former home, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice. The museum was inaugurated in 1980 and presents Peggy Guggenheim's personal collection of 20th century art, masterpieces from the Gianni Mattioli Collection, the Nasher Sculpture Garden, as well as temporary exhibitions.

We first noticed the statue as we cruised by on the Grand Canal. The rider sits astride his horse, arms wide open, taking in the stunning glory of Venice. It is when you get up closer that you notice the 'surprise':

It is perhaps the museums most famous (or notorious) exhibit. The 1948 bronze is called "The Angel of the City" and was cast by by Marino Marini. It is rumoured that this nude and clearly excited horse rider was originally possessed of a screw-in penis so that it could be removed in order to avoid offending passing VIPs. So many of the bronze phalluses were stolen (although this may be an urban myth), that the current member has been welded to the Angel's body.

Mom was most amused by the statue and insisted upon having her picture taken whilst standing next to it - much to our embarrassment!

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere

 

This week's Photo Hunt theme is "surprise".  This was a tough one at first - and then I remembered a statue from the Peggy Guggenheim museum in Venice. It is located in Peggy Guggenheim's former home, Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, on the Grand Canal in Venice. The museum was inaugurated in 1980 and presents Peggy Guggenheim's personal collection of 20th century art, masterpieces from the Gianni Mattioli Collection, the Nasher Sculpture Garden, as well as temporary exhibitions.

We first noticed the statue as we cruised by on the Grand Canal. The rider sits astride his horse, arms wide open, taking in the stunning glory of Venice. It is when you get up closer that you notice the 'surprise':

It is perhaps the museums most famous (or notorious) exhibit. The 1948 bronze is called "The Angel of the City" and was cast by by Marino Marini. It is rumoured that this nude and clearly excited horse rider was originally possessed of a screw-in penis so that it could be removed in order to avoid offending passing VIPs. So many of the bronze phalluses were stolen (although this may be an urban myth), that the current member has been welded to the Angel's body.

Mom was most amused by the statue and insisted upon having her picture taken whilst standing next to it - much to our embarrassment!

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere

 

Photo Hunt - Artificial

This week's Photo Hunt theme is "artificial".  My mind immediately went to pics from our trip to Torino, Italy last year. Not because of anything artificial about the city itself but because there were a couple of times where things were not what they seemed to be.

The first when we were in the famous outdoor market. The market place in Piazza Repubblica, also known as Porta Palazzo, is the largest outdoor market in Europe and one of the largets in the world. You really can find anything there! We saw this vendor selling flowers and thought that they colours were beautiful.

When we got closer we realized that they were all artificial!

The second thing that jumps out in my mind was when we visited the Renaissance-style cathedral of San Giovanni Battista (1498), with the brilliantly original Santa Sindone Chapel (1694) by Guarini, houses the Shroud of Turin, a piece of linen long thought to be the burial garment of Jesus. The cathedral and chapel were severely damaged by a fire in April 1997 and underwent major restoration work. Of course, as with all restoration work in Italy, it NEVER seems to end.

You might think that you are looking at the chapel - you are not! When we got closer we realized thta this was just a big painted screen with the restoration still underway behind it . . .

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere

Photo Hunt - Entertainment

This week's Photo Hunt theme is "entertainment".  This week's shot is from our trip to Italy in 2008. We were in Torino and had gone to what must be one of the funkiest museums in the world - the Cinema museum. As we left we stumbled into the midst of this real-live movie shoot . . .

It was cool to watch future enterainment being created.

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere

Photo Hunt - Utensils

This week's Photo Hunt theme is "utensils". Hmmmm. Nothing came to mind immediately fro this theme. I was worried that I might have to 'stage' a picture - the shame!

Then better minds took over and I was reminded of a day we spent in Montepulciano on our last trip to Italy. One of the shops that we visited was this amazing copper shop:

Later in the morning, as we walked up, up, and up through the town, our guide took us to meet the master craftsman who designs and creates this incredible work. This workshop and tools have been in Caesar's family for generations.

Here is Caesar working on a new piece:

 Look how fast his hands move . . .

 WOW - he clearly knows how to use the tools of his trade! I got dizzy just watching him in action.

If you want to know more about our incredible week in Tuscany check out the web page of our tour leader(Gail Hecko): Gail's Great Escapes. I guarantee that you will have a great trip with Gail.

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere

Photo Hunt - Garbage

This week's Photo Hunt theme is "garbage". I was tempted to take a walk when I was at work last week and take a picture of piles of stinking garbage (the garbage workers in Toronto are currently on strike) but In the end I went with this one:

Now before you before you jump to the conclusion that I have lost it . . .

This is the Roman ampitheatre that was built in 1 BC outside the walls of Volterra. It is located 100s of feet below the town walls. When the Roman Empire fell and this theatre was no longer being used the people found thatthis was a convenient spot for them to dump their trash. It was convenient to just tip it over the walls.

Over time the garbage built up and completely covered the structure underneath - where it lay for 1500 years. Finally in the 1950s the ancient garbage was excavated and the ruins were unearthed. So there you have it - ancient ruins protected by garbage!

Lots of the slow travel  community members also photo hunt when they aren't traveling. You can find their posts by clicking the links below. 

• Old Shoes, New Trip
• Eden's Wanderings and Wonderings
• My Place in the Sun
• Churches in Venice – Mosaics, Marble, and Miracle-Working Madonnas
• Palmabella's Passions
• What I Really Think
• shave Ice and Gelato
• Jerry's Thoughts, Musings, and Rants!
• Keep your Feet in the Street
• Baked Alaska
• That's my story...and I'm stickin' to it!
• Postcards from the Trail
• Cooking at the Whistlestop Cafe
• Candi's Corner
• Trekcapri's Blog
• Destination Anywhere