My week in Italy

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After my week in Austria, I took a flight to Venice where I stayed one night before heading north to Bassano del Grappa. I stayed two nights in Bassano where I met up with Paolo. I had met Paolo back in Ireland and after explaining my upcoming travels, he invited me to his home town when I was in Italy. So I decided to take him up on the offer and I’m sure glad I did! He showed me around town and then took me to Marostica, a nearby village with a big castle on the hill with the castle walls extending down the vertical slope to encompass the town below! This town is also known for the live chess game where actual people are the chess pieces! Everyone dresses up to watch the match unfold underneath the stars. I think it would be a lot of fun to watch this sometime. Hmmm, perhaps when I come back to Italy! For lunch Paolo invited me to his house where we had a feast of a lunch with his dad and little brother. For our first course we had a delicious rice risotto with bacon, chicory and spices! That was followed by thin slices of chicken and beans. This was all washed down with spritzer, similar to carbonized wine, and red wine. WOW, it was delicious! It was great to have a home cooked meal and I had a lot of fun sitting around the table like I was part of the family! I was pretty excited because I could somewhat understand Italian since it shares a few common words with Spanish. After lunch Paolo and I headed to a nearby park and threw the Frisbee for a couple hours. It was fantastic!! I hadn’t played with the Frisbee since Conor left Ireland. We had a lot of fun making crazy catches and trying not to hit the little kids that kept trying to grab the Frisbee as it flew over their heads. Later that night I walked back to Paolo’s house and had dinner with his family again. Since I had not tried a real Italian pizza, they ordered a giant one with four different toppings. Again, it was delicious! After dinner his dad pulled out all his different homemade grappa and liquor. I tried a walnut liquor, limoncello- a sweet lemon liquor, traditional grappa, and blueberry grappa. I have to say that the grappa was pretty strong but my favorite was the limoncello! I had a wonderful two days in Bassano hanging out with Paolo and his family. It’s always nice to be back in a home environment when you’re traveling on the road for months on end. His family was so nice and hospitable and now every time I think of Italy I always think of the friendly people and delicious food.
After Bassano I headed back to Venice where I stayed for two more days. I met a group of Californian girls (one mother, two daughters, one friend, and one aunt) who I had a blast with walking around Venice. We took a gondola ride through the canals, treated ourselves to some delicious gelato, ate at the outdoor restaurants, and laughed our way across Venice. I really enjoyed my days in Venice! At this point in my travels I was a bit fed up with big cities, since that’s all I had been to since leaving Ireland. But Venice is different because there are NO cars, none! The city is actually an island so there are only the gondolas with the occasional motorboat used for transportation. The ‘streets’ are often very narrow and wind in all different directions. It was quite easy to get lost there, but just look for the arrows painted onto the sides of buildings showing the way back to the major tourist attractions. I had a great time wandering the narrow streets then suddenly walking out into a huge square filled with pigeons and a few people. Gelato stands were everywhere and so cheap! Overall I LOVED Italy and I know someday I will have to come back and see more of it!

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Photos

Marostica
The giant chess board and the castle up on the hill.