Stiamo godendo Italia!

We are enjoying Italy!!

We got off to a rocky, or should I say curb-y start.  The ankle is healing very well, thanks for all the well wishes!  Italy is definitely a walking country, so my explorations have been somewhat limited, but what I have seen, I love.

Italians are very friendly and helpful people.  Something to remember in the good ole USA, be friendly to people!  

Piazza dei Signori

We were able to take the bus to downtown Vicenza.....when I say gorgeous, it doesn't even begin to describe it.  It is like a whole, history, art, architecture class in one viewing.  There are so many beautiful things to see, it is hard to know where to look.  The streets are cobblestone, so it was important for me to watch where I was walking, literally!  But, it was breathtaking.

Basilica Palladiana - with a bit of photo editor fun!

Teatro Olimpico

We really only skimmed the surface with our 1st visit.  There is so much to see; we only viewed the outsides of all of this gorgeous architecture of Palladio. Here is a quick wikipedia link, if you don't know who he is....if you've seen a palladium window, thank Palladio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Palladio.   We will definitely take a longer sightseeing tour soon.  

Practically every 100 m, there is a gelateria.  Yes, that means gelato!!  Oh and most of them are also bars....awesome!  I was introduced to my first Italian gelato - hazelnut, which was gustoso! And everyone seemed to be drinking these lovely orange drinks from a wineglass....spritz.

Hazelnut gelato & Spritz!

A bit of info on the spritz: The Spritz (German: "splash" / "sparkling") is a wine-based cocktail commonly served as an aperitif in northern Italy, especially in the Veneto region and surrounding areas. The drink is prepared with prosecco wine, a dash of some bitter liqueur such as Aperol, Campari, Select or Cynar. The glass is then topped off with sparkling mineral water. It is usually served over ice in a lowball glass (or sometimes a martini glass or wine glass) and garnished a slice of orange, or sometimes an olive, depending on the liqueur. Another variation of the drink uses champagne with the liqueur rather than prosecco. The drink originated in Venice while it was part of the Austrian Empire, and is based on the Austrian Spritzer, a combination of equal parts white wine and soda water. More recently it became the traditional drink of the students of theUniversity of Padua.

We had a lovely afternoon & evening walking around Vicenza.  We found a cute little restaurant and managed to point and mangle our way to a lovely Italian dinner, calzone & spaghetti carbonara....with some vino of course.  Typically a 1/2 L of wine is the same as a Coke.....pretty much a no-brainer on drink choice.

We managed to take the bus all by ourselves (with the help of some English speaking, kind Italians).  The cool part about the ride home was how you call the bus.  Your evening ticket has a number on it.  You text the bus company your stop # and your ticket # and they send the bus/car right to you.  We basically had our own cab ride home for 2 euro.

It was our first "assaggio" of Italia and definitely not our last.

Ciao for now!