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Predicting the weather Venetian style on the Festa della Madonna della Candelora
Italy is a country of countries. That is to say it’s a country made up of lots of cities and regions that used to be republics or kingdoms before they united as one in 1861. So apart from speaking the...
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Italian 101 – How to say I love you!
With just a few days to go to Valentine’s Day I’ve been looking at how to say I love you in Italian, just in case I meet the love of my life in the streets of Venice! Magari! (If only!) And not...
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Venice Carnival – The most beautiful mask competition
Dressing up is all part of the enjoyment of Venice carnival. But for some it’s more than just about being seen and photographed, it’s a creative challenge to produce THE most beautiful mask or costume....
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Celebrating Venetian New Year, 1st March
Bon Cao de Ano a tuti i me amighi Venessiani! Happy New Year to all my Venetian friends! Yep, you read that right and no I haven’t gone mad – yesterday, March 1st, was New Year’s Day for in Venice....
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Celebrating the Festa delle Donne, 8th March
This weekend Italians are preparing to celebrate the Festa delle donne, otherwise known as International Women’s Day, with Mimosa flowers, cakes and festive events. The revelries are a little...
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Celebrating Father’s Day with San Giuseppe, 19th March 2015
With the internet and social media still a-buzz with talk of “synthetic babies” and debate over what makes a “tradtional family” its perhaps timely that today is, for many countries including Italy,...
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Italian 101 – How to say Happy Easter
Easter, or Pasqua, is a big deal for Italians, a very big deal. As big, if not bigger than Christmas. So as Lent, or La Quaresima, has drawn to a close, Good Friday is over and the bakeries and...
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Weekly Photo Challenge – Gondolas afloat in Venice
Flat-bottomed gondolas have been gliding round Venice’s water-ways for centuries. The first written reference dates back to 1094 whilst artists such as Carpaccio, Bellini and Canaletto documented the...
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Beware Friday the 17th!
We all have our superstitions. Some refuse to walk under ladders. Others wear lucky charms or even lucky pants. And Italians dislike the number 17 so much that some hotels avoid having rooms with the...
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Happy 2768th Birthday Rome, 21st April!
Murder, myth and mystery surround the founding of the Italian city of Rome. According to one story, the founder was a Trojan hero, while another tells of 2 brothers fighting it out for the prize....
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The legend of the rosebud of St Mark’s, Venice – April 25th
La leggenda del bòcolo di San Marco, or the legend of the rosebud of St Mark’s, is a little known Venetian tradition that sees men giving their beloveds a red rosebud as a sign of their true love on...
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Weekly Photo Challenge – Intricate Burano Lace
Burano, a pastel-painted island in the Venetian lagoon, prides itself on being the oldest centre of needle lace making in the world. Using an embroidered technique the first lace dates back to the...
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8 fascinating facts about Christmas in Italy
Every country has its own Christmas traditions. If you’re British, like me, you’re probably elbow-deep in card-writing, tinsel and fir tree needles by now….and the cat is probably eying up the tree! If...
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Babbo Natale invades Venice!
If you’ve ever been in Venice on the last weekend before Christmas you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’ve had one too many mulled wines as you’ll start to see double. Or maybe triple. In fact...
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29th February – Italians invented the leap year, who knew?
Every fourth year we get an extra day for free on February 29th. And 2016 is one of those years. Which got me thinking. Why do we have leap years and who came up with the idea? Was it just … Continue...
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