Walter Hinteler wrote:You should have had a look at
this site before :wink:
Ah, but my little town of Bagnacavallo in Emilia Romagna is not listed!
It was a completely different type of holiday from my usual sort. I was going with about 25 people from Stone, a small town in the English midlands, to their 'twin town'. I was only going because my good friend Anwyl actually lives in Stone and goes to the Italian class there. Most of our party were on the less glamorous side of fifty, and several on the decrepit side of seventy, but all were in a festive mood. Friendly visits had been made before in both directions and many people were meeting old friends. It was the town's annual festival, San Michele. We were met at the airport by three or four beaming adults and some teenagers wearing union jacks! Thence transported in a bus to the town and our hotel - entirely taken over by our party - where snacks and drinks awaited us. Anwyl and I shared a room with Sue, 20 years our junior but not very used to travelling abroad. The first night she couldn't sleep well because she wasn't used to any bed but hers.
The first day of our visit, after seeing round the local secondary school, we had an interesting lunch provided by one of the many organizations which make fairly basic meals and give the proceeds to charity. Long trestle tables are laid out, and pasta, a meat course, then dessert served (Dr Atkins - my mentor - revolved in his grave increasingly rapidly as the visit went on). The local pasta was capellete, little hats, filled with cheese, usually served in a broth (brodo). Delicious! The local meat speciality rejoices in the name of STINCO, and when our guide explained it to us, we assumed it was pig's trotters - and decided on a Mexican stew instead. We were wrong however - it turned out to be pig's hock, cooked in rosemary (which I only put with lamb) and judging from the bites we were allowed of our neighbours' portions, was absolutely delicious (whereas the Mexicans would have despaired at the lack of chilli in the stew). Following this was San Michele tart, a nut-encrusted slab of sweetness.
We waddled round the town after this, admiring its walls, its air of being 1950, its wonderfully coloured houses - all shades of terracotta, ochre, umber. There was a gigantic storm in the early evening which lowered temperatures from 30 to 12, and kept us in the hotel listening to the thunder and rain.
Next day we had a bus trip to Ravenna, my favourite Italian city, and although I'd been there twice before, it was great to be a sheep and have a guided tour, as our guide was lively, interesting, and in her spare time taught mosaic art at the university. On the way back we stopped at a fruit farm where we had the run and pickings of all the apples, pears, figs, nectarines, persimmons, pomegranates ... and they had a vast wood-fired pizza oven in which a concatenation of pizzas were produced over the following 4 hours, as we sat in the sun and absorbed red or white local wine effortlessly. International cooperation never flourished so well! Later we found a sophisticated place in a convent courtyard serving local cheeses and sausages by the platter, along with some much better wine - 13Euros a bottle but well worth it, a magnificent wine which is not exported
Then the rest of the group went to Florence for the day, but Anwyl and I felt like doing our own thing, so we asked about rented cars. Alas no, but Dario the hotelier asked 'Do you want to have my car?' 'Yes - what about insurance' 'Oh I'm sure it'll be OK, never mind' - how different from rule-obsessed Britain-
so we went, scarily driving amongst overconfident cyclists and impatient pedestrians. We went back to Ravenna for some retail meandering (Anwyl is a shopper) and to see the church of S Apollinari in Classe which is outside the city, and then we went in quest of mountains, since Bagnacavallo and surroundings are dead flat. We found a charming spa town with piadine (local flat bread) and squacquerone (local cheese) for lunch, and the mountain town of Modigliana (no women with long necks) which boasts a ruined castle of the most romantic type. And in the evening a troupe of acrobats from Burkina Faso entertained us in the town square.
We ended our holiday by stocking up with olive oil, unfiltered, and parma ham, and that special wine, and aglio a spicchi in oil - what a truly wonderful foodfest, and all so traditional, organic fruit and veg, proper local dishes.
This reads like a school essay, I do apologize - I left it too long to commit to type perhaps!
