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The delightful strips of deep-fried dough pictured at the right are called chiacchiere, and they’re served during Carnival in Venice (happening right now!).
In Italian, chiacchiere means “gossip,” which is, like, the perfect word for deep-fried dough — ’cause we all know how deep-fried dough goes down (deliciously), particularly when it’s dusted with powdered sugar (a sprinkle of guilt).
During Carnival, you’ll find various versions of deep-fried dough treats around, and you might as well eat ‘em while you can, particularly if it’s Fat Thursday, which the Florentines once called Berlingaccio — another Italian word that has to do with running your mouth.
This post might be kind of weird because it’s mostly going to be written by Charles Dickens. But I just think his description of a gondola ride in his 1846 travelogue “Pictures of Venice” is so haunting and lovely, and it made me really, really want to ride in a gondola.
“Looking out attentively, I saw, through the gloom, a something black and massive — like a shore …
As a fan of table salt, I was intrigued by photos of the new “Salt Mountain” recently poured into a large conical shape on the Piazza Duomo in Milan, Italy.
True to its name, “Salt Mountain,” an art installation by Mimmo Paladino, is a mountain of salt — 150 quintals of salt from Sicily, to be exact. It’s 33 feet (10 meters) tall with a 115-feet (35-meter) diameter.
The World’s Teeniest, Tiniest Italian Restaurant
by Amanda Arnold | February 17, 2011
There’s only one table at Solo per Due (translation “just for two”), a 250-euros-per-person restaurant located in Vacone, a small village in Central Italy, about an hour from Rome. So, it’s sort of like eating at home. Only home has servants who give you Italian food and wine when you ring a little bell. And home has a little patio outside with a view of the valley and its rolling olive groves and vineyards. Also, home’s grounds include the remains of a Roman villa that belonged to the poet Horace.
Horace wrote odes. Here’s a quote from one of his odes: “Take the present, the future’s no one’s affair.”
Most people come into contact with olives in one of three ways: There are the olives that go on pizzas and into into dinner entrees There are the olives (with pimentos) that go into martinis And there is olive oil But it seems odd – how can the fleshy olives found in dinners and drinks [...]
Watch your body language, travelers!
by Amanda Arnold | October 22, 2010
I don’t care what Black Sabbath song comes raging over the loud speakers in Italy or Cuba, don’t throw up your index and pinky fingers in a salute to heavy metal and expect to make any friends. In those countries, this devil horns gesture is akin to the American use of the middle finger, except that it implies another person’s wife is “not of sexual moral standing.”
This is just one example of how a seemingly friendly gesticulation can be construed as rude when you’re traveling abroad.
Get Lost in the New Largest Maze in the World
by Amanda Arnold | August 12, 2010
Because I’ve edited so many adventure articles for HSW, when I think about navigating a maze, it’s a survival scenario. If you can’t find your way back out of the hedges, well, you’ll need to pry up a rock and eat some larvae. Have you any water with you? No? Well, does this maze have elephants? ‘Cause you can pick up elephant dung and squeeze the water right out of it to drink. And FYI, you can only survive without water in this labyrinth of bushes for about three to five days.
Abu Dhabi’s Leaning Tower of Not Pisa
by Amanda Arnold | June 10, 2010
The Leaning Tower of Pisa leans by accident. The leaning tower of Abu Dhabi most certainly does not.
Abu Dhabi’s Capital Gate tower, which is set to be completed by fall 2010, was just given the honor of “world’s most inclined building” by the Guinness Book of World Records, beating out Pisa’s tower by a mile. Or more precisely — by about 14.1 degrees.
My friend has a pair of polka-dot rain boots I’d like to be wearing if tides put Venice several inches under the sea while I’m walking its streets and alleyways. If “acqua alta,” or high water, puts Venice a few feet under the sea, I’d like to be wearing a fly-fisherman’s chest-high waders. Either way, I’ll take the whole thing in stride like a real Venetian and perhaps drink a glass of wine at a sidewalk café, even though the table and chair legs are standing in seawater.
My co-blogger Cristen is in the midst of a two-part series on the perfect pasta, a topic that has been near and dear to my heart since I spent a college semester abroad in Italy. And after reading her entry on tomatoes, I immediately began to crave what I always crave after eating a good spaghetti sauce: gelato.
For those of you who have always wondered about the difference between gelato and ice cream, wonder no more.
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