High Time for More Food

One of my favorite differences in food between Italy and the States is how much more seasonal Italy is.  I feel that the availability of fruits and vegetable we buy come and go with the seasons much more than Stateside.  My favorite restaurant in Cremona (Osteria il Foppone) does not have a set menu like I’m used, but instead frequently prints a new one based on the products in season.

The different sweets for each holiday pertains to the pictures I’ve included today.  Most holidays have a special cake or dessert that is only available around the time of its given holiday.  The first three pictures are all of sweets made only for the two weeks before carnival (fat tuesday and the start of lent.)  This limited availability makes them that much better when we can finally eat them each year.  Likewise, but not pictured, there is a special cake called a panettone for Christmas and a different cake called a colomba.  I feel like we have a few specific meals here in the States but not nearly as specific as Italy.

The last three pictures I’ve included are of one of the common street fair/markets that come around in the spring.  Stands like this one featuring Sicilian food make it possible to taste the different regional specialties.  I always like when we are coming into the season that these markets visit Cremona.

Daily Pictures (Trapani, Agrigento, Todi)

Real quick today:city of Trapani, seaside facing away from Agrigento, and a vineyard in Todi.

I’m looking forward to getting some stuff done on my violins tomorrow.  Generally I’m really goal oriented and for the last two weeks I’ve been setting goals for the progress of my violins.  While I think goals are really important, I’ve decided to change their focus.  Instead of deciding that I want to finish the ribs tomorrow, I’ll decided that I want to work at least 5 hours tomorrow.  This is a lot more suitable in a field that focuses on quality and not quantity of work.

Happy Friday everyone!

Daily Pictures (Trapani, Prickly Pear, Ragusa)

Once again I didn’t work on anything violin related – it seems like I’ve been lazy this week.  Interestingly enough I always want to get something done just so I can post it on the blog.  Obviously its not strong enough to actually make me do stuff.

Anyway, today I’ve got my last three backup pictures of Sicily.  The first picture is from Trapani; I had another Trapani picture yesterday.  This walkway was really cool and wrapped around most all of the city.  The second picture is of Matt (my past roommate) and Alex playing with a prickly pear.  As the name suggests, prickly pears are a fruit you find on a cactus, peel, and eat raw.  They’ve got a lot of seeds that you just work your way through, kind of like a pomegranate.  The seeds were the strangest part since almost all fruit I eat in the states is seedless and rarely do you eat the seeds.  The needles were the dangerous part.  In this specific moment Matt and Alex decided to risk their hands and arms to pull prickly pears from a random cactus.  Matt used a key to peel them because we didn’t have a knife.  In the end the prickly pears they picked didn’t taste good and Matt’s hands were full of spines.  The final picture is from Ragusa.  We were on one side of a valley taking a huge stairway to the bottom and eventually would have gone up to the other side of the valley you see in the picture but ran out of time and sprinted the way back to the train station (the train simply didn’t come that day, something you get used to in Sicily.)

Daily Pictures (Trapani, Cremona, Agrigento)

So the first picture is over the water of Tapani, Sicily.  We flew there and the first thing we saw was a double rainbow, I have the picture on a past post.  It now makes me think of the Double Rainbow Guy on youtube.  If you haven’t seen it you should definitely check it out.  The second picture is of the street my school is on.  You can see it on the left side of the picture with the bike stands.  The last picture is from Agrigento.  The house overlooks the amphitheater I posted a few days ago.

Daily Pictures (Trapani, Taormina, Montpellier, Random Facts)

Hi all.  Not much new to report, let alone some fresh pictures.  I’ve got an epic water picture from Trapani, Sicily.  Second is a picture of Italy’s only active volcano, Mt. Etna; I took this picture from the city of Taormina.  I’ve probably explained this already but Taormina is built into a cliff/hill directly against the ocean.  As I’ve mentioned before I like finding the highest point in a city when I’m exploring it, so naturally I insisted we take a ginormous stairway (thinking the stairs to Shelob’s Lair right now) to a castle overlooking everything.  The only thing that went wrong was the castle being closed, immediately followed by a raging thunderstorm and downpour.  We went back down the stairs in the largest storm I’ve seen since I’ve been in Italy.  The final picture is from Montpellier, France.  Montpellier is the hometown of one of my classmates and we spent a long weekend there.

Tonight I’ve more or less finished making my second set of ribs and tomorrow I’ll shape the second set of blocks before bending the C’s.  Since I haven’t had anything new lately I thought I would give 5 random facts since I’ve been here.

1. I can ride my bike with no handlebars

2. I’ve realized I’m OCD.

3. ‘Have you ever seen the rain?’ by Creedence Clearwater is would be on the soundtrack to my life if I made one.

4. I miss playing violin with a quality orchestra.

5. We spend over 30% of our food budget on quality cheese.

(In hindsight that seemed cheesy but whatever)

Daily Pictures (Ribs, Agrigento)

I know this is repetitive but it’s all I’ve got for today.  Today I started repeating all the things I’ve already done to my first violin.  I went to the wood store and bought another set of ribs; I also bought wood to make the linings for the violin which I hope to do by the end of this weekend.  I spent the extra two euros to buy wood one grade higher and so far its been absolutely great.  I’ve been able to plane my ribs in both directions (carefully) and have nearly finished the entire set today.  I also bought new sand paper and lowered the blocks on my second form.  Compared with the last time, I’ll have finished the same amount of stuff in 2 days instead of one week.  I also included a close up picture of the marezzatura of the ribs I’m working on now.  Marezzatura, I don’t know the translation, is a defect in maple that gives it the cool patters of tiger stripes or flames you can see on the backs and side of violins.  Although its called a defect, its nearly impossible to sell a violin that has little or no marezzatura.

I’m also posting my favorite picture from Agrigento to spice up yet another rib post.  Finally for anyone who knows Philip DeFranco, from Youtube, he’s vacationing in Italy right now and I sent him an email asking if he’d meet a viewer.  Keep your fingers crossed for me that he responds and I get to meet up with him sometime in the next two weeks.

Ciao!

Daily Pictures (Todi, Agrigento, Ragusa)

Hi guys.  Mondays are my fullest day of the week so I’m going to my backup stash of pictures from Sicily (which is quickly dwindling.)  They aren’t in chronological order because I actually visited Todi on the way back from Sicily.  I took this picture on a ‘nature walk’ that Laura, her friend Andrea, and I went on.  It quickly became a mud slog through flooded paths but was both fun and beautiful.  I think Todi is one of the most beautiful places I’ve visited throughout Europe.

The second picture is of an amphitheater that we visited in Agrigento.  The park that we paid to enter had both Roman and Greek ruins.  One of the larger differences between the States and Sicily is the lack of boundaries.  We walked and climbed all over the ancient ruins without so much as a glance; I don’t know if Sicily is that different from Italy where I have memories of park guards yelling at us for climbing on ruins.

Finally I have a picture from Ragusa.  I don’t feel like I properly explored Ragusa because we had a few mixups over train times and where the historic part of the city was.  It’s built into a valley and is absolutely beautiful.  I wish it would have been a little less hazy on the day I took that picture, but it gives you the general idea.

That’s all I’ve got for today but I’ll give a little advice for anyone traveling to Europe.  Check into RyanAir.  We flew from Milan to Trapani, Sicily for less than 40 euros a person.  You have to learn how to travel light, but its both faster and cheaper than trains (which cost us about 80 euros to get back to Milan.)

Daily Pictures (Rib Bending Success, Agrigento)

Today was a very good day.  I went to school, successfully bent my second C rib, glued the ribs, cleaned our house.  I thought I would make a more clear picture of the bending iron we use at our house.  We put the bent end on one of our stove top burners and clamp it to our table when its hot enough.  As you can see, the curvature is similar to a C rib so the first step is simply to bend the rib around the iron.  On my second attempt things went really well and I only had to make small adjustments to fit it to my form.  The second and third pictures are basically the same and I almost didn’t post them both.  The second shows both the ribs on the form and the third shows them with glue and clamped into place.  I’m excited because I’ll be able to shape the rest of the blocks tomorrow and hopefully bend the upper and lower bouts (cross your fingers.)  The final picture has absolutely nothing in relation but I thought a small change from all the rib stuff would be good.  We are in Agrigento, Sicily and you can see my two roommates looking up at the ruins.  I really like this picture because it shows the size of what we were standing by.  As a fun side note, we picnicked on the big stone you can see in the lower right corner.

 

After two weeks of consistent updates, I think I’m starting to get a feel for this… however, if anyone readers have suggestions I’d love to hear them.  Thanks for the support!

Daily Pictures (Mandolin, Ribs {again}, Taormina)

Hi all!  I really like today’s first picture.  It’s of a mandolin that Nicholas has been restoring.  He’d made a new top and wanted to glue it on; which is easier said than done for an instrument with such curvature on its back.  So obviously the logical solution is to apply the glue, then cover it in plastic wrap and finish everything off by tying a halved bike inner tube around it.  I partially blame this idea on the copious amounts of “Dexter” we’ve been watching lately.  My next two pictures are feel like a repeat after all the time I’ve spent working on ribs.  These have been going considerably faster than my last set and I should be able to try bending my C bouts tomorrow night.  And finally I figured I’d leave you all with a sunset picture from Taormina, Sicily (my favorite city we visited on our trip.)

Daily Pictures (Alex, Fresco, Sicilian Lady)

Hey everyone!  I didn’t know what to post today because I haven’t made any photographable (?) changes to my violin and I need generally need to take some more current photos.  Anyway, I’m pulling from my Sicily trip again and chose to feature my other roommate, Alex.  This is another picture from Agrigento.  The town is built into a hillside – or series of hillsides – and we spent a few ours taking every possible stairway to the top of the hill.  This was one of my favorite times in Sicily becuase I love to explore the places where tourists don’t generally go.

The next picture is a little less exciting; its just a fresco in my friend’s kitchen… a fresco from 1607!  This picture is like the tip of an iceberg in relation to the age of Italy and all of Europe for that matter.  The building where I go to school, for another example, is from the 1500’s.

The last picture is really cool; its of me helping a 90 year old Sicilian lady down a flight of stairs in Noto, Sicily.  She said a lot, I didn’t understand much, and we got down the stairs together.