2008 ITALIAN ODYSSEY - Castelfranco #2

Sunday September 28, 2008

I didn’t sleep very well last night as the sposi parties kept going around the square. My ear plugs helped in the end and that meant that I almost missed the big parade this morning. I guess it was a veterans march. Led by a large number of  cyclists, who were followed by the marching band, came a number of older men all carrying banners. The music sounded martial.

Castle walls at Castelfranco

Another excellent breakfast – a crisp roll with assorted pork pieces thinly sliced: ham, speck, porchetta and salami – with two pieces of tremendous cheese: a glass of blood orange juice: a chocolate filled pastry: and a cup of cappuccino to finish off. Tremendous, yet when he stayed here Boet complained about the paucity of the fare “No eggs – not even scrambled.”

Garden in Vincenza

Since we had a WiFi link, I checked my e-mails – nothing of great moment there and then we headed for Vicenza. TT. Guided us there very well and was particularly useful because so many of the streets were one way. But we had the same problem as yesterday – no parking. After doing some alley-work through the network of one way streets we chanced on a spare place on the street. It wasn’t a particularly interesting part of town, but we wandered around for about an hour taking in what sights there were – some lovely little gardens; a glimpse of a river; some attractive old buildings – before heading off again.

Rab with some of the antiques

This time Rab chose a place called Piazzola sul Brenta on no other basis than it showed up on the map as a small place. Well, indeed it is, but it also hosts what we were told is Europe’s largest Antique Fair on the last Sunday of each month. There were at least 500, maybe more, stalls, most of which were selling the biggest load of junk you’d ever see in one place. There was some lovely old furniture – huge in scale – and the odd piece that we might have been interested in, but otherwise…..who buys this stuff? We stopped off at a book stall run by a couple of Poms. They were selling English language paperbacks at two for a euro. You’d have to sell a lot of books at that price to keep a roof over your head! I bought an old hardback copy of Mark Twain’s book about his European tour which looks as if it will be good value at Є2.00 – mind you it would have to be pretty bad not to at that price.

 

The Palazzo - how many rooms?

The fair takes place in the grounds of a huge palazzo dating back to the sixteenth century. It was not accessible, but was enormous stretching almost as far as the eye could see either side of the central building. Well, maybe not that far, but certainly very imposing. 

Rab and me in a mirror portrait

Outside the gates of the palace there was an old man playing the accordion with his dog at his feet. A nice thing about the fair was the number of people who had their dogs with them. They seem popular pets and all seemed to be very well cared for. I gave a donation to the local equivalent of the SPCA and received a knit cap in exchange. Bright yellow, it will be  good for winter mornings to keep my ears warm.

Having walked our feet off to no avail, we headed back to the hotel for an afternoon nap and then went across to Resana for our evening meal at the Central Hotel where we had such good tucker the other evening. The traffic was very heavy going there and the car park was almost full – we only found a place when some cars pulled out and left. The people were crowded around a van that seemed to be selling fish and chips, although a closer inspection showed that it was prawns and the like – at what seemed to be very inflated prices. Maybe the quality was good. We went across the road and were greeted by the little Ghanaian girl who had served us last time and who spoke very good English, as you’d expect for someone from Ghana. We each had an excellent pasta – Amatriciana and Arrabiata and shared  a half litre carafe of house wine – all for the bargain price of Є21.50.

Another very pleasant and interesting day.