The Festa Comes to Belforte Part 1

October 8, 2006 Last night, Paola had her husband bring us a tray of goodies. They are a sampling of what we later saw at the Festa. It was a chilly day yesterday, so we decided to try out the fireplace. It took several minutes before the chimney started drawing the smoke up, but other than that it worked fine.

We woke up to a dreary day here in Belforte. It rained last night so we were hoping it would be nice today. We went down to the Festa already this morning, checked everything out, and came back home to wait for the events to start.

There are so many things to see. There was a booth with dolls; and one with helmets and swords; and another with honey and cute little angels made of beeswax! In fact, there were several honey stands (since this was the honey festival!) including the one that Larry bought from. We were afraid that there wouldn't be the big turn out that was expected because of the dark skies and cool temperature, but by 5:00 Belforte was packed! I took pictures of almost all of the stands, but even by dividing this blog into 2 parts, there won't be enough room for all of them! I missed getting a photo of the chocolate stand probably because I was too busy sampling and buying some! In fact, my favorite was chocolate with salt! They were little tiny chocolate balls and when you bit into them there was a distinctly salty taste! Yummy. There were stands with wine and cheese; and there was one with apples and nuts, and a man with garlic! In fact, that strand of garlic is now in our house!

Stay tuned for part two! I will need to pick and choose so that you can get a feel for the Festa! One interesting note, while we were eating lunch (which we paid for!) I was sitting at a table waiting for Larry when I heard the people at the table speaking English. I told them that we didn't hear much English around Belforte and they turned out to be students from the castle. When Larry arrived, one of the women said, "Larry" and told the woman next to her that he was a friend from the ICC (Italian Community Center, San Diego--where we took our classes) and he had told her about the school last year so she decided to come! Isn't that funny?