Up to the minute with TrenItalia’s ViaggiaTreno
Oct 27, 2006 Instructions for Use
Worth learning a bit of travel-Italian for. TrenItalia has just introduced ViaggiaTreno.it and its mobile counterpart ViaggiaTrenoMobile.it, two sites that allow you to see train traffic progress in real time. Una meraviglia.
A vote for Andrea’s work.
Oct 26, 2006 vita venexiàn
This post will remain at the top of the blog until November 24, in case you’d still like to cast a vote for Andrea’s photo: www.premioceleste.it. (By the way, once you vote, the site will send you a confirmation e-mail, to which you must reply to register your vote. It’s in Italian, of course…but it’s the standard reply procedure.)
The original post follows…
Glass, cork. Glass cork?
Oct 11, 2006 wine for all & all for wine
I’m unexpectedly captivated by the oddest things.
We we had the pleasure to dine recently at Vini da Gigio, and to accompany dinner, co-owner Paolo brought us a Blauburgunder Pinot Nero (that’s what Blauburgunder means in German, I’m told). He didn’t open it with his usual panache, i.e., with his preferred cavatappi, though. He couldn’t, because the stopper was made of glass.
Is it live…
Oct 9, 2006 vita venexiàn
As you meander the fondamente of Venice, you’ll likely notice they’re lined with i pali, the mooring posts which permit the boats to park, for an hour, a day, a lifetime. Until recently, these have all been made of wood, hewn tree trunks of various sizes, hauled in from the mainland and impaled deep into the soft lagoon bottom, serving devoted boaters for as long as they’d last. All part of practical Venice that also adds to its famous atmosfera, yes? There’s a problem, though.
The lower sections of these piles are drenched and exposed incessantly with the tide ebb and flow, and the saline slowly eats away the wooden surface, which eventually becomes rough and craggy. A boat lashed at high tide will drop with the water level, as will the ties that bind. If lashes can get caught on the lower, roughened sections of the piles when the tide comes back in, though, the water level will rise…but the boat will not. So you can imagine the buzz-kill when you show arrive to take it for a spin on the lagoon, and discover it is instead playing nautical hide-and-seek, glinting up at you pathetically from just underneath the water’s surface.
What’s a water-bound city to do?
