I lived in Ferrara long enough to know few secrets of this wonderful city. And in this guest post I’m sharing it with a blogger – Agnieszka. She is Polish too and she visited Ferrara. It seemed enough reasons to publish a short post on Hebrew Graveyard of Ferrara. Some of you will find it difficult to deal with: this post was written in Polish. I know that only Polish speaking audience will understand it but I think it is worthy to click anyway. The pictures I took last autumn in Ferrara are stunning: Hebrew Graveyard is covered with yellow ginko leafs which makes them really spectacular! Have you ever thought about visiting Italy? Here is an alternative way on how to visit Italy and get really close to the Italian way of life. I created a project ‘I love Ferrara‘ so you could join me and experience how beautiful and tasty Ferrara is. If you wish to immerse in Italy book your holiday now!  

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I’ve just got back from Ferrara where a fabulous event took place: a Street Dinner. It was my second time and I must say that this event really met my expectations. This was really amazing and I’ll leave the pictures to speak for themselves. Just let me assure you that participating in this event is one of the best ways to visit this marvelous italian city. Ferrara seen and experienced through eyes of a participant of Street Dinner makes your travel experience memorable. In fact, memories and pictures from Street Dinner are really hard to beat. Being there, dressed total white and sharing the experience with friends and strangers makes this event very special. The second event in Ferrara that is similarly appealing is Palio. Although quite different it offers a fabulous opportunity to get known Ferrara. Do not hesitate any longer! You should experience Ferrara the best way possible. You can book today your stay in this Italian city: join I love Ferrara and let yourself immersed in Italian dolce vita!         Have you ever thought about visiting Italy? Here is an alternative way on how to visit Italy and get really close to the Italian way of life. I created a project ‘I love Ferrara‘ so you could join me and experience how beautiful and tasty Ferrara is. If you wish to immerse in Italy book your holiday now!  

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Two days ago I was having a typical Italian breakfast: brioche and cappuccino. And when I’m sitting in my office 1400 km further north it is really hard to believe. Especially when this morning temperature dropped below zero. But here I am. I got back after 2 weeks of a combined car, train, scooter and bike voyage. What can I say? Italy was awesome. As always. (Just like the last one). Drive The drive is long. It takes about 12 hours to drive through Germany, Austria and Italy, to cross from Poznań to Ferrara. And if the traffic is heavy or the road works are carried out then it can be 14 hours. So it is rather challenging in terms of driving. How to survive a long drive? Well, I found a good way to stay focused on the road: I listen to the audiobooks. This time I was listening to a book by Bulgakov The Master and Margarita. This is not my favorite book but you know what? I am still thinking about it. About the cat, Russia, Moscow that I have never visited and the main plot. I can tell you this: this book gets into you and it is very hard to stop analyzing it, remembering the crucial events, trying to imagine the main characters. Train Thanks to the book I drove safely to Ferrara where I joined some of my Italian friends and we went further south by train. With 2 changes – one in Bologna and one in Napoli – we arrived to Sorrento. This was a Frecciarossa train which meant it was a really short journey. The train goes with a galactic speed of almost 300 km/h and it crosses numerous tunnels. As a side effect of this fast journey and many tunnels you get your ears clogged. This is very similar to a feeling of being aboard of a plane that takes off. While on a plane it takes few minutes at most in the italian Frecciarossa it takes hours. So think twice before you decide to use this mean of transportation. My personal preference? Scooter, what else? Scooter This was one of my big dreams: to drive a scooter in Italy. So when I received a scooter as a gift for my birthday I was unbelievably happy. I was proudly driving it in Italy for couple of years and loved every minute of it. So when I went to Sorrento I knew I would love to do it again. Plus, there was my birthday. And the route from Sorrento to Positano is one of the most scenic routes in the world (Costiera Amalfitana was proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site). The weather was fabulous that day so I had an absolutely wonderful time! I had my GoPro camera with me and shot more than a hundred short clips. I will share them with you when a short movie was created (later, I mean…). Bike The final stage of this journey was done by bike. In one of the hotels I stayed in Ferrara the bikes were available to the guests so I took a long ride through my favorite Italian town enjoying the sun and the spring air. It totally convinced me that Ferrara is a bicycle town, very friendly to bikers. I participated in an extraordinary feast of the Hebrew literature (La Festa del Libro Ebraico in Italia) and joined a guided tour around the town, focused on Jewish traces, that are numerous and well preserved. So here is what I’ve been doing for last two weeks. I hope to share it with you in few episodes in next few weeks. Keep in touch! …and start from the first post about Sorrento. Have you ever thought about visiting Italy? Here is an alternative way on how to visit Italy and get really close to the Italian way of life. I created a project ‘I love Ferrara‘ so you could join me and experience how beautiful and tasty Ferrara is. If you wish to immerse in Italy book your holiday now!  

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Let me share this short story with you: it is published at a very interesting travel blog called Travelling with Sweeney. I met Catherine – the founder and editor – in Dublin and we exchange our business cards. After few months you can have a look at the result of this meeting and my guest post at her blog. She is an enthusiast of Italy and traditional cooking so I thought it is a very good idea to share my story with her. All comments published under this post made my day! So even if you know the story already, please visit Catherine’s blog and read some other posts related to Italy. Enjoy your week! UPDATE This is great news! Due to high interest in this post and in my experience in Italy I’ve decided to make the participation in Italian life possible for you! Yes! It is possible to join me for a week this autumn! Check the details here! The project is called iloveFerrara and it is the essence of Italian Dolce Vita. Have you ever thought about visiting Italy? Here is an alternative way on how to visit Italy and get really close to the Italian way of life. I created a project ‘I love Ferrara‘ so you could join me and experience how beautiful and tasty Ferrara is. If you wish to immerse in Italy book your holiday now!  

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UPDATE This is great news! If you have ever thought about coming to Italy and participating in Street Dinnes this is an excellent opportunity for you! Yes! It is possible to join me for a week this autumn and experience together this awesome event! Check the details here! The project is called iloveFerrrara and it is the essence of Italian Dolce Vita. Street Dinner 2013 I have just returned from my favorite Italian town Ferrara where an amazing event took place. It was the fourth time when Street Dinner was organized and it gathered this time more than 300 participants. I shared some basic information with you before but now it’s time to give you the full review of what happened. I started with meetings with people responsible for organization of this event: Giulia- from the local touristic organization, and Zeno- the person who brought this idea to Ferrara. After meeting these two people and some other collaborators I am pretty sure that the success of such events is strictly related to the effort of few enthusiasts. It took Zeno few years to gather people from the local community to organize it for the first time. From the moment they were convinced about the beauty of this idea the rest was just fine. Although this idea was imported from the French white dinners- the idea that currently spreads out through the world- there are some particular elements in Ferrara that does not exist anywhere else. First of all: the location is secret! I knew about it before but I had no idea that the secret is really kept from everybody until the very last moment! Even I spoke to the guys from the organization committee the day before they didn’t tell me a word about it! And I am really grateful for this because I could participate in the event just like everybody else. Second, the message on the location is revealed through the text message. In the late afternoon the city center was full of people dressed in white, hanging around, laughing and waiting for the message. The locals and other tourists were intrigued and were asking us what is the reason behind the white crowds. The whole beauty of this idea was seen when the message came and everybody dressed in white were walking to the same direction. Just like Zeno described: like white wave through the city. I expect nothing less than that at this year’s event: Street Dinner 2014 is coming! Book today! Small groups were growing fast and finally we arrived to the place indicated. It made us walk through the most beautiful parts of the city which was one of the organizer’s ideas. The Marfisa Palace (Palazzina di Marfisa d’Este) and local tennis club were hosting the first part of the event: aperitivo. The location was spectacular! And the food served as well. What marvels me about it is that in the garden there were no tables or chairs but people did not mind. There was live jazz music as a background and we had simply amazing time together. We immediately got some new friends and just started chatting about the place, food, previous Street Dinners and Ferrara. We could also visit the palace which was impressive even for the local people. Some of them admitted that it was the first time they visited it and were delighted about it! If that was the end of the event I would be already happy about it. BUT this was just the BEGINNING! We received another message with the location of the food distribution. And again, the white wave flooded the city. The main street Corso Gioveca was transformed into a walking-only zone so we could get our dinner sets (meat or sea food). It was dark already but our white clothes were visible from the distance. If you add to it a sound of laugh you’ll get a picture of happy people having fun. The third message of the evening indicated the location of tables and chairs collection.  And finally we got to the point and the location of the dinner was revealed: Piazzale Medaglie d’oro. This is a modest square at the entrance to the city center. There is large stairs and a sort of archway that leads to the Castello. The most impressive thing about this location was a transformation of ordinary public space into an open air restaurant with special guests in it. I admire the effort of the organization committee, their perseverance and enthusiasm to bring this event to Ferrara. And, just like Zeno said, the modern media accused for distance people from each other were employed for the opposite: to bring them together. The company at the table was awesome and the whole atmosphere unforgettable. Just after we ate our dinner and drink excellent wine we started to dance. Watching 300 people dressed in white dancing at the stairs with a renaissance town as a background was something really special. My guess is that our joy out of gathering, eating out, enjoying the beauty of Ferrara exploded and so the dance was a lovely conclusion of this edition of Street Dinner. I simply can’t wait the next year event! Have you ever thought about visiting Italy? Here is an alternative way on how to visit Italy and get really close to the Italian way of life. I created a project ‘I love Ferrara‘ so you could join me and experience how beautiful and tasty Ferrara is. If you wish to immerse in Italy book your holiday now!  

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What is it? Broadly speaking, Street Dinner is an annual event- a dinner- that brings together people passionate about food and entertainment. It grew from a global movement of unconventional restaurants and eating habits. There are at least three very particular features re this event. First, the place where the dinner is set is not revealed until the very last moment. The only thing you can be sure is the it is UNCONVENTIONAL (like having your dinner in a square or in a public garden). Second, the participants are asked to follow the dress code, which is TOTAL WHITE. Finally, this is an opportunity for local vendors to delight the participants with their specialities, which means excellent food. In Ferrara the Street Dinner has been organized for 5 consecutive years. Here is super cool news: you can participate this event! I have prepared a holiday package for you that includes a 1 week stay in Ferrara and pass to all Street Dinner events. Join me and book today! This year, 2014, it takes place on Saturday, September the 6th. How it works? When you register online you are asked for a cell phone number which is used to let you know: the place where you get table and chair from and the location of the dinner. However, you get these messages JUST before the beginning of the dinner. So, you dress white, you wait until the very end to get informed about the location, then you take a table and chair and join few hundreds of other food enthusiasts having your dinner like nowhere else. What is so special about it? Many things. Most of all the atmosphere of the event boosts amazingly through the whole city. In the late afternoon there are small groups of people dressed in white walking around and slowly in the early evening the city is full of them. What I consider really nice is the gathering of so many people to celebrate good food, excellent wine, medieval buildings and- surely- beautiful weather. This is really FUN and THRILLING event. I simply can’t wait to be there! Practical Information: Don’t forget to join before August, 28th! http://www.facebook.com/streetdinner http://twitter.com/streetdinner http://www.youtube.com/user/StreetDinner http:// www.streetdinner.it Find out how was the 4th edition of Street Dinner here!   Have you ever thought about visiting Italy? Here is an alternative way on how to visit Italy and get really close to the Italian way of life. I created a project ‘I love Ferrara‘ so you could join me and experience how beautiful and tasty Ferrara is. If you wish to immerse in Italy book your holiday now!  

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Visiting Italy is always fun. I had been living in Italy for many years, I visited the majority of known places, I saw many of its famous monuments but it’s never enough. You simply can’t get bored in this country. Over and over again, in familiar places you discover something fresh and fascinating. At this point what I enjoy the most is visiting with Italian friends or showing it to the foreign friends. Both ways are awesome. And here is my surprise for you: it is possible to join me this autumn to experience a real life in Italy. Live like a local for a week in Ferrara with me! A super cool idea for this holiday plus participation in 5th edition of Street Dinner! Ferrara There is no holiday without a short visit in Ferrara. My favorite Italian town was visited with a friend who hasn’t been there before. And this was cool. As he is a huge fan of cinematography he discovered that famous Italian director Antonioni was buried in Ferrara and indeed, he is. We went to a cemetery and found it. My favorite part, however, was just passing the time together, talking from time to time about what we saw, and sitting in a cafe for hours. Luckily, he was a perfect company to do the best holiday like things. So I had a great time, despite the unbearable heat. I’m working on a short clip from Ferrara these weeks, and I really hope I’ll share it with you soon. Ravenna One of the dreams of my travel fellow was a visit in Ravenna. Sure! Why not? By the time we went to Ravenna we were three. We went to Ravenna for one day. And this was even more entertaining. Two of us visited Ravenna before but the only thing I remembered was a pain in my knee caused by a little incident with a bee (running away from a bee I run directly into a road barrier made of concrete and- not surprisingly- hurt myself). So three of us went to this small town and got marveled with everything what we saw. The mosaics in couple of its churches are amazing. I’ll write about this in one of the next posts as this is really exceptional. …and finally… The Dolomites By the time we went to the Dolomites we were four. Spending the whole week in a small village Arabba and visiting most spectacular tracks around in great weather was causing a goose-flesh every day. I’ll probably never found precise words to describe everything so I’ll focus on sharing photos taken (by the time I left the Dolomites they were about thousand!). I’ll also describe precise itineraries I made in few next posts so you could visit the same places, if you wish. Day one is here. Day two is here….and will be continued. Right. The trip ended up in the German city of Munich, where three of us visited our friend. Despite the unexpected heat we spent marvelous time on lazy chatting about the recent trip. Warm welcome made this day a lovely conclusion of the whole trip. So what I’m going to do is to flood all my readers with stunning photos from the Dolomites. I believe it is far better than my lame attempts to describe the beauty of what I saw. Have you ever thought about visiting Italy? Here is an alternative way on how to visit Italy and get really close to the Italian way of life. I created a project ‘I love Ferrara‘ so you could join me and experience how beautiful and tasty Ferrara is. If you wish to immerse in Italy book your holiday now!  

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Here is my recent guest post about Italy. Courtesy of Megan from MappingMegan. I enjoyed writing it very much so hopefully you’ll enjoy reading it. Visit Megan’s website for details. Have you ever thought about visiting Italy? Here is an alternative way on how to visit Italy and get really close to the Italian way of life. I created a project ‘I love Ferrara‘ so you could join me and experience how beautiful and tasty Ferrara is. If you wish to immerse in Italy book your holiday now!  

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Expectations towards travel of any kind has grown. People who undertake the trip expect many things from it, starting with simple relax and finishing with a complete change of life. It’s OK to have your own plans regarding the journey however it needs to be reasonable to avoid disappointment. After my full immersion in Italian traditional kitchen I thought I should learn some local history. Although I had a general idea of renaissance in Italy I wanted to know something more about the modern times. My Italian friends gave me two things: an old Italian movie titled La lunga notte del ’43 directed by Florestano Vancini (The long night in 1943), and a book Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini by Giorgio Bassani (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis). Both- the movie and the book- tell a story of Jewish population in Ferrara and their tragic story during the WW the 2nd. Learning the modern history of Ferrara brought me to an extraordinary place: the Jewish Cemetery. In a sunny winter morning I entered this cemetery and took a series of pictures published above. Not far from the vibrant main square, full of noise and move, the cemetery brought me to the parallel world, full of memories and peace. I think it completes the story of Ferrara and if you ever visit this town I think it is worthy to enter this cemetery. Its beauty in the morning light when it is covered with yellow ginkgo leaves is pretty obvious. And powerful too.  

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True: my job looks like never-ending holiday, however, I need some rest too. And guess where am I going? Italy, of course, where else? As a result of my holiday I’ll limit the post published to one post a week in July. Knowing my habits you can expect that the holiday planed includes trekking in the mounties and visits in some touristic places. Trento Alto Adige, Emilia-Romagna, Marche and Umbria are on my list. As I am going to visit some new and old places I promise to bring you a huge bunch of new stories and beautiful pictures. Where are YOU going this summer? I’m very very curious of your holiday destination so please share it with me by commenting this post. Have a good holiday, wherever you go, and let’s stay in touch!  

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