Noto Flower Festival
A few weekends ago Patrick and I headed south to a little town called Noto. Every year they have an infiorata or flower festival. The people make beautiful artwork out of flowers and organic material. Before going to the festival I had an idea of what might be awaiting us, beautiful potted flowers arranged in amazing works of art. However, it was a little different ,but no less beautiful.
There are indeed flowers, but instead of the whole plant there are millions of petals. They use petals, stems, leaves from plants as well as lentils, beans, fennel fronds, dirt, coffee, whole pepper corns, and likely more things that I didn't pick up on. The festival was much smaller than I had anticipated, really only consisting of one drag of flowers. The rest of the streets were filled with the normal vendors selling their wares, like cheap kids toys and balloons.
The city of Noto is quite lovely. The town is full of magnificent Baroque churches and squares. In fact I look forward to going back to explore the town a bit more, when it's not quite so busy. After leaving the festival we took a short detour to check out the beach. And what a lovely beach it was! Not too busy yet, with white sand and turquoise water. I have to be honest I'm not a huge fan of going to Italian beaches, if you've ever been then you know why. They have so few nice beaches that they rent out chairs and umbrellas placed close together, and sometimes costing up to 20 Euro a day. There are of course public beaches, but they fill up fast, and Italians (like a lot of Europeans) have a very different sense of personal space compared to Americans. Hopefully we can find a nice beach that is not too busy and have a nice afternoon sometime.
There are indeed flowers, but instead of the whole plant there are millions of petals. They use petals, stems, leaves from plants as well as lentils, beans, fennel fronds, dirt, coffee, whole pepper corns, and likely more things that I didn't pick up on. The festival was much smaller than I had anticipated, really only consisting of one drag of flowers. The rest of the streets were filled with the normal vendors selling their wares, like cheap kids toys and balloons.
The city of Noto is quite lovely. The town is full of magnificent Baroque churches and squares. In fact I look forward to going back to explore the town a bit more, when it's not quite so busy. After leaving the festival we took a short detour to check out the beach. And what a lovely beach it was! Not too busy yet, with white sand and turquoise water. I have to be honest I'm not a huge fan of going to Italian beaches, if you've ever been then you know why. They have so few nice beaches that they rent out chairs and umbrellas placed close together, and sometimes costing up to 20 Euro a day. There are of course public beaches, but they fill up fast, and Italians (like a lot of Europeans) have a very different sense of personal space compared to Americans. Hopefully we can find a nice beach that is not too busy and have a nice afternoon sometime.
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