Wurstel, Brezen, and Plans for January

Since getting back from Verona on Monday night, we've had a busy week. Our number one priority has been trying to plan our time once we leave Siena (at the end of December). We thought about trying to spend one or two more months elsewhere (one in the South and/or one in Verona) but realized there are a lot of places we want to travel to and we could either travel for a short period of time (three weeks) and see the places we want to see, or choose one of the many places and move there and not travel. We chose to travel!

We've been working hard to try to create an itinerary that works with our budget and our time constraints (we are looking to fly home around January 18th-flights are very reasonable at that time!). We've even been able to be in contact with a few hotels and have one confirmed reservation already! Our tentative plans include heading to Sorrento (near Naples) for a few days; Ostuni and Alberobello in Puglia (to see the trulli); Matera (a crumbling old city where Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ was filmed); on to Sicily to see the Greek temples in Siracusa and the fabulous food markets in Palermo; then back to Verona for a few days before heading out of Milan)

I've also been working on figuring out the requirements for bringing Ollie back. Luckily the U.S. only requires that the dog been given a rabies vaccination within one year. Italy though, apparently has a few requirements for you to be able to export your dog.

With all this planning, we have still had some time to do a few things. On Wednesday (in between dealing with our landlady) we stopped by the weekly market:


We did not end up buying any artichokes-maybe this Wednesday. On Friday we headed over to the Christmas market that they had set up the week before in the park near the Fortress.


They have a weird mixture of stands: a spice man, people selling trinkets, and food stalls including crepes, wurstel, pretzels, beer etc. Very little Italian Food. Someone told Reed that it was a Northern European Christmas market.


Reed opted for a wurstel con crauti.....


It was huge!


Not being the biggest sausage/wurstel (hot dog) fan myself, I opted for a Brezen. At the time I thought it was like a pretzel (shape) but it tasted a lot like a doughnut.


There were many options to choose from....



In the end I chose the Brezen Krapfen.....


It was huge too!! And sweet!


Then it was back to more trip planning....

On a side note, Reed got to meet Al Gore at Osteria Le Logge on Wednesday. Al Gore was in town to celebrate the birthday of the restaurant's owner. They all got to drink a really old Brunello too!