Carnevale Asceoto

Today was carnival day in Ascea Paese. As usual the floats were impressively large, funny and politically relevant. We had great weather for the parade, which coincided with International Women's day, when random strangers give you sprigs of mimosa blossom. Here are some photos - enjoy!
The 150th anniversary of Italy's unification was a popular theme (above). The anniversary is coming up this year, and with Italians feeling so divided in many ways, especially between North and South, this is a subject ripe for satire.

Translation: So many heroes to unite it (Italy); one idiot to divide it. I think they're probably referring to Berlusconi.


And this is another political scandal and corruption jibe: the theme of this float was 'Politicans in Hawaii'.

Sunset

Since Italy is long and thin, and oriented roughly north-south, and has a massive mountain range down the middle (remember this if you plan to land at Bari airport and travel from there to the Cilento), you tend to get a view of either the sunrise or the sunset. We get the sunset. Here are a couple of photos of it.

Today's sunset

It was quite misty this evening, but the colours are lovely. To the left is a mimosa tree.

Cook book recommendation - by Leila

I got hold of three River Cafe Pocket Books kind of by chance when I was living in Brussels. They weren't much use to me, either there or in the UK, because although the recipes are simple, the ingredients were either not easily available or, though available, weren't fresh or good enough to make the recipes work (mozarella, for example. Mozarella doesn't travel. Eat it south of Rome or not at all). But down here, they're perfect. I use them all the time. The recipes seem to be made for this area;; they use vegetables and herbs I can buy year-round, less than five minutes walk from my house, most of them are simple and quick to prepare, and taste delicious. So if you're planning to come down here and want a travel-sized cook book that you can really use, I recommend this series.