The Bike&Barge Cookbook - Waterway of Venice

Giuliano Zarantonello & Fabio Perselli

girolibero easy cycling holidays

The Italian for fish stock is fumetto, or ‘little smoke’, because it is left to simmer away. In southern regions, kitchen herbs are known as odori, or ‘smells’; while in the heartland of our northern risotto (the plains of the River Po), every cook will know the meaning of sospiro, or ‘sigh’: this is what you should hear when, in the early stages of cooking your risotto, you gently infuse your rice with a drizzle of wine. If the ‘shhh’ is more than a retiring sigh, then your heat is too high. Sadly, the Bridge of Sighs in Venice has little to do with a splash of wine: the Ponte dei Sospiri is where prisoners being led to the dungeons would see the light of day for the last time.

I SECONDI

Coffee is the balsam of the heart and soul. (Giuseppe Verdi)

When I die, bring me my coffee and you will see that I shall come back to life, just like Lazarus. (Eduardo De Filippo, playwright)

A caffettiera on the hob is all one needs to fill a room. (Erri De Luca, Neapolitan novelist)

It is simple in appearance, yet the most complex thing in the world. Coffee is a microcosm, a Divine Comedy to be read in 30 seconds, a sensory kaleidoscope. (Anonimous)

Freedom is like coffee: intense, to be served and conquered in minimal doses. (Diego Cugia, journalist, writer and broadcaster)

A sip of coffee is short and sweet, but capable of rising to the remotest regions of the brain and giving them a healthy tickle. (Luciano De Crescenzo, writer and philosopher)

Coffee should be as hot as Hades, black as the devil, pure as an angel and as sweet as love. (Italian proverb)

Saint Mark’s Square and Cathedral, Doges’ Palace, Grand Canal, Rialto, Accademia Galleries, San Rocco, Gugenheim Collection. The islands: Murano (and its glass) and the quieter Burano and Torcello. . . .

– The Biennale has served as the model for countless arts events worldwide since 1895. Its pavilions are scattered around the ‘Gardens’ of Venice and throughout the city.

– An early-morning sortie to the top of the belfry for that bird’s-eye view of St Mark’s, still free of the hordes and bathed in magical light. A souvenir that stays with you for good.

– Who needs a bookcase when you have a gondola? An Aladdin’s cave of books old and new, maps, objets d’art, cards, cats, scholars.

– Created in 1516, its name has become synonymous with any space occupied by an isolated minority. Now one of the city’s peaceful havens.

– Far from the madding crowd and still staunchly… Venetian.

– Home of the Bellini and Carpaccio (shaken, not framed), and frequented by Chaplin, Toscanini, Hemingway, Hitchcock, Onassis, inter alia.

wander and get lost.

St Mark's Campanile