Ciao Conference

Last Friday I went to a conference held at a local restaurant Dei Gelosi. The Vicenza Community Club has been putting on a conference for the past couple of years with hour long classes designed to enlighten, uplift, motivate and strengthen the American community. It was phenomenal. These were the classes offered:

• Italian cooking
• Wine tasting
• Italian art and architecture
• Traveling around the Veneto
• How to become a temporary Italian 
• Communication and negotiation
• Personal development
• Writing as a therapeutic and creative outlet
• Photography
• Self Defense

I lucked out and got all three of my choices- art and architecture, wine tasting, and Italian cooking. I learned so much, especially about Andrea Palladio- the architect that made Vicenza famous. His name was actually Andrea something Gondola. He was native from another city down the road, Padova. His family did not come from a great source of wealth, so when he was young his father made a contract for him to go work for a richer man in the area when he reached 13. Well, when he reached 13, Palladio changed his mind and did not want to go work for this rich family. This "broken contract" forced his whole family to move to Vicenza, where Palladio got a job as a stone cutter. His big break arrived when he "fixed" this rich man's problem with his staircase- some design problem. The man was so impressed that he took Palladio under his wing and wanted to teach him how to be an architect. They traveled to Rome 3 times- Palladio has a lot of Roman influence in his designs, and Palladio began working on a book and a new way to design buildings. During his apprenticeship with this Vicenzian intellect, he changed his name to Palladio. The rich man was a writer and wrote a lot of plays, poems, and short stories and in one of the pieces he was writing at the time Palladio was learning from him, was a goddess of wisdom named Pallas...thus Palladio. 

The rest of the class we looked at all of his designs throughout the region including the villa. Oh the villas....they are so beautiful around here!! There are 4,000 villas in the region!! 4,000! Just another example of how wealthy this area truly is. I heard before I came over here that the northern part of Italy was very successful and wealthy, though at times it doesn't look like it, this place really is full of wealth. The people usually let you know as well that the Veneto region is the wealthiest.

I didn't actually get to cook in the Italian cooking class, bummer, but boy did I learn some AWESOME recipes and get to taste some amazing food. I learned different ways to cook pork and how to make my own pasta sauce. I haven't tried it yet- but it is on the menu. I love Italian sauces. Don't get me wrong- the Classico sauce will always have a special place in my pantry, but hands down it is nothing like legitimate Italian sauce. Besides the cream sauces, all of the tomato based sauces are so light. Literally, just pureed tomatoes- nothing to thicken it up, which allows me to eat more of it :)

My last class was wine tasting...and I was very thankful for the little snack from the cooking class because lets just say there was no tasting here. We all got about half a glass of 7 different wines...SEVEN, in an hour. It may have been a little much, but man they tasted so good. I even bought 2 of the wines because I thought James would really enjoy them. This winery is located in Colli Berci hills, so it is the perfect place to make red wines, due to all of the iron in the soil, and boy do they make some awesome red wine. I've got brochure with an address on it, so I plan on visiting the actual winery very soon.

Lunch was then provided by the restaurant and by lunch I mean a 6 course meal, with more wine. The whole day was wonderful- I met new people, built stronger friendships, and got to drink wine the whole time :)