Pasqua (aka Easter)

Being in Italy for Pasqua was a really interesting experience because of the heavy catholic presence. Pasqua is HUGE in Italy - like it is definitely a big deal here and are very strict on following tradition. I'm not well versed in the Catholic religion, but I definitely know a lot more now. There are a couple things that I found interesting and thought I would share.

As the case in most religions/ethnic groups, food is a big tradition - so during Pasqua there are certain foods that they make for the holiday. One is this bread thing - Easter Pizza or Easter Bread. Essentially it is a ring of bread with a full egg (full egg as in - straight from the carton) spread out evenly around the ring- then they put little crosses over the egg (for symbolic purposes, but mostly to hold the egg in place while it bakes). So anyways, as you can imagine, eggs become a very hot commodity leading up to Pasque, therefore increasing
the cost of the eggs due to the high demand. Haha who would have ever thought that they would jack up the cost of eggs leading up to the holiday and then the next day they go right back down in price - oh, Italy, how I love you.

I should also mention that people were starting to get a little pushy in lines at the bakery - they wanted to make sure they could get a fresh Easter Pizza bread and so of course they were waiting till the last day possible to buy them. I was in the bakery trying to buy just a regular loaf of bread and people kept pushing past me because they thought I was going to get the "last" pizza bread. haha ... I just laughed and waited and watched all the drama around me.

Before Pasqua, Capri was a pretty sleepy little city, pretty casual and for the most part, pretty chill. But as soon as about 4pm on the Friday before the weekend hit, Capri changed in a second. I think the city doubled in size and I have never seen so many 4 inch heels and designer bags in my life. It was a totally different city. It was the first time since we left Calgary, that I felt like a dirty backpacking student haha - everyone was pimped out in their best clothes. The funny thing about the heels is, that as mentioned before, the city is built on a hill and the streets are cobblestone - I don't even know how they were walking around like that. And on Easter Monday, a HUGE cruise ship arrived - from what I heard, it had about 5,000 people on board that all came up into the city. As you can imagine the city was crazy - I hid out for most of the weekend to get away from the crowds. Thankfully after the weekend things went back to the way they were.

Since our flat is very close to the main plaza, I can hear the church bells chiming all day long (they ring on the hour, quarter past, half past, quarter to and so on) so they are always going off - which is actually really nice. Anyways, from Thursday to Monday at certain points in the day the bells would chime in this unbelievable pattern for about 5 minutes - obviously, it was to symbolize the significant events of Easter weekend and it was really, really quite beautiful.

Time to go...

Love Melissa and Arnold