Following up on topic of pizza, here is where I think you can find the best pizza in Lucca, my hometown: the Pizzeria “La Bella ‘Mbriana” is a small and not particularly fancy place, but it has definitely the best pizza in Lucca and among the best pizzas I’ve had in general.
The service is quite minimalistic and fast-food like: you get a number for your order, wait to be called, and when you are done are expected to clean up after yourself. But the cutbacks stop here: the kitchen is equipped with a brick oven and the ingredients are top-notch.
I make it a point to take my foreign guests there, and so far they haven’t been disappointed. So if you happen to be around go there, and let me know how you liked it!
As an Italian, one of the questions I’m most frequently asked is “where to get a good pizza in Helsinki”. Well, the answer is in the picture above: go get yourself a Dr. Oetker Casa di Mama frozen pizza, and you will have a better pizza than in any restaurant around town. Honest.
If you really, really insist on going out for pizza, then the closest to Italian standards I have found is in “La Vista” in Kamppi, although the quality seems to vary from one time to the next. And you’ll still be better off with Dr. Oetker.
Another option is to make it yourself, but that’s the subject for another post…
I took the video above in Helsinki last Friday, during the Night of the Arts (Taiteiden yö). This is part of the Helsinki “festival weeks”, where a number of free events are arranged by Helsinki’s notable institutions. Quoting from the website:
On this year’s Night of the Arts, the French street theatre company Plasticiens Volants will transform Helsinki’s city centre sky into an enormous ocean aquarium. Giant floating sea creatures will swim from Esplanadi to the Senate Square, telling their aquatic tale along the way.
I normally don’t talk about Nokia here because of the conflict of interest, but this time I must say that I was really impressed by the video and audio quality of my phone’s camera. I think the video above speaks for itself.
Check some photos as well (these taken with the Canon D20)
Yet another summer holiday is over and has left behind the usual trail of photos. This year’s highlights have been a tour of Tuscany with finnish guests Anu and Petri, U2′s gig in Milan and a trip to the Isle of Elba for my good friend Valeria’s wedding. Enjoy! And if you are friend or family, don’t forget to login to Flickr.
Went to try “retkiluistelu” or “tour skating”, a variant of ice skating made for long trips on rough terrain. It uses (among other things) longer than normal skates and ice pikes to test the ice for thickness. The style is somewhat different than traditional skating in that you have to kick slightly forward to avoid getting stuck in the bumps and cracks of the ice.
It was fun, although as the photo shows my style needs some improvement. There are some nice photos on Flickr if you want to get a better idea.
My cousin Massimo sent me a link to this video, showing him and his friends building and riding their own snowboards in 1986 (!). Back then snowboarding was little more than a curiosity in Italy, and if you wanted to try it out you had to be inventive – as they certainly were! Massimo is the one with the red sweater and displaying an almost flawless descent at 8:27
I uploaded some photos taken during the holidays in San Cassiano, a charming little town on the Dolomiti mountains where we have spenty almost every Christmas in the last twenty years. We don’t have many traditions in my family, but this is certainly one of them (the other would have to be the Sunday pizza).
Yesterday we drank a bottle of Sassicaia that had been lying in my father’s cellar for several years. This is considered one of the best wines of Tuscany, and its price tag is counted in hundreds of euros, so you don´t drink it lightheartedly. It is also not unheard of that you would store it for a very long time waiting for a special occasion, and when it finally comes the wine has turned bad – so we decided that opening the bottle was itself the special occasion, and surrounded it with good food and a little bit of ceremony. Well it was worth it, the wine was excellent (thought I certainly wouldn´t have told the difference from a still expensive but less pricey one) and at least we didn´t end up drinking it from a styrofoam cup in a MacDonald´s.
A strange object appeared in the sky today, a glowing ball of red light peeked from the horizon and after a few hours went back to where it came from. A natural phenomenon or an alien flying ship? And will we see it again?
