"Where are all the black folk in Tuscany and Venice, Italy?" Italy Adventure Part I

June 2, 2010. Breeze at the beach Ca' Savio outside of Venice. Mediterranean Sea.

I traveled to Italy for 2.5 weeks and just got back into Munich a few days ago. It was my first time. I had the pleasure of spending my birthday week in Tuscany and in Venice. I guess I was most surprised that I hardly saw any black folk in Florence and Venice, two cities that get millions of tourists each year throughout the world. I got lots of stares from little kids and a few adults and found it kind of funny. I kept on asking my husband, “Where are all the black folk? Weird since we’re in major tourist cities.” It was pretty easy to be vegan in the places I traveled, despite it being a culture heavily saturated in foods that come from pig and cows. We had access to legumes, whole meal bread, fresh fruits and veggies, arugula and a lot of wonderful olive oil. I have to admit that I was saddened by the plethora of wild boar and pig shoppes. Many of the shoppes displayed stuffed pigs and boar. In Greve, Italy, I found it particularly saddening that a shoppe stuffed several baby boars and then set them up at a table and posed them in a way that looked like they were eating sausage. Why would a pig want to eat a pig? I imagined how enraged I’d be if Sun were killed and stuffed and set up to eat human animals (or any other animals). (sigh)

We drove from Munich Germany to Lago di Garda on May 17, 2010. For the first time in my life, I drove ridiculously fast using stick shift through the Alps. I kept on saying, “What’s the point of seatbelts and airbags? If you hit anyone or any thing at this speed you just blow up!” I guess I wasn’t used to the BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes pissed off at me for not driving mach 5, so they just tailgated me until I moved out of the way. We got into Lago di Garda at around 2 in the afternoon and it was breath taking.

Sun and Breeze: First arriving at Lago di Garda in Italy.

We ended up dining in Lago di Garda and Sun and I had our first vegan pizza in Italy.

That evening, Sun and I had our first vegan pizza in Italy on Lago di Garda

Our first gelato without milk. It was at Lago di Garda. Papaya and Mango.

After a few days at Lago di Garda, my family and I headed to Tuscany and checked into Camping Girasole. The first night we dined at the campgrounds restaurant, but the next day we ended up dining in Radda in Chianti at the best pizza place we had gone to, by far.