This involved dressing the kids extremely warmly and trudging along to where they set up stands of life in the past (from 1400 onwards, more or less) next to a tiny church. There were animals including sheep, lambs, goats, 4 young heifers, one grumpy horse, one nippy Shetland, two donkeys, 3 ducks, 3 cold rabbits, 3? geese, a few goats in with the sheep and lonely one in a corral and a few variants of the chicken. We gave the horses carrots (after asking permission), looked at the sheep (Xavi was very wary of all the animals), drank hot apple cider and I had a mulled wine, ate a home-made sausage sandwich (Elias), played a game involveing hitting a bag with a big stick and getting a dragon toy as a prize (and Elias was really proud when I said, "You got that for the family! Now we can have a dragon to play with in the castle." - the concept of him getting it for all of us was really important), wandered around the market, looked in the tiny church, ate some bread made with chestnut four and now there's meant to be a parade so I'm going to sign off!!
Update: here's a newspaper article about it in a regional newspaper (Watch out, NYT).
http://www.laprovinciadivarese.it/stories/Cronaca/261570_saronno_festa_di_santantonio_corteo_storico_con_500_figuranti/
and some photos of the fest:
Mulled wine - yes please!
And the parade. The parade was great, it had all sorts of characters from the ages including families,
wandering salesmen (vegetables, tinkers, basket weavers and so on), a herd of real sheep (the best!):
people dead or dying from the plague (of course the kids were most curious about them - perhaps a teeny bit worried but then when I pointed out their eyes were open they found it just intriguing), horses,
soldiers and so on. Great job I have to say. Elias remembers the people "pretending t be married" (insert blush here) and Xavi remembers the people "pretending to be sick":
No comments:
Post a Comment