According to a recent article published on Yahoo Travel, Lonely Planet cites attending international festivals as a top 10 prediction of future travel. To me this seems no more insightful than “predicting” that Disney World will have lots of visitors next year. Now I’m sure they mean big, giant festivals of “World’s Fair” caliber, but that also means they’re missing the whole local festival opportunity that pops up in front of us lucky travelers sometimes.
We were fortunate enough to be in Umbria near the village of Panicarola for their annual lamb festival (or “festa”, as they call it). Where we come from, there are plenty of seafood festivals throughout the year (in fact, the loss of the Saint Paul Seafood Festival was one of the greatest tragedies of Hurricane Katrina). Here in Panicarola, lamb was the celebratory food, and it was available in quite a few grilled varieties, along with pastas, vegetables, and other Italian specialties. There was also, naturally, plenty of wine.
 |
| A Beautiful Little Chapel Next to the Festival |
Adjacent to (what we would call) the fairgrounds was a small, lovely chapel. Like any other local American festival, there were tents and booths to buy trinkets and mementos. There were also a few rides. To wind up our meal we enjoyed a Nutella and banana crepe, and then to work it off, we managed to squeeze in a little dancing. For all our Arthur Murray friends back home, yes we can still dance (sort of). While the locals danced line-of-dance around us in a step we didn’t recognized, we represented America with our own version of cha-cha.
