"Too young to worry, Too old to smile"

Island of Murano He said, "We don't have any women masters in Murano and that's because, a woman cannot blow glass and talk at the same time"... Well what can I say, the problem is universal! Jokes apart, the masters subtle rotation of the rod, with a blob of glass hot out of the furnace at one end, and gravity doing its part in pulling the blob off the rod, to form weird shapes, is nothing but sheer magic. A gentle blow from the other end and a few strokes of the rod and voila, a vase comes to life. If you thought this was sheer brilliance one must admire the pulling technique with awe. Clearly, working on glass with the pulling technique is like sculpting castles of the sand. The imaginative parlance of the 'Master' is far beyond any viewer in the room. A couple of gentle pulls using tongs clubbed with gravity doing a tad of its part and the end result can be anything but your imagination! Apart from farming, I cannot imagine another practi...

Piazza Navona - Rome Art stops time, and I experienced it as well. Staying fixated at a painting full of exuberant colors is not something new and one must surely have done it at least once in life. Someone once told me that it would takes months just to explore Rome and half of it would surely be spent standing in from of a 3x4. You never quite understand that till you stumble upon Rome's cobbled-stone Piazza's, especially the most famous of all, Piazza Navona. This square  is enlivened every day by many artists who with their art succeed in capturing the features and the typical expressions of those being depicted.  Be it a ballerina in red with her back facing us or the carpet of poppy laid out for you along the rolling hills of Tuscany, each artist brings his inspiration to life with so much care and concern.  It is easy for an untrained eye to get mixed up with the work of a real artist pitted against a counterfeit one. Today their is more of chaos and cl...

If one sleeps well, he eats well... and if he eats well, he is surely in for a gastronomic orgasm in everything he tastes! As you wake up, the thought of that first cup of coffee and something to nibble along lingers  vaguely in your mind. On a chill spring morning in Italy, after a lazy morning shower, you would hurriedly get dressed to find the nearest coffee bar. And that’s what I did every day. The robotic arms of a tender working his way on the equally fast, yet complex espresso machine, does catch your entry from the corner of his eye. A short and brisk “Buon Giorno” and he is back to his love of his life, making the best ristretti one would ever imagine. A ristretti is no humble coffee for the common coffee drinker. It is pure liquid adrenaline and has a tendency to keep the tourist on his feet all day. The warm smell of cornetti freshly being lined up for the customers’ tingles a very soft corner of your palate. Be it the residents or the tourists, the quintesse...