Live out in the country long enough in Italy and you'll come across garishly colored signs announcing various food festivals called Sagre. These represent your chances to eat well and cheaply during the summer season, without having to get the kitchen all heated up.

Every weekend thousands of these things are held across Italy. You can join in easily. The hardest part at the good ones is to find a parking place. In the country we just leave our cars anywhere. Your mileage and tolerance for breaking the law may vary.

In any case you'll be herded toward a table with a list of all the foods on offer. Just pick the dishes that sound good to you, pay up and head to a table while they take care of your order.

A village in our vicinity in northern Tuscany recently held a sagra as a benefit for their sports teams. In the picture is a plate of meat we bought for €7, cooked over a wood fire and emerging mighty delicious. There's a sausage, three ribs, and a pork chop.

Buon appetito.

La Spezia was always an important port in Italy. It's fitting that the Festa della Marineria be held there. The festival celebrates "the arts, culture and traditions of the sea". You'll see antique sailing vessels racing each other in regattas and more.

We went on Thursday, when things were just getting set up. Marine antique dealers held to one side of the waterfront, displaying all sorts of things you might want in your house--or not, depending upon whether a nautical theme suits you.

Old sailing vessels were scattered throughout the port area. Folks strolled between them, gawking at the polishing being done as the ships were being readied for the festival. A huge, articulated metal statue of a woman was being hoisted unsuccessfully to a standing position. At noon, thundering cannons announced, well, noon I suppose.

There are special seafood meals being served in the local restaurants in honor of the festival (you have to have a coupon, as far as I know). La Spezia has a suprising number of restaurants just inland of the port area. For a town that's on nobody's lists of places to visit before you die, La Spezia is actually quite nice.

A walk up to the Archaeological Museum rewards you with not only fine artifacts for viewing, but the museum is inside a castle; the views down to the port are quite nice. The walk up the stairs is not.

The Festa della Marineria runs from the 11-16 of June. I didn't find any info in English, but here's the official site in Italian.

We're staying in Masseria Li Mennuli for a few days and wow, do I like Puglia all over again.

Yes, we've had some spring rain. We've also had some spectacular light and clouds, including a big ol' rainbow today.

Some Primitivo vineyards are under water, and folks are worried. We're just south of Manduria, where the famous Primitivo di Manduria comes from.

We've learned a lot. Like "Primitivo" doesn't have anything to do with primitive. It's an early ripening grape, so the word relates to "primo", or the first to harvest.

As far as restaurants go, we've not had a bad meal here. The seafood is top notch, and the traditional dishes, like fave and ciccoria and wonderful.

And the festival season has started already. The picture above is from the local St. Baggio festival.

Evolution is an interesting thing. Festivals, for example, evolve with time. They take a core idea and modify it through the years using whatever technology is available to make a point in the most dramatic way.

Take the Scoppio del carro for instance, a Florentine festival held on Easter morning. You see, Pazzino di Ranieri de' Pazzi declared Jerusalem a Christian city during the First Crusades by rasing a banner on the defensive walls. For this, Godfrey IV de Bouillon gifted him with three chips of stone from the Holy Sepulchre of Christ which he took to Florence in 1101 and used to light the "new fire"--Christ risen at Easter.

The fire was distributed to the citizens, first on foot, then on a cart. Eventually, the cart became the launching pad for some spectacular pyrotechnics:

During the early 1500s, the "colombina," a dove-shaped rocket holding an olive branch in its beak, was introduced; it is ignited by the holy fire, setting off the entire cart in a series of explosions.

Today you can see the festivities of the Scoppio del Carro in front of the Baptistry of St. John near the Duomo in Florence. There's will be flag throwing, holy water sprinkiling and...

...a sizzling cart that explodes with fireworks, the latest incarnation of this Easter celebration.

See: Italy Magazine: Scoppio del carro in Florence for a detailed look at the festival and some video of it. See Easter in Italy for more Easter events.

There were plenty of porcini up north in the street markets of Torino yesterday. We spent a day at the recently remodeled Reggia di Venaria Reale, north of Turin. The royal residence was built in the mid 1600’s and had fallen into disrepair. I can report to you that the restoration is wonderful. But...you know, there's just so much glorious excess your eyes can take in a day, and if you see everything, they say you've hoofed it for 1.5 kilometers.

The day itself was fabulous, and ended with a glass of wine sipped slowly in the main piazza of the town of Venaria Reale. What surprised me was that the town outside the palace was a very interesting place to stroll, with restaurants and cafes that featured decent food and drink for a reasonable price in excellent surroundings. A stroll down the main street was better than a stroll in the Palace gardens in fact, at least this time of year.

Don't hesitate to came to Italy in the fall. It really is the best time to visit. Rent a villa, bring a great book, buy a good bottle of Barolo and you won't mind being stuck inside when it rains.

Until the Barolo runs out that is.

One of the great things about staying a while at your destination, as you do when you rent a villa or have your own "casa vacanza", is that you have a chance to learn of all the weekend festivals in your immediate area.

Signs of them will be all over town. Some, like sagre, celebrate food. La Sagra di Porcini, for example, would likely consist of celebrating all the ways the local folks prepare funghi Porcini, or Porchini mushrooms. You'd sit down for a communal meal with all manner of Porcini dishes you might order at the little kiosk they've set up. It never costs much, and the wine will be local and cheap.

Other festivals celebrate the good times of the past. Lots of festivals, especially in Tuscany, include Renaissance-garbed Sbandieratori, the flag throwers. You see a young practitioner of the sport above, doing his thing in the city of Aulla in the Lunigiana.

Hotels are for businessmen who have no need for this interesting cultural manifestations, I figure.

We looked over the balcony last evening to see our neighbor Enrico unraveling and cleaning the bright orange nets they arrange at the foot of olive trees to catch olives at harvest time. He explained that the ulivetto or olive grove was just over the hill, and we should visit, as it was in a beautiful spot. He pegs the harvest at the middle of October.

So we made plans to walk up the hill and see it the next morning, then go to the Saturday Open Air Market in Aulla. Enrico assured us that it wouldn't rain, maybe a few sprinkles in the evening...

Well, it's raining cats and dogs, gatti e cani.

Which means that we probably won't be going to the local sagra di porcini, a communal feast of porcini mushrooms, the promise of which has had our mouths watering all week. Enrico commented on those plans as well, waving a finger and making that tsk-tsk sound Italians make when you're wrong about something.

"It hasn't rained in 3 months. You won't get having fresh porcini, don't kid yourself."

Oh, yeah. We hadn't thought about that.

But with this rain....

One of my favorite dishes this time of year is simply pasta with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and cheese. I chop the tomatoes while I cook the pasta in abundant salted water (real salted--as salty as the sea, none of that "half teaspoon in 5 gallons of water" garbage the food dunderheads on the tee vee tell you). When the pasta is done I drain it, add the chopped tomatoes, some oil, and then mix and sprinkle some cheese on top. It's done. It's easy. It's mighty tasty.

Of course, you can spiff the dish up with some crushed garlic. Or, you can go to your local store's deli department and buy a couple tablespoons of pesto and add it too.

It's not just me telling you to add pesto to your fresh tomato pasta. Nope, the Genovese who settled in Carloforte on the island of San Pietro off the south west coast of Sardinia make their pesto with fresh tomatoes, so you're eating the real deal.

The folks of Carloforte are known for their Tuna fishing prowess. You might see tuna stomachs drying in the sun if you go there.

If you need a story to tell your friends after visiting an Island they've never heard of, tuna stomachs floating in the breeze might be just the thing to start things off with.

Carloforte celebrates a tuna festival, usually at the end of May to the first days in June. They also have a Cous cous festival in May.

You gotta love those cross cultural currents flowing through the Mediterranean...

This month you have Barga Jazz running the whole month in the Garfagnana's most visited town. Out at Torre del Lago you can see and hear the Puccini Festival: Madama Butterfly, Turandot, Tosca and Edgar will fill the evening air.

Marina di Pietrasanta offers the Festival "La Versiliana" which offers everything from ballet to Jesus Christ Superstar in its lineup.

Viareggio has an August "Festival Latino Americano" on tap.

If you've rented a home in the Lucca area of northern Tuscany, you should sign up for the Lucca and its Lands newsletter.

And don't forget all the "sagre" held in even the smallest communities in the countryside. You'll find great local food and sometimes music at a sagra. You find them by driving around and observing brightly colored posters tacked to everywhere cars might stop. That's how we found the Sagra Dell’Anguilla a Gassano last year. It's the eel festival of Gassano in the Lunigiana, where you'll sit at long communal tables and let the locals serve you what you've ordered at the ordering window.

We used to have to send letters to a hotel and hope they spoke enough English to write our names in the reservation book (and hope they actually received the letters in time). Not any more.

In any case, did you know that if you stayed at a place like La Rocca, you can hire someone with a falcon and a few hawks, and he'd come over and start slinging meat into the air so that you could photograph the hawks' agility in picking it from the ether before it hit the ground?

Or you can hire a group of Sbandieratori, those flag throwing dudes who perform in Medieval costume with drums and flags and even do a show with cross-bows aimed at a candle.

There are so many possibilities for interesting travel these days. And just think, your contribution to the free spirits who do these kinds of activities not only keeps good people gainfully employed, but keeps the old traditions alive as well.

As a tourist, you have responsibilities you know.