Small things
Sunday Espresso XIV.
Hi, I’m Peter, and you’re reading Anywhere Italy. Our mission is to cover the 1,000 Italian towns most travelers skip, in person, one at a time. To come along, join free, and go paid if you want to keep us on the road.
Buona domenica!
Last weekend, we went to the Pupporina and Tordello Festival in Bozzano. Typing this down makes me laugh, and I promise I will write a full piece about it and how an Italian food festival works. Pupporina (amazingly funny word, if you ask me) is a cookie made with butter, by the way. And I wrote about tordello here.
But today I wanted to write about the small things. So here is Alessandro’s little boat selling fried fish:
Now, Alessandro has multiple boats. This is boat number 2. His boats sell fried stuff. There is one on the molo of Viareggio (guide about Viareggio is here). It sells seafood, octopus, calamari, etc. And there is one on Lake Massaciuccoli, selling local lake specialties, like frog legs (guide about the lake is here). The place doesn’t even have a name, it’s just called La Barchina 2. The boat 2.
We arrived at our festival an hour before opening, because we are idiot foreigners, but at least we’ve booked our tables. So, had to kill time, so we drove back to the boat. We had fried anchovies. They were fresh, not from the freezer, it was marked on the menu as “local catch” specifically.
The boat is in Gambero Rosso, which is basically the Michelin Guide’s Italian version. In the picture, you can see a newspaper clipping on top of aperto (open). It’s a local article about why the boat is amazing and part of the local community.
Once done, we went to the festival. We stuffed ourselves with food. We paid almost nothing. By the way, I gave up spelling my name nowadays, so you can see only Pietro on the table booking note.
The food was cooked there fresh, obviously, and everyone dined together under the sky, celebrating the pasta and the cookie. And this is one of the, I don’t know, can’t guess, but like one of the 50 options where you can go just here, just that weekend, if you are looking for a festival, event, or happening. All of them are like “fish festival” or “festival to celebrate medieval bread-making” or my favorite, “sausage festival” where Fosdinovo, a local town in the mountains, celebrates their way of making sausages. It will have a saxophone band as well.
I know this all sounds like banality. But the secret here is this: everyone is looking for this dolce vita experience, which, even writing it down, makes me itchy. Everyone is searching for the big thing, the big beach, the panoramic view, the mountain-top town, the big dinner, the big table, the Europemaxxing and Eurosummer experiences, whatever all of these mean.
But this is how you celebrate life. This. The small-town festivals. The event that is built around a butter-cookie. The article and award that is about a rusty old boat selling fried frog legs.
I am not joking, we’ve spent almost an hour sitting at the table at the boat. There were people stopping, many of them, some of them came with a bag and packed their fried frog legs home. For about 10 minutes, the line disappeared and the lady who a minute ago fried a bowl of octopus in the oil walked out, sat down with one of the dudes sitting there, smoked a cigarette, and talked.
I don’t know. I can barely remember my afternoon in Positano. I’m sure I won’t forget frog-leg-lady.
Peter
Pietrasanta, 9 August 2026
What’s new on the page
I’m back from Turin, finished with property-hunting, yaay. I wrote up my entire apartment buying experience, which I’m told is gold if you are in buying mode or planning to be in one:
I also wrote about amaro. This piece was sitting in my drafts for more than a month, and I almost forgot about it. The pitch: if you think Aperol or any of the spritzes are amaro, you are wrong. Read to learn the full story, also a little alcohol distilling history lesson there.
Last one, you’ve got it in your inbox, my personal story on how one small town (Ronciglione in Lazio) changed my entire view about Italy and about travel in general. It’s based on an experience that was more than half a decade ago, but the memory is still sharp.
