by Maureen | Apr 26, 2010 | Canals, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Journal, Photo of the Day, Photos, Shopping & Markets
The original plan was to head to Firenze for the day (!), but I caught a short, quick cold Friday night and couldn’t dare think of hopping on the train this morning. (I could hardly get out of bed!) After eventually getting up-and-at-em, I dragged myself up to the Naviglio Grande, knowing they were having their monthly Antiques Market. “OK, fine. I’ll go there instead.”
Glad I did! I found some wonderful things. I’m enthralled with old penmanship and typography, fabric and sewing notions, curious boxes and just plain cool things. Here’s my day’s assortment:
Old post cards, religious medals and pen nibs.
I selected a pencil drawing from 1888, an old travel journal from 1961, report cards from 1907+, a cheese sign, decorative cloth tape, “money substitute papers” from the Comune di Varese from 1926 and some hat forms from Genova.
A bundle of 100-year-old postcards and a Superman school journal from 1980 were included in my day’s treasures. (1980 was 30 years ago! Wow.)
by Maureen | Apr 26, 2010 | Canals, Discoveries, Featured Articles, Journal, People, Photo of the Day, Photos, Shopping & Markets
On the last Sunday of the month, one can browse Antiques and Flea-Market-Finds for as far as the eye can see (2 kilometers), on both sides of the Naviglio Grande, the Grand Canal. (This canal intersects with the Naviglio Pavese, the one I ride my bike along.)
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There is still some limited boat traffic along the canal when they’ve let the water in.
The antique sellers’ stalls also stretch far out into the side streets that branch off of the canal.
Linens? Oh yes. I find plenty. And they’re gorgeous. And the sellers know what they have and charge prices accordingly. There are few, if any, “steals” here. But the high quality linen and cotton, with the embroidery and open-work stitching, are superb examples of the old European linens. (I would love to buy them all up… but for what?)
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Beautiful, finely-crafted instruments of all sorts! The asking price of this Astrolabe was 700 Euro. (Cough, cough. Roughly $1000 right now.) But it was lovely.
I don’t even know what this Parisian instrument is.
These look like porcelain portraits of Mao and his family.
An interesting assortment of portraits.
It is startling to me how often I see the American flag, or some representation of it.
Isn’t this luggage out of the stereotypical “Italian Holiday Travel Movie”?
The dog matches the upholstery. I missed him at first.
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Smile. I’m on Candid Camera (for my Seester.)
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This guy sold horse figures of every sort.
I had been walking around for hours and stumbled upon some finds. “How much for this group of papers and books?” “50 Euro.” “How about 40?” How about 45 and you let me buy you a drink.” I laughed. It caught me completely by surprise. I bought the papers and books for 45 Euro and Graziano and I stepped 10 feet across the cobblestone and had a glass of cold white wine at a Sushi Bar on a hot afternoon and talked for a little while. So funny. But it was a pleasant and charming break.
Cool hat box. (Cool typography.)
As the warm afternoon waned, the cafés started to fill with people enjoying the Milanese aperitivo. The musicians showed up in the old Vicolo dei Lavandai, the washing station of the 19th century where women gathered to scour their clothes against washboard stones as their wash water flowed off into the canal.
Who’da thought I’d see this?! Wait! I should have bought the one a few issues back: Settembre 1957!
Packing up to go home, this man still wore hat, bow tie and white coat as he packed his lamps into a salami box.
So now, do you have an idea of what’s for sale at an Italian Antique/Flea Market?
by Maureen | Jul 19, 2009 | Discoveries, Featured Articles, Food!, Journal, Meals, People
One of the Sunday street markets of antiques and collectables lines the narrow, crooked, cobbled Via Fiori Chiari. I had found the listing online and it seemed like a nice way to spend a Sunday morning.
Almost as soon as I came up out of the subway, I was faced with the Piccolo Theater and the public art that dominated the intersection. (I thought of Burien’s new Town Square.)
Two blocks later, at the entrance to Via Fiori Chiari, sat the mozzarella bar, Obika. I made a note to go back there, as I watched the woman prepare a broad flat disk of fresh mozzarella the size of a pizza! She laid the cheese out flat, piled it with fresh arugula and freshly sliced bresaola (my favorite cured meat). She rolled the whole thing to be later sliced into beautiful green, white and red spiral rotoli. The place looked sleek and hip, (The prices weren’t so sleek, however. Check out their web site for a lesson in mozzarella.)
Via Fiori Chiari is a mere alleyway, only two blocks long, narrow but spotless, and faced by antique and clothing stores. The restaurants along those two blocks set out their tables and table cloths, their menus written in either cursive or chalk, and umbrellas to shade all the hungry antique-shoppers.
I wandered the two blocks and bought 7 beads. Sure. Come all the way to Italy and buy beads from Thailand! But I liked them. They reminded me of folded paper, and their simplicity pleased me.
Lunch time. I perused the posted menus and the octopus at Il Kaimano kept sounding good to me, Polpetti alla Luciana. I stepped up and was seated with tables one inch away from either side of my own. The waiter handed me a menu, and when I said “grazie“, he looked startled and replied “Italiana?”. I said “si“, and he returned with a menu in Italian. (I was pleased again today.)
The table proximity was cozy… Indeed! And it was on this lovely, just-right-warm Sunday afternoon, sipping prosecco and spooning octopus out of my bowl that I met my first new friends in Milano! I can’t remember how the conversation began with Ewa and Piotr; I think it was that Piotr asked if I’m English, or if I speak English. “Americans speaking Italian usually don’t have such a good accent,” he said. The three of us ended up enjoying our meals together over the next hour or so, speaking with Italian and English blended so well I forgot what language was being spoken!
Ewa (Eva) is a doctor from Poland and has lived here for 30 years. Piotr is Polish and German, and a retired musical conductor. He was especially pleased by the music of the street musician just a few feet away, and thus their selection of this restaurant. He told of being a part of the musical production, Cinderella, at the Kennedy Center in 1962.
It wasn’t long into the conversation that Ewa suggested we get together so she could practice her English and I could practice my Italian! What fun. How perfect. We exchanged cards and numbers and plan to meet for coffee or pizza next weekend. We might make it a weekly language practice!
Just last night I was musing about “living” in Milano. Living in a city is not simply having an apartment and buying groceries alongside the locals. That’s just the mechanics and structure of living. Living in a city is about being a part of community in that city. That’s the heart of living and the key I was wondering how to create. Certainly, sitting in my apartment doesn’t do much to help me meet people, but I had thought, “What? Go to a restaurant alone and just sit there writing in my journal while I eat?” Well…no journal with me today and the tables were only an inch apart. How could we NOT have started a conversation?! It was all so fluid and easy.
Reflecting on friendships, I am so very grateful for the lifeline that NABA creates for me, and the gathering of wonderful people that I’ve met there. Without those friendships this move to Milano would have been an entirely different story. NABA has given me a community to dip my big toe into right from the start.
But since arriving here, meeting Ewa and Piotr began the first spontaneous, independent friendships outside of NABA that have a likelihood of continuing! And that prospect pleases me even more deeply than paper-like beads or being mistaken for an Italian! Grazie a Ewa e Piotr!
