1. French bread is superior to Italian bread.
Abundance of salt and crust are the key factors underwriting this decree.
2. Italian coffee is superior to French coffee.
Every single espresso I’ve drunk in Italy has proudly borne a thick, golden crema. Waiters don’t look at you like you’ve made a major cultural faux pas if you order a coffee with milk, be it a cappuccino or a macchiato. 
I hadn’t encountered any cappuccino froth art since I left Sydney and coffeetops like this one, quaffed in the Campo San Stefano in Venice, with a copy of the Guardian on hand, made me a little homesick.
I can’t, however, come to a definitive position on the important question of Ice-Cream. Without a shadow of a doubt, the ice-cream I ate in Paris (ah, Berthillon) and in Corsica (made of strawberries picked by mine own fair hands) aced the gelati I’ve eaten in Italia. I don’t think that I can fairly appraise Italian ice-cream having tasted only a random sample. The strawberry and grape sorbet served as part of Peter and Allegra’s wedding feast was superlative but as far as I know, no photographs are available. 
This cone – tiramisu and frutti di bosco in Venice – wasn’t bad either.
Look though, at some of the things that you can’t do at Duino Castle.
No smoking, no spitting, fair enough. No ice-cream?? This seems a bit tough, given there is a café which sells ice-cream about twenty metres away from this sign.
And no talking! No talking seems absolutely reprehensible in view of the long, loudly trumpeted relationship between the rulers of the Duino Castle and the poets. Middle echelon aristocracy – don’t get me started.
4 comments:
isn't the one with a bubble a no bubblegum sign? all this talk of icecream is making me crave some... yum!
you're right, it is bubblegum! i have clearly internalised the Power. if i had been a chewing gum chewer, i would have assumed that that sign applied to me. sheeesh. go get some icecream, lady. xx
And that's quite a spit being represented. I'd go so far as to say, given the size of said spittage, that the sign is actually specifying one should not spit seeds...perhaps there was a fruit merchant nearby as well??
No fruit merchant, but lots of extremely disreputable nuts and olives on offer in the vicinity.
Duino is far behind me, and yet the logic of the place is only becoming clear now.
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