🇮🇹 ItaliaPass Insider - Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Ciao ItaliaPass insiders! Here's your weekly round-up of the latest and greatest happenings in our community and around the web when it comes to travel to Italy.

The big picture:

Super green pass requirements continue to challenge travelers to Italy, but ItaliaPass community members are boldly stepping up to the challenge! And speaking of challenges, it’s Florence Week here in the community!

A closer look:

  • UK travellers had what we’re all hoping is a huge victory this week, when the government announced that starting 3 February, “12-15 year olds in England will be able to prove their vaccination status via the digital NHS pass for international outbound travel.”
  • Our Super Green Pass group and our UK Travellers group have been buzzing, and members have been giving each other amazing help. 
  • And let’s not forget, we’re a community for expert advice and tools for travelers to Italy, and that means all things Italy, not just travel restrictions! It’s Florence Week here at ItaliaPass, so join in our weekly challenges. Here are the ones going so far:
  • And if you missed last week, we knocked out the Rome Week challenges like true gladiators! It's not too late to jump in: tips, photos, food, take your pick!

On the web:

Just for fun:

One of the things I absolutely love about Italy is the seasonality of things. If you had no idea what month it was and you just happened to pop up in Italy, you could probably get a pretty close idea of what time of year it was just by looking at certain seasonal offerings.

Example? It’s already Carnevale time! Heading into Lent, and therefore “Martedì Grasso” (Fat Tuesday), Italy gears up for the Carnival season. That means here in Rome we start to see the reappearance of some seasonal sweets in the bakeries that we only get at this time of year: frappe, castagnole, and bignè di San Giuseppe. 

Here are a few pictures for you of this year’s reappearances in my neighborhood bakery. It is so hard to resist buying some everyday. You can buy fried or oven-baked frappe, and the castagnole are essentially freshly made donut holes. Bignè di S. Giuseppe (St. Joseph’s Day Cream Puffs), also baked or fried, are in honor of Father’s Day, which in Italy is celebrated on March 19.

Italy Magazine has a recipe for Carnival chiacchiere (what frappe are called down south as well as in Milan) if you want to try your hand at making them yourself!

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