First and foremost Happy Easter everyone. A little late I know, but I didn’t wanna blog about Easter until I had experienced an Italian Pasquetta.
So like England (and the rest of the Christian world) the Easter weekend is split up into three main days. Unlike England there is a proper distinction between what you do on these days.
The first day, Good Friday to us/ Venerdì Santo (Holy Friday) to them, is a day of fasting.
The second day, Easter Sunday to us / Pasqua (Easter) to them, is the day where you meet up with your family and eat yourself to death. Unlike us Christmas isn’t about the food. They prefer to eat fish and seafood during the Christmas period. Easter is all about the lamb, mutton, ham, salami, sausages, turkey, chicken and cheese. In fact here in Naples there are two Easter specialties which are just saturated in fat.
The first is the Casatiello. This is a layered savoury cake made of several different kinds of meat and cheese (oh and a few hard boiled eggs). This “cake” is huge and weighs a ton and there is no limit to how big you can make it.
The second is the Pastiera. Which is a sweet cake which a hard exterior filled with ricotta. It has a very unique flavour to it, which I just found out comes from the fact that the cake is made days in advance and left to kinda ferment.
And of course you cannot forget that Easter Sunday is the day you receive your Easter eggs. Italian Easter eggs are a lot more fancy looking than ours…and a lot more expensive. I didn’t receive any, but that’s ok because my Mum gave me 2 packets of mini eggs and 15 Creme Eggs.
Last but not least there is Easter Monday or as they call it here Pasquetta (little Easter…how adorable!). Whereas the Sunday is spent with family, the Monday is generally spent with friends. Here in Naples (not sure about the rest of Italy) there is a tendency to have a picnic during Pasquetta, probably to eat up the leftovers from the day before. Supposedly the weather is ALWAYS bad on Pasquetta and yesterday was no exception.
My Pasquetta: I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to do any thing on the Sunday. My host family went to their families house and I was left alone to eat fried spaghetti and watch TV. So it was really exciting to be invited to celebrate Pasquetta with my Italian friends.
The excitement quickly faded when I received news that we would be leaving the house at 7am! About 20 of us went for a picnic in a park outside of Naples called “Parco deglli Uccelli” (Birds’ park). It was basically a forest…but you had to pay 7.50 euros each to get in. It took us a while to find somewhere to sit and when we finally set up everything we got moved because it was “reserved” so someone else.
Finally we were all set up and settled. After a few hours I was ready to go home. Part of it was because I was tired, the reason was because of a little thing called Marijuana. I’m really over Marijuana! I had friends who smoked it when I was 16/17 and it really didn’t bother me. But at 21 I just find it lame and stupid. Yes I know people say it’s not dangerous and that it’s healthier than alcohol, but as I see it, it is illegal and there must be a good reason for that. Everyone apart from my friend Eli were smoking it. God knows how much of the stuff they went through because each person had at least 4 joints each. They even made a bong at one point! When they weren’t on the weed they were smoking tobacco. So basically I was constantly sat in a cloud of tobacco/marijuana smoke. I felt so disgusting. My hair, skin, eyes, clothes, just everything felt ingrained with the crap.
At 4pm the park closed and I just so happy to be going home. All I wanted to do was go to bed. Unfortunately they had different ideas and we ended up going to one of the girl’s houses. I admit I had more fun there. We played games and I think they finally ran out of the green stuff. But I was so exhausted. I finally got home at 8.30pm. I wanted to shower so bad, but I literally had no energy. I changed out of my clothes asap, scrubbed my face and hands clean, tided up my hair and went to bed.
This morning as soon as I woke up I was in the shower (I hate having showers in the morning but it had to be done!) I was in the shower for an hour just scrubbing every inch of me clean. A little OCD I know. My pyjamas went straight into the wash basket just in case they managed to absorb any of the smell.
I’m sure Pasquetta is an awesome day. My experience of it just wasn’t. Maybe I’m just too uptight but boh I’d rather be uptight than a pothead.
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