Doing things like spending the weekend in Italy seems almost effortless when you live in Austria. With the weather cooling down we decided to visit a friend who currently lives in the small Italian town of Cittadella. I had never heard of it before (and neither had anyone else from what I could tell), but Cittadella is a charming, walled Italian town, in the vicinity of other charming little-known Italian towns, and only a stone’s throw from Venice.
On the Friday night our friend (who I will now refer to for the remainder of this post as ‘other Thomas’), took us to an amazing Italian restaurant where we sampled San Daniele prosciutto and shared one of the tastiest T-bone steaks I’ve ever had. Obviously drinking copious amounts of wine in Italy is mandatory, as was the panacotta for dessert!
A night on the town was called for and we wound our way through the small streets, stopping at bars along the way and sampling, you guessed it, more liquid delights of the Italian variety. This led to some bad decisions, the cheap, strawberry cocktail (what was that??) and beer the Italian way (no tilting of the glass, just pouring half a glass of foam and waiting for it to subside), but we were eventually smart enough to stumble on home in the wee hours of the morning.
Saturday, as a result, was fairly quiet. I mainly read and slept while the boys played video games. A late lunch saw us taking in a pizza (we were in Italy of course), which made everything all right again and we took a touristy but scenic stroll along the top of the city walls to check out the beautiful view over town. And lo and behold, wouldn’t you know it, there was a medieval festival on!
So that evening we donned our medieval garb (actually, we didn’t, but everyone else did), and headed back into town. There were big burly men offering beer, ladies strolling around in old-style dresses and small children carrying toy bows and arrows. You could browse various medieval stalls, try your hand at knife throwing or just watch the crazy guy with the fire display… we discovered that the majority of the action was happening the following day, so decided to head into the main part of town for a very Italian meal of – hamburgers.
On Sunday morning we took a quick trip to the nearby town of Vincenza for a wander, taking in the beautiful mountain views along the river and of course tasting some delicious Italian food. The weather was in the low 20s, so just about perfect for strolling around, and much warmer than the Austria we had to go back to!
On the way back, we helped other Thomas with his grocery shopping (ok, that’s not true, he did his shopping and we ran around looking at all the cool Italian things), and grabbed a few things ourselves like Fonzies (Twisties) for me and Italian cookies for Thomas.
And while it wasn’t an overly touristy our action-packed weekend, I hope I’ve convinced you that Cittadella certainly has enough Italian charm to warrant a visit if you’re in the area.
an aussie in austria 
Sounds like a fun weekend!