Best of British

Stumbled on Piacenza's very first European market on the way to the Vodafone shop today. It was all very exciting, with a bunch of men in uniforms or navy blue suits giving rambling speeches before cutting a ribbon. I'd had to throw my breakfast away this morning because there was a dried caterpillar in it (that's All Bran for you - I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference) so treated myself to some "dutch mini crepes" as a late breakfast, then marvelled at all the bizarre stuff on offer, including...

Surfboard size bread from Tuscany (strictly speaking bodyboard size, but still pretty impressive, a good four feet long.)








Giant sausage from Germany - quite frightening, but not as frightening as....








...This pig thing - not sure which country this was from but made me contemplate vegetarianism, except that in Italy I'd probably starve to death.







There were amazing things from each country - tulip bulbs and cheeses from Holland, amazing sausages and cold meats from Germany and Eastern Europe, delicious sugar laden cakes from Sicily. Ireland was represented by a giant Guinness stand, of course. And as for Britain - there was a great big stall draped with Union Jacks and emblazoned with a big slogan saying Best of British, and what did it sell?

Ah, of course, a big pile of tacky stuff!

It took about an hour to fix the dongle, which had gone wrong for absolutely no reason except to make life more challenging.