Well, I'm not living with Italians, so I can't exactly say. But this is what I do know. In the morning, they go to Easter mass. Then around 11 there is a big explosion of the cart, which I don't know what exactly it symbolizes, but that's what they do.
They give their children these big chocolate hollow eggs with surprises inside. I asked my Italian teacher why, and she told me it's because early Christian depictions of the Virgin have her with an egg on her head. These eggs can range from really really simple 5 euro eggs (that are still bigger than my hand) to really elaborate and ginormous and fancy. I saw one that had a castle built into it, and it was somewhere between 30-40 euro.
After that, I don't know what they do. Today and tomorrow everything is closed, except for restaurants and some places in the center. What is the significance of tomorrow?
So I would love to tell you about the explosion of the cart, but... I can't. Why? Because I dreamt I was there so I missed the real thing. I really really dreamed I was there, like I was at the Duomo but there weren't a lot of people around so I started asking people in Italian if this was the right spot for the explosion, but since I didn't know the word for explosion I kept saying "boom!" The explosion I dreamt of was nice though. Big fancy cart, lots of nice fireworks. Whoops.
When I was little and we lived in Russia, there was a huge easter egg hunt at this hotel we ate at a lot, and I couldn't find anything except for a fake matrishka that didn't even open and it was stupid. I was crying (because I was, like, 5), and the people in the hotel felt bad, so they came out with this massive hollow chocolate egg with beautiful white chocolate roosters on the outside. It was as big as my head.
ReplyDeleteI miss you.
--Nikki