It was a day to be Italian even if you aren’t. The annual Italian Fiesta Weekend. Ybor City was filled to the brim with hundreds of variety of Italian fare, Italian gifts, Italian beer and Italian entertainment areas. A weekend had the Bocce ball Tournament matched with visiting teams from Italy participating. The fun lighted reenactment of the original “I Love Lucy” grape stomping episode comes alive with people stomping and crushing the barreled grapes with their bare feet!
It all comes down to rekindling of friends from years or days past. Fun, Games, Food, Talking with Friends new and old. Centennial Park is the stage to all so many Tampa & Ybor City/ GaYBOR events. How wondrous it is to have a diversity community filled with ethnicity differences, sexual orientation differences, religious differences, color differences, language differences and all held in the melting pot we call home, Historic Ybor City. Food venues were as diverse as to the hundreds of fare introduced including dozens of deserts. Spaghetti with meatballs, eggplant dishes, Italian Club’s homemade sausage sandwiches and 100 of other tantalizing aromatic prepared authentic dishes. I had to go by Bernini’s tent for the grilled lamb chops! Oh so good….You left stuffed and happy!
Everyone takes the chance to win in the Italian Club Foundation raffle, 3000 gallons of gasoline given to the lucky winner. Yes, Jack Shiver comes back from the Baltic Sea to be a barker selling those raffle tix on the microphone. They haven’t called me yet!
I again was with our dear friend Miss Italian girl herself singing performer Judy B Goode. She had met up ith the top stage entertainment for the event. The three Intl. Italian women singing group, Tre Bella. The ladies performed for 45 minutes to a welcoming crowd of thousands.
For the last song set they brought Judy up on stage to sing with them for their final numbers. How thoughtful and how honored Judy was.
Another great time in historic Ybor City with another great event, Italian Fiesta.
