That’s Odd

ERETRIA EVIA  GREECE

SUKKOT 2022 FROM OCTOBER 9TH TO OCTOBER 19TH

Full Board with Gourmet Meals Sukkah Musical Evenings & Concerts Kids Club

Private Beach Indoor & Outdoor Pool Tennis Court Spa : Massage, Sauna

Double Room Family Room & Connecting Room Junior Suite

Surf’s Up

Two men got to see Venice in a unique way last week.

Last Wednesday morning, the pair was filmed surfing on Venice’s Grand Canal. Riding eFoils – electric surfboards raised out of the water on hydrofoils – they raced up and down the canal, dodging water buses and water taxis.

Locals – and politicians – were not pleased with the surfing stunt. The Grand Canal is not just the center of the UNESCO World Heritage site lined with historical buildings; it’s also the main thoroughfare of Venice.

As they passed under the Accademia Bridge, one of the surfers fell off his board but made sure to hold what appeared to be his phone out of the water, filming his companion.

Mayor Luigi Brugnaro tweeted a video of the surfers, calling them “two overbearing idiots making a mockery of the city.” He offered a free dinner to anyone able to identify the pair.

Ultimately, the law caught up with the pair, whose surfboards (worth around $24K each) were confiscated for not being insured. Each of the surfers were fined around $1,500 and were expelled from the city.

Sounds like they’re in hot water.

Fast Food

in a 24-hour period in New York. Chefs Nick DiGiovanni and Lynn Davis, aka Lynja, chose Manhattan as the location for their attempt at the Guinness World Record because they could visit all 69 eateries with a single 8-mile walk.

The TikTok stars, who previously earned records by cooking up the world’s largest chicken nugget and world’s largest cake pop, were accompanied on their restaurant-hopping adventure by Guinness World Records adjudicator Andrew Glass.

The duo was required to purchase and consume at least one food or drink item at each location – but the rules didn’t stipulate they had to do the consuming themselves, so at several locations other customers waiting in line were treated to free food.

Where to begin? Their journey started bright and early, at 8:30 a.m., at the McDonald’s in Times Square. Along the way, they stopped at other eateries including Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Taco Bell, Shake Shack, Burger King, ChickFil-A, Wendy’s, Chipotle and Five Guys.

The chefs had 24 hours to complete the record, but they managed to visit all of the restaurants within 7 hours and 15 minutes, despite some time lost by getting stuck in an elevator at Macy’s on 34th Street.

Sounds like they had a lot on their plate.

Hidden Gem

When Scott Overland went out to eat last week, he got more than he bargained for – in a good way.

The man from Pennsylvania was eating clams with his family when they made an unusual discovery: a purple pearl.

“At first, my wife thought it was, like, a bead, or one of those – it looked like one of those ‘Dot’ candies on the paper,” Overland said. “We thought the chef dropped something in there.”

The family soon realized the object was a pearl.

“We had never heard of a pearl in a clam. I always thought they came in oysters,” Overland added.

Pearls produced by quahog clams are often button-shaped, like Overland’s, and can be white, brown or purple. They are “exceptionally rare” – occurring in about one in 5,000 shells, according to the International Gem Society.

Tim Parsons, a spokesman for Ballard Clams and Oysters, which supplied the restaurant with the northern quahog clam that produced Overland’s purple pearl, said the company generally learns of two or three pearl discoveries per year in the oysters and clams it supplies to restaurants.

“Usually, it’s over a dentist claim,” Parsons quipped. “But you can definitely get it graded and they are worth money.”

Overland said he is planning to have the pearl appraised. Pearls like the one he found can be valued from $600 to $16,000. But the couple may not sell the gem.

“We are still deciding what to do with it, but we are leaning towards keeping it as a cool family heirloom and something to remember the trip by,” Overland says. “We may turn it into a nice piece of jewelry, but I am going to have to keep eating a lot of clams to find a second one if my wife wants earrings!”

Start shucking those clams, Scott.

World’s Smallest Vineyard

The world’s smallest vineyard only makes only 29 bottles of wine a year, but its owner says it’s worth it.

Tullio Masoni created the tiny orchard on top of a building in Italy named Via Mari 10. That’s the building’s address and also the name of the wine itself.

“My father was into winemaking,” he said. “I inherited an actual vineyard in the countryside around Reggio Emilia, but when I looked at the books, I realized I’d have spent more money on it than I’d have made, so I sold it.

“However, 20 years later I regretted it, so I made myself a pocket-size vineyard.”

The vineyard is only 200 square feet. At that size, it only yields 29 bottles of wine a year.

But those bottles come at a price. Masoni prices them at a jaw-dropping price of 5,000 euros each – around $5,000. At that price, you can’t buy your booze in a store; bottles are sold in an art gallery a few blocks away.

“My wine is a form of artistic expression, a philosophical provocation, something to keep in your living room so you can chat about it with your friends and tell them about the lunatic who put a vineyard on his rooftop,” said Masoni.

“My vineyard is like that: It’s unexpected; it stimulates the brain; it sparks new thoughts.”

Masoni’s wine is babied since its inception. It’s aged in oak barrels that are also sculptures by another local artist, Lorenzo Menozzi. Masoni also got Giuseppe Camuncoli, an established Marvel comic book artist who was born in Reggio Emilia, to draw a special edition of his wine label. As a result, he encourages his buyers to never open the bottles but treat them like artworks.

“I’m the only wine producer in the world who says you shouldn’t drink his wine,” he said.

Even before the wine is put into caskets, it’s treated with kidskin gloves. The vines are fed with eggs, bananas, seaweed, and nightingale droppings, according to Masoni, but he says their “diet” also includes the voices coming from the neighborhood – the quarrels and the various dialects that enrich and contaminate the fruit, giving it an edge over countryside grapes, which enjoy only silence.

Pressed on what the wine is really like in the glass – we dare not taste it at that price –Masoni offers some unique tasting notes: “At the first sip, you get a lot of perplexity, but after a few seconds, something comes alive in your palate that opens up your mind to a new dimension,” he said.

“My wine does not offer tranquility, rather it traces a red vertical line inside your mind, that conveys a feeling of infinite speed.”

Of course, we will just have to take his word for it. And that makes us want to whine.