These Boots Were Made For Drinking

We've been in Italy now for about a month and my male bipedal attendant has been drinking a lot of red wine. In spite of the fact that a) this is Italy and b) the wine is excellent and c) the wine is incredibly cheap, he's been a little down in the dumps (= whining) about drinking almost nothing but beer.

Or maybe he's just going through withdrawal. I know I get a little cranky if a few weeks go by and I haven't had a couple of nice gorgonzola, honey & walnut canapés but I hardly make a production out of it. I should just send him back to Slovakia if he wants a beer so badly.

Anyway, I came across a nice little bar in the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II here in Rovigo which has on draught a local Italian beer called Pedavena. Naturally he turned his nose up at it, which I suppose I understand because people usually don't think of beer when they think of Italy but still, I thought he was being a little judgmental not to say rude.

As it turned out, the beer arrived in these nifty glass boots! Once you drink about a third of your beer, the boot - or the beer - (I don't understand physics very well) makes farting noises and big fat bubbles. I apologise because I know that 'fart' isn't a polite word but it does sound like someone (not a bear though because we don't fart - ooops, sorry!) making "bum-bubbles" in the bathtub. Bububububloooop!

And the beer was good - even my male bipedal attendant said so, although I think what he said was this beer is good ... for Italy. Whatever.

I just like the boots! It's been so long since I wore Italian boots! And the more everyone drank the more I boots I had to wear. Too bad the bartender kept clearing our table of empty boots so quickly. It was almost as if he was expecting someone (by which I mean my female bipedal attendant with the really big purse and the really sticky fingers) to walk away with a pair. I can barely (bear-ly) take her out in public.

I don't know why Pedavena serves its beer in boot-shaped glasses. I checked their website and I could only find a reference to their signature 'silver tankard' but I think that I - a former international fashion model - can tell the difference between a boot and a tankard. I do know that Italians have what one might call a national shoe fetish (I remember this from my days modelling in Milan), so maybe Pedavena's boot is an homage to Italy's fashion designers and love of footwear. Who knows?

The beer was good and the boots were divine. And in the immortal words of Miss Nancy Sinatra: are you ready boots? Start walkin' Or in this case, start drinking.