It was midday in Padova, Italy. We had just been dragged all over the city by our Italian confidant and host, the lovely Gioia. We had seen all of the piazze, the frescos, the building designed to look like an upside down boat and the shockingly huge horse therein, and now it was time for lunch. Finally. 

"We will go to the piazza della signoria and get something to eat," She had said, "A merenda." A light snack.

She approached a small red cart protected from the noon sun by a pair of white umbrellas and a large man with shoulder length hair greeted us, "Bon giorno! Che cosa volete?" He said in a voice better suited to a children's television show than a burly italian man.  

I was quickly distracted from his vocal oddity by the mass quantities of seafood laid out on the cart. There was grilled octopus, fried octopus, octopus sauteed in garlic and olive oil, sardines with onions, scallops with caviar, boiled fish with shallots, grilled cuttlefish lightly seasoned with salt and pepper, fried calamari done in a light buttermilk and seasoned with thyme and salt and pepper, and then I was brought around from my food induced orgasm by a jarring elmo-esque voice shouting to passerby's, "Pesci fresci! Abbiamo pesci fresci!" 

Gioia told the man, "We'll have one of everything," and then insisted on paying for it.

We carried the plates three at a time to our little table in the square, and each of us still had to make two trips. We pulled another table over as a waitress from the restaurant that I assume the tables belonged to came up to us. 

Instead of asking us what we thought we were doing, moving the restaurants tables around and bringing food from elsewhere in, she asked us if we would like anything to drink. 

It turns out we did. One bellini a piece please. 

The food all tasted as good as it looked. The cuttlefish was grilled so it had a little give and a nice snap as you ate it. The octopus was slimy but smothered in oil and loaded with garlic. The anchovies and sardines were salty and had been sauteed with onions or breaded and lightly fried.  The calamari was leagues beyond anything you will have at TGIF, crisp, crunchy, flavorful. There were also little fried crabs, that were fried whole, and whole baby octopus. The scallops were buttery and whatever the opposite of heart-wise is. Probably "delicious".

Then the bellinis came to wash our meal down, a perfect mix of peach nectar and champagne to quench our thirst and prepare our pallets for dinner...

Leprechauns in Scotland.

I was out with friends in Edinburgh. We had just finished our exams and decided it was time to party.

A Scot, a Peruvian, an Irishman and an American walk into a bar. Bad joke? Or the start of my night? You decide.

The Scot, the Peruvian and I decided to order beers like normal students celebrating the end of a grueling exam week. The Irishman, we’ll call him Sean, decided to drop acid.

We told him no, but he insisted on taking three times the normal dosage. It was too late to stop him so we continued drinking.

The night became hazy after that. I remember we lost Sean. We were doing a proper pub crawl, and in his drug induced state it would have been easy to confuse one loud group of carousing students with another.

Somewhere between the second and twentieth bar Sean called my Scottish friend, he’ll be Tim, and said, “Where are you guys? You have to come back to the flat.”

“What? Sean is this you?”

“Yes, come back to the flat.”

“Why would we do that? You’re missing the best night of our lives you fucking Irish git.”

“You have to see it. You have to see what I found!”

Tim snorted and hung up his phone, “Idiot’s back at the flat already. Good riddance. Now we don’t have to babysit.”

We continued to more and varied bars that slowly became nightclubs and discos. We were drinking, dancing, and meeting cute girls. Which is why every forty-five minutes or so one of us would have to ignore another call from Sean. At first we answered to see if he was all right, but when we found all he could do was tell us to come back to see what he’d found, we stopped answering all together.

Finally, when we walked out of the last club of the night at five in the morning, Tim got another call from Sean.

“Yes, Sean? Yes, we’re on our way home now. Ok, fine you can show us when we get there.”

When we got back, I tried to walk in the front, but all the locks were set. So I knocked on the door and we all called to Sean. Finally we see movement inside. It’s Sean.

For some reason instead of opening the door he pulled black the blind on the window. We could see his figure glance about suspiciously before he closed the curtain. Then we heard the locks rattle and the door opened.

At first all we could see was his silhouette in the door frame, but as my eyes adjusted I realized he was covered in blood and grinning like a maniac.

“My god Sean! What happened?”

“Guys, you have to come see.”

“See what? Why are you covered in blood?”

“Look at what I’ve found. It’s in the kitchen.”

“Why couldn’t you tell us on the phone?”

“I didn’t want anyone else to know. Come on,” with that he turned and walked into the kitchen.

We glanced at each other and followed him through the hall. The kitchen was empty.

“What is it then? Some delusion?” Tim asked, “I don’t see anything here Tom.”

“It’s in the cabinet, look in the cabinet,” He said and pointed to the doors beneath the sink.

I walked forward, eager to end whatever stupidity was going on and pulled the doors open.

Inside was the last thing I expected to find: a midget, bound and gagged, with red hair and wide terrified eyes staring at me from beneath the sink.

“Sean, what the hell is this!?”

“Look, I found a leprechaun!”

Once the recipes section is off the ground, we will post travel advice and stories from our own experience and ones discovered on the road here.  Stay tuned!