The drug of choice for young, club going Italians: psychedelic mushrooms dissolved in Nutella.

Found under cow patties in mountains near work-hard, play-hard Milan, these red, polka-dotted Amanita muscaria shrooms are plentiful. Dealers mix about 10 of the fungus in a jar of jam or the famously addictive hazelnut spread Italians consider a national treasure.

“We older consumers have eaten these mushrooms for ages, thanks to the hippies who passed down the knowledge. Nowadays mixed in with sweet stuff, the young kids go for it too,” said “Mauro” a drug dealer/factory worker interviewed in leading daily Corriere della Sera.

Though possession and sale of the mushrooms is illegal in Italy, business is booming. A jar of the psychedelic snack goes for 16€ (about $25).

Popularity of the DIY hallucinogens has increased thanks to stricter controls on discotequers drugs of choice like ecstasy, said Francesca Assisi, a toxicologist who also recently published a book outlining all the species of hallucinogenic mushrooms in the Lombardy region.

It’ll be hard to think of those famed after-school Nutella parties the same way ever again.

Historic Italian outdoor firm Ferrino concocted a travel kit for pilgrims hoofing the thousand-year-old Way of St. James to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.

It comes with a super light, feature-happy backpack, waterproof map holder and lightweight sleeping bag sure to come in handy on those long, cold nights; the whole shebang costing a parsimonious €99 euros. A few friends have trekked from Milan to Northern Spain, returning with sore shoulders and mostly horror stories. Hmm. The combo would probably also come in handy for the slightly less ambitious Francigena pilgrim trail in Italy.
Image courtesy Ferrino.

If, as some scientists claim, 80 percent of taste is linked to smell, you’d better follow your nose to Europe this month. New York Times perfume critic Chandler Burr leads a series of scent dinners in Rome and Florence, curated by Context Travel (who insist on calling their scholarly guides “docents”), the evenings are part lecture, part feast and part exploratory scratch-n-sniff.

On June 10, you can sample the pantry perfumes in Rome at Casa Bleve, nestled into the ancient bath complex built by Marcus Agrippa. Another dinner will be held in Florence on June 11 at the new Four Seasons residence club Palazzo Tornabuoni, where the fabled Medicis broke bread in the 15th century.
Full story by Nicole Martinelli at Globorati.