The Italian Heritage Festival

We always have a great time at the Italian Heritage Festival in Des Moines.  2013 was a great year for the event.  In it's fourth year, this was the biggest one yet.  The festival was July 26th and 27th in Downtown's Western Gateway Park. Lots of great food vendors, free inflatables, crafts, face painting and balloon animals for the kids, live music and lots of fun contests like pasta-eating and bocce ball tournaments.  The festival is free from opening until 5pm when there is a $5 cover charge to get in.  Children 12 and under are always free to get in.

Of course we sampled everything from pizzelles to meatballs to Italian Nachos (which I highly recommend) to gelato and fresh squeezed lemonade.

The highlight (food-wise) was the Italian Nachos that were topped with beef and sausage, tomato sauce and mozzarella.  There was a topping bar of peppers as well.  So good!  My sons favorite was the Italian cookies.

While kids spent most of the time bouncing on the inflatables (I also really appreciated that they had boxes full of socks available for kids since in the middle of July a lot of kids wear sandals and sock are required for the bounce houses.) and doing crafts, they seemed to really enjoy the entertainment that we caught that day too which included a bagpipe player and dancers.

If you missed this year's event, mark your calendar for next year!  A great, free (during the day) family outing or a great inexpensive date-night!  Alway wonderful to be able to learn a little about Italian heritage, have some great food and have some fun.