Archive for the ‘Europe’ Category
Sojourn in Southampton
Forever Young News clip
The Naples Nobody Knows
Story and Photos
By Cecil Scaglione, Mature Life Features
Puzzuoli and Naples in background
But we did stroll around 2,800-year-old Cuma, the first Greek colony established on the Italian peninsula some 350 years before the founding of Naples.
It’s the images of these fortress-like ruins and nearby Pozzuoli, Sofia Loren’s birthplace, that appear when we think of Naples. As do memories of Simone, Dario, Maria and Tulia, who whisked us through the crammed and crowded cobblestone streets of this cosmopolitan complex built at the base of Mount Vesuvius. The volcano on the southeastern edge of Naples is responsible for a couple of the world’s better-known ruins – Pompeii and Herculaneum.
However, about 30 kilometres on the west of Naples is Cuma, a sight that can satisfy both the avid and amateur archeologist. With a 4 euro entry fee, they can amble over and around the remains of temples to Apollo and Jove on the acropolis that overlooks one of the most enthralling expanses of beach along the Mediterranean shore.
It was these soft waves rolling up against the softly curved shoreline and the natural hot springs that drew the Greeks here. It’s also the land of myth and magic that Virgil etched into legend. Both avid and amateur will get a kick out of walking through the 145-yard trapezoid tunnel hollowed out of the massive rock to the grotto of the Sybil, Apollo’s prophetic priestess who foretold Aeneas’s future.
On the drive to Cuma, you can stop at a roadside overlook to peer down into Lake Avernus, which contemporaries of Homer and Virgil believed to be the entrance to Hades.
Before embarking on any of these jaunts, you have to sample the original modern pizza – the margherita. It’s available everywhere in Naples. While this type of flatbread dates back several centuries, it was in June 1889 that Neapolitan chef Raffaele Esposito created the Pizza Margherita in honour Italy’s Queen consort, Margherita of Savoy, who was visiting the city. He garnished it with tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, to represent the red, white and green Italian flag. He was the first to add cheese.
After washing down this palate-pleaser with wine and beer, it was time to dive into side dishes of fresh seafood, also available everywhere in this seaside city. Then it’s chased down with a toddy of the local favorite – the citrus-flavored liqueur limoncello, which is sipped as widely here as Starbucks coffee is in Seattle.
There are sites aplenty to see between snacks in this, the third-largest city in Italy.
We stopped at the il Vero Bar del Professore on the edge of the massive Piazza Plebescito, the largest square in Naples. It was given that name after the plebescite of 1870 that made Naples part of the Kingdom of Italy under the House of Savoy. On one flank are the municipal palace and Real Teatro San Carlo, the opera house that has been operating continuously since 1737. Behind it is the Norman Castel Nuovo, where you can board a hop-on-hop-off bus to tour the town.
After sampling two specialties of il Vero Bar – a coffee with nut cream and a sfogliatelle (roll) – Simone led us to San Severo Chapel to view The Veiled Christ, completed in 1753 by Giuseppe Sanmartino, reposed among more than two dozen other intriguing works of art.
Then we headed for the central metro station, dodging anything on wheels as we danced through the Piazza de Gesu, one of the city’s prettiest piazzas decorated with churches and statues. The station is tucked firmly in a section locals call Calcutta because of the constant commotion created by vendors and vagrants, booths and bicycles, walkers and watchers. Our train took us to a stop within minutes of our bed-and-breakfast in Pozzuoli, a commune on Naples’s western border that was once the busiest seaport on this section of the Italian peninsula. It was here that St. Paul landed about 60 A.D. to establish a Christian community.
A recently built waterfront park and walkway makes this one of the more pleasant promenades alongside the Mediterranean.
For more information visit italiantourism.com.
Swiss Jewels Stud the Alps
By James Gaffney, Mature Life Features
LUCERNE, Switzerland — We stopped in the rolling, sun-drenched foothills of the Alps on a spring afternoon and sat by a small herd of milk-chocolate-colored cowbell-clanging dairy cows. A pair of the curious creatures inched towards me – or, more precisely, my feet — and in a quiet calculated move commenced nibbling the toes of my loafers.
“Maybe your leather shoes reminds them of a distant cousin,” wisecracked a fellow hiker.
This was just an added fillip in the surprising walkabout in the UNESCO Entlebuch Biosphere, a natural reserve that makes you think of Colorado on steroids.Our stroll through this postcard landscape was less than an hour’s train and bus ride from bustling Lucerne, the hub of our visit for a few days.
View from Murten’s Old Castle wall
I’d really expected this country to be barely more than its legendary three Cs — cows, chocolate and cheese. That perception was dashed the first day I headed out to explore Lucerne, tucked like a jewel on Lake Lucerne, along the Reuss River. The city is tied together by a network of historic bridges that link the city’s clean-swept pedestrian-only districts, such as Hirschenplatz and Weinmarkt resplendant with half-timbered buildings and Renassaisance-style painted facades.
Everywhere are cozy squares filled with inviting cafes, fashion-forward boutiques and stylish hotels like the Wilden Mann Luzern on Bahnhofstrasse, our home away from home. Everywhere, it seemed, was history, even inside the 670-foot long wooden Kapellbrucke, or Chapel Bridge, one of the city’s many cherished landmarks that features 120 captioned triangular paintings from the early 1500s that depict Lucerne’s history.
Not unlike Amsterdam and Venice, Lucerne’s pulse springs from its meandering waterfront walkways that beckons the romantic of heart at night. As this country’s understandably most popular tourist destination (and essential stop on European bus tours), breathtaking Lucerne is Switzerland’s calendar-girl city — mercilessly pretty and not a hair out of place.
“People in Lucerne are a lot more conservative than people in Geneva and Zurich,” said 20-year Lucerne resident Eliane Ritschard. Which helps to explain the popularity of the city’s Swiss Transport Museum, or Verkehrshaus, the nation’s most visited museum. It’s a Smithsonian-like collection of past and present forms of rail, road, sea and air transportation.
None of which is to suggest that this cosmopolitan city of 60,000 is merely a history-filled relic of European past content to rest on its laurels. To glimpse this enclave’s edgy contemporary flair, we co-mingled with art lovers at the Kunstmuseum Luzern (Museum of Art) and Sammlung Rosengart Museum. The latter houses the impressive (and sizeable) personal collection of the late Sammlung Rosengart’s Picasso paintings, watercolors and drawings. The Museum of Art, situated on the fourth floor of the futuristic KKL Culture and Congress Center, is an architectural showcase of glass and steel. Amid this expos‚ of postmodernism we feasted our eyes on a cache of avant-garde art that included a multimedia exhibit by acclaimed Swiss-born artist Urs Lthi.
“I feel as though I’m discovering genius for the first time,” my museum-junkie traveling companion from New York noted, as she admired a self-portrait of a middle-aged, bald and overweight Luthi lying on the beach and dropping a ball.
We left German-speaking Lucerne and headed north by rail to explore the French-speaking 12th century medieval town of Fribourg and its day-trip-worthy country cousins, La Gruyere and Murten.
Fribourg, tucked alongside the Sarine River and touted as Switzerland’s most “amiable and easygoing town,” calls for good walking shoes because everywhere you need to go is uphill, or at least seems like it. Like many medieval European towns, Fribourg is best viewed from as high a vantage point as possible. So we huffed our way up the winding roadway that leads from Old Town up a steep hill past chalet-style homes sporting window boxes of seasonal flowers. Finally we reached the little wooden chapel, built in 1684 and parked ourselves on a nearby bench a few yards from grazing cows for an unsurpassed view of the city below, the sun warming our faces and the Alpine wind blowing through our hair.
Back in Old Town, we stopped in at Brasserie de L’Edge across the square from our accommodations, the Romantik Hotel Au Sauvage on Plache-Superieure for a cold glass of local Cardinal beer and to soak in the after-work wind-down rhythm of the Old City as the late-afternoon sun cast a warm yellow hue over the dormers of former burghers’ townhomes.
“If you squint your eyes,” my companion said, “this scene looks almost like a painting.”
To peer deep into the heart of this millennia-old country’s heritage requires a short bus ride from Fribourg to the 400-year-old rural township of La Gruyeres, to visit a factory that helps produce the cheese of the same name that Switzerland single-handedly put on the international map and dinner tables worldwide. Gruyeres, the cheese, if you haven’t had the pleasure, is among the best on the planet and still hands-down the favorite among those who know a thing or two about fondue.
Nearby is the photogenic hilltop town of Gruyeres Ville, population 100, home to the 13th-century Gruyeres Castle, and the H.R. Giger Museum and Bar — named for the local artist, sculptor and set designer who won an Academy Award for creating those horrific creatures seen in the 1979 movie “Alien.”
We got the chance later to twirl bread cubes at the end of long forks in a simmering pot of the delectable melted Gruyeres.
Next morning we explored the medieval, arcaded town of Murten. A stroll along the ramparts of the Old Castle wall was rewarded with panoramic views of the lovely red-tiled rooftops of this 800-year-old community. No visit here is complete without a boat trip to Sugiez in Lake Marten’s wine-producing region, The Vulley, for lunch at the well-reviewed Restaurant l’Ours, before a Swiss-style walk in the clouds through the hilly countryside and wine tasting in the nearby cobblestone-lane town of Praz.
If you plan to travel by rail here, your best bet is to buy a Swiss Pass, which must be purchased in the United States before leaving for in Switzerland. It covers not only rail excursions but also bus fares and museum fees.
For more information on travel in Switzerland, contact your local travel agent, Swiss Air at (887) 359-7937) or Switzerland Tourism (301) 260-2421.
Comparisons
Drove to dentist this morning. Little Nissan started right up on first key application after sitting under cover for the past 10 weeks. Bev’s Toyota started fine, too. I discovered I prefer driving in Italy. Motorists there are much more aware of what’s happening around them than the folks here, more and more of whom are oblivious to the world outside their container of tin and plastic. And as Bev and I sat in the house with the wind pelting rain at us, we found there’s more to do in the rain in the village of Panicale than there is here. There, we can pop open the umbrella and. all within a three-minute walk, stop by Aldo’s for cappuccino, or Masolino’s for espresso or lunch, or Linda’s for some groceries and gossip, or Iolande’s for some fruit and conversation, or the tabacchi for a chat and some Internet time, or the bakery for some fresh rolls, or church to light a candle, or the bank ATM for some cash, or get a haircut. If that’s not enough, it’s but a short drive to another fine restaurant in Paciano (4 km) and an excellent bakery/coffee shop in Tavernelle (6 km).
A Day for Delays
With the worst winter weather in years trampling all over England, we flew right into its maw, and paid the price. After getting from Bologna to Gatwick without incident – not even a 10-minute delay – on Tuesday, we stayed overnight in nearby Crawley and Bev got her pub-meal fix. Out taxi arrived about 7:30 a.m., a couple of hours after the snow began falling, and got us to Gatwick without delay. We noted how pretty southern England looks draped in white.
Pretty thoughts ended at the airport. The Virgin holding pen was crammed and jammed and under-manned. We were told the world’s largest/busiest single-runway airport had been closed for hours. Then it was announced that passengers on our 11:20 a.m. Las Vegas flight would be bused to Heathrow and the plane would take off at 1:30. Having given ourselves a four+-hour window when we booked USAir to San Diego, things still looked workable. After milling and telling and listening to strained jokes for 2 1/2 hours, we were shredded into groups of 40 and marshaled down to minibuses, after we poured our luggage into vans that were supposed to follow us.
Now, mind you, it was snowing, but lightly, and it wasn’t cold. I grew up in northern Canada and my memory still works. The only reason we could surmise for closing down Gatwick was that no one ever ordered snowplows for the complex.
AT 1:30, we were told our 747 had not yet arrived from Las Vegas. So they gave each of us 5-pound vouchers “for the inconvenience” and suggested we all go grab some coffee somewhere. We’d all be checked in but no one was certain what gate would be used. We managed to get double vouchers because Bev and I went separate ways to find the source and each came back with our share. And we sat down with a healer from Australia who was heading to Barbados as the guest of a cancer patient she’s working with.
An airport announcement notified us of what gate to report to, where chunks of the group were picked at random to go through security again. And then they herded us onto buses to head to our airplane, which, we learned when we reached it, had just been emptied and the sanitation crew and security folks still had to sweep it clean. We sat in the buses for an hour.
Fortunately, it wasn’t a full plane so we passengers scrambled aboard in rather short order and, after de-icing the wings, unglitching a minor engine glitch, and standing in line for takeoff, we slid off the snow almost six hours late. Which slammed shut our window to our Las Vegas-San Diego flight. And there were no more USAir flights later in the day. ,
The10-hour flight was actually quite pleasant but our concern about getting home lowered our level of appreciation. After clearing customs and immigration at McCarran, we trolleyed our luggage to Terminal 1 and barreled into a Southwest counter. Explaining our position, the ticket agent said we were too late for the 7:35 flight, which was leaving in 20 minutes, but there was another at 8:55. Magnifico? So we called home and arranged for our pickup. Then we were told that a Reno flight had to use our gate first and our San Diego flight was delayed until 9:50. I fell asleep as soon as I sat down on it and didn’t awaken until the wheels bumped the tarmac at Lindbergh.
We got home at 11:20, about 26 hours after we awakened to head to Gatwick.
It was a grand trip but the return journey made us feel like we’d been riding planes and hanging around airports for the past two months.
San Diego smells fresh and oceany. And I’d forgotten how quiet it is here at home.
Befuddled and Bewildered By Befana
The church bulletin said Befana would arrive at 13:30 Tuesday in the catechism-class building up from the church. I saw Christmas stockings and assorted images, from Cabbage-patch like copies to hand-carved and twisted crones to Smile happy faces of la buona strega Befana (The good witch Befana) displayed for sale leading up to the Epiphany – Jan. 6 and also known as Little Christmas in our part of the world.
I got to the hall about 30 minutes early, right after Don Bruno and his team of teens got there to set up the small hall.
I asked an early arrival if Befana would be on stage doling out goodies to the kids. She nodded and told me Don Bruno was taking care of things. Tables were moved around, chairs were hustled into the room, boxes of assorted children’s goodies and gifts were emptied — hold on, some prizes included wine and umbrellas. So I clicked some photos as the hall filed with a couple of dozen people, most of the older women. And they began playing Tambolo, the church version of Bingo.
I wandered down to Masolino’s and checked in with Stefania and she was confused about my confusion. “Pensavo andavo a vedere Befana” (I thought I was going to see Befana)
I showed her the little note about her making an appearance at that place at that time and the light dawned. She explained that the “arrival” of Befana was the little gifts of goodies handed out by the priest as special prizes to the youngsters as he called out the Tambolo numbers – from one to 90.
We give everybody gifts at Christmas “ma solo i bambini a Epifania.”
The legend of Befana, briefly, is that she turned away the magi looking for the baby Jesus and, having second thoughts about her error, runs around on the Epiphany and delivers sweets to young children hoping to redeem herself should she find the right child.
“It’s all over – the holidays – on the Epiphany,” Stefania said.
She’s right. We’re heading to Bologna for a handful of days – plan side trips to Ravenna, Parma and, perhaps, Rimini or Padua or Modena — before heading home next Wednesday.
Spello Still Spellinding
Even on a rainy wintry day, “Spello is still a pretty town,” said Jean. And it’s easier to get around since it isn’t packed with tourists. We climbed up to a shop that features – what else? – olive wood products. She bought a rosary, similar to the one I had blessed by a couple of old friends – retired monsignors – last fall in a visit/reunion in our Northern Ontario home town.
When we got back to the village, we bumped into the tail end of Bobbie’s funeral, the man who died Christmas Eve morning just hours before he was to play Santa Claus/Babbo Natale for the children. As the white hearse drifted away from the front of the church below our window, the crowd applauded as Bobbie exited left life’s earthly stage. The more cynical onlookers had their own explanation for the hand-clapping.
The Day Santa Died
It was Christmas Eve. We got to the butcher and picked up our gallantina for Christmas Eve and lasagna for Christmas dinner. Gallantina is a local tradition – a chicken is de-boned and stuffed with everything from prosciutto to pistascios and hard-boiled eggs to eggplant and then pressed and cooked, sliced and eaten cold. Got chores done in way home – bank ATM, started the car, checked out last-minute grocery list as a warm sirocco-like but humid wind moved in and made the town almost summery. Lou dropped by for a grappa and headed home for a shower. Riccardo dropped by and said he’d skip tonight because he won’t be able to find a parking space because of midnight mass at the church. Then we found out. “Bobbie died,” he said
Bobbie Natale, the true Santa from Sweden, died while walking his dog this morning. Santa died. The whole world had to be told. Headed down to the piazza with Lou following to scout out the facts. We ran into Simone’s wife and Lou got our foto and she told us “Babbo Natale e morta.” I asked if they found an alternate and she nodded her head and said, “Qualqu’ uno” (somebody).
I asked if her osteria’s Christmas Eve dinner (E30) was full and she said no, they didn’t start planning/advertising early enough. I said they’ll start earlier next year and she nodded yes.
Then she said Santa was due to land on the piazza at 3:30 so we came back to the apartment and sipped a few until it was time to return to the piazza. It was still warm and humid. And it started to drizzle on the dozen or so kids and their parents in the piazza. So the small trope moved into club rooms below the street level across the alley from the osteria. Guillermo said the club room was made available after it started to rain. Santa and his jingling sled were greeted about 4:20 by applauding parents and wide-eyed children. And everyone got something. Even adults received little packages of candy from each of the kids.
But no one seemed to miss Bobbie.
Sampling Arezzo’s Stops and Streets
Driving through the alleys and around the pedestrians of Arezzo has prepared me for taking the car back to the rental agency in Bologna when we wrap up this trip.
Many of the folks from around here, when they don’t head for Rome, do their “major’ shopping in Arezzo, a sizeable medieval town an hour to 90 minutes north of here, depending what road you take. One of its shopping attractions is an extensive array of antique furniture.
Our jaunt was impromptu; we were heading to a shop just the other side of Castiglione del Lago a dozen kilometers up the road. Arezzo’s another 35 kilometers farther, 20 kilometers past the gleaming hillside town of Cortona, so we decided to re-visit the place we hadn’t been to for eight years.
On that last visit, we took the Roma-Firenze toll road and rolled into a parking lot behind the duomo perched atop the hill overlooking the city. We photographed the park there and strolled down the hill several blocks and found a great restaurant – Il Saraceno – where I had rabbit while watching a gentleman at the next table wolf down two kilos of steak. That’s how they sold it on the menu – by the kilo.
This time, we were on the local road forming lines behind large lorries and didn’t get to the hill overlooking the city.
We didn’t even get out of the car. I did for a few minutes. After spending about half an hour brushing pedestrians aside, dodging motorbikes, slamming brakes to avoid rear-ending other vehicles, squeezing up against parked vehicles to avoid moving vehicles, standing in traffic-signaled lines several times for several minutes each time, I ducked into a temporary parking space and asked a young couple how to reach the parcheggio behind the church. They said go two corners (they don’t use blocks in Italy because short blocks, curved streets and roundabouts make that standard confusing if not downright useless) and turn right, another two corners and turn right, and then to the second semafora (traffic light) and turn right again and head straight up the hill to the church. After another session of aiming the car away from amblers and autos, we wound up exactly where I’d talked with the young couple. So we tried it again and was squeezed onto a roundabout that looked like it would lead us out of town, I drove around the block again, suggested we give it up and got back to the roundabout that got us onto a main artery – the first one we saywhere – that took us to the Roma-Firenze A1 and headed back. Return trip took half the time and the toll was only 3 euros.
(Nonths later, I got mail saying the rental-car company had taken another $70 out of my credit-card account for providng the Arrezzo police with information about my rental agreement and then tickets from the Arrezzo police department — the service was outsourced — with fotos of my two transgressions within 15 minutes of each other and which I still hav no idea about. But they said I owed them a total of $190 U.S. for the two infractions. I just paid to get rid of the crap. That was an expensive visit.)
We left at 10:45 and got back about 2:30 in time for pranza at Masolino’s – an almost-four-hour car ride. We did get to see Arezzo’s shops and sample its streets.
Snow Storm
Snow flakes did their stunts outside our window all night and most of today (Dec. 19) and piled onto parked cars and piazzas. They also clustered into sheets of ice so walking around the village was treacherous – you walked around its edges to avoid the slippery slopes and slants.
Quick ‘Qwake
Had a simple terremoto (earthquake) in Panicale on Wednesday, shortly after 2 p.m. Its center was in Mangione, across the lake where we had lunch Sunday. Enough of a scare that schools were closed but, to us Californians, it was a simple little ride.
‘Quakes here are rare. There are more a bit farther north and farther south, but no one around here likes them very much.
Mature Life Features 