Archive for the ‘Europe’ Category
Buon Natale
Wishing everyone a comfortable Christmas with family and friends. Will be reporting more on what folks do here in Panicale. Already being swallowed by some traditions. Festive family fun…
Love Travel, Hate Traveling
The thought that we’re heading home in four weeks – we’ve been gone a little more than five weeks – not only underscores how rapidly time disappears down the black hole of time, it includes thoroughly uncomfortable images of the physical act of “getting there” and “getting home:” maneuvering the rental car through Bologna traffic back to its stall, manhandling luggage through four airports – Bologna, Gatwick, Las Vegas and San Diego (we also have to change planes in Phoenix but at least our bags get checked thru) — dressing and undressing for security checks, and scrunching in crammed tubes for several hours.
Why isn’t our luggage checked all the way through? We made our own travel arrangements online and, as a result, each leg is a separate transaction. By shopping and buying our own tickets, we saved more than one-third the total ticket cost.
As it stands, Brit Air already has cancelled and re-sked our Bologna-Gatwick leg. We’d planned leaving Bologna in the morning and spending a pleasant day re-visiting Crawley, the British village we’ve hung around about a dozen times on our European jaunts. BA canceled the morning flight and we leave Bologna at 4 p.m., get into our Crawley hotel about 6 p.m. and have time only for a quiet dinnerand fair night’s sleep before heading back to Gatwick the next morning.
It just occurred to us that we’ve never had a satisfying experience with British Air. They’re courteous and polite, but they’re also bureaucratic and unpredictable. We’ve flown them more than a half dozen times and, in each case, they’ve re-scheduled at least one leg of our flight.
When they had a direct San Diego – Gatwick, flight, they re-scheduled our flight back home to a day later. We fortunately had arranged a couple of layover days in Crawley and checked Brit Air before we left the airport for our hotel. Their only response when we complained was, “We called your travel agent to notify you.” When we told them there was no travel agent, we made our own arrangements, there was only silence. As it turned out, our plane was lightly loaded so we each had a row of three seats to ourselves. In a follow-up letter to Brit Air, I told them I understood why they have so many empty seats.
Language Lesson
Sorting through the array of cheeses sitting around shops here is daunting enough without the added confusion of Italian descriptions. Many of them look alike and have almost the same texture and similar taste, so you have to pore over the labels, just as you must do with the labels arrayed on the shelves. I asked a lady behind the cheese-and-cold-cuts counter at Eurospar (a chain of mid-sized supermarkets) in the nearby hamlet of Pineta where in the big bank of cheeses I could find something with a strong rather than delicate taste. “Ahhh, piccante,” she said and rummaged through several mounds. She came up with a half dozen fist-sized samples and I asked “Sono tutti pecarino? (Are they all sheep cheese?)” She shook her head and showed me a couple that were “moo-moo, baa-baa, misto.” – a mixture of sheep and cow’s milk. Now I know how to ask for a combined cheese – moo-moo, baa-baa.
Magione Meal
The antipasto plate in Al Coccia not only is more than enough to give anyone a true taste of local food, it’s more than enough for your appetite: four kinds of cold meats, eggplant doused in olive oil, cheese and rosemary focaccio, mushrooms doused in olive oil, two kinds of bruschetti – tomato and pate, faggioli (white beans) doused in olive oil, and a couple of chunks of pecorino cheese. I added a dish of tagliatelli with meat sauce to all this and washed it all down with a cold Moretti beer.
The restaurant is run by Marco, a shaved-headed bundle of nervous energy who’s a friend of Andréa Belfico at Masolino’s. It’s at the entrance to Mangione, a sizeable hilltop town at the opposite (northeast) corner of the lake from Panicale. To make our Trasimeno tour more complete, we headed west to Passagnano for a gelato, the kind I like with a texture that still “peaks” when it’s pulled – more body than a Dairy Queen but much silkier than regular ice cream.
Rome’s Ready
A Christmas carnival in Piazza Navone is just that – a carnival, complete with carousel, carney games (“A Win Every Time”), knick-knack booths, balloons dancing with the wind, and hot and cold food, classes of kids marshaled around by nuns, litters of tourists marshaled around by a guys and gals waving them on with numbered signs, and dueling guitarists. All this counterpointing the ageless statues and churches that form the walls of this canyon in The Eternal City.
I quickly snagged a cimballi calde (hot doughnut) to hold me until lunch. A cimballi is a Roman doughnut about the size of a small pizza and can be eaten plain, sprinkled with sugar or covered with nutella (a chocolate-hazelnut butter spread popular here). I hadn’t had one since one of the officers aboard our freighter cooked a batch one morning. The dough is much tastier than the U.S. donut, it’s deep-fried but as flat as a pizza, has a less fatty texture and doesn’t curl up into gut-busting balls to play havoc with your digestive processes and system.
We went to Rome the day after the high season opened Dec. 8. It closes Jan. 6. Both days are national holidays here. The first is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception; the closing date is Epiphany, also known as Little Christmas in most quarters.
For our first stop, we arrived at my favorite optometric shop on Via Nazionale just as the owner was unlocking his exterior display boxes and I bought a couple of pairs of sunglasses. They’re about one-fifth the price of expensive sold under such American trade names as RayBan,Foster Grant, etc., which are amde by these same Italians. Bev got an eyeglass frame to take home.
After strolling into and by the ritzy boutiques stretching from the Spanish steps to the Trevi Fountain — and picking up a gelato across from the fountain at one of the finest gelateria in the universe — we went into the Pantheon for the first time. It’s now a basilica with Mass offered every Saturday and Sunday, although it’s closed Christmas Day. The sun was bouncing off Roman roofs so we didn’t have to worry about rain falling in through the hole in the massive copula that also lets light pour into the building, the only one to survive in its entirety since Roman times.
After lunch at my favorite eating spot – Melo’s, a Sicilian ristorante on the steps leading down from the bottom of Via Nazionale to il Vittoriano and the Forum – we decided to take an earlier train back home instead of hanging around into the evening We were tired.
The sun was rising as our train pulled out of Chiusi and it was setting as we rolled out of Roma Termini.
Hannibal Lecture
That pun’s intended, folks. The Battle of Trasimene is largely ignored by modern-day Italians because it was where Hannibal slaughtered in ambush several thousand – the number ranges from 15,000 to 50,000 – Romans by shoving them into Lake Trasimeno and drowning most of them. There’s a broad plain off the northwestern shore of the lake where the Roman’s camped as they tailed Hannibal, who looked like he was heading into the jaws of another Roman troupe marching from Rimini in the east. Instead, and what made this battle important in military history, the Punic general surveyed the field he chose to use to his advantage rather than using the history honored practice of challenging the enemy and then rushing at it with all your might. He stretched his army – this number varies, too, but it was about 12,000 — which included a contingent of Celts who eventually killed the Roman leader — over a half dozen kilometers of high ground ringing the northern edge of the lake and watched silently while the Romans tromped along the shoreline right into the Carthaginian’s trap. Archeologists are still picking human bones out of the lake. An interesting historical sidelight for such a little spot, but there are several such episodes from this region where Tuscany and Umbria bump into each other that date back to the Etruscans. For example, Panicale was the first community in central Italy to be given official status because it was never – not ever — defeated by any attackers. It was too high, too well fortified and too self-sufficient with its own animals within the walls and its own big bubble of water. This castle became an important stopover for popes and nobles traveling between Rome and Florence.
Roamin’ in Rome
Gonna return to Rome this week when cleaning lady attacks our apartment. There’s a little optical shop on Via Nazionale where I got a cool pair of Italian sunglasses a couple of years ago. Ray Bans are made in Italy and a similar pair without the trademark costs about a fifth the price..
Portal Problems
Doors are half size around here. When you see a door, don’t expect it to open fully. Only half of it opens. This isn’t a problem in modern shops that have the automatically opening and closing variety, but it takes some slimming and sidestepping to enter and exit homes and bars and gelateria and butcher shops. And if you’re burdened with packages of salami and cereals and stuff, getting out of the store can be an adventure because you have to protect the freight from bag rips and other mishaps.
Here’s More
Clearer and Colder
Winter cold hit today – Dec. 1 — after yesterday’s heavy rain dumped here by a warm south wind.
After lunch of a makeshift salad of tomatoes, ham, seafood salad, artichoke hearts, and salame finished off with a beer, I went for a two-beer hike thru the town and up cemetery hill. The cemetery is up there but the hill can kill you. Went by the gravestones and got some good shots of Tuscany and Umbria and Lake Trasimeno and Panicale and Castiglione del Lago and Tavernelle.
Hill and hot sun gave me a good sweat in the high cold, clear air and I think I lost about four pounds somewhere on that road. If I hike that hill every day, I’ll be able to leave all my clothes here and acquire a new wardrobe when I get home.
There’s More Moretti
Been buying a liter of Moretti beer, my favorite here, for E.79 a bottle, a promo price about half the regular shelf price in some stores. Italian beer is like good German lager and the two main labels are Moretti and Peroni, which also makes Nastro Azzurro (Blue Ribbon).
Plenty of Persimmons
Persimmon trees scramble all over these hills. There’s a regal one reigning over Jurgen Heiss’ moat garden that towers over the road on the south side of the castle. They lose all their leaves and the persimmons are left hanging on bare branches like apricot-colored Christmas bulbs. They aren’t persimmon-colored because they aren’t ripe. They just languish there because there are so many at once, yet they’re still sold in the markets, and the lowest price I’ve seen is 3.50 euros a kilo, which gives you maybe three.
Mariolina snapped several twigs with more than a dozen fruit off her tree for us and we stored them atop the fridge. They ripen very slowly but “if you want them to get ripe more quickly,” Riccardo said “put them in a bag with an apple.” Mariolina added that they don’t taste as good when they ripen on the tree. “They are not as sweet,” she said. They’re ripe when they feel heavy and semi-soggy, like a slightly over-ripe tomato.
They’re about the size of your fist and one makes a great breakfast. Cut it in quarters, cut each quarter in half or three, whatever, and then you have a plateful of little orange-colored oysters. If it’s too ripe, you’ll have a plateful of little orange jellyfish.
Birthday at Masolino’s
Was 75 yesterday (Dec. 2) and that coincided with re-opening, after month-long vacation hiatus, of Masolino’s restaurant – our favorite in this town of Tuscany-tourist-touted high-end-chef’s restaurants – Lallo Tatin’s, Boldrino’s, and Osterio Il Gallo nel Pozzo. The Belfico family has operated it for 50 years, and Andrea Belfico said, instead of observing the anniversary on its proper date – Nov. 19 – they’re going to celebrate it in the spring, “when there are more people.” Andrea and his family live in the apartment immediately to our left so we’d already chatted a few times. He told Bev that he’d re-open on an auspicious day in Scaglione history. Mama Bruna Belfico and daughter Stefania, Andrea’s sister, were happy to see us and made a comfortable to-do about our return to Panicale for the half-dozenth time. Stefania made one of her great desserts – a cream-and-peach cake with a candle atop. And Andrea tossed in a bottle of champagne. A scoppone session with Riccardo and Mariolina Ripanti, who joined us for dinner, wrapped up the evening. They also gave me a couple of Panicale momento photo books in Italian.
Mountain Man
Walked up the cemetery hill again, this time to where cars can no longer climb and the “road’ becomes a series of rocks and rills. Climbed above the clouds: Tuscan and Ubrian lowlands were packed with cotton batting as far as the eye could reach, from Cortona to Chiusi to Perugia to Orvieto, with only a hill here and there shouldering its way through the fog. And far off to the east, glistening in the sun, are the snow-covered Appenines.
Some portions are like walking on a steep roof. If you slip or trip, you’re going to roll, fall or slide quite a bit before stopping.
Train Trauma
You should take lessons on how to debark in a train in Europe. There’s no problem when you get out with groups of passengers because someone knows how, or if you’re in a busy terminal where the train doors are opened automatically or from the outside. But when we arrived in Chiusi around midnight and were the only passengers getting off, we got a quick train-training session.
We were in the vestibule at the end of the car and the train stopped and … nothing happened. We started looking for something, anything, and then saw a little red handle that we started twisting and turning and tugging and pulling and pushing and, finally, an observant gentleman heading for Florence who had anticipated our plight – we greeted him and spoke briefly when he took a seat in our compartment and he became aware that we weren’t Italian – came to our assistance and rotated the handle, just like you used to crank old automobiles to get them started.
The door opened and the steps dropped down and the conductor outside, ready to open the door from the exterior, shouted “bravo” and said something to the affect that we had made it. We shouted a “grazie’ to the man from Florence and headed down the stairs under the “binari” (tracks), through the station, onto the street and to the parking lot to get our rented Mercedes.
A similar incident occurred in England a few years ago when we headed back to Crawley, near Gatwick, from London. When the train stopped, nothing happened. A chunky lady shouted at us to open the window. “How?” She pantomimed, so we grabbed the handy straps and pulled the window up. That wasn’t big enough for us to get out. She hollered at us to turn the handle. “What handle?” It was outside, she yelled. So we reached out and turned the handle and fell out of the train in time.
Siciliana
“Take a week and visit Sicily,” everyone tells us. “ You have to see Palermo. Drive around the island and stop wherever you wish. The food is good.” We sorta agree that’s next time. U-T oldtimer Frank Saldana has visited the island a few times and he loves it. Any time of year is fine because of the climate but Mariolina said she likes February best because the blooming almond trees cover the hills with color.
Packing Them in in Panicale
Oil festival weekend of Nov. 21 – 22 was touted as a “gastronomic experience” of new wine and olive oil of the region. There are those who say, without argument or declamatory tones, that Trasimeno olive oil is the best in the country. You have to keep in mind that everything here is a festival. Bologna even had a Festival for Festivals, sorta leaving you with the feeling that, if there isn’t a reason for a festival, we’ll have one anyway. It brings in the booths and the tourists and the dollars. This little village has transformed itself into a tourist-dollar magnet. Prices are aimed at the transient, not the local. Friday’s weekly market was about half the size of those recalled from the past. And most of the ex-pats, from Europe as well as U.S., head home for the winter.
Met Santa Claus
Ran into entrepreneur Bobbie (a Swedish ex-pat whose last name I forget) in the piazza this morning (Nov. 19). We chatted for about half an hour until his wife, Ann, came to retrieve him. He’s growing a beard to be Santa Claus Dec. 24 for the kids of the village.
Napolitania
Wot a trip! Simone met us at the station, introduced us to his friends – sculptor/artist Dario Correale, girlfriend Maria, their roommate Tulia, and acrylic painter Rosario – who showed us the real Naples after we walked to and into some of the sites after a 90-minute hop-on/hop-off bus tour around this metropolis built at the foot of Vesuvius: “Christ in the Veil,” Santa Lucia, Little Calcutta, Piazza Plebescito, Palazzo Reale, Parque Virgiliano, Pozzuolo e Camu. The last is a 3,000+-year-old archeological site that few folks visit. We walked thru a long tunnel/warehouse to the Apollo sybill’s niche and then climbed to the acropolis to walk around the Temple of Apollo and, at the top, the Temple of Jove, with a magnificent view of the Med shore, and the islands of Proscida and Ischia. Ruins not as impressive as others but quiet and easier to visit. It was where the Greeks established their first sites for vacation homes on the Italian peninsula and founded Naples later. Harness racers were putting their horses thru their paces on the beach while we were enjoying the vista.
And we supped and sipped our way thru pizza margharita, birra Moretti, lemoncello, grappa, spaghetti and clams, fried pumpkin blossoms, fried shrimp, fried mozzarella, fried pasta cakes, mozzarella napolitana, mussels, lagostina, Dario’s parents gave us cookies and grappa and lemoncello and mandarino and, to take with us, a bottle of lemoncello and two bottles of home-made red wine for my birthday.
Four-hour train ride (26 euros each) got us home shortly after midnight tired and happy, in need of a shower and happy, a bit sad we left but happy we went.
Rain Routine
Our first rainy day here was almost welcome. It gave us a chance to rest, especially since we were invited to, and accepted, an invitation for cake – it was a gorgeous-looking and tasty chestnut cake with layers of meringue and cream that looked like a lady’s expensive hat — and cards with Riccardo and Mariolina. Invite was for 9 p.m. and we stayed until after midnight.
The wet weather cut down the size and time of the weekly Friday market in the piazza. It also gave Carla, who takes care of the church (Chiesi de San Michel) the opportunity to wash her car. She sweeps off the muck and mud with a broom.
Downpour also prevented Simone (Aldo’s son) from putting out and plugging in the all-red-light Christmas tree in front of his osteria — Il Gallo del ????
We spent most of the day reading and napping and eating and napping and reading and napping.
Tipping Tip
Had a great meal of spaghetti alla carbonara e coda (oxtail) at family owned and operated Locanda di Marcanzia in Castiglione di Lago Tuesday night. Bill was 21 euros each. We just divvied total five ways – Bev, Barb, Mariolina, Riccardo and me – regardless of who had what. Then Riccardo explained you don’t tip the owner. When you tip help, it’s loose change . No tips reach 5 percent anywhere in Italy. So I can start saving a few euros here and there.
O Sole Mio
Had a shoe problem almost immediately on our departure. I spent time and effort settling on an old pair of thick-rubber-soled Clarks that would be wear-on-the-airplane-and-walk-around-the-village-and-perhaps-leave-here pair. But didn’t want the following to happen. The rubber apparently has been rotting over the years and the sole on the right shoe split open crossways in Las Vegas. So I went to the little all-kinds-of-stuff store off the Mandalay Bay lobby and bought some Krazy Glue. Jammed some of that stuff into the crack and it worked. As have subsequent applications to chunks of rubber trying to chip themselves off other parts of the sole and heel. So a quick lesson here: never leave home without duct tape and Krazy Glue
Mature Life Features 