Grub

Fresh salad with veggies

ITALY

Food is part of the reason we travel to places far away. We were curious and excited to try a new cuisine. Rome is a huge city and has a cosmopolitan selection of dining options but we kept to traditional fare, to learn what regional Italian cooking is like and how it differs from what we know back home.

Restaurant off a piazza

Well, there were certainly some surprises. The minestrone was a light, vegetable based broth accentuated with tomatoes but not overly flavored by them. Small cubed vegetables including winter cauliflower and broccoli, dotted the broth along with potato, carrots, and two types of beans (kidney and pinto we think) all flavored with sauteed garlic and onion and fresh italian seasonings.

Tiramisu

We tried Tiramisu, of course. It looked similar but it was softer, the flavors blending better, and the ladyfingers were actually spongecake. The liqueur is more subtle and let me tell you the Italian whipped cream with ground unsweetened chocolate was out of this world.

'Continental Breakfasts' are hearty and good and included with the room. A typical fare included eggs (hard boiled or cook-your-own in hot water, cappuccino or strong coffee, homemade granola, yogurt, croissants, brie, fresh fruit, two types of juice and sometimes slices of Italian salami.

Pizza Napoli (Marinara)

The pizza was not heavy and thick with big chunks of meat and vegetables on top, at least not in Central and Northern Italy. Even within the city the base varied by restaurant, some served on thinly sliced bruchetta or (our favorite) a thin crust almost as thin as a cracker in the middle and thicker on the sides. But the toppings were the same everywhere, lovingly and delicately layered thinly with cheeses and a rich and flavorful sauce ideally suited to it.

There are literally hundreds of pizza options, very few of them with more than 3 or 4 toppings so as not to overwhelm the palate. Ooh, and served with an Italian beer, it made for a very satisfying and popular lunch!

Breakfast Room, Rome Hotel

Purists consider there to be only two true pizzas from the 1800s — the Marinara and the Margherita -- and are often what is preferred by many Italians today. The Marinara has a topping of tomato, oregano, garlic and extra virgin olive oil. It is named for "la marinara", the seaman's wife who prepared the dish for her seafaring husband when he returned from fishing trips in the Bay of Naples. The Margherita (named for the Queen of the period's preference) is topped with modest amounts of tomato sauce, mozzarella cheese and fresh basil. We tried both.

Delicatessen/Restaurant

The lasagna noodles were surprisingly delicate, thin, fresh, and layered high between well seasoned fresh cheeses and topped with a sauce scantily flavored with sausage. It was mouth-watering and delicious and ample, again not overly tomatoey. 

Fresh Gnocchi

The Gnocchi was exactly like my mother in law used to make, small crimped dough dumplings served in a light alfredo sauce with tiny hints of fresh basil and garlic. It was one of my most savory meals during the trip. 

Serving portions were small but ample. We ate from smaller plates and even with walking all day it was the perfect amount of food. There are plans in the works to ditch the dishware and get smaller plates at home and take some of the lessons to heart.

Tomatoes and Mozzarella

We particularly enjoyed a dish served with fresh tomatoes alternated with fresh mozzarella slices and some fresh chopped basil, drizzled with a little oil and vinegar. Sometimes it was served with thinly sliced proscuitto ham, sometimes not. Either way it was fantastico!

Catch of the Day in Venice

Delicatessens have beautiful displays of fresh meats and cheeses and restaurants show off the quality of their food with displays with menus. Restaurants stay open past midnight seven nights a week and dinner is generally eaten around 20:00. One young restauranteur said her last seating on weekends is at 22:50 and she closes up and falls into bed at 02:00.

Coffee is celebrated here, and it is delicious and strong. Starbucks is international, but we stuck with the Italian coffee houses that served an outstanding cappuccino.

Evening dining in Venice

The old cities in Italy excel at optimizing available space. Restaurants and shops are around every corner and competition for tourist dollars is fierce. The food was better and less expensive a few blocks away from major tourist attractions, but sometimes it was just worth it to pay for the view overlooking a beautiful fountain or bell tower in the main piazza.

LONDON

The Anchor, across the Thames
from Parliament Square

England was a completely different experience than Italy and we particularly enjoyed the pubs, which serve traditional meals for a reasonable fare. Pubs are invariably long, narrow and dark, with stairs leading down to a room of darts and the bathrooms below. The beer was good, too, and served cold.

Traditional Fish and Chips

We had fish and chips more than once, and they are masters of lightly coating it with batter and frying the thick chunks of white fish just long enough to cook it perfectly in and out. It is served with malt vinegar and salt  and thick wedge fries.

Some places serve it charmingly wrapped in white paper with an overwrap in the day's newspaper so you can read while you eat. :)  Pubs also serve other items like bangers and mash (homestyle sausages with mashed potatoes and cold peas) and Shepherd's Pie. It's a great place to people watch, too.

Cornish Pasties - YUM!

Our find in London was the British equivalent of fast food near the tube. {We are ignoring the offensive presence of McDonalds absolutely everywhere and the astonishing price of between 6.8 and 11.6 euro for a Big Mac meal ($9-$18).}

Chequers Pub

What we discovered were the most delicious half moons of delectable crust filled with wonderfully flavorful vegetables, cubed potatoes and optional meat - chicken or beef. For 3.5 euro you could tuck one of these pies into the backpack for when your feet give out (or it's time for lunch), whichever comes first. Since the weather was cooperating, this was a great way to go. Cornish pasties are indescribably delicious and I hope to learn to make them at home.

One of many Shakespeare pubs

Naturally, everything in London is named Shakespeare, or alludes somehow to him, which is surprising because there are hundreds of famous literary contributors from this part of the world. We did enjoy pub names, like the Boars Tooth and Queens Gate, Chequers and The Swan.

People are smart and well read and interesting, and it was enjoyable to listen to spirited conversations about the upcoming vote for Prime Minister and the concerns about Greece's near economic collapse. Every kind of international food is available in London and all of it good (and expensive). We stuck to the regional favorites and loved the specialties of the house.

PARIS - coming

Travels to Venice, 05.01.10

We assumed Labor Day would be a day when major attractions would be closed, and so it was a travel day between Florence and Venice, typically three hours by train. We upgraded (again) to the speed train, which makes just a few stops at towns along the route and therefore arrives well ahead of the standard train.

The countryside was so beautiful on this sunny and muggy day, and again Espresso with little napkins was served, and we felt suitably pampered by the time we arrived right at the water's edge of the Grand Canal in Venice, at last. We stood on the bridge surveying the busy waterway of Gondolas, Polocia, water taxis, water buses, and private boats with gaping mouths. We were sure we  had crawled into a postcard with our senses intact. There has to be other words to describe it because breathtaking is an inadequate word.

I would have been happy staying there on that bridge for the entire visit had it not been for my husband returning with bus tickets for the departure leg (Venice>Treviso>London) which we would be taking in two short days. We were incredibly mistaken for allowing such little time here.

So off we went on the Vaporetto water bus that was easy enough to figure out and dropped us at San Marco Square with just a short walk up and over a bridge and down narrow streets to the Hotel Kette. Water buses are easy provided you know which direction you intend to go (yah for Randy). The water was not unclean or smelly, and so we visited at an ideal time before the tides recede later in summer. We have a very spacious room on the 4th floor with a full sized shower (our first in Italy).

Venice is different than Rome or Florence, perhaps because its ancient heart survives almost entirely on tourism and spans just 6 miles across with a steadily declining population. The city is elegant and old, and in the piazzas are stacked wood stilt walkways to anticipate the continual flooding of the squares. There are hundreds of bridges and during our visit it seemed like we crossed over every one!

Venice calls to us with its picturesque impermanence and adaptability. It is vibrant and alive and hopelessly complex. Asking directions in half broken Spanish from a good-natured Venetian goes like this: a gesture to walk straight a while and eventually take a sharp right turn on a narrow street and then another left and you are there. (That describes every street in Venice) What worked for us was finding a close piazza marked on the map and worked our way in the general direction of where we wanted to go.

People walk along the skimpy streets all hours of the day and night, which are safe and well lit late into the evening. There are many other diners and sight-seers, as the shops and cafes and churches are open very late. But most of the locals are home at rest and dock their boats next to tall narrow residences on canals that reach deep into the city.

The first evening when it began to drizzle, and everyone pulled out their  colorful umbrellas, we became part of a painting to hang on a wall. We tossed on our jackets and walked forever, it seemed, on the nearly deserted streets that shone wet in the lamplight. On that first night in Venice, it was just for us.

The Last of Florence, 04.30.10

Dante's Muse

Today, on the eve of Italy's Labor Day, we began with a walk to Ponte Vecchio and past the silver and gold smiths and leather brokers and artists after a filling breakfast at the Hotel Silla. A brief ten minute walk took us to Dante's house and a creative muse just outside who could recite any part of the Inferno for anyone wanting to toss a coin in his cup and turn to any passage in the book. How we wished we were fluent in Italian!

Restoration of the Frescoes

On to Santa Croce, a magnificent neo-Gothic church begun in 1294 and completed two hundred years later and which is the fourth largest church in Italy. It is under continual renovation, as so many historic sites are, and we studied their progress in revealing frescoes buried beneath years of paint and plaster. This is the resting place of great men: Michaelangelo, Machiavelli, Dante and DiVinci and a monument to Galileo, who spent his later years in Florence and greatly out of favor with the church who did not agree to bury him here until decades after his death. We enjoyed its relative simplicity and particularly the ornate roof supports.

Santa Croce

We are continually amazed by what we find and here was no different: in an outer room off a hall on the way to the Leather Apprentice Factory is part of the actual robe and waist cord worn by St. Francis of Assisi, 12th century, the patron saint of animals, and founder of the Franciscans. It was astonishingly well preserved and I could not take my eyes off it, just inches away and protected by glass. The cloak of St. Francis: imagine that!

Florence is a deep and rich experience and we were sad to leave the next day, with so much left to see. Dinner again was exceptional, minestrone with lasagne, bread and veggies. Authentic central/northern Italian food is so different than what we know as Italian food in the States: it is lighter and more flavorful and perfectly seasoned, and uses tomatoes as an ingredient but not as a base. It was exceptionally good.

Who can miss the similarity
with Lady Liberty?

In the early evening, we made the heart-wrenching choice to forego the Operatic love song duets at St. Marks in favor of a much needed trip to the laundromat, and I was bummed. Instead, we became part of learning Florence's Labor Day celebration which unexpectedly began in a small piazza at the end of the street that came alive with drumming.

Labor Day Drummers

What a sound! It was beautifully synchronized, loud and growing louder as more drummers joined in. We watched windows up and down the street fly open and residents look eagerly toward the square and head down into it. Song after  song echoed down the streets as they slowly headed our way, up the narrow street, 100 or more all dressed in red, with people walking alongside, and in front, and in back, their faces filled with joy.

All of Florence was alive with music that night, singers and dancers and bands, and people roaming along sidewalks in small groups singing songs and being answered by those walking on the opposite side. We slept with the windows flung open, enjoying the occasional burst of music on both sides of the river all night long and from double decker buses with bands that drove up and down the crowded streets. What a fabulous celebration. Funny but we didn't seem to miss the Opera at all.

Lucca and Pisa

The excitement in our cousin's voice when she talked of Lucca is reason enough to go, and we were in the neighborhood so on day 2 in Tuscany we headed there, and Pisa, too. Lucca is indeed a charming and medieval city that can only be traversed by foot or bicycle. 

The walls are an architectural marvel, tight and strong, with a long and storied history of being built in Roman times and rebuilt and modified and improved since then. In their current, eight-hundred-year-old remodel there are keeps at the weakest points, armed with guns, and sally-ports that round into narrow and deep corridors only fit for a small emissary of peacekeepers, should their intentions be otherwise. It is rumored that this city stood alone against Constantine and invested 50% of its city's coffers for hundreds of years to build and maintain the wall. I believe it.

Life thrives in the form of tourists jamming the shops and private residences tucked along narrow streets that take you to beautiful cafes, magnificent churches and piazzas all safely encased in just 0.6 miles.

One euro bought us a hunk of meringue, large enough to span both of our hands, light and flavorful with a carmelized bottom that melted on our tongues. It was here we tried a Gelateria and five small scoops of different flavors for 2 euro while admiring Torre Delle Ore with its Swiss Clock that weighs more than a city bus and has chimed to the quarter hour every day since the 1600s.

San Giovanni Church is one of numerous churches, but was of special interest as an active archaeological site after it was discovered that centuries of churches lay beneath it with intact remains. The church was impressive as well as the archaeological areas which were accessible from a metal staircase on one side of the church through a large opening in the floor. There we saw up close the mosaic floors and walls and ancient headstones from the Roman church dating back to 3BC.

We rested and had a cappuccino in the Piazza Cittadella near Giacomo Puccini's house and bronze statue of this famous musician who was born and raised here.  It was a wonderful visit but it was 15:50 already and time to head to Pisa before sunset.

I must admit the side trip to Pisa was not my choice and I would have much preferred lingering in Lucca until dark. I had read about it and the ravishes of World War II that nearly destroyed its former glory, save for the Field of Miracles which houses the duomo, the baptistery, the camposanto (medieval cemetery), and the tower.

The matching buildings are from the 12th century and striped with five hues of grey and white Italian marble. The Baptistry has an ornate exterior depicting New Testament stories and the Camposanto was decorated with some of Tuscany's most important frescoes which were nearly destroyed.

The tower, which remains the butt of jokes and an international symbol for poor architectural planning, began its lean even before completion and by 1284 was just 35 inches off mark. Not so today: through the centuries it has gradually increased to 14.75 feet and in 1990 was closed for aggressive counter-measures, supports and cables and even wedges of soil removed from beneath it. It remains closed for foot traffic. Pisa turned out to be delightful and extremely beautiful and a worthwhile stop to round out a very full and exploratory day.

Trying To Outsmart a Train

Our first full day in Florence was breezy and warm, humidity gathering already by 08:00 when we headed out in search of the train depot and an adventure into the countryside. Today we would use the regular jump-on-and-off, no pre-arranged seats or espresso Eurail pass and find our way to Lucca and Pisa and (hopefully) back again, all in one day. We were empowered! and ready to go!

We admit it was ambitious, but we were fearless. That, and we really REALLY wanted to see both places. And so armed with our Eurail timetable booklet and the coveted Eurail pass, we arrived at the station but couldn't really figure out the exact train to take to get to Lucca. There didn't seem to be a direct train, and we thought Lucca would be best first because there was so much to see, and Pisa would be a quick on and off stop for photos and maybe a souvenier or two.

What's that? The train to Lucca wasn't leaving until 10:45? That can't be right, it would waste half the morning! So we did what any other inexperienced travel team would do: we asked someone else, and then someone else again, until we were pointed to a train departing in 3 minutes heading to Pistoia which was kind of on the way to Lucca, and reassurred there would be a train there to take us the rest of the way.

And off we went to Pistoia, a sleepy little Italian town in the middle of nowhere with a deserted little train platform and just two rails (east/west?)  and absolutely no trains in sight, which was sad for your heroes who saw the occasional train come and go but none of them to Lucca. So after a while of waiting for our train that wouldn't come, we trekked across the street to a little coffee place.

We studied the timetable a little more there and had something to eat, my first and only Diet Coke of the trip (called a Coke Light) for a whopping 2.80 euro and a (fortunately) tasty sandwich that I pointed to in the case which turned out to be tuna. Randy ended up with some unappetizing variant of olive loaf.

Refreshed and ready to put our heads into understanding the Italian railway chart on the wall, we trekked back and finally located a man speaking marginal English who directed us to the one and only train to Lucca on Track 1, and it would arrive at 13:15. Wait a sec! That's the same train we didn't think we had time to wait for in Florence...

Happily, it did eventually arrive, and on time, which we appreciated this time around and it took us into a beautiful afternoon in Lucca with loads to explore before easily catching a connection to Pisa to take all those goofy touristy photos while you laugh along with everyone else holding up the tower. The locals must hate that.

And as we headed home, tired and satisfied and with the sun setting on a wonderful day, we gazed out at Pisa's enormous train station with its 8 or 10 rails going every whichway all through the day, and realized that reading a timetable is just as much about interpreting it, and even if you want to try, you can never outsmart a train.

Beautiful Florence, 4.28.10

Ahhh, how cool that first class serves espresso and a snack! We traveled from Rome today to Florence, on the Eurostar, after saying goodbye to our friends there who we exchanged emails and facebook contacts. 

We traveled from Baggini to the Termini and upgraded to the fast train (express) which was recommended by a chap in our hotel. Good call! The trip is now 45 minutes instead of 3 hours. How immaculate and beautiful it is, comfortable for the traveler, and a plug in every row for computers. Trasitioning from the Metro to Termini was 1 Euro each, easy and quick. People we have encountered have been friendly and helpful, a nice tribute to a city inundated by tourists during the year.

Beautiful countryside! We made our way easily to the Hotel Silla, a vintage European hotel at the edge of the Arno River, central to the Ponte Vecchio and central Florence, just a walking distance to everywhere we wanted to see, even the Uffizi. The welcoming staff helped us get our footing and also with booking tours of the gallery and bus routes.

Our room is lovely. It is a simple room, clean and comfortable, and we find great joy in overlooking the patio that overlooks the river. After settling, we headed into town, along the Arno and along the Ponte Vecchio with all its gold and silversmith shops to piazzas and restaurants and life.

Open air cafes are all the rage. The environment wraps around you as you dine, light turning to dusk and then to night as you linger over dinner and the mosquitos dine on you as you notice only the great coffee and dessert! It is a country of leisurely play, a comfortable pace of work and rest with the backdrop of incredible music and art.  

We found such a cafe in town, a salad and vegeterian fare and then a city tour which took us to the mountainous town of Fiestole just outside as the bus made the loop of Florence proper. Fiestole had magnificent views of Florence and it is one of the oldest cities in the region. And then we meandered along the narrow and hilly streets, back down into the beauty that is waiting, and walked until evening with all the new smells and sounds and warm friendly faces around every curve.

Florence is completely different than Rome, with its own spirit and core. How great it will be to walk to the streets in the next three days and learn what we can. Tomorrow is Lucca and Pisa, a full length day, which we are greatly looking forward to seeing. Arrividerci!

Capella Sistina (The Sistine Chapel), 4.27.10

Capella Sistina is one of the highlights of any trip, midpoint in the compound known as the Vatican with its strong walls that allow safe movement of the Pope from one structure to another. The chapel was built in 1481 when Michaelangelo was just a baby, as the pontiff's private chapel and for conclave when the Cardinals gather to elect a new pope. Cardinals remain sealed in the Sistine Chapel until a unanimous decision is made, and the 250,000 people in St Peters Square know the result by the smoke from the chimney. Black - no decision; White - they have elected a new Pope.

In addition to its magnificent value as original art, the Sistine Chapel tells a story. With hushed tones we enter the sanctuary which is packed with hundreds of people craning their necks to take it all in. No photos, please, cell phones, backpacks, short shorts, or uncovered shoulders.
The frescoes have recently undergone a delicate restoration after sitting faded under years of soot and grime. The stunning original colors beneath have been revealed, Michaelangelo's original colors that he added himself to wet plaster and created the masterpiece in sections. It is interesting that when the Pope commissioned the young sculptor to paint the ceiling in 1508, Michaelangelo fled to Florence because he believed such an important work should not be done by a novice painter. He was fortunately persuaded to return and he worked mainly unassisted and flat on his back for four years. The story of Creation is here, and that of Noah, surrounded by the Prophets.

Here with astonishing beauty the story of the Bible comes to life along the walls through the talents of Florentine masters such as Botticelli, Rosselli, Ghirlandaio, and Perugino who spent a year on the frescoes, scenes from the Old Testament on the left wall as you enter and those from the New Testament on the right. Most famous of these is Perugino's Christ Giving the Keys to Peter.

Behind the altar and commissioned by the Pope in 1535 Michaelangelo painted the Last Judgement which took six years to complete. His work shows mastery of the medium and it was painted in one fluid design. We enjoyed noticing all the details that make this a timely and astonishing work of art, for instance how small the book of names is for Heaven and how large it is for Hell. And our tour guide pointed out Minos at the door to Hell, the one with donkey ears and wrapped in a snake, was actually a Cardinal who denounced Michaelangelo's work because of its nudity and tried to label him a heretic.

From here we headed back to the hotel, a great lunch at an outdoor cafe, and knock-around time including a great dinner and reflections about this lovely city and how we would love to return and rent an apartment. Tomorrow we are on to Florence, the center of Italian Arts and Sciences.