So Why Italy?

Great question that I have indeed asked myself more than a few times.  Why Italy and not Spain, or France, or Greece?

All good suggestions and certainly places considered, but it mostly came down to one deciding factor: Food. I like to eat and I like to cook and Italian regional cuisines as well as cheese and olive oils and breads are the kind of things i dream about and make heroic attempts at creating. 

I've been to Paris and love love love the city of lights, it's culture and people. To date, no, no one has ever been rude to me in Paris. Well, maybe that one waiter in a cafe in the Tuileries on a beautiful April day who snubbed us and refused to wait on us or even look at us for 40 minutes until we got up and left.  God knows what needle got stuck up his butt that day, but he was the exception. Maybe it's because I always, always make the effort when travelling to learn at least the basics of becoming conversational in the language of the each country (though French has always been a steep hill to climb for me) and speak in my own caveman fashion.  I've found that properly phrasing and correctly conjugating verbs is far less important than making a human connection with the person in the market stall, your waiter or cafe owner, the person sitting across from you on the train or bus.  Smiles and effort and being human carry a lot of water.  The best words I made a point of mastering in Italian before my first trip was, "Mi Italiano e non forte o perfetto, ma Io provo. ...but I try!

And I've been all over Spain and muchas adoro the people, the food, and omg, the music!! The slowed down and forgiving pace of life. Spain was a contender when I landed in a job I love which allows me to work from any location, in any time zone and I realized, Hell yeah, this is the opportunity to travel in a more rooted fashion and really become a part of the community I enter.

But I chose Italy.  Rome and the North in the Emilia-Romangna regione. I chose it for the pasta, I chose it for the ciabatta, the amatriciana, the arrabiata, the wine and limoncello, but mostly for the breakfasts.

I love espresso and i love a pasticceria in the morning. Simple light and packing a power to launch you into a life mode that really defines the whole mysterious dolce vita thing.  It hit me last year when on a driving trip through Southern Italy, in the wilds of Puglia,  found myself rocketing through the countryside in a Fiat (of course)  just after a stop at a bar for a fast colazione, fueled on 3 espressos and a cornetto filled with lemon cream and suddenly it hit me that at that exact moment I felt more alive, more comfortable in my skin, more bursting with, with just everything than I'd ever felt in my entire life. It was like I was seeing the word in technicolor after a lifetime of faded black and white.  It was how I was meant to feel and how I wanted feel like that again and again.

Here's a photo taken at almost the precise moment of my epiphany.  Good god, what a day that was. pristine vineyards, green verdant hills, small hillside towns with the only traffic congestion from some sheep and their guardian dogs 

making me wait a few minutes while they went about their timeless business,  not to mention lovely friendly humans everywhere we stopped and a sun that hit me like a golden hammer.



Oh sorry, I was getting all poesy there.  That'll happen, can't be helped. But you get my point. I'd found a feeling, a part of me that needed to be felt and to be brought out to see daylight.

So here I am roughly  year later coming back for more adventures. This time not just a quick flash through Rome and a meander through the South, but in residence, with time to make friends, have dinner parties, wander alleys and streets in Rome without rush or purpose othen to to perhaps find a bookstore or a place for a suppli and a glass of prosecco.

I always knew I'd be back, because that after 50 + years of life I finally felt like I was home.

Quale, che cosa, quando, perche, come?

Uh okay.  Is this thing on? Okay, apparently so.

So... What is this? What does it mean when a whitebread, Scot, English, Irish, Czech background old dude declares that he's "Becoming Roman"? Am I suffering from Thomas Mann, Death in Venice syndrome?  Do I think I'm Keats?  Maybe just a little.

It's a longish story, but I won't tell it all now, not all in one piece at any rate.

I first made my way to the Mediterranean in my late twenties while in my previous life as an audio engineer, doing live concerts for various acts. That had been a big-time bucket list item for me since I was the youngster that had firmly figured out music was my career; my squad goal was to get paid to travel the world while doing music. In my twenties and thirties I made it happen.

Pay me to do a tour in Spain, the Netherlands, Norway, Italy.  Oh yeah, throw me in that briar patch. And from the very first trip I completely understood the value of non-tourist, not just moving from hotel to hotel to hotel travel, but working, meeting people and forming fast friendships and sharing culture no matter the language gap was the epitome of the travel experience.

An example, so you don't have to guess.  There I was, first time in Italy, speaking hardly a word of Italian beyond "scusi, prego and espresso, per favore." Sicily, actually, so a whole other subset of Italian culture and doing a 9 day annual folk music festival near Agrigento,  Il Teatro di Tenda in Mondello. I found myself in a car with my production liaison Paulo, who spoke about 10 more words of English than I did of Italian, barreling around the Sicilian countryside to view venues and do stage set up prep for my "folk band."  Actually, we were American blues and gospel which was exotic at the time to Euro audiences and highly anticipated by the crowds.

Driving with Paulo was the most fun day ever, chattering in pidgin Italian and pidgin English we somehow spent the whole day laughing and getting to know each other while he proudly showed me all around his hood. At one point he screeched the tiny Fiat to a stop in front of a storefront that said Trattoria / Pastecceria. I followed Paulo into the shop and instantly was made to feel like his best friend returned from a long trip abroad. I met the cugini who owned the shop, his girlfriend Lucretia (who I immediately got a crush on) and was made to take into hand a freshly made panino for the road, piled high with prosciutto crudo and salumi, and some pastries of indescribable creamy lemon and almond flavor -  and...and, espresso, doppio espresso (my vocabulary was rising steadily)! The cugini were firm that, "Your money is no good here."  Announcing, "This is my new friend Beel, sona Americano," to each new person who walked into the shop." I never wanted to leave, and the last thing they gave me was the most amazing thing I've ever had, -- Pocket coffee --  a perfectly round ball of semi soft dark chocolate with a hollow core, filled with espresso.  I bought (insisted that they take my money for this and it took much arm twisting) 3 boxes thinking they'd last a while. Good luck with that, they didn't even make it home from the tour. BTW, if you know where I can get Pocket coffee drop me a line.  It's far better than crack, believe me.

The rest of the day was a sunny blur, dashing from stage to stage, trying to convey monitor mic requirements  to engineers who again, had as much English as I had Italian, but it all worked out fine due to warmth, the sunny disposition that I've found lives with every single person I met on this trip and for years going forward. 

The festival started the next day and the promoters put on a dinner at a local hotel. When I arrived with my band mates, from across the crowded terrace full of Italians, Czechs, Spaniards, French, Croatians, Malagarans (it was a very international folk music fest) we heard shouts of "BEEL, BEEL BEEl," My new Italian friends we're waving me over to meet about 20 of their friends from the surrounding towns and I instantly found myself surrounded by a crowd of more new friends, eager to buy me a drink. It's a wonder I was able to make it to the show the next day. Again my money was no good and l Iearned all about Prosecco, which to this day is still my favorite and first choice of a celebratory beverage. My bandmates who'd spent the day cooped up in their hotel rooms and hotel bar were amazed that I appeared to be a minor celebrity in Sicily.  To tell you the truth it was mostly a blur of shiny, smiling faces and a cacophony of languages I couldn't cypher floating me in a sea of a universe I'd never known back in California. An unforgettable evening.  The tour went off amazingly well, and I still  have a dozen go-to stories of amazement from Sicily. Ask me to tell you some time. All it takes is a glass of prosecco and I'm an open book.

Sorry for the pretty pointless story, but that was my beginning of my love of the mediterranean. So here I am many years later and a few more trips under my belt going to make my first foray into an extended time in country. Time measured in months and people and experiences, not days or a few short weeks of frantic running around trying to tuck in as many photo ops as I can.

Phase one:  Rome in Winter.  Rome without the mobs of tourists, Rome as home in Trastevere in a house on top of Gianicolo hill, not a brief stay in a hotel that ends far, far to swiftly.  Finally time to go to my favorite ristorante multiple times to sample the whole menu, to motor out on weekends to have a Buona Domenica on the beach, to shop for verduna and formaggio at the same markets daily until they see me coming and pull out something special with a suggestion for my dinner, and to find a morning espresso bar to latch onto where

I can gain my favorite seat to work, write, muse and just let the dolce vita which has always attracted me and made me begin to feel like the person I was always meant to be, soak into my skin and take over my soul completely.

To cook, to eat, play music, wander, sip Limoncello, and really think about the value of taking the time to think of things of which have real value.

My First time in Italy

From the way-back machine.  This was my first moments in the Mediterranean  that opened up the path that allowed me to fall in love with The southern sun of Sicily, and by proxy, Italy.

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1985 --
Almost famous. Or something. There I stood in a tiny airport in Catania, sweating and feeling comatose, staring blankly at a fifteen-year-old kid with an Uzi hanging from his neck, flapping his arms like a chicken and speaking to me in rapid Italian. Not an everyday event. And quite oddly, not as frightening as you’d expect.

Let me back-up a bit. In my former life I traveled as a FOH (front of house) mixer for a Blues band; fulfilling a lifelong dream of free travel, non-stop music, tattooed girls and an endless supply of free T-shirts. This particular tour brought me to Sicily and an international music festival. Sagre del Mandorlo in Fiore.  I'm sure you've heard of it. You know what I'm talking about. The kind of festival where most of the acts are basically large groups of men and women in puffy-sleeved blouses rapidly running around in circles with linked arms. Stopping every so often to jump and shout, “Youdkeskloslaava!” Whoever was organizing this festival, a tradition of 45 years, and pretty much the biggest event of the year on Sicily, had thought to bring over a number of blues bands to represent America’s face to the world music scene. So there we were, to try and translate a bit of Chicago stomp to the eager, old world masses.

Travel is always exhausting, even if you’re only catching the shuttle from SF to LA for the weekend, but crossing 10 time zones whacks you out like a two by four across the brow. Counting layovers, delays, and bar tabs; SF to NY to Rome to Sicily is something like 22 hours of continuous motion. So when we flicked past Mt. Etna and dropped across the narrow channel from Italy to Sicily and into the Airport at Catania, I felt like Columbus, gingerly stepping ashore in the new world. Uh, backwards, kinda. We got off the plane on a sun-baked tarmac with a picture postcard stacking of white polished stone houses and buildings lining the surrounding hills. You could almost smell the wine, the food, and the mafia of Sicily in the air. It was perfect a dream as could be and I looked to the next 10 days going forward as heaven defined. Ten days in Sicily, only three shows and plenty of wine. It really doesn’t get much better than that. Don’t believe anyone who tells you differently.

Fifty minutes later as the last bag had come down the conveyor and mine not among them, my state of bliss started to rapidly crumble. I realized that I was in a spot. My Italian was limited to, "ciao," "prego" and "bellissima!" None of which seemed to fit this situation. And that amount of bilingualism was only functional when I hadn’t been traveling for 22 hours with multiple airport lounges and G&T’s floating my boat. I morphed instantly from almost famous rock star to befuddled uncle Joe from South Dakota in the blink of an eye. About that time is when I looked up to find a peach-fuzzed, acne-laden kid with an Uzi and a snappy uniform flapping his arms like a chicken, alternately pointing off into the distance and peppering me with rapid, frenetic Italian. Thank God he seemed to be smiling, but my mind told me he was laughing and describing what was going to happen to me after he took me to jail – I was sure I was guilty of something. Maybe they’d opened some luggage and confused it with mine. Daddy Ray the Alto player and Smacky the drummer always had, er, substances that don’t meet current standards for international trade agreements in their bags. I was sure I was about to be thrown into a dingy, dirt floored jail; two cigarettes and a bowl of soup a day my only rations. All I could do was stare at him in my coma-state and keep repeating, “Scusi, el Luggaccio is lostissimo" and other phrases I made up on the spot, hoping that didn’t mean, “Want a date, big fella?”

That’s when Lucretia appeared. A vision of all my dreams of Italy rolled into one. A young, well dressed and molto-bella girl came to my aid and said to me, with no question mark in place, “You are American.” She addressed the automatic weapon-toting freshman and they seemed to bond, laughing and turning back to me. “Your luggage is lost, but not to worry, it will come on the next flight from Rome. Maybe one hour, maybe two. My name is Lucretia. It will turn out all right.” Seems my chicken flapping friend was no thug threatening me with jail time, but just a friendly local cop, trying to do his best to help one of the thousands of people and musicians streaming into Sicily’s main airport for the festival. He spoke about a much English as I did Italian and flapping his arms, although chicken-like to me, was meant to paint a picture of the next airplane coming from Rome. No jail time awaiting me. Not on Sicily. Damn my overactive imagination.

Lucretia took me over to a cafe and bought me a doppio espresso to calm my nerves and taught me a few more words of Sicilian/Italian. Every Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni movie I’d ever seen (which is how I’d formed my impressions of Italy) was on the verge of coming true.

I was finally living my life as if in a movie. I leaned back with my espresso, lit a smoke and tried to look suave.

But unlike the script that was rapidly writing itself in my mind, Lucretia didn’t whisk me away in a yellow convertible Fiat to the tiny fishing village she grew up in, just shy of Palermo. I didn’t get to meet her gigantic, eccentric family and be drawn into the great romantic love affair of my life. She told me to enjoy my espresso and that she hoped we would do well at our concert and vanished down the street, a swish of blue skirt, a wave of her arm and a smile. The Sicilian welcome wagon off to save some other stranded traveler no doubt. I joined my band mates and got on il autobus for the 2 hour ride to the gig. Lucretia’s and my La Dolce vita, a lost cause, but never forgotten.  Filed under: great love affairs of my life.

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Launch day approaching and it just occurred to me....

What the heck am I actually going to write about?

Is this going to be a travelogue, a food blog, an Under the Tuscan sun imitation (likely much more poorly done)?  Will I entertain anyone, most importantly, myself or will it simply fold and drift into a boring dear diary?

 

 Food, Neighborhoods & Vita

What will be my first entry on my first moment in Rome?  It's likely to be pounding rain and dreary on day one - or fabulously crisp and razor sharp in the afternoon light turning to evening (I expect to arrive at Termini around 4pm-ish).

What are my expectations and what is my blog outline? Do I need one?

Then it came to me

Nothing.  I should plan to write about nothing. And everything.  I'll write about whatever strikes my eye on  ay to day basis. The color of the leaves blowing in the venti d'Autunno on the top of Gianicolo hill, about the smile of the baker as they hand over the fresh baked ciabatta, or the cooking advice of the butcher when I ask for his recommendation of sausage type for my ragu. What I really want is to know oddly quiet streets where no hordes of tourists crush at every turn. I want to get to know the smell of the Tiber.

People, light, streets old and new. Whatever I feel and knowing myself, I'll feel a lot. Recipes, sure. I DO like to cook and eat and plan on ramping up my game and really learning how to make some of the local specialties -  especially in January in Emilia-Romagna, Bologna and Modena.  But it's the people behind those recipes I want to know.

Bucket list item. A holiday dinner party at my swanko apartment on top of Gianicolo hill in the Trastevere.  I've already got the menu planned.  Caprese salad, flowed by ribollita,  then fettuccine con vongole and finally, Porchetta. With glasses of limoncello in the garden to wind down.  If you've seen the movie, Big Night, you know what I'm speaking of.

Those are my thoughts tonight.  It's all starting to make sense.  A presto  -  prossimo mese in Roma.

Getting there: Okay, Gods and Goddesses, what did I do to offend thee?

Travel in the modern world is an amazing thing, You climb into a long metal tube, sit, cramped a bit  at 40,000 feet if you're the vox popoli and not one of the swells, yet within a few hours you are transported thousands of miles away with  even a hot meal and a glass or two of vino rosso under your belt.

Easy eh?

Yes, usually. I'm pretty lucky and rarely have many snafus, but yesterday was almost comedic in the cosmic display of how many things could go sideways and a relatively short 14 hours of transit time could be turned into around 30 with much sweat and stress and airport hiking.

I've had worse days but it's been a long time. How it was supposed to work and how the fates decided it would be fun to poke at us a bit:

1. Our doggies with the mountains of officious paperwork all in order were to fly to Milan in advance of us to be picked up at the airport an hour after we landed.  For someone like myself who adores a well-laid plan, it was perfect.  Maybe too perfect.

2. The doggums flight was missed somehow so they were scheduled for the next day. But, but, it's all saints day in Italy so dog customs isn't working. So they get held for flying on Sabato, arriving Monday in Rome. I'm bummed they didn't get to wear their custom jackets in Milano and be tutto moda in the fashion capital of the world.

3. Then our flight gets delayed by poor weather at one of our layover airports causing us to miss our connection and send our luggage into purgatory. We got a new connecting flight, but 4 hours later - upside was that we were now in Germany and spent our time wisely on wheat beer and a torte di frutta.

Some stress reduced, but we were hitting hour 20 by the point and brain functionality was flatlining so it's hard to say if it was truly stress reduction or just a numb brain. But okay, we got our flight to Milano and were nearly there. Tutto bene.

But no, Discordia was not amused and she vanished our luggage...somewhere.

The lost luggage CS  peeps were wonderful and friendly, but with a holiday the next day in Italy, confidence was not high at seeing our clothes anytime soon. 

........Then things slowly got better.  Although still thoroughly jetlagged and barely able to speak or communicate beyond grunting and pointing we somehow found an amazing ristorante, very old school, very friendly and food to kill or die for.

Murale's. The kind of place that has the apertivi di Giorno under glass as you enter so your thoughts and taste buds could be woken up to their full height.

Then my favorite appertivo; Fiori di Zucca with mozzarella di buffala stuffed intro the flower before deep frying. That and a glass of wine and I was feeling better.

A secondi was Bacalla, Bacalla, Bacalla.  Cod prepared three ways.  Hard to choose the best but the polpetta with creamed formaggio was a life-changing piatta.

Finally came the limoncello, when I mentioned to our waiter that I make my own limoncello authentico at home and showed him a picture,

he ooh'd and ahh'd and said maybe I could make for his restaurant too? Then he brought us the limoncello with some complimentary biscotti and a smile.

Man, I love Italians. A perfect evening.

And then, and then, our luggage arrives, delivered to our appartamento. All is well in Milano today.

A Roma tomorrow!

A presto....

A few small observation from my brief foray into Germany

During my Hell travel day, (see earlier post) I had the pleasure of all of about 5 hours in Deutschland.

Here are a few of my observations:

1..  Germans are polite rule followers. I think they really enjoy authority figures.  When queuing up for our flight from  San Francisco to Frankfurt I noted when the flight check-in clerk instructed group one to line up on the green line, and group 2 on the red line they did so quietly and efficiently.  Really.  No jostling for position or cutting the line and dang if group 4 and 5 DID stay in their seats as instructed. And even more remarkably, after landing, no one. Not a single person got up and started mining the overhead compartments for carry-ons until the plane full came to a stop at the gate and the captain turned off the seat belt sign. I was stunned. I didn't know people could act like this

It was like I was watching a well-rehearsed play.  Not the chaos I'm hardened to and used to. They really are good at following orders.

2.  German cops are A. Huge and B.  Completely without human emotions of any kind. I'm sure the Terminator robot and Robocop were designed from this meme.  I'm not dissing them, they do a marvelous job and I felt safe as hell in the Frankfort airport at all times.  But the few times I met the eyes of security cop with an UZI scanning the folks walking away from the security checkpoints as a secondary protocol check, I felt my soul drained by their nearly glowing red eyes.

Those guys were well trained, just not apparently in things such as mercy and empathy.  It was just scanning for three seconds, match up projected evil-doer probabilities and profiling, and make a determination:  Not a threat, move on to the next human unit.

3.  German beer is really, really good.  The Sud Deutch hefeweizen I  had was just perfection from the fields. crisp; light but hoppy and yet slightly sweet good German wheat.

I'll have to return one day.  Seems like a fine place.

Prima Giorno a Roma

Waking up on the first day of my Rome adventure was glorious. Roma wore a torn-paper sky of clouds and sun; threatening yet light and airy. Windblown leaves on the ground, and golden treetops and rooftop gardens basted with shafts of moving, tremulous sunlight. The entire spectrum of expectations and possibilities.

Patty and I wandered from our new home about 50 yards to a cafe I've been lurking at on Google maps/street view for months and it totally met expectations. Despite the rain last night, it was dry enough and warm enough to take our caffe and cornetto outside.

Bar Gianicolo.

Now, my language skills are far from fluent and I speak Italian sometimes badly but with brava and confidence, and when the lovely server asked what I'd like I swiftly replied, "Vorrei caffe e cornetto."  She seemed surprised, but smiled and left.  A few moment moments later she returned with an espresso cup and caffe corretto.  Espresso with a shot of liqueur. Not what I intended, but hey, I'm a roll with the punches guy so I said grazie and enjoyed my corrected coffee. I believe it had an amaretto liqueur, and was quite an amazing eye-opener. Just to be sure I had enough caffeine for my first foray into the Trastevere,  I ordered a second cup.  Oh, yeah, Bar Gianicolo makes a hearty cup of coffee.   Pulse rate hitting about 175, I wolfed down my marmalade stuffed cornetto as well,  then we set out to make the acquaintance of our new hood.

Home for the next two months.

Our house is the doorway behind the Vespas, which leads down into a grotto/cave of an apartment. Spacious, quiet and feels like a sanctuary - which I'm told by the owner it was, as part of a church many, many years ago. The greenery on top of is a rooftop sekrit garden. Another sanctuary on non-rainy days. If the wifi reaches it, I will have found one of my office spaces. This after all a working voyage.

On the right is the largo del Pancrazio monumenti and museo. One of many monuments to the ferocious battle between the guardians of Roma and French troops in 1849. Everywhere in nearly every city in Italy you run into monuments to Garibaldi, but the battle of Gianicolo Hill was his Battle of Hastings (without the conventional decisive victory) and one of his defining moments as a hero of Roma.

A two minute walk down the hill is the Fontana dell Acqua Paulo or Fontanone (big fountain), which, if you turn your back on the fountain, you get an awe-inspiring view of all of Rome laid out before you.

Breathtaking is a buzzword description I'm not usually inclined to use, but completely apt in this situation. A few photos that made me wish for a real camera and not just an IPhone.....

Down the hill further found more monuments to glory,  the Roma O Morte moment to the fallen, gallant defenders of Roma.  >The young men advanced toward victory, on galloping horses, without fear<

soh yeah.  Galloping without fear. That's how it's done.









The next stop was sharply down into the Trastevere down the scala for our first Domenica pranzo at an outdoor cafe on the edge of piazza di San Cosimato.

A simply beautiful day walking in the most beautiful and vibrant city in the world. We hit a picolo marketo on the way home and picked up supplies for cooking our own dinner tonight: pasta oglio ed aglio.

I feel like Roma has warmly welcomed us...

Roma or Morte!

Any direction one turns in Rome there is either a monument, a church or a building older than any Christian god. Even sitting outside at our now favorite caffè joint, Bar Gianicolo, you can't help but notice the thirty-foot tall, still remarkably intact 3rd-century Roman walls that marked the outline of the city. As this was Milty and Bisou's first day wandering Roma with us, we judiciously and respectively kept them from doing their instinctual dog marking thing on the wall. Though I'd wager cash money that in 1800 years I'm sure a few drunken late night pees have been taken on the wall.

Of note, Milty shares my love of a La Bombe con crema di limone for colazione.

Properly çaffeinated and sentirse forte we struck off through the city gates to the top of Gianicolo Hill through the peaceful forest that is a monument to the heroes of Rome who fought off a French siege of the city in a massive battle on this spot on 1849.  Garibaldi and his young heroes sit immortalized atop a piazza on the peak of the hill with a fantastic view of the skyline of Rome.  Put this on your ta-do list for sure when you visit Rome. Being early November, blustery but warm, we had the piazza mostly to ourselves, which is a lovely thing beyond belief.

The walk up the hill is a quiet park with dozens of busts lining the path.  I only took a couple of photos of faces that struck my fancy; the one of  Daverio for the fire in his eyes and cool af beard (a remarkable piece of sculpture),

  and his nearby crypt which honored him for his valiant death as a defender of Rome and for expressing the ideals of all of Italia: Libertà, Indipendenza, Unità.

Medici was next to him, probably for financing the entire affair. He doesn't look like the battle-worn and battered types of the other busts.



We all have to die one day and anyone could do worse than to end up enshrined and admired in a lovely tree-lined park for valiantly defending one's country and people against a foreign invader.

Romo o Morte! 

                                      Saluti




A few steps further and we came upon the main monument, to Garibaldi himself.  A 30 meters high monument to all the defenders with Garabaldi on horseback on top looking out over all of Rome.  Yes, really looking out over Rome as this is the highest hill in Rome and one can see the entire city laid out before one.  This is only day two, and not my first time in Rome, but this view, this serene yet historically ghost-filled hill will be hard to top.  It's right up there with looking down into the  Colosseo for the first time, or the forums.  I kid you not, put this one on your bucket list.

Some photos:

A hero watches over his city...

As we rested and avoided a brief rain squall we got to hear the Gianciolo cannon go off, at close range.  We didn't realize that it was just a few meters away down below some trees and it's roar nearly knocked us off our bench.  Next trip up top at noon and I'll take a video to illustrate just how loud and sharp is the report of a century and a half old cannon.


A good day of exploration with the doggies. Lunch was of our own design back at the house as the rain hit, consisting of crostini con burra ed acciughe,  e alcune mele e formaggio. Unfortunately it's about time to submit to the indignities of work so I couldn't crack open that bottle of prosecco in the fridge.

Walking everywhere and eating light, but with arte and gusto and who the Hell needs a gym membership?

Tired doggums. Poor little ones are still very jet-lagged

A presto!

A day in the Trastevere

After four days of er, changeable weather - meaning blasts of sun, blasts of rain, wind, and clouds, today dawned crystal clear and warm.  It was as if Autumnus took a sick day, headed back up to Olympus, and handed the world back to Aestas for a moment.  Blues skies clear as a bell, crisp as a new apple and nearly 70 degrees, and I took a day off work too, and all four of us, Patty, myself and the doggums headed down the hill into the Trastevere to enjoy the day

Trastevere is a bit off the Roman beaten path as it doesn't have the big-ticket monuments, the Colosseo, the Forums, the Pantheon or Bambino Gesu!, St Peter's square.  What is does have is vibe.  It's long been where University students, artists, and other broke lowlifes have made their home and it still has the vibrancy and gritty, edgy feeling of youth.  It's changing with gentrification I'm told but it's some of the last of the true Roman neighborhoods. Kind of why we chose this for our home base, actually

The first stop was the Cosimato market square/triangle where I'd hoped to find the real deal green market,  stalls macellaria and negotio di formaggio.  I wasn't disappointed even slightly

All our food-based shopping was intact.  I counted 9 separate greengrocers with just luscious veggies. One even sells you carciofi (super cheap!!) and will prep it on the spot for Carciofi Alla Romano or Alla Giudia. Win!

Behind the stalls were more established shops;  macelleria  (butcher) shops, cheese shops, pasta shop.  Heaven on earth to me and just a brief 12 minute walk down from the casa and 15 back up.  It's amazing how quickly one can become accustomed to walking everywhere and not just jumping in a car and running down to the Safeway an hour before dinner.

After scoping out our future food suppliers, we headed into the midday Trastevere. Yes, it's everything you've ever been told or seen n a picture or a movie.  Shady narrow streets with cafes every ten steps and arte, both traditional, punk and guerilla, coolio shops, bars and tattoo parlors. Oh yeah, I could live here.

I saw this yellow-headed tag in three different places.  He gets around.

I should have taken a video as the lights were cascading down like a waterfall.

A Hollywood central casting set of a Trastevere street corner.

It was feeling like lunchtime, but we pressed on to see Basilia Santa Maria, the oldest church dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Rome. They started building it around 340 and finished it in 870 or so. That's a bit of job security. We took turns holding the dogs outside and ventured in.  No photos allowed, so you'll have to imagine the high dome completely plated with gold and frescos after frescos, friezes and statues.  Pretty amazing even for a country with churches on every corner. Not the drama of the Pantheon, but boy-howdy that were a few fortunes in gold on that ceiling,  

The outside in the piazza wasn't too shoddy either.

We nicknamed the saint on the far left "Santo Whatever."

All that gold made us hungry and we found without much work, a likely looking spot: Il Baccanale.

I had bruschetta with speck (more pig parts) and cheese and a few suppli which I generously shared with the doggums.  Patty had a pizza with shockingly good tuna and red onions., which also found its way to the lucky dogs.

Please, may I have some more?

All in all a fine day which we topped off with another gorgeous view of the skyline as we hiked back up Gianicolo hill to our home, this photo with hardly a cloud in the sky.

A small, wondrous moment happened on the Gianicoo scale.  As we descended a couple of semi lost Spanish tourists asked us in Spanish/Italian via pointing at a map, how to get to the Garibaldi terrace monument. I answered solo in Italiano, which translates pretty well into Spanish if you concentrate.  Up the scala, turn right, walk 5 minuti to the Pancrazio arche and turn right again, walk for another 5 minutes and you're there.  They seemed to understand, said gracias and walked away up the steps, map in hand.

Later while we were down in the Trastevere having lunch, they walked by, recognized us and gave us a huge smiling thumbs up. Succeso!  They found Garibaldi.  Fun to have a conversation in Italian to a Spaniard who doesn't speak Italian or English and be helpful and communicate. It's a lovely world, sometimes,

Tomorrow rain again so I guess I'll suck it up and do a day's work instead of playing hookey.

A Presto!