Tag: Italy

Dying for our sins, and for Italian food

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

Like many Catholic countries, Italy is crawling with crucifixes, and Florence, where I’ve been for four days so far, is inescapably swept up in the cross craze. The objects, often beautiful pieces of art, are bloody, baroque, humdrum and horrific — a whole cross-section. 

Jesus died on the cross and we know that wasn’t pleasant. Naked, nailed, speared, bleeding, suffocating … you get the picture.

I do too. But what I don’t get is the exuberant, even perverse glorification of Christ’s grisly death. I sort of understand the symbolic power of it all — God willed it — yet wonder why people wear one of history’s worst torture devices around their necks. (And I wonder why so many heavy metal bands are morbidly obsessed with them. Dude!)

Speaking of bodily torment, today I stumbled on the rabidly popular sandwich stand All’Antico Vinaio — the kind of place with lines out the door — where I had been hoping to go but had no idea where it was. Pure kismet. This was after I took in a sprawling and mind-altering M.C. Escher (he sounds like a Dutch rapper) exhibit at the Museum of the Innocents, whose name has guilt written all over it. I didn’t know Pink Floyd was so into Escher, but it makes almost comical sense.

I couldn’t read the big menu board at the sandwich place — Italian and all — but I finally settled on the Firenze for seven euros, or just over seven bucks. The baseball mitt-sized meal consists of six heart attacks worth of salami, creamed parmesan and sun-dried tomatoes, stuffed between thinly sliced focaccia. It was fantastic, popping with flavor, and totally unfinishable. The pigeons had a frenzied feast.

The night’s meal is typically the highlight of the day and must be meticulously researched. For dinner I went to an old-school trattoria — defined as an “Italian restaurant serving simple food” — that ratings aggregates go gaga for. Even Michelin backs this joint. It was fine, but mostly wound up being overrated by dint of its noble, been-there-forever history. The giant glass of house wine was a plus at a meager four euros. I maybe eat one or two steaks a year and I ordered a sirloin (Florence is famous for superior steaks) and a seven-euro salad that was actually a few floppy, naked leaves worth about 15 cents. 

The steak was solid, but it dawned on me: As yummy as they are, steaks are like pancakes — they get boring about half-way through. I was glad I didn’t get a true “Florentine” steak that so many diners got and chewed on for like an hour. Those meats are the size of the cut from the opening credits of “The Flintstones,” a slab so big it tips over Fred Flintstone’s car.

As far as Florentine greatest hits, the other day I visited the awesome 17-foot-tall marble nudist David, by Michelangelo. I didn’t mention it before, but here’s a peek (it’s almost obligatory, isn’t it?):

Flitting about Florence

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

The humongous duomo (cathedral) that is the centerpiece of Florence slams you with its blunt-force beauty. Instead of describing it, which would reduce its flamboyance to a clinical chill, here’s a couple of shots that hint at its Renaissance marble glory:

Elaborate, bold, proud. And yet the cathedral’s interior is almost naked, largely stripped of art and artifice, the gaudy trimmings of Catholicism. Except for some stained glass, it is cold and gray, stubbornly spartan. 

But then you look up at Brunelleschi’s mind-boggling, logic-defying dome and soak in Vasari’s “Last Judgement,” one of the world’s largest paintings, a spectacular sprawl of doomsday religious commotion. I craned my neck and arched my back for a proper peek, stretching body parts that I’ve never used before. The painting, which gives the interior a dazzling kick, is outright sublime.

As is Florence, which at times seems to be one enormous fashion show cum gelato shop. That’s not a complaint.

Last night, I ate my first sit-down dinner here at a highly acclaimed restaurant (ristorante!), whose groovy chef/owner wears so many arm bangles he practically looks bionic, or like a distant cousin of C-3PO. He’s one of those characters who hangs photos of himself with celebrities like John Travolta all over the joint. 

Today, to see more of Tuscany, I beat it about 40 minutes outside the city to Chianti, land of fine red wine. I was with a tour group of mostly swell people for a wine tasting and damn it started early. We had to meet at 8:45 a.m. and the drinking began at 10 a.m. sharp and lasted till 1 p.m. We were all baffled. But it turned out well and I was back at my hotel by 2:30 p.m.

The guides basically left the group tipsy then thundered off in the big bus. Everyone I talked to said they were going to go take a nap, which I shamefully admit I did (for all of 20 minutes). 

At one of the wineries, three Labrador Retrievers roamed the idyllic grounds when they weren’t begging for belly rubs and general adorable attention. I liked the dogs immensely, even more than some of the wine poured so generously — and frequently. This place is vino mad, and I like it.

Getting there is half the battle, but so worth it

~ Chris ~ Leave a comment

It’s a blinding blue 60-degree Monday in Florence, Italy, and I just about broke my neck slipping on a yellow glob of melting gelato on the sidewalk. Except for the fact that I almost became a paraplegic, I will not complain. 

See, this happened a block from my hotel, which — both boon and bane — is plumb in the fluttering heart of the ancient Renaissance city center: the Duomo, Medici Museum, Academia, Uffizi, and I’ll stop before this embarrassment of riches makes me flush. I say bane because it’s teeming with bodies — though, from what I gather, most are locals; they’re speaking Italian and looking stunningly chic. Locals are good, even local tourists. They almost always make a journey better. Fellow American tourists? Meh.

Yet I’ve only been here an hour, so what do I know? Maybe I’ll get mugged, or pummeled for persistently mispronouncing grazie. Big plans await this week in Tuscany, a region peppered with medieval towns and fecund vineyards and a particular tower with dismal posture. I will tour cathedrals and museums, take day trips to crumbly towns, and sip vino, nectar of the gods (next to bourbon and gin).

An angle of the Duomo, Florence

Getting abroad is always fun for me, ha. I can’t sleep on the seven- to 10-hour red-eyes, and this time I had a delightful layover in Munich, where the short flight to Florence was delayed and my fortitude, eyes and shoulders were drooping gruesomely, Quasimodo-ly. 

Finally we were herded into a standing-room-only shuttle bus and dumped at the bottom of steep stairs leading to a tiny jet. Ascending, I felt like Joe Biden, like I should turn and wave to the press scrum and his half dozen fans.

I had a bad feeling about this winged, rickety rust bucket. When it finally got off the ground, creaking and rattling, I was reminded of a bi-plane, or worse, one of those tiny-tot airplanes you put a quarter in and rock about on the curbside in front of Safeway or Target. 

But we made it, despite the bloody fingernails and crippling jet lag. More on how the hell it’s all going down later. For now, a much-needed cocktail at swooningly classy bar/restaurant/book and flower shop La Ménagère, a stone’s throw from the Duomo:

A brief winter reverie

~ Chris ~ 1 Comment

A crisp Sunday morning and gaggles of children hoot, holler and gambol outside. It is the sound of chaos. (And, to these gentle ears, terror.) 

Temperatures are far higher than the last couple of freezing days. At 47 degrees, the sky is a glowing gray, sun struggling to burn through the haze. A fine winter day.

The children are out at last, released from the arctic prison imposed by the polar vortex, or whatever hit us with only a whisper of snow, for which we’re grateful. Snow is lovely, until it’s a big brown Slurpee. 

It will hit 60 later this week, an unwelcome augur of springtime. I’m all about the 40s and 50s. I have plans to go to Florence, Italy, in one week and the forecast says low 50s and I couldn’t be happier. I can see you frowning, and I don’t care.

But spring is a’coming. I had a dream last night that colorful leaves — red! green! yellow! — were blossoming on naked winter branches. A dream? More of a nightmare. 

So save for the one-day dusting, there’s been no snow this season. The children above — those huggable hellions — have been deprived of sledding and hurling balls and making snowmen, however virtuosically deformed the creatures invariably turn out.

It’s been a mostly mellow winter, a zigzag of 20s to 60s, so heat lovers and outliers like me can split the difference. That rotund rodent Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow a few days ago, ergo we are promised — blessed with — six more weeks of winter, they say.

Hang tight. All this brisk glory will soon be usurped by sun and sweat and pollen and long days and children screeching outside and the warbling tune of the ice cream truck and picnics and baseball and tank tops and flip-flops and other fashion misdemeanors. It’s going to be a massacre. For now, I’ll do what I can: just chill with the chill.

A flaneur in Florence

~ Chris ~ 2 Comments

The frivolities in my life are legion, but travel isn’t one of them, despite how trivial a far-flung journey might seem — or ultimately be. (Most trips soar. Some sink.) 

In three weeks I head to Florence, Italy. Though I’ve been there twice, the last visit was in the Paleolithic Age. I wanted something mellow, somewhat familiar, distinctly European, with lots of marble, museums, manicotti, and mustaches on both men and women.

The city is a cornucopia of artistic abundance: Michelangelo’s David; Donatello’s bittier David; the Uffizi, that Renaissance eruption of Botticelli to da Vinci; Ghiberti’s bronze doors; Brunelleschi’s dome; the locals’ luxuriant facial hair.

I was last in Italy in March 2022, ferrying between Rome and Naples, the latter a bracing revelation, rough-hewn and bristling with a singular urban snap. As novelties go — serpentine side streets, graffiti, killer Neapolitan pizza — it sort of kicked Rome’s ass. In July I swanned to beautiful Buenos Aires. In October, magical Madrid.

Florence seemed like a good middle-ground — encrusted in a glorious past but not overly exotic; grand but not overwhelmingly vast. It’s not like going to jostling Taipei, say, or sunbaked Algeria, which I hear is majestic. Yet Forbes did name Florence the most beautiful city in the world in 2010.

No, this would be a week luxuriating in western art, architecture, food, drink, scenery, inhaling the rarefied air of undiluted enchantment. I imagine me a self-styled flaneur, strolling the cobblestones, gilded walking stick in one hand, tipping my top hat to passersby with the other. And then I snap out of it and pinch the bridge of my nose.

Florence is not massive. So I’m making at least one day trip to Central Tuscany, namely Siena and San Gimignano, medieval towns cluttered with Gothic architecture and honeycombed with history. The region is also a wellspring of Chianti, and tippling some of the red elixir from the source is essential.

I have made five restaurant reservations in Florence, from a traditional trattoria to a Michelin-star bistro. I will eat pasta and pizza and exist — and subsist — a bit like Stanley Tucci, without the bald pate and skinny chinos (but with the dashing scarf). I might also employ a larger vocabulary of superlatives than just, “This is so good” when I taste something delicious.

And though Tucci meets up, and hams it up, with lots of local hosts, he makes it appear he is his own man, ambling the streets of Italy, the stylish flaneur (that word again), when really, of course, he’s accompanied by a small battalion of producers and technicians taping him all the way.  

If life were only like that. I travel solo most of the time, by choice. But once in a while it might be nice to have a crew of professional sycophants at your beck and call, filming you, powdering your nose, providing the background about everyone you’re about to meet and everywhere you’re about to go so you appear super smart and amply informed. 

I do what I can. I read books, watch Tucci and Bourdain, comb the net, view movies. In the end, I’m still alone, tramping about the glittering city, whose promise is assured. I think that’s pretty cool. And I think that’s quite enough.  

Notebooks to MacBook — it’s not the same

~ Chris ~ 1 Comment

Used to be a small notebook and a fist-sized camera were my best friends on my travels, each jammed in a coat pocket ready to record spontaneous events. I’d take florid notes in my notebook — usually a trusty Moleskin and always in blue ink, always — and snap shots with my Panasonic Lumix, a sleek digital wonder, like a geeky shutterbug rapt with the world.

Things change. Today I carry along a MacBook Air for writing and an iPhone 12 mini for photos, and of course it’s not the same. Instead of turning my weathered notebooks into lavishly illustrated, ink-splashed scrapbooks, slathered with ticket stubs, business cards, adverts and newspaper clippings, I now find a dark place in uncrowded bars and lobbies or my hotel room to type and record the day’s impressions in the glow of the computer. It lacks all the tactile fun and creativity of the notebooks, which exude an intoxicated brio, but it’s rather utilitarian, and right to the point. I no longer need Glue Stick. 

The iPhone, I hate to admit, takes equal if not better pictures than the Lumix, so I miss little there. Plus it’s far smaller cargo to tote around. Like an Altoids tin.

But it’s the notebooks, those eye-popping documents of doodling, journaling and scrap-bookery that give me pause. I miss crazily jotting in them all that I saw, heard, tasted with a right-now urgency. They pulsed. Popped.

So why don’t I still do it? Sad to say I don’t have the energy for them anymore. I’m a more sedate traveler now. The last time I brought along a Moleskin was to Paris six years ago, and I wrote almost nothing in it and collected limply a few ticket stubs and scraps to glue in it. I’ve gotten a little jaded. And, erm, older. I don’t feel the need to rip out newspaper clippings or save little street flyers and stick them to the creamy blank pages.

But I still record and retain, with passion. The laptop keeps things throbbing. On my last trip, to Italy, I produced five live reports from the airport, the hotel bar, my room and elsewhere, with photos. I blogged them, something I couldn’t do with the chicken scratch of my paper journals and all their scrappy idiosyncrasy and improvisatory punch. They were page-bound, and hitting “send” or “publish” wasn’t an option.

Still, I can’t abandon the idea of a physical journal for one’s travels. If done right, with raging curiosity and a magpie’s eye for minutiae, the books make marvelous keepsakes and souvenirs, stuffed with facts and ephemera, a living gallery of the journey. They’re also a great repository for the names and emails of people you meet along the way.

Scribbling in bars and cafes frequently draws the attention of fellow travelers, who approach and ask what you’re up to. There you are, channeling the absinthe-tippling artists and philosophers of fin de siècle Europe say, or today’s hoary Brooklyn hipsters. It’s an art form, and it’s the best thing you’ll bring back from your trip. Swear.

Istanbul, 2018. It’s come to this.

 

A trip that’s up in the air

~ Chris ~ 3 Comments

This is the book I just ordered:

Big and bold it announces “Buenos Aires,” and you can gather from it that Argentina’s capital is in my sights for my next destination. The nerve, the gall, you might huff, considering I got back from Italy a mere four days ago. But see, I’m a greedy globe-trekker, scheming my next move on the plane back from my latest journey like a cheating lover. 

Buenos Aires wasn’t on my bucket list. Though I almost went years ago, I’ve never been to South America. As I was decompressing after my flight home from Rome, I was chatting with a woman, a friend of a friend, whose entire life is an unbroken blur of world travel. She asked where I was off to next and I had no answer. I really didn’t know. I just knew it would happen in the fall, my prime travel season.

I told her I never travel in the summer because of the heat and the crowds, and she, a veteran of Argentina, suggested Buenos Aires. Below the equator, our summer is their winter, of course. I could go in July and luxuriate in 59-degree temps in a jacket and jeans. And it’s the off-season, so crowds are thinner and prices cheaper. I was on my computer researching the city within minutes. 

I was taken. Infused with Spanish, Italian and French colonial influences that lend it a lusty European sheen, yet still boldly Latin, the city of 13 million people is famed for a dizzying eclecticism that runs from its architecture to cuisine, including ubiquitous beef steaks and flowing Malbec. Street art animates facades, baroque cemeteries lure the living, and, if you’re into it, clubs smolder with tango. (I’ll watch the dance, but not partake, lest I cause an international incident.)

It’s all enticing until you shop for flights, which run a stroke-inducing $1,200 to $1,300 in July. Argentina also requires you to buy travel insurance to cover any hypothetical Covid treatments. That’s in addition to a negative Covid test, proof of vaccination and some other minor paperwork. 

That’s the downside. The upside is stylish and affordable boutique hotels (I already have one picked out), 15-minute taxi rides costing $2.50 USD, dinner with a full bottle of wine for $10, free museums, jumping cafe and bar cultures and, by most accounts, loopy, lively people. I’ll tell you more when my book arrives. 

Buenos Aires is Spanish for “fair winds” or “good air,” and isn’t that nice. It’s not certain that I’m going there; I’m thick in homework and investigation. I’m vetting this city that seems magnificent on paper, and might be even more so in the flesh. I’ll see where those fair winds carry me.

P.S. If you don’t think I’m already pondering my fall voyage, you are grossly ill-informed. Scotland? Iceland? Poland? Peru?

Italy finito, beautifully

~ Chris ~ 5 Comments

As I write this, 35,000 feet in the sky on a jet back to the States from nine fine days in Italy, I’m swollen with that cruddy reverse homesickness in which you miss the place you visited instead of your actual home. Rome and Naples were wonderful and I wasn’t ready to leave and I wanna go back. I’ve got the home-bound blues.

Still, my last rueful day in Rome was brilliant, quite literally — balmy mid-60s, cloudless, cerulean skies, sunglass weather. The kind of conditions that make people dress way too skimpily for the actual temperature. I was perfect in jeans, a light jacket and t-shirt. The guy in the short-shorts and tank top, not so much. 

Especially if he wanted to get into the Pantheon, the almost 2,000-year-old Roman temple turned Catholic church, where modest dress is a must. Leaders, popes and artists, including Raphael, are buried in the cylindrical building, which is famous for its oculus (or big hole) at the tip of its dome, shooting down a thick beam of sunlight like a celestial Bat-Signal.

Our lovely tour guide in Naples told us he gets chills whenever he enters the shrine. I did not get chills, but I was aptly awed by the ambient beauty and unimaginable feats of engineering. So often in Italy, if you regard your surroundings for just a moment, astonishment floods in and you wonder what hit you. It’s called the sublime.

I didn’t care if I found it or not, but fate planted an unmistakable sign in front of me — a literal street sign — so I ambled over to the vacantly majestic Trevi Fountain, where mugging selfie dolts and preening sun-worshippers congregate on days like this, as if Nicola Salvi’s pompous 1735 fountain is a swimming pool or the beach and not just a glorious repository for Bernini-style sculpture. I do respect this extravagant splash machine, but it’s a brief pitstop, not a gawk spot, despite its iconic role in Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita,” a personal favorite. 

A local beer, a prosciutto and mozzarella sandwich, and a cappuccino later, I headed to the Vatican for a guided tour of the Vatican Museum, a riot of artistic riches. Our tour guide barely made it on time, and my mood was starting to curdle. But she materialized at last, a petite Italian who used a plush Woodstock doll dangling from a stick in lieu of the boring old tourist-group flag for us to follow amid the crushing, claustrophobic crowds (many of them terrible teenagers, lolling, laughing and leering). 

She gave each of us little radios with ear buds so we could hear her literate narration of highlights in the museum. But the contraptions were on the fritz, all buzz, fizz and crackle — sonic flatulence that drowned out her spiels about each grand piece of art, from writhing statues of men and lions and Raphael’s “The School of Athens,” to the visual commotion of Michelangelo’s peerless Sistine Chapel ceiling. The works spoke for themselves.

As we finished, I asked the guide for the nearest taxi line, and she warned me to be careful with them, that they quote outlandish prices and don’t use the meter. And so it was. I approached a driver and told him my address and he promptly said it would cost 40 euros because of, you know, that zany Tuesday traffic. I scoffed and said, “You’re crazy,” and he responded, “You’re crazy.” Genius.

I hailed a passing cab, got in, and paid 14 euros back to my hotel, where I wound down, went out and ate pasta, sipped wine, and, reflecting on the past nine days, sighed: perfetto. Which in English translates simply as: damn. 

The trivia of travel travails

~ Chris ~ 4 Comments

My taxi driver was having none of it. On a bright, brisk Sunday in Rome, he wove through traffic and bowled down skinny cobblestone alleyways clotted with gelato-lapping pedestrians. Amusement was at a premium. “Everyone walking! Tourists! Ice cream! Ice cream! Ice cream!” he fumed. (Earlier in the day, I had some gelato. Suddenly, I felt like a putz.)

His car horn bleated. Gaggles of walkers reluctantly parted like the Red Sea. My driver grumbled to himself. Someone said “Sorry” as she jumped aside. “Sorry!” the cabbie repeated mockingly.

What a sourpuss, I thought, yet I understood his frustration. And soon enough, I became the grouser. As he took detour after crazy detour, I could recognize none of the scenery, and finally I blurted, “Do you know where you’re going?” 

The meter skyrocketed and my exasperation flared. I quietly seethed and loudly sighed. The driver apologized. It’s Sunday, he explained. Swaths of road are closed, traffic is atrocious, people are eating ice cream mindlessly in the street. A normally 10 euro ride quickly ballooned to more than double that. “Ridiculous,” I sniffed. “Sorry,” he said, this time without mockery.

So goes travel, with its minor irritations, unpredictable hassles, junk that seems like a big deal in the moment but is so often just life doing its thorny thing. The drama becomes but a fleeting speck in mere minutes. The intoxicating mists of travel return.

Seriously, I had just finished marveling at three massive and magnificent Caravaggio canvases in a 15th century church, strolled the Spanish Steps and Michelangelo’s Piazza del Campidoglio, gawked at the Roman Forum, and, yes, licked dreamy gelato in the Italian capital under sparkling spring skies. Espresso was sipped.

Where does complaint possibly fit into this scenario?

It doesn’t. And the day’s splendor continued undimmed, including a celestial dinner of grilled tuna, carbonara, Italian meats. Because it’s hard to douse the naked joys of the journey, to discount the novelty of uninhibited voyaging.

Make a plan but don’t be too rigid. Then hit the streets and let life unfurl in its own mad fashion. You’ll find frustration, no doubt. But also, I promise, the divine. 

Colosseum, April 4

Naples, knockout

~ Chris ~ 3 Comments

Farting thunder and crackling lightning preceded the cloudburst that tried its damnedest to drench our small tour group at Pompeii, the ancient city of dramatically preserved ruins just outside of Naples yesterday. Umbrellas aloft, my brother and I winced at each other and agreed we didn’t want lightning to blast us into human beef jerky like the displayed bodies caught in squalls of volcanic gas and ash from a spewing Mt. Vesuvius way back when (79 A.D., to be exact). 

Weather-wise, Rome was better, but Naples, Italy’s third largest city, set south and known as the country’s black sheep and mischievous scamp, might be more atmospheric, vaguely sketchy and intimately enthralling. It’s got kick and fizz.

Sure, Naples has offered lashing schizophrenic weather — enveloping sunshine, then muffling fog, then a glimmer of sun, then a 10-degree temperature drop and downpours — but it has character to burn: crazy winding backstreets streaked with old churches, lavish, looping graffiti, bristling bars, sensational food, boisterous people. And do mind that Vespa tearing down the cobblestone street bustling with fleet-footed pedestrians. 

Speaking of food I might kill for — last night’s grilled octopus and the pasta carbonara in Rome surely count — we waited about 40 minutes for a seat at the famed Sorbillo pizzeria, known for the best pies in the world and certainly in Italy. Get the basic Margherita — mozzarella, basil, zesty homemade tomato sauce and thin, chewy crust (huge and about $5). It will recalibrate your pizza expectations for life. 

But I’m not here to peddle pizza. I’m here to report that we tracked down the three (stunning) Caravaggio paintings in Naples; found a go-to watering hole, Libreria Berisio, which is a cozy working bookstore by day, heaving with volumes, and at night dims the lights and serves a boggling array of cocktails, with funky seating, including stacks of hardbacks for stools (books and booze!); and took a private four-hour city and food tour with the spectacular Gennaro. Just the three of us.   

Gennaro, who speaks with a lilting, comically tangy Italian accent and shoots off sparks of wound-up energy, whisked us along in a gust of breathtaking erudition, knowledge, information and raw charm. Food, history, literature, opera, architecture, art, politics both local and global, film, geography — he seems to know it all, an effusive polymath who makes you feel intellectually undernourished. 

But we weren’t undernourished, because Gennaro fed us a feast, including pastry, fried seafood, buffalo mozzarella, deep-fried pizza (!!), beer, Limoncello (a local lemon liqueur), pasta with meat sauce, and more. 

He’s also something of a one-man chamber of commerce for Naples, fervently defending the city, exalting its virtues with fist-shaking passion, and angrily blaming city leaders for underrating and underselling their jewel in the rough. Five years ago, he says, Naples still carried a bad rap — piles of garbage, crime, mafioso, and other underbelly lesions — but it’s enjoying a surge of respectability and much-needed tourism. He wants the world to see his native city as he does: a top draw, a world-class player, a tourist mecca. He wants it to be loved, adored, appreciated.  

Me, I already see it that way. I’m sold.