Boots in the Oven

Marsala to Agrigento: BANANA!

OK, not really banana. Buon Anno! (It’s Italian for HAPPY NEW YEAR! But it sounds kind of like people keep wishing each other banana.)

New Year’s Eve. A LONG day. We started out in Marsala, and did a little backtracking. First, we had to go take a couple of pictures of this amazingly wonderful fountain we found in Marsala. I mean, what town actually puts this up?

Having seen the fountain and breakfasted, we further backtracked up the coast towards Trápani to visit the island of Mózia. It’s a site of interest for anyone who likes learning about the ancient world.

The island houses the ruins of ancient Phoenician settlements – the Phoenicians lived here prior to being stamped out by the Romans. It was the pet archaeological site of a man named Joseph Whitaker, who bought the whole island out from under its inhabitants at the turn of the last century so as to explore it.

The most wonderful thing he found is a statue called the Boy of Mózia, a Greek statue of delicate proportions. It’s the best thing in the museum, which is otherwise mostly a jumble of amphorae and votive offerings.

After you see the Boy, you can wander around the island for as little or as much time as you’d like. It’s pretty compact, but we were in a hurry so we only walked about half of it. There’s an ancient Phoenician road that’s about 3 feet under the water that we wanted to see, but it’s unfortunately not visible from the shore. Ah well.

Also, you have to take a private boat to get to the island from the mainland – no bridges or anything of the sort. Makes it just a little more fun.

The island even has its own “Giuseppe Garibaldi slept here” building. It’s Sicily’s version of the ubiquitous “George Washington slept here” signs you see absolutely everywhere in Virginia, D.C., and Maryland.

We left the island around lunchtime and headed south for Mazara del Vallo, where we were planning to drive through the Arabic village center prior to heading inland. We got lost, really lost, and ended up circling through endless suburbs until we absolutely had to stop for lunch. And a cannoli. Also very sheepy.

Giving up on Mazara del Vallo, and already worried about remaining daylight, we turned the car inland to see a little bit of the Sicilian interior.

We drove through hill towns, mostly made up of new apartment blocks, and past olive groves and shepherds tending their flocks. A couple of hours inland, we finally made it to our destination.

Corleone.

It’s famous because… well… you know why. I do have to say that we were surprised to discover a lovely old town, dominated by a huge rock with what appeared to be perhaps a monastery on top.

In all seriousness, though, I’ve never seen a higher concentration of stereotypically “Italian” men – with the little floppy hats and the perfectly tailored jackets. We also saw lots of small groups of men talking intently. Though the people in the car where we grabbed a coffee were very nice, the town exuded a strange vibe.

The Mafia museum was closed for the holiday, so we walked around for a half hour or so.

With the sun again starting to go down (I can’t wait for Spring… it gets dark way too early!) we left Corleone, again pointed south to the coast. Though we did get lost again and go a full town out of our way (I swear it’s the signs, not us!) we did eventually make it to Agrigento and then to our pensione.

When we got here, there was a whole family group gathered in the downstairs common area. We learned that they all belonged to the proprietress, Antonella, and we were introduced around to many shouts of “Auguri!” and “Buon Anno!”

Antonella and her sister were even kind enough to call around and make restaurant reservations for us, a difficult proposition since most restaurants in the town were completely booked for New Year’s Eve. Dinner wasn’t bad, an overpriced set menu, but wine was included and we had a great time.

Several enormous firecrackers went off outside of the restaurant while we were eating, loud enough that people dropped silverware in surprise and yelped. (By people, I mean “me.”)

Dinner ended with panettone, the traditional Italian holiday egg bread, and a plate of lentils, which are eaten around midnight to ensure money in the year to come. Tasty lentils, but I’m not going to make a habit out of ending my meal with them!

We got back to our pensione at about ten to midnight, planning to grab our bottle of prosecco out of the fridge and quietly toast in 2007. Antonella and her family, however, had other plans for us.

They grabbed our coats and my purse and sat us down at an extremely long table, where we were given wine and watched the end of a rollicking game of Uno. We were urged to eat pomegranates, and as midnight came near (and the explosions outside became louder and louder) an enormous pot of lentils appeared and everyone got tiny plates.

Then, all of a sudden, prosecco was everywhere and the Village People were singing “Macho Man” on the TV and people were eating lentils and everyone was cheek-kissing us and some kid was asking me, “Che significa ‘In the Navy?’” and a giant conga line snaked through the common area and we were introduced to “la zia”, the aunt who had lived in England for 40 years and nevertheless spoke next to no English but who spent the next hour or so talking with us in Italian about Sicily and how we liked it and how the food in Firenze is good and how funny our Italian was.

Our attempts at speaking Italian met with much happiness, and a couple of people practiced their English on us. It was a GREAT New Year’s Eve, just wonderful, and though we got up several hours later today than we meant to and thus didn’t continue on to southeastern Sicily like we had planned, it was completely worth it.

Plus, it meant we got another day in Agrigento to explore one of Sicily’s premier tourist attractions, the Valley of the Temples.

Good night from Agrigento, settled by the Greeks who were pounded by the Carthaginians who were sacked by the Romans who gave over to the Saracens who hung on until the Normans arrived, and eventually this all turned into Italy. I think that’s the chronology. Except for the Bourbons and the Aragonese…

And BANANA!

girlie

Marsala: Wine and salt

We presented ourselves this morning at 9:30 at the Cantina Florio for an informative tour on the marsala wine they produce. The level of difficulty on the tour turned out to be an approximate 9.4, since we discovered after we arrived that the full hour would be in Italian!

Great wakeup call, I might add. We understood a fair amount, and got to smell the cork out of a barrel from 1944, so all in all the tour was a success. And we definitely understood the tasting portion, wherin we tried a little superdry marsala and a little sweet. Marsala has only been made since the 1830s, and production was started by an Englishman, which came as a bit of a surprise. Also, marsala likes to be exposed to air – again, very strange.

By about 10:45, we left with a little more knowledge of Marsala wine and our very own (cheap) bottle. You can’t not buy Marsala in Marsala, right?

After a brief stop in town to grab a very late breakfast pastry and cappuccino,

the gastronomic tour continued with a visit to the salt flats south of Trápani, where some of the world’s best salt is produced. As soon as we got out of Marsala, we started to see giant piles of salt protected by shingles. A strange sight, dotting the roadside.

There is a brand-spanking-new Salt Museum housed in a windmill on the coast road between Marsala and Trápani, which really turned out to be interesting – we learned the specific use of all of the different drying pools, from largest to smallest (least to most concentrated), as well as the use of the windmills. They turn an Archimedes screw to get water uphill from the giant collection pool to the first salinization pool.

They did have an informative video in English, though afterwards the actual mechanics of the mill were explained by a lovely older man who spoke Italian and French… no English. Today stretched our nascent Italian to the breaking point, I tell you what.

(The man did go into a bit of an odd digression, when we admired the museum’s Nativity scene, saying that in northern Italy they have Christmas trees because the Muslims are chasing out all of the Nativity. I guess lots of people think we’re in the middle of a war on Christmas. Their presepe, what the Italians call their ubiquitous nativity scenes, was made out of salt paste painted to look like native coral.)

Of course, we bought about 10 pounds of salt that we now have to lug around for the next three weeks. Good salt, though.

After admiring the salt ponds some more, we drove towards Trápani with the intention of going past it to Érice, a mountain town overlooking the entire region. We got very lost, but only for 30 minutes or so, before finding a sign pointing us in the right direction and shooting directly up a narrow mountain road towards the town.

Érice is a very old town. Its strategic location, and view of miles and miles of surrounding coutryside (apparently, on clear days you can see Tunisia!), combined with the relative flatness of the surrounding area, make it totally stunning.

The collection of ancient streets and churches doesn’t hurt, either.

We did share the town with a tour group we kept running into, as well as a few Italian families, but all in all there weren’t too many people around.

Everyone in the shops was really friendly, as well – in a small caffeteria, we tried to order a caffé doppio (double espresso) and had a bit of a communication problem. Somehow, it ended with us explaining to the confused barista that, though we are American, we didn’t want the Italian version of caffé Americano. She asked just what that was, anyway, and when we told her that caffé Americano is just espresso with water added, the look of disgust on her face (Like, why would you DO that?) completely cracked us up.

When the sun started to go down, we left Érice to see one last town – San Vito lo Capo, a beach town back towards Palermo. We apparently are cultivating a love for off-season beach towns.

We traveled through Purgatory on our way to San Vito lo Capo. Leaving Purgatorio!

Though the town itself was not too much to look at, it sits on a stunning bit of land that juts out into the water. Large rocky hills tower over it.

The sunset was spectacular.

With the sun now setting in earnest, we drove back the hour and a half to Marsala (including 30 minutes of being lost in Trápani). We had dinner at the strangest place, a ristorante and pizzeria named Nashville, which was completely packed with locals and fluorescent light.

I finally got to try a specialty of Sicily, pasta with sea urchin roe. I’ve only had sea urchin roe twice, both times raw, and I was not a fan – but cooked it’s really yummy. Especially cooked with lots of oil and butter.

And that’s another day… tomorrow, on to Agrigento and Greek ruins… and our first New Year without sushi in 6 years! (Our traditions are short-lived, but hey… we’re young.

Good night from Marsala!

Palermo to Marsala: Into the Arab West

We woke up early today, at least earlier than we had been, ready to pack up and get to our bus to the airport. That was when I realized I had no idea where I’d put our passports.

Oh my god. I’d never done this before, and I completely freaked out. I remembered having put them somewhere strange, a place where I thought to myself “I have to remember doing this, or we won’t find them.” Of course I forgot, and 45 (forty-five!) frantic minutes of searching later, along with trying to find out if Palermo has an American consulate, we found them nestled in between two packed pairs of Husbear’s pants. Good hiding place, me. Phew.

The bus ride to the airport was uneventful, and soon after arrival we were ensconced in an ugly-as-hell GOLD Smart ForFour with giant car rental decals all over the butt end. Whatever, we were on the open road!

We were going west along the coast, and then south towards Marsala, the west coast town famous for its wine. We stopped at a couple of lovely views near Castellemmare del Golfo

and got very very lost for a little while in Trápani, but all in all had no real trouble getting to Marsala. We were lucky soon after arrival to find a large bronze map that led us directly to our hotel, which is adorable and wonderful and run by an older Italian couple. We even have our own bathroom!

Leaving the hotel, we found a town completely deserted. I’ve never seen anywhere take the pausa (otherwise known as the siesta) as seriously as Sicily – even most museum hours are 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. and then 3 or 4 p.m. to 6 or 7 p.m.! It’s a difficult transition.

We were able to find an open bar, where we ate yet another giant stuffed fried a arancino (LOVE THEM!) and another cannolo, this one tasting extra sheep-cheesy – like an almost barnyard type flavor! - but good.

We stopped by the extremely friendly tourist information office, and then headed in the direction they indicated for the archaeological museum (which has the actual remains of a Punic boat sunk during the First Punic War!).

This being where it is (Sicily) and us being who we are (occasional dumbasses) we ended up forcing open a closed fence (after all, it was across the street we were told to take!). We then walked down a long uninviting road and clambered around in some bushes until we found the back door of the museum and triumphantly presented ourselves at the ticket desk. The ticket-taker didn’t bat an eye.

The museum’s small collection was interesting, but we were hampered in that the only explicatory information was in Italian – except for the Punic wreck, which had some English. Further explanation might have helped us to understand why they chose to show this sculpture of Venus on her side in dirt (I understand it was found that way, but it really doesn’t seem to me like the best way to show off the find).

The Punic boat itself was quite interesting. It was spotted in 1969 off the coast of Sicily by a fisherman who took the information to an archaeologist. Though there isn’t too much left of the boat, after 2400 years underwater, much was learned from its remains. For instance, the presence of certain Phoenician letters in strategic places on the boat shows that it was put together something like a kit, by workers who must have been literate.

A very cool find in such a small town.

We left the museum just in time to see the end of a lovely sunset over the coast.

Just next to the museum is a pair of enoteche, or wine stores, selling local wines and food products. We chose the one on the left and were treated to free tastings of several different types of local marsalas, as well as wines from the island of Pantelleria. We were actually able to carry on much of the conversation with the man in charge in Italian, which was a nice feeling – though he wanted to talk a lot about James Brown’s funeral, and we didn’t have too much to add to that discussion.

Wandering around Marsala between wine and dinner was lovely. Marsala is actually a corruption of an Arabic name, Marsa’ Allah, meaning Port of G-d, and it’s where Giuseppe Garibaldi first landed with his ships and men to attempt the reunification of Italy in 1860. Now, it’s a town of about 70,000 or so, with a charming little historic center and lots of fugly suburbs. The area within the old walls is very nice for a walk, though, and most of the town was out at about 6 in the evening for the passeggiata – the preening walk around town. The one in Florence is usually impressive, but it’s probably 60% tourists – here, all locals. Marsala isn’t really set up for tourists, actually; though there are some hotels, the number is pretty small, and there are barely any within the historic district.

Dinner was at a restaurant (Trattoria Garibaldi) highly recommended not only both of our travel guides, but also the tourist agency; thus, it turned out to be overpriced and kind of sucky. Good antipasta buffet, but gross fritto misto (mixed fry) of tiny shrimps and calamari.

Also – this is from their menu. If anyone knows a Doug that might find this as hilarious as we did, you are welcome to it. Handmade Doug will ROCK YOU!

Good night from Marsala – tomorrow, salt pans and lots and lots of driving!

Palermo, December 28, 2006: Archaeology and Churches. And a cannolo.

Up late again, due to continuing yuckiness on the part of Mr. Pants’ poor stomach.

On our way out today I picked up another arancino, the big balls of fried rice and meat yumminess that are becoming addictive. For 1.30 euros, it was a more than satisfying lunch.

We started out with a walk through Palermo’s Cattedrale, a building that impresses on the outside with its Arabic/Norman looks, but fails to hold the high level of awesome due to its pretty drab interior.

They did have a great display of nativity scenes from around the world, and we enjoyed a Spanish one complete with bullfighters

and one from Alberobello with trulli houses. (It’s a town in Puglia that’s in an area with distinctive cone-shaped houses – we’re planning to visit it in January.)

Behind the cattedrale we found a really interesting little shop specializing in the centuries-old art of painting Sicilan carriages. Apparently, they’ve moved on to Ape trucks as well. The vehicles are usually painted with scenes out of the life of Roland (Orlando), one of the knights of Charlemagne, loved by Sicilians for his romantic death at the hands of the Saracens.

We then moved on to a walk through the Mercato in the Capo district.

Foodwise, it was just as wonderful as the Mercato Ballaró yesterday, but it excelled in the area of clothes and crap. Fake baby dolls planted to look like chrysanthemums jostled up against 3 euro pairs of jeans. Come to think of it, I should have tried some on.

Since it was time, once again, to sample an overwhelming array of Sicilian sweets, we headed over to the Antico Caffe Spinnato, where Husbear got to have a real honest-to-goodness ice cream sandwich. Pistachio ice cream on a brioche, to be more exact – I think he fell in love. He says he wants to mail their pistachio ice cream back to Florence, where he can run it through the school’s gelato machine. Perhaps.

On the other hand, I got to have the tastiest marzipan I’ve ever tried – much lighter and softer than any I’ve had before – and another delicious cannolo, this one with the inside of the shell coated in chocolate.

Yipes. I washed it down with a nice espresso – I needed something a little bitter to chase all that sweet.

They had Nativity cakes on display!

Then, we walked over to the Archaeological Museum, in a beautiful building that used to be a convent. We saw some amazing Greek artifacts, mostly from the area around Siracusa (Syracuse), where we’ll be next week, as well as some interesting Etruscan finds and some great Roman bronzes.

And, of course, a Roman flying penis with a penis and a penis for a tail. What?

Finished with the archaeological museum, we went back to visit an ancient church that’s had no roof for hundreds of years. On the way, we wandered into a small church that happened to still be open, called La Magione. It dates back to 1150 and has a beautiful entrance, lined with palm trees. The best thing they had was an intricate presepe (another nativity scene) which included not only the usual suspects, but also Pope John Paul II hanging out by a stream as well as Mother Teresa wandering in a desert built specially for her off to the side. I love seeing these nativity scenes everywhere!

Then, on to the church-without-a-roof, Lo Spasimo, which is now used as a space for concerts. It looks like it would be a beautiful place to get married, provided the weather was good. Nothing like getting rained on inside.

We had dinner tonight at Il Garage, the Tunisian place run by the husband of the woman we’re renting this little apartment from. I’ve never had the experience of walking into a place and being asked “Wine or beer? Because you’re having fish.” We got a little more than fish, though – starting with a nice bean stew before moving on to the main event. The pictures are all pretty horrible, though – can I ask you, who paints their fluorescent bulbs green?

We did have a tasty whole orata, or sea bream. Deliciously pan-fried. With a side salad of tomato and fennel. And cheap cheap cheap! Water, wine, fish, salad, soup… 12.50 euroes each. Now that’s a price we can get behind.

Tomorrow we’re going to have to try to get up early… we have a car to pick up out at the airport at 11 in the morning, and then off to the western side of the island. Marsala, here we come!

Palermo, December 27, 2006: Mosaics and Arancini!

Unfortunately, Husbear wasn’t feeling too great this morning, so we got a late start. First thing was a walk through the Ballaró market, apparently one of the two most vital in Palermo and the one closest to our apartment.

It was amazing – narrow alleys chock full of produce and fish and meats, with the detritus left over from cutting artichokes and cauliflower off of their stems filling the street.

The fish looked amazingly fresh and clear eyed. There were a couple of cured fish vendors, including a guy selling baccalao and smoked sardines out of the back of an Ape truck.

People drove their scooters (and the occasional car) right down the middle of the market, which meant you had to be on constant lookout.

We bought a couple of clementines to much on for a late breakfast type thing, and the guy wrapped them in a cone of newspaper for us.

Then, off in the direction of the Teatro Massimo (Palermo’s premier opera house) for possible lunch, but first we stopped at a duo of churches that sit next to each other along Via Maqueda. The Arabic-style square one (San Cataldo) was closed, but we did get in to see the golden mosaics at the Chiesa della Martorana. They were beautiful, the gold twinkling in the low light. The mosaics were completely different than any of the concurrent Gothic styles you see in Florence.

After seeing the churches, we walked through the Quattro Canti again – the baroque Four Corners, arguably the center of Palermo.

We went by the Teatro Massimo to see if there were tours being given in English (though our Italian has progressed, it’s still very difficult to follow fast spoken Italian), and after a bit of confusion and a false start on a tour that turned out to be in Italian, we did actually get to go on one in English. We saw where the carriages pulled in to drop off the nobles, the Pompeiian Room where gentlemen would meet to discuss the affairs of the day – taking advantage of the amazing acoustics, enhanced by the presence of false doors – the room where the ladies could gather to watch people enter the main waiting area so they could more easily make fun of their clothes, and of course the opera hall itself, a giant creation seven stories tall with removable panels in the ceiling frescoes to let in some air. A great building, where you can’t take pictures.

And it’s where the end of the Godfather part three was filmed! There’s some movie fun for you.

Then, on to one of Palermo’s most famous snack bars, Mazzara, where I finally got to order an arancino (a fried stuffed riceball, so called for its similarity in appearance to an orange) and Husbear got to try his first Sicilian cannolo. The arancino was delicious, soft and moist, and the wedge of baked pasta I had with it wasn’t half bad either.

You know how when you’re little, you love eating cake batter? The filling on this cannolo was like the best cake batter ever, stuffed in a fried cookie shell. I tried one of the Sicilian specialties known as cassata (this tiny one was called a cassatina), which basically takes the cannoli filling and layers it with yellow cake, and then surrounds the whole thing with marzipan. Very good, though so sweet I felt my teeth start to rot out. (Oh, and we had a fig and orange cookie, which was delicious but not that exciting.)

Our last sightseeing stop of the day took us back near our hotel to the Palazzo Reale, the palace of the Norman kings which apparently originally dates back to Arab use in the 9th century. It contains what’s described as Palermo’s true artistic treasure, the Cappella Palatina, a chapel all done in beautiful gold-leaf Byzantine mosaic. It was really neat to see this mosaic after that in the Chiesa della Martorana earlier – we could really see that the quality was much better. The room also included a lot of mosaics that showed obvious borrowing from Arabic themes, such as intricate knotwork in the floor. Too bad that a lot of the chapel was under scaffolding, but I had a lot of fun identifying all of the Old Testament stories.

We then moved on to another part of the palace that’s open to the public, the Royal Apartments, which includes the current seat of the Sicilian Parliament.

There was a fair amount of damage still from the earthquake here in 2002, but we were still able to see some more beautiful mosaics (in King Roger’s apartments)

as well as a hilarious room done in the Chinoiserie style, from the time when European nobles became obsessed with all things Chinese and had entire rooms painted with fanciful “Chinese” scenes that are pretty divorced from reality.

After that, we were able to actually go under the palace to see some uncovered fortifications, parts of which date back to the 5th century BCE, though with these things it’s always hard to really tell what you’re looking at.

Back to the apartment to rest up and do a little reading before dinner, and then we headed out at 9:30 since we were starting to feel a bit peckish. The place we wanted to go, run by the husband of the woman we’re renting this apartment from, was unfortunately closed so we wandered the streets before settling on a fast-food vaguely “Middle Eastern” style joint. We had some extra-psychedelic looking eats, which were not half bad and were extra cheap.

Worth noting is that I actually kept count this time – we had 11 people come up to our table to try to sell us things while we were eating. Lighters, glowing fiber-optic centerpieces, flashing keychains, roses, you name it. I always feel guilty for not buying anything from these guys, but I’d go broke much too fast were I to try to get a little something from each of them.

Tomorrow’s our last day in Palermo! What are we going to do?

Palermo, December 26, 2006

We were up way, way, WAY too early after a night of restless sleep at a small hotel in Pisa. Our flight, after a bit of kerfluffle regarding sunscreen forgotten in the bottom of a carryon bag, was uneventful. In fact, I slept through most of the Rome – Palermo part.

Meeting Marjolein, the woman who runs our apartment (we have our own little apartment here, with a loft bed!) was great – she’s Dutch and apparently speaks seven languages.

The apartment is awesome. Each unit has their own bare bulb set up in the corridor, because they are unwilling to work together long enough to get an actual lighting system.

We were only here for a few minutes before heading out to the Antica Foccacceria San Francesco; Marjolein told us that their prices have gone up, since they didn’t pay their Mafia protection money and now they have to hire local policemen.

On our walk we saw a man taking a picture of a cat sitting in an impossible hole on top of a garage door. When we went to take pictures he saw us; turns out he lives across the street with his mother and at least two of the kittens from this garage cat, who we got to meet. Beautiful kitties.

We had the paste con le sarde, pasta with sardines and pine nuts and fennel and raisins (currants?), caponata, which was oh my god amazing, a mix of sour and sweet and savory; involtini di melanzane and involtini di sarde, which were ok though we were almost sardined out already; and the house special, panino con milza… a sandwich with beef spleen. Better than it sounds.

After that, we wandered the streets of Palermo, taking in all of the crumbling baroque/Norman/Arabic architecture. It’s amazing that there are portions of this city that still haven’t been rebuilt, more than 60 years after they were bombed during World War Two.

We found perhaps the only Fascist building here, the Post Office, and were duly impressed with its imposing exterior.

The port was very nice, with lots of pretty little boats... though the water itself wasn't the nicest to look at.

We also found a garden with an enormous tree. I know I’ve read about these somewhere, but the name of this tree is slipping my mind at the moment. It sends out shoots back from its branches towards the ground, where they take root. Most strange.

Eventually, I ran out of steam and had to take a nap.

After our nap, we walked down past the Four Corners (the Spanish Baroque center of the town) and found a pizza restaurant for dinner.

We also found a bustling street market or two and had a glass of prosecco at one of the old fancypants cafes, where we admired their cassata and cannoli and beautiful desserts. We even found a couple of really neat stores, one selling nativity scenes carved out of almond and walnut shells and made out of clay – beautiful stuff – as well as a marionette store.

Dinner was not so wonderful, and left Husbear feeling yucky; though I was a fan of the sort of sweet beef stroganoff like dish we had.

Day One, down the tubes. To bed to rest up for Day Two. Markets and mosaics and churches, oh my – and bring me some more crumbling baroque!

G'night from Palermo.

girlie

Buon Natale!

Tanti auguri! Buona Festa! Merry Christmas!  That ought to be about enough exclamation marks for the coming year.  So it's Christmas and all and we're firmly ex-patted in Bella Firenze (except that we're actually leaving today to go play around in Sicily and the Toe-Arch-Heel regions.)

It's strange and sad to be away from family during all of the holiday festivities, but it does make you feel a little better when one of the most beautiful cities in the world puts on her Fancy Pants and gets all gussied up with twinkling lights and shiny tinsel and such.

A couple nights ago we went out for a walk all around downtown to check out the extent of the decorations.  It was pretty impressive. The whole town really glows when the sun goes down.  Since y'all can't be here to join in our reindeer games we've collected a sampling of some of the finer examples of festoonery that are on display.

Piazza Repubblica puts on an especially fine show with a huge tree, lots of food vendors, and even a carousel for the kiddies.

So one more Merry Christmas from the Pants clan and from Florence.

We're off to finish packing so next time ciao from Sicilia!

Driving a ForFour to Umbria

Unfortunately, this is the story of Auntie's last weekend visiting us.  The plan was to rent a car and go see some things that would be difficult to reach without said car - so, Umbria it is!

Umbria is Tuscany's wilder neighbor, less touristy and more nature-y.

Awesomely, Auntie rented us a Smart ForFour to make the journey!  It's a great little car (really, really little), and drives very nicely according to Husbear.  Though we couldn't figure out how to open the back doors from the inside.  Minor quibble.

We headed south along the major Milan-Naples highway, the A1, towards Rome.  After a little while speeding along in a sort of boring straight line, we got off the road near Arezzo and wandered through some of the little towns marking the border between Tuscany and Umbria.

We didn't stop for about three hours, until we saw the small town of Assisi poking up above the horizon.  It's probably, besides Perugia, the most touristy town in Umbria, because of its justifiably famous basilica and its status as the birthplace of one of Italy's patron saints.  All of our books warn that it is very, very crowded in the summer months.  Well... not in November.

We had some lunch (a couple of slices of a sort of buttery stuffed pizza) at a really nice little jazzy cafeteria on this square and took a little bit of time wandering around town.  Auntie took advantage of free internet at the cafe.

The road leading up behind Piazza San Rufino leads up a stairway towards an imposing fortress and beautiful views of Assisi.

The views of Assisi were really stunning, but we couldn't spend too much time admiring them - after all, we had to make Norcia still, and we had no idea how long that might take us!

The fortess, the Rocca Maggiore, dates back to the 14th century.

With the light already starting to fade (for serious, I'm so ready for longer days!) we made our way back to gather Auntie and hop back into the ForFour.

I am sad that we had so little time in Assisi.  It looked like a beautiful town that I'm sure would be well worth a couple of days.  We really have to try to make it back sometime before we leave Italy! 

Of course, it was especially nice that the town was all but empty.

It got fully dark pretty soon after we left Assisi and pointed the car's snub nose in the direction of Norcia.  The last 30 minutes or so of the trip, we could tell that we were driving through a really striking valley, but we couldn't really see any of it... this made me very much look forward to the next day, and the few hours of sunlight it would bring.

We ended up making it into Norcia a lot earlier than we thought we would, and had no problems finding parking and checking into our hotel.  It was a good bit colder in Norcia than we had been used to in Florence, so we bundled up for a brief "getting-to-know-you" jaunt around town before dinner.

The town's main piazza was beautifully kept - it looked like each of the stones had been individually washed earlier that day.  Apparently, Norcia was also damaged in the earthquake that toppled part of Assisi in 1997, but you can't really tell that looking around today.

The square was mostly empty, except for a group of men in full camo hunting regalia having a loud discussion about wild boar in front of a restaurant while smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.  St. Benedict looked on in approval.

We made dinner reservations at the restaurant in our hotel, since it was fairly well-regarded by our guidebooks and the information we could find online.  (Hilariously, after we returned home, I had an email warning us that this particular restaurant has been known to turn out some pretty mediocre meals.  Ah well... too late!  Though luckily our experience was just fine.)

We entered the restaurant and Auntie and Husbear, both hot-natured folks, immediately melted into puddles.  This might have had something to do with the combination of giant roaring fireplace (which was being used to cook some pretty impressively sized meatslabs) and enormous radiators lining the walls.  I, on the other hand, was just thrilled to be warm.

Norcia's fame lies in its meat products.  In fact, Norcia is so well known for the quality of its sausages and salumi that butchers around Italy often refer to their shops as norcinerie.  So, we started off with a sampler platter of meats.

I loved the prosciutto the most, the cured pork leg.  It's the extra-thin sliced one on the upper left.  The platter also included finocchiona (fennel salami), coppa, contadino (a peppery sausage named for farmers) and a little pecorino cheese for good measure. 

I imagine it would be pretty hard to screw up a sausage platter in Norcia.

We split two pastas for our primi, one with the much-loved cinghiale (wild boar), which was pretty good, though not very strongly boary,

and the other, maltagliata (meaning "badly cut") with pesto.  Good, but oily, which is not uncommon with pestos.

We ordered three secondi to split, along with a contorno (side vegetable) of beets.  When the beets didn't arrive, we asked about them and were given cooked chicory instead.  Very nicely done, but not the beets we were looking for. 

The first secondo was local lentils from Castelluccio, a small town nearby we'd be visiting in the morning, served with sausages.  It was pretty bland, but cooked well - and there's nothing wrong with a bland gruel every now and again.  Sorta reminded me of the oatmeal of my youth.

Auntie was curious about a veal preparation that was a special that day.  It turned out to be very thinly cut veal ribbons that tasted strongly of rosemary.  Not really memorable, but not bad.

We also ordered the grilled pork liver.  Immediately after we ordered it, a man came out of the kitchen and threw two livers on the grill set in the fireplace.  We thought "Surely those aren't ours!" but they sat there through us eating our antipasta meat and our primi pastas, at which point they were put on a plate and served to us.

Considering they had been sitting in a fire for perhaps 45 minutes, they didn't seem overcooked.  They were actually pretty good.  Husbear was correct in pointing out that they would have benefited from a pre-cooking soak in milk to flush out the impurities, but this isn't a common Italian thing.  (It really does make a big difference in diminishing that irony liver flavor.)

After eating all of this food, we did end up ordering a dessert - but, since it wasn't particularly great, I will spare you the picture.  It was a sort of pudding/berry/pastry thing, but we're pretty sure they used instant pudding.  Yeesh.

All in all, a pretty good meal - better than mediocre, but not outstanding.

Moving on - the next day, we went to Castelluccio, and Todi, and saw many pretty things that we took lots of pictures of.  That will have to wait for tomorrow.

girlie

Ostia Antica, and a Glaring Fish

Next in a continuing series entitled "We leave for Sicily WHEN?  OMGOMGOMG  CRAP!" :

Ostia Antica.  November 26, 2006.

In a brief side note, we did all of our laundry Friday desperately hoping it would be ready and dry to be packed Monday.  Sometimes, not having a dryer isn't all it's cracked up to be.  Actually - are there people who say "Oh, not having a drier is the bestest?"

I was talking about Ostia Antica.  It was an ancient Roman town, in fact the ancient Roman port of Rome, founded apparently in the 4th century BCE.  The area is impressively large and impressively not touristy, at least in November.

We were staying right nearby, so we were there pretty early.  Parking was a breeze, and we waltzed right on in, like a piece of cake, insert cliche for "easy" here.  You enter at a point a good bit outside the ancient town's gates, near where all of the rich people were memorialized.

You probably shouldn't spend too much time in this area, though, because the site is quite big and you'd miss a lot, were you to do that.  You should feel free to strike a pose with your Auntie, though.

But then you start to notice the road stretching in front of you... so you move on, through the gates of the town, towards the theater and the forum.

One of the first sights to tempt you off of the main road is the Baths of Neptune, an area covered with a mosaic that's really quite large, though there's no particular sense of scale in this photograph.  Maybe Husbear should have put his foot in the picture - you know, to make it easier to get a sense of size.

A little ways past the Baths of Neptune (where, incidentally, there's a nice overlook of the immediate area), you come to the Roman Theater.  This was the first building in the area to be excavated, (then heavily restored) and according to our literature people actually put on plays there in the summer.

Just below the theater is a set of masks - though our book was silent on the subject, I'm guessing they represent drama?  Or comedy?  Or the heartache of the bouffant hairdo?

Being the people we are, we then insisted on going to the ancient fornaio, or bread-makers.  There was a largish building dedicated to a particular baker, who actually ground his own wheat before baking it into bread.  This is what his mill looked like.

It's a little hard to figure it out by looking at the picture, but the top stone rotates against the bottom, which has a cone-shaped protrusion that fits into a little reciprocal cavity.

After admiring what was left of the baker's place, we went over to the Thermopolium, like a snacketeria for the ancient Romans.  There were even some frescoes left in this particular one, which advertised the types of food you could expect to find there on a working day.

When you do something twice, does that count as the start of a tradition?  Because if you go back 2.5 years to our honeymoon, to a Roman snack counter in Herculaneum, you would see this:

But now, in November of 2006, we have this.

The Thermopolium was interesting, mostly because it was easily recognizable as the ruins of a restaurant (other buildings would claim to be barracks for the firefighters, or some such, and you pretty much just had to take their word for it).  It was made perhaps more out of the ordinary through the addition of a cat, who stomped around on the counter for a few minutes allowing his picture to be taken.  You can see him in the picture above, but here's a close-up.

He doesn't look particularly happy to be the center of attention, but he did put up with some petting and the cooing of a few tourists.

Perhaps the best thing about Ostia Antica was the ability to wander for quite some time without seeing anyone else.  If you're the type of person with a better imagination than me, it's the kind of place where you might be able to step back in time a couple of thousand years.

For me, though, it was increasingly difficult to translate what I was seeing into anything approaching lifelike, especially with the aid (or more accurately hindrance) offered by our park-produced paperback guide.  Ah well.  We were getting hungry anyway.

We left the ruins and went to eat at a restaurant just outside the gates called Il Monumento.  When we walked inside, we were left to chill by the door for a few minutes - this offered us the opportunity to check out the home-made cheese ravioli (actually, cappelletti, though those are usually meat-filled and these were definitely cheese) drying in front of the kitchen.

When we were seated, the three of us all decided that that's what we wanted - at least for starters.  Unanimously, we agreed to try different sauces.

Husbear and I ordered the cappelletti with butter/sage sauce, which was quite a bit thicker than I was expecting.

Auntie opted for the meat sugo, with lots of ground beef and perhaps veal and pork - they tend to mix these meats in their meat sauces, especially in Emilia-Romagna, where cappelletti come from.

They were both really good - there's nothing quite as wonderful as homemade pasta.

For our secondi, I was really wanting saltimbocca alla romana - the "jump-in-the-mouth" pounded veal with sage and prosciutto in a lemon sauce - but they were out, and told us we could have marsala instead.  They also sold a lot of fish by weight, which we were interested in trying, but our waiter recommended a 1.5 kilo scorpionfish. At 4.50 euros to the etto, or 100 grams, we were talking a 65 euro fish!  So we settled on an ortica, or sea bream, which was priced by the fish instead of weight. 

We also wanted fried carciofi alla romana, but again - they were out, so we got an eggplant side instead.

The veal was delicious, with a good salt-tart flavor.

When our waiter brought our sea bream, he expertly filleted it tableside, and tried to whisk away the head before I asked him in halting Italian if we could keep it.  (Possiamo avere la testa?)

Like we were going to give up the cheek meat - that's the best part!

Simply grilled, with a slice of lemon - perfectly tasty.  Very few bones, too - the waiter did a better job than I probably would have.

When the eggplant came, it smelled so good I couldn't get my face out of it to allow Husbear an unsullied picture.

I'm still not exactly sure how they prepared it - perhaps slow-cooked in oil?  Whatever, it was delicious, and I would definitely recommend the restaurant for after you're done with Ostia Antica.  The service was certainly the sort of haphazard Italian style, though, so I wouldn't necessarily go there before checking out the ruins, or if you're on a really tight schedule.

Right behind the restaurant is where you can find the tiny medieval section of Ostia.  Unfortunately, we had no time there since we needed to return the car and catch a train back to Florence, but Husbear did take his camera out for a spin while Auntie and I were finishing up in the restaurant.

Most things in the area were closed for the pausa, or siesta, but it looked like there were a couple of cute restaurants and pasticcerie that would be worth checking out.  Also, lots of nice views.

We ended up getting the car back in plenty of time, of course.

As further evidence of just how amazingly lucky Husbear can be at times, we brought the car in at 299.7 kilometers - our total allowance was 300.  How's that for awesome?

Next posts bring us into Umbria, Tuscany's less-explored and more rugged sister.  For now - sleep for me!

girlie

Ristorante Monumento: Piazza Umberti I, 8, Ostia.  06/5650021

Driving Lazio

We have plans!  Big winter break plans!  We are leaving Florence on Christmas Day, staying overnight in Pisa, and flying out early the morning of the 26th to PALERMO!!!!

This is the beginning of four weeks that we will be spending on Sicily and in the mezzogiorno, specifically Italy's southernmost provinces of Calabria, Basilicata, and Puglia.

What does this mean for the blog?  Well, it means that over the next few days we're going to be pretty well reduced to putting up pictures without too much backstory, in order to get the most important parts of our backlog up before Monday... this could be good news or bad news, depending on how you feel about our writing.

We hope to be able to do some updating on the road, but we don't know what the Internet situation will be where we're going, so please be patient.

Anyway, the second-to-last post about our trip to Lazio!

Admittedly, our visit to the American Cemetery at Nettuno followed by the Beachhead Museum made for a pretty heavy morning.  So, we drove on down the coast of Lazio without a particular destination in mind, just watching the waves.

We stopped a few times when vistas presented themselves for inspection.  There were a lot of fishing boats and fishermen around, and not too many other cars.

We were getting a little hungry, it certainly being time for lunch, so we started keeping our eyes open for restaurants.  Almost everything we passed was closed - after all, it was November in a succession of beach towns.  We eventually found an open pizzeria serving Neapolitan food called the Imperatore, or Emperor.  Promising.

Unfortunately, no pizza... but we did have lots of seafood!

This giant assortment cost only 7 euros... the wonders of getting off of the tourist path!  It was very salty, but the shellfish themselves were quite good.

We got some enormous oily pasta that each of us proceeded to get all over ourselves.  This is my spaghetti alle vongole, though all three pastas were approximately this oily.  Apparently we just all need bibs.

Completely and utterly stuffed, we piled back into the car and began making our way towards a tiny town that looked promising in our atlas - Sonnino, with only one road in or out due to the configuration of the hills.

We passed a small water buffalo farm - presumably these guys were being kept for their milk, because it certainly wasn't for their looks.  Or their smell.

Most of the roads we were on were pretty empty, so we did a lot of pulling over to take closer looks at interesting places.  Or to try to figure out the atlas, which, though thorough, doesn't include road numbers!  Argh!

The terrain was starting to get hillier and hillier, the further we got from the water.

As we turned on the road which would eventually take us to Sonnino, we were confronted with a very strange sight... a sea of goats!  Not every day you turn a corner to see this coming at you...

We piled out of the car and took lots of pictures... unfortunately, we were laughing too hard to get many in focus.

Soon, our car was completely engulfed.

With the goats out of our way, we continued down the road, missing an important turn and thus finding ourselves in the small medieval center of Priverno.  If only all missed turns could end you up in a town as pretty as this...

The town had a really pretty central piazza, anchored by the church but with a few restaurants and even a B & B, all in beautiful rustic buildings. 

All of them had been painted red at some point, it looked like, and the paint stuck around better on some buildings than others.

As you can see, we were beginning to lose the light (that happens so early here in the winter!  Incidentally, happy solstice yesterday, and cheers to the days starting to lengthen again).  We all got back in the car and found our way back to the road to Sonnino.

Sonnino is sited spectacularly atop a hill just inland from the coast.

It has a stunning view out over the valley below - I'm sure that the location was very strategic, back when that mattered.  Now, instead of a view of approaching armies, there's a view of a cheerily lit soccer field.

Once we finally figured our way up the hill to Sonnino's main drag, we got the car parked in the central piazza and got out to do a little looking around.  Down the street we could see the evening passeggiata beginning.

Turning around we saw a tunnel leading further up into town.  Husbear and I were unable to resist its song, but Auntie stayed in the piazza looking at the war memorials and watching the kids flirt.

Sonnino has a very small, very old area at the highest point of the hill.  We took about fifteen minutes or so, wandering the narrow streets.  Nobody else was out.

We walked back to the car to find Auntie frantically waving her arms.  "Didn't you hear me!? The cops were here and they say we have to move the car!!"  So we did, getting right back on the road towards Anzio.

Once back in Anzio (more complicated than it sounds - with several detours we blame on extra-confusing road signs, as well as a frantic search for our compass) we settled on a pizza restaurant that looked inviting and was, more importantly, open.  It was called "Ferro di Cavallo", or Horseshoe.

No, they didn't have horse pizza.  What do you think this is, Switzerland?

Hungry hungry hungry, we started off with an order of olive ascolane (fried olives stuffed with meat) and a fried stuffed zucchino blossom.  Along with their love of offal, the "fifth quarter", Romans and the people living near Rome are renowned for their love of fried.  These were good, though they did prompt another discussion of if the zucchini blossoms are really necessary - I mean, by the time you stuff them with a bunch of mozzarella cheese and an anchovy, you don't taste them anyway.

We moved on to pizzas, which were pretty good - tough not as good as the amazing ones we had here in Florence last week at Antica Porta... which we will blog someday. 

I wasn't all that hungry, so I went for a margarita... Auntie got a capricciosa, for some reason the pizza that appeals to everyone we bring to a pizzeria (it's a big mix of ingredients - here's Mama Bear and Pegs' slightly crazier version), and Husbear stuck with a funghi, just mushrooms.

Much fuller and happier, we walked back to Anzio's town square to see what a rebuilt piazza actually looks like.  I mean, I think we can safely assume this has been rebuilt since the war.

It's a well-done job.  There's a large fountain in the center that it's actually possible to sit on, and with many nicely designed benches/planters around the periphery.

For today, good night from Anzio.  Tomorrow's trip was to Ostia Antica, the ancient port of Rome, and then back to Florence.

girlie