Bella La Vita
Fair warning: this is longest blog post ever. If you just want to look at pictures, go to
my flickr page.
10 things I learned in Italy:
1. Italy is really big.
2. Cheap trains are really slow.
3. The wait is exactly one-third as long as the people trying to sell you a tour say it is.
4. When someone offers to feed you, the answer is always (always always) yes.
5. You can learn the best swears at church.
6. Never pay more than 90 cents for an espresso, and stand up while you drink it.
7. When a Napolitan tells you you’re going out for a drink with some friends at 10:30, understand that you will not sit down for said drink until 1:30, but, once you do, it will be really really fun.
8. I am a good woman.
9. When in Rome, look up.
10. When attempting to cross the street in Naples, pray.
We left Manosque on a Saturday morning and took the bus to Marseille, where we caught a train that took us right along the Azur Coast, through Toulon, Nice, and Monaco to Ventimiglia, the first town you come to after crossing the border between France and Italy. I was excited to see Monaco, but it remains mysterious, as the train goes into a tunnel before you get there and only emerges once you’re past. The only visible evidence that you’ve been through Monaco are the massive yachts in the bay. I sort of love that.
We stayed overnight in Ventimiglia, where we ate our first and worst Italian meal (we stupidly picked a place right on the water with a menu in 5 languages. It wasn’t entirely our fault though: we tried to ask locals for advice, and everyone just said “Oh, just go walk along the water, there are lots of restaurants.” Clearly, the locals are working hard to keep the local places local. You can’t really blame them.) Anyway, this meal was terrible, but it did give us a gift in the form of the first idiom of the 6eme Langue (The Sixth Language is our name for the language that we speak at home – a mixture of our four mother tongues and French). So, Linda ordered a mixed seafood platter, which turned out to be different kinds of friend fish, including whole anchovies. She was alarmed that they still had their heads, and we spent some time discussing whether or not you are supposed to eat them whole, or decapitate them with your teeth (and which would be worse), and how dumb we would feel if we asked the waiter. Finally, I just said “Mange la tête!” which means, y’know…eat the head. And she did. And for the rest of the trip mange la tête settled into our lexicon as a way of encouraging ourselves to do scary things (like crossing the street in Napoli).
Mange la tête!
Some photos of Ventimiglia:
From Ventimiglia, we caught a 6 am train to Florence (thank god for the man in our hotel who reminded us to change our clocks the night before). Here’s the sunrise from the train:
And surprisingly good train-puccinos:
In Florence I had my first experience with a real, live, backpacker youth hostel, Ostello Archie Rossi. We shared a room with an Aussie couple who had been traveling for 2 ½ months. They were really nice, but the girl had a cough that sounded suspiciously tubercular to me, and, frankly, I’m just happy that we got out alive. The garden was really great, though.
Florence is lovely, but super touristy. Our last morning there, we just sort of wandered away from the city center and across the water, and discovered Santo Spirito and San Frediano, a much quieter area where the menus are all in Italian, and it made us so sad that we had to leave. We randomly stumbled upon an art exhibition in a 14th century church. It was called Cubes, and all of the artists had created installations in 10 by 10 cardboard boxes. It was all pretty bad, but the low-budgetness and the artists’ delight at having any audience at all made me feel so at home that I didn’t want to leave. On the way out the sweet 20 year-old who was working the door (the curator, perhaps?) tried to give me an exhibition pin for free, but I insisted on paying the 50 cents. Best 50 cents I spent in Florence, for sure. We stopped at a grocery store in Santo Spirito and stocked up on fruit for the train ride. The grocer followed us around the store gathering up all of our fruit in his arms and speaking Spanish. We’re not sure why, but it was awesome.
(Linda took this one outside of the grocery store. I love this lady.)
We got into Rome in the early evening and took a harrowing bus ride to the outskirts of the city center in order to find our hotel, Albergo Lodi. Through some magic we managed to get off at the right stop and found that place without too much trouble. We were greeted by a boisterous counter guy, Marius, who asked us if we would rather go straight to our room, or sit down and have a cappuccino. We chose cappuccino, which turned out to be an excellent decision. He showed up with two cappuccinos in huge glass cups and a map of Rome, which he proceeded to write all over with a fat red marker, dividing the city into four quarters called “Histoire” (he was showing off his French) “Mattin” (which was supposed to be matin – morning), “Yill” (I have no idea) and “Nuit” (night). Here, I’ll show you:
We were in our room a little later wondering what to do about dinner when Marius knocked on the door and asked us if we wanted to come downstairs for a little pizza party. We said sure, and when we came down, there were 6 or 7 people sitting around a table in the garden eating pizza and drinking wine. Glasses were filled, names and nationalities exchanged (Czech, Czech, Iranian, American, Australian, Canadian – that’s not counting me and Linda), and we proceeded to get completely wasted (me probably more than Linda, as I couldn’t eat the pizza).
And since I couldn’t eat the pizza, Linda and I and Marlene and John (the Canadian and the Australian who are teaching at the same school in England as well as having an illicit inter-office relationship. Yay!) then went out to a dinner at a restaurant near the hotel with a very tiny smiley waiter. I have no idea what I ate, but I remember that I thought it was really delicious, and also that we ended the night with limoncello, which was also delicious but a bad idea. Later I fell off the bed.
Okay, wow, this is turning into the longest blog post ever. So, for those of you who are still with us: the first day in Rome, we had our morning cappuccinos and consultation with Fabrizio, the formidable and extremely gentlemanly proprieter of Lodi, who also sat down and wrote all over a map (though in black pen and with a bit more style and restraint than Marius). All of the advice was fantastic, but also overwhelming (and contradictory), so we just decided to go to the Colloseum and then decide from there. We did ask Fabrizio for a restaurant recommendation, and he told us (in a satisfyingly conspiratorial fashion) about a little restaurant in the Jewish quarter with the most authentic Roman food. He also told us that it was good that we cared about food, because it’s very important that a woman be a good eater.
We went to the Colloseum. It rained. Photos can’t possibly do justice to how overwhelming it is to stand there, but here you go:
We did not go to the Roman Forum, which I regret, but it was raining really really a lot and we decided to walk to the Jewish quarter and eat lunch instead, which I do not regret. We found the Piazza Cinque Scole (the Piazza of the 5 Schools) and, per Fabrizio’s instructions, stood with our backs to the water and looked for a signless door with red strings hanging down. There were two guys standing in front talking, but no one coming in or out, and, though it was clear that this was the place Fabrizio had described, we were a little intimidated. It was a mange la tête moment. We went up and asked (in our feeble Italian and with lots of eating gestures) if this was the place. It was, and we were ushered into a teeny restaurant and seated at a table right in by the kitchen with a large, kind-faced Italian man. The hand-written menu was incomprehensible, but our table-mate Philipo (who, it turned out, is an Archeology professor at the University of Rome and speaks perfect English) came to our rescue. Linda had gorgeous hand-made angoletti (little meat-filled pasta dumplings) with tomato sauce and I had some delicious meat whose name I can't remember. We both had the fried artichoke, a Jewish-Roman specialty that was worth the eleven euros a piece that we paid (artichokes are out of season. Plus, I suspect that this is the tourist tax at this place. Everything else was cheap.) When they served us an enormous ball of buffalo mozzarella, Phillipo informed us that we would have better once we got to Napoli (he’s Napolitan). He told us that he has been going there for 20 years, and that he knew the original owner, Margherita, a tiny old lady who used to greet the college boys who came in to eat by saying (without looking up from the stove she was presiding over) “Enough with your buon giornos. Sit down quick and eat something. I need money!” He said that he had badgered her for years to teach him how to make the artichoke, and one day she had finally sat down over a glass and wine and told him. He said he had tried twice, and that he’s not a novice in the kitchen, but that he had found it impossible and given up. Sora Margherita is the name of this place, by the way, and if you’re ever in Rome, I command you to go (turn your back to the river and look for the red ropes). Margherita is not there anymore, but I suspect there’s a decent chance Philipo will be.
By the time we finished lunch the sun had come out, and we decided to cross the river and take Danny Richter’s personalized walking tour of Rome. Here are some pictures of some of the wonderful things we saw. Thank you Danny!
Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere
Ponte Sisto
The Pantheon
The Pantheon again
Then we ate gelato. Then we were happy.
And, insanely, we decided to walk some more. We walked all the way up Via del Corso to the Piazza del Popolo, which marks the entrance to ancient Rome.
It was raining again, and we were wet and tired, so we hopped on the metro and went home. That night we made dinner in the little kitchen at Lodi and then crashed.
Here’s one of Marlene cooking
And here’s John showing off the tomato sauce that spilled all over his shirt
Rome, day two was the Vatican (where we stumbled upon the Pope’s weekly public appearance):
And where the toilet lady has breasts:
Linda’s boyfriend pointed out that this is perhaps because all of the men in Vatican City also wear dresses. Reasonable guess.
Then we wandered through a street market:
Then we were really tired and hungry and we had a fight about something I can’t remember. But eventually we found food and Trevi fountain and everything was good.
We were a little sites-weary (Hey look! It’s another, like, ancient church) so we decided to go the Villa Borghese, the big park. Climbing the big hill to get to the big park pushed both of us over our exhaustion threshold, though we did get some nice shots of the view over Rome:
…as well as evidence of the torrential downpour we had survived the day before:
But by the time we got through the park, we were thoroughly done, so we found the metro and went back to the hotel to collect our bags and catch our train to Naples. Here is the last photo that I took in Rome:
It’s from Piazzale Flaminio, looking at the gate to the city. I kept trying to get one with no buses, but, in the end, I love this photo
because of the buses. Roma lives.
We got on a train to Naples. We tried to sneak onto the fast train, but we were shut down, first by two different Trenitalia guys who were busy smoking and talking to their friends and kept pointing us toward other guys in jackets when we tried to ask them questions, and then by a very nonplussed Trenitalia lady. We didn’t have the right ticket. So, we were on the slow train. The most frustrating part is when you think you’re there, and then it takes another half hour to actually get there (the train station in Naples stretches out for miles, and the train just crawls into the station. Linda almost lost her mind at that point, I think.) But, when we finally got there, we were greeted by Carmen’s smiling face, and the smiling face of her cousin Stefania, both of whom insisted on carrying our bags to the car. We were so happy to be in someone’s car going to someone’s house and not on a train going to a hostel.
When she’s not living in Manosque with us, Carmen lives with her parents and brother in Castellemare di Stabia, about 30 minutes south of Naples, also known as right next to Mount Vesuvius. Here, I’ll show you:
And here is a statue commemorating the Castellemarean’s flight from the volcano.
Our first night in Castellemare Carmen said we were going to have dinner with a bunch of her friends. We were both expecting to go to a restaurant or someone’s house, but it ended up being, delightfully, at Carmen’s church (with nuns and everything!) Everybody was so nice, and they had planned ahead and cooked gluten-free pasta for me, and there was local fizzy red wine with no labels, and I was so happy. Also, after Carmen left to drive some people home (and after the nuns had gone to bed) all of her friends decided that Linda and I needed to learn all the worst Italian swears. I shant repeat them on the blog, but I will tell you that it was very funny when they were trying to translate one and they kept saying things like “It means…um…the thing that belongs to your sister” and then laughing like they were completely scandalized. We figured it out eventually, and I’m sure you can too. It’s not a nice thing to say about someone’s sister.
The second day we wandered Castellemare a bit, and then went to Sorrento, where we saw views like this:
and also like this:
It rained a lot on our trip. The second night was Carmen’s mother’s birthday, so we had a lovely birthday dinner with her family (where I was forced to do this little impressions of American accents schtick that Carmen loves. I don’t think it’s quite as funny when you don’t speak the language, but my Italian-American, Theresa, had them rolling in the aisles.)
The third day Carmen and her friend Giovanna took us to Napoli. Giovanna said at one point (as we were mentally preparing to cross a street, I’m sure) that Napolitans leave the house in morning and just pray that they’ll come home alive. I said that I now understand why Italians are all Catholic. I’m talking about the cars, in case that’s not clear, and the way that they try to kill you everywhere you go. Also the scooters.
Here are a few photos of Napoli:
I loved the Piazza Plebiscito, where they have (to me, for reasons I can’t explain, hilarious) statues of all of the kings of Napoli. Giovanna said the story is that someone asks “Who peed?” and they all say “Not me!” until the last one goes “Twas I!”
On some of the lamp posts near the water there are tons and tons of locks with little messages on them. Carmen and Giovanna explained that there was an Italian movie a couple of years ago where the lovers put a lock on a post and then tossed the key into the water, and it became a huge trend with Italian teenagers. They said in some cities, kids had put so many locks on the posts that they had fallen over. That’s amore.
That night we went out to a bar. We did this every night. Here’s how it works: you decide to go out by spending the whole day on your cell phone deciding to go out. Some people come over to your house around 10:30. At 10:45, you leave (if you are the American or German visitor, you think that you are going to the bar now. You are wrong.) You drive to some street corner where you meet up with a bunch of other people who have driven to the same street corner, and you stand around in the street for a while kissing everybody hello and looking good and kind of, but not really, talking about where you’re going to go. You might be waiting for someone else to show up…or maybe not. If you are the American or German visitor, it’s not really clear. At some point, everybody decides to get into their cars and leave, but it takes a while to decide who’s going in which car (and you usually don’t go in the same car that you came in). Okay, you drive to the bar. But, maybe because there are, like, 16 of you, or maybe because it’s just the way it is, you have to wait for a while. Maybe half an hour. You wait. No one is impatient, no one is tired of waiting. You could wait forever. Sometimes you wait outside the bar just because not everyone is there yet, ‘cause maybe somebody forgot the way or turned down the wrong street or something. But you wait, because it seems to be very important that everyone goes in together. So now it’s been, like, 2 hours since you left the house, and, if you are the American or German visitor, you are thirsty. If you are the American, you are thinking that you are too old to be beginning your evening at 12:45 at night. But you go in, and things are looking good. It takes a while to figure out where everyone is going to sit (there’s some complex social math involved) but, finally, everyone sits. But this is not a good table, so then you have to move to a different one. More social math. Okay, you’re at a good table. Now it’s time to order, but you’ve got to wait for the server. You wait for a long time. No one is impatient. You could wait forever. Once you order, happily, things show up quickly, but never all at once, and, if you’re the American or German guest, you’re not sure if you’re supposed to start eating, but your food has been sitting in front of you for 10 minutes, and the person next to you doesn’t have theirs yet, so you drink, and wait. In the end you eat, you drink, and everyone is happy and funny and kind and it’s all delicious and magical and great. Nobody drinks too much because the server never comes back to take a second order. In the end you say ciao and spill out onto the freshly rained-on street, and it’s three o’clock in morning and quiet for your first time in Napoli. You all walk back to the car singing. Dolce vita.
One night we went out a bar, and Linda and I decamped to a little table for a bit to watch drunk Italians commandeer the piano man’s microphone. So we’re sitting there drinking wine, and these two men, one old, one young, come up to us and say something in Italian that we don’t understand. Oh, you don’t speak Italian! They switch to English. The younger one explains, with much gesturing, that it’s good that we are drinking wine. We look nice with our wine. He likes the way we hold our glasses. We have excellent bearing. You understand? You have good bearing! It’s good when woman drinks wine. It’s not good when woman drinks beer. You have good bearing! You understand? Okay, good. Ciao! And they walk off. I have concluded that Italian men love it when women do things that they (the men) consider womanly. They love it so much that they have to come over and tell you. But really, if the most important qualifications for being a good woman are eating well (as Fabrizio told us in Rome) and drinking wine, then I’m covered. That’s a load off my mind.
We went to Pompei (well, Scavi, which is the name for the archeological site that we think of as Pompei). Pompei is huge. Everybody says you could spend three days there and not see everything. We spent an hour and a half. But it was a really incredible hour and a half.
Afterwards, Carmen picked us up and drove us to her cousin’s restaurant, President, which is the most famous and schmaltzy restaurant in Pompei. There we were treated to an extraordinarily classy lunch, with courses that just kept coming and prosecco that never stopped flowing.
Still, we were outdone by the two guys at the table next to us, who went through no less than 8 courses of food and 4 bottles of wine in the time that we were there (and were still going when we finally left). There was also a group of men in suits in the corner who were engaged in very serious conversation over bottle after bottle of wine and course after course of pasta. We thought that they hadn’t really noticed us, engrossed as they were in their food and negotiations, but when we got up to leave, one of them called out “Bon soir!” and when I turned, he gave me a wink and a little coquettish finger wave, which is just odd behavior for a man in an Armani suit.
On our last day in Italy (you never thought we would get here, did you?) we took a bus to Positano. We were supposed to go to Amalfi, but we decided it was too far, and also I saw a postcard of Positano once, like, 8 years ago that has staying in my head ever since, and I wanted to see if the reality would confirm my vision. It did. The sun finally came out, and it was warm and stunningly beautiful and just everything you want your last day in Italy to be. We sat in a café right on the beach and ate for a couple of hours, and, in the end, the waiter gifted us with ice cream bars, which we sat in the sun and ate with bliss. It’s good to be a girl in Italy sometimes.
Then we climbed 500 steps to our bus stop, realized that the bus we needed didn’t run on Sundays, got totally stressed out trying to call Carmen from a non-working payphone, were given bad directions by an old man, and generally just completely harshed our mellow.
This is us after the 500 step climb.
However, when we finally made it back to Carmen’s house, we were greeted by her completely adorable grandmother, and all was well.
I feel so grateful to Carmen and her family for their incredible warmth and hospitality (and for working so hard to communicate with us. We hope it was as fun for you as it was for us.) Oh! I have completely forgotten to mention that, upon arrival in Napoli, I was handed an enormous plastic grocery bag chock full of awesome Italian gluten free stuff, including the hands-down best gluten-pasta I have ever tried, and many delicious things dipped in chocolate. For this, and countless other graces, I want to say thank you to Carmen and the Iovinos, Carmen’s cousins at President, Fabrizio and Marius and Philipo in Rome, the guy who helped us get onto the train in Ventimiglia, the grocery guy in Florence, the Cube artists, Giovanna, Stephania, Helena, Marco, Atilio, Valeria, and all of the other friends of Carmen, and every single other nice person who we met along the way. I would like to say no thank you to the sniffing and snorting guy who sat next to me on the night train from Napoli who wouldn’t move his legs to let me by with my bags. You are the only Italian I didn’t like. To the rest of you, molto piacere, grazie mille, e (con fortuna) a presto!
