Day 6

Italy 2011

Day 6

We need to catch you up on the food.  First of all, dinner service starts at 7:30, kind of late by our standards.  You can see by the following we are of the Early Bird generation.

Supposedly, Tuscan food is not the best in Italy; in fact it’s not in the top 10. But according to Mark Bittman of the NY Times, Lucca is the exception, and we’ve been reminded of that our last couple of meals.  As last night’s dinner shows below, we ordered one thing from several courses to make sure we sampled and enjoyed the wide variety of foods while preventing stomach overload. In honor of our usual traveling companions (Jan and Dan Studer) we ordered Melone and Prosciuto, cantelope and Italian ham.  Underneath the cloak of ham is the melon, and you eat them in combination.  It’s a lovely combination.

Our next course was one of the things we’d like to make at home, Tortelli Lucchese, a specialty of Lucca.  The tortelli is filled with meat and covered with a hearty meat sauce.

Our main course was wild boar stew with polenta (ignore the insalata on the right).  The polenta reminded us of what we had years ago.  The stew didn’t have any of the usual vegetables but did contain olives.  For those wondering, the plates were split so the total service was twice what the picture is showing.

The excellent food got us in the mood for more great food, so we decided to try what Frommer’s said is the BEST place to eat in Lucca, Buca di Santa Anta Antonio.  This is one place where you eat indoors (we prefer outdoors) and the waiters wear tuxedos, even though we were there only for lunch. We made it our main meal.

What was remarkable here was the ravioli with fresh ricotta and pulverized zucchini . . .

and the baby goat with roasted potatoes and green bean pudding.  That’s right, pudding!  That’s now another dish we would like to recreate.  It wasn’t easy, but we got over the baby goat issue pretty quickly.

We finished the day with music from the ages.  We think we have identified Lucca as the home of the composer Puccini.  Every evening of the year there is a one-hour performance in a dedicated cathedral of Lucca.  Tonight’s show was a sampler of Puccini and Mozart, mostly operetic works sung by two women with great voices.  Even though we haven’t made opera part of our listening music, it was great, and we would highly recommend it.

By the way, even though Lucca is a small town, it’s a music capital. We noticed that in July there are many outdoor concerts, held in a large piazza, by such performers as James Blunt, Elton John, B.B. King, etc. There are many classical concerts, too.

Our endless days of sun may be coming to an end.  We walked home tonight from across town hand-in-hand through a light rain.

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Day 5

Italy 2011

Day 5

After eating breakfast in our apartment, we went out for cappuccini and pastry. Then we were off food shopping.  First, we found the local bread shop where only Italian is spoken and the bread is baked early every morning. The next stop was the frutta e’ verdura shop to buy very fresh fruit and vegetables. We bought rucola (arugola), tomatoes, fresh eggs, and very large ripe figs. With the meat and cheese we bought yesterday at the meat and cheese shop (which we knew wouldn’t be open today), we were all set to make our sandwiches for lunch. But first we went to the internet café to send out our blog. This is the only place at which we are staying that doesn’t have internet connection, but we can at least compose our messages in our apartment.  The cost for this wonderful apartment is only 500 euro ($650) for the week, so we can live with this inconvenience.

While Bob was at the internet café, I was at the bank where I met in interesting man. He said he is from La Jolla, CA, but has lived in Lucca for 20 years. He says there is no other place he would rather be. He said Italy is ranked #2 for health services while the U.S. is ranked #39. He gets his prescriptions for free as well as many other services. He actually lives in the country outside Lucca and rents country villas. 

After lunch and a restful break inside our apartment, we rented bikes and “rode the wall”.

It’s very strange that we have not seen one adult wearing a helmet, whether a local or tourist. The only helmets we’ve seen have been worn by local children. In this photo you can see a child wearing a helmet as well as a tratoria (place to eat) set up in the street! 

All of the bikes are one speed because the town is perfectly level. The only “hills” are the paths that lead to the top of the wall. The following is a photo of the top-of-the-wall path and a scene of what we might see looking towards the old town of Lucca.

In all of Italy, the locals leave work and eat a big lunch with their friends, even including wine, and then take a riposo (rest) for three or four hours. This means shops and even restaurants close and don’t reopen until late afternoon (shops) and early evening (restaurants).  You wouldn’t eat dinner until after 7:00 or 7:15. The towns and cities become very “alive” after this time. On the way to Italy, we learned that people in Italy work many less hours than Americans each week. Italians are happy making just enough money to live on. Their focus is on family and the enjoyment of food, wine, and life.  While we were riding our bikes around the wall this afternoon, we observed some locals taking their riposo.

Some of you have asked what kind of weather we’ve had. It’s been perfect, as far as we’re concerned.  It’s been warm and sunny and a little humid every day. If you see me in long sleeves, it’s only because of the sun. I could easily be wearing sleeveless tops every day and evening.

         

Days 3 and 4

Italy 2011

Days 3 and 4

In places with major historic features, guides with groups are a common sight.  On all our other trips to Italy, Jan Studer has been our special personal guide.  Due to her absence on this trip, we hired Maximilianao (or Max) for a tour of the ancient ruins of Rome. It started badly with Max.  Our written instructions were to meet him at the McDonalds (it’s very hard to even use this word while in Italy) in a piazza.  A piazza is what we would call a plaza or town square, not the thing you eat!   The company that set up the tour neglected to inform us that the McDonalds had closed for three months and had removed the sign on their building.  We were searching for a no-longer-existant McDonalds, and our guide who didn’t know us was trying to pick us out of about 2000 people who were milling around the Pantheon and surrounding restaurants and shops.  By divine intervention, Max found Shari about the time Robert found out that McDonalds had moved out of the immediate neighborhood.  Also, the other couple scheduled for the tour didn’t make it, so we had our own personal tour guide. 

Max turned out to be a moonlighting archaeologist and possessed a wealth of information and knowledge regarding the ancient Romans.  One of the first sites he took us to was the murder scene of Julius Caesar, and he provided an interesting history of why he was murdered.  The Italians have excavated the temple site shown here.

Back in Caesar’s time, the government was run for the people (much more for the men than the women).  The government back then was run a lot like it is in the U.S.A., and Julius wanted to change things and become emperor.  In any event, the government worried about popularity (kind of like now) and so they mark many of the parts of the public buildings with SPQR, perhaps the first government acronym, and it stands for Senate, People, and Rome (Senatus Populusque Romanus).  In Latin, the Q works.  It was a small thing to notice, but suddenly it was everywhere chiseled into marble.  I guess it was the precursor to our E Pluribus Unum.

Then in succession he showed and told us the origin of the Forums, several Arches to Triumphs including the one to Constantine, the first Christian Emperor, and the Coliseum.  There is more than one forum and the word means marketplace, which we hadn’t known.

The finale of the tour was the Coliseum, and it’s almost unbelievable what the Romans built.  The engineers who designed it definitely earned their sheckles. 

Some final pieces of information we gleaned from our personal archaeologist were

• The Romans were small in stature, somewhere between 4½ to 5 feet tall. Max explained they ate little protein, as it wasn’t readily available. Yet they conquered and ruled lots of people, including larger meat eating peoples.  Tough little roosters were the Romans.

 

• Eating was one of their passions.  They occasionally had 45-course meals.  How would you like to be the chef for such a dinner feast?  They were also the first bolemics, but only in order to stuff more food in.
• The word “arena” means sand, and that is what they put on the floor of the coliseum where the gladiators and wild beasts fought. Sand provided traction and absorbed the blood (another piece of engineering).  In the movies, the gladiators seem to fight lions, but they were only part of the animal kingdom that was part of the show.  Several types of exotic large animals were used to please the audiences, including giraffes, bears, etc..  The shows were to win the support of the public.

We concluded our day with a meal at the Hostaria Romana, our new best restaurant in Rome.  Sorry, no pictures, but all the courses (just 4), were excellent, and our waiter made everyone laugh. After another day of walking many of the streets of Rome, we headed back to our excellent hotel, Hotel Oceania. It has the best staff in our travel history. After climbing the 114 steps several time each day to this hotel, coupled with the miles and miles we walk every day, Shari is realizing she is getting sufficient training for the Grand Canyon.

Day 4

After a sad good-bye to the friendly staff at Hotel Oceania, we walked our suitcases to the huge Rome train station, where Bob has gotten quite good at avoiding the long lines of foreigners seeking to buy their tickets from a live person. Instead, he buys them from one of the machines, which makes the task a quick five-minute process. He has also learned to read the boards to find the correct track. It was a quick non-stop trip in a first-class car on the fast Eurostar. We then had to change to a slow train for the rest of the trip to Lucca. It’s slow because it stops at every little train station along the way. It took a total of three hours to get to Lucca.

We walked our suitcases into the old town, which is surrounded by a 60-foot thick wall that is about three miles around. The top of the wall is a park-like place with trees and a path/road where people walk and ride bikes. Cars are not allowed on the wall. And even down below in the town, cars are allowed by permit only. Therefore, it seems that every local, young and old, owns a bike. Even dogs ride bikes.

Bikers and pedestrians rule the narrow streets, but unfortunately there is no organized direction of riding. Throw in a few cars and a few large tour groups and you might have what you’d call chaos. Fortunately we arrived on Sunday, and things were quiet. The tour groups come from the cruise ships only on certain week-days and for only a few hours.

We found our apartment from memory. There was no check-in. All we had were the keys that had been mailed to us months ago from the owner in Massachusetts. We were so excited to be back in Lucca and “our” apartment that we dropped off our suitcases and were out the door within minutes. We had a late lunch at our favorite ristorante called Da Francesco. We shopped at our favorite shops for meat, cheese, wine, eggs, etc. and walked around the town. We paused to watch an Italian rock concert held outside in a large piazza. We then had dinner at our favorite pizzeria called Mara Meo.     

Day 2

Italy 2011

Day 2

It would seem there are several meanings of the old saying ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, meaning there are many things to see in Rome.  We choose a route that cut through the center of Rome that we got from a Rick Steves travel book.

We started from our hotel that is fairly non-descript from the street.  When we tried to find it, we had to ask for directions when we were less than a block away.  The street numbers are chaotic and there is little signage.  We are sure glad we don’t have to a car to either drive or park, as this is the scene in front of our hotel.

When on your own, map reading is very important.  Street names change, sometimes more than once or twice.  The names, at times, seem very strange.  We doubt that Via Propaganda will be used as a street name in St. George, or Utah, for that matter.  You'll notice the street signs are marble and made part of the buildings.

This street is not far from the Trevi Fountain.  Moving water into the City was a trademark of the Romans a couple thousand years ago and thus the great numbers of fountains.  The sculpture is even more impressive than the size.

They say if you throw a coin over your shoulder into the fountain, you will return to Rome.  The guy next to Shari looks like he might have been hit by a stray coin and would vote for forward throwing.

We continued walking to several more ancient monuments including the Spanish Steps and the Pantheon.  Rome has the Pantheon, while Athens has the Parthenon.  For being over 2000 years old, the Pantheon looks pretty good.

We walked miles and miles, so we stopped from time to time at lively outdoor bars to have a drink and hors doeuvres while watching street performers and all the action around us.

We ended our tour by walking to a section of Rome called Trastevere that is located across the Tiber River.  It is very colorful, sort of the Grenwich Village of Rome.  We ate at a restaurant called Da Lucia, where we ate in 2004, and met some very interesting Americans.  

Day 1, May 26, 2011

Italy 2011

Day 1

We had high hopes that what would prove to be our quickest trip to Europe would prove to be our easiest.  Sadly, we left our luck in Las Vegas and the plane trip was wearing.  We had two flights to arrive in Rome, one from Las Vegas to Philadelphia, and the second from Philly to Rome.  The seats in both US Airways planes were so tightly spaced they are best suited for gymnasts, ballerinas, and yogis.  When you are confined to a plane for eight hours, comfort is a consideration.  We also had such a non-existent layover in Philadelphia that we had to ‘run’ from one concourse to another in 20 minutes.  I kept thinking about O.J. and the Hertz commercials.  No one seemed to be filming us . . . nor were there any hurdling moves.

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None-the-less, we arrived this morning and are already melding into Rome.  We like the adventure that comes with a ‘foreign’ land and language.  La vita è bella in Italia!  Life is good in Italy . . . much like what we remembered it and why we returned.  We had a great lunch at a place we ate at once last year, and the staff actually remembered us. We checked into a hotel where we stayed on our first trip in 2004. It is located on the fourth floor of an ancient building. They remembered us here, too, and we remembered them.  We are writing the blog as we are sitting in an open courtyard sipping wine and discussing multiple dinner options while a pianist is accompanying a student singer at the music school two floors below.

We are here, we’re safe, and we’re sleepy.