Signs

One thing I love about traveling is that you never know when you are going to see something interesting. Below is a collection of some of the interesting signs we saw on our journey through Italy.

Run or die!


Good versus Evil!

Where are you from? The town where lardo lives!!!

I just loved this sign because it listed all of the typical things you could get in just about every little market store.



Need I say anything?



We were bummed we would not be allowed to do naked laundry in Bologna.

Ravenna is known for its amazing byzantine mosaics. I loved the fact that most of the street signs carried on that tradition.

This sign was in typical neopolitan. Our guide told us that it was celebrating the life of a gentleman referred to the chicken man.

All hail the mighty Baba o Rhum. I loved that this guy looks like he is giving you the rock on sign.

This sign was the post marker for the Agriturismo we had dinner at. For those not familiar with his term it combines agriculture with tourism. In Italy several small family owned farmhouses have opened up their homes to allow tourist to came stay and dine with them. In some cases you can actually help collect and prepare the food. The meal that we had here was perhaps one of the best we had in all of Italy and incredibly affordable for the shear amount of food we enjoyed.



When did trash become ecological?

Ciao, Italia!

We leave Italy today. I've been downright terrible about keeping up with this blog, though I hope to fill in the gaps when we get home. (I already have about 4 pages about food written, waiting for editing and photos).

The lack of diligence is partly due to spotty internet access, partly down to easy access to Prosecco, and partly because we've been so constantly on the move. For such a small country, Italy is huge. It has only been a country for 150 years (they just celebrated their sesquicentenial this year). Each region has retained ferocious cultural autonomy and identity. Referring to "Italian food" is almost as absurd as talking about "Chinese food" as if it were a singular thing. In five weeks, we only barely scraped the surface.

There has always been a distinct north/south divide that equates roughly to rich/poor, butter/olive oil, fresh pasta/dried pasta, cream sauce/tomato sauce. For me, the north/south distinction was most evident in terms of touristiness. Pretty much all of the northern places we visited--Florence, hill towns in Tuscany, Cinque Terre, Venice (especially Venice), Ravenna--felt like Disneyland. Everything was just as you would expect it to be. Everyone we met, even in the tiniest towns, spoke English. Nothing unexpected happened and we felt pretty secure that nothing would.

Don't get me wrong. Those places were beautiful and full of so much history and amazing art and architecture. I am incredibly glad we saw them. But, though we really only touched the surface of, say, Florence, I don't feel much compelled to return.

Then there was Naples.



Suddenly, we started meeting people who spoke little or no English. Flailing though it was, I was forced to speak Italian. And surprising things happened. Even the crazy 3 km, 20 euro gypsy cab ride from the train station, which left us stranded nowhere near our hotel, was welcome after the sedate experience of the north.

We were warned by everyone that Naples is dangerous and I don't doubt that street crime is a real problem. But when we were standing in a warren of narrow, dark, tiny streets amidst an impossible jumble of people and shops, trying to figure out where our rooms were, a young girl, maybe 15, stopped and asked us (in Italian, or maybe Neopolitan) where we were trying to go. When we told her the name of the street she and another man pointed us there.

Here is Theresa standing at the alley entrance to our inn. Seriously, there's not even a sign, and the stairway up is dimly lit, steep, and bare concrete. But the room was truly lovely once you got there.




Although people were helpful when asked in the north, no one ever volunteered help when we were clearly lost. Naples had that familiar sense of urban chaos: there are dangers and at the same time people will go surprisingly out of their way to help you. The people we met--our innkeeper, our pizza-making tour guide and her boyfriend, the crazy custodian in Pompeii (more details to come, I promise) were warm and genuinely excited to talk to us and share their city.





If (when) we return to Italy, we will start in Naples and head south.

We will also certainly return to Sardinia, where we've spent the past 7 days. For all of Naples crazed urbanity, Sadinia embodies wildness in the opposite way. So much of it is remote and its wildness untamed because the landscape is forbiddingly rugged.



It is covered in weird, prehistoric ruins called nuraghe that they know precious little about.



We got lost here, too, and loved every minute of the dramatic changes in vista around every turn as we tried to find our way back to our placid, friendly beachside hotel.



When our rental car died Eurocar towed it away without sending a replacement, informing us blithely on the phone that they had reserved a car for us in Orosei, 25 km away. When I asked how we were supposed to get there, without a car the customer "service" person told me that they would reimburse us up to 30 euro for a cab, but that we'd have to cover the difference. But, I told him, there ARE NO cabs in Cala Gonone, a tiny coastal town. The receptionist at our hotel, who had been doing battle on our behalf with Eurocar for an hour, offered us George, who does odd jobs for the hotel. He spoke not one word of English, but drove us to Orosei in Pandino, his 1998 Panda (I asked. He looked at the registration to be sure).
No mention of compensation was ever made (though we made sure to get him enough to at least cover his gas).



So, for now, farewell Italy. I hope someday I can return and see, eat and drink much, much more.

Napoli, Part I

So we get to Naples yesterday and it goes something like this:

We’ve been warned not to take gypsy cabs, but somehow we manage to get in one anyway, despite our best intentions at the train station. After a 10-minute ride with no meter running, our driver hits a button and the number 20.50 appears on a screen. He demands 20 euro and tells us that we have to walk a block to get to our hotel because the street is too narrow. We meekly pay him and start walking, only to discover that we are at least 4 blocks from our hotel and on the wrong street.

We call our hotel keeper who comes and finds us in the narrow unmarked streets, then asks (in his outrageous Italian accent but excellent English) why we didn’t call a cab using the number he gave us. We have to confess that we are just plain lame. He is sweet and voluble and named Rafael Festa (“my last name means party” he tells us, laughing) and completely ambiguous. He touches me too much and comments on my tattoo. “Mi Corazon,” he reads, and I point at Theresa and say, “Le e mi Corazon.” She is my heart. Just to be clear. He continues to touch me too much and we start to climb the many, many very steep, worn stairs to our room. He tells us, “After this you will have a beautiful Brazilian butt!” We have to stop because we are laughing too hard to climb the stairs.

We get to the room, which is one of four--a small apartment, really--and is decorated perfectly. You know, wink wink, nudge nudge, that kind of perfectly. And Rafael gestures wildly and wears a scarf. But he continues to touch me every time he talks. He tells me he will show me where we can leave our luggage during the day on Thursday after we’ve checked out but before we leave. Theresa stays in the apartment and Rafael leads me up more stairs. He shows me a nook on the next floor where we are to leave the bags. Then we climb some more. “Come, I will show you something,” he says and leads me to a rooftop terrace. I’m certain a) that Theresa is wondering where we are and b) that he is going to try and kiss me. He shows me the view and I admire it. He tells me that Italian food is good and I tell him I know, that my jeans are too tight after 3 weeks in Italy. He says climbing the stairs here will fix that. I tell him we were in Cinque Terre a few days ago and that there were many, many stairs. “Let me see,” he says, and peers around me, pats my ass and says, “Nice Brazilian butt.”

We go back downstairs where he shows us our room. It is beautifully decorated, including a large bamboo pole on iron brackets over the bed with a tapestry hanging from it. As he is telling us about the room he stops and looks at the pole. He goes over and begins to straighten one of the brackets, which is bent. “Someone had wild love here last night!” he says and laughs. Then he looks at us and adds, “You don’t use, what do you call them?” and gestures. “Handcuffs?” I guess. “Ah!” he says, and leaves the room, muttering, “must write that down. Handcuffs.”

Then he tells us about a nearby café, “where people like us go,” he adds and I am back to thinking that between the meticulous decoration, his slightly swishy manner and the “like us” that he is part of the family.

Who knows? We went to the café and he was there but besides smiling and saying hello, he completely ignored us in favor of a bevy of cute and likewise ambiguous young women. All I know is that I am madly in crush with Naples and its loud, passionate, slightly crazed inhabitants.

Venice

I don't have a lot to say about Venice. It is completely car-free, breathtakingly beautiful, crushingly expensive, and would have no reason to exist anymore but for the tourists near as I can tell. So, enjoy some pretty pictures.








That green shutter is our room. Which was so slanted it was hard to stay in bed. Yup, Venice she is sinking.



Further proof:



More random, pretty pictures











A boat selling vegetables



Artichoke hearts



Here we are on the lovely Piazza San Marco:






Here is Ardbeg posing on a door knob on the Basilica San Marco.





The awesome thing about this is that after T took her photo but before I could retrieve Ardbeg, one of the bajillion other tourists took the same photo, with Ardbeg. Won't she be surprised when she gets home and looks at her photos!

Murano




Glass art shoes




We took a little walk through the ghetto. All of Venice's Jews were deported during the war. There are something like 27 Jews living there now.




There were some very powerful monuments.







There were several Jewish bakeries. This one had handmade matzo.






This stuffed licorice is apparently a Venice specialty.



And, in the wtf file: