Nancy, Author at Itch.world

Nancy, Author at Itch.world - Page 2 of 20

A three-minute escape to Italy.

Tuscany, travel, medieval village, Italy, festivals, celebrations, customs, cooking, recipes, living in Italy, moving to Italy, visiting, visit, restaurants, language

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September 22, 2024 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The Joys of Autumn

One day, everything is different. Growing up in Florida, then living most of my adult life in California, I’m used to a more gradual shift into Fall, but here in Tuscany it’s a precipice, like stepping from one room into another. During the first week of September the scorching, take-no-prisoners heat of summer abruptly changes. So does nearly everything else. Here’s what I notice, and love, about Fall.

The hunt

I woke up on September 1st at 7:00 am sharp. Not because I had transitioned from sleep in a gentle hug from the conscious world kind of way, but was jolted awake by the sounds of gunshots. Hunting season had started. Officially, the guns can be shot at 7 am and clearly there was not a moment to waste. These guys (I think exclusively) were shooting in the valley we overlook and the sound ricochets. As the shots came from that direction it must be birds they are after—pheasants, partridges, and the occasional hare. The cinghiale, or wild boar, hunters are usually in the woods, only affecting my walks—and the boar. There’s nothing like a group of armed men dressed in orange shooting their guns, with packs of barking hunting dogs, and danger signs on the trail, to interrupt a “forest bathing” mood.

I have yet to infiltrate the close knit group of hunters, although I once tried. They meet at a bar very early in the morning to fortify themselves with caffè corretto, or corrected coffee. “Corrected with what?” you might ask. Take your pick of grappa, sambuca, brandy, or whiskey. They have a couple of these and then go out and stand in a big circle shooting at the boars in the center. Nothing to be alarmed about. This could be the reason they don’t want me along.

Cinghiale

The wild boar, or cinghiale, come in close to the village for safety, trying to avoid the hunters. As our land hugs the village’s defensive walls, this often means they are living in, or passing through, our yard, which is 10 acres. They have a lot of babies, so we often look out our windows to see a family of eight to ten, sometimes mere yards from our house. It turns out that they have a passion for the lemongrass I’ve planted, as I can’t buy it locally. (Pork with lemongrass. Yum.) They are cute in the abstract, or further away from the house, but dangerous and destructive in the garden. One evening, John and I returned in our car after dark, parking at the back of the house. We got out of our car and heard at least two boar, on opposite sides of the house, and there was no way to get to the front door without chasing them away. Not for the faint of heart.

John’s idea was to get firecrackers and throw them out the window when he hears them, to discourage getting too comfy in our foliage. We were recently buying some pretty big fireworks to set off for a friend’s wedding, and John asked the owner for the most powerful firecrackers he had. The bright yellow “Titan” firecrackers were produced from the vault. The label warns that these are “not to be used for fun”. An acceptable use, according to the label, is to “frighten wild animals”. Last night John threw some in the direction of a happy family of boar in the field and said that he could feel the recoil. Amazingly, this plan seems to be working as there are fewer boar in our yard.

Firecrackers are often set off by pre-teen boys under the walls of town, seemingly an unending source of fun for them, and terror for our dog, Lola. She particularly hates it when John hurls firecrackers from our windows. This is not the way a senior member of the pack is supposed to behave and it upsets her to an alarming degree. She leaps into my arms in bed with her heart pounding. We hope that the local boys can’t get their hands on Titans, as we will never sleep again. Usually the places where one buys these things are pretty careful not to sell anything to powerful to kids, but eight-year-old Sebastian was able to purchase, without our knowledge, some firecrackers from “under the counter” at one of the local tobacco shops. These were all shot off within minutes.

Tobacco

Along with the sound of gunfire, the most common thing I wake up to in the Fall is the smell of the smoke from the fires used to dry tobacco. This area grows a lot of tobacco. Some native friends swear that it is some of the finest tobacco in the world. The rest say it is garbage. Not knowing my tobacco I cannot weigh in. All I know is that whenever there’s a movement to limit growing it in any way it is defeated in the local elections. Tobacco is big money, partially subsidized by the government and the E.U. for reasons driven more by votes than public health.

The tiny plants go in at the height of summer, after the cover crops are plowed under, usually fava beans. The tobacco plants grow quickly, aided by copious amounts of irrigated water and tanks full of toxic sprays. At this time of year, pickers are out harvesting individual leaves and hanging them upside down on frames pulled by tractors. These frames are then placed in barns around a fire where they are dried until golden brown—a smell that wafts across the valley. As our house is within sight of two of these drying barns, we get exposed to quite a bit of the smell when the wind blows in a certain direction. Sometimes I kind of like it. Our kids have said that this smell represents Fall for them. But it has started to get to me more and occasionally is quite irritating—on the days when the smell is strong I often wake up congested and with eyes burning. A village friend with lung damage from the mold in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina has a great deal of difficulty breathing during this season. Nothing to be done about this except for an air filter, which we just fetched from our attic storage.

As the tobacco moves from the fields to the drying barns there’s usually a road involved. Which means that most times I’m driving anywhere—on narrow country roads—there’s a loaded tractor to pass. They are very slow, as one might expect, so this is less of a problem than other forms of passing.

Sunflowers

When I say “sunflower” and ask you to picture something in your mind, those gorgeous yellow flowers that might pop up first are only a short part of the flower’s life cycle. Before they are ready to harvest, with a fascinating machine that cuts them off at about three feet high and digests the seeds, spitting out the rest of the flower and stem onto the ground, they need to get totally and completely dry. Meaning totally black and dead. I actually think they are quite beautiful in this state, in a Morticia Addams kind of way. Everywhere I go fields are being completely transformed from summer to winter, sometimes in just a day.

Swimming

Last time I wrote about how the pool saves my life during the hot weather. When it was still scorching at the end of August I asked the owner how much longer the pool would stay open. He looked at me like I was crazy and said “Until the 1st, of course.” After that milestone things cool down and school starts. Absolutely no need for a pool. The precipice of Fall.

The views

The air is crystal clear, despite the tobacco drying, and you can see for miles, finally breaking the haze of the summer high pressure zones. The angle of the sun makes all the colors pop in an extraordinary way. And the clouds are just as beautiful as the mountains and fields. Global warming is making the clouds more spectacular, a small silver lining.

Sagre

Fall is the season for harvest festivals, called sagre. Each village, and sometimes even a tinier hamlet, has their own festival. Last night, we went to a nearby local village for a celebration of polenta. Yes, that’s correct, polenta. Polenta is cooked in huge vats, stirred by volunteers with big wooden paddles. It’s served with either a mushroom topping, or meat ragu, in plastic bowls to thousands of people seated at long tables in tents. These festivals are one of my favorite things about the season. I will write more after I go to the ciaccia fritta festival in a tiny hamlet in the suburbs of our small village. Ciaccia fritta is a Tuscan delicacy—fried dough—every bit as delicious, and heavy, as one would expect.

Thanks, once again, for reading and to my new subscribers—some even paid—much to my amazement. It’s an honor to have your time and support. Ci vediamo presto—we’ll see each other soon.

September 8, 2024 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Procida

I’ve been on a mission to find the perfect fishing village for years. I have this idea in my head—Local Hero in a warmer climate, for those of you who know and love this movie as much as I do. Actual boats, and fishermen, who fish, small village, no hulking 1960s or 70s ugly beach resorts. Interesting landscapes. Delicious food, bonus for freshly caught. I finally found it, right off the coast of Naples—Procida—where we headed after our trip to Ravello and Materea, at the Hotel Santavenere.

Procida is one of the islands off the coast of Naples, along with its better known sisters, Capri and Ischia. At the ferry dock there were hundreds of people in line for the ferry to Capri and Sorrento, but only about ten of us waiting for Procida. We’d mentioned our next destination that morning to the owner of the hotel we were staying at in Naples, the mid-twenties heir of a wealthy, landed family of hoteliers, dressed in an immaculate suit, who was greeting guests eating breakfast on the roof terrace. When he heard Procida his eyes lit up. “It’s like going way back in time, totally different to today,” he said with his eyes looking to the horizon as he thought of a time period adequately remote to make his point. “It’s like going all the way back to the… 1980s.” Gulp. This appreciation for the island was not limited to him. When we told Italians that we were headed there the usual response was “Brava! Not many people know about it and it’s wonderful.” (Our overnight in Naples, and the hotel, warrant their own story, coming soon.)

We learned about Procida from Sebastian, who had explored it when sailing for a week on a friend’s boat. They moored and had lunch on the island and he was enchanted. He was insistent that we go to experience it. He was imagining us renting a little room on a cliff for a month and doing nothing but staring out the window and writing. After seeing it I can imagine this as well.

We landed at the port after a half-hour ferry ride from Naples. The port has a small harbor, ringed by buildings of pastel colors and restaurants along the quai. We weren’t quite sure enough of the busses yet to know we could get where we needed to go—radically underestimating the island’s simple layout—so we got a taxi. We proceeded along the one main road that follows the length of the spine of the tiny island (it’s less than 1.6 square miles), lined by stone buildings that come right up to the street. These roads are impressively narrow, and I live in an Italian village where I frequently have to pull in my side mirrors to fit between two stone walls. I thought I was unflappable. One of Sebastian’s most distinct memories of the island was seeing how scraped up and dented every car on the island was.

Our taxi sped down the one main road, barely one lane in width, and avoided pedestrians, small delivery trucks laden with goods off the ferry, and many electric bicycles with super fat tires, which seems to be the preferred means of transportation over the hills and rough cobblestone roads. Parts of the island looked familiar—it’s the star of the movie Il Postino and also was one of the locations in The Talented Mr. Ripley.

We arrived at our hotel, La Tonnara, on a spit of land between a little marina, an excellent beach, an a pedestrian causeway to a small nature preserve island. It was simple, but very welcoming. Despite a sign in the room warning us not bring our own hotplates to cook meals, and impression that you might have that I love fancy hotels because of the last entry, I loved it. Sweet staff, fantastic location, and immaculate.

Our first evening we wandered along the long beach past some fantastic rock formations and ended up finding a beach-front restaurant that looked promising, Da Girone (no website, linking to Tripadvisor). We are always a bit suspicious of restaurants with views, especially after seeing the logo from this place, but it was amazing. Family run for decades, everything was fresh and delicious. There were long tables filled with Italian families whose kids ran back and forth between the sea, the sand, and the restaurant while all of us watched the sun set over the water. I’d been told that I had to have a salad made from Procida lemons, which are huge, ugly, and with a very thick pith (the bit between the skin and the juicy part). The salad is made of just the pith, raw and cut into chunks, with a little olive oil, garlic, spicy chili pepper, and mint. The first bite was a bit of an act of will, but it was delicious.

Walking back the short distance to our hotel we spotted a very odd-looking bus. It was tall and unbelievably narrow, clearly purpose built for these streets.

We took it the next day to cross the island. The narrow bus was filled with locals who all knew the driver and one another, and gave us hints on where to go. At one point, on the narrow central road, we met an oncoming bus. They obviously had done this before and met where the stone buildings gave a few extra meters of width, and they successfully passed. That feat was nothing compared to a sharp left turn the driver took at speed in this long bus, between two narrow streets, all tightly bordered by stone buildings. Despite the hundreds of scrapes visible on the corners of the buildings, this bus navigated with ease. I was watching the corner nearest me and I swear that we cleared it by about an inch. This bus ride was as close as I will ever come to experiencing Harry Potter’s Night Bus.

Our destination was a small fishing port accessible only on foot or by boat, La Corricella. We walked to it along the cliffs via an old prison and ancient castle perched on a promontory, then descended down steep stone stairs between tightly-packed, colorful buildings. The small marina with a variety of fishing boats and clear water had several restaurants at water’s edge and we had another delicious meal.

That evening we decided to eat at Da Girone again. One of the owners and her husband served us. After a dessert fresh out of the oven that she had just made, I was paying and bought some homemade liquors. Just then an older man entered who turned out to be her father. He was deaf and she had to shout that they were lucky to have had three dogs in the restaurant that evening (one being our Lola), and he beamed. He said that he made all the liquors and then pointed to the label—their logo of a gruff, sea captain sort, scowling—and held it up next to his face as he mimicked the expression. His daughter looked on, beaming.

As idyllic as all this sounds, we weren’t completely relaxed. The day that we arrived in Naples, for our overnight before Procida, the supervolcano that lies under Naples was acting up. Forget the dangers of Vesuvius, the Bay of Naples is the collapsed crater of this volcano, which is considered the most dangerous supervolcano in the world as millions live in the highest risk area. The land in part of Naples is rising two centimeters a MONTH. The night before we got there was a swarm of over 150 earthquakes in a few hours, including a 4.4 magnitude. Schools were closed, prisons evacuated, and thousands slept in the street. Procida forms a part of the rim of the supervolcano. It takes a lot less to fuel my anxiety. (The Washington Post wrote an interesting article on this a few days ago.)

But the lure of a cottage overlooking the fishing port…

And I do have to confess that I have found dreamy fishing villages in another part of the world, Scotland, which I wrote about here.

August 19, 2024 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Saunter like Sophia (Loren, that is)

I find it hard to imagine what the Italian coast must have been like in the 1960s. Before the hordes of tourists, bumper to bumper traffic on the Amalfi Coast, and the insufferable Instagram influencers nearly pushing one another off cliffs to get the right shot. I caught a glimpse of a less-traveled coastline when we went to the South for a week in May to cover the newly reopened Hotel Santavenere. I discovered my inner Sophia Loren. The one I had no idea I had inside.

I love finding places that are unusual and relatively unknown, and this trip delivered. We headed to Salerno on a Frecciarossa, Trenitalia’s high-speed rail service, cruising along at nearly 300 kilometers per hour (185 mph). We left around 8 from Tuscany and arrived, nearly 300 miles away, in Naples’ southern neighbor Salerno by 11:30—not bad for a morning’s work. Salerno is very walkable with a nice seafront. We rented a car, explored the town on foot, had lunch at a local place with an array of fish caught that morning displayed on ice, and drove a few miles up the infamous Amalfi Coast road for a night in Ravello. (Travelers hint: Salerno is a great base for the Amalfi Coast. There are frequent ferries that run to Portofino, Amalfi, and Sorrento that are much easier than waiting in traffic on the narrow, twisting main road in high season. It’s also very well-connected to other destinations in Italy by train.)

The ancient village of Ravello (dates from the 5th-century) is famous for being perched high on a cliff, safe from invaders, 1100 feet over the sea. We chose to stay down the hill at water’s level at the Hotel Marmorata. Luckily, they gave us a room with a window looking directly over the coastline and the pounding waves—one of my favorite sounds—which we could hear all night.

There was even a ladder from the pool area right into the sea, but it was too cool and rainy that night to use it.

En route to my assignment we visited the ancient site Paestum. This was a major ancient Greek city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Three major temples are in remarkable shape for having been built from 550 to 450 BC. The site is evocative, with the remains of houses and civic buildings, paved roads, city walls and amphitheater, and it wasn’t at all crowded. Often overshadowed by the Roman ruins at Pompeii, Paestum is well worth a visit.

I am lucky to be able to go on the occasional boondoggle to cover a hotel for a travel publication, and this assignment is my favorite to date. Hotel Santavenere was built in the 1950s by an industrialist from Piedmont, Count Stefano Rivetti di Val Cervo. He bought a huge chunk of the Tyrrhenian Coast below the perched, ancient village of Maratea and built a hotel with a mere 34 rooms. The place was recently taken over by one of Italy’s highest-end hotel groups, Egnazia Ospitalita Italiana, who did a complete remodel. It just entered The Leading Hotels of the World group.

I’m not a big mid-century modern person, but this place is gorgeous. The gardens are sprawling and have been well-tended since the resort’s creation seventy years ago (the hotel will provide picnic lunches for those who’d like to eat under the umbrella pines). There are several paths which wind down the steep hill between where the hotel is sited and the Tyrrhenian Sea to a rock outcropping and a small beach arranged with sun loungers. A ladder provides easy access to the sea, which was blissful to swim in. Private dinners can be arranged seaside.

The topography of this area of Italy is beautiful. It’s where the Apennine Mountains, which extend the length of Italy, meet the sea, so plenty of cliffs, ravines, and apparently, caves.

The hotel has so few rooms that the lobby and restaurant take over one whole floor, wrapped by a terrace with stunning views. One of the details I loved the most are the beautiful pink and green tiles, custom made for the place in the 1950s.

Walking through the lobby, on the way to dinner on the terrace overlooking the sea, I did find my walk changing into a saunter when I could so easily imagine the heyday of Italy’s dolce vita years. Sophia would have been perfectly at home. But probably not in my Birkenstocks…see above.

On a mountain top towering over the hotel is one of the largest Christ the Redeemer statues in the world (the biggest being in Rio) that stands 70 feet tall. The road up to the statue was as noteworthy as the destination.

One of the interesting things about reviewing a hotel is that the hotel provides rooms, food, and extras like massages and local tours—but you have to be very well-behaved and there’s no anonymity. We visited the statue, the church at the summit, and the village of Matarea with two guides provided by the hotel and here is where the story of the Count began to show some cracks, although we could only push so hard. According to the hotel the Count was a beneficent guy who came South to help the local population by building wool factories, textiles being his family business in Piedmont, and happened to buy up a huge chunk of coastline. Apparently, this generosity was also helped by huge postwar grants from the Italian government—and when the subsidies ended the factories closed. He commissioned the Christ the Redeemer statue and wanted it to be the tallest in Italy. Near the statue he also “restored” an ancient church, Basilica di San Biagio (built in 1324 on a site used since 732) by gutting, modernizing, and plastering over all the art. It’s now one of the saddest churches I’ve ever been in.

The village of Maratea, five minutes from the hotel, is small and charming with 44 churches, attesting to how dangerous life was for fishermen.

If the names Paestum, the Tyrrhenian Coast, and Maratea don’t ring loud bells in many of your ears it is a good thing. We were driving along roads just as beautiful, and “thrilling” to navigate as the Amalfi Coast but were nearly the only car on the road. Everywhere we went was largely crowd-free.

Living in Italy and traveling widely, I am torn when asked about the best way to visit. Trends I’m reading about, like Bologna being touted as the new Florence, whether Rome or Venice should be avoided, or as I’ve done above, Paestum vs. Pompeii, or this piece of coastline over Amalfi, are not easy discussions. The OGs of travel are flooded with visitors for excellent reasons—they really do represent an apex—and if there’s only one chance to see Italy, should be on the list. (Hopefully not in July and August, when the heat and crowds are making the experience nearly out of the range of human tolerance, no matter how fabulous the backdrops.) However, beyond the top few must-see places, Italy is so richly blessed with scenery, architecture, culture, and food that there are many less-trafficked treasures to discover, where it may just be you and the ghost of a young Sophia Loren. And the two of us will endeavour to share these gems when we are lucky enough to encounter them.

My complete hotel review here.

la dolce vita

August 10, 2024 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Here’s How Paris Surprised Me During the Olympics

I had no idea what Paris would be like during the Olympics and arrived with a mix of anticipation and dread. After a week of watching Olympic events and strolling the streets of Paris, here’s what’s surprised, dazzled, and inspired me about the city and the Games.

Paris has felt quiet.

Where is everybody? This was definitely not the question I was expecting to ask myself during the Games. A friend flew to Paris for the opening ceremony and the plane was so empty that all the economy passengers had the luxury of stretching out flat across the empty seats. Friends are reporting with glee that the hardest to get restaurant reservations are now easy. I am often the only customer in boutiques and stores. Traffic is restricted on some major thoroughfares, like the Boulevard Saint-Germain, where there’s not a private car or bus in sight, which only adds to experiencing Paris in a very different way. Crossing streets that aren’t traffic restricted is suddenly easy. Many shops and restaurants staffed up, and even stayed open during their normal August closures, to serve the Olympic crowds who haven’t materialized, impacting their businesses. But, as a visitor, it is delightful to visit a peaceful and uncrowded Paris with nearly empty sidewalks and plentiful seats on the metro.

August is the traditional vacation month for Paris, which partially explains empty streets, and many additional locals decided to leave town to avoid the potential hassles. More foreign visitors than expected also chose to stay away, to the extent that Delta Airlines is expecting a $100 million revenue loss due to the Paris Olympics, according to the CEO.

Despite these Games, according to the organizers, selling more tickets than any other Olympics, there are still tickets to be purchased for many events. There were 10 million tickets released for the Games ranging in price from €24 ($26; £20) to many hundreds of euros. And then there are the hospitality packages that add transportation, dining, champagne, and a great vantage point, but at a steep price. Want to see the men’s basketball final, which just might include some American superstars, in style? That will be €6,500 ($7,000; £5,500) per ticket for the hospitality package. Organizers have said that the prices are not more expensive than previous Games, but many people feel priced out and the events I have been to have had some empty seats.

The spectacles are truly spectacular.

Paris is doing one of the things that the French do best—spectacles, and they can be impressive to behold. The French have a long history of understanding the power of spectacle. In the summer of 1676, King Louis XIV ordered that hundreds of wildly expensive and exotic white swans—a completely new bird for France—to be imported and released in the Seine. One of the objectives was that visitors traveling by boat between Paris and the Palace of Versailles would pass by the impressive birds and be amazed by the wonder of the French court. It’s a flair that continues to thrive, and the French spirit of spectacle is everywhere during the Games.

At the conclusion of the opening ceremony, the Olympic Torch ended its long relay journey by lighting a giant caldron suspended by a hot air balloon that rose into the night sky. It floats aloft every evening at dusk until 2am, weather permitting, throughout the Games. The interesting thing is that the ring of “fire” in the cauldron is not actual fire but thousands of LED lights and water mist, which took three years to perfect, and looks exactly like the real thing—the first time the Olympic flame is not actually the flame—in the history of the games. The actual Olympic flame is a footnote enshrined near the balloon, in the Tuileries Gardens, where the first manned hot air balloon launched in 1783. I did find the crowds here—tens of thousands of people line the Seine every night hoping to watch the Olympic cauldron rise into the sky. The French guessed that a spectacle like this would be far more impressive and memorable than seeing the actual Olympic torch. And given the excitement on the streets, it’s clear they were right.

This sensibility carries throughout the Games, from the famous (or infamous) opening ceremony to the event venues which were chosen with care for their magnificent settings—fencing in the soaring glass enclosure of the Grand Palais, skateboarding in the Place de la Concorde, equestrian events (I went to one!) in front of the Palace of Versailles, and beach volleyball under the Eiffel Tower, to name a few.

There’s an army of volunteers, and the Army.

There are 45,000 helpful volunteers all over Paris. Every metro stop has a squad of helpers, and each event has hundreds shepherding attendees to and from the venue. They are also present all over Paris in the streets. The easily identified volunteers, wearing bright purple vests, answer questions (in several different languages), hand out water and fans, and generally cheer people on.

The walk from the busses to the equestrian events at Versailles was about a half mile long and lined by enthusiastic volunteers wishing us a good day, playing music, encouraging dancing, and joking with the crowd. Special play areas for kids have been set up all over the city to let children try their hands at different sports. I watched several rounds of tiny fencers, complete with helmets and protective gear with sensors, being instructed by a fencing volunteer about the basics of the sport. Nearby was a three-foot-high basketball hoop, a ping-pong table, and uneven bars over a sea of mats.

France has had a sad history with terrorism, and safety at the Games is being taken very seriously. The presence of police, security, and army is unmissable at the venues and all through the city. Well-armed patrol units of the army are walking through neighborhood streets, making sure all is safe. Security is tight to enter any of the venues with bag checks and metal detectors. I might have imagined that this would feel oppressive, but, for me, it makes the Games feel more secure.

The details matter.

The level of thought and care that has gone into the logistics of the Games is amazing to see. There are event locations all over the city, and it can feel complicated for newcomers to the transport system to get around. Organizers have taken great care that it is easy to find venues. The standard chart of stops over the door of every metro car has been replaced with new ones that indicate the stops for the venues—all in the recognizable shade of Olympic pink used by these games.

Once you exit the metro car there are signs at every turn indicating the way to the place you need to get. I attended a field hockey match at a stadium slightly outside of town, which was a 15-minute walk from the train station through the streets of a suburb with several turns. This could have been complicated if it weren’t for the volunteers and the convenient pink stripe painted in the middle of the street to indicate the way.

If a bus is needed to ferry people from a station to an event that is slightly further away, it is seamless and organized. Even with an event of tens of thousands of people all leaving at the same time there was only a brief wait for a bus and very clear instructions to the busses and their destinations.

And yes, it is green.

I’ve visited many cities that have hulking buildings outside of the center, often moldering and choked with weeds, which were constructed to host prior Olympic events. Paris has gotten mixed reviews for choosing not to install air conditioning in the Olympic Village and providing cardboard beds with inflatable mattresses for the athletes, but hasn’t built any new structures to house the hundreds of different games. They’ve smartly used existing sports facilities, sometimes dramatically repurposing them, like building a temporary pool over a rugby field in a huge stadium to host swimming events. The beautiful equestrian venue was entirely temporary—the portable bleachers will come down at the end of the Games and the field will once again be grass.

It really is the world’s games.

My biggest takeaway from spending a week in Paris during the Olympics is the breathtaking array of nations, events, and languages around every turn. Walking down the street it’s easy to hear dozens of different languages and see fans carrying such a range of flags that it would challenge a geography student to identify them all.

Certain countries are clearly dominating the non-Olympic sport of what fans wear to events. The Dutch can be seen all over Paris wearing bright orange, a color that has been associated with the country since William of Orange led a revolt against the Spanish in the 16^th century. I went to a women’s field hockey event, which happened to be Belgium against Netherlands, an old rivalry. It was great fun to see tens of thousands of people wearing bright orange. A Dutch man told me that they take sports very seriously and will travel far and wide to support their teams.

I’ve loved how good natured and supportive the fans have been at the events I’ve been to, and the dozens of others attended by friends. At a Germany vs. China match, the mostly European crowd was clearly rooting for Germany, which was dominating. But when China made its first goal, the crowd erupted in cheers. The same was true in jumping. No matter what country was up, the crowd was respectfully silent, with collective gasps when a fence went down and cheers for every horse and rider crossing the finish line. My friends who attended some of the bigger events have said that the roar was deafening as the crowd supported athletes across many countries.

This week has felt like a little break from all the divisions in the world, a peek into a place where we are all just humans together, albeit a world in which some are capable of much greater physical feats than mere mortals.

February 25, 2024 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Roman Treasures

Rome is slightly over an hour away from us by fast train, but it always feels like an exotic vacation, even on the briefest trips. In the last month I’ve gone for two overnight stays and found some special treasures—perfect after you’ve experienced the heavy-hitters like the Vatican, Forum, Pantheon, and Colosseum.

The Appian Way

The Via Appia Antica is in the running as the oldest paved road in existence. Begun in 312 BC, it was the first of the Roman superhighways created to move troops and materials—in this case 360 miles from Rome via Naples to Brindisi, an important port town where the Romans bumped up against the Greeks, and an intimidating military presence came in handy.

The most well-preserved section of eleven miles runs through the Appia Antica Archaeological Park, the second largest urban park in Europe. You can get there in fifteen minutes by taxi from central Rome. As I walked along the road paved with large basalt stones, still held in place by an early use of limestone cement, and showing wear tracks from cart wheels, it was impossible not to be swept up in history and natural beauty. This place is simply chock full of interesting things—several catacombs; Roman villas; a tomb of the daughter-in-law of ancient Rome’s richest man, converted in the 1300s to a fortified castle; aqueducts; and flocks of sheep. It was clearly the place to make your mark in Roman times.

We walked for about an hour from the Tomb of Caecilia Metella to the Villa of the Quintilii and were surprised by a flock of sheep running across the road in front of us at top speed. Caecilia’s large, round tomb from 30-10 BC was later incorporated into a walled castle in the early 1300s that is now only a shell. It was fascinating to see what it must have looked like—aided by an excellent VR-tour, complete with helmets—which I had to admit I liked despite my initial skepticism.

Unfortunately, due to a ticketing system hiccup, we didn’t get into the Villa Quintilii, but now have something left to explore. The villa is so large that at first the archeologists believed they were finding a whole town, not a single residence.

The walk itself was stunning. It’s the kind of place where we walked past Seneca’s Tomb and didn’t notice because there were so many things to see—realized it only later when looking at a map. Part of what made this adventure so special was that we were off-season so it wasn’t crowded or hot. The light was stunning with the sun low in the sky. Attempting this in high summer when it’s scalding hot would not be fun.

We had lunch at the Hostaria Antica Roma, a quirky place where the chef has recreated several dishes from the first cookbook in existence, written 2,000 years ago. There are also places to rent bicycles—a great way to explore more of the archeological park—which is enormous.

Domus Romane di Palazzo Valentini

Back in Rome, and next to Trajan’s Column is the Domus Romane di Palazzo Valentini. Discovered in 2005, when work was being done on the 16th-century Palazzo Valentini, workers discovered a well-preserved house, street, and part of another house from 400 AD, buried from 16 to 23 feet under the palace. These were homes of the rich and powerful. The tour wanders through the private bathing complex of the house consisting of plunging pools of various temperatures, a swimming pool, reception rooms, and the family’s private staircase—many walls still decorated with polychrome marble and painted frescoes. A street that used to run outside the house, and some rooms from the house next door are clearly visible. You can also see how the foundations for the Palazzo were put right through the Roman floors below.

An earthquake in AD 538, and subsequent fire, seem to have partially destroyed the house. The scarred beams and earthquake cracks in the elaborate mosaic floors remain to tell the story.

Spaces for the tour are limited, so advanced booking is critical. An audio tour, in a range of languages, and projections on the walls of what the villa might have looked like help to bring this site to life. Morning tours are slightly longer and include an up-close look at Trajan’s Column.

Basilica di San Clemente

The ‘modern”church, from the before 1100, at the top layer of the archeological strata.

Almost in the shadow of the Colosseum is the Basilica of Saint Clement. The Basilica one sees today was built just before the year 1100, which is pretty amazing all by itself, but excavations revealed that the current structure was built on top of two older ones: a 4th-century basilica, and a 1st-century Roman home that housed a Mithraic temple, used for secret, early-Christian worship around 200 AD. I felt the layers of time as we climbed steep staircases down and down to the earliest structures, deep underground.

It’s moving to see these structures, still intact with their early-medieval wall paintings, columns and alters—as well as signs of earlier Republic buildings, like the Roman mint and an apartment block, separated by a street that’s clearly visible. At this period, the population of Rome was around 1,000,000 people so urban density was important. There were many five-story apartment buildings and multi-level houses for nobles.

This visit is less-structured than some of the others, and in some ways more intimate. We did book in advance (always critical), but because it was February, I was by myself on the lowest level—otherworldly and magical.

We had dinner at Hostaria Costanza, set into one tiny part of the massive walls of the Pompeo Theater, built in 61 BC. The setting would have been enough by itself, but the food was lovely, and the staff was smart, funny, and attentive. The kind of crew that noticed with amusement that as soon as we walked through the door Lola, our dog, found the location of the kitchen and was staring in that direction with her considerable focus and powers of persuasion.

And don’t forget to visit another of my favorite archeological treasures in Rome, Ostia Antica.

Christmas tree in Florence in front of the Duomo

December 26, 2023 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

What the Italians Don’t Get About the Holidays

Being in a mild state of panic seems to be obligatory around the holidays to us Americans, and we wondered if the Italians feel the same on Christmas Eve. John suggested a little experiment when I, feeling pretty overwhelmed myself, needed to get groceries for the feasts. The very unscientific test was to observe faces while I shopped looking for signs of stress. I found very few. Smiling people passed me in jammed aisles, carts loaded, and most said a cheery “Auguri!”, or “congratulations” when they met my eye. I found very few people who looked strained or hurried. Even the thirty or so people waiting at the fish counter to buy their selection of seven different types of seafood to serve on Christmas Eve were smiling and chatting as the clerks assembled each person’s detailed order. The Italians I saw clearly have no idea how this season is meant to be celebrated. Don’t they understand that you have to be frazzled and overwhelmed?

The one thing that might prompt tension in the store is if there was a debate between Team Panettone and Team Pandoro. Italy’s affection is pretty equally divided and the loyalties are strong about the ubiquitous sweet breads. Panettone and pandoro differ in shape—a cylinder with a dome-shaped top for the former and a tall, star-shaped body for the latter. Panettone has candied fruit, sultanas, and possibly chocolate; pandoro is made from a plain, sweet dough. And pandoro is served with icing to complement its simplicity.

I love that most Italian cities and villages (as well as towns throughout Europe) go all out on decorations. Streets are lit by fanciful and creative lights draped between buildings, and nearly every town, no matter how small, will have a giant tree in the piazza.

Our village has several evenings when it is lit solely by thousands of candles, a romantic and beautiful sight. The village of Gubbio creates the world’s largest Christmas tree out of lights that stretch 2,000 feet down a steep hill from a monastery perched above to the village below. The tree can be seen from as far as 30 miles away.

Christmas markets are an import from Germanic countries, and have evolved and grown in Tuscany over the decade we’ve lived in Italy. Verona and Bolzano have older and larger markets that we’ve particularly enjoyed when we needed a dose of Christmas spirit.

Some towns have quirky local traditions. In our village, the local Vespa club helps the town celebrate on Christmas Eve with members dressing up as Santa and storming, on their largely vintage Vespas, into the square to distribute wrapped gifts to the kids. It is fun to spot people you know, male and female, under their white beards as they roar past. Some years the gifts are better than others. One memorable misfire was when they distributed grammar books, much to the disappointment of the kids.

Living nativities, where volunteers dress in costume and recreate biblical scenes, happen across Italy. There are some hugely famous ones, like in the cave city of Matera, but we have a much beloved local edition with hundreds of volunteers in scenes that continue for over a kilometer, lit only by candles and with a sound track from Ben Hur. From a Roman slave market to a field of lepers, the creators have taken a pretty broad brush to the Christian nativity story in a delightful way.

New Year’s Eve has its own, very Italian, traditions. One that is taken quite seriously is that everyone is supposed to put on new, red undergarments to welcome in the new year. This tradition has a long history symbolizing fertility and fortune. I was surprised our first year here to see the store windows filled with all kinds of women’s and men’s red underwear ranging from demure to risque. While wearing one’s red panties there’s only one thing to eat—lentils. If you squint they can look vaguely like coins, and are mandatory to have at midnight to ensure wealth in the coming year. The more lentils you eat the more coins you’ll have pouring in, according to tradition. Around our part of Italy lentils are often topped by cotechino, a large pork sausage cooked slowly and cut into rounds, or zampone, sausage encased in the front shin and hoof of the pig. These are readily available in big displays in the supermarket—not refrigerated—a mystery I’m not sure I want to solve.

If you’ve ever wished for the holiday season to extend past January 1st, Italy has your answer. The holidays are in full swing until January 6th, the Epiphany. Those extra six days are a delight—the pressure of gifts, what to do for New Year’s Eve, and other items on the holiday to do list are all checked off with only relaxing, enjoying the lights, taking walks, and continuing to eat lovely things left on the agenda. This period is not totally shut down, life continues to pick back up to normal, but it does provide a few days to have an excuse to jump back in slowly.

The isn’t a tradition of Christmas stockings left on Christmas Eve, except in our house due to popular demand, but rather of an eccentric, old, flying witch, La Befana, who leaves stockings full of presents for good children (or coal, straw, or garlic for bad ones) on the night of January 5th—Epiphany Eve. She’s from Rome and the city has a large market in the Piazza Navona dedicated to her.

Once again, the Italians are shaping me and teaching me how to live. After my observations in the grocery store, looking up to notice and appreciate the warmth and excitement in the eyes that met mine, I realized that maybe this season isn’t all about getting things done to make things perfect, but appreciating the perfect moments that are already in front of me, even in a crowded grocery store. Hopefully holding this beyond this season and into the New Year. Wishing for peace, human connection, and a spark of excitement for you all in 2024. Tanti auguri.

November 5, 2023 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Pregnanxiety

I love my village. And what I love the most is not the food, or the wine, or the rolling Tuscan hills, or the thousand years of defensive hilltop architecture, but the spirit of the place. I treasure the events that mark the seasons every year—festivities profoundly of this place, created by this place, and for the locals. Almost every month something rolls around. More in the summer. The fall festival honoring our patron saint and a fat spaghetti, called bringoli, that’s only made in our town. The vintage bicycle race that attracted over 900 participants this year. The local Vespa club that dresses in Santa costumes and races into the square on Christmas Eve, at exactly 6pm, to distribute toys to the assembled kids under the enormous Christmas tree. Carnivale, when hundreds of spectators dress in costume and watch the farmers pull floats with their freshly-washed tractors. The polenta festival to cheese rolling, we are always busy.

But in late summer, the local play, Tovaglia a Quadri, has a special place in my heart. The play is written fresh every year by Andrea Merendelli and Paolo Pennacchini who delight in collecting everything from the small details of daily life to huge societal trends and synthesizing them into a rapid-fire, witty, and farcical play, the acts separated by aperitivi, pasta, the main course, and dessert. It runs for ten evenings, and they have done it for 28 years without a break.

The play takes place in the courtyard of a neighborhood castle dating from 1234 with long tables set in the middle. The action occurs all around the diners, with the sixteen actors popping out of windows to deliver lines, and walking through the middle of the diners. We booked four tickets together at one of the long tables and sat down to greetings by our dining neighbors and large, open flasks of red wine.

This year’s play, Gravidansia, is a mash-up of the Italian words for pregnancy and anxiety. It wraps the declining Italian birth rate (one of the lowest in the world), the difference in funding between the private and public health sectors, the economic and social reasons people are not starting families, and rodents, into one package. The premise is that the castle is now a state-funded care home for the elderly, the booming demographic. The presiding doctor trained as an OB-GYN, but with nobody having babies he now needs to work in elder care and is always worried about when the state funding will arrive, and if budgets will be cut further.

The swirling plot features an old, male farmer, who now dresses as a woman and is convinced that he is pregnant; two of our waiters shouting at each other while they serve us—a couple on the verge of a breakup as they face their bleak economic future together; a young professional couple who keep circling by the tables as they run laps, checking their times on fitness watches, and eating protein bars—treasuring their child-free lifestyle and too busy to have kids despite their uncle yelling out the window of the care home that he will give them the best apartment on the village square if they provide heirs. Another doctor arrives on the scene, who trained as an OB-GYN with our protagonist, but paths have diverged. He founded a group of very successful, high-end private clinics providing fertility treatments.

All these plots soon center on a loose mouse, long bothering the facility, captured by the local exterminator. Instead of destroying the mice he has captured through the years, he has sold them to the fertility clinic the visiting doctor runs, to be used in genetic research. The doctor has brought the alpha mouse from his clinic in a small cage. She is the mother to a long, important line of mice and has stopped reproducing. The doctor is hoping that by introducing a wild mate she will regain interest in her procreational duties. He has come for the just-captured mouse for his new blood that will rejuvenate the line. The two are put in the same cage but ignore each other.

The visiting doctor goes inside the care home and is touched by the beauty of the place and the frescoes of the old castle as the older residents reminisce about how their families used to be living close to the land—brutally hard times but filled with life. The 11-year old daughter of our protagonist doctor is chased by the doctor and exterminator after she frees the two mice from the cage. The visiting doctor has a change of heart—only by releasing people, and mice, from their cages and returning to beauty and a sense of place will people want to continue the race. He wants to help turn this castle into a center for the beginnings of life, as well as endings.

I remain amazed how this is pulled off with local writers, director, and actors, many of whom I often see around town. I am understanding more every year, but am jealous of Sebastian who gets it all but can only translate highlights as it’s so rapid-fire, and the laughing crowd, enjoying every twist and turn.

In case you were worried about the mice, in the closing moment of the play one of the characters spots them on a rooftop, finally “getting along” rather well in their new, freed state.

July 23, 2023 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Is it getting hot in here?

Yep, it’s hot. And here’s how I am coping in a land with almost no air conditioning and heat into the 100 degrees. Although we have not had it as bad as many places it’s still enough to completely change my daily routine, and mood. In a good moment I can appreciate that the sunflowers are at their crazy best and the cicadas are singing, although the chickens at the farm stand have stopped laying and our cats remain motionless on the stone floor for most of the day, which does remind me of the physical toll of this kind of heat. I read a fascinating article in the NYTimes about the impact that heat has on intelligence and mood. So if you catch any misspellings, you know why.

Our house is made with thick stone walls, around two feet, which provide some insulation. We open the windows at night to try to cool the walls and floors as much as possible and then close the windows, outside shutters, and inside scuri to put as many layers of protection between us and the sun as possible when it starts to heat up around 8 am. The scuri are wooden panels on hinges that you can close over the windows on the inside and it is not an accident that the word scuro also means dark. The effect of these heat shields being in place is quite cave-like in certain rooms. I saw Dune for the first time and the heat protection techniques they were using on Arrakis felt like my daily life. Minus all the really great hair.

We broke down this year and got air conditioning in the rooms on the back side of the house—the kitchen and a couple of bedrooms. This has been a game changer for sleep on particularly hot nights, but we use it the minimum possible, set as high as tolerable, using fans to help keep cool, and with all the other temperature mitigation procedures still in place.

During daylight hours, within our dark rooms, I rarely leave the side of my fan, even with the AC on. Which may, or may not, have had an odd side effect on our dog, Lola. She’s often at my side, so is equally often in front of a fan. Lola likes to pull on the leash and we often forget her walking halter. We’d taken her to lunch with us and on the way into the restaurant she’d seen something interesting and was pulling unusually hard on her collar. Later that day she started having a very dry, continuous cough. I start searching the internet and was convinced that she had developed a collapsed trachea from damage to her throat from pulling on her collar.

I rushed her to the vet as soon as they opened after their four-hour lunch break. Fortunately, unlike most emergency visits to the doctor with our children, she was still coughing and spewing when we got to the vet. He took one look at her and asked if we had air conditioning or were using fans. When he learned that she was frequently in front of the fan he said that was the reason for the cough—he’d seen five other dogs with the same issue in the previous few days. Avoid fans and drafts and she would be fine. I was convinced he was crazy because heat is a trigger for symptoms of a collapsed trachea and it could be that these five dogs also had this undiagnosed condition that the heat brought on. The old correlation/causation chicken and egg. But weirdly enough, she has been fine since we’ve kept her away from me and the fan.

This diagnosis should not have surprised me. The Italians we know fear drafts. We were having lunch in a restaurant that had air conditioning on a particularly scorching day, and we were seated right under it, enjoying the respite. Six people were shown to the adjoining table. They looked with great concern in our direction and I was worried that one of the kids was scared of dogs, because Lola was with us. They exited in about a second with fear on their faces and went to an outside table in the heat. Sebastian said they’d told the waitress that they were all sweaty and couldn’t possibly sit in front of an air conditioner or they would all get sick.

During the height of Covid, in the winter of 2020, we were not eating inside restaurants. On a road trip Donella and I stopped at a restaurant to have lunch which was packed with people eating inside. We asked if we could sit at an outdoor table right next to the front door. The waitress started complaining to the manager that by going in and out into the cold she would surely get sick. She seemed unconcerned about working in a room with a hundred unmasked people in close quarters in the days before the vaccine.

Because I need more exercise than getting out of bed and up from my desk to adjust the fan my big adventure of the day is to go to the local pool, run by a family. It’s a fantastic Italian social scene populated by everyone from grandparents to the tiniest babies. I’ve never heard a word of English spoken. It’s the kind of place where I leave my wallet and phone in full view while I swim, without a problem.

I game my entry carefully and try to get there late enough that most people will be leaving so that I can have the pool relatively empty so I can swim some laps, and so that the dad will let me in at a discount. Even at six the pool is usually packed and I am the only one trying to swim anywhere. There are more kids than I can count and the water is always unusually warm. This makes me glad that I swim with my head above water. The visibility my technique provides is a good thing because it has never entered the head of anyone who is standing in the pool to get out the way of someone trying to swim.

There’s only one lane. For some reason this seems to be the most attractive spot for groups of people to stand in the water and talk. When I am swimming I sometimes remember when we still lived in Berkeley and I was swimming one evening in the pool at the club we belonged to. The whole pool was divided into lanes and there were two people sharing every lane except for one. The lone swimmer was at the other end of the long pool and I slipped into the water and started swimming. When we met in the lane mid pool the other swimmer started shouting at me because she didn’t want to share a lane. I often want to plunk her in this Italian pool, just to watch her reaction.

When I swim in the main part of the pool it gets even more interesting as there are kids diving, people playing ball games, couples cuddling and flirting, and many more people standing in groups talking. Not to mention the occasional pool floating toy days which I can never keep track of. I try the best I can to weave through it all and avoid getting hit in the head by a ball or run into more than once. Today there was a very cute little Italian boy wearing Spiderman arm floaties who had an industrial strength water gun and was soaking everyone in the face. This is when having one’s head above water is not ideal. (Armed Spiderman is much better than Little Lorenzo, who terrorizes the entire pool daily with his screaming when he has to get out of the water, much to his mother and grandmother’s horror.)

There is also a swim class taught by the daughter of the family who runs the pool. The class is mostly made up of eight to ten-year-old boys and the instructor wears a constantly changing selection of the tiniest bikinis I’ve ever seen, either on a Kardashian or in real life. I am sure the boys don’t notice.

Last year, the pool was frequented by about twenty very fit guys. They’d usually arrive en masse just as I was getting out and all jump in, doing laps while waiting for their coach. He’d arrive with a boombox and start yelling out instructions for aqua aerobics like a drill sergeant, while being backed up by bouncy, usually American, pop hits. I found this very amusing to watch while drying off. One day they arrived earlier than usual when I actually got to swim in the one lane, enjoying the blissful emptiness. They started doing a chorus line high kicking move in a circle, with their arms linked. The whirlpool effect was powerful—I’d be hurdled to one end of the pool at lightning speed just to turn around and barely be able to struggle back to the other end. I asked the owner of the pool about them and they were a volleyball team doing some cross-training. They seem to have found another form of exercise this summer, much to my disappointment.

The grocery store is another air-conditioned mecca, but equally crowded. Sometimes I forget that the Italian ideal is not one of efficiency—get in and get out as quickly as possible—but one of social optimization. The more people you see and the longer it takes, the better. This often means that I leave my cart in a corner and ferry purchases back to it because it is too complicated to get my cart through the aisles on a Saturday morning, which is prime time. Like at the pool, there’s little of the American sense of personal space—I pull my cart to the side so that others can get by. But I am the only one. Carts are abandoned crosswise in the middle of aisles, or a whole group of carts are grouped around the one with the baby in it. It’s also the kind of place where I went to the customer service booth with a question and the woman there spent about five minutes trying to solve it. With many thousands of euros of cash on the counter next to her in plain view and easy reach. She was completely unphased.

It’s in these moments that my Americanness runs full tilt into my adopted homeland. Why can’t I just efficiently exercise and cool down? Why can’t I get my cart through the aisles on a Saturday morning? Because that’s not what’s important here. Efficiency, competitiveness, and the sense of entitlement of my lane partner in California who didn’t want to share has nothing to do with the daily reality here and I am the better off for it. These things—flirting in the pool, Spiderman with his water gun, Lorenzo’s tantrums, the lateral tossing ball game with six players who use the entire width of the pool—are the things that people remember and that matter. How many laps I swam is meaningless and I know it.

We had American friends visiting and I was hanging out late at night with their eleven-year old in a park watching everyone from three-year olds playing soccer to old men playing bocce ball. I was telling her that everyone knew each other and that the three-year olds would turn into the old men, probably in the same park. She said that she was discovering that Italy was like a peach, easy to break through skin with sweetness inside. And that Americans were more like dragon fruit, very hard to break through the surface, but still sweet inside. I am enjoying that thin skin and the easily accessible sweetness inside.

July 4, 2023 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Discovering Lake Maggiore

Italy is sinking under the weight of tourists right now, and it’s not even high-season. I am not too affected by crowds living in such an off-the-radar village, but am always on the lookout for places to go in Italy that are uncrowded and spectacular. We just returned from a week stay on Lake Maggiore and I loved its beauty, diversity of places to visit, and some unexpectedly good restaurants. The times I’ve been to Lake Como the crowds—mostly American—along the promenade in the town of Como have been so overwhelming that it has been hard to walk, even in early Spring. The towns that we visited along the north side of Lago Maggiore and Lake Orta were blissfully empty (as of two weeks ago) and filled with fun things to do, even for the two kids we were traveling with. Surprising as this area is just over an hour from Milan.

Lago Maggiore sits between Italy and Switzerland, nestled at the foot of the Alps. It’s the second largest lake in Italy and extremely deep—lower than sea level for most of its bottom. This depth evens out the heat in summer and the cold in winter, creating a semi-tropical microclimate, perfect for lush hillsides and unusual gardens. We went with extended family to the Villa Valentino, one of the few vacation rentals we’ve been to that is even prettier than the pictures, along with an unusually generous and gracious owner—this place is a gem if you are looking for a house for a large gathering. The deck at the front of the villa had the kind of view of the lake and mountains that made it hard to go inside, let alone get in the car to explore. There were thunderstorms nearly every evening and we watched the dramatic clouds, torrential rain, and lightening approach us from the end of the lake for hours.

Our first adventure was to Lago d’Orta, known for having the cleanest lake water in Europe. We headed to the beautiful village of Orta San Giulio, with its narrow stone streets, and found the lakefront piazza where the small wooden ferries docked. Our destination was a tiny island, Isola San Giulio, just offshore, crowned by the Basilica di San Giulio, started in the 5th century. That’s not a typo. For a few euros the wooden boats, ferry being such a strong word for a boat that fits about 10 people, took us across to the island.

From the water, I spotted a restaurant, Ristorante San Giulio, with a deck over the lake where I assumed that the view might make up for mediocre food. Amazingly, they had a table available for eight right at the lake’s edge and we had a delicious lunch with some unexpectedly kind and attentive waiters—in Italian they had referred to the 9 and 11-year olds as bambini, a common way to talk about kids of all ages, and then stopped to apologize and made sure that the kids knew that they weren’t actually calling them babies.

After lunch we visited the basilica, where the “modern” 12th-century church was built over the foundations of the earlier 5th-century building. We then walked the silent path around the island’s perimeter, skirting the Benedictine monastery that has grown up around the basilica. All along the path are signs encouraging silence, enjoyment of the moment, and contemplation.

The next day’s exploration of Lago Maggiore took us to not one island, but two. We drove to Stresa, which is often touted as a “mini Cannes”. We drove to the dock and again found a selection of beautiful, small ferries waiting to take us across the water for just a few euros. I love to be on the water, especially on wooden boats, and could have ridden around on these for the rest of the day. Our first destination was the tiny Isola dei Pescatori, or Island of the Fisherman. It’s inhabited year round by a population of 25. We had lunch in a lovely and sophisticated restaurant, Verbano, on a point with a stone deck draped with jasmine and wisteria with views to the Palazzo Borromeo. It also is an inn with twelve rooms.

After lunch we boarded another ferry to head to Isola Bella, or beautiful island, with its massive Baroque 17th-century palace and gardens created by the powerful Borromeo family. One of the ornate huge rooms has an alcove with a bed that was used for one night in August 1797 by Napoleon and Josephine. The description on the wall echoes complaints from 200 years earlier—how the Napoleon and 60 troops arrived with only one day notice, required special meals, and left the place “dirty and smelly”. Apparently the Empress Josephine was “much more polite than the great hero.”

Others enchanted by these islands include Hemingway, setting the final chapters of A Farewell To Arms here. “I rowed towards Isola Bella and I approached the walls, where the water suddenly became deep and you could see the wall of rock going obliquely down into the water, and then I climbed up towards the Isle of Fishermen where there were boats pulled dry and men mending nets.” This villa was also the setting of a meeting between the United Kingdom, Italy, and France in 1935 forging an agreement, the Stresa Front, to try to stop the advance of Hitler. This agreement fell apart months later when Italy invaded what is now Ethiopia.

An exploration closer to the villa was to an old church perched above a gorge with a rushing river 85 feet below. There’s a small bridge for cars paralleled by a foot bridge perched above the abyss, impossibly built in the 12th century.

But it wasn’t just scenery that we were after. There’s the charming Ristorante Grotto Sant’Anna where cascading terraces filled with thick stone tables are perched along the side of the gorge. We had such a surprisingly good meal here that we returned a second time. From the restaurant there’s an easy trail that heads downhill, following the river, to the beautiful lakeside town of Cannobio. I thought that the topography looked familiar and realized that we were only 13 miles from the stunning gorge we’d found last year in Switzerland on our road trip to England.

This proximity to Switzerland wasn’t just geographical. We found this area intriguing as you can feel the southern Italy versus northern Italy differences. It felt almost more Germanic than Italian, and the predominant nationality of tourists we saw, other than Italians, was German and Swiss, judging by license plates. Italy’s unification in 1861 was so recent that I am constantly intrigued by how distinct the architecture, food, language, and culture are from region to region. It is part of the reason that Italy is never boring.

We didn’t have time to visit the Hermitage of Santa Caterina del Sasso, an 12th century complex perched on a balcony of rock with a sheer cliff dropping to the water, but I will next trip. And there will be a return trip.

April 30, 2023 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

Just go: Brescia

An unexpected visit to Brescia revealed a delightful town often overshadowed by its neighbors—Venice, Verona, Padua, and Milan—but packed with beauty, history, and great food.

We haven’t even hit May and yet friends are reporting epic crowds in all the usual suspects—Venice, Florence, Rome, Cinque Terre, Amalfi Coast… As special as all of these places are, when you can’t even walk down the Spanish Steps in Rome because there are too many people it takes all the pleasure away, at least to me. One of the joys of living in Italy is the seemingly limitless supply of beautiful and fascinating towns to visit that are still uncrowded—and we accidentally found one last weekend.

John and I are still trying to master the Italian medical system and when a friend suggested we check out a modern clinic in Brescia for some routine doctors’ appointments we decided to make a night of it. I knew almost nothing about Brescia except that it was one of the cities on the front line when Covid arrived in Italy in January 2020. Arriving with no expectations we couldn’t believe what we’d happened upon—a beautiful town filled with architectural gems, a history of diverse cultures, and some great food. Best of all, we heard almost no English and saw almost no tourists despite it being a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Brescia sits at the foot of the Alps, whose snow-covered peaks were visible, and close to Lake Garda and Lake Iseo. Although it is a city of 200,000 and surrounded by industry, the old town is compact and beautiful. We wandered around with no agenda and happened across one beautiful little piazza after another ringed by restaurants and bars serving aperitivi at outdoor tables.

What makes Brescia so fascinating is its layers of history. There are remnants of Bronze Age settlements, later the first part of the city was founded in 1200 BC by either the Etruscans or the Ligures people, then it was inhabited by the Celts, followed by the Romans, then the Visigoths and Attila the Hun, then the Lombards, on to Charlemagne and French rule, then the Venetians…and this only gets us caught up to 1512. These layers play together in intriguing ways.

On old Roman ruin incorporated into an apartment building

The ancient old town is surrounded by palazzos built in the Renaissance. For dinner we decided to go to Veleno, located in one of these palazzos built in the early 1700s. The food was a bit uneven, but the decor was stunning. There is even a Michelin-starred option in town.

Our morning stroll took us up to the castle and its extensive gardens, built on top of the Bronze Age settlement. As one of the largest castles in Italy it dominates the hill that overlooks the town. Then we wandered into a stunning piazza where two cathedrals were jammed next to each other next to a palazzo with a huge bell tower where the city’s offices are housed. The Duomo Vecchio (Old Cathedral) sits snug up against the Duomo Nuovo (New Cathedral), started in 1604. The Duomo Vecchio is a stunning example of a round Romanesque church dating from 1100, but my favorite part was going into the crypt and finding a complete tiny church from 762 with a forest of columns supporting the low ceiling.

At that point we were satiated but decided to push on and go to the Santa Giulia Museum, housed in a monastic complex of Longobard origin. In its 150,000 square feet the museum houses archeological finds from the Bronze Age on. But it’s not just about things in cases—there are two excavated Roman houses, the Longobard basilica of San Salvatore (8th century CE), the Choir of the Nuns (early 16th century) and the Romanesque Oratory of Santa Maria in Solario (12th century), where the nuns kept the monastery treasure, all skillfully incorporated into the museum.

Despite being spacey and hungry we had a reservation at the archeological park which is part of the huge museum complex and we were told by several people that we cannot be late. We go back outside and walked past a large Roman theater to meet our guide in front of the towering Roman Capitolium (73 CE).

Our guide assembled our group of twenty and took us down a staircase into a small room to watch a film for 5 minutes. This isn’t just about information—we were in an airlock where our germs and the humidity and temperature are being controlled before we can go into the next room which is a Roman sanctuary dating back to the early decades of the first century BCE with vibrantly-painted frescoes—some of the best preserved other than at Pompeii.

After we all have our fill we go back up and into the Capitolium where we again entered an airlock before we could see the Winged Victory, a bronze statue from the early years of the first century BCE, high on a pedestal in all her 6 foot 6 glory.

Lunch, a quick wander through a pristine Renaissance piazza, the Piazza della Loggia, the oddly beautiful Piazza della Vittoria, an Italian art-deco piazza created in the late 1920s, then home, exhausted but barely having scratched the surface of things to do.

Brescia is also home to the famous Mille Miglia vintage car race where some of the most rare antique cars in the world leave museums and are driven for 1,000 miles in Italy every year. Brescia and Bergamo are sharing Italy’s “capitals of culture” designation for 2023.