Best Of Archives - Page 2 of 15

Best Of Archives - Page 2 of 15 - Itch.world

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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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.

April 30, 2023 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The Mediterranean diet

I’m doing something next weekend that really scares me. I am joining a hike from La Verna back to our village. Ten miles a day, mainly up and down over steep terrain, two overnights. I lost a bit of my confidence for such things after the Chamonix helicopter rescue debacle. To prepare, I decided to pick up some things, like hiking boots, at Decathlon which is located in the big box store area of the larger town near us. I want to be fit and ready.

We timed our shopping excursion around having lunch in the next town to break up the routine. Although this town has a beautiful medieval center that includes Roman ruins we chose an easy to get to restaurant in the suburbs near the box stores, not our usual neighborhood for restaurants. John found a simple, family Italian place that people seemed to love in a modern building on a modern street, I Bottega.

We entered the restaurant with the best of intentions. It’s been long past time, for me, to tackle the toll on the waistline of eating and drinking whatever I want in Italy. John and I have been dialing it back and eating mainly vegetables and lean meats. Along the lines of the famed Mediterranean diet.

I keep reading about this mythical way of eating. Loads of fish. Fresh fruits and vegetables. Whole grains.
Little red and no processed meat. And I marvel. What Mediterranean are they talking about? I can drive to the body of water known as the Mediterranean in two hours so I think I am in the Mediterranean sphere of influence but you’d never know it from what people eat around here. Every menu is largely identical. A full meal includes appetizers, which are a couple of different toppings on slices of saltless Tuscan bread. The other choice is the cheese and salumi plate which is usually served on a cutting board (it’s called a tagliere, which means cutting board) with five or six different kinds of preserved meats—prosciutto, salumi and the like—and pecorino, in a few different stages of aging. This is followed by the pasta course, and then usually by meat. Almost always a steak as this region is famous for its Chianina beef, or pork. If you are lucky you can order a bit of sauteed spinach on the side. The other ubiquitous food staple is pizza. Where is the fish? The fruit? The vegetables? Where are these people eating this stuff because all the 90 year olds I see are enthusiastically eating prosciutto and pasta?

So back to the restaurant. We walk in, heads held high and backs firm in resolve. We arrive right at 12:30 so are very early and the only ones there. We had our dog and they, as with every other restaurant we’ve ever been in, are delighted to see her. A set designer would have a really hard time replicating this place. Every wall is covered with paintings of different genres, all bad. Between the paintings are shelves filled with nick nacks. Every real Italian restaurant has at least one TV going in every room, and this one is no exception. It’s tuned to a motorcycle race which, it turns out, is hard to look away from. Most Italian restaurants worth the time also have a radio blaring and so did this one.

There’s a huge menu on a board hanging on the wall with about eleven types of freshly made pasta and an equal number of sauces. The trouble with this presentation is that it takes skill and practice to know what you are allowed to pair with what. It looks easy but is a minefield. Pesto on pici? You’d be better off dead. But we are ignoring all of of the pastas and trying to figure out what virtuous bits of meat we will have with a simple salad or maybe some of the ever present sauteed spinach. We are strong and resolute.

Then a lovely, warm 40-ish waiter arrives. He explains that his mother has been working all morning on several types of fresh pasta to go along with some interesting sauces his grandmother makes. He is bearing two very full “amuse bouches” plates of large pieces of bread topped with a traditional chicken liver thing, but this time it was cooked nine hours by his grandmother and was delicious, and sauteed greens with sausage that was also lovely. And the two are more than enough for lunch but here we are and need to order. He says that mom will make us a sampling of what she’s whipped up this morning and we, of course, say yes. We order roasted duck to share and greens. There’s an open bottle of house wine on the table. Our pastas arrive in two small flying pans which are set on the table and are unusual and delicious. The duck is incredible. Yet another meal where the Mediterranean diet ideal hits reality. Over the course of the meal the restaurant becomes packed with couples and families, all happy to be there and content. Three more dogs walk in, one is a Bernese Mountain dog who doesn’t even begin to fit under the table.

And this place touches me and puts everything else in perspective. I marvel at this constantly—there is nothing obvious in this decor, or this cuisine that speaks to me on an inspirational level—stick me in most places in France and I feel inspired and want to live that way, but Italy doesn’t push the same buttons of aspirational desire. But there’s something even deeper here. The acceptance, warmth, and lack of self-aware positioning of this place, the pride in creating simple things of flour and water and meat and tomatoes, the purity of being whole-heartedly comfortable in who you are and what you do still take my breath away when I find it, which I do often. Maybe this way of being in the world is what’s actually at the heart of the famed Mediterranean diet.

Now wish me luck on my hike.

March 19, 2023 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Six things that are different in Italy

Observations from my recent, quick trip to the States. After ten years of living in Italy I am often amused by the cultural differences between the US and Italy, and in the ways I’ve gone Italian native.

I didn’t see a single Porsche hearse the whole time I was in California.

Nor a Maserati hearse like the one that has, on occasion, passed me in our village when I was going too slow.

All those wasted parking spots

I was in a multi-level parking garage with a friend in her car and we were driving around looking for a spot. It was painful for me (yes, actually, in a way) to pass all these perfectly good places to put a car that somehow had been overlooked by the people painting the little white lines. For instance, every corner. Huge spot for a car to come in at an angle with no possible problem for the cars on either side to back out. Screw the little white lines. AND NO ONE, NOT ONE SINGLE CAR, WAS PARKING THERE ANYWAY. And we continued spiraling up to level four. My driving has definitely become more Italian. (More observations, and photos, about the Italian gift for parking.)

But I want to buy something

I popped in and out of a variety of small stores during my visit. I’d always pause at the entrance, waiting for eye contact and a greeting by the sales clerk, and that faint nod of permission to enter. Never happened. I’d be the only one in the store and the person standing behind the counter, doing nothing, would not look up and say hi. Or goodbye. Completely ignored me. I have a strong response to this as it feels wrong.

Meanwhile, in France and Italy, one would never enter a store without greeting and being greeted—and not in that creepy “how can I help you” kind of way. Leaving a store in Italy usually involves multiple salutations. There’s almost always an exchange of grazie followed by an arrivederci or ciao, depending on how well you know them, topped off by a buona giornata or buona serata, wishing you a nice morning or afternoon.

This evolved from a long history from when most shopkeepers lived above their stores, so the shop below was an extension of their living space. I can imagine that one would have always paused and waited for that nod to enter, and would always say hello and goodbye. And this tradition of greeting still continues, without fail. Some people still live where they work. Many little businesses exist around us where the family lives over their workshop or small factory.

It’s also a great thing for visitors to France and Italy to pay attention to, otherwise it’s easy to come across as rude. And it just feels nicer to say hello and goodbye to the other humans in the room.

Live to work or work to live?

I got caught up with quite a few friends when I was back and a good bit of the conversation was around work. What was good, what was challenging, what was next. This is a pattern so ingrained in me that I barely notice when I slip back in, and only in retrospect do I realize that in my Italian life work rarely comes up. People talk about vacations, family, food, or complain about bureaucracy, weather, food, or family, but rarely, if ever, is work a topic of conversation. Work is what you do, but not who you are.

And it’s not just this way in Italy. I spend a lot of time in Paris and have been watching in fascination as Macron is attempting to reform the pension system by raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. (France is an outlier in retirement age for Europe, for example, Italy’s is at 67, Germany at 65 and 7 months, and the UK at 66.) France is weathering a storm of protest strikes showing that this reform is a dagger to the heart of many of the French people who see work as a means to an end and don’t want to do it a minute more than necessary.

Does this mean that they are all lazy losers? The story is more nuanced than that. Paris has a thriving startup scene which I would have expected to play by the US rules rather than the European ones. But talking with friends who migrated from the Valley to Paris and invest in startups, the informal rules in France are different. There is less pressure to work unbelievably long hours. The work day tends towards 9-5 or 6, but, according to my friends, the employees work with focus and productivity during this time. They noted that at many large and small technology companies they’d worked in America people were there for longer hours, largely because it was culturally impossible not to, but during those extended days there was some time spent basically goofing off. (This supports every scientific thing I’ve read about the brain’s attention span—it is hard work to think and we can’t sustain it for long spans of time with any effectiveness.) Our friends feel that there is a lot less of this in their subset of French companies. They want to work, get out, and live. This is a tiny, totally unscientific sample, but I found it to be an interesting perspective. For me, it’s probably like so much in life where the art is in the middle. I’d be very curious to hear you opinions on the productivity of the American work till you drop model, and if work at home has changed it or not.

Who is tipping who?

Everytime I am back in the US the screens asking for a tip with a transaction seem more ubiquitous. I get it for people making me something but still cringe a little when I am buying a bottle of water or something else packaged and all they need to do is ring me up. I understand the cost of living pressures and the need for a living wage but the awkward moment that arose every time I paid for anything really got to me, especially as I am out of practice tipping.

Here in rural Italy tipping is just not done. I’ve had wait staff run after me with 20 cents when I’ve rounded up. What happens in most transactions is that they knock something off the total—sometimes quite a bit—because you are a frequent customer. Say you are getting a pizza and it comes to €23 they will often say you can pay €20. And it doesn’t matter if you are paying by cash or card. It scales up from there for more major purchases or work on the house. This happens on a substantial percentage of all transactions, and I’ve even had it happen in big cities. The idea is that you are a valued customer and they want to show their appreciation for your business. Tipping is more common in larger cities and where there are tourists, but what’s appreciated, and I have never felt at all expected, is rounding up. Say a bill comes to €48 it’s nice to leave €50.

I didn’t get called tresora, bella, or cara once

I like these endearments probably more than I should. And it’s not just something that is directed to women. These forms of address are equal opportunity. And often men, even professionals, will call each other darling, greeting each other with a “Caro, come va?” Una bella cosa.

March 19, 2023 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Finding a castle out my kitchen window

Certain windows of our house, including the one over the kitchen sink, look out over the Valtiberina, or upper Tiber river valley. We are partway up a hill and look across the valley to a series of hills framing the other side, all of which are a part of my daily life but have never been properly investigated. There’s one distinct hill that I’ve had a passing curiosity about that I’ve never explored as I had no idea how to get there and it was never higher on the list than, say, laundry. The hill sits quite distinctly apart like a giant, softly melted Hershey’s kiss set down in the middle of the terrain.

Last Sunday a friend suggested that we do a hike around the Montedoglio castle, which I’d never heard of. When we arrived at the ruins I realized that I was on top of this distinct formation looking back towards our house. And that I have been looking out every day at a 1,000 year old castle with a rich history that I didn’t know was there. It passed from wealthy family to wealthy family, along with the Camaldoli monastery for a period, usually changing hands at the end of a family’s male line. The Germans took it over in WWII because of its strategic position and it was bombed by the British Royal Air Force during the Anglo-American advancement up the Italian peninsula. The Germans blew up what was left during their retreat and mined the ruins and fields.

One of the joys of living in Italy is that you never know if there’s a 1,000 year old castle right under your nose, or your kitchen window, and that Tuscany seems to always offer up more to explore.

February 19, 2023 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

Life is good

The week of San Valentino has made me think of those moments when you get slapped upside the head by someone’s kindness, humor or grace and it lights you up inside, and how those moments can feel like a kind of love. I’ve been lucky enough to have had, or witnessed, a couple of these in the last week or so.

A village mystery

Friends rent a house in the village on a busy, straight, steep street that is often lined by parked cars. The friends do not live in Italy full time but visit often from their home in Paris, so the house is frequently vacant. There’s a hardware store next door to the house that is run by three generations. Our friends have fallen in love with the hardware store family, and vice versa. The son of the hardware store looks after some of their potted herbs when they are gone which is often rewarded with freshly baked cookies upon their return.

They threw a fantastic party before the holidays with about 60 locals in attendance. As part of the decoration they’d purchased two inexpensive, potted cypress trees less than two feet tall to put on either side of the front door and festoon with lights. The little trees remained guarding the door after they returned to Paris, joining the potted herbs.

One morning they received a text from the hardware store son who had terrible news to report. One of the cypresses was missing, he was horrified to report. Several texts followed to the effect of “What is our village coming to? Who would do this? Take an innocent cypress? People know you! I am deeply ashamed and apologize on behalf of the village.” Minutes later more texts arrived, this time from a lovely woman who does gardening for both of us. She texts that she just drove by and saw that one of the cypress trees was missing. She wrote that she was deeply sorry and sad that such a fate had befallen the potted tree, and also wondered how the village could have gone so deeply wrong. And both were puzzled by the fact that only one tree was gone. What kind of person would do that? (The remaining cypress, and assorted herbs, grace the hero shot above.)

About half an hour later our friend received another text from the son with a video of his mother triumphantly walking up the hill carrying a mangled cypress tree in a broken pot. She was beaming. The village had been vindicated. The cypress had not been stolen at all but clearly a car had managed to entangle the cypress under a bumper while parking and dragged it down hill before it was dislodged.

Peace and civility returned to the village. All the small potted plants can sleep more peacefully now.

Paris

We go to BHV, the large, wonderful 160-year old department store in central Paris near the Hotel de Ville—its full name is the Bazaar de l’Hôtel de Ville. I am searching for a very unusual size fitted sheet to put on a bed we are due to take delivery of. We decided after 26 years of marriage we’d earned the right to a proper bed frame, which we’d never had in our married lives, always sleeping on a mattress with legs. Friends led us to a woman restoring antique bed frames and we’d fallen in love with a very wide one with a curved base, necessitating not only new sheets but a whole new mattress.

I asked the clerk for this uncommon size and she said she’d have to get it from the stockroom. Winter sales were in full swing and I asked if the sheet was on sale and she said unfortunately no. I was paying and she asked if I had a loyalty card and I instinctively replied no. Then I suddenly realized that I actually did—I’d signed up for one when I bought the mattress. I corrected myself and we went through a long process of finding my loyalty account. Phone number didn’t work, I was having a hard time remembering my French letters to spell my name. She finally found it and said, “Ah, you live in the 11th arrondissement.” I said no, thinking there must be a mistake and that she had the wrong Nancy Raff—oddly enough there is another Nancy Raff who lives in Paris—she used to work for HP while I was doing consulting with HP and we often got one another’s emails. On a trip to Paris years ago she and her husband had us over for a drink. The patient clerk pulled me around the counter and showed me the listing on her screen, which had my email address. I realized that the address was for the workshop where I had the mattress delivered and that the 11th arrondissement was actually correct.

By this point I am a candidate for the world’s worst customer. I can’t speak the language and have gotten even the simplest things wrong. Like being able to spell my name. And my address. But yet this clerk was still calm. She then said something about 130 euros. I was concerned. Was the mattress delivery not free? Did I owe 130 euros? She then managed to convey that I could apply 130 euros to the sale, taking the price of the sheet from 145 to a mere 15 euros—a much better price than what was on sale. At this point she starts punching the air saying “Fantastique!” “Incroyable!” I add a “C’est chouette” and call her a goddess. She is beaming and it has clearly made her day to pull off this coup.

She then asks what brand mattress we’d purchased, which, of course, I can’t remember. She walks with me all around the extensive mattress department until I locate the model of the one we’d bought at the far end of the store from her area. She calls over the mattress clerk to get the measurement of the mattress to make sure that the sheet would be deep enough.

The humanity and generosity of this woman lit me up for the rest of the day. Her job can’t be easy and her grace at dealing with my ineptitude and linguistic incompetence seemed boundless. Such a lesson in how the most mundane of encounters can add such texture and warmth to life.

Paris: Groupies

A friend kindly invited me to Le Meurice for high tea to celebrate my birthday. This hotel is one of the fanciest in Paris and tea there is an event. We were shown to one end of a table for four that we shared with two Parisian women in their seventies. We nodded hello and then retreated into our own worlds.

The food part of the tea service arrived on a stand with three levels—savory at the bottom, scones in the middle, and some very beautiful and unusual pastries on the top. We work our way from bottom to top, as instructed by our waiter, and by the time we get to the pastry level we can hardly even think about eating them. Which is a problem as the desserts are a product of the hottest pastry chef working in Paris right now, Cedric Grolet, and not eating the top tier was out of the question. One of the pastries looked like a miniature mango, with an airbrushed surface that was indistinguishable from the real thing, except for its size. It wasn’t marzipan but an amazing few layers of white chocolate and something crunchy around a core of mango puree. There was a small, round chocolate tart in the middle, covered with hazelnuts. Then on the other end was a round chocolate ball constructed to look like a nut, sprayed with gold. You can see the mango and the chocolate ball below.

This was about two hours in and the going was getting hard. We were gamely sampling the desserts and my friend was telling me a little about the pastry chef when I realized that the woman to my right was talking to me. She was saying under her breath “He was right here! He was just behind you. He was standing right behind you!” Her friend went on to say that they were “groupies” (said with that fantastic French “r”) of Cedric and came often. The woman to my right whips out her phone and starts to show me his impressive Instagram feed (@cedricgrolet). She knows every video and photo he’s posted.

They then proceed to give us some of the best life advice I’ve received in years. Ignore what the waiter says about the order in which to eat the food—who says it has to be savory to sweet. They’ve learned to always start with the desserts and work your way down. This may just apply to more than high tea.

January 8, 2023 In Best Of, Chow By Nancy

An adventure in Normandy

The older I get, and with a birthday coming up on Monday that is top of mind, the more I realize that one of the most necessary elements in my life is adventure. And one of my top adventure partners is Meg Ray, the unstoppable founder and cake boss at Miette. She’s in the planning stages of her third book which is on several chefs and bakers in France who are breaking all the rules and French traditions. When she suggested that we take an overnight trip to Normandy to visit the new restaurant of one of her favorite rebels, John, another friend, and I were in.

The Presbytere is in, as the name promises, an old church and parsonage on an estuary of the river Sienne, by the hamlet of Heugueville-sur-Sienne. The restaurant was started by British chef Edward Delling-Williams, who originally trained at St. John in London, then moved to Paris and opened a successful restaurant Le Grand Bain and bakery Le Petit Grain. He describes his new restaurant as part English pub, part Norman bistro, and he features the best of hyper-local ingredients prepared in sophisticated, yet earthy and simple ways.

Ed sat with us before dinner and revealed his reason for choosing this new location for his work. With three young children he wants to be as close to self-sufficiency as possible, growing much of his own food and being well away from urban centers. Thought-provoking actions from a self-declared collapsist.

We changed the subject to a lighter topic, namely where we should have lunch the next day, and he suggested one of his favorite places, a shack on the beach that serves only mussels, oysters, lamb, fries, and wine, called La Cale (I am afraid there’s no website to link you to). I didn’t need more persuading. We walked along the beach at high tide before the restaurant opened—it doesn’t take reservations and we were warned to get there early. It’s located next to a concrete boat ramp that leads into the sea and the “shack” description was not stretching reality. One whole wall is constructed of glass panels and swings out on hinges to embrace the wooden outside deck and protect it from wind, leaving the restaurant completely open on one side. There is a small stage and a big open fire that was crowded with pieces of meat on a grill. A hutch contains serve-yourself plates and utensils. All the walls are covered with paintings—badly-painted nudes, mostly female. I didn’t notice when we sat down that my seat placed my head right next to a penis in the painting behind me. For some reason the other side of the table found this amusing.

The place filled up almost immediately and we got bread, oysters, a steaming, enormous pot of mussels, lamb, and local rose wine, just as promised.

The band was a duo in their late sixties which upon closer inspection revealed that the lead singer was a transvestite. The meat-cooker was a person with a beard wearing hiking boots and a pink gingham dress. I was in heaven.

Midway though the meal, when I turned to the right to converse, I realized that I had unconsciously noted a series of large tractors going by, all loaded with standing men. It was like I was watching a parade going by through the small plastic window I was facing. The mysterious thing was that they were all headed towards the concrete ramp which ended in the sea a few yards beyond the restaurant. I was mystified about why I didn’t see any tractors coming back and where they all ended up.

We left the restaurant and when we looked towards the sea we were shocked. The tide had gone so far out that the water was now nearly invisible on the horizon, leaving a huge patch of revealed sand. And oyster traps. And men in waders who were loading the oysters into the tractors, which were now dispersed all over the still wet and boggy sand. In addition to the more organized oyster farmers were locals, mostly French grandmothers, armed with hoes, shovels, buckets, and wearing rubber boots headed out to harvest their own oysters in unfarmed areas.

In the afternoon we took the train back to Paris completing a perfect adventure which will stay with me for a long time.

January 8, 2023 In Best Of, Live By Nancy

The living nativity gets complicated

Those of you who have been with me for awhile know that my favorite part of the holidays is the impressive presepe vivente, or living nativity, that the neighboring village of La Ville puts on. I have missed it dearly the last two years when it was suspended due to Covid. It was epic—200 volunteers, 50 scenes of ancient Jerusalem lit by 1500 candles over a route over a kilometer long. It had it all—nasty Romans with a slave market, donkeys turning a oil press, women washing clothes in a stream, a field of lepers, culminating in a manger with a rotating Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus cast from families who had recently given birth in the local hospital.

I kept driving past the location eagerly looking for signs of activity and notices of the dates it would happen; it always ran a few days between Christmas day and Epiphany. But nothing.

Doing some research I discovered that there is a new parish priest in the church that was located at the center of the event. The church had always given space to the volunteers to house the sets and props, and to build and repair things from year to year. The new priest wanted to end the arrangement causing the organizers to find a new home. They mustered and moved it to another nearby village, but have a much smaller area to work with. We went and it was impressive how much they had managed to recreate, the Jerusalem part was very similar, but the truly magical bits that occurred out in open fields weren’t possible. They still had a few lepers, but it just wasn’t the same without a field of them, it turns out.

Should I send the new parish priest a Grinch outfit?

December 11, 2022 In Best Of, Roam By Nancy

A new favorite place: Fife, Scotland

So what were we to do? We had paid for tickets for all of us to convene in Edinburgh to drop Sebastian off at the University of St. Andrews. Four days before we leave everything changes and he is no longer going there. Cancel Scotland? “No way” says Donella, and she is usually always right, especially as we were already headed to London directly after to attend her graduation. Sebastian informs us that he is not going anywhere near St. Andrews. He’d just started bonding with it and making friends online when the last minute shift to Oxford happened and it was all too sudden and fresh to be able to be just a regular sightseer. I had happened upon a just-released Travel+Leisure article touting the wonders of Fife, Scotland, and I unilaterally decided that twelve miles or so outside of St. Andrews did not technically count as “near,” and a truly magical four days started.

The Fife peninsula lies between Edinburgh and St. Andrews, bounded by the North Sea, the Firth of Tay, and the Firth of Forth—say the last aloud and you’ll see that the fun has already started. The terrain is stunning, reminding me a bit of the Pt. Reyes peninsula in California, but with ancient ruins. It also happens to have a terrific food scene, along with villages right out of one of my favorite movies, Local Hero. I was in love. I haven’t been so strongly drawn to a place in years.

I booked us into one of eight tent cabins right on the sea at Catchpenny Lodges. The “tent” part is an exaggeration. Although they have canvas walls, nothing else is particularly tent-like—the floors are wood, there are two bedrooms with comfortable beds and good sheets, a charming sleeping loft, a bathroom with a rainforest shower, a well-outfitted kitchen with a wood-burning stove/oven, and a front deck with a grill and furniture from which to try to catch a glimpse of dolphins, humpback whales, and sea birds. And it’s totally off-grid. The best part was that in the few yards between the porch and the sea is the Fife Coastal Path, a 116-mile stretch of trail right at the edge of the water. We walked for a half hour to the left and climbed around the ruins of the 15th-century Newark Castle. To the right we walked past the ruins of the Lady’s Tower to the too-cute-to-be-true village of Elie where we had just-caught fish and chips.

The food options rivaled almost anywhere I’ve been in freshness, sophistication, and local sourcing—a few talented chefs and farmers moved to Fife during the lockdown from more urban locations and stayed. I didn’t get a whiff of food preciousness or pretensions either, quite the opposite of what sometimes drives me nuts about food in the Bay Area. Our first dinner was in the tiny fishing village of Lower Largo at the Crusoe, which also has a few rooms and is located right on the beach. We had a memorable candlelit dinner in our own tiny, dark-blue wainscoted room, complete with a fireplace in 17-century pub, The Kinneuchar Inn, with a hyper-local menu that changes daily. But one of my favorite food finds was the Andross Farm shop right at the end of the driveway to our tent cabin. The family farm raises grass-fed beef, mutton, lamb, and vegetables and has a lovely store that features their own bounty as well as loads of freshly prepared meals and pastries—perfect for going back to the cabin and cooking. I loved learning the intricacies of cooking on a wood-fired stove and oven.

And way too soon our few days in Fife were over. We were on to London for a couple of days for Donella’s graduation from UCL, then onto Paris to join friends for an overnight trek to Normandy to go to a new restaurant that one of their friends had started. More on that later, including finding one of the most memorable restaurants I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating at.

And no, we never set foot in St. Andrews. But I can’t wait to. This area of the world is calling me back.