Parisian Adventures

Over the President’s Day weekend, we decided to do our part to make sure the terrorists don’t win and visited Paris. We ended up having a good time, even if it feels like we barely scratched the surface.

When you arrive through Charles de Gaulle airport and take the commuter train into the city, you go through a lot of ground that doesn’t scream “Paris”. You follow the highway, and the highway has a lot of warehouses and undeveloped land around it. It doesn’t look any different than anything you’d see in the outskirts of any reasonably modern city. The stop we got off at was a shopping mall, so we had to go up several escalators before we actually saw central Paris.

After getting checked into our room, which was an apartment we rented on the fourth floor of a building (too many stairs!), we began to explore despite the dreary, rainy weather. We began with a tour of a wine cave that was set up as an interactive museum, but not all the exhibits worked right and weren’t all that great. What was great was the tasting at the end because the person doing it was very knowledgeable about French wine. We’ve gotten the gist of how Italian wine goes, but French wine was entirely new to us. Some quick schooling was a good thing.

For dinner the first night, we decided to do something typically Parisian: get Chinese takeout. We’ve not had any since before we left Illinois, so it was a nostalgia trip as much as a meal. Paris is pretty cosmopolitan, and there is a definite Chinese influence in it. It wasn’t much past Chinese new year, so there were red lanterns about and a few marketing posters for it as well. There were plenty of Chinese tour groups visiting just like us too.

We began Saturday with a trip to see Old Paris. We first went to Sainte-Chapelle, which is a beautiful old chapel on Île de la Cité. Its claim to fame is its extensive stained glass windows, and fortunately they had just been cleaned last year. It was a wonder of its day, and it is the sort of place you go to feel the beauty and majesty of God.

From there it was a short walk to Notre-Dame, where they were holding mass. We got to hear the pipe organ played and heard some choir music as well.

It also was beautiful, and it’s very different from Italian cathedrals. It is all gray stone on the inside without the busy colored marbles of Italian churches.

And while it did have some art and sculpture, it wasn’t covering 75% of the wall space. We both prefer the style of Notre-Dame, as it’s not as busy and has aged much better as a design.

After a quick croissant stop….

Hot Chocolate, cafe au lait, and a few croissants… three times more expensive in Paris than Naples!

…we hit our scheduled Eiffel Tower appointment.

It is bigger than I (David) had thought it would be. Unfortunately, it’s been painted an ugly brown color. (Danielle’s note: the Torre di Pisa is more impressive). We waited in two different lines despite having a reserved time, which was annoying, but we did make it all the way up to the top. It was windy, but fortunately the rain had subsided for the most part while we were in line and in the tower.

From the very top, you can see just about every notable landmark in the city. Paris looked like it sprawled out further than Athens did. It wasn’t as clear a day as we had hoped, but the view was still remarkable.

The Arc du Triomphe is right in the middle

We then did another Parisian thing, but a more traditional one: we ate French food in a cafe and watched people go by.

I had French onion soup, or “onion soup” as they call it there, while Danielle had vegetable soup. It was the best French onion soup I’ve had, and the experience was sullied only by the smokers around us. Smoking has been banned in Parisian cafes, but enforcement is spotty. The smoking wasn’t as bad as in Greece, but it was close. The stereotype of the French and their cigarettes is unfortunately still a well founded one.

After lunch, we walked around a bit, exploring the obscenely expensive Parisian shops, including a chocolate store that sold every variation on chocolate you could think of.

We also watched the traditional crepe being made by two chefs set up along the sidewalk…

…and then bought the world’s most expensive macaroons in Paris’s most Parisian macaroon shop, Laduree.

We capped off the day with Taste of Paris. It’s run by the organization that puts on Taste of _______ events in cities all over the world. It was in Le Grand Palais, an exhibition hall that opened in 1900. I guess they were still calling new things a “palace” despite the monarchy having gone away 30 years before it opened.

Taste of Paris was a lot of fun. We sampled food from six different restaurants and had enough credits left over for a glass of wine as well. Our favorite food was a crab dish from a restaurant called Salt. It was the best crab either of us have had since we lived in Virginia Beach for Danielle’s post-boot camp schooling. The chocolate dessert we had was pretty great too. The French are experts at chocolate and macaroons.

This is not the chocolate dessert (we ate that before we remembered to take a picture), it is the world’s most expensive and probably most delicious egg. With truffles and some fancy cauliflower mash.

Sunday morning brought what was probably our favorite single thing we did: the Bastille Market. On Thursdays and Sundays, there is a large street market beginning at the large roundabout where the Bastille prison once stood (see: Revolution, French).

It was like other European street markets we’ve been to, only in this one we got a chocolate chip baguette, another croissant, and a Nutella crepe.

It had plenty of produce and fresh meat and eggs, but it also had shops with non-food items including (severely overpriced) scarves that we didn’t buy.

It was fun to stroll around, watch the people be French, and feel for a little bit like we were Parisians too.

Following the market, we hopped on the Metro and took it over to the Arc du Triomphe. No other place we went to exemplifies the fact that there isn’t just one Paris.

Here was a monument to the short lived glory of Napoleon’s empire being circled by Fiats and Renaults. Look one way, and you see the monument to the industrial age that is the Eiffel Tower. In another direction, it’s the traditional styled apartment buildings with cream-colored stone façades and gray roofs. Turn a little more and you see the modern office towers where the real business of the city happens. Spin around to your back and you see the Champs-Élysées with old gardens and a garish modern Ferris wheel at the end. Under it are people speaking at least a half dozen languages. Paris’s past, present, and future are all there.

Standing under the Arc, looking at the Champs Elysees, and watching the cars all fight for right of way

We indulged a bit more of the past after that and made our obligatory Louvre visit.

We waved at the Venus de Milo… (she didn’t wave back)

and we smiled at the Mona Lisa…

David’s picture…

Danielle’s picture… a far more accurate representation

We looked at 4,000-year-old artifacts while our Nintendo 3DS XL audio guides told us about them. We walked through as much as we could until our feet and attention spans could take no more, and it was barely any of it.

David’s attention span is a little longer, obviously….

When you look at the incredible size and lavishness of the place and then remember it was a palace before it was a museum—and then remember that several monarchs were mentioned inside who didn’t live there but rather at other palaces—and you kind of wonder why it took until the late 1700s for the people to revolt.

The last thing we did was get a proper three-course French dinner at a restaurant.

It wasn’t anything overly fancy; the decor included old magazine pages glued to the ceiling, for instance. The atmosphere was nice, though, and the food was excellent. Myth confirmed: the French are great at cheese, steak, and crème brûlée.

(Italians are better at wine, though)

Heading out on Monday morning was a little tough because Paris felt more comfortable to us than a lot of Italy does. It helps that more people speak English there than most places in Italy, but it’s also far less homogenous than much of Italy is. Everywhere we go here, it’s mostly just Italians. In Paris, we saw people and heard accents from every continent. It’s far more like America in that way.

I’m not sure if we’ll get back before Danielle gets orders to somewhere else because there are lots of other places we haven’t been to on our list to visit. Paris was a great time, though, and one of the highlights of our time here.

Until our next adventure, au revoir!

it’s all greek to me…

Back in November, we were excitedly planning a trip to Paris, France, for my winter leave (aka vacation). We’d finally found a dog sitter we trusted and were anxious to get out of the country! About one week after we purchased our plane tickets and put a downpayment on an apartment, the Paris attacks happened and the military banned all travel to France. Not knowing how long the travel ban would be in place, we set our sights on a new European getaway—Greece!

We left early in the morning for our flight from Naples to Athens and then boarded a train to a port to catch the ferry to the island of Hydra, a beautiful little piece of paradise south of the mainland of Greece. Having traveled by car, plane, train and boat, we sat down to enjoy our first Greek dining adventure- a Greek salad. Or as the Greeks call them, salads.

There’s no potato salad hiding at the bottom…

Along with 6 new feline friends… one thing Rick Steves doesn’t mention about the island of Hydra is the cats. They’re everywhere, they’re abnormally nice, and they’re well fed and healthy. It’s unnerving.

The island was fortified to protect them from pirates.

Not only do they get handouts from tourists, but the fisherman toss fish scraps to them AND residents of the island regularly set food out. Everywhere we turned, there were at least three cats chattering away at us.

Since we went in the middle of the winter, most of the shops were closed and the island was all but deserted, save for the 2,000 or so residents. Instead of shopping, we stuck to hiking the island and enjoying Greek food and beer (which isn’t as good as American, but still better than the Italian Peroni).

A block of fried feta with honey and sesame seeds… heavenly!

Part of our island adventure was going for a horseback ride up the mountains to a monastery where two Greek Orthodox nuns invited us into their home for Greek coffee and cookies.

We had the pleasure of observing the Greek Orthodox Epiphany tradition of swimming in the freezing waters for a cross that been paraded through the town, blessing all the homes. Only boys are allowed to partake in the tradition, and the first to reach the cross is given an extra blessing to have extra good luck for the year.

We were suppose to leave Hydra after 2 days, but a storm blew through the night before our scheduled departure that canceled all ferries to and from the island. We were stuck for another 24 hours. Luckily the folks that owned our apartment were more than eager to collect another night’s rent, so we weren’t sleeping on the streets. With even fewer shops and stores open (the bad weather shut the place down) we wandered around the town and the trails again. We clocked about 9 miles of walking every day we were there, with about 60 flights of stairs climbed!

No filter. The water is that blue!

Cars aren’t allowed on the island, so people walk and use donkeys to transport their goods.

Local grocery store

Not a bad view for your front door…

Southern mainland of Greece behind us.

When we returned to Athens, our hotel begrudgingly refunded us one night’s rate, but we had to majorly rearrange our plans. With one day left, we were only able to see the Acropolis and Parthenon, the Monastiraki Flea Market (a sight to behold!), and the Panathenaic Stadium.

The Acropolis is probably smaller than you think it is (Wikipedia says just over 7 acres). It stands tall over the city, but it doesn’t have much surface area. It was mainly just a place for temples to gods—and later, one Roman emperor—with the main life of the city taking place elsewhere. Only four structures still stand on it anymore, with the famous Parthenon being one of them.

Standing in front of the Parthenon

They’re constantly working on restoring the structures, so the west side of the Parthenon was covered in scaffolding. The picture here is of the east side, which made for a better shot. The Greek ruins we saw in southern Italy at Paestum (a picture of which is in the last post) actually have temples that are in better shape. The Parthenon is bigger, but the Paestum ones are nicer and more complete.

One of the more impressive sights on the Acropolis was Athens itself. It just goes on for as far as you can see in every direction.

 

After returning to the heart of the city for lunch and the flea market, we finished the day at the Panathenaic Stadium. It’s the largest all-marble stadium in the world and where the first modern Olympics took place in 1896. It’s also where the first Olympic marathon finished (beginning of course in Marathon, Greece). They even used it for archery and as the marathon finishing line in the 2004 Olympics.

This was probably the coolest part of our Athens trip for me (Danielle). Current day Athens does an annual marathon that begins in Marathon and ends in this same stadium (dad, you in?).

In the Panathenaic stadium with the Acropolis in the background.

All in all, not a bad way to spend 5 days!

Next up… Paris!

Buon Anno from Napoli!

I’ve been reminiscing over our last year here in Italy as the calendar just turned over to 2016. Obviously, moving to an entirely different country can be (and was!) overwhelming, and we’ve been on one incredible rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows since landing in Napoli almost one year ago.

The truth of the matter is this—living in Italy is wonderful, but it’s not (dare I say) for us.

But at the same time, we’ve met new friends and learned an entirely new culture and it’s been incredible and life changing and perfect.

I think this post would best be narrated by pictures from our adventures from 2015…

Work for me (Danielle) has been fulfilling. I’ve been TDY to Spain, France, Finland, and Estonia. I’ve played for folks who didn’t speak a word of English but understood the language of music. After playing the Estonian anthem in one Russian town, one woman had tears in her eyes because she remembered a time not too long ago when you could be shot for listening to their anthem.

Finland

Memorial Day in Draguignan, France

My biggest fan!

We’ve been doing our fair share of traveling throughout Italy as well. One of the coolest things about our travels is how welcomed we are even though we have 2 four legged companions. A lot of people discouraged us from bringing the dogs with us to Italy, but I’m so glad we ignored them. Italy might be the most dog friendly place in the world!

Enjoying lunch from the comfort of a lap

Walking up to the Duomo in Pisa, dog on back and underfoot

We had to get the obligatory ‘holding the tower’ up picture with the dogs. Yes, they hated it.

It’s almost hard to remember all the places we’ve been this year! We went to Tuscany four times and spent time in six different cities plus hiking in Cilento, several trips to Amalfi, Rome, and Alberobello. It’s more travel than we ever did back in the states, but experiencing this country has been rewarding.

A brunello winery in southern Tuscany

Visiting the old Greek ruins in Paestum

One of my biggest concerns coming here was whether or not there would be adequate vet care. I can honestly say the Italian vet out here we’ve worked with has given our dogs the best care they’ve ever received. Over the summer we had a big scare with Max that sent us up to see neurology and cardiology specialists at the Vet Hospital in Rome. Compassion knows no language barriers—they treated us with the utmost care and professionalism even though we couldn’t speak Italian.

The people everywhere in this country have been great to us, really. Our landlord looks after us here, and many of the people we met whether in the north or south of Italy were warm and welcoming. There still were a few people who aren’t so nice just like you’d find anywhere, but the hospitality of Italy is no myth.

The only thing better than traveling is getting to travel with your best friend, who was able to come over for a visit over the summer!

Sitting on an ancient column at the Flavian Amphitheater (Roman ruins)

And of course the food has been incredible, but words do that no justice!

Neapolitan Pizza

Bruschetta

Eggs in tomatoes? Why not!

We’ve had a pretty great first year here, and we’ve come pretty far in finding our place in Italian life. But it’s not always fun and exciting. We still have moments of intense homesickness where we want nothing more than to feel like we fit in. We miss certain conveniences of American life that we always took for granted (the commissary has been out of half and half for almost a month), and celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas was challenging without family and Stateside friends. There are many wonderful things about living here in Italy, and we’re certainly taking full advantage of them. But at the same time, we’re counting down the months until our return.

For our second year abroad, we plan on doing as much travel out of the country as possible. First up will be Greece and France, and I’ll be sure to come back and share our pictures!

Until then, Buon Anno and Ciao!

PS- check out the video of the New Year’s Eve fireworks from the rooftop of our home!

 

The Trulli Houses

Having been to the Tuscany region three times already, we decided to change it up and head to Puglia on our next mini-vacation. Puglia is about three and a half hours east of Naples in the “heel of the boot.” Our getaway destination was just south of Bari, in the town of Alberobello—the trulli houses.

Trulli houses (or trullo, singular) are thought to be the product of a tax dodge. The houses were built without mortar so that when the tax assessors were coming, they could be dismantled and therefore not counted as dwellings. The feudal lords that lived in the area had permanent houses, but peasants that worked the land lived in trulli.

You can see in the picture above that the trullo on the left is of the original construction and doesn’t have mortar. Trulli were built all the way up to the 20th Century, the newer constructions did include mortar(as seen on the right).

With pretty much no agenda, we rolled into town around 5:30 and got checked into our very own Trullo house, which was approximately the size of a shoe box.

We had to duck to get into the front door. The small cutout to the left was the only window in the place.

About two feet from the bed was a little table and an adjacent room with a tiny shower and a sink, toilet, and bidet.

The main attraction in Alberobello are the trulli houses. We spent almost the entire next day wandering around the town, admiring the tiny little huts that use to house peasants back in the day.

Of course, no Italian tourist town is complete without a smorgasbord of artisan craftsman shops and a few dozen knickknack shops. Some shops were really, really cool, like one where the lady wove all of her own scarves, rugs, sweaters, etc.

Other trulli houses displayed your touristy gadgets. We found this particular sales pitch to be quite entertaining:

The best part of visiting the trulli houses were wandering around and finding hidden gems, like this beautiful alley:

Could you imagine living in a home this small?

I just couldn’t stop taking pictures of this town full of little, pointy houses.

There was the Church of Sant’Antonio, constructed in the 1920s to look like the trulli houses in the district.

The was another church, dedicated to the Medici saints, built in the late 1800s on the other side of town. It looks nothing like a trullo house, but not everything in Alberobello does.

As with every region in Italy, the Puglia region is famous for certain types of wine, Primitivo and Salice Salentino being two big ones. Primitivo doesn’t mean “primitive”. It refers to the fact that the primitivo grapes are harvested earlier in the season than any others. Salice Salentino gets its name from the small town where most of it is from. Of course, we felt obliged to investigate the local sapore of Alberobello in one or two cantinas.

On our way out of town, we learned a very important lesson on Italian parking. When we checked out of our room and headed to the car to drive home, we found we had been blocked in by someone who double parked. After sitting in the car for a good 5 minutes, a kind young Italian man walked over and gave us some advice.

“In Italia, you must play the trumpet to move the car.”

Who knew? Within 10 seconds of “playing the trumpet” (or honking the horn), an irritated old Italian man walked over, muttering something akin to “yeah yeah I’m moving it, hold your horses.”

It was great to get out of Naples for a bit and explore the only place on earth that has trulli houses. Italy is full of cool small towns like this.

Lucca and Pisa

Not long ago, we took our second weekend trip. This time, we went to the northern edge of Tuscany where we saw Pisa and Lucca.  It took over five hours to drive up there, but it was worth it.

Instead of staying at a bed and breakfast, we decided to stay in an agriturismo. Agriturismos are small farms here that also rent out rooms to visitors. The Italian government regulates who can and cannot call themselves an agriturismo, the prime requirement being that the owners must be actual farmers. If it’s just an old farmhouse but no one grows anything anymore, it’s not an agriturismo. The view from right outside our room.

We stayed at Agriturismo Il Leopoldino, situated right in between Pisa and Lucca, and up a pot-hole ridden gravel road that challenged our poor little Prius on every journey to and from.

The woman who runs the agriturismo, Arianna, warmly welcomed us to her home, and her son quickly became good friends with Max and Roscoe. Her husband Giulio works at a winery down the road. On the premises they also own animals, have a vegetable garden, and make their own olive oil. Benny the horse surprised us one evening as we were eating dinner and enjoying the fresh air. Roscoe wasn’t exactly a fan.

After a good night’s sleep, we set off for our second adventure (the first being the drive up the road to find their farm)—Pisa! We told you that Montepulciano was a bit touristy, but that was in the sense that it was staged nicely for tourists. Pisa is touristy in the same way that Times Square is. It draws visitors from all over the world, there are people selling knockoff fashion items in the street, and there are street hustlers looking to finagle some Euro from you. In fact, we decided to hedge our bets with the parking lot hustler and donated a euro to his cause in hopes he would keep an eye on our car and not break the windows himself.

The city of Pisa is, for the most part, an unremarkable college town that doesn’t stand out much from other Italian cities. The site where that description falls apart is the Field of Miracles. In one giant lawn, you can see Pisa’s three main attractions: the baptistry, the duomo (Cathedral), and the tower.

In the foreground, the baptistry. Behind it, the duomo, and poking out behind that, the tower.

The Pisa cathedral is a magnificent structure that serves as the final resting place for the Saint Raneiri and the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII.

The cathedral is one of the busier duomos we’ve seen, in that there is a lot to take in no matter where you look. Art, sculptures, and striped marble columns compete for your eye no matter where you go.

The second attraction is the baptistery for the cathedral, needed because back in the day only baptized people could enter a church. It has pretty amazing acoustics, as a powerful enough singer can perform multi-part harmonies by himself or herself thanks to how long notes sustain.

A rather scrawny representation of John the Baptist.

The final big attraction is the cathedral’s bell tower, which if you look closely enough (and you really have to concentrate on this one) you can see that it happens to tilt over a little bit.

The obligatory “pushing the tower back over” picture.

The Leaning Tower really does look like it should fall over. It’s hard to get a picture that adequately shows how freaky it looks in person. Part of it is that the tower began to lean after only the first three floors were complete, and so the builders made the upper floors taller on one side than the other to try to help stabilize the structure. To fully appreciate the lean, you have to stand at its base and only look at the base. The door to get inside.

When you climb the tower, you can really feel the lean as you go up. There is a short part near the bottom where, as you go up, it almost feels like you’re going level or even downstairs despite what you’re actually doing. No picture from the top really shows off the lean, but it does offer nice views of the other buildings.

All in all, Pisa did not disappoint, despite its Disney World type feel.

After leaving Pisa, we went to Buonamico (in English, “Good Friend”), a winery that sits just to the west of Lucca. It wasn’t as unique as the one we went to at the end of the Montepulciano trip, but it was still an interesting place.

It made its own olive oil as well, which is common for the region. The owners of the place were from the family of Filipo Berio, as in the olive oil you can buy in any grocery store in America, but it had stopped being a supplier for the company sometime in the last 20 years. We didn’t buy any of their oil because, no surprise here, it basically tasted like the standard grocery store oil you’d get from Filipo Berio. It was still a relaxing event for all involved.

Especially the canines…

On Saturday we went into Lucca. It’s bigger than Montepulciano, and by the time we got there, it was much busier too as tourist season is upon us. Its claim to fame is that it is well preserved and has its Renaissance walls intact thanks to skilled diplomacy that kept it out of any wars since before those walls came to be. The top of the wall is now a park, and we walked some of it to start the day. It is known for being car free and being a place where you rent bicycles to get around, but it had no fewer cars than Montepulciano did.

The next thing we did was visit the church of San Giovanni. It’s no longer a working church; any art that can be removed has been, and now it mainly serves as a concert hall for the music of Puccini, Lucca’s most famous citizen. What makes it special is that the church was built in the 1200s over a church from the 700s, which was built over an older church from the 400s, which was built over a Roman structure from the 200s, which was built over another Roman structure from the first century B.C.

Got that? A church built on top of a church, built on top of another church, which happened to be built on top of an old Roman structure which was built on top of an even older Roman structure, originating from a time before Jesus was born.

You can walk through the excavations underneath the floor of about a third of it, and colored markers show you which aspects belong to which periods.

This is the baptistery of the church from the 400s.

We hit a few other highlights of the city. The Torre Guinigi was one of them. Aristocratic families used to build towers in their homes to climb up for security, and that one is the only one left in the city. It has trees at the top, making it unusual for similar surviving towers in the country.

I know, once you’ve seen one bird’s eye view of an ancient Tuscan village, you’ve seen them all…

We strolled up Via Filungo, the main shopping street in the city. We also saw Piazza Anfiteatro, which was once a Roman amphitheater but now only retains the oval shape.

That night we finished back at the agriturismo where Arianna made us a delicious dinner in the typical Tuscan style.

Antipasto enjoyed with her husband’s wine and the beautiful view.

We ate in the family dining room as she cooked the courses and chatted with us. It felt like being a part of an Italian family to stay there. The next morning we shared breakfast with our host’s four other guests, a couple from Germany and another couple from Northern Italy. We did the best we could in communicating in our three different languages, but basically discovered two things: the German couple thought Italian breakfasts were far too sweet, and the Italian couple thought Napoli is the craziest city in Europe and never want to visit.

After our “dessert” breakfast and lamenting on the downfalls of Naples, the six of us followed Arriana’s husband, Guilio, down to his winery for a private tour. After the tour he gave us a personal tasting where he taught us the basics of harvesting grapes, the best way to store wine, and of course the best way to drink wine. It was a great way to end a nice, relaxing weekend.

Montepulciano

We finally had a three-day weekend to travel, with previous opportunities here either taken away by Danielle’s work or a lack of transportation. We decided to do our first overnight trip to Montepulciano, a hill town in southern Tuscany. It’s only about a four-hour drive, which isn’t as close as Amalfi but still doesn’t make for a bad drive. We went with a few other friends, making six total on the trip (plus two dogs!).

The most stressful part of the trip was driving through the streets of Montepulciano. Italian road signs can be a little difficult to read.

On the way up, we stopped for a short time in Tivoli. It’s an eastern suburb of Rome, and we toured Hadrian’s Villa. It’s the former home of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who didn’t like the other imperial palace and wanted to live outside the city.

David standing in front of the pool and gardens with Roscoe Il Cane.

The ruins were pet friendly, too!

It was cool to visit, but the ruins are in bad shape. They’ve had a rough go of it between being pillaged around the time of the empire’s fall to having people plunder its treasures to put in museums or to decorate their own villas to having nature itself overtake the site for some time.

It’s nowhere near as well preserved as Pompeii is, but it also wasn’t the site of a volcano killing thousands either.

While we did the sight-seeing, Max rolled around in the grass and soaked up the sun.

After that we went up to Montepulciano. It has two main areas. One is the Piazza Grande, where the cathedral and a few other important historical buildings are. The other is the Centro Corso, a street with a lot of shops. The B&B we stayed at was just off the Piazza Grande, and it featured an amazing view out of the window.

The Osteria del Borgo Bed and Breakfast, right on the main part of town. (Can you spot the Prius?)

View from our room. This was the point where I (Danielle) declared I was never returning to work and would live here forever.

Having arrived in the later afternoon, we didn’t get out to doing a whole lot. We checked into our hotels, admired the setting sun and the scenery at an overlook, and then went to dinner.

I’m (Danielle) thoroughly impressed we managed to drive through these tight and windy streets without leaving blue paint on any of the buildings. Must have had a good driver…. 

Most of the group just did a fixed price deal where enjoyed a sampling of Tuscan foods including pici pasta and steak. Beef is a common element of Tuscan cuisine, unlike that of our home in Campania where there aren’t many cows.

An enthusiastic thumbs up for pici pasta!

Saturday was our day to explore the city.

It was built on a ridge made primarily out of tufa, which is a soft stone that’s easy to dig through. The Etruscans dug out tombs in it before the Romans took the area, and people dug into it long after the empire fell. As a result, the city has wine cellars all over the place. I’d guess more streets have at least one underground chamber for aging wine than don’t, and all of the cellars have shops above them to sell what’s been resting below.

We looked at a few different cellars through the day, and they all have different approaches to letting visitors in. They range from  letting people just wander through on their own to doing a guided tour complete with staged rooms and theatrics about sharing their most prized possessions (i.e. their products) with their new “friends” (i.e. the tourists).

Montepulciano is famous for its vino nobile, which must come from certain grapes, grown from and aged in the Montepulciano area. It’s downright mouth-watering delicious.

One thing they had in common was trying to claim to be the oldest something or other. One has the oldest cellar. Another has the oldest field of grapes. Another has the oldest Etruscan tomb inside. You get the idea. You have to be the oldest at something. You can find these places both off of Piazza Grande and Centro Corso, and we visited some near both places.

This wine glass is juuuuust perfect.

We wandered over to Centro Corso and did the tourist thing of looking through the shops. Some were overpriced knick-knack merchants like you’d find anywhere, but there were some gems. We discovered a shop that sells what is now the best balsamic vinegar we’ve ever tasted. We picked up some good olive oil and got some lunch there as well.

Late in the afternoon we made it up to the top of the Palazzo Comunale (a bell tower on top of the city government building), and it offered a spectacular view of the area. Montepulciano is already on a hill, so going to the top of the tallest building offered amazing sights.

We also went down a road that has craftsman shops for things like wood, mosaics, and gold. The shop that interested us was the coppersmith’s shop, but unfortunately everything was really expensive.

Dinner that night was at a place outside the old city and down in the area where the locals actually live. It was a place known for steak, and it didn’t disappoint. Four of us shared a nearly four-pound fiorentina steak, and we had the giant T-bone to take home for the dogs.

One quick note- we found Montepulciano to be incredibly dog friendly. They came with us everywhere. They were allowed in restaurants, all the wine cellars and tastings, the shops, they even came up the bell tower with us!

Finally on Sunday, we stopped at the Salcheto winery on the way out of town for a tour and some lunch. It has plenty of rows of grapes to look at, but what makes it unique it that it’s an environmentally friendly operation. It uses sunlight almost exclusively for lighting the cellars via mirror tubes, uses rocks and a vertical garden to keep the inside cool, and it reclaims and purifies all of its water. There was more things of interest as a result than just “so here are our large wooden barrels” for the fourth time. It also made excellent brunch and had good wines to boot.

Tuscan vineyards. Can you taste the wine?

Another view of the Tuscan vineyards with the old city of Montepulciano sitting on the hill top.

It was a relaxing weekend, and we definitely plan to go back to Montepulciano. Tuscany is gorgeous, and we’ll be exploring more of it than just that one city too. Danielle might just have a new favorite place on earth, and I can’t complain much about it either.

Salerno, Vietri, and Solopaca

Homesickness has begun setting in these past few weeks. In an attempt to ward off la nostalgia degli Stati Uniti, we’ve been doing our best to get out and travel as much as possible. And even though we’ve kept mainly to day trips, it’s been helpful in reminding us of how beautiful this country is and how rich the culture is that we have the opportunity to experience every single day.

Our rooftop view

Last weekend, David and I headed out for our first Neapolitan adventure, sans guidance from the experts (a.k.a. people who have been stationed here more than 6 months). We were headed to the town of Salerno, about an hour east of Naples off the Amalfi Coast.

Proof of parallel parking! 

I should mention that when you live in a foreign country, everything is an ordeal. From the language barrier to the different styles of driving to the crazy (and I mean crazy!) roads, even the smallest, most mundane tasks you take for granted in the States are exhausting. Going to the grocery store, filling your car with gas, parking (that one might be more of a Neapolitan joy), eating at a restaurant… the list goes on.

So that gives you some perspective on how we felt getting into our car and heading to Salerno. Our goal was to make it there and back in one piece. We were absolutely fine with whatever happened in between (but really hoped that would not include our car getting broken into).

Our efforts were greatly rewarded when we pulled into town and saw the beautiful waterfront path and quaint cobblestone streets, complete with your quintessential Italian cafes and street vendors.

An ancient aqueduct runs through the town—how cool is that?!

We wandered the town with nothing more in hand than Google Maps, poking into stores and shops here and there. We happened along an open-air market where small business owners were selling meats, cheese, produce, honey, and a plethora of other tasty goods local to the Campania area.

I also had a lovely conversation with an Italian man, who first thought I was a student, and then thought I was a teacher, and then just gave up on trying to figure out what I was doing here. I can’t be sure exactly what was said because it was a mixture of broken Italian and French (he didn’t speak any English but we both knew a little French), but he was very kind.

You can see the street slopes downward into the ocean.

We also had a handful of Italians ogle over the Twin Terrors. We heard lots of “piccolini” and “molto tranquille, brava!” and had to explain with our broken Italian that Max was in fact blind and not just sleeping.

Outside of the Duomo of Salerno

I’d also like to take a moment to say just how incredibly dog friendly we’ve found this country to be. Sure strays are everywhere, but the doggies lucky enough to be doted on by Italians get the royal treatment. We’ve been in cafes and shops with them, seated in restaurants with them (they did tack on an extra cover charge for the dogs, but luckily they only counted them as one person’s worth of coperto), we even took them into a 1000 year old cathedral and no one batted an eye!

Roscoe offered to help finish our pizzas

Roscoe also wanted to remind us that “God” is just “dog” spelled backwards…

After lunch, we headed to the neighboring town of Vietri, famous for its ceramic creations and of course, its breathtaking views.

The following day, we invited some friends who are currently car-less to join us on an outing to Cantina di Solopaca. The Cantina is a giant farmer’s co-op that collects grapes and turns them into the most delicious wine you’ve ever tasted.

When you drive in, you see huge “silos” of wine in the parking lot. And you can buy your wine from gas pumps. Yes, you read that right. Gas pumps. It’s spectacular.

They were kind enough to offer us wine tastings of some of their bottled wine (and later their gas pump wine).

Quick lesson on wine drinking—there are four types of wine consumed here in Italy. The lowest tier and quality is called “vino da Tavola,” or table wine. The next one up is vino a indicazione geografica tipica, or IGT, which is wine produced in a specific region. After that is vino a denominazione di origine controllata (DOC), which are also produced in specific regions, but they must fit specific rules designed to preserve the traditional winemaking methods of those regions. Finally, there’s vino a denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG), which is like DOC wine but made under even more regulations.

After over 30 liters of wine purchased (between three 5 gallon jugs and a dozen or so bottles, some for us and some for friends who couldn’t come), we patted ourselves on the back for a successful outing. We then almost got into a car accident because the navigator told the driver to go the wrong way on a one way road. The navigator might have been a little tipsy from all that wine tasting. But I’ll let you all figure out who was who.

All in all, it was a very rewarding weekend even if it was a little stressful. The more we let go of the way we “think” things should be and just accepted that “this is Italy,” the more we realize how wonderful and amazing this country is that the Navy tossed us into.

Sunset view from our rooftop

I look forward to many, many more travels in our time here. But for now, I have wine to drink!

Pompeii

Last Friday, we went out with some friends to see the ruins at Pompeii. We drove out first thing in the morning and met up with Giancarlo, a local archaeologist who gives tours of a few different sites in the area.

Pompeii is up on a hill, which makes sense given that ancient people tended to build towns on high ground for security. It has some of its outer wall still intact, but the city had been enjoying Pax Romana for so long by A.D. 79 that people used the walls not for defense but for building multiple levels of houses on the outer wall to take advantage of the great views.

You seldom see pictures of Pompeii from the outside, so it’s pretty impressive to see just walking up to it.

The outside of one entrance to the ruins.

Most of the pictures I (David) had seen of the place ahead of time either of the forum (the open village square) or looking directly down a street. Those pictures gave me the impression that Pompeii is largely open feeling thanks to Mount Vesuvius having knocked over most of the structures.

An ancient archway framing a view of Mount Vesuvius.

The first place the tour guide took us was the field where gladiators trained, so the prior impression I had was initially correct.

In fact, the city doesn’t feel open at all except for that training field, the forum, and the intersection of the two largest roads.

The field where gladiators trained. It used to have a covered walkway around all of it, but the field was always open to the sky.

While no roofs still stand and nearly all walls have crumbled to some extent, it does feel closed in like a city. Buildings come right up to the sidewalks, and there isn’t really space between them.

It doesn’t take too much imagination to feel what life might have been like as there’s more of the city left standing than you might think.

Rather than looking down a street, this is the view from the street. You can see an arch in the back where an oven was. The regular holes in the back wall were for wooden support beams for the second floor, which housed slaves.

It was a great choice to hire a tour guide because so much of the nuance would have been lost. You can notice some things a guide would point out, but our guide was able to explain why all those things existed.

For example, the walls have obviously different construction methods interspersed because the Pompeiians rebuilt old walls damaged by earthquakes with the current era’s methods and materials.

There are two differently sized theaters because one was used for theater (large space to accommodate sets, multiple actors, costume changes, etc) and another was used for musical performance (a smaller space helps the sound to project better; it also had what modern day musicians would refer to as a ‘pit’).

This was the larger theater, used for drama. Only the white seats, which are marble, are original. The rest are modern reconstructions. You’ll notice the entryways get smaller as each level gets higher- the rich would enter the biggest door and sit on the lower seats while the lowest class would enter at the highest point through the smallest doors.

Not all of the buildings on the sidewalk would have been businesses. The building fronts with grooves in the ground for sliding doors were the businesses, while the buildings without grooves were homes. Each home had a main entrance with a large door for the family, but the house’s slaves would have to enter a smaller entrance.

This was a Pompeiian fast food joint. The pots would’ve contained food, and the shelves on the left would’ve had wine.

The place is fascinating, but it’s not without its downer aspects. The plaster casts of the bodies of people who died in the eruption are a reminder of the horrific event that allow us to tour the city in the first place.

Slavery was also fully integrated into Roman society. I can barely think of a thing that Giancarlo pointed out that didn’t involve mentioning slaves to some degree, and he told us that slaves were truly thought of as property (sometimes disposable property) and not as people. Some slaves were forced into being prostitutes, purchased by the richer families and made to perform in certain ways depending on what the local clientele desired. Some ‘merchants’ purchased their prostitutes from lands a far distance from Italy so they could advertise their goods as ‘exotic’ and therefore more appealing. For as advanced as the Romans were, they were unbearably brutal on a large number of people.

One of the 40+ brothels found (so far) in Pompeii. The marble sign is from a mapping system created by archaeologists in the 1800s to better keep track of the ruins. Richer clients would use the larger rooms on the second floor while the budget shopper would simply occupy a stall on the first floor.

The stone streets sloped downwards and were used (along with a steady stream of water) to carry waste away from the city. Large cobblestones were used as “crosswalks” so one could cross the road without stepping in the filthy water. You can also see large grooves in the stone carved out by the wheels of the chariots that traversed the city.

We plan on going back to just wander and look at the details, as well as see a few things like the amphitheater we didn’t get to this time. We also want to go to Herculaneum, a city that Vesuvius destroyed with mudslides rather than ash and pumice. It’s smaller, but it’s also better preserved. The mud kept out oxygen, which means that unlike at Pompeii, organic material didn’t decompose. Plus, the mud is tougher to dig through than the ash. That fact kept the area-ruling Spanish in the 1700s and the museum-building Neapolitans in the 1800s from pillaging many of the artifacts.

A house in Pompeii once had the famous mosaic of Alexander the Great, but this is a copy installed in 2005. The original is in a museum in Naples.

We’re fortunate to live so close to the ruins to be able to explore them multiple times over our years here in Naples. There aren’t many places you can go to see city-sized areas that old outside of places like Egypt and some remote locales in Central America and Asia.

 

Getting to Home Sweet Home

Well folks, today marks two weeks since we moved into our Italian home! Things have been a little nuts here in Napoli land for us- I (Danielle) took my semi-annual advancement exam the day we started moving into our home. The next day, we had our three (!!) home goods deliveries and have been been drowning in a sea of chaos ever since. Work has been crazy- this is the first time since moving in that I’ll have two days off in a  row! Basically, I’m trying to explain why our blog has been a little quiet lately.

So I thought I’d share a little bit of how we found our uniquely quintessential less-that-perfect-but-we-love-it-anway Italian home. If I merely reduced it down to “hey, we found a home and signed a lease and now we’re moving in, hooray!” you wouldn’t get to vicariously experience the delightful rigmarole that is the Navy.

So if you’ve always wondered what it’s like to find a home in Naples, Italy—read on! If you haven’t wondered or don’t care, you should still read on to know what a joy the whole process is!

Step One: Get Permission

Some of you might have heard us toss around the term “direct assignment.” At some installations, there is no choice to live off base. This is (sort of) the case here in Naples. We were told direct assignment is in effect, so if there was room in base housing, that’s where we would go. And I’d be lying if I said that didn’t sound appealing to us within the first 48 hours of arriving in Naples.

But once the jetlag wore off and we came to our senses (and spent two minutes in Gricignano and experienced the burning garbage smell), we realized we wanted to do everything in our power to appeal the system and get into the economy. So when housing came to our Area Orientation briefing, we requested off-base housing. Sure enough, a few days later I got an e-mail stating (magically) there was no housing availability on base. We got a Certificate of Non-Availability, a.k.a. the Navy’s blessing to start searching off base.

Step Two: Find a Home

Next, we had to find a realtor to take us to look at homes in our specified areas that met our list of requirements (pet friendly, fenced in yard, open concept, not too big, etc.). We saw over 25 homes with three different realtors, and somewhere in there we found “the one.” It’s not too far from work and is close to friends, and our landlords will be living right next door.

Step Three: Pre-Contract Signing

This step basically formalizes the “hey, I want to live in your home, let’s get the ball rolling!” stage. We met with the landlord, our realtor, and a Navy housing agent to sign papers, formally tell the landlord what things we wanted him to add to the home (ceiling fans, fireplace tools, etc.), and schedule an inspection.

Every home that’s rented to Americans through the Navy has to pass an inspection, deeming it legal and safe for us to live there. Among other things, inspectors check for up-to-date alarm systems, secure entrances (metal shutters or bars across the windows), proper heating and cooling systems, and safe electrical and gas hook ups.

Step Four: Fail First Inspection

Pretty much every home fails its first inspection. We were no exception. No worries, it was a quick and easy fix. Less than one week later, it passed the second inspection.

Step Five: Sign the Lease

This part takes 3-4 hours. How could it take so long, you might be asking yourself? Because it’s the Navy. That’s why.

About an hour is in the housing office with the realtor and landlord just going over paperwork and signing forms. Then we had to head to the cash office in the Navy Lodge (not in the same building as housing) to fork over our security deposit—one month’s rent in cash. Then we took the receipt back to housing where we requested our appliance delivery (washer and dryer, refrigerator, microwave, stove, wardrobe closets). Then we had to go directly over to the NEX (Navy Exchange) to turn our electricity on. While we were there, we also got our phone and internet services started and applied for the Telepass (an electronic transponder for the toll road I’ll be driving every day).

Nearly three hours later, we were finally heading to Personal Property Office where we updated our address and requested delivery of our household goods, which had been sitting in storage for more than a month.

Step Six: Move In

From the day we signed the lease, we had five business days to get out of Temporary Lodging Assistance (a.k.a. the Navy Lodge). That’s how long they estimate it takes to get electricity turned on and the household delivery scheduled. We signed our lease on a Friday, so the check out date from the Lodge and move in date into “home” is the following Friday.

Moving day… and so exhausted!

So… as you can see, finding a place to live in Italy is quite a lengthy process. In the States, we only get 10 days of house hunting leave. Here, they offer up to 60 days of TLA because, well, it really does take that long! Our stay in TLA was just over 50 days in all.

View from our backyard- the sun setting over the Mediterranean.

The next big adventure was unpacking and moving in, an adventure we’re still living through. After living a nomadic lifestyle for nearly three and a half months, we’re grateful to have a home again!

These guys are grateful to have a yard all to themselves!

Food

When people think about Italy, food is something that usually comes to mind sooner than later. Italian cuisine is already good in general, and it doesn’t get better than when it’s good here in the country.

Food here is different from dirt to dish, though, when compared to America.

There are large farming operations here, but they’re not like the gigantic factory farms of the Great Plains. A lot of the farming seems to be done smaller and more locally. Freshness is at a premium for meat and produce, and that’s probably half the battle in making food that is really good.

Also, have you heard anything about urban farming? It’s a Really Big Thing that has a surprisingly long Wikipedia page and is an issue that people interested in cities think about and promote. Here? It’s just the way things are. If there is a patch of ground that doesn’t have a building or pavement on top of it, it’s more likely to have things growing in it than be just a patch of grass.

You can be cruising along the highway and suddenly see a field of something growing in the middle of all of the buildings around. Of all the places we saw as potential homes, more had lemon trees, orange trees, or both growing in the yards than not. Our house has a lemon tree, the landlord’s house has lemon, orange, and olive trees, and the landlord keeps a large vegetable garden that’s larger than two average American house lots.

This is only a partial view of the landlord’s garden.

How food gets to you can be different too. There are grocery stores just like in America, and there are outdoor markets as well. The markets are different, though, as they’re not always just about food.

The market in Gricignano where we’ve been staying is actually less than half full of food vendors. I (David) went to the market first as a Fleet and Family Services outing to get an idea of what it’s like, and I’ve since gone to it just by myself. It’s a bit of a hike from Support Site, but it’s less than 30 minutes. It’s nice to get out of Support Site sometimes anyway.

The majority of the market is clothing and household goods. This photo shows you what the first aisle looks like. There’s no food to be found.

The food stands are towards the back. Most everything is priced by the kilogram.

The “ch” combo in Italian makes a hard K sound (think “Pinocchio”), so of course that means we’re talking price per “chilo” rather than per “kilo”.

One particular vendor is clever about it. Everything in the market is bought with cash, and as is common, most transactions end up rounded if they’re close to a full Euro. So, one of them has the same things that everyone else has priced at €1 per kilo at €0.80 per kilo. You probably will only buy a kilo of whatever it is, and that’s close enough to round, so there’s not really a difference in price in practical terms. The lower price on the signs sticks out, though.

There isn’t a lot of seafood available in Gricignano because it’s not really close to the water. Most of the fish for sale is all salted heavily for preserving it. There are, however, some smaller seafood items available.

The octopi were not alive, but they probably were earlier that morning. The shellfish were alive though, and some of the clams (I think they were clams) were still spitting squirts of water. Like I said: freshness matters.

This was just under €10 of food.

The last way to get food is, of course, at a restaurant. Ordering there is not like it is in American restaurants.

Antipasti is the first section of an Italian menu, and it has things you’d think of as appetizers. They can range from simple bruschetta to a large sampler plate of meats, cheeses, olives, and any other kinds of small food. The latter are great when eating out with friends, but they’re more than what two people would want.

There is also a wine list to look over at the beginning, of course.

Next is primi piatti, or first courses. This section is where you will find most pasta dishes, and more than you’d think come without meat. Many of them are just pasta and sauce or pasta, sauce, and seafood. Things like clams, mussels, and shrimp are common additions to the pasta dishes.

Secondi piatti come next, which is where you find entrees. These mostly are meat courses, and they come in a variety that would be fairly familiar to American eyes: steak, chicken either grilled or fried, pork, veal, and so on. Whereas an American restaurant (or Italian restaurant in America) would put the pasta and entree on the same plate, here they’re ordered and served separately.

There is an insalata (salad) list in most places, and at least here in Naples, there’s nearly always an extensive pizza menu. Naples is the birthplace of pizza, so just about every restaurant offers it. I’m not sure if that holds for the rest of the country. You might think the pizza is top notch and fairly simple, and you’d be right. However, pizza covered in hot dogs and french fries is also a thing here. Maybe they think that’s what Americans eat; we have no idea. Neither we nor anyone we know has been brave enough to order that one yet.

Things wrap up with dessert, and they’re usually cake-like or pastries. One place we’ve been to offered us limoncello on the house afterwards, as that’s a common meal-finishing drink.

Thanks to the local culture and the fact that wait staff are paid real wages, no one rushes you out of the restaurant. Aside from ordering, bringing out dishes, and a quick check to make sure things are fine, you won’t see your waiter or waitress often. You won’t get a check unless you specifically ask for it. Italians also tend to eat dinner late, so restaurants don’t really get going until about 9 p.m. When we think we’re having a late dinner by going at 7:30 or 8:00, the restaurant will still be empty.

Earlier in the day you go to a cafe instead of a restaurant, of course, but check your watch. Cappuccino is a breakfast drink only.

You never know what design you might get on your cappuccino.

And if you can find a caffe Kinder, as in the Kinder chocolate company, Danielle highly recommends it.

If you can make it to Italy at some point, it’s worth it for the food alone.