Stew, Author at See You in Italy

A day in Italy. A story in several parts. And in several parts of Italy.

I cleaned madly and ceremonially closed one set of shutters after the others, and as a final act of love, I talked to the mason about a wall that needs fixing. See, house? We do care, even though we are leaving you here by yourself. Then it is off to the piazza for coffee and hugs goodbye, “tante cose belle!” and we are Siena bound.

cuppa Joe, Simone? coffee at bar gallo, panicale, italy PANICALE, SIENA, FLORENCE – Or, as we say: Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner.

Part one. Breakfast in Panicale.

Today really is the proverbial Movable Feast. Lovely, busy, interesting day. Slightly on the maudlin side to start with because the trip had wound down to these final moments. But, onward and upward, there are many fun things to do today. I cleaned madly and ceremonially closed one set of shutters after the others, and as a final act of love, I talked to the mason about a wall that needs fixing. See, house? We do care, even though we are leaving you here by yourself. Then it is off to the piazza for coffee and hugs goodbye, “tante cose belle!” and we are Siena bound.


Part two. Lunch in Siena.

Pulling into Spannocchia, I see Midge in the midst of a sundrenched tableau. Sitting on a stone bench, her back to a warm stone wall, her friend Gail beside here, other friends left and right, a big shaggy white dog dozing at their feet. I hated to break the spell.

But what the heck.

It was lunch time.

We filled our plates in the kitchen and moved this Magic Moment to the veranda in front of the main villa and just let the sun wash over us. Cukes freshly cut from their vines lying in the warm Tuscan dirt that morning, plus fennel also from the garden and pieces of oranges made up the salad. And see the pasta in red sauce in the photo? Not at all. It’s just not pasta. It is eggs, if you can imagine, cooked like a thin omelet and cut in strips. What will these people think of next? Well, that was all swell but we have places to go and yet more food to eat. And plus, it is time to go. Midge and the Spannocchia board have been to so many meetings they must be getting punchy. Over lunch the conversation turned to cats. Not a good sign in the best of times. And that turned to the potential of cat-a-pults as a way of effecting population control. Everyone slaphappy, we pack and exit stage left.

Pulling out we take a minute to see if we can get into a restaurant in Florence we heard about when we were olive-picking. It is Saturday and some Australian friends said it was great, but tiny and reservations were sort of mandatory. Ok. We’re in. They are expecting a “Mr Stuardo” at seven thirty. That’s me. Stuardo T. Vreeland. And we’ll do that story in an upcoming blog. Stay tuned to this channel for Part Three and Part Four in this Day in the Life series.

Water, water everywhere. Life on an Italian peninsula.

CASTIGLIONE DEL LAGO, Umbria, Italy – Not a bad place to be on a sunny day. The “del Lago” part you’ve probably already figured out is all about being right on the lake. Strangest, no – I think the chamber of commerce people would say most unique – geography I can imagine. First, you have this nice round lake in the middle of the Italian peninsula. There are some hilly approaches to the lake but mostly on the far east and some on the north. On the south it is all an agricultural plain around the lake, same with the west where this peninsula, for no reason at all, inexplicably juts straight out into the lake. And there it is. A long, tall rock in the middle of a lake. How did that happen?

I suppose it really doesn’t matter how it came to be there. The point here is that the peninsula is very interesting and when you get up there, the town built there on the peninsula has water on all sides. And you have enough elevation to pull up a gelati and enjoy the view. Look, isn’t that Panicale on that hill over there? If I squint I think maybe it is.
castiglione del lago in umbria, on an italian lake
FURNITURE CAN BE FUN

When you first drive through the main gate you will likely be parking in front of a big palace where there are art shows and exhibitions. That palace is connected to a long skinny defensive corridor to an imposing fortress where the views get really grand and wild. You can sometimes see outdoor movies in the center of the fortress on a summer’s eve. Been there, done that, quite liked that. People smoke, they talk, kids run around, there is a long intermission. Very much not like a night at your multiplex back at the mall in your home town. Meanwhile, along the main, and almost only street, are frame shops, books stores, restaurants, hotels, and pastry and fruit stores of every stripe. And lots of stores with mounted cinghales where you can get wild boar sausage, wine, cheese and other necessities of la dolce vita. And down by one arched entry to the city (you can just barely see it in one of our photos here) is an eccentric “antique” store. Its merchandise is all over the map, just like the owner. He’s tiny and busy as a bee. We usually talk in Italian but every now and then he surprises us with his English. Something about South Africa? I disremember exactly where he misspent his youth. But what I do remember is pushing in through the clutter and inching my way sideways like a crab past decorative farm tools and glass dishes to the furniture cavern at the back and being kind of bowled over by the lofty, seemingly optimistic, prices. I expressed my “concern” over the cost there and the owner said “oh, you need my ‘cose povere’. We have a whole building full of poor things” He herded us out of his building, locking the door behind us, jumped on a long suffering Vespa and motioned for us to follow him. And we were off. The cinder block building he led us to was just a few blocks away, down the hill. And when he opened the doors it was like Ali Baba’s cave to us. Great, fun and funky stuff, dirt cheap. And choices? You bet. This was a nice size place and full to the rafters. In more, shall we say, our price range. We bought things we loved, he steered us to a cousin who is an aces restorer, we picked new marble tops for all of the pieces. That made them seem to match, we had them all stained to match, and a few months later we had a set of bedroom furniture to be proud of. They look old money but they cost hardly any money. And we got what we wanted.

HERE WE ARE AT SEE LEVEL.

Below the walled town itself the ground goes almost to sea level – ok, lake level. And there are beaches and ice cream vendors, and ferries to the islands and parks. And a nice drive around the peninsula. Being Italy, it is a bit of circuitous route with a baffling one way / non one way kind of pattern to it. Someone in their department of transportation decidedly thought about this way too long. But along the drive, on a sunny day anyway, the lake can be an almost unnatural Caribbean turquoise blue. And should a storm come up, I’ve seen that that blue can change to black water and white caps in a flash. When we took these pictures it was sort of an in-between kind of day. Just recently along this lake drive there is a new modern crop of sculptures that have sprung up. Their job seems to be to frame views of the lake the way their ancient ancestors in the city up above have framed their views for centuries. You remember Katia the broker of course. The people shown next to the sculpture are Katia’s parents celebrating life, good health and Italy on a summer day. Wouldn’t mind being there with them right now. Ciao, Mario, Ciao, Angela!

See you in Italy,

Stew Vreeland

In Breaking News from Bar Gallo . . .

When we are in Italy you can usually find us there on Via del Filatoio. Our end of the street is quiet, reserved, great views, but it is mainly “four cats” and us. But the other end of the street – that is where the action picks up.

PANICALE, Umbria, Italy – The wheel turns. Another revolution. And a new generation comes to town. To our favorite town in Umbria, Panicale. I have to admit it is not only our favorite but it is also our “home town”. When we are in Italy you can usually find us there on Via del Filatoio. Our end of the street is quiet, reserved, great views, but it is mainly “four cats” and us. But the other end of the street – that is where the action picks up. We often find ourselves referring to the piazza as if it were an extension of the long standing village café/bar. This bar is the first place open in the morning and the last place to crank up its awning and stack up its chairs every night. We say, “Lets go to Aldo’s” and we sort of mean lets go down to the piazza. But have a cup of coffee first. All the stores, restaurants, the hairdressers, are right there. So is leaning against a sun-warmed stone wall or licking a gelati sitting on the fountain’s steps waiting for friends to come by. Just part of the texture of the place. And the focus here, as in many villages, is the village café by the gate to the city.

In the winter months, the bar closes one day a week. Monday. And it is a Blue Monday when that happens. Lost souls sit in the sunshine in plastic chairs in front of the locked metal doors looking for all the world like there has been a death in the family. I suppose I am exaggerating a bit, but people do know when Bar Gallo is closed, and the piazza seems a bit quiet, off balance, disoriented. I can promise I am all of those things and more.

love is in the air in Umbria, italy The café is often just called “Aldo’s” (a photo of it is captioned like that on an internationally published calendar we bought here in Maine), but its true name is Bar Gallo. And it really is a Gallo family affair. Aldo and his bright, shiny penny of a wife Daniela seem to have been there smartly dressed six, and more often, seven days a week for more years than we’ve been coming to town. They were legends when we washed up on these shores ten years ago. Sister-in-law Leyda comes mid-afternoons and gives them a break. And more and more the last couple years, Aldo and Daniela’s son, Simone, has been swept up into the business. Building us our lifesaving morning cappucchinos, noonday proseccos, late afternoon gelatis and our after dinner, after theater, after whatever, night caps. Bailey’s and Orzo and Goodnight, Goodnight. Sogni d’Oro indeed.

LOVE IS IN THE AIR.

And what is this? Simone’s found a honey. Look at that rascally smile on his face. Is that the cat that ate the canary or what? It looks to be young love in full bloom. Young and wired. And not just from the high test cappucchino. We may all be way up on top of a hill in Umbria but we’ve got broadband. And that is where Simone met his lovely Siciliana Lorena. On the internet. Isn’t technology grand? If you saw Simone in June you knew there was a Lorena countdown. At the bar, every morning. “Only five days.” “Will you be here Tuesday?” “ Four days. She’s coming Tuesday, you know”. And the next thing we knew, there she was behind the bar, dishing gelati and local gossip with the best of us – like she’d been here forever.

If a medieval village of brick and stone can be said to have a heart, it is surely its piazza. And the heart of Panicale’s piazza is right there under its striped canvas awning, right between its ancient marble fountain and the old town gate where the drawbridge used to be. And now Bar Gallo not only has a great family history, it also has new blood. The beat goes on.

Complimenti, complimenti pure. And happy congrats to Simone and Lorena and Aldo and Daniela and everyone sitting in the sunshine of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele.

See you in Bar Gallo,

Stew

Gelati. Cortona’s got the A-List

At some point the subject of Gelati came up. I’m not all that attracted to ice cream here in the states. I’ll eat it,of course, if you plop it on my pie/cake/empty plate/bowl/outstretched hands. But gelati, in Italy, that’s in the give us our daily bread realm of things, isn’t it?

I SCREAM. YOU SCREAM. WE ALL SCREAM . . .
FOR GELATI.

PANICALE, Umbria, Italy – So, here I am walking through the double glass doors of Aldo’s café for the millionth time with yet another burning question on my mind.

Oh, look, American friends. “Hi, Hi”! and oh look over there, some English-speaking German friends “Hi, Hi” some more. Aldo looks up from loading ice cream bars into a cooler, wide eyed, skips a beat and then shakes his head and laughs at himself. “Never going to learn” he says “You all say Hi as a greeting and I’ve heard it over and over but it sounds just like “Ahi” our word for “Ouch!” And I jump everytime.” Foreigners. Its not like we don’t know how to use big words like: Ciao.

I wait till the bar clears and Aldo is squeezing me some orange juice. “Aldo, I’ve been trimming and pruning my garden for days. I’ve got leaves and branches piled high as anything. Know anyone with a pickup?” “Oh, you need Primo.” He says, “You know him?” I nod; Sure, Primo is the mason. He was supposed to fix a wall in our kitchen last winter, and I need to talk to him anyway.

Ever helpful, Aldo knows how to make this happen. “Go ask Andrea. It’s his uncle.” Never knew that. I tromp next door to Masolino’s and say the whole thing over again and Andrea says, “Come back at 1:30. Primo’s here everyday for coffee after lunch.” Didn’t know that either. Can’t believe they gave away his location like that. And of course he didn’t show. “Don’t know where he could be,” Andrea says, looking at his watch. While we were waiting, killing time, talking about this and that, Andrea was polishing glasses behind the bar for a while, and we both flipped through the sports newspaper and admired the view out the open door of his balcony down through the cypresses to Villa Le Mura.
dolce vita, gelati at the gelateria in cortona
At some point the subject of Gelati came up. I’m not all that attracted to ice cream here in the states. I’ll eat it,of course, if you plop it on my pie/cake/empty plate/bowl/outstretched hands. But gelati, in Italy, that’s in the give us our daily bread realm of things, isn’t it? And this is Andrea talking. Andrea’s family owns Masolino’s restaurant and his mother is the ranking chef in all of Umbria. She has an Olympic sized medallion to prove it. Go Bruna! Naturally, when they are on the subject of food, I’m all ears. Holding up his thumb and the nearest two fingers he says “There are three places you need to know. My top three for Gelati – Uno, Gelateria Snoopy in Cortona.” I know that one! It is right next to our friend Nando’s Bar Sport in the epicenter of town. “Due,” he continues, “Quinto Vizio, in Perugia, near Warner Village, the movie complex.” I think he said the name means Five Vices. Can that be right? Can there be that many vices related to Gelati? “Tre, Bar Alise, by the train station in Castiglione del Lago.” I write them all down. Write off Primo ever coming and step out into the piazza. And, there he is. He’d almost slipped into the cafe on the other side of the piazza. He was that close. Aren’t small towns great?

snoopy means gelati in Cortona, italy THE GELATI CHALLENGE

CORTONA, Tuscany, Italy – The next day Midge and the two girls and I decide to zip up to Cortona for a bit of adventure and gelati. I called our friend Elida to see if she needed anything there or if she wanted to come along and see sites with us. She lives here in Panicale all the time and is always up for an adventure. Ma, no. Not today, she has stuff to do. I mention that Andrea’s top Gelati shop is in Cortona and she agrees that Cortona has the best gelato. Except she thinks it is Dolce Vita. Says she makes the forty minute one way trip to Cortona just to get the gelati at Dolce Vita. Wellll. It is clear what must be done. It seems a taste-off is in order. We’ll do one gelateria on the way into Cortona, one on the way out.

I love having a simple-minded travel goal. So easily amused. We spot Dolce Vita not long after we park the car. It has four seats at a tall table. Each seat is shaped like a giant fiberglass ice cream cone. But it is the gelati that steals the show. Incredo presentation. Incredo. Mountains of each exotic flavor and huge piece of the kind of fruit represented capping each mountain to make it blindingly obvious, even to tourists, what is on offer. Halves of papaya, for example, grace the peachy pink tub of that flavor on the left, and whole bananas sit atop the container right in front of us. Bingo. That is the one Midge has been looking for! She’s in for all banana all the way. Graysie has the purple/blue blueberry and pairs it with the bella papaya. Katie has a nice contrasty combo of dark chocolate and watermelon. I have a cherry swirl thing with frutti di bosco (forest berries, they say, meaning raspberries and blueberries and black berries and such).

Love mine. But, hey, its gelati. How far wrong can you go? Midge is over the moon on the banana. Graysie likes hers but isn’t raving. Katie only likes her chocolate. I, on the other hand, tried her watermelon and loved it. And I’m not a fan of the actual melon itself. I thought mine was great. Especially the very frutti one.
the piazza in Cortona, italy
We fiddled about, shopped – it was market day – took pictures, enjoyed the sunshine and just got a kick out of being out and about. We got some pizza in the piazza for lunch and tried to work up an appetite for Gelati #2. Snoopy is right beside the market, and as it was closing up for the day, we ducked under the awning of a place selling belts and shoes and dresses and checked that Snoopy dog out. I’ve been there before many times but this time we were there for serious research. Midge said she was full, full, full and none for her thanks. Graysie had the green team of mint and green apple. Katie had futti di bosco and lemon. I did the frutti again and put it with Moro (black berry).

First, the gelati here is nothing to look at. Well, they were till I’d seen Dolce Vita beauty pagent of gelati. The tubs of gelati at Snoopy just lay there, great colors, just no art to it. Which is fine, but I missed the over the top Dolce Vita presentation. But, on taste they may have outdone themselves here at Snoopy. Bright, tangy, tasty. Katie’s lemon was sour and refreshing as biting into the fruit itself and my fruits were just knock out. I didn’t think I would like Graysie’s green on green combo, but I did; it was quite wonderful.

Which gelateria won? They were both great, and if pressed, I would have to say we were the winners. To be there in Cortona on a sunny summer day, licking gelati off our knuckles from one end of town to the other. OOOH, can I try a bite of what you’re having?

around Cortona town on a sunny day in Tuscany, italy<img decoding= See you in Italy,

Stew Vreeland

P.S. Primo and the Pickup ? This whole Italian ice cream adventure started with me looking for a pickup. Well, I really found one. Except it was what a pickup might hope to be when it grows up, a ten ton big rig that had to be backed through a crooked tunnel to get to the street below our place. When I tried to gratefully, happily pay them, Primo’s son Sergio held up both hands in a classic No, No, gesture. I had the money in my hand. I said, “but it is such a favor” and Sergio pointed at me, like I had raised my hand and really gotten the correct answer, and said, “Preciso.” Exactly. You got it. They wanted it to be a favor. And it was. Thank you.

Hello, Spello. I see your streets are paved with gold.

spello during corpus domini. spello, Umbria
SPELLO, Umbria, Italy–Midge knows a short cut. There is, evidently, some shopping that has taken place near here. Ceramic-related shopping she thinks. Its early and we take back road after scenic back road through one sleepy town after another. Us and the occasional spandex and logo covered bike rider/professional racer wannabe. Is there any other kind of biker these days? No matter, we’re happy to share the Sunday morning with these few brightly colored fellow travelers.

As I write this later in the garden, bees are buzzing, an orange butterfly lands on my knee. The hummingbird-like bug is putting his long needle nose in the sweet purple lavender, but Focus Stew, Focus. Get us to Spello, already. It is not that far from Panicale but we are such slugs that we’ve never been right there so we’re staying sharp looking for signs. We’re south of Perugia, south of Assisi, but it is before Foligno off 75. I see it! We’ve been driving on the flat agricultural plain around the lake when suddenly, there is Spello looking down on us from its cliff, the houses uniformly pale pink, the color of Bruno’s cactus blossoms. There’s the exit. Gulp. There’s the gridlock. This town is not asleep. It is wide awake and neck deep in cars. We bump up over a curb and onto an available sidewalk, lock up and step away from the Fiat Bravo. Someone right behind us does the same and suddenly those two blocks of sidewalk are filled too. To fortify us for the flowers we sit for a minute in a huge café under a resort hotel. Everything is better after a cappuccino and one of those fruit tarts. We follow crowds across the street and it begins. Just like that. Quiet coffee to full emersion in a festa in a matter of a few feet.

THE STREETS REALLY ARE PAVED IN GOLD. AND RED. AND GREEN. EVERY COLOR UNDER THE SUN.
AT LEAST DURING CORPUS DOMINI.

streets of Spello, Italy are paved with gold during corpus domini
Did I say what we are doing here? Meant to. Happily, it is spring, flowers are everywhere and it is Corpus Domini. Even the catholics among us are not solid on what that all entails. Sounds like Holy Body. But we think it is more in the body as in the host at communion and why not have a flower festival for it? Because, here in Spello they have covered the streets with major sized, highly detailed art made over night from flowers, seeds and petals. Like someone had steamrolled over a Rose Parade float. Its all biblical themed, huge, happy, bright and hard not to be knocked over by the scale. Several are 30 or 40 feet long? I didn’t measure them but they are big, trust me. The teams that did them are proud but not really standing tall, often sitting or laying down. tired flower arrangers of Spello, Italy during Corpus Domini celebration We think they’ve all been up all night doing this. I read one brochure that claimed 2,000 people would be up all night, including several hundred 3-14 year olds. Tradition! And it specifically said they would not be playing about. Flowers to gather, dissect and arrange artfully. During the show there are step ladders and metal viewing stands here and there and people go up, snap a photo, come down and someone else goes up. Some of the teams are spraying their art if they are in full sun to keep them fresh. There are flowers not only below us, but beside us in doorways and over hanging from balconies. And above that, bright blue skies. What a day we fell into here.

The festival is crowded but civilized. We walk wherever we want and see things along whatever path strikes our fancy. Until, suddenly, we’re swept up toward a church and in the distance we can hear a band forlornly playing as the host approaches. A tower full of bells begins to ring, priests trudge by carrying loudspeakers on a pole, someone is chanting, someone on a scratchy recording is singing and eventually the band is right in front of us. Tubas, trumpets, clarinets prevail. The priests wear white and gold robes, Caribinieri are in full dress and that means the Napoleonic hats with red plumes. Canopies, big, tall, old painted canopies sway by protecting the host and everyone shuffles, shuffles, shuffles through the flowers underfoot. One by one, foot by foot, the dirge plays on. The procession rocks from left foot to right in solemn obliteration of the flower designs. Strangely, it does mess them up but it doesn’t ruin them. And the designers, some more than others, rush to pat things back together. In the end it doesn’t matter too much, flower petals are ethereal and destined to dry up and blow away, anyway aren’t they? Luck was with these artists this year as it was perfect out all night, not a hint of breeze and for the first time in a week, no evening showers. (All this weather wonderfullness was reaching its high point after church at 11. By five that afternoon it was pouring buckets, so good timing all around.)

We followed the procession to the park where plant sellers of every stripe were tempting the crowd successfully with their wares. Shoppers were carrying people sized rose bushes to their cars all around us. We found a table of seriously exotic cactus and picked one for Bruno that looked like a pale green softball with long needles marching around its stitching and two big candle-shaped flower buds sticking straight up from the top. Wonder what that will be like when it grows up. We’ll see what Bruno thinks of that.
wonderful colors of spring flowers in Spello display, Spello, Italy
The medieval festival in Bevagna starts today and its just down the road. But, this has been such a star crossed, by the numbers, perfect kind of day that we think we should just go sit in the garden and think about all this. But you know that porchetta place in Corciano? We go right by there . . .

Next time: Andrea shares his Big Three in Gelati. We’ve only been to one so far but we’ll fix that and report back when we have compared at least two of them. They are going to have to do some hustling to beat the peach I just had at Aldo’s!

balcony street watcher in Spello, Italy during corpus domini celebration

See you in Italy,

Stew Vreeland