Out of Italy Archives - Page 5 of 7

Even when we are not in Italy, we sort of are in Italy

We may have gone around the bend. Saturday was emails to and from Italy in the morning. Some in Italian some in English all on subject of Italy. About noon I signed off on all that BECAUSE We had a party to get ready for. Late afternoon on the beach in Ocean Park, by Saco, Maine. Both couples were people we have met through the wonder of the internet and one had a house in Italy and the other was considering a trip to look at same. To get ready for this, we were planning to spend the afternoon deep in anti-pasti preparation. Because this would be an all about Italy conversation, Italian and food and drink too. Just your traditional Fourth of July party.

So, about one pm the phone rings and a sweet voice says “Hi! It’s Lydia, and we are on Main Street a couple blocks from your house. We will be right over. Lets do lunch.” Yeah! Its Lydia. Stew running upstairs yelling “Lydia!” meets Midge, coming down the stairs yelling “Lydia?” Then we both got nose to nose and said “I thought knew“? Well, heck. We started throwing junk in far closets and revealing couches and tables we had not seen since before we packed our daughter off for camp at the last minute in the middle of the living room. And then the mystery Lydia called again, lost, whew. Momentary reprieve from governor and chance for all the pieces to fall into place. Oh, LYDIA. We are so dense, like we know a lot of Lydias. What WERE we thinking?

We know her as well as we know anyone. She is American and from nearby Connecticut. But we have only ever known her IN ITALY. Contextual issue. Even our fun drop-in guests are Italian related. Some times having houses in two countries is like having two separate lives. This was a fun case of the two blurring over and surprising us.

PETER POURS PARTIALLY POPSCICLED PROSECCOS AT THE PARSONS’ PARTY

Later, after that fun lunch with “Italian” friends, we were at the party on the beach and all those great minds were thinking alike and the world was in total harmony, because everyone brought bottles of the fun fizzy Prosecco. Forget champagne. Forget Spumanti. The real deal is Prosecco. Friends in the Veneto introduced us to it years ago and immediately got our full and undivided attention. Believe me, they don’t save it for special occasions up there. They plunk pitchers of it on the table like it was beer. Right thinking people. Prosecco is not as sharp and dry as Champagne, not as dessert sweet as Spumanti, but like baby bear’s porridge, juuust right. Somehow sitting on the beach watching the colors of the blue in the sky and listening to the waves crashing on the beach made all the bottles of bubbly go away. All, save one.

Peter turned to Joan and said “You think that last bottle I put in the freezer would be any good by now?“ She jumped up and said “Peter! That was two hours ago, it will be a Proseccoscicle!“ He ran up into the house to begin damage control. The rest of us slowly and regrettably dragged our rainbow colored canvas chairs off the beach just ahead of the incoming tide and tossed them into the tall grass at the edge of lawn. When we got into the long screened porch, Peter was gingerly holding the last bottle of Prosecco, or, should I say, block of Prosecco. And looking at it through squinty eyes with great scientific interest. Yep. Frozen. But the cork hadn’t blown. Whew. Peter made it his mission to keep that bottle near him for the next hour.

Ready yet? Nope? How about Now? Eventually, holding it up to the light we could see the bottle shaped baby ice berg melting a bit and producing some strange shaped chunks burbling left and blurbing right as the bottle was tipped back and forth. Finally, he of multiple MIT degrees, said that in his professional opinion, it was high time to try it. And you know that was the bestcoldestmostawesome bottle of Prosecco any of us had ever tasted. Now kids. Don’t try this at home. But we did live to tell the tale. All Is well that ends well and that night of Italy on a beach in Maine ended very well indeed.

Only six more days until Italy!

Up in the Umbrian Sky, high above Panicale. With AIRiccardo

Counting the days till our July trip to Umbria and then daughter Wiley’s graduation from college in London. We are hoping she will be able to spend some more time studying in Italy now. Her Italian got crazy good with a few weeks of lessons in September and I think she wants to keep that momentum going.

One of our foreign correspondents, Harry from Steamboat Springs, saw these fine photos at our friend Riccardo Ripanti’s house and alerted us to them. Riccardo is a retired pilot and is back up in the air these days. He took these pictures and was nice enough to say we could share them with everyone. Enjoy! Thank you Riccardo!

These photos can be viewed larger size.
Click on the photos to see them enlarged.

By the way, speaking of Italy and England, did anyone see the USA Today with the chart showing where in Europe international travelers really want to go? They asked people who planned to travel within the next two years for their top destinations and what do you know? Italy was the very top with 25 percent. We knew that one! Followed by England at 20 percent and then it faded off to France at 18, Germany and Ireland at 16.

But. On the other hand: There was another chart. They love feeding us the tiny bits of information we can handle in charts at USA Today, don’t they? Notice I am not quoting any learned documents. Limited attention span? The other chart showed “Most useful second languages in business”. Spanish (where was Spain on the first chart, huh?) was 61 percent. That percentage of respondents thought Spanish was a most useful second language for business. Then 16 percent felt like Chinese. Way down in the doesn’t matter category was Italian at a positively recreational 2 percent. It might wreck everything if the reality of too much annoying commerce got in the way of all our holiday fun!

25 PERCENT SOLUTION. YET ANOTHER SUMMER GETAWAY STATISTIC

I had barely put down the USA Today when Midge showed me the latest Travel+Leisure Readers’ Poll. Visitors to their web site were asked to pick a favorite summer vacation. 32% said a kind of generic “Quiet beach anywhere” duh. But next was a more focused “Biking through Tuscany” at 25 percent. Italy always makes the charts.

Until next time,

See you in Italy,

Stew

Italy comes to London. And comes looking for my daughter.

Daughter Wiley text messages me all the time, in Umbria and in Maine. The other day, after half a dozen back and forths she typed: “2much2text. Call me?

LONDON, England— Daughter Wiley text messages me all the time, in Umbria and in Maine. The other day, after half a dozen back and forths she typed: “2much2text. Call me?&rdquo

She lives in London and goes to college there. Graduating soon! Anyway, she had lots of stored up tales to tell on that phone call and this one was one of my favorites. “You know babbo (dad) &rdquo she said, “is it me or is London crawling with Italians?” I sense she is right. I hear Italian on the streets of down town London constantly whenever we are there. And I know three mid twenties — early thirties people from our tiny Panicale alone, who live in London. Had to agree.

She said that waiting for her musician boy friend to finish a set, she had been hit on by Italians both the previous two nights of the weekend. She was wondering what the odds of that were and was kind of amused by the attention she was getting from the lost Italians of London. Especially by the one that waited till her girlfriend Cass got up to go to the “loo” and then plunked himself down beside her announcing “I am an Italian boy. Are you a Spanish girl?” In my mind, he is doing this with a Steve Martin “We are two Wild and Crazy Guys&rdquo kind of delivery.

But he lost interest when he found out she was merely An American Girl. Even one that speaks quite a bit of Italian and spends a lot of time there in Umbria. I guess she may have a bit of a Latin look, now that he mentions it. They quickly ran out of things to talk about. Her not being Spanish and all. So she was happy for him to finish wearing out his welcome and be on his way. It was late and time to say good night. So he did a cursory “Buona Notte” and she, without thinking, immediately responded with what we have always said around our house when someone tucks you in and says ” A domaini” or “Sogni d’oro” or “Buona notte”, which is “Ti voglio molto bene”. No thinking. Worse. No taking it back. There it was: “I love you Very much.” To a perfectly strange stranger you’re trying to get rid of. She’s a good actress and it was so out of left field that she could play it for broad comedy or irony. And he did keep going, but his wide eyed, fade away response was “Molto?”

ALERT: STRANGE SEGUE AHEAD!

Bear with us. We know this isn’t Italy. Going there in a very few days. Giancarlo tells me he has a huge list of new houses to see and report on.

In the meantime we are using that Iowa mention from the previous bit as a transition out of the Pacific Time zone and into Central. This time next week we will be on Italian Time!

Ok, the correct answer is the house on the right is in Sausalito on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge and the one on the left is in Vinton, Iowa. We saw Vinton’s Victorians while visiting my sister Mary in her new home there. The town was very nice, her home and all the Victorian homes were great, but the high point of the afternoon had to be when the high school across the street let out at two thirty. We are so not in Umbria or San Francisco here friends and I can tell because here in Vinton’s Washington High it was the final day of Ag Week and therefore Bring Your Tractor to School Day. Take that Sausalito. You may think I am kidding but that is specifically why I carry a camera with me. What parents trust their sixteen year olds to take their behemoth rubber tired tanks to school? Yike. I’m from an Iowa farm background but I didn’t remember tractors following us to school. Or tractors THIS big. Maybe they look bigger when there are packs of them roaming up and down Main Street in the rain, smoke billowing from stacks and kids with seed corn hats waving from the cabs. So glad our timing worked out for all this. I put this in the pantheon of wonders with Day after Easter Cheese Rollthru the streets of Panicale in Umbria.

ITALIAN DOVE FLIES IN FROM FRISCO
This bird took the long way to its final destination. We bought an Italian Easter Cake called Colomba (nominally shaped like a dove) at Ferry Plaza on the Embarcadero. And brought it to Iowa to share with the family on St Paddy’s Day. The Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk Cheese didn’t go over as well as we hoped but that Italian cake was crumbs in a heart beat.

——————

There was something kind of nice and completing the circle in this trip that made me especially glad we stopped in Iowa. 68 years ago my then teenage dad made the Iowa-California-Iowa trip with a bunch of guys in a 1930 Model A Ford coupe with rumble seat. They shot gophers and tin cans with a pistol from the open rumble seat going across the Nebraska and those other wild and wooly states.

They were in San Francisco when the Golden Gate Bridge had just opened and was in its first coat of Golden paint. Dad said they had no money and just kept getting closer and closer to bridge but did not want to spend the money and pay the toll to actually go over it. At a certain point they got a bit too close, could no get back out of the on ramp and tried to explain their way out of it to the toll booth guard. But any explaining that was going to happen was done by the guard holding out his hand for their money saying Oh, yeah, you ARE going to see the Bridge. And pay the toll, too boys. They were glad they saw it and so were we.

That is all for the moment folks. We are headed off going east to Bella Italia and our home in Umbria during school vacation in mid April – so watch this space. Until next time

See you in Italy,

Stew

No, really. Where ARE we?

Rome, Italy this is not – as maybe the license plate gives away. Strangely enough this is a hundred year old exhibition grounds in San Francisco. Where? Hmmm. I’m turned around again, but think it is near the big park south of the bridge.

WHERE ARE WE? NUMERO UNO.
Is this the Golden Gate Bridge? Holland West? Well I don’t know if you trust me now after the previous bridge debacle, but yes this windmill is in sight of a big rock carved with the inscription: Golden Gate Park. The good wooden shoe wearing folks had a spare wind mill years ago and sent it to San Francisco. Did you know there was a windmill at the gate to the Golden Gate park? Well, neither did I. Let alone two of them. There is this one, The Dutch Windmill and evidently The Murphy Windmill at another gate. Did not see that one. Was it folded back into a wall like a Murphy Bed mayhaps?

WHERE ARE WE? NUMERO DUE.
We all know ‘There is No Place Like Rome’. But Rome, Italy this is not – as maybe the license plate gives away. Strangely enough this is a hundred year old exhibition grounds in San Francisco. Where? Hmmm. I’m turned around again, but think it is near the big park south of the bridge. OK, just Googled it. Palace of Fine Arts on Richardson Street at the end of North Point. In my mind it is not too far from the jaw dropping Pacific Heights. I thought I’d seen everything till I saw Pacific Heights with its extreme hillside stacked straight up to the sky with gazillion dollar mansions bigger than embassies – one on top of the other. Never ever seen such amazing opulence go on and on. Miles and miles of million and billionaires I suspect because really tiny bungalows in Berkley seem to routinely sell way over their half a million dollars asking price, so who on earth knows what these beauties run here in Pacific Heights. Yes, we did look in real estate offices windows. No, we’re not moving unless that Power Ball thing kicks in. All I could think was ‘Shaazaam would you look at those buildings, Sarge?’

WHERE ARE WE? NUMERO TRE.
San Francisco is also justly famous for its streets of Victorian ‘Painted Ladies’ and we saw boodles of them in every part of town I could just sit and look at them for ages but we were flying by and most of my shooting was drive by. OK, but this is a test. Which one of these random houses was in San Francisco and which one was in Iowa? Answer in next issue.