NYPorter

Wednesday
Again we got up early and headed out on the bus for a 2 ½ hour trip to Florence (Firenza).  Here we toured the city on foot.  We saw a large statue of Salistro Bandini, the monk who invented credit. (If he had only known what problems that would bring to people and nations in the 21st century he might have kept the idea to himself!)   We walked to the Ponte Vechio – a bridge where on the most beautiful jewelry is sold in stores on both sides of the narrow, pedestrian only bridge.  Rubies, diamonds, emeralds, pearls and gold and silver – serious buyers only!  I lucked upon an abandoned map of the city and Tim and I walked around enjoying the sites, shops and people.   Tim even saw a bicicletta verde.

We met the group for lunch and Romeo took us to a quaint favorite of his, the Ristorante Mamma Gina.  They had a large back room where we were able to eat without disturbing too many others.  We had the nicest waiter who spoke clear English and was very patient with our table.  Everyone ordered whatever they wanted off the menu.  I can only recall that I had a cold artichoke and cheese salad – it might have had a vinegar dressing, I’m not sure.  It was just so light and the cheese was sliced paper thin.  The whole meal was delicious.

After lunch, we were invited to wander again and agreed to meet at the Galleria Dell ‘Accademia, the museum where Michelangelo’s magnificent statue of David is housed.  Security was very tight as you would hope it would be.  This was another beautiful museum full of marble statues, paintings and mosaics.  We were allowed to get very close to the statue of David.  It is huge.  His hands did seem a bit too big for the rest of his body though.  Not that I could do any better.  Just a comment, Michelangelo, not a criticism. We walked to the San Lorenzo market where we had about ½ hour to shop.  I visited a farmacia for throat lozenges.  Then we had a 2 ½ hour drive back to the villa and additional cooking classes!

Tuesday
The day arrived sunny and warm (although it was cool in the morning when we left for Siena, a “short” 2 hour ride from the Villa Poggiarello.)  We visited the famous Piazza del Campo, the main square where the various neighborhoods of Siena have for 450 years held a horse race twice a year, known as Il Palio.  Once you are in the square you can see how they have to roll up the awnings, pull in the tables and clear the outer area for the race.  They then lay down 6 inches of clay and sandstone on top of the cobblestone for the horses to race on.  Apparently, the noise and the number of people within the large square keep the horses nervous.  They always have to restart the race a number of times (3 laps – 17 horses, riders ride bareback – it’s all over in about 90 seconds – not all horses run at one time.    The winner gets a painting. )  The corner shops are lined with mattresses the day of the race to protect the horses as they make the sharp turns.  If you go, be prepared to stay for the duration of the event.  No one goes in or out during the event.  (I would think that the unavailability of restrooms might make it a challenge to attend as you are in there for hours!)

The Duomo di Siena towers above the city and the river, Arno.  We had some time to view the Duomo inside.  The walls were striped black and white (the areas ‘local colors’).  The art was beautiful – mosaics and sculptures, a perfectly preserved wooden nave.  One nice touch was that you could listen to a description of the various pieces of art via headphones (for a euro).  We wandered away from this area toward the restaurant Piazza del Campo.  We had one course of the most delicious “bread soup” ever.  I’m not kidding.  I had bread soup at another restaurant and didn’t find it even half as good as this was.  This small restaurant squeezed us in.  The locals who stopped by must have been both amused and annoyed by the boisterous Americans, who with the help of the red wine, got louder and louder.  (It was all part of the bonding process the group seemed to go through.)  After lunch we had some time to ourselves to shop and admire the city.  We had to meet the bus to go back to the Villa to take our first cooking lesson that night.

As part of the first group to cook (in our new aprons) we made dessert (Dolce) – Ponna Cotta allo Cioccolato, the Antipasto (Crostini al Peperoni), and one of the secondo’s (second course), piscelli primavera con pancetta (spring peas).  The ponna cotta is just heavy cream, sugar and the equivalent of knox gelatin.  You heat the cream and sugar, soften the gelatin and add it to the cream and sugar.  Then put it in small serving dishes and refrigerate.  Later melt chocolate and drizzle over the top – our use fruit or honey& nuts.  We had an altima insignate for this lesson (good teacher.)  We learned that the Tuscan trinity is carrots, onions and celery.  Also use the capers that come in salt and sea salt is the best flavored salt (little tricks of the trade.) The second group prepared the Gahberoni (shrimp) al brandy and the spaghetti con tatoni (calamari).  The whole meal turned out wonderfully, even if we do say so ourselves.

Up until Feb 11, 1929 the Vatican essentially controlled Europe.  Mussolini changed all that.  He gave them 1 square mile of the city in Rome to call their own.  Now about 1000 people live in Vatican City.  There are three main gardens in the Vatican – Italian, French and English gardens maintained by 35 gardeners.  There are also 100 fountains in Vatican City.  Official VIPs can fly into the helipad and stay at the St John the Baptist tower.

The tour of the Vatican Museum was overwhelming.  The statues, paintings, mosaics were just amazing.  There was a hall of tapestries from Belgium – each one depicting a different region in Italy.  One fascinating tapestry was tricky – if you looked at it from one direction it appeared that the table depicted went from front to back (left to right),  but if you walked a bit further to the right of it and looked back, the table appeared to point back to front (left to right).  Each tapestry took 5-7 years to make.  There were a number of statues that had been found buried under a hill in a field in 1508.  There were statues from the Egyptian Valley of the Kings (3500 years old).  Greek artists tend to make people look beautiful, perfect.  Roman artists tend to make them true to life.  Bees were the symbol of the Barbarini family.  The frescos (meaning “wet”) in the Sistine Chapel are just amazing.  It took Michelangelo 4 years to paint the ceiling.  It is rumored that he wouldn’t let the Pope even have a peep at it until it was completed.

After this amazing tour of so many beautiful statues, paintings, tapestries, and mosaics we had to leave the romantic city of Rome behind.  Romeo arrived to take us on our next journey. We piled our luggage in a large bus and rolled down the highway to the Grosseto region.  This was Tuscany!  Groves of olive trees, Cyprus trees, beautiful pink- blossomed peach trees, (trained to grow vineyard style for ease of picking) and, of course, vineyards surrounded us.   Off in the distance you could see on every hill top a town, oozing down the mountain in beautiful old stone, the roofs all gorgeous red terra cotta tile.  These were built ages ago on the tops of mountains for safety.   The newer towns were on flat lands.  We took highway most of the way to our next location.  Then we were on a long, straight dirt and gravel road between the peach orchard and an olive grove.

Villa il Poggiarello
As we pulled up to the end of the ¼ mile long driveway to our Italian villa home for the rest of the week our world traveler, Maryann, advised us that the Cyprus- lined driveway looked “just like England” – or there ‘bouts.  I think it was the majestic view that just over took her!  It was just like in the movies – the scenery took your breath away.

We unloaded the bus and met the Villa owner, Chiara (her husband, Stephano, was out of town) and Romeo’s wife, Federica.  We took a few moments to settle into our rooms (the villa was a gorgeous restored stone structure – indescribable.)  Then we had a “light lunch” of antipasto, bread, wine, and more delicious food.  Afterwards, Chiara took us out to the vineyard and explained to us their theory of good wine-making.  Every winemaker has their own plans on what makes a good wine.  The vines here had been cut WAY back  – this led to less grapes, but better grapes.  They make Muralia wine – 15% alcohol.  Vines take about 4 years to mature enough to grow the grapes needed.  We also toured the cool winery and storage area for wines maturing in casks and stainless steel tanks.  Well, by this time it was time to leave for dinner!  I know we just finished lunch, but we had a short drive ahead of us up a steep hill to the town of Montepesche.  Here there was a restaurant willing to open just for us on a Monday night.  It pays to have friends – or to have Romeo who has friends willing to do this for us.  Again we were fed some fabulous food.  If I write about it I may have to go get more food to eat, and I just finished dinner.  Dessert was tiramisu – who couldn’t like that!  Our driver managed to get us safely back home, winding down the narrow, dark, twisty roads – back to our villa.

Sunday morning, Marco (Rome Connection) with his three vans (and drivers/tour guides Max and Philippe) loaded us up and took us around the city. We had a terrific tour of the Coliseum – cutting the line significantly – group travel has its conveniences! Max got us up to the second level (we took the elevator – not an original piece of the Coliseum).  We learned that the Travertine marble that originally made up the whole Coliseum was later stripped from the place for other structures in the city – mainly, the Vatican. The metal rods used to hold the large pieces of marble together had also been stripped out by the “barbarians” and used to create weapons – canons, etc.)

The admission (during Roman times) was free for the people. This was because they had had their land taken from them, so the leadership felt it was the least they could do. Some of the regular attendees had carved their names in the marble. The leaders and wealthy merchants of course had their names professionally carved in. There was a built-in water system. Water started out in fountains (spigots) at the second level or so, and it ran downhill from there into the lowest level where it provided some water for the animals (lions, tigers, bulls, wolves, even ostriches- which I’ve heard can be pretty vicious) and persons soon to be led to slaughter. Only a very small portion of the Coliseum has been restored.

We also toured some Catacombs – these are maintained by the Vatican. Small niches carved in tunnels underground. Grave robbers have stolen everything but a few remaining oil lamps –each about the size of a small teacup. We had lunch at Hostaria Antica Roma where we definitely overfed and overcharged (80 Euro for two people!) It was an unusual structure, with niches in the walls, possibly old catacombs? Or were they just to hold more oil lamps? We had a good time starting to get to know the people in the group. After lunch, we saw the Circus Maximus where horse races and much betting occurred many years ago. We had some time in the Pantheon (meaning – all Gods) and admired the craftsmanship and artistry. The domed top was open and this allowed for rain to come in- it drained out through holes in the floor– also for the light to be a kind of sundial on the domed top.

Later we walked down a narrow road of shops to the Trevi fountain (largest Baroque fountain in the city – over 65 feet wide and 85 feet high) and threw our prerequisite 3 coins over our left shoulder into the fountain (from the movie Three Coins in the Fountain –) supposed to bring you back to Rome someday. We only had a light sprinkle of rain while at the Trevi fountain. (guys selling umbrellas appeared out of nowhere trying to get you to buy one.) We also peeked through a keyhole of the Malta Consulate across the Italian city of Rome to see the dome of the Vatican. — Three countries in one view. We drove by the Spanish steps, named for the Spanish embassy and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Back to the hotel to prepare for dinner. Because, hey, it’s probably been a few hours since we ate that huge expensive lunch! We had dinner with about 10 people from the group. We took a taxi – you pay the taxi from wherever it started from to your destination. So you might get into a taxi with 8 euro already on the meter. Seems like a scam to me. I bet only tourists fall for this.

Dinner was a laugh a minute. The food was excellent with a funny old guy as our waiter. He tried to tell us what to eat, but Barbara insisted on menus. The restaurant had one room painted a light red full of pictures of Popes. It reminded us of Bucca di Beppos. The food and wine were great. The waiter took a liking to Maryanne as she wandered over to check out the dessert counter. He referred to her as “Tiramisu” for the rest of the evening and she kindly gave him a peck on the cheek as we were getting ready to leave. A young waiter took our group picture.

We arrived in Rome on Saturday, March 24th right on time (7 am). After picking up our luggage we were met by Marco from Rome Connection and 2 eight-passenger vans. They took us right to our hotel, The Casa Bonus Pastor. There the friendly desk clerks were able to help us secure our luggage in a small room while we were fed our first Italian breakfast (yogurt, rolls, some with powdered sugar, some plain), and strong coffee with steamed milk. There was also a nice cold juice (apricot or mango?).

Some rooms were ready early, so we were able to put our luggage in our rooms and get ready for a walking tour with Barbara. I was able to purchase two postcards at the front desk with postage (about €1.2 for each stamp). Then, we walked as a group downhill to the Vatican area.

It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm. We agreed to meet at 2:00 at a specific spot inside the walls. Tim and I wandered out of the Vatican toward the Tiber River. Fortunately, we had a fairly detailed map.

We walked down to the Umberto Bridge and crossed over the river. The river appeared shallow and we saw no boats or traffic on it. We just wandered the narrow streets, looking in shop windows and looking for a place to grab some lunch. We found a nice restaurant with outdoor seating right at an intersection. Most of the traffic was foot traffic, with an occasional moped or motorbike. Since we were just looking for something light, Tim ordered a pizza, I had some pasta and vegs.

While we were eating a violinist came by, spoke to the maître d’ and apparently got permission to entertain. He played a song or two and then walked around with his hand out. We gave him a Euro.

Continue reading Italy – Day 1