Pisa Today - Regatta of the Maritime Republics · Jun 2, 03:20 PM by James Martin
This picture was taken during the parade preceeding the Regatta of the Maritime Republics (the best part of the whole deal). I think we should have a competition for putting words into this soldier’s mouth. My entry would be, “I hate these idiotic parades. I just wanna put all my arrows through a lot of stout-hearted men and have a beer after. Maybe two beers.”
Filed in: Italy Festivals Italy News
2009 Giro d'Italia Pictures - Outside Piobbico · May 26, 12:03 PM by James Martin
Ok, so just how close can you get to your heros of bike racing at the Giro d’Italia? (And how much work do a cyclist’s arms get?) Well, looking through my 70mm lens, I kept sensing that I was in danger of hitting the cyclists with my elbow. They were that close.
Here are more pictures of the Giro from outside Piobbico in the Marche region, which is a very nice place to visit. Do not be put off by the horrible quality of the thumbnails. The pictures are much nicer. Look out Sports Illustrated!
Filed in: Italy News Italy Travel Tips
On to the Giro! · May 18, 12:41 AM by James Martin
Yes, this morning we’re packing our bags with all manner of cameras, video and still, computers, cell phones, and, oh yeah, some clothes—before heading out to beautiful Bella Baita to await the arrival of the world’s top cyclists competing for the pink in tomorrow’s 10th stage of the Centenary Giro d’Italia.
Yep, the tenth. You know, the one Lance Armstrong twittered, “where the real giro starts.”
Don’t know where the 10th stage goes? Cuneo to Pinerolo. See the route on our Giro Map
I know, I know: Wandering Italy has been on a Puglia love-fest lately. We’ve posted a video about the incredible Messapian artifacts in the Archaeological museum in Manduria and a map of my favorite city for Italian seafood (and a very evocative old town of narrow streets and interesting courtyards). See our new Gallipoli Italy map.
Filed in: Italy News Italy Travel
On Paris Hilton Writhing Naked for Canned Prosecco · Apr 14, 06:34 AM by James Martin
Prosecco is a fine, usually dry, bubbly wine that goes very well with appetizer type foods—especially those they set before you during Italian happy hours. It’s a tradition here in the Lunigiana. A glass of Prosecco will cost you about €3 in a bar, and comes with a table full of little nibbles, a bargain and a delight. Prosecco is protected as a DOC within Italy, and usually comes in a bottle. Outside it’s anyone’s silly game.
For example, makers of Rich Prosecco, a company that seems to have had too much sweet, fizzy plonk on its hands, signed Paris Hilton to a contract that required her to be all painted up in gold paint (they probably had lots of volunteers for that job, I’m sure) so she could promote little cans of fizzy wine while writhing like a golden snake with an itch that couldn’t be scratched. Surely that’s gotta mesmerize folks into popping open a can of sweet bubbly while watching the tee vee or changing the oil in the ‘vette. Then all the Rich (company) has to do is to sit back and start enjoying the sweet ka-ching of the cash registers…
Well, it didn’t turn out like that. In fact, it was a disaster. According to news:lite)
Now there are said to be over 30,000 units of the canned wine sitting in a warehouse in Serbia ready to be auctioned off at bargain basement prices before their expiration date in May.
Y’all probably don’t want to start lining up just yet.
It’s not that decent prosecco can’t be put in a can, it’s just that there have been so danged many failed attempts to dumb down wine with sweetness, stuff it into a container that can be sold in gas station vending machines, and then try to sell it to folks who hate wine. You’d think companies would just give up on the whole idea. Yet they continue. Maybe they’re after a bailout. Those seem easy to get.
Yes, I bought the can of prosecco you see up there to the left at a Lidl market in Germany. It’s not Rich Prosecco, so I don’t have to worry that I’m promoting the idea of painting socialites in gold so people can point and gawk. I bought it there because I didn’t know if Italy allowed that sorta thing inside its borders. I wouldn’t.
I haven’t drunk it yet. I don’t think I will. I’ll let Martha drink it. She’ll want me to have a sip. I will cringe and do what she says.
Sono un uomo vero.
—-
You want a taste test right now? I call upon the Winesleuth: Prosecco in a can – The video
For a more serious discussion on Prosecco and this controversy, see Italian Insight’s Paris Hilton and Prosecco in a Can!
Filed in: Italy News General
Italian Food: The Beginning of the End of Quality · Apr 13, 10:12 AM by James Martin
I’ve just heard the bad news from Burnt by the Tuscan Sun. The Italian government has recently decided that Italian orange or lemon drinks will no longer be required to include the actual fruit juice.
How gosh darned American of them.
I love(d) the taste sharp lemon taste of Italian Limonata. It even had pulp. What it didn’t have was that incredible cloying sweetness that sodas in the US evidently have to have. When I order one at an Italian bar and the waiter returns a perfunctory “Sprite va bene?” I shake my head so vigorously I sometimes hurt myself. Not on your life, sister…
But then there is the curious paragraph in Burnt:
As a staunch capitalist, I think this is wise. But, as someone who loves the pure juices without having them tainted with sugar, corn syrup and all of the other insidious ingredients which creep into American beverages, well, it’s a travesty. And the outcry has been huge.
(I feel a Beppe Grillo rant coming on)
Wise? Why? Certainly you can make more money by serving people industrial waste and left over donkey urine in place of the lemonade they think they’ve ordered. That’s just plain stealing. I really don’t get why people stand up and cheer when government sits back and allows industry to lie so that it can sell cheap knock-offs of good things in order to increase profit from people who have to lower their standards of living to provide that profit. Why should that be called “the free market?” You know the one I mean. The old one. The one that had unlimited buyers, unlimited sellers, and the buyers knew what they were buying.
Here’s the thing. You can sell lemon soda. Nobody’s saying you can’t. We just expect it to contain lemon, that’s all we ask. You can also sell sugared donkey piss. Just say what it is and put it on the market. Nobody’s stopping you.
A market in which you don’t know what you’re buying with your hard earned money is not a free market, it’s a thieves market.
Take American genetically modified “food.” The industry doesn’t want you to know if what you buy is or isn’t genetically modified, so they throw great gobs of their profit at lawyers and lobbyists who work endlessly to defeat truth in advertising laws to hide their work from you the consumer.
Why? Because you might decide (erroneously, to those who cook the books) not to purchase their frankenfood. And that would be wrong. Does this government enforced over-ride of your opinion—right or wrong, correct or erroneous—bother you? Just a bit?
I’ve heard the arguments from folks deathly afraid of a “nanny state” in which the government protects consumers by setting rules about what can be done to food. But when the government steps back and lets industry lie, well then, folks, you have yourself a nanny state by proxy. And let me tell you, I can think of nothing worse. If you don’t like a government nanny state, you can vote the bastards out. But if government builds a wall between consumers and an industry so devoid of new ideas it has to put all sorts of crap into your “food” in order to make an indecent profit—well folks, that’s a proper nightmare.
What kind of nightmare? Corporatism. Mussolini’s “Corporate State”.
You want that? Ok, then.
Filed in: Italy News Living in Italy
Italy's First UNESCO World Heritage Site Gets a Celebration · Apr 9, 12:06 PM by James Martin
I’ve been writing about Italy for a very long time. Still, there is only one place in Italy I’ve written about that has provoked the ire of those who would like certain things to be kept secret, their special place. Bet you can’t guess where that is…
It’s the Valcamonica, where you can see the world’s largest collection of rock art.
Ok, I have to explain. You see, lots of times when someone mentions “rock art” in public, a whole bunch of people who have been smoking dubious weed are likely to think that the speaker is referring to the CD cover art of groups who play music loudly if not harmonically and have names like Kinky Creepy One-Eyed Pigeon Pinchers.
This is not about that.
“Rock art” is a term we archaeologists use when we’re sitting around drinking beer after a day’s work to describe what folks—usually ancient and dead—paint, scribble, incise or carve into rock. Usually the things carved into rocks are symbolic images. There are also human stick figures. Some of them are doing things a modern person needs to be over 18 to view if society’s clucking tongues are to be avoided. I’m talking sex and violence here, in case you happen to be 18 years and 364 days old and thus are forbidden to understand.
(To tell the truth, determining the difference between sex and fighting when you’re gazing at a couple of stick figures superimposed upon one another is a task that even we adults have trouble interpreting. Or some of us anyway. But I digress.)
Let me just say that the Valcamonica has some 6000 BC carvings as well as some as recent as yesterday, considering that humans can hardly resist putting their marks on places they’ve traveled to. It’s a great place to visit. You can walk among the symbols, interpreting them any way you wish, and see some darn spectacular mountain scenery while you’re at it. We have a Valcamonica map that has visiting information for you, of course.
But the purpose of this post was to alert you to the celebration of the 30-year anniversary of the site’s inclusion on the World Heritage List that they’re having in Brescia in Palazzo Martinengo until May 10. Read more: Rock art spotlighted in exhibition
We’ll be there for sure. I’ll be the stick figure holding the wine glass.
Filed in: Italy News Italy Travel
Monday Madness - Lance Armstrong, Sexy Prisons, Top Regional Blogs · Mar 23, 03:00 PM by James Martin
First the breaking news: Lance Armstrong has broken his collarbone in the Vuelta a Castilla y León, making him highly questionable for the Giro d’Italia...
Now back to our regularly scheduled program. Why do I never get tired of touring Italy? It’s all that regional variation. You nurse the car up over a craggy peak and wham! On the way down you’re in a different region of Italy. They talk different. The food is different. People look different. I’ll never tire of the differences.
So, when blogs.com asked me to do a top ten list, I chose some blogs that really get into those differences, reflecting the diversity of Italian cuisine and life. These should make a good place to start exploring the Italy beyond the Rome-Venice-Florence triumvirate. Here’s the list: 10 Great Blogs for Exploring Italy
What’s caught my attention this morning? Well, any blog post with a title of The Sexiest Prison certainly titillates the topmost.
Filed in: Italy News Italy Travel Tips
Lance Armstrong in Italy - Milan-San Remo Spring Classic · Mar 20, 06:36 PM by James Martin
Today Lance Armstrong is doing the carb thing. “Sitting at the team dinner. Lots of pasta tonight. Lots,” he tweets. For tomorrow he shall test his legs at the Milan-San Remo Bike Race.
La classica di Primavera (“the Spring classic”) is Saturday, March 21st, 2009, Steephill.tv tells us. Steephill is probably the best place to get info in English for the race.
USians will get the chance to see the race, tape delayed, at 5pm ET on Versus, accordiing to steephill. Check them out for other internet video options. I’ll be watching; I liked San Remo very much on my last trip. Here are some San Remo Pictures.
If you twitter, you can follow @lancearmstrong and @steephill to keep up with the race tomorrow. If you have nothing else to do except dream of Italy, you can follow me @wanderingitaly.
Lance has told the media he’s hot planning on winning, but then it’s a darn nice ride through the Italian countryside, ending up on the Ligurian coast in springtime. You can’t call that bad.
See also yesterday’s interview: King Armstrong holds court in Milan’s Castello Sforzesco
Filed in: Italy News General