(Not) Digging Pompeii: Pompeii Food and Drink · Mar 7, 03:52 PM by James Martin
I like the direction archaeology is heading. It used to be that folks looked only for treasure. You found treasure in the vast palaces of the ruler. Maybe also where they buried the sucker. It was fun to dig there. Gold! Grants! Exhibits worldwide!
I’m one of those people for whom the powerful and wealthy hold no particular interest. I mean, can you name even one of those overcompensated Goldman Sachs wonks who brought down the entire economy last time by making gambling instruments out of poor people’s mortgages? I doubt it. They are not interesting people in the least (except to the government, who rewards them with sacks of money so they can try again.)
Archaeologists are wising up to this view. They’re starting to bring alive the more interesting parts of the city; the brothels, the slaughterhouses, the little shops and cafes that fed the people who maintained the fabric of the village core.
And now, for a price, you can join the scholars and learn about the real folk while they do.
Yes, this morning in a flurry of twitterings, I learned from Napoli Unplugged of the Pompeii Food and Drink Project in which you pay “to explore the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, Italy, as a research participant in an ongoing noninvasive (that means no digging) study with a staff of historians, architects, and classicists.”
These kinds of experiences are quite enlightening—with prices commensurate with the degree of potential enlightenment. Expensive, yet you won’t likely get the opportunity to do this kind of thing again in your life without spending four years in school—and you’ll have tales to tell your friends that will make you the envy of your social group, even if it is only made up of people on facebook you haven’t actually met.
Anyway, check out Pompeii Food and Drink Project
I’ve decided to illustrate this post with a picture of nearby Naples, where food is an art practiced not by the elite, but by your ordinary folk who talk mostly with their hands. This is Russortaggi. Who in his right mind would rather shop at Safeway?
Filed in: Food Italy Travel Tips
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Blogs About Italy · Mar 3, 07:18 PM by James Martin
Information. Isn’t there a ton of it online? What information do I like best? Cultural information. What are people around the world doing right now? Who’s making pasta? Who’s gutting a wild bore? Who’s stuck in the subway with a live lobster making odd noises in a paper bag?
For all this, these days, we have blogs. When Martha decided to create a list of Italian blogs for Italy Travel, she didn’t want to make one of those “Top Ten Italian Blogs!” lists that people fight and whine over but create constantly, as if there was a cosmic force behind the urge.
There are just too many good blogs out there. So, she let everyone submit a blog, and then weeded out the ones that consisted of only one blog post or had pictures of naked people handling snakes. There were some surprising entries among the old favorites of mine.
For example, there’s a whole blog devoted to Artichokes in Italy. It is called, oddly enough, The Artichoke Blog. It cracks me up how they get these names. Anyway, the blog has great pictures, and is a tribute to writers who can pick a narrow topic and wow you with what they can do with it.
Anyway, if you love things Italian, you will want to check out the compilation Blogs About Italy
Did you know there’s a blog done by researchers Blogging Pompeii? You can get right down in the trenches with them, in three languages yet.
Well done.
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips Living in Italy
Lampredotto: Cow Stomach Eaten from Trucks in Florence · Feb 15, 08:52 AM by James Martin
Why is it that the world’s best food is cooked inside a truck or van? It is the fact that true competition at a small level produces better products? The big boys, after all, eliminate competition economically, by buying up the competition, or out-advertising them (not with facts, but with simple math: bigger boobs = greater sales).
When I’m in California I can hardly resist the urge to eat at a “taco truck”. It’s where you get real Mexican grub. The tacos can hardly be compared to the bland, one size fits all slop served by the chains.
In Florence, I can always find the fortitude to forgo the Renaissance in favor of the Lampredotto stands that dot the landscape. Yes, Lampredotto is one of the more refined stomachs of the cow, the last one, or fourth on the butcher chart. You cook it slowly. It softens to a sensuous silkiness. You spike it up with green sauce.
I couldn’t resist taking a picture of the Lampredotto stand in Florence’s Borgo San Frediano When Kyle Phillips of Italian Cuisine took me there for a panino which was to become the first course of a full Italian meal. Wow.
This is the internet age, and now it’s easier than ever to find these stands because of the tireless work of folks like Dan Woodford, who has mapped Florence’s lampredotto and trippa stands
Filed in: Food Italy Travel Tips
Popular These Days
YoGen: Get a Charge Out of Pulling a Ripcord on Your Vacation · Feb 14, 04:07 PM by James Martin
This is the time I usually start thinking of equipment for my spring jaunt to Italy. By equipment I mean the electronic things one needs to get information onto the web.
You see, I’ve just gotten back from 10 days in Palm Springs, doing some research for the nascent Wandering Palm Springs, a sort of sister site for when the temperatures in Italy fall and you need a place to go with your rat pack.
Anyway, while listening to other travelers in Palm Springs, I heard a lot about all the crap the average connected tourist has to carry. The battery chargers alone will give you a hernia.
So what if you could just pull hard on a ripcord and WHAM! your electronic doodads are charged?
(Then again, what if you did this on a plane?)
Anyway, that seems like the principle behind YoGen, which sounds to me like a Star Trek character who is cute as all get out but carries some odd thoughts about sexual relations with female robots stuffed in the bowels of a spaceship heading for Uranus…
Anyway, if you’ve been out in the field and your iPad is drained and your iPod is sagging, you might want to check out YoGen. It’s got that see-through plastic thing going that’s all the rage—-and lots of gears. Tell me how it works fer ya, willya?
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips General
Those Dirty Hotels · Feb 4, 08:20 AM by James Martin
TripAdvisor, the travel site that’s gained fame and fortune from using unpaid content from users to create an online travel empire, is in trouble for a list of the UKs dirtiest hotels it published recently. Turns out hotel owners want an EU commission to start looking into limiting anonymous reviews. Hotel owners would like make sure that “reviews are posted by genuine guests and not by rivals or people simply out to cause mischief.”
I’d have to agree. Anonymous reviews are pretty worthless unless there’s a critical mass of them. Sure, eventually you can learn enough to spot a clunker with pretty good accuracy, or at least you think you can.
The difference between (good) professional writing and anonymous drivel is in the details—no matter if the subject is pornography or hotel reviews. A pro can’t say “the room was too small” without defining exactly how many square feet too small is. A porn pro can’t say “it was gargantuan” without a ruler and…well, you get the picture.
It’s odd reading reviews that trumpet the idea that “service was not up to snuff” when we don’t know what snuff is, or what level of “service” the reviewer expects. Is “service” what’s provided by information gleaned from the staff? Or is bad service defined by the fact that nobody carried your 2700 pounds of luggage up to the room with a smile the minute you arrived? The degree of goodness or badness is always related to expectations, and a good reviewer has to be a slave to that fact. An anonymous unpaid reviewer isn’t necessarily a slave to any facts, and there’s the rub.
Besides, cleanliness isn’t the half of it. One of the memorably bad hotels I’ve ever stayed at was one of the cleanest. It cost more per night than I usually spend for a week in a self catering apartment. It had two bathrooms and a little office with a sofa. Every day the maid came in an rearranged my stuff on the desk so I had little chance of finding or making use of it, then turned on each of the 37 lights so that when I came home at midnight, stanco, or “tired as all get out” as we say in America, and pushed my card key into the wall I was greeted with an explosion of light. If I my tired eyes didn’t snap wide open from all that, I was certainly wide awake hours later when I had finally managed to extinguish all but the one light I’d need to turn on at night—what little was left by then of the darkness of it.
I don’t need a gargantuan room. Just a quiet place and a comfy bed without critters, a bathroom that works right and a staff that leaves me and my stuff alone. Now you know.
Here’s how I find hotels. (Hint: good companies limit reviews to folks who’ve stayed in those hotels, it’s not rocket science to program this stuff.)
Here’s the article which inspired this post.
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips General
I'm Missing the Lunigiana: A Statue Picture · Jan 31, 12:16 PM by James Martin
I’m on my way soon to Palm Springs. It’s a way to escape winter and visit with my mother and brother. It’s not the same as being in Italy.
The statue over to the right is one I recently discovered in the town of Bocca di Magra, the mouth of the Magra river. I’ve heard that Italy’s famous writers met here. It’s a great place to go to eat seafood—or fish for it.
The statue is interesting because its form mimics the stele statues you find in the museum in Pontremoli (which is inside a castle you should visit). The statue is of a woman who seems to have come out of the sea with friends at her feet. The “friends” are like the local critters they cook up and serve to you in the nearby restaurant which overlooks the yacht harbor.
Darn, I miss that.
Filed in: The Lunigiana Italy Travel Tips
Having a Cultural Experience in Italy: Experiential Travel Tips · Jan 28, 04:29 PM by James Martin
When people ask me for travel information, they often append their request with something like, “Don’t send me to any tourist traps. I want to go to a place without tourists where I can have a true cultural experience.” The unwritten part is, “…which you are going to spell out for me and which is going to be easy.”
Here’s the thing: nobody can give you steps to follow to have a cultural experience—or, for that matter, an epiphany.
I like epiphanies. You just can’t force them. They come when you’re ready.
What you can do is open yourself up to experience. For the most part, this means becoming a “cultural relativist”, even if only temporarily and then only if your chosen political party or leaning allows it. Yes, that’s right, the first step is to stop thinking that the culture you come from is the very bestest in the whole wide world and nobody does it better, despite the fact you haven’t experienced any other cultures. Other folks a long way away from your country have solved (or tried to solve) the same social problems. They got different answers. That difference is what makes the world go ‘round. Well, that and a whole lot of good Barolo…
Become childlike. Marvel at things. Have no shame in asking about things you don’t understand. People everywhere like explaining their traditions. Open your mind. Control nothing.
You’re in the garden of Eden. What’s around you is beauty and goodness and light. Marvel at it. Remember you get kicked out if you try to gain control of things. Remember God.
Now you’re ready. I’ve got tips.
Learn a bit of the language. You’ll have a hard time making inroads unless you can at least show folks you’re a decent person. Learn the polite words. Greet people in shops. Thank folks who help you.
Go on a quest. Got a question about why folks do what they do? Find out for yourself. Want local regional foods, the best a restaurant has to offer? Discuss the food with the waiter and take his recommendations; it’s how you get good food in Italy because what’s special isn’t always offered to us hamburger eaters and isn’t always on the menu because they think we won’t like it. Or—go to an open air market and search for something you’ve never eaten before—perhaps agretti, or perhaps a rare cheese from a guy in a truck who likes talking and using his hands to make a point.
Stay where you’re not isolated as a tourist. That usually means you won’t be staying in a hotel. You might try a self-catering vacation home or apartment, but you’ll get more advice in a rural agriturismo, a country house on a working farm, where there’s someone to lead you over the cultural hurdles and send you to the right places to learn what you want to learn. You’ll also eat well and learn how the Italian insistence on good ingredients has created a cuisine that’s the envy of the world, especially in places where the industrial hamburgers are awash in Ammonia or other noxious liquids.
How to find an agriturismo and an owner that suits you? Easy. Go to twitter and search with the term “agriturismo”. You’ll come up with a list of owners that use the social network to tell you what’s happening in their neck of the woods. You can use twitter not only to find a likely agriturismo, but to see if the owner might share your interests or be willing to teach you something about the culture. If your quest is to find out how the taste of extra virgin olive oil you buy in the supermarket is different from that of artisanal production, you’ll be amazed the first time you taste an oil made by people who care. It’s an astonishing difference you’ll tell your friends about until they hate you for it.
I’m out of gas. Maybe my open mind has dried up. I need to remember to cover it in saran wrap when I’m not using it. There’s a hockey game on tv tonight.
Filed in: Experiential Travel Italy Travel Tips
Places to Stay in Italy · Jan 8, 10:05 AM by James Martin
I’ve been beefing up the main site here with tips on finding places to stay in Italy.
You see, over the years that I’ve been traveling, the kinds of lodging you might expect has changed dramatically. Then along came the internet, which ramped up the rate of change in way we look at our little rented sleep boxes.
In the 70s, we’d just get on a train and ride, secure in the knowledge that there would be a hotel across the street from the train station where there’d be a room into which we’d toss our bags before we went exploring.
All you did was look the place over, walk to the reception desk and inquire about price and availability. It was easy. The beds sagged, the bath could be down the hall, and the reception might well be manned by a toothless witch. We didn’t mind. We were young then.
Today, folks want the perfect lodging—and they can find it on the internet. Trouble is, all this market efficiency means all the “top-rated” places are reserved months and sometimes years in advance. The internet also means that big chain hotels can offer unreasonably low prices at the last minute to fill their huge hotels, a strategy that’s caused many independent hotel owners to be flung onto the mean streets, among them those memorable cheery ones you miss because they were a wealth of local insider information and made fresh, homemade buns for breakfast.
But the situation isn’t all bad. What has also skyrocketed is the availability of houses and apartments you can stay in—often cheaper than hotels, especially for families. You might have to rent them for a week minimum, but heck, tell friends you’re contemplating a week in Tuscany (or Puglia or the Abruzzo or Piedmonte wine country…) and see if they advise you that a week is too much! (If they do, dump them, they’re not your friends.)
In any case, I’ve spilled my guts. See Hotels: Finding a Place to Stay in Italy. Then, if you’re not familiar with renting a vacation home or apartment, read about Italy Self Catering and finally read some very short reviews of the places I’ve stayed over the years and really, really, liked: Recommended Self Catering Apartments and Houses
I highly recommend self catering. It gives you a base for some experiential travel. You can go to the same cafe in the morning, making it your cafe. Live like an Italian without the taxes and ponderous bureaucracy. It’s the best of all worlds, believe me.
Bed and Breakfasts? Coming.
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips Experiential Travel