Talk to Me of Italy · Mar 11, 02:00 PM by James Martin
Fun times. Our new Canon EOS 7D come yesterday (The price has finally come down off suggested retail at Amazon: Canon EOS 7D 18 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3-inch LCD (Body Only)
Nice piece of kit. Blazing fast focus. I’m still playing with the High Def Movie mode.
At the same time I’m playing with this camera, I’ve been busy at work on the Wandering Italy Facebook Page. I figure since I travel a lot and have comments turned off in the blog, the facebook thing would be for a way for me to interact with you. So head on over if you want to tell me to write more about attending the 2010 Giro d’Italia or you’d like to see more videos of Italy or something. Or you can just say “Hi” and ask me about my new toy.
I’ll also be posting some shorter comments on things I see on the net that I like, or I’ll talk about the weather in the Lunigiana when I’m there (less than a month, stay tuned).
Let’s have some fun with this.
Filed in: General Italy Travel
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Delta of Italy Exotica · Mar 5, 10:20 AM by James Martin
Martha and I have just celebrated the wondrously arcane task of cobbling together her Italy Travel Fan Page by spending an evening listening to a cd of Italian music called Putumayo Presents: Italian Café
Yes, the era spawned paparazzi, men who took snaps of celebrities from the shadows, mostly women attached to the arms of handsome and nouveau-wealthy men. It was a time of machismo. Men were in.
But something changed, maybe around the time Italy had its “economic miracle” in the 80s. The edge seems to have suddenly come off the machismo, as if we noticed all of a sudden that the prosciutto was pink and feminine, unlike the ruddy redness of the cured hams of Spain, for example.
I got thinking about the people I follow on twitter who talk about Italy with passion. Mostly women. Then, too, there are women writing books about travel in Italy for women, like Susan Van Allen in her 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go (Travelers’ Tales)
Why, there’s even special parking now in the autostrada rest stops. Lady park. Nice.
Get yourself gussied up and head over to the Lady Park some day. Change is good, isn’t it? (But paper money is worth more.)
I wish they hadn’t changed the music though.
Filed in: Italy Travel General
Massa Marittima and the Phallus Tree · Feb 25, 05:37 PM by James Martin
Tuscany is a hot, swinging place. If you were to be poking around the medieval piazze of Massa Marittima, you might come across a frescoed fountain. The fresco, made reasonably brilliant from restoration in recent times, is a harmonious composition featuring a huge tree and women below, reaching for the fruit of said tree.
How quaint, I hear you whisper, ever so softly.
Look at the tree closely though, and your puritan hackles are in danger of being raised up. The tree bears phalluses. Lots of them. Big, too.
I like the medieval, especially around the 12th and 13th centuries, when pilgrimage was rampant and sexual carvings were being hammered out in droves inside Romanesque churches along the routes. It’s so not the stuff of the 21st century.
In any case, folks close to the mural want the tree of phalluses to represent a pagan wish for fecundity, a desire that isn’t passing through the modern population of Italy like wildfire for sure. It is likely to have politics attached to it, as explained in Negative Campaigning, Medieval Style, which also has a great picture of the fresco.
And if you want to sit back and hear about Massa Marittima’s phallus tree, here’s an NPR report
Unusual fruit indeed.
Filed in: Italy Travel Italy News
Popular These Days
Hot Oil Lamp Sex in the Boot · Jan 27, 03:09 PM by James Martin
In honor of the parents of kids in Southern California who discovered the salacious entry oral sex in the new editions of Merriam-Webster and had a cow over it, I’ve prepared this post. For a while these folks managed to make the dictionary a tome non grata in school libraries. Can you imagine?
I just don’t get it. How turned on can a modern kid get over the “explicit content” of this entry. Cover your ears cuz I’m gonna repeat it: “Oral stimulation of the genitals.”
Yup. That’s it. Totally, as far as I can tell.
Those parents probably don’t travel, but if they did they’d be horrified to discover the wonderful world of sex lurking in such unlikely places as Italian archaeological museums. There’s hardly a Greek vase (or Roman copy of one) that doesn’t have something genital-like peeking out from the folds of those gowns they wore.
But it’s the Italians we promised to talk about here. We might as well start with the Romans. For them, the erect, you know, “male genital apparatus” was a good luck symbol. You tacked a representation of one over the door of your business to ensure good exchange of money. Kids saw ‘em, too. They didn’t melt. They probably didn’t even giggle. Much.
And it makes a certain amount of sense. Good health was lucky. An erection was a sign of good health, so you put it over your shop. I don’t mean the real thing, I mean a representation of an erection.
Anyway, just as soon as the Romans figured out how to make molded oil lamps like the one you see on the right, what did they do? Well, how many sexual positions could you imagine being put on top of the lamp you kept near your bed? Never mind that the wall of your bedroom was likely fresco-ed with folks “doing it” as they say. You needed something tactile. Bas relief. You grabbed your oil lamp. Yes, they mass produced oil lamps with different sexual positions on them. These sexual oil lamps sold like hotcakes evidently, because you find them darn near everywhere you dig in Italy.
These lamps were mass produced in ports, most notably the old port of Rome at Ostia. Yep, you might as well make ‘em were there are sailors, your sexually deprived best customers—until the rape and plunder part of the job starts anyway. (If you go to Rome, you should definitely plan to visit Ostia Antica as a day trip.)
If you want to get an education on these and other sexual appurtenances of the Romans, you’d best get yourself over to the Naples Archaeological Museum and head right for the secret cabinet: the Gabinetto Segreto, where they’ve stocked all the stuff they couldn’t show women, children and excitable parents in the dark ages of a “little while ago.” Now anyone who can afford entrance to the museum can go in and poke around. I mean “poke” in a general way, of course.
Oh, and click the picture to see it bigger. Warning: you’ll see in pretty good detail just what the parents in Southern California were talking about: Roman archaeology and social customs of times past in living, digital color. You might decline to look if you’re too excitable.
Filed in: Italy Travel
Game Over for the Dollar? · Jan 22, 02:39 PM by James Martin
Lately there has been a general decline in the number of times folks collar me to ask what Italians think of Americans. These days, the Italians in my village are too troubled with their own um—for lack of a better word—“leadership”, not to mention the slumping, dead-in-the-water economy.
I was thinking of this when I remembered the picture over there to the right (click to see it bigger). It was part of an art display that caught my eye as I searched for the entrance to the Naples Underground excavations below the Church of San Lorenzo Maggiore, located at the exact center of the Greco-Roman city.
The artist wanted to know if an American like me “got” the art. Well, certainly I got this one. And they’re right, the dollar will probably never be the same again; all bow to Goldman Sachs. We know they won’t quit until the even the butterfly loses interest in the greenback.
Another thing I noticed is that Italian art is like Italian food. It’s simple, direct, and to the point. There’s not a lot of ingredients. You don’t stew in it for hours. After, you go out for coffee…
In any case, you should forget the wallowing dollar and make an effort to get below Naples at any cost. It’s quite interesting. As in many Italian cities, people have been digging out soft limestone underbellies for years. They’ve made bomb shelters, dovecotes, wine cellars. Along the way they’ve discovered that other folks have been carving out the same territory; ancient Greeks and Romans had the same ideas. You can go underground in Rome, Orvietto, and Naples and probably a bunch of other cities built on soft rock.
The other interesting thing is that the folks who keep the Naples underground going are volunteers. It makes sense—if the Italian government financed every archaeological excavation and visitor center they wouldn’t have money left to repair their leader’s faces after irate and ignored citizens smash them with Duomo statues.
Of course, through these volunteer organizations you can explore the whole underground thing in Italy virtually. Try Napoli Underground for example. One of its members is Larry Ray. I bet you can’t guess what Larry does. He’s a Gourd Artist. As someone who’s lost his gourd years ago, I can dig what Larry does. Besides making some incredible art out of inedible squash, Larry has written the history of some of the stuff that gets discovered under Naples. Check out Larry Ray’s Site then read the stuff Larry has penned about the underground history in Naples, Italy
There are some mighty fascinating people in the world. You should go visit them. They tend to live in some interesting places. To hell with the dollar. Just go.
Filed in: Italy Travel General
Rome Calling · Jan 17, 09:32 AM by James Martin
After a fine meal with friends and a new acquaintance at Olea Restaurant in San Francisco I was itching to go back to Rome. Yes, we discussed the Eternal City, its secret gardens and some interesting places to view Rome from above.
Rome is one of those cities that divides folks. Orderly folks will hate it as they might hate Naples for some of the same reasons. For those of us who like surprises, cacaphony, and life lived in the midst of surreal oddness, Rome is the motherland of vacations.
Anyway, this occasion, a fine meal presided over by a waiter who understood our desire to communicate unabated while he worked in the background tirelessly, gave me an opportunity to drag out one of my favorite pictures taken last year at the Christmas Market in Piazza Navona. Call it performance art if you wish. It was colorful. Dazzling in its serenity. There was also a little eye candy in it. So shoot me.
Which also reminds me of a page I wove together yesterday on Rome Taxis. It includes a widget that allows you to find what the real fare is to wherever you’re going, just so you don’t get ripped off I mean. There are many sides to Rome.
Filed in: Italy Travel Italy Festivals
Sardinia. You Should Go · Jan 13, 02:20 PM by James Martin
Angela Corrias, a journalist who works out of the UK, is stuck in Sardinia doing research on the Knights Templar. She’s also cranking out articles about the interesting culture there. She’s breaking my heart. I wanna go back. I want to see the nuraghi, the sacred wells, the Roman baths still warm, eat lamb stew from a cork plate and chow down on some formaggio con vermini, cheese with worms, after.
Anyway, Angela writes about S’Ardia – A Race Between Danger and Faith for example. You won’t see a race like it anywhere. I’ve seen it five times. I want to see it again. The Palio di Siena? Child’s play, I’m telling you. Besides, the palio’s best riders are all Sardinian.
But my heart really went all a flutter when a read one of Angela’s recent articles Called Fordongianus: Roman Thermal Baths in the Heart of Sardinia. It brought back earthy memories of a 1980s visit when I was working on an archaeological project nearby.
Fordongianus is a Roman spa complex fed by natural hot springs that are still filling the pools to this day. We visited the complex often as it was a stop on our introduction tour for new volunteers on the archaeological survey we were conducting. Not many people had seen a working Roman bath complex.
But I have to tell you, seeing the water in the daytime was plenty of a deterrent for those reprobates among us who harbored thoughts of soaking in it. It was filthy. It was smelly. It said “stay away” in a variety of ways, none of them verbal.
Fast forward to another evening. Our dig house was visited by some British archaeologists. Earlier, a Sardinian volunteer had brought over some chanterelle mushrooms, so I asked if any of the Brits had Scotch. I knew a recipe for chicken with chantrelles and Scotch that I liked and wanted to cook it.
Of course they traveled with a bottle! In the end (meaning quite late, as is the habit in Sardinian summer) we ate luxuriously and there was that bottle of Scotch, unfinished, just sitting there…
So we drank from it.
By midnight we had run out of words to slur, so there was only one option. Well, that is to say there was only one option presented to us by our guests, who were noteworthy enough archaeologists that we forced ourselves into playing along at every opportunity.
“What say we have a race, Brits versus the Americans, Olympic style. Isn’t there a big pool at Fordongianus?”
I looked at my friend Mike. He was wincing noticeably.
The Brits encouraged us…wait, they made us go to Fordongianus. I am not the least bit sad at being able to tell you the American team did not compete. We stood like wienies at the side of the warm pool, gasping in awe of the fearless Brits, crawling through the murkey shallows, flopping over at the end of the pool, kicking plumes of brown water in the air…
I wonder whatever happened to them.
Sardinia is a fascinating place, even id you don’t have any notoriously staid British archaeologists on hand. So, if any of this makes you want to explore further, please take a look at Angela Corrias’ latest works. Then, start planning that vacation in Sardinia. And wait…forget the costly coasts—go to the interior—if you care about fascinating cultures and archaeology that is. You might want to also take a look at my Sardinia scribblings: Inside Sardinia
Filed in: Experiential Travel Italy Travel
Hot New Travel Tools · Jan 3, 06:18 PM by James Martin
Hey, it’s the new year, ya know? There’s gotta be some dynamite new tools for travelers you’d think. All this social networking that’s seeking a focus has to gather up some light sometime and start a fire…or something.
Well, here’s a good idea: Expatistan. No, Expatistan is not a dusty country where there are camels; Expatistan is an machine that tells you what it costs in a country you’re thinking of moving to. I suspect it could be used to give travelers some idea of the money they’ll dole out while staying in a foreign city. Anyway, the thing seems to grab your locality from your IP address so you can type in the name of a foreign city and compare costs. I found out, for example, that Rome is 34% more expensive than Sacramento. Now, I don’t live in Sacramento, but heck, I do know what it costs for a hamburger there. So, I know I’ll spend about a third more in Rome. Cool.
This thing can harness all of us tied to our computers. You see, we can make the machine run better by feeding it with the data from our own localities, like transportation costs—or the cost of that burger.
So get with it. Try Expatistan.
Then there’s World Taxi Meter. If the site looks as clean and simple as Expatistan, that’s because there’s been some commingling of talent between the two, as far as I can tell. In any case, the World Taxi meter is meant to tell you what a taxi journey should cost in the city you’re traveling to. Cool, especially for those of you who think every taxi driver in the world is out to grab every last remaining bit of odd currency out of your wallet and then some. There’s even a widget available to put on your website so your visitors can spend all day figuring out the cost of a taxi ride in Gumbutistan (tell the driver to watch out for longhorn camels).
And, same deal, the site will get bigger and more accurate when you report your own findings. Try World Taximeter
Ok, the last thing isn’t a neat machine, database, or a small box filled with showgirls that can kick up a storm on demand, then deflate and go back in the box before you get in trouble with the missus. No, it’s just my personal reflections on Italian hotels. You know—how I find them, when I reserve them, why they don’t have free wifi, and why the stars don’t make sense to you. It’s here: How to Find a Place to Stay in Italy
Have fun planning your vacation.
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips Italy Travel