A View of Bassano del Grappa · Jun 25, 07:35 PM by James Martin
I’ve been a little behind on the blog, being that this is only my second day home from Italy, so I thought I’d do an easy thing, and put up a picture I liked. This is the classic view of Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto region taken from the Ponte degli Alpini, a famous wooden bridge designed by Palladio in 1569.
I had a great time in the Veneto, so expect more from me on this subject. I know nobody wants to go there, but I don’t know why, so I figure you smoke them out with hard evidence of the charms of the place.
And, in this case, there’s also the Poli grappa museum, which is really quite entertaining. And it’s free, which doesn’t hurt either.
Filed in: Italy Travel General
Shooting the Piemonte Rapids in a Cardboard Boat · Jun 16, 09:23 AM by James Martin
I think it’s pretty safe to say that wine is more popular in Piemonte than river rapids. Even as someone who spends considerable time in Tuscany, I tip my hat to Piemonte wine. It’s the best.
But Piemonte does have rushing water. And what do you do with rushing water—especially if you’re Italian and weaned on Ferrari juice? You travel down it at breakneck speeds. If you’re a real man, you go down it in a cardboard box.
It was via a tweet from @campariman that I first heard of Carton Rapid Race. Only the title is in English, but here’s the gist. You get a couple hours to build a “boat” outta cardboard, then you race it down the rapids in a time trial.
You better be thinking of your boat design. The race is the 4th and 5th of July.
Here’s a video of the thing. Just in case you think everyone in Piemonte just swirls and sniffs.
Filed in: Italy Festivals Italy Travel
OMG! I Saw Barack Obama in a Train Station Bar in Viareggio! · Jun 12, 01:52 AM by James Martin
We were on our way home from Lucca and had to stop in Viareggio to change trains. We scoped out the bar in the station. There he was. His head was bigger than you might have imagined. He is slim. Impossibly slender. Stick-like even. Oh, wait…
Viareggio is known for its carnival celebration, carnevale. The Obama mask, shown above, was quite popular. I had a peach flavored ice tea without any ice; it, too, is all the rage in Italy.
Filed in: Italy Travel Living in Italy
Not All Bikers Along the Giro Route Wear Spandex · May 20, 11:58 PM by James Martin
Sure, you can’t swing a cat anywhere near the finish line of the Giro d’Italia without smacking some fuzzy kitty-flesh against spandex body-condoms infused with ads for odd products you’ve never heard of and will likely never use. (Liquigas, anyone?) But the real story is this guy over to the left. He’s in his 80’s. He’s at the Pinerolo market pretty much every day selling stuff from his garden. He was there three years ago when I last visited, and he was there yesterday.
Engage him and you’ll find he’s much livelier than all of the privileged US congresspeople put together. The guy is a walking, talking example for your mom’s exhortation to “eat your vegetables so you can grow up strong and wiry so you can bring your cabbages to market so other people can live well and prosper.” So what kinda bike gets him into the big city? How does he get his produce to market? Well, here:
The bike is in front of the trailer he uses for the goods. Note how they attach (on the right in the picture).
Filed in: Italy Travel Living in Italy
It's a Beautiful Day for Stage 10 of the Giro d'Italia! · May 19, 02:38 AM by James Martin
Here’s the view from our room at the Bella Baita on the day of the tenth stage of the Giro d’Italia. The giro will pass below us in Pinasca this afternoon. We’ll be there.
Filed in: Italy Travel Living in Italy
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
Don't Go to Puglia During Bad Weather... · May 16, 10:12 AM by James Martin
…or you might get photos like this:
We were going home to our masseria, the Masseria Li Mennuli, which is right across the street from this “warehouse” in Puglia south of Manduria, the famous Primitivo wine region. The sun had just peeked out from some big storm clouds.
Is there any wonder why I choose to go to Europe in the “off” season?
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips Italy Travel
Brescia, Wine, and School Groups Oh My! · May 8, 03:02 AM by James Martin
If you visit Brescia (and you should, especially if you want to see the start of the upcoming Mille Miglia) don’t miss a trip to the City Museum.
Ok, “City Museum” isn’t a scintillating title for a museum, but it offers a fascinating glimpse at Brescia’s checkered history none the less. The museum is inside the former Monastery of Santa Giulia, which was founded in 753 A.D. by Lombard King Desiderio. The whole thing sits on top of some Roman houses. The houses were found under the monastery’s kitchen gardens, the remaining walls evidently used to separate the garden sections. (Just like the garden outside my building, which sits tight inside the lower level of a torn-down house so the ground level is the same as the terrace of the lower story. Thus, while you’re eating al fresco and you want another pomodoro for your salad, you just lean over and grab it instead of walking down stairs to the real ground level.)
Anyway, getting around the huge museum can take hours. When we reached the Roman houses, I stopped to sit and listen to a school teacher talk to his students. (Students outnumbered adults about 2 zillion to 1 on account of it being a school day in the middle of the week in spring.)
This particular group of students seemed about 11 or 12 years of age. They were parked in front of the mosaic on the left, which seems to depict a naked man feeding his jaguar with a funnel in much the same way as housewives feed corn to ducks to bloat their livers into foie gras. I could be wrong.
In any case, I figured I could understand Italian spoken to such young’uns so I listened in. Just then the teacher started talking about wine. He described the flavors and mouth feel of modern wine, then started to explain how Roman wine would have tasted, which evolved into a discussion with the students about the differences in food that meshed with the difference in the wine over the centuries…
“Hold on a minute!” I thought to myself. What if this were the United States? Can you imagine what would happen if a teacher started waxing poetic about wine to his 11 year old students? (For Italian readers: knowledge in America is considered poison in some quarters. Ok, most quarters. Knowledge of sex and alcoholic libations tops the list. To know about sex (for example) is to have it. To have it is to offend God, who invented the appurtenances used in the act as well as the desires which make us mad to practice it. Dang, I can’t explain it because it’s pretty idiotic, but it’s like that…)
I imagine (now that the practice has been made popular and deemed effective by the enthusiastic people who practice it) that any school board worth its salt would maybe try waterboarding the poor schmuck who would dare to talk about these forbidden subjects to his students. If that didn’t work, a month of supersized “value meals” at a fast food emporium might do the trick to keep such a teacher “on track.”
Oh, by the way, there are some extraordinarily vivid frescoes in the church of Santa Maria in Solario (inside the museum complex) which depict such blood-dripping martyrdom scenes as Saint Sebastian playing his standard role as a pincushion for spent arrows as well as one depicting a couple of presumably sinless gentlemen ripping a woman’s breasts to shreds (Saint Agatha perhaps).
Torture. It’s all part of the heritage.
Filed in: Italy Travel Italy Travel Tips