Taxi Cheat Slapdown: Rome vs. New York · Mar 13, 09:16 AM by James Martin
It’s interesting how many people are just terrified at the thought of getting ripped off by a Rome taxi driver. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. It does. Frequently. I’ve even written about Rome Taxis and have gifted you with a widget that tells you what a taxi should cost in the Eternal City so you can “know before you go” or something.
But enough about Rome. I gleefully read the article about New York Cabbies on Gladdling this morn, New York cabbies caught overcharging passengers – 1.8 million times
That’s a lot.
It also shows how the world is much the same. It’s amazing to me that many rural-based American folks who wouldn’t dare set a tootsie in New York for fear of getting mugged (or ripped off by a taxi driver) will head off for a visit to Rome without a care in the world.
What I’m sayin’ is that street smarts is street smarts, wherever you go. Big cities everywhere are are full of people who make a better living than their peers by relying on their cleverness to extract more money from a client who is not paying attention.
So pay attention. Don’t just watch—see!
That said, I have chosen a house in a rural area of Italy. Taxi drivers have so far been wonderfully civil in the Lunigiana. You might consider getting out in the country if you’re afraid of cities—or unwilling to pay attention to your surroundings.
On the other hand, Rome is a wonderfully diverse city of surprises, art, and Roman ruins. If you pay 20 Euro too much for a taxi, what’s it matter in the grand scheme of things? You can get mad, you can huff and puff, the veins can stand out grandly on your forehead and still, it won’t make a bit of difference. Trust me, you’ll have a great story to tell which will leave folks clucking and shaking their heads over how superior their country is.
Filed in: Italy Travel Tips The Lunigiana
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Lunigiana Honey is Best · Feb 19, 10:31 AM by James Martin
I was happy to hear recently that The best honey in Italy comes from Lunigiana. My neighbor makes some dynamite chestnut honey just outside my window. His hives look like, well, that’s them over there to the right (click to see them bigger).
The only DOP honey in all of Italy comes from the Lunigiana.
Italy is the only country in the world able to produce, thanks to its geographic position and its orography that determine particular climatic conditions, more than 30 different types of valuable honey. The only honey to have obtained the Dop label is the honey of the Lunigiana. ~ Many types of honey
The two DOP types of honey, acacia honey and chestnut honey, are at opposite ends of the color and taste scales. Last spring I was able to taste for the first time the Lunigiana DOP acacia honey. It’s light in color and has a delicate vanilla and flowers taste. Italians, the seller told me, take spoons of it for their health. In earlier times it was used as a general sweetener.
Chestnut honey is dark, rich, and fuller flavored, with a slightly bitter aftertaste. I like it drizzled over my Greek style yogurt in the morning.
Head over to the Lunigiana for some honey. Stay for some castles and maybe a worker’s lunch at one of our favorite restaurants.
Note: The Lunigiana produces great honey in part due to the lack of pollution. That is, there’s none of that icky, smoggy stuff and there’s very little of that other, unspoken pollution, the invasion of the corporate crap products like the Bayer CropScience AG’s insecticide Proteus that’s killing France’s bees
Filed in: The Lunigiana Food
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
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A Luni Christmas Eve · Dec 24, 07:42 AM by James Martin
Yes, here in the Lunigiana we’re blessed with a laid-back lifestyle and a land full of good things to eat. After documenting the processing of Armando’s pig, we’ve been invited to eat much of it at Armando and Francesca’s house. Tonight we’ll be eating cotecchino con pure, or a sausage made from the meat and skin plus some mashed potatoes.
But things aren’t all paradiso found in northern Tuscany. Nope. After our snow storm, in which our entire village lost water for an entire day, the murkey russet sludge started coming from our pipes at the exact moment we lost electricity. It was time for bed, luckily, so we hibernated a while.
But then came the rain. A torrential downpour that put soccer fields completely under lakes complete with ducks.
That was yesterday. You can see the blue bike stored under the overhang in the picture.
It rained all night, then stopped for about three hours. Now it’s raining gatti e cani, cats and dogs. I’m glad we’re on a hill. I wasn’t so glad when the hill was iced over.
Then, to top it all off, someone hit our car while it rested peacefully in our little community parking area. A tail light is broken, a bumper smudged in black. No note, not even in Italian.
Ok, so there are good things to balance the bad. Here’s a picture of a presepe entered in a presepe competition in Pontremoli done by grade school students using only pasta shapes. It sits on a bread paddle. I think. It brings a smile anyway. Click to see it bigger. How many pasta shapes can you see?
So, I know I’ve been somewhat discouraging with this post, but hey, come and visit the Lunigiana some time. Friends have fixed up a kinda neat 17th century monolocale as a vacation rental. It’s a big room with a great kitchen and sleeping loft called Podere Fiana.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I get to have some real turkey, one of Armando’s, that doesn’t have a breast so large it couldn’t walk around proudly. I don’t know about you, but porn star turkeys are about the last thing I want on Christmas.
Sometimes it’s the little things that make a holiday a good one. Hope yours is all you want it to be.
Filed in: Food The Lunigiana
Mechanical Presepi - Presepe Artistico di Pallerone · Dec 23, 09:48 AM by James Martin
The village of Pallerone is where we shop on most days. We could walk there if we wanted to squeeze ourselves between the guardrails and the road, a slice of safety about 20 cm wide, but declined due to, well, imposing girth I suppose.
We looked for an overland route, but to no avail.
In any case, Pallerone has a fascinating Nativity Scene, Crib, or what they call in Italy a Presepe Artistico located right in the heart of town, which is to say the small stretch of houses along the main street. The peasants within the presepe scene go about doing their business like good peasants, day and night hacking away at trees, sewing, fishing, and generally banging at things with hammers or sledges. In a corner, away from all the hacking, hammering and swatting, Jesus lays calmly in a manger and as the sun descends the angels fly in to dangle overhead. When they’re done dangling, a star with a flaming tail bravely moves across the sky to settle over little Jesus. All this occurs with a mechanical precision that is both fascinating (engineering-wise) and campy.
Which is to say I liked it a lot.
Along with the presepe comes a little museum which shows how the figures are built and animated. That’s the clickable pic over there to the right. Also on display is the original motor that controlled the 1937 version of the presepe that was built for the “Salone delle Feste” and shown at the Castello Malaspina in Massa. From a newspaper article on display in the museum I learned that:
the current structure was inaugurated on 22nd of December, 1968, in the presence of the Bishop of Apuania and of the leading local authorities. In just 12 days it was visited by over 15,000 people and a special train from Genoa was even hired for the occasion.
Now 15,000 people represents 15 times the local population. So, in other words, it was a big hit.
The presepe is on display in an artificial grotto on the side of the church. You can visit it year around. It condenses a day into 7 1/2 minutes. An even more condensed version of the presepe day is shown in our little video below: 3 minutes and 11 seconds worth. Enjoy and…Merry Christmas.
Filed in: Living in Italy The Lunigiana
Time to Butcher Pigs in Tuscany! · Dec 22, 02:34 AM by James Martin
At one time here in the Lunigiana, butchering was a critical mission. You needed food to get you through the winter without any refrigeration other than the cooling temperatures of the season. You killed your pig and you preserved a good deal of it as prosciutto, salami and other products that fall under the category of salumi.
My neighbor Armando still follows the old tradition. The pig he sacrifices in December yields prize winning salame Toscana most years, and he makes great lardo and Culatello as well (the inner muscle of the ham or prosciutto).
I was able to watch and take pictures this year. Of course, I labored thus after an offer to “help” with the whole deal. The butcher, Giovanni, really didn’t seem to need any help, leaving me to my own devices, which included a still camera and video camera.
It took roughly 2 and a half hours to totally break down the pig into pieces that would sit overnight, including processing the intestines into roughly cleaned sausage casings. The next day, early in the morning, the pig was further broken down, some of the meat being ground for the salame tascana, mortadella, and sausage and stuffed into the cleaned intestines. That took the whole morning. By noon we sat down to a pig feast while the preserved meats were hanging handsomely.
I’ve prepared a slide show of the process used to break down the pig in the field. You might want to take a look if you don’t get physically ill at the sight of an animal being processed for food: Tuscany Pig Butchering
Filed in: Food The Lunigiana
Snow in the Lunigiana! · Dec 18, 07:39 AM by James Martin
After making sausage, mortadella, and salame toscana, we sat down to eat what seemed like the rest of the pig prepared by Armando’s mother: chiodo (pork sausage cooked on a terra cotta testa heated in the kitchen fire), spaghetti al sugo di maiale, maiale in umido, salad, cheese, desert, and coffee. Then, the snow came down.
This is the view out my back window. Who would believe it is a color picture?
Armando’s pig is no more. Enrico’s garden is no more.
Filed in: The Lunigiana Living in Italy
On a Clear Day: Terenzano · Dec 5, 08:51 AM by James Martin
Ok, so you’ve had a winter’s day and it’s been all gray like old flannel underwear and you’ve huddled near the stove and shivered nearly to death and then the next day emerges all bright and bristly and the landscape is, in its upper extremities, doused with a fresh coat of snow so what do you do?
Well, I head to Spino Fiorito for lunch. I make Martha drive me so that I can jump from the car just about any time I want and whip out my camera and snap a few. That’s Terenzano over there to the right, with support from the Alpi Apuane. Click her to see her in her full glory. You know you want to.
Nice, no? Here’s a big picture of the joint in summer and a map. Go there. The people might be friendly. I dunno, I’m so darn jealous of their view.
Filed in: The Lunigiana Living in Italy