Vagliaglia Grape Festival

Sunday was the last and most important day of Vagliaglia's Grape Festival, so we drove over despite gathering clouds. The road to Vagliaglia from Castellina is a windy gravel road mostly through forests, but only 6 km. We got there around 3pm and it turned out that was just when the wine tasting was getting started. We bought a glass for 10 euros (you got 5 euros back when you returned the glass and its little bag for carrying it around in). They had probably 30 wines you could taste grouped into Chianti Classicos, Chianti Riservas, and non-Chiantis. At least 3 brands were made in Vagliaglia. Vagliaglia is small, smaller than Denton, but charming. It is of course built on a hill and all the buildings are stone. There are a few more modern apartment buildings on the outskirts of town. It may be that the only paved road that leads to Vagliaglia is the one going to Sienna.

Back to wine tasting - there were 2 sommeliers who could tell you about the wines, Italian only spoken. We would sample a few then wander off around town, return for another couple samples. Very few people were tasting when we got there. There were other booths around town selling food and 2 with games. I stopped at the sweets booth twice, the first time for a piece of apple cake and the second time for a crostata (sort of a soft jam tart) and plastic cup of vin santo, like sweet sherry.

There was a painting and photography contest. The photos were pretty good, the paintings pretty mediocre. A couple people had also put up displays of historic bric a brac and vintage clothes in their living rooms or terraces.

There was supposed to be a parade at 5pm and crowds gathered along the route, but it didn't get going until 5:30 by which time it had started to rain. I have never seen such a chaotic parade! It was a short route with a loop at the end where we were standing and no one seemed to know which way they were supposed to go around the loop and everyone ended up quickly jumping off floats at the end trying not to get wet as the rain intensified. This was followed by a demonstration of local dances. They held the dance despite the rain, and the kids seemed to get more and more into it the harder it rained! They got a lot of applause for their endurance. Several older young men played the "clowns", dressed in country garb and cheered the dancers on while swilling Chianti from a big jug.

We thought about staying on for the food tasting which was supposed to begin at 7pm, but it would be getting dark and we weren't sure about the condition of the road home in the rain. We left following signs for Radda because we thought that would be a paved road, but it turned out to be an even longer, narrower, steeper gravel road winding down into the valley. We did finally make it to Radda with daylight to spare! We are looking forward to exploring these roads further on a dry day.

Life in Castellina

We've enjoyed our stay in Castellina and thought you might enjoy a few more details about the town. The center is about 4 blocks long and 2 blocks wide with 2 blocks pedestrian only. At the north end of town is an Etruscan burial site (see photo with Jake) which we learned at the Archeological Museum in the center of town, is a rather important site. It is at the top of a hill and has 4 entrances oriented to the points of the compass. The museum has artifacts taken from the site, although the site had been pretty well plundered in the last few thousand years. The museum has laminated sheets in English that describe the artifacts exhibited in each of 4 rooms in the museum.. The museum is in one of the older buildings downtown, the Castle of Castellina, and you can climb up the tower (photo) for a nice view over the countryside.

There is a small post office where everyone seems to know everyone else, a grocery store that meets all basic needs, one pharmacy, two small groceries with fresh fruits and vegetables, cheeses and cured meats, one butcher, a church, several boutiques, a bike store for biking clothes anyway, a couple art galleries and gift shops, at least 4 wine stores, 2 newspaper stands, 2 bar/coffee shops and at least 4 restaurants. Also the Hotel Scuarchilupi which manages our apartment. We visit the hotel to use the internet and have general guest privileges there. It seems to be a very nice hotel. The front desk staff are helpful and knowledgeable and the public rooms are lovely. There always seem to be a lot of tourists in town and sometimes a tour bus drops people off for a couple hours.

Our apartment “complex”, 2 apartments in the stone farmhouse and one larger one in a separate stone building, is also very pleasant. There is a pool area with lounge chairs, but it has been too chilly to swim. Each apartment has a terrace with chairs and table and a grill. The farmer/caretaker lives in the other half of the building with his family. The walls are so thick you seldom hear anything from other parts of the building. The apartment has nice touches like handmade metal railings, the refrigerator disguised as a cupboard and windows with screens (a rarity in Europe!). The kitchen is adequate and the bathroom's only flaw is a tiny shower with water temperatures that vary from scalding to chilly within minutes. It's a good idea to be the first in line to shower!

You can walk around the fields on the hillsides and so far no one seems to object to us walking through their vineyard. It's hard to tell where one stops and another begins and nearly all the farmhouses in our area are agriturismo ventures anyway. It is hunting season and there is the occasional sound of gunfire, but the lady in the tourism office said not to worry (hmmm...).

Saturday morning is market day and there were stalls featuring fruits and vegetables, fish, cheeses and a roast pig, and kitchen goods, and clothes. We bought some roast pig. It is basically an entire pig that has been boned, rolled back together and roasted whole. The cut thin slices off and will make a sandwich for you or package it up for take away. One guy bought a sandwich, requested a glass of wine and ate his standing. Another man ordered 2 kg of pork and also got a small bag of something salted, have no idea whether it was some other pig part or what.

Sienna

On Thursday we drove south to Sienna. It takes about as long to drive there as it does to find a place to park, but we finally found a spot around the outside of the soccer stadium not far from the walls of the historic center. In charge of sightseeing activities, I opted for a tour of the Duomo first (after Jake's suggestion of stopping for a piece of Torta di Nonno at the first Pasticerria we came across – excellent rich torte filled with chocolate and topped with chopped hazlenuts!). The outside of the cathedral is one of the most elaborate I've ever seen with multicolored marble, animal sculptures and fancy flourishes of all types (see photo). Inside is just as impressive. I suggest renting the audiotour for a good explanation of the features of the church. Sections of the marble floor are only unveiled during the months of August and September, and they were well worth seeing. They were the most elaborate marble art works I've ever seen (see the She-Wolf of Sienna suckling the children of Romulus and Remus). The pillars lining the nave are striped black and white, the official colors of Sienna (see photo). Jake was reminded of a certain type of striped kachina from the southwest. One alcove contains the Pitti library with frescoes and a ceiling that look like they were freshly painted. The detail and vibrancy of the colors were astonishing (see photo).

From there we walked down to Il Campo, the central piazza that is divided into nine pie-shaped sections for the original 9 neighborhoods. The buildings surrounding the plaza seemed austere compared to many other towns, but the sheer size and number of people around made it seem lively. We meandered the streets near the piazza until we were hungry enough for lunch, and by chance picked a slow food restaurant called Hosteria il Carroccio a block off Il Campo on Casato di Sotto I think. It was a small place that packs the tables into a colorfully painted room decorated with photographs of children and events in Sienna. I ordered mushroom soup with chick peas and Jake got the lamb stew with “windy beans”. Both were excellent. My soup had at least 2 kinds of mushrooms and you could taste each of them distinctively. It was a rich soup, but not overly mushroomy. Jake's stew was very thick with white beans and chunks of lamb. We saw other wonderful looking dishes pass by including bruschetta with kale and tomatoes, bifsteca florentina, and several pasta dishes.

My next sightseeing goal was the botanic garden behind the Accademia di Fisiocrifici (no idea what it means, but it sounds important!). We finally found it and it was a pleasant place to wander through away from the tourists. The garden is built on a steep hillside and ends at the city walls. Paths wander back and forth starting at the top with medicinal, cooking and other useful plants arranged by family. The second tier has an area with tropical plants next to a greenhouse and a section of native Tuscan plants. I figured out the names of a few things that I've seen on walks and I'll add the names to the Nature Notes blog entry. Further downhill are fruit trees and a vegetable garden (photo) as well as some small pools of native aquatic plants. One pool featured purple loosestrife, yellow- flag iris and narrowleaf cattail – all invasive in the U.S.!

The streets around Sienna are narrow and go in loops because of the hill the city is built on. Only a few cars are allowed within the historic center. The big bi-annual event in Sienna is the Palio, a crazy horse race run around the outside of Il Campo – horses that have lost their riders can still win the race. Each neighborhood sponsors horses and has its own flag. You know you're in a particular neighborhood by the flags hung along the streets and the street lamps (photo). Various symbols include the turtle, the snail, the rhino, the giraffe, and a fish – they must have chosen their symbols before there was a horse race!

There are many shopping opportunities in town with plenty of leather stores, pottery stores, paper stores, and food stores. We browsed a lot but only bought some chocolate cantucchi cookies (biscotti in the US). Oh, and a gelato for Jake before going home! Good thing he had one since it took us another half hour to figure out how to get out of town.

Tuscan Towns and More Food

From our apartment on the hillside below Castellina we look out to the west over vineyards, olive groves and wooded hillsides. Turns out Castellina is something of a crossroads making it easy to take a new route every day. Our first full day here was a Sunday and the larger grocery (the Coop, every town seems to have one) was closed, but we had done some shopping on our way down from Florence and the little shop in town was open supplying us with homemade prosciutto and fresh pecorino, a few vegetables, pasta, large cracker-like bread, and olives. Still, we chose our Monday outing by choosing a town that was supposed to have a market on Mondays. We headed east to Radda, another hilltop town maybe slightly larger than Castellina. No market. Oh well, the tourist office supplied us with a map for a nice 2 ½ hour hike through the hills. See the next posting for the nature details to spare those of you not so into nature.

We got back to Radda (see photo) from our hike in time for lunch and chose Al Chiassco dei Pacifici because of its lovely outdoor terrace. Jake tried the local soup, Riboletta, really more of a thick stew of white beans, tomato and many other things. I got fried meatballs with potatoes and salad. It may sound ordinary, but it was really good. I think they must fry everything in olive oil and the salad had an intense, fruity balsamic vinegar and a slightly spicy olive oil dressing. From Radda we drove up to Volpaia, taking a wrong road the first time and ending up way up in the mountains. Volpaia is a hilltop castle that makes wine and olive oil, sort of a company town. Unfortunately there wasn't much there to do aside from take in the views, maybe due to what seemed to be an intensive effort to fix some underground plumbing problem. I had read that they offered cooking classes and made excellent wine and olive oil. But there is a restaurant/bar with a terrace with amazing views and we had an espresso before driving home.

Tuesday's outing was planned yet again to find a market. This time we succeeded by again heading further east to Figline. Jake enjoyed driving the twisting roads, except for when the occasional bus or truck would come zipping around a curve towards us. Taking in the large number of warnings on road signs can be pretty daunting. Sequential sign posts can warn of falling rocks, leaping deer, unstable road edges and the need for snow tires. Figline is a fairly large town near one of the major north-south highways. The center is ringed by a massive stone wall with various towers built into it. You couldn't miss the market this time, but at first all we could find were stalls selling clothes, shoes and household items. Finally down a side street Jake spotted the market stalls with edibles. There was a decent selection of vegetables as well as a lot of stalls selling cooked meats, cheeses, olives, and dried fish. We bought a good-sized trout from a fresh fish vendor and some swiss chard and garlic from the vegetable stalls. Also a melon to have with prosciutto at lunch time. Pan-fried trout and braised swiss chard made for an excellent home-cooked dinner!

We ended the afternoon back in Castellina getting some necessary work done (see photo of Jake's new office!), picking up clean laundry and having a five o'clock gelato in town before walking back to our apartment.

Wednesday we opted for San Gimignano, supposedly the most beautiful town in Tuscany. It is beautiful, but also filled with busloads of tourists. It's large enough though that you could still escape down back streets. Still, it was hard to think of anyone actually living there. The town is ringed by high, thick stone walls and has many tall stone towers within the walls each apparently built by different families. I went through the ancient basilica which has frescoes from the Middle Ages. One side was frescoes from the New Testament and the other side the Old Testament. They seemed to have a thing for camels back then! We also enjoyed walking along the outside of the walls where there were few people and great views over the valleys. The scent of figs perfumed the afternoon air in some sections.

We decided to have a rather nice lunch at a restaurant the Michelin Guide recommended for its local food and creative menus. We had planned to eat at La Cisterna on a recommendation from a friend, but it was closed for lunch for some reason. Ristorante Dorando' didn't have the view of La Cisterna, but it was within an old building on a side street and very peaceful. The waitress brought a chef's offering of a dab of red pepper mousse and some sort of fluffed mild cheese with a roasted cherry tomato. I had a fan of smoked duck with grilled cabbage as a first course and Jake had roast quail with an onion that had been hollowed and roasted with apple. For my main course I had guinea hen stuffed with a mild sausage and served with swiss chard cooked with raisins and pine nuts. Jake had macaroni with a very rich sauce of duck and leeks. Probably because I'd had most of the split of Chianti Classico (Rietine 2005 from Gaiole), I convinced Jake that we should also share an order of the warm chocolate cake with caramelized pears and orange slices with a cup of espresso. Not that he objected!

Nature Notes from Tuscany

Aside from grapes and olives, there are hillsides still covered with forest. On our walk near Radda we walked along a ridge line, then down into the valley below town and along a little stream. The forest changes considerably in different parts of the countryside. Along the ridge line near Radda there were mostly short, gnarled oaks with an understory of Viburnum, juniper, scotch broom, ivy and grasses. I'm not really sure whether the ivy and scotch broom are native to Italy. There's been a lot of Ailanthus along the roads which is definitely an introduction from Asia. Closer to the stream the trees got a little taller and the brush thicker. There is some sort of Rubus with blackberry-like fruits, but they have a more intense flavor than our blackberries. On the drive to Figline there were many multi-trunked chestnut trees, some with plenty of nuts. The forests between Castellina and San Gimignano had more evergreen cypresses and laurels.

I have seen very few birds. The Coop grocery in town has a lot of swallows flying around with nests up under the eaves. I've seen one hawk and a few magpies. Also some house finches and starlings. The only other animal I've seen is a striped lizard or skink that hangs out on our terrace. The same sort of lizard seems pretty common throughout. It seemed to be following ants around and I figured it would eat one, but it appeared to be more interested in the seeds and bits of vegetation the ants were carrying. I never saw it take anything from the ants though.

Finally, there's Neve, the apartment caretaker's dog. He's a tall lean, long-haired white dog whose name means snow. He's usually pretty snowy except when he's been lounging in puddles. He's a friendly dog, but stays on his side of the building.

I saw the caretaker once when we arrived, but I think he's been busy with the grape harvest and olives. The idyllic beauty was somewhat shattered when we saw him out on his tractor spraying something up into the olive trees and along the rows of grapes. So much for nibbling unwashed grapes on our walk into town!

Roomates Wanted - Tuscany

ROOMMATES WANTED – TUSCANY

Roommates wanted to share large(!) apartment in Tuscan farmhouse (photo) in the village of Castellina-in-Chianti. Sleeps six – full kitchen, dining table for eight or ten. Plenty of extra wine glasses available. Views, views, views from patio just outside (photo). Walk to town (uphill!) (photo) through vineyards, olive groves, fig trees. Grapes ready to harvest (photo) (and delicious). Figs ready to pluck and bake with gorgonzola. Nearby town has everything a chef needs, from 80 Euro bottles of balsamic vinegar to 3 Euro bottles of Chianti. Free to the right roommates – more space than we need. An entire floor will remain unused unless you join us in the next couple of weeks. .

Contact by email to tell us when your plane arrives.

Venice Sightseeing

Somehow we didn't make it to more than 2 museums and didn't even get to see the inside of the Piazza San Marco, but we did see some great things in Venice. I was so taken by walking the back streets that I guess I found them as interesting as any museum could have been. We did go into the Doge's Palace on Piazza San Marco. The doge was the head political and religious personage of Venice, thought to speak directly to God. The palace is built to impress. The ceilings and walls of many rooms are painted in elaborate religious frescoes or paintings of naval battles among galleons. Gold trim was everywhere along with marble fireplaces elaborately carved and many plaster flourishes. At the end of the tour of the palace you go through a couple rooms of arms and armor before you descend into the jails. The “Bridge of Sighs” which I had always heard of as having something to do with lovers, was actually an enclosed bridge prisoners crossed from which they could catch a glimpse of the outdoors (see photo) and it was said you could hear their sighs from outside.

After a restorative cup of espresso we took a boat out to Murano, about a 20 minute ride. Murano is the place to go to see the artistic side of Murano glass works. You can tour the furnaces and visit galleries of art glass. There really is an amazing variety of glass from sculptures to chandeliers to tiny glass animals to jewelry and vases. The jewelry is pretty reasonable priced, but larger pieces are expensive and would be very difficult to get home anyway! There is a small glass museum on Murano which is worth a visit, although several rooms were undergoing renovation while we were there.

I also took a short stroll through Venice's Ghetto Novo, the area to which Venice's Jews were restricted to living before WWII. It happened to be Yom Kippur and there were lots of families and small children out on the main square. Apparently the Lubavitcher (spelling?) from NYC have recently immigrated to Italy and taken over many of the kosher restaurants, but most of the residents are not as Orthodox.

On Saturday morning we walked down to the fish market to take in the impressive array of fish and shellfish. Most stands have swordfish, tuna, salmon (from British Columbia), shrimp (local and from Turkey), razor clams, mussels, octopus, cuttlefish, eels, squid, sea bass, flounder and several other fish. We then went to the Dorsoduro neighborhood where I wanted to stroll through Peggy Guggenheim's sculpture garden. The guidebook had said it was free, but turns out you do need a ticket even to see the garden and we weren't up for doing a whole museum visit. So we wandered around Dordsoduro some looking at the art in the windows of the many galleries and admiring the view of the Giudecca canal. The monstrous cruise ship that Jake has posted a photo of came up that canal.

Back to the B&B to pick up our luggage and catch the train to Florence and our 12 days in Tuscany!

Venice Food Highlights

Back to food again, so the restaurant, Fiaschetteria Toscana, was not a Michelin star restaurant, just a 2 fork for “buon confort” and it was indeed very good. We opted for the tasting menu of seafood. Our meal began with tuna tartare that had a slight crunch from sea salt and had an apple kiwi sauce which neither of could really note. Next up was tagliatellini nero (squid ink pasta) with lobster. That may have been our favorite. Third was fried mixed seafood and vegetables. Very light and crunchy; we think the vegetables included zucchini and leeks and seafood included shrimp, squid and clams. Dessert was caramelized apples with a scoop of ice cream. With this we had a bottle of a Venetian white wine that was quite nice, Angiolino Maule Sassaia. Sassaia is made leaving the juice with the skins longer which gave it more of a golden color. It was a little like a dessert wine without the sweetness.

Today's lunch was equally good at a restaurant on Murano. We shared a plate of prosciutto with perfect cantaloupe and a plate of small gnocchi with scallops and grilled zucchini.

Our last night in Venice we decided to try “chiccheti”, snacks, at a couple wine bars (osteria/enotecas). The first was down by Campo Apostolino on a little side street. It had been recommended in a Rick Steves Guide to Venice, but I forgot to write down the name of it. Osteria something or other. There we ordered a mixed place of chiccheti and it included some delicious rolls of sardine stuffed with raisins and pine nuts, roasted red peppers, marinated squid and some other seafood things. We each had “un uombro”, a small glass, of the house red wine. You can get a small glass of wine and snacks at the bar for less, but our feet were tired from sightseeing and we opted to pay a little more for chairs and a table! On the way to the Osteria we had passed an Enoteca near our B&B that had a good selection of ham sandwiches, so we decided to stop there on the way back. The patrons and staff were very friendly and we ended up chatting with three Brazilian women from Recife who were visiting Italy for 2 weeks. It was a mother, daughter and mom's best friend. The daughter was studying to be a lawyer and the best friend works at a hotel. The mother plays bossa nova on piano, but I'm not sure whether that's what she did for a living or not. Her son plays piano professionally. At that Enoteca you get to choose among several types of wine that are open. There were ham sandwiches of many descriptions along with various other snacks like roasted tomatoes and something that looked like quiche. There were tables in the back too for a regular meal. Jake ordered Tiramisu to end the evening with which was excellent although the bartenders gave him grief for ordering dessert at the bar. It's at the first canal after canal Guglie on the main street, left side.

Our last food from Venice were pizza arrolatas (pizza rolls) from a take-away shop that we got before boarding the train. Also quite tasty – they heat them up for you before carefully wrapping them in a paper napkin.

Venice Jails

Will someone with a brain and perhaps penal experience check out this photo? I hope you can see the bars on the window. Focus on the right half first. It looks like it is built so that the horizontal bars will slip through loops in the vertical bars to assemble the window covering. Then look at the left half. It looks like it is built so that the vertical bars will slip through loops in the horizontal bars to assemble the window covering. Wait! They can't both be true. How do they build this thing? Oh, yeah, its old and in some famous building in Venice. There were old paintings and stuff too, but this was most interesting.

Venice Kayaker

When I saw this kayaker(see photo), I figured this guy had found the trick to getting around Venice, where there are, as everyone knows, no streets. Then I tried to imagine paddling in the Grand Canal where navigating would be like trying to ride a tricycle across an eight lane highway. Not only are there no lane markings, but it is clearly permissible to travel on either side of the Canal regardless of which way one is headed. The public transport boats (vaporettos) have stops that alternate from one side of the Canal to the other, so every vaporetto is constantly weaving across the Canal. This also applies to vaporettos coming the other direction, of course, so it is a mess. This is not to mention the cargo boats (see photo) and postal carriers (see photo), barges with rocks, cranes, appliances, Guinness (!). One last beautiful photo, Sylvan with a glass of white, prior to our touring glass factories in Murano.

Rome to Venice

On Wednesday, we had the morning in Rome before taking a train to Venice. Having woken up after 9am, we headed out along back streets and found a nice little bar/cafe for coffee and a pastry. Off to the Colosseum then and its crowds of tourists! We had read in the guide book that you could avoid the ticket line by buying tickets at a different entrance, but Jake discovered that you could also avoid the line by purchasing an audio tour for 4 extra euros each. Around the coliseum we walked learning about the brutal games and spectacles that went on there. Like 500 bears emerging from a whale skeleton! The coliseum's marble, wood and most other building materials were scavenged later to build other buildings in Rome, so large parts of it have been stabilized and excavations continue. From there we explored other Roman ruins in the huge archeological area near the Coliseum.

We caught our train with no problem, but found out that we had only validated one of the 2 tickets we needed to validate (you need to validate your ticket and get a stamp for your Eurail pass). The conductress was very nice and instead of paying the 50 euro fine she let Jake get off in Florence to get the Eurail pass stamped. We decided that if he missed the train I'd meet him in Venice, but neither of us thought it would come to that. It nearly did though and you can imagine my relief when a few minutes after the train left the station Jake appeared in the aisle! There were very long lines at the Eurail ticket window (that was true in Rome too and at the time we were congratulating each other that we didn't need to go the window since we already had our tickets!).

So we both arrived on time in Venice. There we needed to get our boat passes and public toilet passes. We stood in a line for about 25 minutes and the lady told us that we needed to go outside to another ticket office. That ticket office said try the one 100m to the right, and yes!, success at last. Then off to our B&B, conveniently located within a short walk of the station across a canal.

So it's true – EVERYTHING in Venice is transported by boat! Very cool to see the boat ambulance, garbage boat, DHL boat, boats carrying boxes and food, etc. They unload onto large dollies which are hauled around the cobbled streets for delivery. It's nice not to have to deal with cars, although there is plenty of pedestrian traffic. Tourists from all over the world are here. In both Rome and here our meagre Italian is sufficient and most people speak enough English that you wouldn't need to know any Italian.

This morning we took the #1 Vaporetto down the Grand Canal. Venice is very beautiful with a feel of decaying elegance. The first floors of many buildings along the Grand Canal have been abandoned to rising waters, but the upper floors remain occupied. There are so many flourishes and brightly painted shutters and hanging flower baskets that it seems very colorful. Wide streets give way to tiny alleys or dead end against a canal. The city has wisely posted signs that direct you from one area to another, but it is more fun to just take a street at random and see how far you can get. So far the food has been mediocre, but we have reservations tonight at a restaurant with a Michelin star!

We got off the Vaporetto at the Giardini stop where there happens to be an architectural exhibition. The whole area is part of Venice's general exhibition grounds where many countries have there own buildings like at the World's Fair. For the architectural exhibition they had exhibits on architecture in their respective countries. The main exhibition hall had different exhibits by architecture firms. Much of it was very avant-garde but really pretty interesting even to the lay-person like me. Jake was taken with the folding wooden chairs that could be stacked to form stadium seats and moved to be a full size chair or a short chair for kids. We took the vaporetto back up to San Marco, the main plaza, but avoided visiting it yet by taking back alleys until we found a place for lunch. I've decided that if you're not sure about the quality of a restaurant, pizza is a good bet!

Rome

Noi arriviamo en Roma! We arrived in Rome! 2 uneventful plane flights on USAir featured seats that reclined by maybe 2 inches, a video monitor that only got the teen movie channels, and charges for headphones. But on time! Customs in Rome could not have been easier with no questions, no scanning of passport, no paperwork, and no passport stamp! Are we officially here?

Anyway, we took the train from the airport to Stazione Terminali and walked a few blocks to our hotel, Luxury Le Griffe, which is conveniently located on a main street that goes down to the historic center. We couldn't check in until 2pm, so we took a walk down Av. Nazionale to the see some of the Roman ruins. Also took in the Trevi fountain which was packed with tourists (see photo) and then found a nice Ristorante/Pizzeria off of the main fountain area for a leisurely lunch on a patio. The restaurant was named Sancto y Profano, “sacred and profane”. We started with the house antipasti featuring hot and cold dishes like eggplant parmesan, salami, olives, artichoke hearts, crepes stuffed with sausage and a spicy red pepper and olive spread. As we anticipated our main courses, the fungi delivery van arrived with wooden trays of fresh porcini and chanterelles. I expressed interest in the mushrooms and our waiter took us inside for a closeup view. Jake got pumpkin and sausage ravioli as his main course and I had the swordfish in lemon and bay leaf sauce, both excellent. A ½ liter of white wine washed it down. Back to the hotel for a 2 hour nap!

Feeling somewhat revived, we went to the nearest bar for an expresso and capuccino and a little cinnamon hazlenut flaky pastry. This energized us enough to go see the Parthenon, an elephant by some famous sculptor, a jesuit cathedral, and the Navaro and Fiori plazas. Rome is beautiful at sunset, in fact the light all day seemed soft and glowing. From Fiori plaza we strolled across the Ponti Sisto to the Trastavere neighborhood, the old Jewish quarter. This was our favorite area so far with narrow winding streets and lots of shops and restaurants. We had a salad and pizza at Pizzeria Scaletti near the main church plaza. On the way home we took a few wrong turns so it was a long walk home. On the other hand, it took us by some more ruins that were quite impressive all lit up (see photo). And now, here's hoping for a good night's sleep!

Jake Says: You all know that one acquires certain expectations about foreign cities. I expected that Rome would have a lot of old buildings in a terrible state of disrepair and piles of architectural rubble. I just didn't expect so much!

Ready for Italy?!?

Yup, Sylvan says we're already to go. For me that mean preparing myself to gain 10 to 15 pounds -- not by losing in anticipation, but just getting ready by salivating. While I took the Italian class too, I am too busy learning Spanish to pay much attention. So I focused on the numbers 1-100 and how to say "I would like . . . " I also plan to say Bon Giorno all day and night. Yippee! I can also say "Where is the bathroom?" and "How much does it cost?" I figure, what else does one really need to know?