Ottsworld Travel Experiences » Italy

Photo of the Week – World Cup Fever

admin — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 04:50:27 +0000

Balancing Act

I don’t know how it happened, but I’ve been transformed into a football fan. Yes, that’s right, I said football, not soccer; just to prove how authentic the transformation is. With the World Cup championship coming up this weekend, I felt like I better give this new love of mine visibility on my Photo of the Week. One of the constants as I travel and live around the world was the presence of the beloved game of football. From Thailand to Turkey to Italy to Kenya – it is the world’s sport.

I snapped this shot in a park in Rome. Teenage boys were walking on one of the many paths and this one decided to show off some skills. Who knows – maybe he’ll play in the World Cup one day…

To see more photography from Rome, visit my Global Photography website where you can view and purchase photography from around the world.

To see more travel photography check out Briefcase to Backpack’s Photo Friday or to see more World Cup photography check out Wandering Educators World Cup photo of the week.

SmugMug.com – Serving up crisp, clear photos – without the side of Spam.

Arrivederci Italia!

Sherry — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:44:29 +0000

Tuscany

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Italy makes it into my travel ‘record book’ – it is the country in which I’ve stayed the longest amount of consecutive time. I arrived in to this pasta haven at the end of April – so that makes 2 months in Italy. I had grand expectations of Italy as prior to starting on this world adventure it had been my favorite country to travel to and I never seemed to want to come home. In fact, I had dreams of living here one day. However, now after more travel under my belt and 2 months here – I can safely say that I still love it here, but I’m ready to move on. I had a wonderful time here; however, I never really felt a part of the everyday culture as I hoped I would have. Sure, there were great times, times where I met locals and tried to ‘fit in’, but for some reason or another I never really felt super comfortable here. I’m not sure if it was an internal phase I was going through, or my experiences in Italy. Even when I lived in Sorrento for a month, I still never really felt like I belonged there. I used to use Italy as my escape…my escape from NY and work. I glamorized it and fantasized about it. But maybe since I’m not running away from anything – any place, any job – maybe, just maybe that’s why I’ve felt differently about it this time around.

Photos: For all of you people out there that complain about not seeing any photos of me…this post is dedicated to ME in Italy!
I did have my favorite places in Italy – Ferrara, and Ischia probably top my list. I will also always love Siena and Tuscany, but maybe it was all too much of a good thing. Maybe it was too easy and beautiful…is that possible? Like most everything, I think I had higher expectations than reality – so I’m sure that jaded my feelings about it. I really don’t mean to paint this negative picture – as it wasn’t a bad time at all. In fact – it was quite the fairy tale time – cooking schools, sailing schools, villas in the country, laying by the beach, wonderful food, Rome nightlife – it was all a great vacation! However – maybe that’s just it – it was a vacation and I’m not sure that’s what I was really looking for. It’s rather difficult to sort out all of these thoughts as I’ve never traveled for this long before, I’ve never been away from the US this long and I find it difficult to sort out my feelings – is it the country, is it the long term travel, is it the fact that I’m still living out of a suitcase…is that why I felt off my game here in Italy?

However – I also spent a lot of time in Italy sorting out my next travel plans. The plans had changed rather extensively from my original itinerary – so I had to spend a great deal of time playing travel agent. Many people ask me how in the world I plan all of this travel on my own…the answer is that you spend many hours on the internet searching. Searching, searching, searching. It’s exhausting and you never really know what sites to trust and you wonder if you just look for another 5 minutes, you may find something else that’s better or more desirable – and then it’s 5 hours later and you still haven’t made any travel decisions! Sorry – I kind of got off the topic of Italy…back on track…sometime soon I will dedicate a whole post for how to do travel planning on the internet.

So- I may not have become fluent in Italian, nor met an Italian lover, nor bought my own Italian villa – but as always, I made a few observations about the people and the culture here over the last two months. Things that I found funny, or strange, or stupid…I’ve collected a few here.

Mangio!
There is no escaping it – food is frickin’ everywhere. I believe it is impossible to be healthy in Italy. Or at the very least it’s impossible to leave here the same size you came here as in two months. Everyone is trying to stuff your face…it’s crazy! I’ve decided that’s why all the shops are filled with moo moo dresses. Seriously – in these resort towns it appears that you either have to dress as Elilzabeth from Pirates of the Caribbean (all corsettes and cleavage) or you dress like you are 60 years old and overweight in a moo moo dress. They even try to disguise the moo moo dress with sequins, loud colors…and call it a tunic or beachware, but however you look at it – the big, boxy dress with out any shape is still a moo moo dress. Yet – I find myself looking at the sequin boxy dresses thinking – oh – that’s cute – that would fit my new curvaious pasta body…then I have to tell myself to snap out of it and realize that once I leave Italy that it’s likely I will contract dysentery in India and all of my weight problems will be solved!

The other baffling part of the equation is that Italians appear very unhealthy in their lifestyle (like most of Europe that I’ve seen) – everyone smokes constantly, and no one exercises. I honestly don’t get it – how do they stay thin? There’s no shortage of good looking, skinny women in Italy – I have no idea how the do it. You see people eating gelato every day…and that’s not fat free! I would go running and people would look at me like I was a freak! It just doesn’t all add up. More than once I wondered if these Italians were actually from this planet or maybe they were some alien lifeform! I digress…

However, I did find out that there’s the tourist eating lifestyle and then there’s the Italian eating lifestyle. The Italian daily menu consists of a café in the morning, and some biscotti or maybe a croissant…but that’s it. Their breakfast is very small. Lunch is the big meal – it’s the one in which people do actually eat pasta, meat – the normal Italian courses. Afternoon consists of another café and then the evening is typically a light dinner of grilled veggies or just some proscuitto and cheese. The tourist daily menu consists of coffee, toast, cream croissant, and fruit for breakfast. Lunch is normally pizza or a panini – basically something that has huge amounts of cheese. Every afternoon you are to have a gelato – normally 2 scoops of ice cream as it’s just too hard to choose one flavor. Dinner then is antipasta, primi pasta, secondi (meat dish), and dolci. Oh yeah – add in a few café’s and bottles of wine too. So – after spelling this out…maybe I have my answer. I – obviously signed up for the tourist menu for 2 months.

Amore!
I used to love the idea of an Italian lover. Italian men had that dark, thick hair, and olive skin, and that accent…ohhhh…the accent. However, after spending 2 months in Italy traveling around to many heavy touristed areas, I have lost my infatuation with Italian Men. It’s sad, but true. I was jaded by the fact that all of them were looking for tourist women to pick up. Sure, I thought it was cute at first, but then I realized that they all used the exact same pick up line – “let’s go for coffee and you can practice your Italian and I can practice my English.” Like clockwork…after meeting some random guy, this is what they would say. At one point, I looked at the guy and said – you are going to have to come up with something better than that…I hate predictable. However, my favorite (or maybe I should say funniest) pickup line that I heard was “I am the Italian Stallion.”…upon hearing this I cracked up….but at least he got my attention! I actually had one friend, a local, tell me that many times in the heavily tourists areas the Italian men get themselves into trouble – they focus so much on picking up tourist women, that when the winter arrives and the tourists leave, they can’t get a date with a local girl! I honestly have no idea how true that is –but I certainly did see the magnetic draw of Italian men to tourist women. Then there was also another magnetic draw that I witness. My friend Aireka is African American and apparently Italian men find “la donna nero” extremely exotic. When Aireka would walk down the street it was watching bees to honey – I”ve never really seen anything like it. Cars would slow down and they would try to talk to her while driving down the street holding up traffic behind them. My Australian girlfriend, Tash, and I would talk about how we wished we could find a country where “la donna bianco” were worshiped this much! I honestly don’t think any exist! I kind of feel like it’s not fair. I mean average looking, overweight men can go to Thailand and they are saught after as if they were Brad Pitt …but where can I go to be worshiped?? I still have a few countries left – maybe I will find it…the land of Sherry.

Bevere!
If you want to act like a local in Italy, drink cappuccino ONLY in the morning for breakfast. You only have one – and there are no to-go cups. This is one of the few countries that I never saw a Starbucks…and I understand why – no Italian would ever go there. They have a whole different coffee culture here – and it’s not about drinking it on the run or drinking huge grande cups full. They like it strong and in small quantities. After noon, it’s café (meaning espresso) only…as you would certainly stand out if you ordered a cappuccino at 2 in the afternoon. It would be akin to ordering a stack of pancakes at 2PM…on a Monday…when you weren’t hung over….it would be a strange site in the US. Never mind the fact that I actually enjoy a stack of pancakes at 2PM on a Monday. Another odd thing about coffee etiquette in Italy is that a café drank while standing up – is cheaper than if you sit down at a table. Why can’t all bars be like this? Most of the time in NYC I had to stand up because there are too many people there…wouldn’t it have been nice if I would have received a standing discount on the Lower East Side on a Saturday night?!

Non Contatto!
I came to realize that Americans must be a touchy/feely culture. Now I would never initially call them that – however after shopping around Italy I became aware of my tactile fetish. I have become somewhat accustomed to the different shopping culture in Europe. You know, the one that follows you around as if you are going to steal something. The sales people are all rather aloof and act as if you are ruining their day by entering their store. Yet at the same time they look completely pissed off at you when you say – “No, I’m just looking” . They follow you at your heals around the store, so that as soon as you pick up a shirt that was folded on a shelf, and fold it back up and put it down – they are there 2 seconds later refolding it – making you feel as if you never should have touched it in the first place. Some stores even go so far as to ask you not to pick things up yourself – they will get it for you. This isn’t just in clothing stores, I encountered this a number of times at fruit stands. I can’t tell you how many times I had shop owners tell me,”Signorita, no touch”. When I go to a fruit/veg stand at home, I of course pick up the fruit, look at it, squeeze it, smell it – trying to figure out if it’s ripe. You won’t get away with that in Italy…no way. You point to what you want and they will put it in the bag for you. No touching! I’m assuming this is because they don’t want you bruising the fruit. Or maybe it’s just the assumption that if they are selling it then it must be ripe. Same goes for shoes. I was in a store in which all of the shoes were displayed nicely out on a table in the store and on the wall. I went up to go look and also saw a nicely printed sign that read in English “Please do not touch the floor sample shoes”.

However – the strangest experience I had was while shopping for a shirt in Rome. I went into a nice store and found a shirt that I liked. I wanted to try it on so I took it back to the fitting room. The saleswoman all of a sudden comes running back and interrupted me before I could try it on. She told me that I wasn’t allowed to try on shirts. I looked at her in confusion and repeated – “I CAN’T try this on???” bewildered. She said, pants ok, but not shirts. I asked her how I was supposed to know if it fit right. She just repeated that I could not try on shirts – that’s their policy. I of course put the shirt back and walked out. Granted – the shirt incident was a first – most stores aren’t like that, but it is true that they definitely don’t like you touching things! Some stores explicitly state the ‘no touching’ policy and some just watch you like a hawk and make you feel bad for disturbing their display.

Telefonare!
I love the fact that the word “Ciao” in Italian means many things – hello, goodbye, hi, or welcome – it’s a multipurpose word, a happy welcoming word. However I was surprised to find out that this wonderful little word wasn’t used when answering the phone in Italy! Instead, they answered the phone “Pronto!” It threw me off guard because the word sounds so harsh…as if you just answered the phone and said “Talk to me NOW!” Actually – this tactic could probably work well in NYC…it seems to fit the attitude there. I have decided that I will try answering my phone with “Pronto” and see what kind of reaction I get.

Overall – Italy was a great time – and even more so because I traveled with so many friends there. Thanks to David, Marcy, Mike, Angie Amy, and Veronique for joining me and eating gelato every day with me! Then there were the new friends that I met – friendships that will be for life…like Tash, who kept me laughing (and a little intoxicated) throughout my time in Sorrento! Of course I will go back to Italy again and vacation…I will continue to use it as my Europea escape route from real life and work. After all – I’m sure that one day I will need to get back to real life. In the meantime, Morocco awaits!

Photo: This is how much I love to have my photo taken…this post was painful for me!!!

Beam Me Up: Our Visit to the Vatican

Sherry — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 11:26:54 +0000

Pantheon in a wine glass...a different perspective of the sites

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View snapshots of Rome and Siena snapshots

Over the 6 days Micah and I were in Rome, we realized that we had a lot of in common…we liked to see the sites, but we liked to see a different side of the sites – and we both loved to people watch. Ok – like any good gay man, Micah really liked to people watch for hot, Italian men…and I wasn’t complaining! Micah had a little Rome guide book so we used that to guide us through the ancient city and educate ourselves a bit when we did visit the traditional sites. I’m not much for ancient history, so I generally use the guides to gain a quick ‘cliff note’ understanding of what I’m looking at and why I should be looking at it. We covered a lot of ground in 6 days, and we saw many parts of Rome that I had never seen before. Sure, we did some of the main sites, but we didn’t linger at them, we read our ‘cliff notes’ and kept moving. Instead we took the time to really see the people of Rome.

We encountered a great scene one hot afternoon – a bunch of teens in a huge water fight at a piazza fountain. It was extremely entertaining, and a good example of how teens around the world are the same. We went to political rallies, we made friends in bars, frequented local restaurants, and spent some great moments just sitting on the grass in parks enjoying people watching. Since this was Micah’s first trip to Italy, I wanted him to experience other parts of Italy too. Rome is lovely, but I wanted him to see Tuscany. We took the train to Siena for 2 days and found our inner-artists. He spent time drawing, and I spent time writing – it was extremely relaxing. We didn’t go on tours, we just hung out in the Campo, watching people drinking wine and soaking up the sun.

When I lived in San Francisco, Micah and I formed a friendship through running, however while in Italy we didn’t run once the whole week. We were deficient in endorphins for the week. It was as if we had been taken off a drug we were addicted to…we were in withdrawal and compensated with exercising our imaginations instead. As we walked through Rome day after day, sometimes we got a little loopy…I prefer to think that it was caused from the heat – but it made the site-seeing fun!

You can’t go to Rome without going to the Vatican…at least that’s what everyone says. However I must admit – I’ve only been there once in 5 trips to Rome. I am not Catholic, I don’t understand the draw of the Pope and I hate to wait in lines and go through metal detectors to go see the inside of a church – so it’s not a normal stop on my Rome itinerary. However, Micah and I did a walking tour through the Trastevere neighborhood admiring the graffiti and the little funky shops – but when we finished – we looked at the map and saw that we were only a 5 minutes walk from the Holy Land…the Vatican City. So we decided to go see what all the fuss was about.

We arrived in St. Peters Square and took our standard pictures of the vast open space, the fountains, the obelisk, and the numerous columns. The piazza is encircled by these huge rows of columns, it’s impressive as they are lined up one after another, but in a semi circle – feeling as if they are enclosing you in the space. We thought about waiting in line to go into the Basilica, but wondered if it was a good idea for a non-catholic and a gay man to set foot in the holy place, spot lights and sirens might go off exposing us as holy trespassers! Plus – I wasn’t dressed properly…my shoulders were showing, so even if we wanted to go inside, we couldn’t. Instead we walked around the piazza admiring the architecture, people watching and getting our cliff note update from Micah’s Rome book. It was the same old stuff, until Micah came across something interesting that made me perk up. In the piazza near the fountain there were two metal discs in the ground, placed at just the exact point where you could stand and view the columns perfectly lined up…a mathematical/architectural marvel! I was intrigued by these discs…we MUST find them and see this! We started referring to them as the ‘magic discs’ as we hunted the piazza square for them as if we were hunting for lost treasure. Eureka, we found them! I stood on it and sure enough….the columns all lined up perfectly. If you stepped a foot off the disc, they were no longer in alignment. I was intrigued with the planning, architecture, and forethought that they put into this piazza. Excitedly I asked Micah what else the discs did…I mean really – they seemed quite powerful – maybe they could bring me an Italian lover, or a cold beer, or simply a diet coke…that would all be good.

Photo: Couple making out in the park
Micah looked at me and in all seriousness said to me “The discs actually beam you directly to heaven….just like on Star Trek. It’s a shortcut.”
How could you not laugh at the thought of that! Ok – I’m sure that a few of you out there might be offended by this line of thinking…but in the heat of the day in the middle of the Vatican piazza….I thought it was brilliant! And no – we hadn’t been drinking…yet.

We both took our turns standing on the discs…saying our final goodbyes just in case Micah’s explanation was correct and one of us would immediately get beamed up to heaven. I kept on imagining Captain Kirk standing on the disc and telling Scotty to beam him up. At least I was dressed a little better than him, that had to count for something. It probably comes as no big surprise to hear that neither one of us went anywhere. Crap, I guess we weren’t holy enough…no shortcuts to heaven for us. Or maybe the discs just had low batteries…maybe it wasn’t us and our sinning ways….maybe the batteries just needed to be recharged. Regardless, we left the Vatican dejected and decided to stop for a glass of wine at a nearby bar. Actually we really had to go to the bathroom, so in Rome that means that you have to stop at some establishment, buy something, and then you can use the bathroom. Our feeling is that if you have to buy something – it might as well be wine or gelato…that day it was wine.

Photo: Girl jumping in a bouncy castle…love the colors!
We left the bar feeling good – bladders relieved, cooled down from the AC, and thirst quenched. We decided to walk along the river, past an old castle, and over the bridge to the Piazza Narvona.

The walk along the riverfront was nice. However, in the distance we noticed that there was some big atrocious looking silver truck blocking our pathway.
In my wine haze, I asked Micah, “What is that?”
Without hesitating, he answered “That’s the Christ Cannon. If you aren’t beamed up by the Heavenly Disks, then you can have a second chance to make it to heaven via the Christ Cannon. They shoot you up in the sky towards St. Peters. God is there with a big catcher’s mitt.”
“It looks more like a milk truck or sewer truck…but I like this idea of having a second chance at heaven. Why not a cannon?! I always loved the Evel Knievel as a kid, and this seemed like just the kind of thing he would use to get to heaven!”
Micah continued, “Sure, it’s all great if you land in the catcher’s mitt, however all of the lost souls end up as foul balls, falling out of the range of the catcher’s mitt. The Pope just shakes his head in disgust as the lost souls fall into a big pile outside the Vatican. Of course the lost soul pile is mainly gay men and all of their girlfriends.”
I said, “Hmm – sounds like any gay clubbing in San Francisco…could be fun to get rejected”

Photo: Statue in Popolo
Unfortunately as we walked by to get a closer look at the cannon (aka truck), and get in line for our second chance at heaven, we realized that it was clearly out of service at this time. There was some guy working on repairing it. I suppose that some sinner got it all backed up earlier in the day…and now they ruined it for us. It was probably an American tourist that didn’t bring the right electronic converter for Europe and blew the fuse on the Christ Cannon. Oh well, Micah and I were bummed that we were unable to have our second chance into heaven – we were getting a bit distraught. To make ourselves feel better we walked across the river to the Piazza Narvona and bought a ‘Hot Priest’ Calendar. A new good looking priest for each month…what a concept! Yup…we are going to hell for sure now.

As we wandered into the Piazza we continued to laugh about this whole heavenly entry concept. We wandered around the narrow little streets and suddenly a little Fiat abruptly passed us practically running us over.
Micah was inspired by it and said, ”Ahhh – then there’s the Faith Fiat…the last chance to get into heaven if Heavenly Discs and Christ Cannon fails you. The Faith Fiat picks up hopeless hitch hikers that were rejected by the Discs and the Cannon and takes them to heaven. But it’s a small car – so there’s not a lot of room. In addition, it takes a long time to get there, but it’s worth it.”
“There are many Fiats in this town, I guess you can distinguish the Faith Fiat by the rosary beads hanging from the rear view mirror and the Fish bumper sticker.” I said.
Micah finished the thought with, “Whatever you do, don’t get in the wrong Fiat, the red one that has an ‘I brake for sinners’ bumper sticker. You’ll be sorry if you enter that Fiat – it would be disastrous”

Upon this last comment I nearly peed my pants.

Photo: Boys impersonating a seal…
We took a long walk back towards the Colosseum and found a great all you can eat pasta place. They just keep bringing you more plates of different pasta (you can’t specifiy what kind) until you say “basta pasta!”…meaning enough pasta! We also ordered a ½ liter of house wine, and the waitress said that they only have liters of wine. I looked at Micah and said – that’s a lot of wine…but we got it anyway. I told him that we didn’t have to drink it all. Micah countered that with “Yes we do.”. We recounted our day of religious antics and stories recounted over that big liter of wine and many plates of pasta! Somehow, the whole story seemed hilarious to us at that moment…(I’m sure it didn’t have anything to do with the liter of wine). I told Micah that I would try my best to write about it as we wondered to ourselves if anyone else would find the Heavenly Discs, the Christ Cannon, or the Faith Fiat as funny as we did. Instead most likely I’ve offended some people…but it was all in good humor. Heck – I saw today in the news that the Vatican put out a new set of 10 commandments. I’m not joking. This new set of commandments is for drivers, telling motorists to be charitable to others on the highway, to refrain from drinking and driving, and to pray you make it before you even buckle up. See – the Vatican is hard at work! This just proves to me that obviously the Vatican has a sense of humor. I wonder if they found those new tablets in a burning red Fiat?

The next day as Micah and I explored more great sites, we entered the Pantheon and enjoyed the amazing architecture. Once again we read the cliff notes out of the Rome book and learned that when it rains, the rain falls into the Pantheon through the large opening in the ceiling and then quickly drains off the marble floor into 22 hidden holes in the floor! Once again, I was on a hunt to find the hidden holes. When we found them, Micah started talking about the fact that out of the holes came a heavenly vapor that you could breath in and be cleansed. Here we go again…

Photo: Micah and I in the Campo in Siena

The whole trip with Micah was great – it was completely chill, slow, and comfortable – but most of all, it was funny! At least it was funny to us at the time – I’m not really sure how the whole thing will translate…but we were pretty proud of ourselves for exercising our imaginations…granted – I didn’t find any shortcuts to heaven, but maybe I’ll have another chance when I climb Mt. Sinai next month… or maybe I’ll find yet another set of 10 commandments…the ones to use for standing in line at airport security…stay tuned!

Boosh Bashing…It’s Not Just in Amercia!

Sherry — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 08:34:56 +0000

Photo: Flag for Peace (Pace in Italian) Displayed at the protests

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View snapshots of the Protests and the Boosh Visit

Nine months out of the country. Nine months of not having to deal directly with American politics. Nine months of questions from foreigners about the war, our president, the next campaign, Hilary, and the ever popular topic of how wonderful Bill Clinton was. I have been rather astonished traveling to different, remote countries and how they still seem to love Bill Clinton there, and they are continually baffled by George Bush.

Since I’ve been out of the country, I have to admit – I’ve taken more of an interest in American politics and certainly world politics. I now buy Newsweek and get rather excited about reading it…as if it were In Style or Lucky magazine (my old favorites!). I also like to read the local papers and see what they decide to print about America…which stories they choose to share with their population and I consider the picture that it paints about America in general. It’s all a fun pastime for me…fun and games….until June 9th…the day that Boosh came to Rome. I must admit – I was pretty pissed at first. I had been pretty proud of myself for escaping American politics in general and enjoying it on my terms as opposed to being bombarded every day by it in the States.

When Italians talk to me about George Bush, they always refer to him as “Boosh”. No George, no President, no W, just Boosh. When they say it…it comes out like Boosh..and sounds like any other Italian word. In fact – there have been many times that I have asked – Boosh?…what does that word mean? They look at me and say Boosh again…louder as if I didn’t hear them…I’m still puzzled…thinking that maybe it’s some kind of pasta or something…then they finally say George Boosh….ahhhh….the lightbulb comes on and I finally understand that they are actually speaking English to me – and I’m just so dim that I didn’t understand it! Or maybe subconsciously I had tried to forget him!

The first I heard of Boosh’s trip to Rome was from my friend Micah. Micah is a wonderful friend of mine from San Francisco. We met through running and have remained friends ever since. He was a very close friend in San Francisco, and like most of my male friends…he’s gay. We would always joke about being each other’s ‘fall back plan’ for marriage. If I wasn’t married by 40, we would simply marry and throw a fabulous wedding party…well, that was the plan at least. However I’m now 37 and I think he’s getting worried! Sure –it was a great idea when I was 33, but now at 37…I don’t think he’s as excited about it.

Regardless, he helped me get settled into NYC when I moved there, helped me pick out an apartment, introduced me to his friends in NY and cast me off – to survive on my own 4 years ago. (you’d think that he would be trying desperately to find me some good men to date, but he must be waiting until I am about 39…nothing like waiting until the last minute!) We had planned to meet up for a vacation in Rome and Siena. On pure luck he happened to choose the week to join me in Italy that Rome was celebrating Gay Pride. However, last month Micah e-mailed me to let me know that Gay Pride in Rome had been moved back due to George Bush’s planned visit for that same weekend. Apparently the officials of Rome were worried that there would be too many demonstrations in Rome if Boosh and the Gays were in Rome at the same time…sad but true. They didn’t have enough police force to go around. So, they moved Gay Pride celebrations back one week and Boosh took precedence.

On June 9th, Micah and I awoke to the sound of helicopters hovering everywhere. Boosh had arrived in Rome to meet with the Pope, and the Prime Minister of Italy as a quick stop on his was from the G8 summit. I’m really not sure why else he was here…maybe he was hungry for some good pasta. The whole country was buzzing about it – not necessarily in a good way. As New Yorkers know, when Boosh travels, the whole perimeter shuts down creating gridlock…and the Romans were not happy about that. The Polizia were dispatched in the thousands, ready for skirmishes. Micah and I walked around Rome admiring the good looking policemen, trying to steer clear of the Vatican. We came across a poster about a Anti-Boosh demonstration in the Piaza de Popolo at 3PM. I was intrigued…very intrigued. I like the idea of seeing an anti-Boosh demonstration in another country – I wanted to see what it was all about. In addition, Micah had never seen the Piaza de Popolo, so we could also do site-seeing at the same time…perfecto!

When we arrived at the Piaza there were Peace (Pace in Italian) flags everywhere, and television reporters. The reporters were perched high on scaffolding to be above the crowd with a bird’s eye view. We walked around and looked at the different booths, and took it all in. There were posters, t-shirts, bands, and banners. It was attended by anti-war protesters, and the Refoundation Communist Party, the Italian Communist Party and the Green Party. There were also a number of Palestine posters – so they were in the mix too. It was all rather peaceful and harmless –but interesting to see.

As we continued to walk around the city that day there were still a sea of police officers keeping peace, ready for a riot. I did read in the paper the next day that there was a small riot and tear gas used at one point during the demonstration. It always amazes me how much the rest of the world cares about what America is doing, and most importantly what Boosh is doing…and it scares me a bit too. They know much more about American politics than I do, heck – I don’t even know who the Prime Minister of Italy is…that’s terrible…I’ve been here 2 months. I have to admit though, in every place in Italy that I visited I never met one Italian that was a fan of Boosh. This didn’t come as any huge surprise to me as the rest of the world has been like that too I suppose.

I survived the Boosh visit, but I was upset…upset that he brought this piece of American politics here to Rome, and to my traveling…but I suppose it was inevitable that Boosh and I would end up in the same place sooner or later in the world. The only good part was that it brought a bunch of great looking Poliza out on the streets! Micah and I enjoyed our sight seeing all day!

Rome’s Dirty Little Secret

Sherry — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 14:10:49 +0000

View Slide Show of Rome’s Dirty Little Secret below

We all have them…secrets…sometimes small, sometimes big, sometimes innocent and sometimes dirty…and Rome is no exception. If you’ve spent time traveling around the city of Rome then no doubt you’ve been to the main sites – along with thousands of other tourists. You went to the Vatican City, Sistine Chapel, Piazza Narvona, Trevi Fountain, Colosseum, Roman Forum, and my personal favorite the Pantheon. They are all within walking distance of each other and every day you see thousands of other camera toting tourists, wearing tennis shoes, carrying a backpack and a bottle of water going from site to site enjoying the beautiful ancient city.

The city is extremely beautiful – but like any big city it has its not-so-pretty parts too. The areas that no one talks about, or the sites that no one takes pictures of. You see these things with your own eyes, but you try your best to ignore them in the picture and focus instead on the Colosseum. However – this was my 5th visit to Rome, I was tired of trying to ignore the elephant in the Rome…errr…I mean the room. I was ready to stand up, arm myself with my camera, and acknowledge the secrets of Rome, no matter how unpopular that might be.

These dirty secrets manifest itself in trash, graffiti, homeless people, and construction. These items are actually littered all over Rome at the main sites, but we focus on the beautiful Colosseum or Pantheon, looking past the beggars and graffiti. Let me warn you though, the graffiti is EVERYWHERE. It’s not just in the ‘bad’ parts of town, or on the abandoned building. It’s on the walls of buildings in the nice nieghborhoods, where people live every day and tourists walk through. The town is overrun with it – on the buses, on the trains, and on the phone booths. If I stood still too long – it would probably be on me!

I’m used to seeing graffiti – I lived in NYC after all – however, it pains me to be walking through the streets of Rome and see a beautiful old door with graffiti all over it. I mean really…what did that door ever do to deserve that? It’s probably good that I couldn’t understand most of the writing as it was in Italian – else I really would have been depressed to see FU painted on someone’s door…sort of like the scarlet letter. The worst area for graffiti seemed to be Trastevere – which is a travesty (hee…hee) as it’s one of my favorite neighborhoods in Rome.

One of the disappointments that tourists face throughout Italy is they get to a much anticipated site – say Piazza Narvona…they’ve waited for months and months to see the famous fountains, they’ve saved money for the last 2 years to take a trip abroad, and they get to the Piazza armed with their cameras…and the fountain is covered in scaffolding. It’s a big disappointment, however it’s rather normal. These ancient sites can’t simply be closed from the hours of midnight to 8AM to be cleaned and refurbished and then opened back up for the tourists as if it were Disneyworld. Unfortunately, they are refurbished for months and months leaving all of the tourists that come to take pictures disappointed. Shit happens…yeah, it’s a bummer, but it’s better that they take care of these ancient places, than let them fall apart just for the sake of your photo op.

While I was in Rome there were a number of places that had scaffolding surrounding it like a girdle. Instead of shying away from these monuments in their girdle of scaffolding…I embraced them…I took photos of them! Sure, some people thought I was a little crazy…but oh well…I got my picture of the fountain and they didn’t! One of my favorite types of scaffolding was when they would have scaffolding, and a tarp wrapped around the monument. The tarp would have the picture of the building on the outside. Somehow this was supposed to make you feel better. Sure, you didn’t get to see the real thing because it was covered with a tarp…but you got to see the next best thing, a picture of the monument surrounding the monument.

View all photos at once by clicking on the image or use go to Rome’s Dirty Little Secret

I have to admit – I had a lot of fun taking these photos…of course people looked at my strangely, but that’s nothing new. It was something a bit different and got me excited about going to the sites again for the 5th time. Sure, these photos won’t end up in any tour brochure – and they shouldn’t. They need to remain a secret…so forget you ever saw them…as it’s our little secret.

Come Sail Away

Sherry — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 11:30:13 +0000

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View snapshots of Ischia and Sailing

I grew up in the land-locked Midwest. The real Midwest – home to corn fields as far as the eye can see. This is not an area that produces good sailors….and I’m no exception. The only place water sports took place was in my neighbor’s pool or the creek behind my house. Then there was also the white trash pool…the sprinkler. Regardless of the lack of water around my birthplace, I still loved the water. I would beg my mom to let me go out and play in the thunder storms just to get wet…I never said I was a smart kid.

The first time I saw the ocean I was about 12 years old. I was in awe of its size, smell, and sound; however, it intimidated me. It was salty and unpredictable, and unknown creatures lived in it…therefore I always preferred the pool. I was 26 years old the first time I set foot on a sailboat and really sailed – the kind of sailing where you felt as if you could slip off the boat and into the ocean to be lost at sea. I was fascinated by the thrill of heeling over, and how in the world we didn’t tip over completely. I viewed the captain of the sailboat as a Miracle worker…as if he could change water into wine. Sailors have an instinct that I just don’t possess when it comes to the water and weather…it’s impressive. Every time I have a chance to sail…I’ll do it! So when I found this sailing school in Ischia – I knew that I had to sign up! I had simply found the school by doing searches on Google. I had about 6 extra days until I needed to be in Rome, and I was done with touristy Sorrento. I exchanged some emails with the owner of the school, Andrea, and decided this would be the perfect place to take a little vacation from my traveling!

After 2 months of traveling in Italy, I found that you seldom came across a town that wasn’t infiltrated by tourists (Ferarra was an exception). They arrived on big tour buses, following their little group leader as if they were the paparazzi following Paris Hilton into jail. The tour leader held some sort of obnoxiously brightly colored flag so that the paparazzi wouldn’t lose him. Sometimes, it even went one step worse and everyone in the tour group had to all wear some obnoxiously colored scarf or t-shirts that matched…as if they were branded cattle that may wander off and get lost and the scarf would help them find their way back to their orange herd, or it would help the leader herd them all back together…kill me now. Granted, maybe when I’m older and can’t carry 60lbs of luggage around with me and take local trains and travel to weird places on my own, maybe then I will take one of these tours…however, I will NEVER wear a matching scarf. I think I ought to start a cool tour company for the over 70 crowd…one that bring individualism, culture, and adventure back into travel…even though you may not be able to climb a mountain…you certainly don’t need to be dressed the same. Oops…I digress.

I got tired of all of this after a while. It was as if I were living in Times Square in December…I starting feeling cynical about Italy…the place I used to love. I felt as if it were this animal that only survived on tourism – not the lovely country with a beautiful language and amazing history and towns…instead – it was just one big limoncello stand selling postcards, aprons, magnets, and any other tacky gifts to herds of orange scarf people.

Then I stepped off the ferry in Ischia – the place where I fell back in love with Italy. People here spoke Italian, people had real jobs that didn’t center around tourism, there wasn’t a ton of tour operators the moment you stepped off the boat trying to sell you tours and overpriced taxi rides. The island of Ischia is off of the coast of Naples in Campagna. I consider Ischia the stepsister of the beautiful Capri Island. Capri for some unkown reason has all of the popularity and it exists soley for tourism…it really doesn’t operate outside of the tourist months in the summer…and I have come to really dislike that. I want to experience locals and see how people live day to day. However – it’s really difficult to do that in places like Capri, Positano, or Sorrento…they exists for tourism. Ischia however is a real working island. Sure – they do have tourists, but they don’t solely depend on them to keep afloat. The island is beautiful and lush, and full of thermal waters and springs…I honestly don’t know why more Americans don’t come here…but secretly – I was happy they were all in Capri nad Positano! I stayed in Casamicciola, a small fishing town with an amazing view and mountains. It was just me, some German tourists and some Italian tourists…perfect, this is Italy!

I was welcomed into the Le Zagare hotel and sailing school. It was this beautiful little oasis of a hotel on top of a hill – painted a stunning shade of yellow, with a bright blue pool in contrast. I was excited to meet Andrea as I had conversed with him quite a bit over email before I decided to sign up for the school. His wife, Kate, was from Australia and they met when he was captaining a yacht in Australia. They were immediately warm and welcoming. The lobby was bight and airy – it wasn’t ultra fancy…instead, it felt like a home. After lugging my heavy luggage up the hill to Le Zagare they provided me some of the best lemonade I’ve ever had! The kind that was full of pulp and ice cold…perfect since I was sweating profusely from the heavy lifting. They have a lemon grove behind the hotel and make fresh lemon juice daily, and Le Zagare means citrus flower in Italian.

The name, the color of the hotel, the lemon grove…it all made sense. Andrea checked me into a big room with a huge balcony terrace with chairs and a table that overlooked the pool and the magnificent sea. I walked out on the terrace and was immediately in love with the place. When you travel for 9 months, you never really have a home – a place to just eat dinner in, put your feet up on the couch, sink back into a chair in your pj’s and just veg out. Instead, you are always at someone else’s place, never feeling completely comfortable, eating out constantly. However, my terrace was my new living room. I would just sit there in my pj’s and watch the world go by, eating dinner I picked up at the local deli. The only things missing were my cat and my Tivo…but after 9 months I have learned to live without them…sad but true. This feeling of being home was also possible because Kate and Andrea were so accommodating. Kate would give me bus tickets to use, a phone card to call the states, plates and silverware from the kitchen to use for my terrace dinners. I hung my clothes out to dry on the terrace…and I watched the sun set every night from my little haven.

Ah – but I wasn’t just here to sit on my terrace and drink beer in my pj’s or to simply go to the botanical gardens, and see the castle – I was here for a purpose…to learn how to sail! Andrea had an impressive background. He had sailed in 2 races around the world – he was a seaman through and through. I thought to myself…we’ll see if he can take this Midwesterner who hasn’t even driven a car for 4 years and teach her how to sail…that may just be a miracle – or it could end up like the Titanic! On the first day of class…I sat out on the sunny porch listening to Andrea talk about wind and drawing great little diagrams that took me back to my college physics class…somewhere back in the far recesses of my brain. He started off by saying that when on a boat, you should never believe that you are not stupid…always assume the person next to you is stupid. Hmmm – my kind of sport – he already knows that I’m stupid – now I don’t have to spend so much effort hiding it!

Andrea had the personality of my father…he was logical, a purist, and he had this air about him that commanded you to pay attention. Or maybe I was just paying attention because I was afraid of being the first student to fall off the boat! He taught me the correct terminology…in English thank god! He drew triangles, he showed me how to see which way the wind was coming by looking at he ripples on the water (yet I never really did master this…it was like looking at one of those funny paintings where you had to relax your eyes and mind and all of a sudden you would see another picture within a picture…it made my head hurt), he showed me how to see a gust of wind coming, and mainly I learned how to tie knots! Being able to tie a good knot will always come in handy in life…kind of like knowing how to drive a manual transmission vehicle…always a good skill to have. You never know when you are going to have to tie up a cow and drive it back home on a tractor…see…these things could happen! You never really can predict what weird situations you will be in from one country to the next.

Photo – The winch…my favorite part of the boat!
After an hour of theory lessons, we walked to the boat where the hands on lesson started! The boat was a racing yacht (for those of you out there that think a yacht is one of those huge motorized boats, not necessarily true. The original meaning of the word yacht was solely to describe sailing vessels. The big fancy boats came along after the fact and started using the name!) Andrea’s boat is called Istria – named after a part of Italy where his mother grew up (however it is now considered Croatia). The boat was serious…this wasn’t a cruising vessel…this was a real sailing vessel!

Everywhere you looked there were ropes, winches, pulleys, and multiple sails ready below deck for various conditions. We took off and got out of the harbor, turned off the motor, put up sail an sat down to one of the nicest sandwiches I’ve had in a long, long time. It was a real American type sandwich – bread, meat, cheese, tomato, avocado, lettuce…the works! Oh how I miss a good sub sandwich! We spent the next 4 hours on the water practicing the maneuvers that I had learned about earlier. I excelled at using the winch, I even got comfortable with the terms and describing the maneuver we were doing correctly. However, when I was asked to take the helm…my talent ran out! That big wheel isn’t like power steering on a car! It was challenging to keep a course correctly in the wind. I especially was challenged if we were sailing towards open sea and I didn’t have a landmark to aim towards. Andrea would tell me that there was an inate feel to being able to keep the boat on a fetch…sailing at that exact angle with the sails trimmed just right. You had to pay attention to the sound and feel of the wind on your body, the pressure and resistance on the wheel at the helm. I was clearly much better at the manual labor…but the important thing is that I tried – and that

Andrea was totally patient with me as I would steer us off course. When I did end up off course, the sails would go flapping around in the wind loudly notifying me that I had screwed up as if it were a young child screaming that it was hungry…hungry for the wind!

Photo – Captain Sherry!
That night off in the distance it was getting really dark – a storm was definitely coming…hopefully not the Perfect Storm! Since Andrea could determine it’s direction just by looking at it, he made the executive decision that we better run for it! We pulling down the sails, motored up the boat and tried to outrun the storm and make it back to the harbor. Great…my first day at sea and we had a big dark, windy, thunderous storm on our ass…now this was adventure! Alessandro and I hurried about the boat trying to get everything buttoned down and put away the best we could. We actually pulled into the harbor when the rain started to come. We tied up the boat and went for cover below…just in time before the skies opened up and it hailed! We did what any good sailors would do in this situation…we drank. Andrea had a bottle of limoncello on board – so we got out the glasses and drank limoncello out of plastic coffee cups listening to the hail loudly pound the boat! It was a fun time to just hang out and get to know each other…and be extremely thankful that we made it into harbor on time! Andrea was simply happy because he wouldn’t have to hose down the boat now….Mother Nature took care of that. Alessandro and I were happy that we had limoncello…overall – a successful first day of sailing!

The second day of classroom instruction included learning about the Bernoulli Principle. My head hurt…the last time I had to think about splitting air particles was about 20 years ago. I was sitting in my high school physics class dressed like Madonna, wondering why in the world I had to learn this stuff when I would never use it in life – after all, this Bernoulli guy wasn’t going to help me be the next Material Girl. Now I’m sitting in Italy in front of a white board learning it all again 20 years later…life is a wild ride sometimes. The second day of hands-on sailing included practicing our tacks and learning how to pick a point in the distance and how to go through the process of making it there doing various tacks. We also practiced man overboard drills! It was a great exercise to figure out how to get back to an exact point close enough to pick someone up. We thankfully threw a life preserver in the sea instead of a person and then would go back and pick it up. I also learned the proper way to warm someone up who was hypothermic…luckily I didn’t have to practice this with the life preserver. I was always amazed at Andrea’s understanding of the water, wind, and the boat – there was definitely a feel and knowledge that came after years and years and years of sailing experience. After day 2 of sailing…I was still pretty good at manual labor.

Photo – Andrea and I
The final day of sailing included more lessons on Bernoulli, and more practice at maneuvers…and more yummy sandwiches! It was a beautiful day of cruising around with good wind and an amazing view. The island is really beautiful when approaching it from the sea. I enjoyed the peace and quiet being out on the water. I honestly didn’t want to go to Rome the next day…it would be loud and dirty – not quiet and calm like Ischia. That night out on my balcony I celebrated the fact that I successfully completed my beginning sailing class without falling overboard! I actually learned quite a bit – now I just need to find a man with a sailboat so that I can keep on practicing! Or at the very least I probably know enough to stow away on a boat and work the winch! After staying in Ischia for 5 days, I honestly didn’t explore the island much, however, I did get to explore the waters. Sure, I went to the castle and some beautiful botanical gardens, but there were many other activities that I skipped such as the thermal spas (what the island is mainly known for), hiking trails, geological tours, and wineries. Instead, I preferred to sit on my terrace watch the sun go down with a cold Peroni. A perfect vacation for this weary traveler!

For more info on Sailing School at Le Zagare – click here!

Le Miei Famiglie Italiani

Sherry — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 11:03:29 +0000

Sorrento is famous for their lemons

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View snapshots of Sorrento and friends!
View snapshots of the Almalfi Coast

The title roughly translates into my Italian Families…that’s right – plural…I have many of them! I have to admit it – I have always been fascinated with all things Italian – the food, the wine, the mafia, and the family lifestyle. It is no surprise then that the Godfather movies top my favorite movie list. The opening scenes that have these huge weddings and confirmation celebrations are my favorite. I love to see the big celebrations centered around food, family, and normally religion juxtaposed with the morally corrupt mafia.

In general, I’ve always felt that America doesn’t really possess that family bond that other countries do – therefore I’ve always been fascinated with it in other cultures. After living in Sorrento for a month, I have had the fortunate experience to be welcomed into not only one Italian Family’s home…but multiple families’ homes. I am living with a local family, I am taking cooking classes at a large Italian family home, and finally, I have befriended a few locals here and have been welcomed into their kitchens and lives as if I am a part of the family. All of these families make up my Italian family experience here, but each is unique.

Photo: Marina Grande sunrise in Sorrento
I arrived in Sorrento to live with the Signor and Signorina Bandi. They live in a home in Sorrento that has been in their family for over a hundred years. They have two children that are now grown and living in France – therefore they have opened up their home to students from the language school. It’s rather unusual that their kids live abroad, as many Italian families stay in the same areas, and often the kids live in the family home until they are married. The Bandi’s have some very progressive Italian children – which makes them perfect couple to host students! They are social, warm, curious about the world, and welcoming – and more than a little patient with my crappy Italian. I am staying in their daughters room and I feel as if I have been transported back to my high school years as it seems as if they have simply left the room the same as it used to be when she left – a little twin bed with dalmatian sheets, stuffed animals everywhere, and pictures of her friends all over the room – and even a picture of Kurt Cobain. It reminds me of my own wood paneled room with pictures of Sean Cassidy and Tom Cruise covering the walls. Signorina Bandi speaks a bit of English (thank god!), but Signor Bandi does not – however he makes up for it by baking fresh bread and biscotti!

Every morning I have breakfast with them and we try to muddle our way through a conversation…sometimes successfully – and sometimes I just give up and speak English. I always feel so guilty though when I give up (which is quite often) However – every week I get a little better so that I now simply intermix the two languages constantly within the same sentence. I figure that it’s better than nothing! When I come home late from cooking school they are often still awake and we sit down and Signor Bandi pours me some of his homemade limoncello, or a glass of wine and then puts out some cheese and ham to snack on. Of course I have just finished a 4 course meal at the cooking school – so I am really not hungry – but I eat regardless because I like to spend this time with them! Signorina Bandi has made the observation that I’m always doing something – I never slow down. Even in a different country, experiencing a different culture, she has figured me out…I don’t relax…always go, go, go…some things never change! They keep a guestbook of all of their students and pictures – I am already busily trying to figure out what I will write in Italian in the guest book…oh…the anxiety!

Photo: Friends at the cooking school – Haley, Alexis, and Tina
Then there’s my cooking family – at Mami Camilla’s. I love this place…just love it. I honestly don’t know what I would have done in Sorrento without Mami Camilla’s. It was my family for a month…the family that I laughed with, cooked with, drank with. (see the Pooch post for more info). There was something so comforting about coming to the house every day and having someone say Ciao Sherry! – people that knew me. It’s strange that after being a vagabond for 8 months how comforting a familiar face can be. I had a place…a place where they knew me, and a place where they expected me every night.

It wasn’t just the Mami Camilla family – it was the people that I met there at cooking classes as well as the new people arriving every night at the bed and breakfast. Every night there would be new people to meet – mainly American tourists – but new people all the same! I made so many wonderful connections through this venue – I can’t even begin to try to keep track of them all! I met New Yorkers, students studying abroad, Californians, Brits, Australians, and many other people. It was invigorating to talk to Americans again. It had honestly been quite a while since I had seen so many Americans. Topics revolved around travel, politics, cooking, wine, and family. The constant coming and going of people from Mama Camillas created this strange dynamic – a feeling of excitement about what new people you would meet that night, as well as an equal feeling of sadness as people left. It was a revolving door of friendships. It was a lot of emotions to deal with in just one month – I can’t imagine how the staff deals with it – just when you make a connection with someone – they are gone. However, I wouldn’t change a thing about it – it was this unique, different experience that probably was the highlight of my time in Italy!

Photo: Mossimo, myself, and Gigi at the Bollicine Wine Bar
Then there were the families and friendships that I formed outside of classes – at a local wine bar called Bollicine. The first night I arrived in Sorrento, I settled into the Bandi household and then went out exploring the town on my own. As it got later in the evening, I started looking for a place to eat dinner. I really didn’t want to go to a touristy place…just a nice place where I could feel at home. I wandered along the back streets and found a wine bar with a small menu. I went in for dinner that night and the relationship was formed. I met Mossimo and Luigi that night. Mossimo was the bartender and Luigi was the cook and manager of sorts. I told them that I was going to be taking courses at the language school for a month. We chatted over an amazing glass of red wine. Later that weekend, I was out with some girlfriends at a little lounge in Sorrento in the wee hours of the morning and all of a sudden someone walked by me and said – “Ciao Sherry!” – I turned around and it was Mossimo – I was so impressed that he recognized me and remembered my name. I beamed with the joy of feeling that I actually knew people in town.

That was the beginning of my relationship with Max and Gigi. Since I was eating every night at Mami Camillas, I utilized Bollicine as my ‘local’ bar. I took friends there from class and introduced them to the guys. Gigi and Max were wonderful…they sat through my excruciating Italian speaking attempts, they entertained us with stories, they poured wonderful glasses of wine, they had an Italian/English dictionary at our disposal, and they played great music…it was my hangout. There were a number of times that my friends and I closed the place down…literally they locked us inside and we just hung out and drank more wine until we felt like going home. I would run into Max or Gigi on the streets of Sorrento during the day and they would say hi – I felt like a local during those moments.

Photo: My dinner party with my girlfriends
One night Gigi suggested that since I was taking cooking class – that I should cook my friends dinner in his kitchen at the bar. I honestly thought he was joking. However, the next night when I stopped there for a drink, he came out and started writing down a menu of what I could make and what I would need to go and buy. I was thrilled at the chance to cook for my friends in a kitchen! It was as if I had my own apartment again! Plus – there was an added excitement about the fact that I would have to go shopping for my ingredients at the local markets. Gigi gave me a list and told me where to go. The night before I looked up all of the words in the dictionary and wrote down some key phrases in case I got stuck and off I went to the fish market, the butcher, and the vegetable market.

That night I skipped Mami Camillas and invited my girlfriends from class to dinner at Bollicine’s…otherwise known as Osteria di Sherry that night. Gigi taught me how to prepare local food such as Octopus and potato salad, Penne Arrabbiata, and Veal Marsala. I had so much fun cooking with him and preparing the table in the restaurant for our dinner. The girls loved it and we stuffed ourselves silly. That night we all hung out well past close hours drinking wine with the guys laughing into the wee hours of the night.

Photo: Tash and I on one of our many excursions…including wine…
My final family member is Natasha. Natasha was my saving grace here – she’s someone I can call a great friend. She’s a fellow language student from Australia a year younger than me, taking about 9 weeks off from work and traveling through Italy. She also enrolled in the school with no previous experience in speaking the language like myself. Natasha and I formed an initial friendship out of frustration with trying to learn a new language – however that quickly turned into a friendship based on mutual interests and similar backgrounds. Sure – I’ve met a ton of people here in Sorrento – but the one person that I can safely say that I formed a friendship for life with was Natasha. It absolutely amazed me how much two women from different parts of the world can have in common – we just clicked.

By week two I was going over to her apartment for lunch and happy hours, we would plan travel outings on the weekend, we laughed, we cried – we laughed so hard we cried. We knew each other’s families and friends by name – we shared stories and experiences – there was never a dull moment! We had special lunches for ‘ladies that lunch’ which would consist of molto wine and lots of girl talk. Natasha always came up with great words of wisdom when I was feeling particularly stupid in class. She kept things light and funny. Sure – we both had our breakdowns in the middle of class…the moments where you feel so stupid that you just want to walk out…but luckily we would have them at different times – so that we could encourage each other to stick with it. Plus – we both had to be reminded that learning Italian was not worth crying over. After all…we chose this path…and many people would love to be in our shoes.

We explored the area together during our free time – Pompeii, lunched in Positano, climbed Vesuvio, frequented the beaches, and visited Capri. (see picture links at the top for the excursion photos!) I always believe that things just seem to work out…and meeting Natasha is just another example. I was nervous about living in Sorrento for a month and going to classes, but having Natasha around made it possible to really enjoy that time. I’m ready to move on from Sorrento this week – however I know that I will miss her…it was fun to have a girlfriend around again…one that I felt so close with.

Photo: Me on my purple Pasta Eater Bike!
Thanks to my multiple Italian family friendships that I formed – it made my time here everything I was hoping for. Sure – I was also hoping that I could write this whole post in Italian after 4 weeks – but that was probably my overachievement quality emerging. Instead – I can say – Il mio tempo a Sorrento sono stata buona. Io ho fatto molto amici , ho mangiato molto pasta, e mi piace tutto momento.

Grazie Mille!

4 Courses, 6 Nights a Week, for 4 Weeks: My New Italian Diet

Sherry — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 10:22:03 +0000

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View snapshots of Mami Camilla’s - warning – it will make you hungry!

I joke around about being out of shape, however I after 8 months of travel, minimal workouts, and food from all over the world – I have still been able to fit into my same clothes. Compared to the rest of the world, I feel generally fit and athletic….until Italy. My month in Italy at cooking school has produced a whole new level of body image anxiety. I have many names for it – spare tire, pasta pooch, i rotoli, muffin top, fupa…that extra weight that I’m carrying around my middle – it should have a little tag on it that says “Made in Italy”.

Photo: Chef Biagio
When I signed up for cooking classes – I really had no more information about it than the fact that I would be cooking 3 nights a week. When I arrived at the language school they showed me where the cooking school was (in the next town about a mile and a half away) and they told me I would need to go out there to cook on Mon, Wed, and Fri from 4:30 to 8:00 – and then I could stay and eat the dinners that we prepared. In addition, I could go to the school and eat an additional 3 times a week as part of my package. Food that I already paid for…yippee! Considering these days I’m always excited about a good bargain, I knew that I would be spending a lot of time there; however, I still didn’t really know what to expect from the school.

When I arrived the first night at Mami Camilla’s – I was surprised to find out that it was more than a cooking school – it was a family compound of sorts. It not only included the cooking school (which was held in their large kitchen of their house), but it was also a bed and breakfast and hostel. A big wall surrounded the whole compound and when you breached that wall – you came into this welcoming Italian home…a real home. They had big terraces, herb gardens, lemon trees, cherry trees, and two lovable dogs – Spike and Lola. The school was run by Chef Biagio Longo and his son, Augustino. Augustino served as the translator and Sous Chef – plus – he was the funny man…always joking around and lighthearted. As soon as you walked in the kitchen it felt as if you had just entered a party with friends. The cooking classes were relaxed and fun – and they contained an extraordinary amount of eggs, cheese, butter, and fried food.

Photos: How to make pasta 101

The compound also operated as a restaurant every night. They had a little sign up sheet in front of the house and if you wanted to have dinner there, you simply wrote your name down on the list and join the crowd at 8PM for a 4 course meal for 15 Euro…the vest value in all of Sorrento. On average, they would have about 30 people every night to feed – so as a student of the school – we were busy making large quantities of pasta every day! It was a family operation through and through. Biagio and Camilla had 4 grown kids and each of them helped with the business. Augustino helped with the cooking school every day, Giuseppe was the accountant and worked with all of the reservations and finances of the place, and the two daughters came every night to serve the big group of people. Then there was also Palmyra – the lovely woman that assisted at the school and basically was your shadow. Every time you put a dirty bowl or spoon down…she would have it picked up and washed quicker than you could blink. I honestly believed that she was the real brains behind that kitchen…she would give Augustino these discerning looks like…”you are putting too much salt in”, or “the pasta is to thick” – but she never really said anything –you could simply read it in her face.
A typical class included arriving at 4:30, having an espresso, eating some gelato that they had made earlier in the day, making the dough for the homemade pasta, dusting off the pasta maker and creating every type of noodle imaginable. This was followed by a wine break, and then normally we moved on to peeling various vegetables, frying them, and preparing the pomodoro sauce. Finally we’d work on the dough for the dessert/pastry that night and make the base custard cream. In between all of this – we would taste what we prepared – as all good chefs do! We wrapped up the cooking by 8PM and then went out to join the other diners to enjoy the 4 course meal we just prepared…and more liters of wine of course!

Every night as I sat down at one of the long tables for dinner I would meet new travelers that were staying at the B&B or Hostel. Even for a social butterfly like myself…it was overwhelming. New people every day – different countries, different ages, different stories – it was fascinating…and a bit of information overload. I can’t tell you how many times I told my ‘story’ to people…and I would get the same questions:

“What did you do before you left NY?”
“Do you have a job when you get back?”
“What was your favorite place you’ve been to?”
“How big of suitcase do you have?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Do you plan all of this out in advance?”
“What do your parents think of you traveling alone in these places?”
“Do you get homesick?”
“How are you able to do this – isn’t it expensive?”

That last was always my favorite…I would go into my spiel of “Well, I have absolutely no responsibilities – no kids, no home, no college tuition to pay for – so all of my money just goes to me…it’s actually pretty simple.” Just saying that brings a smile to my face.
However – even though I may have gotten tired of telling my same story for a month, I never tired of meeting new people. It was fascinating and stimulating – it was like going to a cocktail party every night…it was pure energy and variety. Over that month I became friends with a number of travelers – and many of them are reading this blog right now!…Hi everyone from Mami Camillas!

Photo: Augustino putting the finishing touches on i dolci
Photo: Augustino
Since I was spending 6 nights a week at Mami Camillas – I talked to Giuseppe and rented an old, dilapidated, purple bike from him for the month. I figured that it would cut down on the time it would take to walk the 1 ½ each way. The bike was literally about to fall apart, but it worked well enough to ride 3 miles a day on relatively flat roads – as long as I didn’t have to use the brakes too much! It was purple, and had a bell…I was in heaven. I called it my purple pasta eater – it seemed rather fitting. The ride home after many glasses of wine and a heavy meal was always interesting – a little Lindsey Lohain-esq. The brakes didn’t really work too well, it was a narrow heavily traveled road, and there was no light, so I basically just imagined that I was in Vietnam where people bike confidently down the road expecting everyone to get our of their way and I rode like a bat out of hell until I got back to Sorrento. There I would have to weave my way through little, narrow streets trying not to hit tourists or crash into a motorscooter. Even though this whole process often got my heart rate up and working, it was no match for the stick of butter, and 4 eggs that I had just consumed in my 4 course meal.

Chef Biagio was talking about the Napoli fish market one day in class and I expressed interest in it. He asked me if I wanted to see it and of course I told him that I would LOVE to see it! Markets are one of my favorite things to visit! The only down side was that it was open from 2AM to 6AM every night. Therefore, Biagio picked me up at 3AM and off we went to Napoli in the middle of the night. Somehow I still thought I was 21 and decided that it would just be easier if I stayed up all night long -so I went without sleep that night – with the help of a few espressos. Biagio is a big man…a real big man…there would be no other person that I would want to go to the Napoli fish market with in the middle of the night than him.

Everyone talked about Napoli being a dangerous city…but the fish market in the middle of the night…well…that’s not in any guide book. We arrived at the market, downed an espresso and entered. To my surprise it was clean and well-organized…unlike the Asian markets that I had visited in the past. It was held in what looked to be an old airplane hanger with a large rounded ceiling. It had pristine white walls, orderly rows of fish, palettes of iced fish, stainless steel scales, and tons and tons of men all yelling. I was the only woman in the whole airplane hanger. Granted – I had been in these all-men situations before – but not with straight men. I’ve never seen so many men and none of them had glow sticks dancing around shirtless. Instead – they were yelling at each other with hand gestures flying. Then in walks this young woman with a camera…needless to say – I couldn’t be very inconspicuous with my photography.

Chef Biagio did buy a palette of sea bass for 30 Euro – fresh that day to be delivered to his home. I walked around the market looking at all of the fish, asking Biagio what some of the fish were, but mainly I enjoyed watching the various men interact. After we left the market at 5AM, Biagio drove me around Napoli as the sun was coming up. He took me by a beautiful castle that was lit up by spot lights with a yellow glow. I got out of the car to take a picture and the polizia pulled up and started questioning us. Great – I was going to end up in a Napoli prison. Biagio exchanged words with them and they asked for my documents..I gave them my NY drivers license and soon they moved on. Biagio later told me that he told them I was a reporter from America…they seemed satisfied with that – so they moved on.

Photo” Layers of pastry dough made with care
Most of all – I loved the whole concept of Mami Camillas. I loved riding my Purple Pasta Eater to the house every day and greeting everyone at the house as if I had known them for years. I loved that fact that during our cooking classes various friends of the family would come waltzing through the kitchen to deliver some produce, to make an espresso or to simply hang out and talk. I loved it when Spike and Lola would smell the meat cooking and would attempt to come into the kitchen just to be banished to fuori (outside). I loved the fact that I had a place to call home…a place where everyone did know my name..a place to laugh at…a place to make new friends at, a place to learn how to make homemade ravioli, and a place to make new friendships. I hated the fact that I had a place that put about 5 additional pounds on my body…but then again – all good things come with a price…mine was 5 lbs of rotoli. My new rotoli is made solely of homemade pasta, breadcrumbs, cheese, butter, cream, and pitchers of house wine all from Mami Camillas every single night. I must admit – sometimes I exaggerate…but this time I’m not…I thoroughly enjoyed every 4 course meal there, 6 nights a week, for 4 weeks…add that up and you will want to hold an intervention and check me into Jenny Craig.

My time at Mami Camilla’s was priceless. I made so many new friends – it really was overwhelming. I wish I could bottle the energy and hospitality that they produce there and sell it. It’s hard to find authentic experiences in Italy these days – but I felt that Mami Camilla’s delivered. The only thing it’s missing is a gym membership with the cooking class!

If you are planning a trip to South Italy…check Mami Camilla’s out!
Mami Camilla Website – check it out for more info!

Photo: My cooking class…Palmyra, me, Biagio, Dale, Myra, and Augustino in the middle front

Graduation Day!

Sherry — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 11:03:40 +0000

Photo: My graduation photo from Sorrento Lingue…surrounded by my patient teachers!

After spending 4 weeks attempting to learn Italian I have experienced a mixed bag of emotions – happiness, humor, stress, anxiety, stupidity, and elation. There was certainly a stage where I was so frustrated that I wanted to walk out – I never thought that I would be able to learn all of the exceptions, the irregular verbs, the tenses, and hundreds of new words. I felt like an idiot and was completely stressed out that I didn’t get it. I thought about all of the brain cells that I apparently killed over the years with booze and drugs and realized that all of those warnings about too much partying making you stupid were actually right! However, that stage passed when I reminded myself that I was doing this for fun – there was no need to put this pressure on myself.

Slowly I was learning more every day and my charades were getting much better every day. We would have so much fun in class at times that I would be laughing so hard that I would be in tears. We had a whole 30 minute conversation once about how to call a cat in Italy, Australia, and America. I found that after 4 weeks, I’m certainly not fluent…hell, it takes me at least 5 minutes to put together a grammatically correct sentence…and I still murder the pronunciation! However, I can read Italian now, and I can sometimes eavesdrop on a conversation spoken slowly and can understand about 50% of the words – so I take joy in the little victories.

As an adult, I think one of the hardest things you can do is to get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. This was hard, very hard – but it was rewarding too. I simply reached the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mastering the Italian language – but it’s a start.

Photo: Sorrento Lingue School
After 4 weeks of classes and various extracurricular activities, I have compiled a list of some of my favorite Italian words/phrases, and some of my favorite experiences from class.

The first one has to be “io non so” which means “I don’t know”. My most-used expression!

I love it when words make sense – it makes it so much easier to remember such as the word for frozen…congelato…literally meaning with ice cream. The word for cow…mucca…pronounced moocow…brilliantly easy to remember. Or abito…has dual meanings…to live…or a dress (that you live in). This seems appropriate when you are wearing one of the moo moo dresses…as they are as big as a house and you could live in them.

Gigi and Mossimo, my buddies at the Bollicine Wine Bar, taught me how to order wine properly…corposo for full bodied, leggero for light. However – I’m not sure why they even bother as whenever I go in there they simply pour me a glass…I feel like Norm at Cheers. They also taught me that the word for drunk, ubriachi, was not really used when describing drunk women…I guess it was too harsh – only men could be drunk. Women however, they were brilla – meaning jovial, silly drunk, or buzzed. I like a culture in which women aren’t described as drunk – but as jovial! Obviously Italian women have not ever played quarters at a fraternity party…one word…ubriachi.

Then there’s the food words that I have come to love. Arrabbiata sauce is one of my favorite sauces – I love the spiciness of the fresh tomatoes and pepper – I tend to crave it in the summer when I want something fresh. In class one day we learned the word for angry…arrabbiata…the little lightbulb in my head went on and a revelation was formed…the sauce that I love got it’s name from it’s spicy demeanor…arrabbiata! In addition, puttanesca sauce, classic Sicilian sauce with olives, capers, and anchovies is full of tart flavors. Gigi informed me that Puttana means whore or bitch in Italian…hence the name puttanesca sauce…perfecto! It makes me love Italian cooking even more to know that some of my favorite sauces have such delicious name sakes!

In the classroom, there were some pretty touch and go times, times where all of us at one point or another came close to walking out and giving up. There were also funny times, like when it took about 15 minutes to have a simple conversation that would normally take 2 minutes in your native language. I would get halfway through the sentence, “My parents moved houses this week” and would realize that I didn’t know the verb for ‘move’…which would then lead to lots of fumbling around my head trying to find a similar Italian word that could kind of mean the same thing. Natasha and I would have to psyche each other up to ask a question as we were supposed to speak Italian all the time in the classroom – therefore trying to compose the question in your head was like trying to climb one of those rope ladders at the carnival – the kind that would swivel around and flip you upside down and off before you knew it. Sure, it looked easy…but you had about a 10% chance of being successful and reaching the prize. Natasha and I would give each other encouraging words, and eventually between the two of us, we’d get out the question we wanted to ask – but it wasn’t pretty.

One of my favorite days was when I could tell that Natasha wanted to ask a question, she was thinking about it really hard – trying to put it together in her head before she said it aloud…instead of asking the question, she said to our teacher, “I have a question, and it’s hurting.” I felt her pain across the table….as I laughed at her!

One of my crowing moments happened outside the classroom. Italy is filled with graffiti – like many large cities, however it bugged me that I didn’t understand any of it. However, after 3 weeks of classes, I was riding a public bus and was looking at the foreign graffiti and I all of a sudden realized what it meant! It was a revelation – the jumbled letters all of a sudden made sense. I felt as if I just discovered penicillin…I was intelligent…I felt accomplished. Scribbled on the bus window was “Giuseppe e un figlio da putana” – which translated into Giuseppe being called a son of a bitch. When the lightbulb went off in my head – I was so proud of myself I felt like I would burst!

Of course – there is my favorite word – il toppo…meaning mouse. It has a special place in my heart. It was the first word that I totally wrote off as not having to know and then found myself needing to use it a few days later. It just goes to show you…you always have to be prepared. Natasha refused to learn the word for squirrel…she said that they didn’t have squirrels in Australia…I told her to learn it anyway. She basically refused and said, “what if you had to learn the word for kangaroo or koala?” Ok…point taken.

Photo: Me studying flash cards in the classroom

One of my other favorite words is i rotoli. We were discussing in class one day the new spare tire that I seemed to be carrying around my middle – and the teacher said it was called ‘i rotoli’. I asked her if she was being serious…she said yes – that’s what they call it! I said that my rotoli was made of pasta and cream…she just laughed.

All in all, I’m glad I learned more of the language – did I accomplish exactly what I wanted to? No…but I had fun, and I know more than I ever did. I can add another diploma to my wall as I did complete 4 weeks without giving up…which was accomplishment enough for me!

Perche Parlo Italiano? Because I want to…

Sherry — Sun, 20 May 2007 16:19:10 +0000

Inside the Blue Grotto on Capri

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View snapshots of Capri

There are few times in life in which you simply get to do something which there is no ulterior motive except for pure pleasure. The thought of taking language classes in Italy seemed adventurous, exotic, and glamorous – like riding the Orient Express, riding a camel in the Sahara, or sailing around the world. However, I met a woman recently who asked me why I chose to learn the Italian language. She felt it was an odd choice for me since I wasn’t working or living in Italy, nor did I have family ties here, nor did I work for a company that had any association with Italy. She told me she knew a woman with a similar background as me who wanted to take Italian, but decided upon Spanish instead because it was a more useful language. I gave her question and comment some thought, there was a bit of silence, and then I answered her, “Because I want to.”

It was a good question – one that I’ve given some more and more thought to since our initial conversation. Sure – the sensible thing would have been to take Mandarin or Spanish – I could put it on my resume and try to sell my international experience. All of my life I had been making the sensible choices…majoring in accounting, getting an MBA, changing jobs for more money and promotions, working on a project because it would look good on my resume, and making sure that I went to the right networking events. However, the choice to spend a great deal of money learning to speak Italian – well – it wasn’t necessarily the sensible choice – yet making a decision purely for your own pleasure…now that’s exhilaration. It’s like crossing the finish line of a marathon, a pure drug flowing straight into your veins, a high like no other. How many of us really get to do what we want to do…not many. The fact that I probably wouldn’t even use what I am learning much beyond this trip…didn’t matter to me…I was simply doing what I wanted to do…not what I should do.

However, doing what you want to do is not always easy…I am reminded of that as I struggle through my Italian classes every morning, yet I am not alone. I have classmates that also do varying degrees of struggling with me. We bond over conversation class when we have no idea what our teacher, Nunzia, is saying. Nunzia has this habit of showing us a picture and asking us what the different things on the picture are called in Italian. We have not learned the Italian word for mouse, but she’s pointing at the mouse and asking me what it is called as if I should know.

This frustrates the hell out of me as there’s no way that I can get it right so I make up words – I try il mouso or fromaggio-mangio-rodento. If she had already taught us the word, and then asked me what a mouse was – at least I would have a chance. If I didn’t get it right then I could only blame myself for not studying enough, but when I never knew the word to begin with…well…there’s just no winning…and I hate losing. I also dislike it when I am learning words that I feel like I will never use. How often do I use the word mouse in a sentence…maybe once every 2 months at best. It is a fact that your brain can only consume a limited amount of new information at one time…so you want to make sure that you are filling it up with the right vocabulary. Vocabulary that you will use – like today, next week, beer, wine, food, sleep, run, travel, good, bad, and no thankyou. Mouse just doesn’t fit into the upper tier of vocabulary words for me. Therefore, I choose to let it go in one ear and out the other with no guilt – I don’t even want it to stop and look around in my brain as it might muddle something else up in there and then I won’t be able to remember the word for beer. Therefore pocket, eyelash, rabbit, and mouse just make a roundtrip through my brain, never to be thought about again.

One of my other pet peeves is when Helena, our grammar teacher, teaches us multiple ways to say the same thing. There are at least 4 ways to ask what someone does for a living, but once I know one way – do I really need to know the 3 other ways to say it? Once again, those other 3 ways just take up valuable space in my brain, space that could be used for things like conjugating verbs, or learning the days of the week. I actually made the comment the other day in class “If I just didn’t know English…this would be a lot easier.” This seemed to make sense when it was rolling around in my head, however once the words came out I realized that it was absurd. My brain was mush.

Many of my classmates are from the US, and a few from other English speaking countries. All of the English speakers are in the beginning class with me – struggling through masculine and feminine nouns that seem to make no sense. We have all gotten to know each other through our 2nd grade vocabulary with no knowledge of the past tense. This is actually harder than you think. For an experiment – try to go to a cocktail party and meet new people with a severely limited vocabulary speaking only in the present tense. It goes something like this:

“My name is Sherry. I no work. I travel 8 month. I am from New York. I have 37 years. I like Italy and gelato. I no married. I no have kids. I have a cat of black and white. I no have car. I have one sister and one brother. I run the morning. I live with family Italian. I stay 4 weeks.”

Good luck on making new friends with that dialogue. However at Sorrento Lingue, it is quite easy to make new friends…we are all in the same boat, bailing water as fast as we can just trying to stay afloat in the growing waves of new vocabulary and rules that seem to make no sense. Rules such as conjugating verbs that convey movement a certain way, however, the verb ‘to dance’ and ‘to run’ aren’t considered movement and they are conjugated differently. Or my personal favorite – ‘to go the cinema’ and ‘to go to the theatre’ are different and require different grammar rules. Potato – Potaaaato…it’s all the same to me.

After one week of class one of my classmates, Natasha, and I decided that we should try to get out on the weekend and check out the night life as well as the surrounding areas around Almalfi. We needed a good stiff drink…plus, Natasha thought that maybe if we had a good wine buzz, maybe all of a sudden we’d be able to speak Italian fluently losing any of our inhibitions. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

We went out on Saturday night with some other classmates and then on Sunday we made plans to take a ferry to Capri. The nightlife in Sorrento is small…but fun. We went to a few bars and watched our young classmate, Aireka, get picked up on by molto Italian men…meanwhile Natasha and I didn’t seem to be getting any more fluent in Italian with the wine so we finally called it a night at 2AM. The next morning was an early start, a minor hangover certainly didn’t help! We took the high speed ferry to Capri. Natasha nor I possessed any type of travel book on Italy – so neither of us really knew what to expect, where to go, or what to see. We stepped off the ferry and were bombarded by people trying to sell us boat trips, taxi services, gelato and drinks – the typical tourist town fare. We walked to the information office to find out that it was closed on Sunday…so we continued on with no map, and no idea of what to do.

Someone back at the school had told me that we should definitely see the Blue Grotto if we went to Capri. However the Grotto was only open if the weather was favorable and the water was calm. It seemed like a nice day so we went to one of the tour boat operators to find out more about the Blue Grotto. Before we knew it – we were in line to catch the boat.

Photo: Row Boat Director at the Grotto
We took the tour boat to a cove not far from the main port. From there, we had to wait in line with many other tour boats full of people like ours to get in a little row boat in order to go inside the grotto. It seemed like quite the traffic jam and I was simply entertained by watching the row boats bustle around to the tourists, like bees to honey. There was one man that stood in a little row boat in the middle and presumable directed traffic – making sure that all of the tourist boats were serviced in the correct order and that everyone ‘played nice’. Every so often amongst the various row boats, Italian words would fly in conjunction with hand gestures that didn’t look to friendly. A typical day at the Blue Grotto I suppose.

We waited our turn and finally the row boats started coming to transport people from our larger boat to the Grotto. Only 4 people could fit in a row boat AND you had to lay down on the boat floor in order to get into the small opening in the Grotto. First though, you had to go to the floating ticket office to pay the fee. The floating ticket office was basically a row boat with 3 old Italian men on it collecting money…it was quite a racket at $9Euro a person. Our row boat captain took us to the opening and waited for the exact right time when the waves were low to pull us through the small opening. It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the cave that we just entered – but when they did – I witnessed some of the most spectacular blue water that I’ve ever seen. Inside the large, dark cave the water glowed in a bright turquoise color as if there were lights on the ocean floor lighting it up like a swimming pool. However there were no lights…in fact, the only light was the light from the small opening that we entered. That was enough to make it glow I guess. I don’t understand how it all worked, but I didn’t care as I was busily shooting pictures like crazy. I didn’t want to use a flash, so I was constantly trying to adjust the camera settings to get some sort of picture that would portray what I was seeing with my own eyes.

We went around the whole large cave as our row boat captain sang out Italian songs that echoed throughout the cave. (I guess that was included in the price…a nice surprise I suppose) Natasha and I were transported back to the larger boat and to our surprise, the tour boat didn’t take us directly back to the port, instead, it took us on a tour around the whole island. Apparently our one week of Italian courses didn’t work so well when we asked for the boat ticket to the Blue Grotto and back. We somehow got the boat ticket for a complete tour…oh well…we were just beginners after all! I was pleasantly surprised by the remainder of our journey around the island – the vistas were stunning. The coast was rocky and in places it reminded me of Southern Thailand – large rocks jutting up from the ocean floor.

After our boat trip, we decided to follow the signs to Centro…presumably the center of the town of Capri. Since we didn’t have any guidebook or information – we were surprised to find out that the center of town was up at the top of a large hill. We realized this after we had already walked halfway up…but at least we were working up an appetite. When we reached the centro – it was as if I had stepped off the subway onto 5th Avenue. On this little island, there were some of the best high-end shops that I had ever seen. There were 2 separate Prada stores in a little town that was the size of Washington Square Park. I mean really – do you think that the first Prada store was sooooo busy that they had to build another one to handle the overflow of customers that wanted to drop $500 Euro on a pair of socks? Ok – it was Europe I suppose, but since I’ve been living out of one suitcase for the last 8 months – I guess I have lost my appreciation for the luxury brand shopping. We walked by Armani, Gucci, Fendi, Ferragamo, Furla, Hermes, Roberto Cavalli, Burberry, and the multiple Prada shops and found a place to have some pizza with a great view. We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the backstreets of the town, building a new friendship, and speaking absolutely no Italian.

We had ample time to reflect upon our Italian language experience and classes. We had some great laughs and bonded over our similar struggle in remembering the massive amounts of new words that have tried to enter our head, but seem to get turned away as if I had a NY bouncer in my cranium. I liked the fact that Natasha reminded me that even though I may get frustrated about my inability to learn the words or at the speed of the course – I’m on vacation…people would kill to be in our shoes right now. I liked her outlook on the whole thing. Sometimes it sucks to be an overachiever…there’s just no ‘off’ button.

As we were eating our lemon gelato Natasha said, “I think I’ve developed another chin in one week. It’s a wine chin”. I chimed in with, “I think I’ve developed another roll around my mid-section…it’s a pasta roll.” We both agreed that after 4 to 6 weeks of living in Sorrento, it wasn’t going to be pretty. Mama Mia!

As we were waiting for our ferry back to Sorrento that evening, we saw a huge group of people gathered around a man with a cart. I assumed that the man was selling some sort of great gelato so I went to see what he had. To my surprise, it wasn’t gelato at all, instead it was some sort of meat…I believe it was carpachio. He had huge lemons on his cart and he would slice off a paper thin slice of meat and then squeeze fresh lemon over the top handing it to one of the many anxious customers. It certainly wasn’t the ice cream man…but he seemed to be just as popular.

As we waited at the port, there was also a stand with a bunch of birds in cages. It reminded me a bit of Asian markets where there were petshops out in the middle of markets or on the streets. We went over to look at the birds and laugh about how out of place this little pet shop cart seemed among the tourist shops. We wondered how many birds the guy actually sold in a day. We also noticed that he had some guinea pigs, baby turtles, some mice and even a rabbit. Without thinking I all of a sudden said, “I wonder what the Italian word for mouse is?” Natasha looked at me and we started cracking up. Just when you think that you didn’t need to know a word…you actually did!

That night when I got home, I got out my book and looked up mouse again, il topo – it is now forever committed to memory – and I try to use it every day – just so that it can earn it’s keep in my brain. I start week 3 of classes on Monday…a new adventure in vocabulary awaits!

Hitting the Pause (ll) Button – Sorrento, Italy

Sherry — Wed, 16 May 2007 12:06:42 +0000

Photo: La Dolce Vita in Italy…

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I am molto happy…for many reasons. But the primary reason is that I’m on ‘Pause’. I arrived in Sorrento last week, drug my bag down the cobblestone narrow streets and arrived at my home for the next 4 weeks. Sure, it was fun to meet Signor and Signora Bandi, my hosts, but the real fun was getting to fully unpack all of my bags in my little room. Seriously, unpacking was practically orgasmic. I have a closet that is all mine – with hangers! I have drawers, I have a vanity , I have a desk. Never in my life would I have thought that I could get this excited about simple accommodations and a room that is probably about 100 square feet. I cleared out every item from my suitcase, every pocket, every bag, giving each item a new little proper home.

I love traveling…love it…I have grown to hate my suitcase about as much as I hated going to work on a Monday, or getting up at 5:45 AM to run in the rain after 5 hours of sleep. It actually makes me wonder why in the world I’m planning on extending my travel through Oct. when I’m already sick of living out of a suitcase. My only answer is that I love traveling so much that I’m willing to make the sacrifice I guess. Plus if I plan little stops like a month in Sorrento, it kind of revitalizes me. When I put away the empty suitcase in the corner of my room, all I could think about was that I wouldn’t have to look at it again until 4 weeks had passed – Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy.

Many of you might be wondering why I’m staying in Sorrento for 4 weeks. I have always had some dream to live in Italy. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the food, the countryside, the ‘la dolce vita’ (living the sweet life), or the sexy sounding language and accompanying hand gestures. The fact that as an American I’m lazy and do not know how to speak any other languages has always bothered me. I don’t regret too many things in my life…except for the fact that I never learned another language. It has always seemed like some mystical thing to me – on par with the performers in Cirque de Soliel. I have the utmost respect for people who can speak multiple languages – as well as an equal amount of jealousy. However, learning a new language at 37 years old…well…it’s molto difficile!

Photo: My first view of Sorrento…I think I can suffer through living here for a month!
I walked around the first day I arrived and became familiar with Sorrento. I was elated as I explored…what a beautiful town I was able to live in for a month….I must really be the luckiest person in the world. My new daily schedule would be to attend 2 hrs of grammar classes a day, 2 hrs of conversation classes a day, and 4 hrs of cooking classes plus dinner afterward on Mon-Wed-Fri.

I was also pleased to find out that my ‘cooking school package’ that I signed up for also included an additional 3 nights of dinner at the cooking school. Therefore, I practically lived at the language school every morning, and at the cooking school every night. I had a schedule…places to be, things to do, people to see…responsibilities for the first time in 8 months! I was rather excited about having a schedule again…about as excited as I was about having a closet! By putting my travel on ‘pause’ for a month, this also meant that I would be able to get some semblance of a running schedule again. This was absolutely necessary since I was to be eating a 4 course Italian meal 6 nights a week…Mama Mia!

I was placed in a beginning language class and we started from step one. My fellow classmates were great. It was mainly Americans, and one Australian as we were all English speakers and all equally struggled with the idea of masculine and feminine words. By the end of the week my brain was full – I really could not save away another new word to my brain…it was impossible. It is exhausting trying to constantly concentrate and translate every word that someone says. The moment your brain starts to wander, you are history. However, I love my fellow classmates – we laugh and commiserate together quite often.

After one week of being back on a schedule, I realized…you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I thought that maybe after traveling in a laid back lifestyle for 8 months I would be less prone to the old traps that I used to fall into…lack of sleep, too much drinking, always being 10 minutes late to everything, and too much partying in general. I can now safely say…people really don’t change…they just don’t. All of a sudden I’m back to getting 6 hrs of sleep a night, going out way too late, and drinking 3 glasses of wine every night. I have had to self proclaim Sunday as my dry day…’no-booze-Sunday’ (as this is the only day that I don’t go eat at the cooking school where the wine seems to flow like tap water). Waking up to an alarm at 6:40 to run is painful…just as painful as it was in NYC. I hate alarms…they are evil.

I have also managed to create a weekly schedule that leaves me no to little free time to relax. Somehow I have planned away all of my free time. I met some Italian guy the other night that wanted to take me out for a coffee date (more on that later), and I found myself saying…”well, I’d love to go but I’m busy Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday – so the only free time I have is on Thursday between 5 and 7:30PM…can we fit it in then?” How is it that after 8 months of being unemployed, living in another country, having no real responsibilities – I still can’t find time to date. My Freudian answer would be…deep down, I must not want to date therefore I fill all of my free time with other activities….but enough about my psychological issues…this is suppose to be a short post.

After one week, I have made friends, I learned how to make home-made pasta, I can conjugate regular verbs, I have a local bar with my new friends Massimo and Luigi, I have been asked out on a date by an Italian man named Mario, and I know the Italian word for ‘drunk’ – ubriachi. All in all, it’s been pretty successful…very successful. I have no idea where the time goes, it just disappears into the beautiful, blue Almalfi sky. The ‘pause’ is good, very good. However, it still doesn’t make me want to come back to real life…I’m not quite ready for that yet – I still have plenty of exploring to do. Instead, I plan to soak up every bit of this experience that I can as it may the one and only time that I get to really live in Italy…la dolce vita.

Honeymoon Crashing – Rome

Sherry — Sat, 12 May 2007 17:05:41 +0000

View Rome Photography

View snapshots of my honeymoon in Rome

I’ve done many strange things in the last 8 months, had some great adventures, met some wonderful people, but I think I have reached the apex of unusual last week. I actually crashed a honeymoon. I’ve always said that I dislike attending weddings…but maybe I should give the honeymoon a shot. If I skip the wedding and attend the honeymoon, I don’t have to dress up and go to church, nor do I have to listen to a DJ play wedding music, nor do I have to catch a bouquet – instead – I can just enjoy the best part of the process of getting married…the TRAVEL! (get your mind out of the gutter) Of course I’m not ignoring the fact that the sex is/should be the best part – but that’s only if it’s your own honeymoon. If you are crashing a honeymoon, then you had better make sure that your friends are going to a great location. When Mike and Marcy said that they were going to honeymoon in Italy, I decided to skip the wedding and go straight for attending the honeymoon.

Photo: The newlyweds…touring Rome – I was their personal photographer!
Mike and Marcy are some more great friends from New York. In fact, I had the pleasure of being there when they met for the first time in a NYC bar. The funny thing is that Marcy, Alicia and I were all out together and we all met men that night, but the only one that worked out was Marcy’s! I was with her when they first started dating and she was freaking out about him…wondering if he was too god to be true…or just plain weird. They are a great couple…one that even I can respect…they belong together. I was upset that I wasn’t going to be able to attend their wedding, but it just so happened that I was planning on being in Italy during the same timeframe as their honeymoon, so I sent my parents to their wedding in California and I made sure that I was in Rome when they arrived for their honeymoon. Mind you, I did stay at my own little hostel in Rome and left them to their upscale honeymoon suite on their own…I do have a few morals after all. I arrived in Rome and settled into my little hostel near the train station. I quickly threw my stuff on my dorm room bunk and got cleaned up as I was very excited to see my friends after 8 months! Marcy was actually the last person I saw when I left NYC. She sent me off at Penn Station with tears in my eyes telling me not to cry as I was just going on vacation…this whole episode seems like years ago now!

I made my way over to their lovely honeymoon suite near Piazza Narvona and was elated to see their familiar faces! The first thing Marcy did was kiss me on the cheek and tell me that was from my Dad (who was at the wedding the weekend before). It was touching – I haven’t seen my parents for a long time, so this gesture from them meant a lot to me, and gave me a tinge of homesickness. Marcy, Mikey and I sat in their room for the first hour and simply caught up. I was a sponge that wanted to hear all about the wedding and what I had missed. We wandered out into Rome and found a cute little place to eat dinner and continued our conversation over wine, antipasta, primi piati, and secondi…while it poured rain in Rome that night.

Photo: Mike and Marcy at the Pantheon
The next day we all went site-seeing together. Marcy and I had actually been in Rome together 3 years prior – right after she met Mike. So we had fun re-living that fun trip together. However, this was Mike’s first trip out of the country…his first passport stamp! I was really excited to see Rome again through a newbie’s eyes!

First off, Mike is a guy’s guy…he drinks beer, eats pizza, lives for Gator football and basketball, hates eating things that are green, will travel anywhere for a major sporting event, and he loves history. Mike announced that he had decided that while in Italy, he would start drinking wine. Mike normally never drinks wine, he’s a beer man, or a mixed drink man at the very least…but wine…no way. However, when in Rome…. [Ok – I was just looking for a reason to throw that in…I couldn’t resist]

There’s only one problem when a beer drinker starts drinking wine for the first time, he drinks it as if it is beer…guzzles it. Marcy and I would barely be done with our first glass of wine and he was filling up his glass again…all the way to the top…just as if he were pouring a beer! I told him he had a very heavy handed pour…it didn’t seem to phase him! He said that a mug of beer and a glass of wine had the same alcohol content…yet I reminded him that a mug of beer is normally 12 ounces and a glass of wine is 6 ounces….deadly!

I loved traveling with Mike; he embraced Rome to the fullest. He tried everything, he walked all over, he really looked at the sites, reading each signboard, and he loved going in churches. We went to the pantheon together, then on to the coliseum, and to the Baths of Caracala. I had never been to the baths before as they were a little off the normal tourist track in Rome – but they were pretty fascinating. They are the largest and best preserved ruins in one of the three large public bathhouses of ancient Rome.

Photo: Ancient tilework at the Caracala Baths
As we were walking to the Baths of Caracala, we had our map out and were trying to figure out how to get the entrance – when all of a sudden…we were targets for one of the scams that you read about in the travel books. I took this excerpt from the travel book word for word…and this is exactly what happened!

Your walking down the street and a man in a car with a map on the front seat pulls up next to you and says he is lost. He will say he works for Armani or Gucci. He will ask if you can help him with gas money and will trade you one of the sample leather jackets he has in his car for the small priced of 20 or 50 Euro. The Leather jacket turns out to be an extremely cheap, smelly PVC jacket not worth 2Euro.

Sure enough – the guy pulls up all frantic telling us that he’s from France here on business and he’s frantic because he needs gas and his credit card isn’t working here for some reason. Before we know it he’s asking us what size clothes we wear and asking us for gas money…amazing. He obviously didn’t know that he was dealing with New Yorkers. Marcy took one look at his gold bracelet he was wearing and said – “I think you can buy your own gas”. It was rather funny though as we hadn’t actually read about this common scam until after it happened. So – it just goes to show…it’s always good to be on guard when traveling – when something seems to good to be true…it normally is.

That night we met again to go to dinner in the Trastevere area. We had heard of a local restaurant named Le Mani in Pasta which literally means “to have one’s fingers in the pie”. We found our way through the little allies of Trastevere and came across this small, welcoming restaurant. There was only one table available, and we took it. The restaurant was lively, loud and bright. It appeared that the other patrons in the restaurant were local to Rome – or at least they all spoke Italian – which is normally a good sign.

Rome can be rather frustrating at times, you have to work a bit to find places that aren’t overrun by tourists. Its kind of like trying to get out of Times Square in NYC, you need to get off the beaten path to find what the city is really all about. Trust me, no New Yorker is eating at Bubba Gump’s. The food was amazing, and I swear that they made the mozzarella di buffalo that morning…it was the freshest that I had ever tasted. During dinner Marcy pointed out that as people finished eating and left the restaurant, everyone went back and kissed the cook. We weren’t really sure if everyone knew him personally or not, or if that was just the tradition. After Mike finished his primi piati, he announced to us, “I may go tongue kiss the cook.” OK – that may be taking it a bit too far! Then again, Mike had a liter of wine that he was working on as if it were Bud Light. The dinner was delicious and when we left we did go back and acknowledge the cook and shake all of the waiter’s hands…we’ll save the kissing for the next visit…when they know us a little better!

We walked around the Piazza Narvona a bit and had another beer, and met some other tourists. Mike and Marcy were leaving for Florence the next morning so this was the last I would see them until I return to NY…not really sure when that will be. So I enjoyed my time with them and as we parted I felt like I had to apologize for crashing their honeymoon. Marcy’s parting words were “Thanks for being around otherwise we’d be tired of each other by now!” Amare!

I had a few more days in Rome on my own and used the time to simply walk around the neighborhoods, do laundry, see some photography exhibits and exercise. I was on a quest to find new running shoes as the ones I left NY with were more than a little smelly! The only problem is that Nike owns Europe…and I hate Nike running shoes. Even Footlocker only carried Nike and Puma, and they were mainly ‘fashion’ tennis shoes…nothing for any type of serious runner. OK – I may not be doing any real serious running these days…but I still refuse to wear gold metalic running shoes – no matter how slow I am. I decided to search for a Rome running club and ask them where I could buy shoes. I thankfully found the Rome Hash House Harriers email group and they were extremely helpful! I bought my new obnoxiously orange Asics running/trail shoes and happily retired my old shoes. I found it a bit sad to abandon them – as those shoes had been to Kilimanjaro, hiking in Thailand and Vietnam, and to Borneo…oh…they stories they could tell. See – this is what happens when you travel alone with one bag for 8 months – you become attached to things…and slowly loose your mind.

Photo: The thousands of tourists descending upon the Trevi Fountain…and this isn’t even the busy season!

For the first time in 3 months I was back to staying in dorm rooms within hostels. Europe is expensive for a solo long term traveler…there’s no getting around it. Top bunk, shared bathroom, no where to unpack your suitcase…at least this time I made the adjustment rather easily – mainly because from the moment I set foot in the Bee Hive Hostel I met people. I was immediately comforted by being surrounded by other solo travelers of all ages and backgrounds. I felt like I was back with ‘my people’ – the long term travelers. Yet my journey was much longer than anyone else’s in the room. I met Americans, Aussies, Koreans, and Canadians – some were couples, some were solo travelers, and they represented all ages – and we all occupied a little 8 bed mixed dorm. I honestly forgot how fun dorm living could be. To add to the fun, the Bee Hive wasn’t an ordinary cheap hostel – it was an oasis among the hostel desert. They had a little on-site organic café that was open for breakfast and dinner and they would even pack you a little sack lunch for you – all super healthy food. Throw in free wireless access, a garden, and a fat lazy cat named Ingmar…it was home for 4 days.

My favorite thing about the whole place was the café. It was small and cozy with Just one cook who also served as the waiter, bus boy, and cleaning crew. The kitchen was simply like an apartment kitchen with a small room housing 6 tables…probably no bigger than my kitchen and dining room in NY. Plus, they had the best happy hour deal in town – 4 Euro for 2 glasses of wine and a plate of bruschetta! It was a popular place as each night the hostel was booked full and everyone staying there was constantly trying to add more days to their stay with no luck.

I was amazed and happy that the other people in the dorm thought that I was much younger than my real age. Oh youth…it’s amazing how sleeping in a bunk bed and months of aimless travel can make you appear younger – more effective than surgery any day! I enjoyed my time in Rome as I didn’t feel the pressure to have to go see the sites, instead – I just enjoyed at a slow, local pace – feeling as if I was becoming part of it, instead of just visiting it. I became acquainted with the bus system and road it with the locals. To my surprise, those Rome buses at rush hour are just as packed as the A,C,E subway at rush hour. My honeymoon in Rome had to come to an end though; I had to hop a train to Sorrento to attend school for the next month. I would certainly recommend honeymooning in Rome to anyone, but it’s probably good to find a husband first!

Trip Details:

Lodging – Bee Hive Hostel near Termini

Food – Le Mani in Pasta – Trastevere

Maps, Loose Wine, and Nudity – Adventures in Venice!

Sherry — Tue, 08 May 2007 13:17:23 +0000

Gondola

View Italy Photography

View snapshots of Venice and Ferrara

After traveling with David for 7 days – we have fallen into our travel groove. I think everyone we meet thinks that we are a couple as we are constantly bickering about things. Don’t get me wrong…the fun kind of bickering…not the ‘ball and chain’ bickering. So – we kind of fell into the acceptance of people thinking that we were a couple and didn’t really try to explain things unless people asked.

There was no better person to experience Venice, the most romantic city in the world, than with my gay boyfriend. Ok – so I would miss out on the joy of making out with some hot man that was in love with me in St. Marks Square. However, David kept me in stitches laughing so much about silly things – that I honestly didn’t dwell on it! He actually moon-walked in St. Mark’s square and then effortlessly went into the worm and the running man. He proceeded to grab me and swing me around like a rag doll in circles – my feet flying off the ground as I erupted into laughter. Neither one of us could walk after this…or maybe it was the wine…who knows. I believe that years down the road – the laughter is always more memorable then the making out (I’ll stop there as you really don’t need to hear any more of my cynical view on relationships).

Photo: Grande Canal – Venice
First I have to back up…to the story of how we made it to Venice…because getting there is always the most fun – and it involves at least one melt-down and a jumbo size bag of Peanut M&M’s! We took a ferry from Split, Croatia to Ancona, Itlay. It was actually a pretty smooth overnight trip. We had a little Kuna (Croatian Money) left so we bought a jumbo bag of Peanut M&M’s at the duty free shop. We had our own little bunk room with bathroom, a bottle of wine that we bought before we got on, a deck of cards, some Dramamine, and Twizzlers. Booze, drugs, and gambling on the open sea…a perfect evening on the Adriatic.

We rented a car when we arrived in Ancona with the intention of exploring the Italian coastline up to Venice. The plan was to make no plans. We didn’t have a place to stay that night – we had the map from Hertz, and no guide book…we took off the travel training wheels that day. We left Ancona with the initial jubilation of riding on our own for the first time, wind blowing through our hair, feeling like you are on top of the world. We made it pretty far on our own…gaining confidence in every town…this one doesn’t feel quite right…lets keep going, no – this one doesn’t have the right vibe, not enough hot men, no cobblestone streets, so we just kept driving. We did make a short stop in Rimini for lunch and continued up the coast. Our initial expectations of the Eastern Italian coast was that it would be breathtaking…unfortunately, we found out that the East coast of Italy was the home of Italian manufacturing. Instead of cute little towns that beckoned you to come, sit, and have a bottle of wine; there were big smoke stacks bellowing and regurgitating manufacturing waste – this is not the Italy that I fantasize about! Sure, there were a few little beach towns, but they were still boarded up for the spring…not ready yet for visitors. So we just kept driving. Driving, driving, and driving.

We seemed to fill the time by eating M&M’s. We were halfway through the jumbo bag when each of us were starting to get a little concerned about the lack of a plan and lodging but not ready to admit it aloud. We went through Ravenna, and didn’t really feel any vibe, so we kept driving…and eating M&M’s We decided that maybe this idea not having a plan wasn’t the best idea after all. At this point we were only 1 hr from Venice and decided that maybe we should just go straight to Venice instead. However, showing up to Venice with no accommodations is like trying to get into a hip club in NYC on Saturday night dressed in zip off hiking pants and a fanny pack…impossible. That’s what that red rope is for – to keep people like that out. We convinced ourselves that we could just simply call our hotel that we were to stay in the next night and see if they had extra room for tonight. We were delusional to think that it would actually work…grasping at straws – we were ready to beg the bouncer of Venice to let us in past the rope…just this one time…paaallleeeaaassseee – we’ll dress better next time…just let us in, we’ll bring hip friends next time….we promise!

It was about 5:30PM, and we had been driving since early that morning, the M&M’s were officially gone, and we both had a stomach ache. I was in a chocolate coma – which equals cranky. We decided to bail on the coastal driving and hop on the Autostrada so that we could get to Venice quicker and figure out lodging. I tried to call the hotel that we had reserved for the next night in Venice – just to see if they could accommodate us a day earlier than expected. For some unknown reason, my cell phone decided not to cooperate and the call wasn’t going through. This irritated the crap out of me, equaling an even crankier mood. It was the beginning of my melt down…damn cell phone…I really hate it when electronics don’t work as they are supposed to.

We decided that we needed to go find a public phone, so we exited the Autostrada at the next town and entered the town of Ferrara. With no map available, we followed the signs for centro, hoping that somewhere there would be a pay phone. However, that didn’t solve the problem of how we would make the call. There aren’t really coin operated pay phones in Europe, they all take a card…that you buy from a store. So – we were frantically looking for a pay phone, with no way to use it, and we had no idea where we were going without a map. Now I’m really, really cranky…but I did my best to keep most of it inside…I don’t think David noticed that I was about to have a melt down. We drove aimlessly around these narrow little streets deeper into the town center, with no sight of a phone.

We finally just pulled over on the side, parked illegally and got out to look for a phone on foot. He stayed with the car and I went out looking for a phone. I was completely befuddled though as even if I found a phone I didn’t have any way to use it. Plus, deep down I knew there wouldn’t be a room available…so the whole thing seemed completely futile…but there David was…his little puppy self…all positive that this was going to work. I wanted to pull his leash and give him a does of reality…but I still tried to remain positive on the outside the best I could as I was the anger was eating away at my insides…or maybe that was the pound of M&M’s that I had eaten.

I frantically went from shop to shop looking for a phone, I felt like I was a chicken with my head cut off…no real plan…just running in circles. Finally someone told us that the nearest public telephones were at the McDonalds in the Piazza about 5 minutes away. You couldn’t drive there though…hell, we wouldn’t have known how to get there anyway. So – after a bit of discussion, we decided that David would stay with the illegally parked car and I would go find the phones. Off I went…I had a mission, I was going to find a phone and someone to call if it killed me – I knew that I was not coming back to David without some sort of solution. I walked into the square, went into a Tabachi shop and asked about a phone, he showed me where the nearest public phone was and luckily he also sold phone cards…perfecto! I made the call and got the answering machine…shit…now what do I do? As I was listening to the message I was frantically trying to decide what to do…leave a message…no…where are they going to call me back? I just hung up…completely dejected.

Now I was really in a bind. I couldn’t get a hold of the place that would never have space anyway, and we still didn’t have a bed for the night. I was thinking about how comfortable it might be to sleep in the car…better than a park bench I guess. I went out into the square again and looked around…it was beautiful. There were people everywhere, a castle, a huge pink marble duomo, and hotels….ahhhhh…hotels….now there’s an idea. I quickly went to a hotel to see if they had any rooms here…it was a really cute town, and we needed a place to stay – so what the hell. I found a hotel with someone inside…unfortunately she spoke little to no English…and my Italian was pathetic – especially in stressful situations. I tried to ask if there was a room available for the night and how much it would cost. After about 10 minutes of trying to figure out how to say “tonight”…I gave up and simply asked for a map. She gave me a map and showed me where I was. I saw the ever-so-familiar ‘i’ symbol on the map…information …great…my savior.

I went to the information booth in the square and they were about to close and said they couldn’t help me, they forwarded me to the city information booth, that was to also ready to close in 5 minutes. I frantically ran through the square to the castle and found the information booth there. All they could do was provide me with a little booklet of hotels in Ferrara…this was at least a start. However, it had been about 30 minutes since I left David and I had no idea what he was doing…so I quickly looked at the 2 star hotels in the book, determined where they were on the map and walked back over to the phone and called the first one that I saw. Someone answered and I asked if they spoke English. “Yes” he said…hallelujah! I enquired about a room and cost and they had one available for 70Euro…perfect, we’ll take it.

I wasn’t sure if I should be making this decision without David – but it was a place to sleep, and we were both tired of driving, and I had no better solution…so what the heck. I raced back to where I left David to tell him the news – it had been close to 50 minutes since I had left him to go make a simple phone call.

I later came to find out David’s side of the story. He was as worried as a mother letting their child cross the street the first time. He said that he kept on imagining that I got lost, got mugged (yeah right…in small town Italy), had an accident, you name it…his wild imagination came up with it. He had my passport, so he continued to worry that if I was in an accident that I had no form of identification with me. He imagined himself scouring hospitals with my passport asking if they had seen me! He said that he had given me an hour time limit and if I didn’t show up by then that he was going to find the police! My lord…I thought I left my mother back in the states, but apparently not!

Actually – I found it sweet that he was so worried. He obviously didn’t know how determined I was to come back with a solution! It made me happy to know that my crisis resolution skills were still in tact. Note to self…I can add to my resume “Ability to find hotels in foreign countries with no understanding of the language, no map and no cell phone. Demonstrates excellent problem solving skills under pressure.” It is funny to think about how in the world cell phones have become such an integral part of our life. This whole situation would have been different if there would have been cell phones involved. I could have texted David my progress and what I was doing…diverting all ‘nervous nelly’ worrying on his part.

Photo: Running path around Ferrara
We parked the car safely, made it to the hotel and quickly found a shop that sold beer and had a cold one. The hotel room was a huge 3 room apartment – the deal of the century. It also had free wireless…yippee! We showered, and enjoyed our beer and then went out right before sunset to see the square and duomo that David had yet to see at this point. The town as buzzing, the little outdoor bars were filled with after work people…this wasn’t a tourist town…which made it all the better. David and I had wine and marveled at what a great little town this was – truly proud of ourselves for discovering it…as if we were Columbus.

The next morning we woke up and decided to go for a run. According to my map, it looked like a big wall surrounded the city and there was a little trail along it. We found a way on to the trail and we took off running. The only problem was that we didn’t really know how far around the wall was. It could be 3 miles, or it could be 13…since I don’t run over 3 miles anymore…I was more than a little concerned that David was going to be carrying me piggy-back style back to the hotel. As we continued to aimlessly follow the wall, stopping frequently for me to catch my breath and freak out about the fact that I didn’t know how far it was….we marveled in this little towns’ public planning. The running/biking trail was exquisite – well maintained, and one of the best running routes that I had been on since I left the US. It had wide dirt trails, with huge trees lining the trail as if it were Central Park. It ended up being 5 miles around the city and we did eventually find out way back.

As we packed up, got some pastries, and hopped back in the car – we both discussed how wonderful this place was…Ferrara…the best mistake we made. I decided that I liked it so much that I would come back to Ferrara after David left Venice. It was such a calm little town, I knew where I could run, and we didn’t get to see any of the sites – a perfect reason to return on my own! Andiamo Venezia!

Arriving to Venice by rented car is a bit stressful – and after our previous day we were both a bit nervous about the whole thing. However, it was surprisingly easy. Especially when we came over the bridge to Venice island and immediately to our left was the Hertz office. We dropped off the car, grabbed our suitcases, walked across the street to the water bus, boarded the bus to Lido and in one hour we were at the doorstep of our hotel…completely simple! Sometimes the travel gods are on your side. We stayed on Lido island at a little old guest house run by Marcus. Lido island was a barrier island basically protecting Venice from the open sea. It had beaches and a wonderful little community that lived there year round. Marcus, the caretaker, welcomed us warmly and proceeded to do the most thorough check-in that I have ever encountered. He ensured that we understood every aspect of transportation, times, tickets, routes, you name it…he covered it. He must have showed us the map at least 3 times explaining where we were. He took us outside to show us exactly how to use the key in the door…and then he made David demonstrate that he understood. He took us out to show us the bus stop (that we just came from mind you), then he took us to our room, and showed us every aspect of the room, explained the concept of complimentary water, how to lock the windows, the map one more time and after 20 minutes of being checked in – he finally left us on our own. I am not joking, this guy was thorough! David and I were betting that had smoked at least 3 joints already that morning! I make fun of him – but he was certainly one of the nicest hosts that I’ve had. Every time we came back from Venice or every time we would leave he come out and make sure that we were doing ok, and see if we had any questions. He was extremely helpful, dependable, and simply endearing.

Photo: Grand Canal near Rialto Bridge
By the time we got settled and had a beer at the guest house, we were ready to go to Venice. It was about 3PM when we hopped back on the water bus and went into the city for the first time. We packed a few warmer layers of clothes since we were planning on staying in Venice through to dinner and beyond. The buses ran all night…so no transportation curfews…yeah! I was armed with my camera – ready and excited to see this floating city. The moment we entered the Grand Canal I was in awe…it was as if you were in a fairy tale. I’ve seen many great sites this year – but few have had the effect that Venice had on me…I was giddy, kind of like losing your virginity.

I have no idea why I was so excited about Venice. I mean the temples of Angkor Wat were certainly more impressive – but Venice was a fairy tale come to life for me. I have always romanticized Italy in general, so maybe that had something to do with it….who knows…but I was in awe. The gondolas, the little, narrow canals, the bridges…just beautiful. We hopped off the bus near the Rialto Bridge and continued our adventure on foot. Every corner that you turned seemed to be even cuter than the last one. I was a picture taking fool. It reminded me of the same feeling I had when I arrived in Hanoi…I wanted to document everything!

We quickly realized that we had no idea where we were going. The little map we brought with us was hardly workable as most of the detailed streets were missing. Then again, since we had no where to be, and we were on an island – it didn’t really matter if we were lost. So we just wandered around…leaving no bread crumb trail – throwing caution to the wind.

Photo: Me in front of all of the loose wine!

David had read in a Venice guide that one of the unique things about the city is that you could purchase loose wine at wine shops. Basically this meant that you could bring in any type of bottle, and they would fill it up with wine from a hug jug/keg for next to nothing. Upon reading this, we both quickly emptied our plastic water bottles that we were carrying and were in search of a wine shop! After asking a few Venetians, we found a wine store, and sure enough, they had about 12 types of loose wine! We each filled up our little water bottles with wine for about 1.50 Euros! Soon we found a little cheese store and bought some goodies for snacks later on.

Drinking wine out of a water bottle is like drinking beer with a straw…it’s wrong. It’s mainly wrong because you tend to guzzle it like water, not sip it like wine. After about an hour we realized that we were getting rather toasted. The sun was starting it’s descent and we wanted to get on the outskirts of the city so that I could take some great sunset pictures. The only problem with this plan was that we were lost, and we were drunk.

David disappeared while I was in a little Piazza taking pictures. I found him in a little store buying a map and trying to get an understanding from the shopkeeper on where we were on the map. The shopkeeper didn’t speak English…therefore it was a pretty difficult conversation…if you can even call it that! He started leading me through the narrow streets, over bridges, and through the woods…oh wait a minute…there were no woods…maybe I needed another guzzle of wine.

Since we had a map and David felt confident that he knew where we were, some other tourists started following us – thinking that we knew were we were going. We even admitted to them that we were drinking wine out of water bottles – but they still tried to follow us. However, at the point when David actually put the map on the ground and stood on it trying to figure out the direction we were going, they finally gave up on us and went their own way. I think that he was trying to invoke super powers from the map that would simply transport us to where we needed to be…but that didn’t work either.

He finally had to stop and ask person number two for directions. Luckily this was a very patient woman. I have to admit, he did eventually lead us out of the maze and to the water…he did better than I ever could have done! I was able to take a number of photos in the low light that made the city glow gold.

Next, we were finally on our way to St. Marks Square. I had been holding out all day saving myself for the moment that I walked into that famous square. It had allowed me to build up a great tension and excitement about the place – and it allowed me time enough to get sufficiently tipsy.

David and his map led us straight to the square, and my first step into the square was memorable. It sent chills up my body. I just stood there in awe, David did the same…we just stood and slowly took it all in. It was dusk so it had a beautiful glow to it. So big, so majestic, so many pigeons! After taking a number of initial pictures, we made our way over to the Doge’s Palace and sat on a bench looking out onto the square in order to take it all in. We decided that this would be a great time to have our little pre-dinner snack. We started unpacking the swiss army knife, the cheese, crackers, peanuts, and salami. We set our plastic bottles of wine on the bench and we had a feast.

However, as the sun had went down, it started getting chilly. I got my jacket out of my backpack and started layering up. David however proceeded to get out his pair of jeans, long sleeved shirt, jacket and different shoes. He was getting all dressed up for our little ‘picinic date’ on the square. However, I wasn’t quite prepared when all of a sudden he started stripping off clothes in the square – as people walked on by. I thought he was joking at first – no way was he really going to get naked in St. Mark’s Square! But before I knew it – he had stripped down to his lime sherbet colored underwear and was putting on his jeans.

Ok – that’s it – I needed to obviously cut him off the cheap wine! I freaked out at him…but was able to snap a few pictures…my journalistic tendencies taking over I guess. After his strip show in public…we sat down to have a rather civilized cheese and cracker snack. We had cheese from Venice, wine out of a water bottle, sausage from Split Croatia, and Crackers from Dubrovnik…a little bit of everything.

Photo: St. Mark’s Square…pigeons and people intermingling
After finding out that the going price for one of those famous and syrupy, romantic gondola rides was 90 Euro, we decided to look for a hot guy traveling with his gay brother to try to share the cost with, else we would pass on the gondola ride. I think you all can guess the outcome of that search….no gondolas for us. However, we watched many of the gondolas from the bridges. Some of them even had opera singers and musicians on them. The music would echo through the walls of the canals.

David decided that he should move to Venice and start an 80’s Gondola singing service. He started practicing by singing Footloose out loud…there were no takers on his idea…they must not have been enjoying Venetian loose wine like we were. If disco bowling can be a hit, why can’t the ‘Totally 80’s Gondola Ride’? The next day we went back into Venice to do more exploring, and this time we brought a bigger empty water bottle – 1.5 liters…and two smaller bottles to drink out of. We shopped around, took tons of pictures, went to the cathedral, and to the top of the bell tower in the square.

We went back to Lido late that afternoon to relax a bit and get off our feet. We sat on bench along the ocean and watched a spectacular sunset. It was our last night together so it was a good time to reflect upon our travels. We talked about life, work, love, friends, and the future – all topics that scare the shit out of me as I have no answers…but then again – who does. I was extremely sad that night. I didn’t want David to leave me for some reason. After spending the last month with my good friends David and Miles, I felt as if I was leaving NY all over again. It wasn’t easy the first time and now for some reason I felt as if I were starting all over again. Normally after traveling with people for about a week, I’m ok with being on my own again. However this time, the tears just flowed.

That night we went back into Venice for a simple dinner, enjoying our last bit of time together. I asked David if we could go to St. Mark’s Square one last time before we left. We arrived in the square and that’s when David proceeded to do the moonwalk. It broke the sadness of the whole moment for me…a gay, white man moon walking across the cobblestones…priceless. Regardless of the lack of romance for us in the romantic city (yet there was nudity)…we had a blast enjoying everything Venice had to offer; especially the loose wine – and our everlasting friendship.

Photo: David and I in St. Mark’s Square

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