Everybody! (to the tune of "These Are a Few of My Favourite Things")

Pizza, tomatoes and buff mozzarella

All taste so good to this travelling fella

Fresh bread to dip in an E-V-O-O

These are just some of the reasons to go.

Umbricelli: Until we sat down to dinner at the la Palomba restaurant in Orvieto, I’d never even heard of umbricelli. And once I returned home, I was flabbergasted when even no one on staff at an Ottawa Nicastro’s Specialty Italian food store had ever heard of it either.

For non-Italians, it’s probably best described as “fat spaghetti”, but that’s more of a simple physical description. Taste and texturewise, it comes across not so much as pasta as something more akin to spaetzle, the eggy side dish of noodles or mini-dumplings that you often find in German-themed restaurants.

Oddly enough, the two times I had it in Italy, it was similar in length to traditional spaghetti, despite the fact that most websites illustrate a much more truncated, almost elbow macaroni-length version, for example this one.

And you might recall my earlier description of our day with The Zeppelin’s Chef Lorenzo Polegri in Orvieto and his book, in which he describes to a somewhat abashed woman TV host the traditional process of making it, where women rolled it by working it back and forth on their thighs. I can’t vouch for whether or not the la Palomba has a kitchen full of women furiously rolling out endless orders of the stuff (because it was a popular specialty of the house), but I can vouch for its deliciousness.

At the la Palomba, they serve it with a buttery, creamy, mildly peppery sauce that acts as the foundation for its intended topping. Hot on the heels of your plate’s arrival, a waiter shows up with a hand grater and what looks like a giant whole, large dried nutmeg. In fact, it’s a truffle (which I only knew because the menu described it as “topped with freshly grated truffle”) and it elevated the buttery pepperiness to an earthy state of the sublime. Having the luxury of receiving however much of the fungus you wish was an especially nice treat because it enabled me to actually taste it for the first time in my life.

I could go on, but a flood blogger named Elizabeth Minchilli has also been there and in this entry captures perfectly not only the gustatory experience, she has included a gorgeous photo of exactly how my own plate looked after the waiter had grated pretty much the entire truffle onto my order.

= =

I’ve done Limoncello in glowing terms an earlier update, but we also discovered another wonderful after-drink liqueur – and also in the la Palomba, on the recommendation of a waiter who named it first when I asked what after-dinner sipper he might recommend: Amaro.

Amaro is an “herbal liqueur” that is relatively new to the world of drink, with most commercial distillers using recipes that date back to the 19thC. It is a significantly fortified beverage that rings in at about 35% A.B.V. (Alcohol by Volume), probably three times what a typical bottle of wine will radiate. And it is unique. The LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) shelves it with Alpenbitters, Jagermeister and other similar products.

Here’s a brief description of what’s inside the bottle. It starts with grappa, which – depending on the brand – is then infused with any from a list of herbal ingredients a mile long that can include lemon balm, lemon verbena, juniper, anise, fennel, ginger, mint, thyme, sage, bay laurel, citrus peels, licorice, cinnamon, menthol, cardamom, saffron, elderflowers and some stuff I’ve never even heard of: gentian, angelica, cinchona, zedoary, wormwood. In a quest for flavour descriptions, you likely will run into words such as “medicinal” and “bitter”, neither of which is surprising since its earliest versions were sourced to monasteries and pharmacies.

In a better Amaro, the bitterness is very much there, but doesn’t overpower the taste and it is worth paying a few extra dollars for a well-balanced one. Which is not to condemn the less expensive, rawer ones. Like Calvados, Normandy’s apple-based tipple of choice, some people prefer the harsher and more pronounced characteristics of a less mature distillate.

Since our trip, I’ve never been without a bottle of Amaro in the household bar. I enjoy it best either neat or on the rocks, depending on my mood, and usually about an hour after dinner, which is about where a digestif works best.

No surprises that the very best Amaros we encountered were in Italy, including the la Palomba in Orvieto, where I first tasted it. But the LCBO does sell an excellent brand, and it is a product of Italy. Amaro Nonino, in fact, caused a beverage writer who blogs as “Italian wine geek” to wax absolutely rhapsodic about the drink, calling it “the delicate flower of distillates, [with] the showy ruffles and sweet, ethereal perfume of elixirs”. As a bonus, it comes boxed if you’re looking for a distinctive gift and the package includes a little booklet with a bunch of recipes for alternative ways to enjoy it.

Taking the much more widely available Campari as your benchmark, if you like it, chances are you’ll enjoy Amaro. But if Campari’s bitterness doesn’t sit well on your tastebuds, then likely neither will Amaro’s.

= =

A couple footnotes to things I’ve already mentioned. You know how when you’re car shopping and you finally select a car and one of the reasons you liked it because it is painted a “really unique colour that I don’t think I’ve ever seen on more than one or two other cars today!...” and as you’re driving it home from the dealership you notice that just about every other car on the frickin’ road is painted the same colour! ??

Yeah well, since I’ve returned from Italy and have several times raved about Buffalo (“Accept no substitutes!”) Mozzarella, it seems like every time I open a website or newspaper recipe page these days, especially when the feature is about salads and sides, I see my much loved caprese salad being offered as an extra special-tasting alternative to the traditional bowl of greens we customarily serve in this country.

Most recently, as I PS’ed to y’all not so long ago, the Globe and Mail’s wine writer, Beppi Cresariol touted it as the perfect pairing for Falanghina wine. The Globe’s occasional food writer, Lucy Waverman, recently included a caprese recipe in her own column. (Coincidence? I think not; she and Mr Cresariol have just launched a cookbook they have co-authored / photo).

Most recently, the foodie porn site “Food Gawker” offered this photo and recipe for what actually looks like a not-too-bad variation on the theme using a variety of tomatoes to add some colour and variety. (Photo: intheknowmom.net)

The visual appeal of the plate notwithstanding, I draw the line somewhere north of the accompanying recipe’s instruction: “If you cannot get your hand on buffalo mozzarella then use ordinary fresh mozzarella / bocconcino.”

NOOOOOOooooooooooooo! Neither “ordinary” mozzarella, however fresh, nor bocconcino – unless it is in a container labelled “Bocconcino di Bufala Campana DOP” – is a substitute for the real thing.

You might also remember I spoke in glowing terms of a couple pizzas – the deceptively simple Pizza Margherita, made up of tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella, and fresh basil leaves, but which actually requires a meticulous adherence to Italy’s codes of food authenticity to earn the name, and the Pizza Quattro Stagioni (Four seasons pizza).

Well, I have since found a great photo of the latter that illustrates perfectly how it should arrive at your table. In this photo, between noon and 3 lie the mushrooms; prosciutto (which can also be thinly sliced Italian ham) sits between 3 and 6; 6-9 is where you’ll find black olives and the final quarter, 9-12, is filled with sliced artichoke hearts.

Again, its success will depend on the quality of your ingredients. Don’t, for example, use canned black olives, because they tend to be immersed in a watery brine rather than olive oil. Use Mediterranean olives (Kalamata, for example), which these days are pretty much a permanent part of any large grocery store’s deli section inventory. Loblaws and Farm Boy stores both have sectioned olive carts in their stores that offer an amazing variety of high quality olives, both black and green.

= =

Speaking of olive oil, nutritionists tend to be unanimous that it is a “good” oil, especially its EVOO form (Extra Virgin Olive Oil). If the label also says “cold-pressed”… that’s recommended. Apparently, temperatures over 86 degrees F enable more oil to be extracted during the crushing process, stretching and thinning it and making, therefore, an inferior product. Cold-pressing, when done right (and apparently it can be done wrong) renders less oil, but of a far superior quality. Or so say the olive experts at Californiaoliveranch.com.

More and more on Italian restaurant tables when the pre-meal bread basket arrives, either it will arrive with cruets of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, or they will be sitting on the table already as a staple. Spread a little oil on a saucer, add a few dots of the balsamic vinegar, each about the size of a $0.25 coin (because of the viscosity differences, the vinegar will hold its place as little circles). Then simply break your bread into bite-sized pieces, and lightly swirl it in the oil / vinegar mix. Based on my experience, I can say this is so good, and so flavourful, you may never use butter again for this purpose. (Nicastro’s Italian Foods in Ottawa is an eye-opening experience to shop for oil and vinegar. They have entire shelves devoted to olive oils and balsamic vinegars whose prices range from “Oh I can afford that” to figures that, ounce for ounce, can soar to levels that make a VSOP brandy look like Cott Cola.

= =

Just so you don’t get to thinking the only fluids we drank over there were alcoholic ones, well… you’re not far wrong. (Hey… Italy… Vino, birra, Limoncello, Amaro. It’s horse and carriage; fish and chips; Laurel and Hardy. One doesn’t work without the other.)

But when it was a quick, sugary thirst quencher I wanted, I usually turned to Italy’s own take on what is best known in North America as Orange Crush or Fanta. Italy’s take on the orangey goodness, however, is fantastic. Even their Fanta has been slightly less sugared than the way you get it over here. But far and away the best I was served was the one I was served first on the Rome to Venice train last Fall during our first trip to the country.

Aranciata is the generic name – it’ll get you an orange soda just about anywhere, but if you see San Pellegrino’s Aranciata Rossa on the cart, that’s the one you want to order. It’s made from the juice of the sanguinello (blood) orange, which imparts both a redder colour and a tangier orange flavour to the soda, not least because its recipe is actually 16% juice. Happily, it’s caught on like wildfire in North America and is a staple on both the Loblaws and Farm Boy soft drink shelves.

= =

“Salami” is an Italian word so it’s hardly surprising that they are unbelievably good at making it. (In fact, grammatically, it’s the plural of the correct singular, “salame”, so to my librarian and editor readers, don’t go editing the chalkboards outside restaurants when you see it spelled with the “e” at the end.)

Schneider’s Summer Sausage it ain’t. You probably also shouldn’t also be surprised if you’ve been reading this trip diary from the beginning but, like almost every other food or beverage that calls Italy home, what “salame / i” is / are depends on what region you’re in. I’m not going to go into all the variations here but you can get a sense of what the major regional variations are by Googling [Region name] salami, where “[Region name]” is Romano, Filzetti, Genova, Milano, Sopressata, Calabrese, Casalingo, and Abruzzi. Some are moist and tender while others (Abruzzi, for example) are so dry and firm that popping a thin round slice into your mouth requires a commitment on a par with tenderizing a 10-year old piece of chewing gum. Essentially, the main variables are the pork grind and the spices but under those two broad headings is a welter of sub-headlines. (Photo: foodloversodyssey.typepad.com)

Here in Canada, the Maestro company makes several of the classic regional types and they’re sold in most major grocery stores. And the only other thing you need to know is that not only are they all excellent, in Italy almost all of them are breakfast foods! Watch for the “Hot / Piquante” qualifier, though (or an almost artificial red / pinkish tint to the salami), because when Italians say their salami is hot, they mean it!

= =

Rum Baba: On the face of it, rum baba seems pretty straightforward – a yeast pastry with a rum flavour. Well if the rum baba we were served in Pompeii is any indication, it’s a pretty safe bet that, had it been available two millennia earlier, any of the town’s residents who were well into the dessert course of their lunch when Vesuvius blew would have been feeling no pain at all. None.

This is what it looks like – in its traditional Italian configuration. And yes, recalling my earlier update about the excessively… uh… er… well, priapic fascination displayed in some Pompeiian artworks, you can be forgiven if you pick up on a similar obsession’s apparently being reflected in this particular dessert pastry. Within seconds of its landing at our group’s table as part of our dessert course, we were all but collapsing in hilarity.

But it was our first bite that suddenly made us realize that this wasn’t simply an artificial rum-flavoured dessert. It was absolutely drenched in the stuff! Rum, that is. One or two of our hard-liquor-eschewing co-tourists hastily abandoned theirs after their first bites but I had no such qualms (in part because I quite like the stuff and my domestic bar is home to at least one amber and one black rum that both are so good they can be imbibed neat or on the rocks in much the same way as one might enjoy an after-dinner liqueur.)

Interestingly, despite finding a very happy place these days on almost every southern Italy bakery’s dessert trays, rum baba has nothing, it seems, Italian in its origins. Several culinary histories trace its roots to the late 17th C in the Alsace – Lorraine region of France but how it got into the wider Europe from there is, you’ll pardon the pun, all over the map. (Although its appearance in Naples in the mid 18thC – possibly created by visiting French chefs – cemented its permanent place in the “dolce” cuisine in that part of the country.)

But on one thing no one disagrees – including our little band of intrepid travellers. A great rum baba is literally “saturated in hard liquor”. (Wikipedia) And so were we by the time we sloshed back aboard our tour bus.

= =

A few random pointers: If you’re feeling somewhat peckish but maybe not up to a whole meal, try dropping into a café and ordering a bottle of wine. Italians generally believe that food is a necessary accompaniment to the leisurely consumption of a bottle of wine and will wheel out what is often a surprisingly generous array of complimentary munchies when all you’ve ordered is a bottle. In Orvieto, for example, we found ourselves with unordered platters of bruschetta, three or four different kinds of meat and vegetable spreads, focaccia and crisp breads. Occasionally, we received the more traditional salty bar snacks. (Although at Harry’s Bar in Rome the potato chips were so incredible we figure they must actually be made on site because nothing like that in our experience has ever come out of a bag.)

= =

In Italy, lemon gelato is the earthly preview of what awaits you in heaven. No matter where you order it. So behave yourselves, because in hell all they serve is month-old pie crust. With no water.

= =

One thing Chef Lorenzo taught us is that making homemade pasta is not only ridiculously simple, it’s fun. On a large wooden cutting board, you “make a Colosseum”, i.e. a closed circular wall of the dry ingredients. Then in the middle you place your wet ingredients (typically just eggs, water and oil in whatever proportion / quantity the recipe calls for). Then you gradually draw your dry ingredients down from your Colosseum wall, mixing them with the wet until the pasta or dough’s consistency gets to where you want it to be. And let it rest for about 20 - 30 minutes before cutting it into pasta. Using a hand-cranked pasta maker also gives you more control over the final shape / cut of the pasta, like driving a car with a standard vs an automatic transmission on an icy street.

This is the one we bought; it's made of stainless steel; it’s heavy and solid and it comes with a base clamp to hold it firmly in place on a tabletop while you’re turning the crank. It’s also pretty widely available in most places where specialty kitchen appliances are sold.

Oh: for pasta, you have to use a “00” semolina flour. It’s an ultrafine grind (think Arabic coffee) and is another Italian food store staple. For some reason, it’s not readily available in major grocery stores, at least not in Ottawa (something that surprised me when I went looking for it, given that our “Little Italy” is a community large enough that they publish their own telephone book every year). Not surprising, however, is the fact that Nicastro’s has about ten different brands.

= =

Pork belly in Italy is a staple, because porchetta is a staple. But finding it in Canada requires making a special order from a specialty butcher. That’s why most North American porchetta recipes begin by telling you to have your butcher de-bone a pork butt roast. Because it’s just too damned difficult to glue all those strips of bacon together and then lard a layer of skin over the top.

= =

Well, I get to this point with mixed emotions. Writing this year’s Italy trip diary has been a heck of a lot of fun but I’m now staring at a blank page in my notebook.

So I guess there’s nothing left for us to do but plan another trip. In the meantime, I’m thinking of maybe returning to the regular bleats and whines that have marked both “Baby Duck” and its current successor, “TriumphAnt”.

Brace yourself.

See you next time.

No wonder Italy is food-obsessed…

…when every conversation seems to end with a call for chow!

And who is this Harry Vederchi that everyone seems to think I am?

The path from the Villa Borghese to the restaurant where we had a dinner reservation took us through an archway in the wall that, at one time, marked the boundary between “in Rome” and “outside Rome”. Not surprisingly, considering the country’s (and its capital’s) history of being invaded and sacked, we’re talking about a lot more than a simple picket fence here.

On the left is the Villa Borghese’s garden entrance and, on the right, the massive wall that once circled the entire city of Rome. You might recall in one my earlier updates, when I talked about where the catacombs are located, I referred to just about any place outside the walls of old Rome as a likely roof for one subterranean burial chamber or another. Unlike modern cities, Romans were forbidden from burying their dead inside the walls. The practice of burying the entire body was also something the Christians, beginning in about the 2ndC A.D. brought to Rome along with their attendant belief of an eventual resurrection. Without going into a lot of detail, previously the almost universal custom among the largely pagan population of the city had been for cremation, so embalming, to put it delicately, was not something done really well at the time. So – outside the wall with Grandpa, please and thank you.

Not too far inside the wall, we found one of Rome’s most popular bars among those who long for the good old “Mad Men” days of three-martini lunches – Harry’s on the Via Veneto, home of fine cocktails, excellent bar snacks and a long attraction among the hoi polloi, many of whose photos grace the walls both inside and out. (One big reason could be the presence – almost directly across the street – of the US Embassy, but that might cause one to make rather *ahem* inappropriate conclusions about the lunching and dining habits of the American diplomatic corps and the soaring word-of-mouth popularity as more and more friends of those same diplomats came to the city for a visit.)

For the record, Leslie and I can vouch from firsthand experience that they make a fantastic Planter’s Punch and margarita – and their bottled Guinness is damned fine, too!

Our dinner that night was a place not too far from Harry’s – thankfully, because their cocktails also contain a generous amount of whatever liquor forms their base with all the resulting impact on a person’s co-ordination. This particular restaurant had been recommended to us as an experience in “comfort food”. It was; Les had a schnitzel cordon bleu and I had a beef that had been braised all day in a rich wine sauce and, as a result, was so tender it could easily have been cut with a dull spoon. We shared a bottle of red wine and if you haven’t yet savoured a bottle based on the Sangiovese grape, I highly recommend it. All the “heavy red” adjectives apply – robust, full-bodied, “plummy”, etc – and with winter getting closer it is absolutely perfect in close proximity to a crackling hearth.

The next day, Leslie was conferencing for the early part of the day and I opted to update my notes upon which this book-length trip diary has been based. Surprisingly, she returned earlier than I expected and she has given me permission to share why.

Apparently, organizers of an academic library-based conference in Rome are pretty much resigned to the fact that the vast majority of people are likely there because it is in Rome, and not because of the quality of the scheduled papers because they were all over the map in terms of both academic content and quality of presentation.

In like manner there was, she said, precious little attention given to posting onsite signs steering delegates to whatever room they needed to be in for the seminar topic of their choice. The coffee break and lunch, she added, were simply laughable. Held in the university cafeteria, coffee was served by one hopelessly overworked behind-the-counter employee who was shoveling the little Euro-sized cups across the counter as fast as she could, but nowhere near fast enough to make the process smooth for the couple hundred people waiting for a cup.

She (Leslie) also said that it was easy to tell who the American and Canadian delegates were – the people looking at the minuscule cups they were handed as if it were a sample for their approval before they received the mugs of joe they clearly expected.

Lunch, she said, was no better and apparently consisted of the same cafeteria food as was flung across the counter at the students, with whom the delegates had to share the cafeteria at the same time, quickly filling the limited number of seats to capacity and leaving a lot of people wandering off to find a place somewhere else.

So since Leslie returned with that tale in the very early afternoon, having abandoned the conference entirely for the day, we decided on yet another walkabout, this time to an amazing ongoing classical Roman excavation on a huge hilltop beside the Colosseum called the Palatino (the Palatine Hill).

Getting into the Palatino site required separating our wallets from 14 Euros each, but it proved to be eminently worth it.

A brief bit of background: The Palatino overlooks – and forms a part of – one of the most ancient sections of Rome. In fact, local mythology holds that the hill is the site of the “Lupercal”, the cave where Rome’s twin founders, Romulus and Remus, were supposedly discovered by the she-wolf who nursed them and kept them alive. Leaving the mythology aside, apparently some recent excavations have been discovered that date to 1,000 B.C.

Related to the classical period, the hill has been home to some pretty famous Romans, including Augustus – the city’s first emperor, Tiberius and Vespasian.

Most famously, the Emperor Nero, whose extravagances re-defined “obscene”, set about constructing for himself a “Domus Aurea” (Golden Palace) after Rome’s great fire in 64 A.D. wiped out several of the elaborate homes and estates of many of Rome’s wealthy living on the Palatino’s slopes. Variously estimated to cover between 100 and 300 acres of central Rome, much of the Domus Aurea remains to be excavated. Sadly, Nero never really got to enjoy his wretched excess for very long; he committed suicide in 68 A.D.

To stroll the Palatino today is to wander among grounds that two millennia ago were barred to all but the most stratospheric of the upper echelons of Roman society.

Here are a few photos taken among the ruins to be found on that large chunk of central Roman real estate:

Even on a blindingly sunny hot day, the Palatino is a wonderful place to wander because its archaeology is interspersed with some magnificent Mediterranean pines that cast large patches of shade, many of them dotted with benches and even public water fountains.

Leslie and I disagreed on whether the random placement of contemporary art pieces among the classical structures enhanced or detracted from the site – as was the case with the modern gleaming marble installation here in the midst of a massive courtyard. (She favoured “enhance” while I was of the opinion that the modern art belonged in a setting elsewhere. Probably makes me a Philistine.) Ironically, the signs accompanying the modern pieces were much more informative than were the signs telling us just what exactly were the 2,000+ year-old structures surrounding them.

Rome was built to last and one result is that there are few restrictions among monumental sites like the Palatino that bar visitors. Besides the wide-open ground level here, notice the people on the upper level in the centre background (which actually is exactly where I was when I took the previous photo that includes the modern art.)

OK… so sometimes a modern placement graces its ancient setting. One of these photos is Leslie channelling Sophia and the other is Sophia herself captured in 1981 by the late Ottawa master photographer Yousuf Karsh. Can you tell which is which? (“Real” Sophia photo source: http://pleasurephoto.wordpress.com )

Two more dining experiences to report before we say goodbye to Italy 2013. On one of my wander-about days while Leslie was conferencing, I found an amazing pub called l’Antica Birreria Peroni and, as it turns out, it’s the kind of place native Romans go for lunch.

As its name suggests, it’s an old-fashioned pub tied to the Peroni brewery and let me tell you that you will find few drinks more refreshing on a scorching Roman mid-day than an ice-cold pint of one of Italy’s signature beers. The day we toured the Palatino, since we were in the neighbourhood (if you get to the Wedding Cake, you’re a five minute walk away from 19 Via San Marcello, the pub’s address) I suggested it to Leslie – and since we were both ready for a chill break, it was an easy sell.

The pub is built on the site of a former shrine where, the story goes, in 1669 an image of the Virgin Mary being displayed on a nearby wall moved her eyes. (Not to be sacrilegious or anything, but a few pints of Peroni bashed down as thirst-quenchers on a hot Italian afternoon will definitely seem to trigger movement of the walls themselves, never mind any images that might be plastered on them!)

Food is affordable, basic comfort food – Leslie had a perfectly grilled breast of chicken with fries while I opted for a knackwurst with fries and sauerkraut. (Fodor’s, I discovered, calls it the home of the best hot dog in Rome.) Meanwhile at the table right beside us, an older local woman was happily picking apart an entire fish. The whole time we were there, it was just bustling with both the fashionably business-dressed and the blue-collar trades who brushed plaster dust off their shirts before they came in.

Memo to self: Next time, get Leslie to take the mandatory we-were-there photo BEFORE we go into a wonderful pub like the l’Antica Birreria Peroni, rather than at the doorway after a couple pints of beer have been tucked away. (Actually, truth to tell, it was her first experience with my new camera and she admitted she might have flubbed the focus… That’s her story and she’s sticking to it.)

After a leisurely walk back once more past the Forum, the Circus Maximus and the Colosseum, we returned to the hotel for a late afternoon siesta before walking a few blocks to another place that turned into a completely memorable dinner: the Romeo e Agata. We decided that since this was our last dinner in Italy we were going to do it traditionally, with something from both their Primi Piatti and Secundi Piatti and a Dolce to wrap up. For the first course, Leslie has an exquisite pea soup garnished with cuttlefish ink (which tasted waaay better than its description might suggest) while I had one of their signature dishes, a spaghetti with a pecorino (sheep’s milk) cheese sauce that re-defined “rich” under a generous grating of black pepper (actually called “Agata’s style" on the menu).

Leslie’s main was a cluster of lamb chops that she pronounced “perfect” while I opted once more for sea bass. I like sea bass a lot, but it is something I have tried unsuccessfully more than once to cook myself (including a disastrous grilling experience that saw large chunks simply flake away between the grates). So far I have failed utterly to do it even close to how well an Italian chef can prepare it, but I have discovered that a carefully monitored pan-fry in olive oil does produce a nice preparation.

We also scored bonus points with the waiter by asking for one of two Falanghinas on their wine list. As I mentioned in my earlier update that described our Mustilli winery tasting and tour, Falanghina is a southern Italian heritage grape recently being re-introduced to oenophiles (Cross two triple word-scores in Scrabble with that one and your opponent will abandon the game in tears!) and simply knowing of its existence seems to mark you as a serious wine lover. (See “Mike’s Guide to Faking Wine Connoisseury”, coming soon!)

Thinking the more expensive was probably the better, I was rather pleasantly surprised when, for the first time in my life in a restaurant, I was talked into a cheaper bottle; the waiter told us that Falanghina actually has far more character in its youth than when aged. So he suggested we try a more recent, less expensive 2010 instead of the 2008 we had originally requested and it was fantastic.

The trip home was marred only by a delay in getting off the runway. While waiting in the departure lounge, I was watching a TV news channel and saw that apparently an “emergency landing” had closed one of Rome’s runways. Given airport spokespersons’ penchant for euphemism, it was only after we returned home that we discovered one of the many Baltic airlines had experienced what pilots call a “hard landing” – essentially hitting the runway so firmly that the landing gear collapses. No injuries; no fire, thankfully, but no doubt a hell of a bump for the passengers and a mammoth exercise in getting the aircraft jacked up sufficiently that temporary wheeled locomotion could be slid into place underneath to get it off the runway.

Meanwhile, this was our view when we finally swung into position for our take-off roll on the one serviceable runway – a line-up behind us in which we had already spent 45 minutes waiting for our turn as aircraft not only took off, but a couple dozen landed farther and farther behind schedule as the day went on.

= =

Coda… In 1955, an otherwise little-known movie entitled “The Seven Hills of Rome” featured this musical interlude written by Renato Rascel and sung by Mario Lanza. It was an instant hit – especially when it was given an English lyric as well as the original Italian. (Well, as “instant” as anything could be in the pre-You Tube days of building an audience through repeated airplay.)

During the 1960 Olympic Summer Games in Rome, the Coca Cola company in Italy gave a vinyl souvenir recording of the song to the competing athletes and Olympic officials. It has since been recorded by singers as diverse as Dean Martin, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, The Ames Brothers, Connie Francis and, of course, countless Italian singers in addition to Mario. By way of farewell, here is as good a version as any that I’m including here for the obvious reason that it is illustrated postcard-style with some of the places we saw on this trip and our visit last Fall, (and a few we’ll save for next time). Play us out, Renato! (Coke record label photo source: coca-colaconversations.com)

Next time: just some of the many tastes of Italy.

Very nice, Michelangelo. Now what about the floor?

Holy cow! I just did a quick scroll back through this diary and discovered that this is actually the 16th update on this summer’s Italy trip.

I said – “WAKE UP! when I’m talkin’ to ya’ boy. (Nice kid, but as thick as a whale sandwich.)” – I said this is the 16th update about this trip!

I’m not sure, but I think Caesar conquered Gaul in less time than it’s taken me to get to this point. But fear not, brave hearts… I plan just three more – this one and one more to wrap up the trip with the rest of the amazing things we saw in Rome (with a few food and drink digressions, of course) and a generic last entry devoted exclusively and in somewhat more detail to several of the unique tasting experiences we enjoyed throughout this trip. (“Tasting” won’t just mean food, either. They even make orange pop way better over there than we do over here.)

So, where are we?

According to my notes, we have reached the day where we had to rise extra early in order to get to a particular staircase close to a special tour entrance into the Vatican Museum and, beyond it, the Sistine Chapel. It was another Dark Rome tour. Plug: if you’re going to be in Italy for a few days, check out Dark Rome’s choices. Despite their name, they’re not all about 2500-year old sub-basements and catacombs (and neither, for that matter, are they only about Rome).

In this case, we were promised a “small-group” exclusive pre-opening visit to the Chapel and it turned out to be one case where the box delivered exactly what the label said it would.

Because we actually departed the Hotel Britannia before their breakfast service began, they had prepared a box breakfast for us and as much as we had to stoically accept the fact that bacon probably would not have travelled well in a paper bag, we were more than compensated by the fact that several delicious little pastries, a couple pieces of fresh fruit and a small bottle of juice did.

After a few introductory remarks by our guide, we were each given one of those antenna “whisperers” – a small receiver that you sling around your neck and listen through earphones to the guide’s comments. It was actually my first experience with such a device and it really is quite remarkable. It gives you the sense that the guide is standing right beside you while permitting him / her to make comments in a low speaking voice so as not to disturb any other groups in the vicinity.

A couple things about the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel that might seem obvious. Other than finding yourself cribside in Bethlehem in the Church of the Nativity or atop Golgotha, the hill in Jerusalem upon which Christ is said to have been crucified, when you are in St Peter’s, indeed almost anywhere in the Vatican, you are in the single most sacred site in Catholicism. The Basilica, after all, is named for the Apostle to whom Christ is said to have given the mission of carrying on His Church on Earth. And the Sistine Chapel is where they elect the Popes, for heaven’s sake!

So we weren’t surprised at all to be advised by the guide that when we actually reached the entrance to the Chapel, three things were absolutely forbidden: normal voice-level conversation; the presence of a guide’s commentary, and photography. Even before we got there, our guide had gone to considerable lengths to explain these rules and to advise us she would be collecting the “whisperer” devices at the entrance.

The no-photography rule, as it turns out, is actually largely capitalistic. Our guide explained that a consortium of US and Japanese companies, between them, have recently spent tens of millions of dollars on a multi-year restoration of the Chapel’s interior artworks, including its famous ceiling, and in exchange have been given exclusive rights to all images of the Chapel’s interior.

(Now, was there anything in the preceding paragraph difficult to understand? We certainly didn’t think so. But I’ll come back to that no-photography rule a few paragraphs farther along.)

Getting to the Sistine’s front door was accomplished by travelling along what felt like a couple miles of interior corridors through the Vatican Museum where photography was indeed permitted. Here are a few of the visual highlights of that walk:

The Galleria delle Carte Geografiche almost doesn’t need a translation. One is hard-pressed to pick which is more impressive: the 120m long corridor of maps of almost every part of Italy, or the corridor’s stunning ceiling. The maps – 40 in all – are frescoes commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII and painted between 1580 and 1583. (Here we go again; I haven’t been in the Museum for 15 minutes and we’re already strolling 120 metres along past 40 500-year-old maps!)

This close-up is in the album for two reasons: first to show the detail of the maps, and second because pretty much dead centre in this shot on one of the hills to the left of that large lake is the hilltop location of that beautiful Umbrian Villa where we pre-emptively ended our trip to the country last Fall with my sciatic back.

It’s hard to imagine, but this was actually considered a lesser assignment once Michelangelo received the commission from Pope Julius II to do the entire Sistine ceiling. The assignment was to decorate four rooms that, at the time, were intended to serve as part of Julius II’s private quarters. Their collective name today, the Stanza di Raffaello, will give you a clue about the name of the young artist from Urbino commissioned to do the work around the year 1508. Raphael’s star at the time was only just on the rise but today his work in these four rooms is considered, with Michelangelo’s famed ceiling, to mark the “High Renaissance” in Rome.

I won’t turn this diary into a history lesson at this point, but if you want to read a great story about the building of St Peter’s and the often chippy relationship between Julius and his two centuries of successors, and their chosen artists and architects, this one is excellent. It’s not intended as an academic study of the 200-year process required to complete the Basilica, but rather as a darn good yarn. And that it is.

I’ve already described the almost overwhelming feelings that arise when one is actually inside the Sistine Chapel, so I won’t repeat myself here. But I can’t let my Sistine story go without recounting a brief feeling of a decidedly UN-christian sort that I experienced while we were there.

You recall my earlier recitation of the guide’s rules, and the reasons for them. Well no sooner had we ten people (that’s right – we were exactly ten people with the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel entirely to ourselves for an hour, but I digress) when this friggin’ little weasel of a twerp happily pointed his camera at the ceiling and started furiously clicking away.

Much to my delight, our guide – who had come into the Chapel with us – swiftly moved to his side and I watched for a couple minutes while she clearly made him work back through his memory card and delete the pictures he had taken. Good.

Leslie and I then sat side by side for a time on one of the side wall benches that bracket the full length of the Chapel until a crick in my neck from almost a half hour of gazing upwards forced me to lower my head momentarily. And I couldn’t believe it! The same little jerk was sitting opposite us on the other bench, now with his camera carefully positioned in his lap with the lens pointed ceiling-ward as he continued to add to his memory card.

By now, the guide had left so he clearly felt confident enough to move back out into Chapel-centre and resume his interrupted photo shoot. He hadn’t reckoned on Leslie, however, who strolled out beside him and politely reminded him of the no photography message we’d all been given (thus interrupting my briefly much less polite desire to walk over, pop his camera open, extract and stuff his memory card down his throat). Later, she told me his response had been to express an “Oh really?” reaction as though he had somehow been unaware of the rule.

Anyway, we both resumed a pattern of therapeutic breathing and got our heads back to where we were. Suffice to say it is one of the few places I’ve been in my life that allows me to say – and be grammatically correct to boot – that it is literally awesome. In fact, now that I think of it, even awe-SOME falls a little short, but given the absence of a word like awe-ALL, it’ll have to do.

One of the downsides – or upsides if you believe rules are for other people – of being in a small exclusive tour is that it plainly is not policed as carefully as during the hours when the Chapel is officially open to the public. Later that morning, as we were exiting the Vatican, we opted for a path that took us once more through the Chapel. This time, even before we joined the sea of humanity inside, a guard at the door ordered me to put my camera, which I had simply slung around my neck, inside the shoulder bag I was also carrying. And several dozen of the people crowding the floor inside inside were guards. No doubt looking for insufferable little twerps.

Even given that most of what is most important in the Chapel is straight overhead so that even in a close crowd there are no bad views of any of the staggering 5,000 square feet (!) of Michelangelo’s frescoes some 65 feet overhead, it adds something very special to be there in the company of so few people that even a soft-soled shoestep seems to echo.

Leaving the Vatican behind, we decided to take a leisurely walk back to the hotel by way of a delightful sidewalk café, a cool draft Peroni beer for me and a glass of house white for Leslie and a lunch consisting of (for me) a ball of Buffala mozzarella the size of a baseball, with prosciutto and bread, and for Leslie another specialty pizza, called the pizza quattro stagione (four seasons pizza). We had earlier encountered this particular topping where the pizza is garnished in quarters, with each quarter representing a season of the year. We didn’t quite grasp which season was which, but the customary toppings on the respective quarters of a pizza quattro stagione are black olives, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and prosciutto.

After about an hour’s battery-charge at the hotel, we took a taxi to another of the places on Leslie’s art history bucket list: the Villa Borghese. One of the advantages of travelling with someone like Leslie in an art-intensive environment is that it never becomes, “Oh ho hum, another magnificent old painting / sculpture / architectural marvel… whatever.” Instead, it’s typically a fascinating flow of information on just why what you’re looking at is so important.

The Villa Borghese is considered the place to visit if you’re a student or scholar of an artist named Caravaggio. And what I learned in the Villa Borghese was just how amazingly audacious Caravaggio was for his time.

Caravaggio’s period in art is known as the “baroque” but Caravaggio was a rebel, so much so, in fact, that when his influence finally garnered the recognition it deserved, he was pretty much declared to have been the father of “new baroque” (and vis-à-vis baroque, clearly an artistic version of what my daughter used to call “Opposite Day”).

Prior to Caravaggio’s unleashing his own take on the style, baroque’s major hallmarks were variations on ornate decoration. You see it in its architecture and statuary, but especially in its painting where pretty much every little space in the painting is filled with something. In fact, baroque is to art what record producer Phil Spector’s renowned “wall of sound” was to rock-and-roll music. Phil left nary a moment when the ear wasn’t being assailed by either voice or instruments, exactly what “wall of sound” suggests.

In the same way, a typical baroque painting could charitably be called “busy”, like this example (again by Raphael in another of his Vatican rooms). Notice how even the spaces between each individual section are filled either with decoration or even more, smaller images.

But now take a look at how Caravaggio utterly rattled the art world.

This is David with the head of Goliath. Literally, David, and Goliath’s head. Period. No heavily populated battlefield of Philistines running away in terror; no pastoral background of trees or clouds. In fact, no background at all.

Actually, since a picture is worth a thousand words, indulge me for a quick momentary digression that is hundreds of thousands of words’ worth of illustration. When you go to Google Images and search “Caravaggio paintings” – like here – notice how the first thing to hit you is how dark your computer screen has suddenly become. It’s a sea of faces and people, but almost all of them are surrounded by black.

In fact, you almost wonder if the poor guy wandered into a huge sale of black by the bucketful, or could only afford teeny amounts of all the other colours. But that was Caravaggio. Love him or hate him, he rocked the art world of his day and the Villa Borghese (pronounced bor-GAY-zee) is home to several of his works.

See? Every day’s a school day… oh shut up, me.

It’s rare that Leslie and I come to any agreement when it comes to art (except if my point is, “You know a lot; I know nothing”; on that we have no dispute) but it seemed that almost to the second we agreed we were “arted out”.

So we stepped out into what was left of the waning daylight for a leisurely walk through the Villa’s magnificent gardens (an attraction all their own for lovers of things green) to one of Rome’s most famous bars and not too far beyond it, the restaurant we had booked for dinner.

That’s where we’ll pick up next time with “Arrivederci Roma”.

Times Roman 2

Our second call in Rome was at no less delightful a hotel than our first visit. The Hotel Britannia is also centrally located, just off the Via Nazionale, a major central Rome boulevard that marched straight downhill from our hotel on the Via Napoli to the wing of Trajan’s Forum that is marked by his namesake column and, immediately beside it, the previously mentioned and still hideously garish “wedding cake” that is, officially, the Monument to King Victor Emmanuel II.

The hotel also offered a complimentary limo pick-up at the Rome airport but because it was so close to the train station – where we arrived in the city – we simply hopped a cab. (Leslie had previous secured a “no problem” message from a hotel representative when, before we even left Ottawa, she had asked if we could swap out the airport pick-up for a ride TO the airport when we checked out. As it turned out, that would figure as, whoops, NOT a “no problem” after all when we checked out, but more about that later.)

The Britannia is another of those properties where you have the distinct feeling of being welcomed by a family, rather than by whoever happens to be working the front desk when you arrive. (As it turns out, this is hardly surprising if you consider it began life as a lavish multi-storey private home.) And of course we were welcomed by another Francesca. (I think it may be a requirement that if you are a woman working in the hospitality industry in Italy, you pretty much have to be named Francesca.)

Not being a boor, I didn’t start snapping photos of the hotel’s wonderful self-described “neo-classical” public spaces, but their website provides a nice shot of the front desk lobby, among others. How could you not feel welcome stepping into this foyer? (Photo source: http://hotelbritannia.hotelinroma.com)

I confess that when I saw our room, I got the distinct feeling that Italians take “neo-classical” to mean “modern tribute to Pompeii’s brothel”, as this shot of our bed, its pillows and the room’s window coverings would seem to suggest. But it was wonderfully comfortable and came with a well-sheltered patio and a fridge stocked with Italian beer in addition to the usual contents you find in hotel room fridges of assorted soft drinks and mineral water – the difference being it was entirely complimentary.

Having begun the day in Paestum and now finishing it, it seemed, a bazillion hours later in Rome, we pretty much just collapsed. Day 2 would see me turned loose while Leslie attended Day 1 of the conference that was the “official” reason for this trip in the first place.

The Britannia’s breakfast – included in the price of the room – was among the best yet. In fact, I’m hard pressed to think of a breakfast item that wasn’t to be found somewhere among the offerings on either their hot or cold buffet. The carnivore in me was especially delighted because the variety of meat choices was astonishing – from the expected bacon through an array of traditional Italian cold cuts such as prosciutto, several salamis and capicollo, complimented each day with three or four different cheese options as well. By the time you added the baked goods, cereals and fresh fruit, we inevitably left so well-fuelled that we pretty much bypassed lunch each day.

For Day 1 on my own I opted for a lengthy morning walkabout and a planned afternoon visit to the inside of the “wedding cake”. I’d read that it included a military museum and Italy’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, exactly the sort of thing that the Air Force brat in me always finds interesting.

Early on in my walkabout, I grabbed what has to be one of my all-time favourite unplanned travel shots.

Rome’s tourist areas are stacked with sidewalk vendors who seem to want to sell you anything you may be dumb or naïve enough to buy.

In fact, as an aside, one of the most puzzlingly popular this visit was something I dubbed the “snotball” as soon as I saw it demonstrated. All around the Trevi Fountain, for example, literally every two or three metres some forlorn looking fellow (and it was always a fellow) would be standing with a shiny surface like a small whiteboard sitting atop a fruit crate. As you approached, he would listlessly make a Price-Is-Right style pose and then slam a golf-ball sized blob as hard as he could onto the whiteboard. It landed with a huge “splat” and, depending on how it was coloured, it briefly resembled a fried egg, or a bloodshot eye, or Jackson Pollack tribute before reforming into its spherical shape.

But not only that, it would also emit the most pathetic whine – like the sound of a stricken cat – as it reconfigured itself. At a slow walking pace, you could experience the questionable joy of three or four such splat / whines before you got beyond range.

But I never once saw money delivered up for one of these. Not by anyone. The whole time we were in Rome. Although we met a family from BC in Orvieto who confessed they bought a couple for their kids and, sure enough, they died (the snotballs’ whine, not the kids) the very next day. (*Phew* sure glad I resisted the siren call of a snotball as a souvenir of my Italian vacation!)

Hmmm… digression within a digression. This is getting almost Zen. How in the world did I get onto a dissertation about snotballs?

Oh yes – another of the odd things that Italians seem to think tourists will pay for is the opportunity to take your photo standing beside a “re-enactor” decked out like a gladiator or Roman Army centurion or simply someone’s interpretation of a Hollywood-ized version of either costume. And although less populous than the snotball vendors, they are numerous – even to the extent of assembling in groups around major attractions like the Colosseum. (The tourist is usually given a plumed helmet – if a man – and a curly wig with a tiara – if a woman – so that his Hawaiian shirt or her sundress would blend right in with the sweat-drenched faux leather of a Christian-killing competitor fresh from the arena.)

This guy was completely oblivious to the fact that he probably had more photos taken of him as he stood on the Spanish Steps engaged in a vigorous cellphone conversation than he likely would experience in a week of trying to cajole tourists into posing with him. Along with about ten other equally amused visitors to the Steps, I fired a couple quick distance shots and then we all pretty much realized he was so wrapped up in his conversation that short of actually bumping into him, we could get into perfect portrait range.

Leslie and I both agree it’s a classic.

Oh, and a snotball P.S. Apparently, they’re officially called “splat balls” (quelle surprise) and not surprisingly at all, the Internet actually has a short clip of one in action, in slow motion no less. Here it is, but you’ll have to imagine the pathetic death scene whine because the video is silent.

I also note that it’s offered for sale on a site called “Office Playground” in multiple colourings, including the fried egg and eyeball, which makes me fear for my former work colleagues. Because it’s just the sort of thing that could turn up in the loot bags at some future team-building exercise. Keep an eye out (Haw!) for snotballs, you guys! You’ve been warned. 

Back to the "wedding cake".

I actually have to temper my observations about the hourly changing of the guard that takes place at the exterior part of Italy’s Tomb of the Unknown at the top of the steps leading to the "wedding cake"'s front door, because I have seen one of the best – the US ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Washington’s Arlington National Cemetery. It is a masterpiece of precision, with not a single wasted or casual motion and drill movements so sharp and meticulous they seem robotic in their perfection.

But this shot pretty much tells you all you need to know about the Italian army’s adherence to ceremonial “precision”. The guard pair on the left is supposed to be precisely in synch with the pair on the right and clearly they are anything but. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. While waiting for the “ceremony” to begin, I noticed that one of the two guards let go with an unabashedly gape-mouthed yawn before his shift’s replacements arrived. That sort of thing would have made the national embarrassment news in the US.

(At Arlington, even the occasionally required guard order to a loud or laughing individual among the crowd of observers is a request to “assume an attitude of RESPECT” throughout the ceremony, delivered in tones ranging from a polite request to a fearsomely bellowed reprimand.)

In sharp contrast to its blinding white exterior fronting the rather gaudy Emmanuel Monument, Rome’s Unknown tomb, deep in the Monument’s interior, is sombrely understated and moving. Like such hallowed places everywhere (and I have also seen France’s and Canada’s, in addition to the US and Italian “Unknown” memorials), it always trips a feeling of respect and genuine grief over the millions of lost young lives they collectively honour. Nowhere in my own family – so far as I am aware – is there a military relative with no known grave, but my lifelong readings have referred time and time again to the sobering, indeed the staggering numbers of “no known grave” casualties in the histories of the world’s wars.

The Monument’s museum, in addition to the expected battlefield experiences of the past couple centuries, also pays tribute to Italy’s historical military role in disaster relief.

This shot, for example, is intended to illustrate a typical earthquake relief centre, where emergency supplies are distributed to survivors – in this case in the wake of two May 2012 earthquakes (magnitude 5.6 and 5.8 respectively) in the northern part of the country where relief was co-ordinated by the Army’s 6th Engineers.

Another highlight was an elevator ride to the Monument’s rooftop observation level, which offers sweeping views of the city, such as this one that includes the Dome of St Peter’s Basilica in the distant centre of the photo.

And continuing my policy of never passing up an opportunity to enter an ancient basilica, this is the view that greeted me when I went through the front doors of the Basilica di Santa Maria in Ara Coeli, whose entrance is atop a mighty climb of steps from the street, or a simple crossover from an upper level link of the "wedding cake".

Santa Maria in Ara Coeli (St Mary of the Altar of Heaven) is one of the oldest in Rome. Its foundation was laid down on what had been a Byzantine Abbey dating back to at least 550 A.D., although the church itself was completed in the mid-1200s.

And it is a survivor. Because when the Victor Emmanuel II Monument was built, you may recall from an earlier note in this trip diary that a vast section of the Capitolino Hill was hauled away before the construction began in the early 1900s,requiring the demolition of several other churches and mediaeval structures, something that countless classical Roman historians and archaeologists still consider to have been a travesty.

When I got back to the hotel for a mid-afternoon battery re-charging, Leslie had returned from her scintillating (sarcasm mode on – more about that later) conference and was ready to go just about anywhere else rather than back to it.

So off we went for a wander that took us past the Presidential Palace in the Piazza Quirinale, whose daily military honour guard could give lessons to the rather casual unit serving at the Tomb of the Unknown. The different branches of the service rotate the honour of augmenting the Palace’s permanent guards and, on this day, it was the Navy’s turn.

For beautiful military uniforms – and no, that’s not a contradiction in terms – you’d be hard pressed to beat or even match (although England’s Household Cavalry gives them a run) the ceremonial kit worn by the Presidential Palace permanent guard. Unfortunately, the few guards we spotted were tucked well back into the palace grounds safely out of public and camera reach, but the internet, once more, comes through very nicely.

Here’s a full mounted unit of them in ceremonial dress escorting the Pope. The cost of silver polish alone must have its own line in the Army’s annual budget!

After the late afternoon walkabout in what had been a scorchingly hot sun, Les and I decided that the day merited an early evening return to the cool shade of our hotel room’s patio and we decided to make a picnic dinner out of it after finding a fantastically well-stocked convenience just a block away on Via Nazionale. (In Italy, we also discovered that “convenience” means ready access to high quality gourmet foods, wines, beers and just about anything you can think of!)

There are worse ways to wind down a day in Rome than with a bottle of wine and an almost endless antipasto platter that included some outstanding olives, meats, cheeses and sinfully freshly baked crusty rolls.

Up next: the Vatican and the Villa Borghese.

Prowling Paestum's Past and Present

“The ancient city of Paestum (originally Poseidonia)… was founded at the end of the 7thC B.C. and is one of the last of the Greek colonies established in southern Italy. The Greeks had [actually] begun colonizing the area in the 8thC B.C… [but] it was during the 6thC B.C. that the city began to take form and annex the surrounding territories. Ever since its beginnings, it was destined for [the] farming that proved to be the source of its great wealth. The importance and riches that the city had acquired by the last quarter of the century led to intensive building projects and the construction of its great temples (Basilica, Athenalon). It was also during this period that the city was carefully laid out with proper streets and the great temple of Hera… During the first half of the 5thC B.C., Poseidonia enjoyed a period of great splendour [and…] aspired to play a leading role in trade with the rich inland regions.” (from “The Temples of Paestum”, by John Robert Cozens, quoted in “Paestum: The Temples; the Museum”, a generously-illustrated, tourist-focused set of brief notes I bought for 3.5 Euros at a shop just outside the entrance gate.)

I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. How come I never have heard of this place until the first set of itinerary notes that Leslie drew to my attention when she started putting this trip together?

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We arrived in Paestum (pronounced PICE-tum) late in the day after we departed Ravello, the end of a long drive. And true to form, Back-Roads Tours had arranged our accommodation in yet another gorgeous hotel / restaurant called Il Granaio dei Casabella. Its name suggests almost all of its history as a granary and silo until it was renovated in the mid-1990s into the beautiful 14-room hotel and high-quality restaurant it is today.

Il Granaio’s front door. Our room was at the left corner on the second floor, where the windows bracket that coach light mounted on the upper corner of the wall. If this side doesn’t say “welcome and relax”, then maybe a wander into the backyard space will do so.

Il Granaio’s backyard, viewed from one of several tables under a sheltering weather cover.

The owners have done a wonderful job keeping the rustic feel both inside and out.

Here, for example, is a massive blacksmith’s bellows that has been put into an honorable retirement service as a coffee table in the foyer that leads to the breakfast restaurant.

The only flaw, at least from Leslie’s point of view, was the excessively firm mattress… perhaps not quite the unyielding stone beds we saw in Pompeii’s brothel, she said, but “damned firm” nonetheless.

After settling in and freshening up, we assembled for a last group dinner together where, aided by Back-Roads’ surprising discovery that there was enough money left in the budget to pay for several bottles of wine (that, at least, was Sharon’s story and she was sticking to it!), the evening became one of convivial hilarity.

And much to my surprise, the group presented me with a just-slightly-belated birthday card – actually a postcard showing two of Paestum’s three temple ruins – that everyone had signed. When I asked how the news had leaked out, Sharon said I’d let it slip when I had previously explained what the occasion was that took us to la Caravello in Amalfi for our special dinner for two. (I actually don’t remember doing that… which might have been the residual effects at next morning’s breakfast of the evening wine and afternoon Limoncello we’d imbibed that day. That’s MY story and I’m sticking to it!)

Sometime over the course of the evening, Sharon also told us that the temples were beautifully lit at night and the three of them were no more than a 15-minute walk away from the hotel’s front door.

So after dinner, Leslie and I did exactly that and it turned out to be well worth the stroll into the warm Italian evening.

The Temple of Ceres is the most brightly lit of the three and easily throws enough residual and reflected light to give one a feel for the grounds leading up to it.

A moodier feel is projected by the Temples of Hera and Neptune. (Neptune’s has the roof peak.)

The three together very much left us with a great sense of anticipation about the next day’s visit to the overall site. But not without a small sense of wistfulness, because it would also be our last day with a group whose company we had very much come to enjoy in only the short week we had spent together.

Again we were ready to entrust ourselves to the very well-informed tutelage of Eliana. Once inside the gate, however, we had a (quiet) collective group laugh as she led us over to an open patch to deliver her introduction to the site as a whole, completely oblivious to the fact that just as she was about to start, no fewer than three large groundskeepers’ lawnmowers simultaneously fired up not ten yards away from where we were gathering. No doubt mindful of the previous day’s episode among the Villa Rufalo’s bells, Sharon pointedly escorted us all over to the far side of the nearest temple to put it squarely between us and the mowers. Today, at least, we’d get to hear Eliana.

Briefly, Paestum actually changed hands over the course of its history, hardly surprising since it was a Greek colony located in Italy. A combination of brutal military conquest followed by political unrest and upheaval saw its Greek roots supplanted by Roman domination, specifically by a powerful subset of Rome – the Lucans. In a most Big Brother-y conquest, the Lucans systematically sought to erase all things Greek about the city and remake them into all things Roman.

Oddly enough, the Poseidonians moved past any lingering resentment and Paestum became one of Rome’s most loyal allies through the Punic Wars with Carthage during the 3rdC B.C., even to the extent of offering Rome the gold from its temples to support the war effort. The Senate, however, declined but never forgot the gesture.

What this means when it comes to naming the features of Paestum, is that they can take on an aura of near schizophrenia, especially its temples, whose names depend on whether your source is Greek or Roman. The Roman god of the sea, Neptune, for example, was known to the Greeks as Poseidon; the Romans’ Hera was the Greeks’ Athena and the Greeks’ Zeus was Jupiter to the Romans. Even the temple to Athena was at one time thought to have been renamed to honour Ceres, the Roman goddess of the harvest, fertility and grains (the source of our word, cereal).

My point is that it’s possible, if you decide you want to delve into the City’s history beyond what I do here, you might start to think there were six or even seven major temples; but as you’ll see, there were, in fact, just three.

One of the reasons that Paestum is so well-preserved has echoes of the Pompeii story, but with a “catastrophe” much less spectacular than a volcanic eruption as the cause. As Paestum grew, the surrounding forests were pillaged for building materials, a deforestation that caused the rivers running through the nearby plain gradually to fill up with silt and eventually stop flowing altogether. The resulting marshland became a vast mosquito hatchery and malaria grew rampant in the city. This had two effects: the population eventually moved away and the City’s reputation as a centre for deadly illness made it no bargain for ransacking and pillaging by potential conquerors either.

I also discovered one much more recent and no less fascinating sidebar to the Paestum story when I happened to browse a massive coffee table book in the foyer of Il Granaio – the story of WWII’s Operation Avalanche. The code name applied to the landing of the Allied armies – officially at Salerno, just a few miles away, but in reality at Paestum and the ruined city was among the first pieces of real estate through which the invasion force swept as they moved inland. The book featured a panoramic two-page black-and-white American aerial reconnaissance photo that took in the beach, the ruins and even what was then the farm and granary that in the mid-1990s was to become our hotel.

Fortunately for the sake of those with a passion for antiquity in their histories, Paestum did not become the major Salerno battlefield and the ruined city suffered no significant WWII battle damage. (Although also in the book there were several sobering photos of dead German soldiers on the road that ran right past what, 60 years later, would be our hotel.)

Minutes after wading ashore at the beginning of WWII’s Operation Avalanche, US soldiers found themselves walking past Paestum’s Temples of Hera and Neptune, while others following actually camped in the shadow of the structures. (Photo source: nuke.montecassinotour.com)

Here’s another fascinating then-and-now photo composite created by a photographer named Erwin Jacobs showing US clerks working in an administrative Operation Avalanche “office” hastily set up inside the Temple of Neptune and, on the right, that same spot as it looks today.

The temples are no less imposing in the light of day. One of the fascinating things we learned from Eliana relates to this particular temple, known as the Temple of Hera (or possibly Juno) to the Romans and the Temple of Athena to the Greeks. Almost without exception, classical temples have an even number of columns across the front but a quick count reveals that this one has nine.

This has led scholars more recently to suspect that this particular temple was, in fact, intended to be shared equally by the seniormost male and female gods on Olympus and the odd number of columns creates an absolutely perfect centre line so that neither Hera nor Zeus (nor Juno nor Jupiter) would have even a centimetre of interior temple space more than his or her counterpart on the other side of the line. Looking at the temple absolutely dead on from the front is a view resonant of several scenes in Stanley Kubrick’s movie, “The Shining”, which also featured countless left / right symmetrical framings used by the Director to provide rock-solid visual anchors for his film of Jack Torrance’s growing and deeply unsettling insanity.

When I asked Leslie why it was she knew about Paestum with her liberal arts education while I’d never heard of it with mine, the answer lay in the simple fact that her degree included the study of the architectural side of art history, which formed a large part of her university curriculum. And even a cursory read of most modest tourist guidebooks to the site reveals content replete with references to Doric, Ionian and Corinthian (columns), colonnades, pediments, cornices and entabulature. But since this is a trip diary and not a fourth-year study of classical architecture, you’ll just have to trust me when I say that Paestum – especially in its temples – has superbly preserved examples of all of the foregoing, and dozens of other classical building features.

What is especially wonderful about Paestum, as you’ll instantly note from this picture, is the utter lack of crowds – unlike Pompeii which daily hosts thousands of visitors – and the obvious freedom given to visitors to wander the site largely unfettered by fences or barricades of any kind – the temples being the only significant exceptions to this freedom of access.

This shot shows a tiered circular structure called the Bouleuterion, within which political assemblies of up to 500 members of the city’s most important council could be (and regularly were) held. (Sheesh, and we thought we had an unmanageable Senate in Canada with 105, or thereabouts, occupants!)

Like Pompeii, Paestum still hides a great many of its secrets in large zones that are yet to be excavated.

This shot shows two arches of a structure leading towards the temples (out of sight to the left), which very much intrudes into the modern pedestrian sidewalk and motor vehicle road on which I was standing when I took this photo.

Apparently aerial photos have revealed a meticulously laid out pattern of city blocks that extend well beyond the present excavations. (The mapped area in the illustration shows the present-day excavations and the city boundary wall. The unmapped, unexcavated white space shows just how much remains to be explored. Source: sights.seindal.dk )

The buried Greek and Roman history that eventually will be unearthed is something that no doubt will keep archaeologists and antiquities scholars happy for hundreds of years to come.

Our final Back-Roads group event was a last lunch together in The Basilica Café, directly across the road from its namesake temple (The Temple of Neptune / Poseidon is also known as the Basilica) with yet another round of complimentary wine and beer -- augmented by an old family dessert recipe made by the owner's mother -- to ease us off to our various points of departure in a cheery mood. (Luigi thoughtfully said he would make all the requisite stops on the way back into Naples.)

Ours was the rail station. Other group members were deposited at the airport and even our pre-Amalfi hotel – the Turchini – for one or two more nights before saying goodbye to Southern Italy.

Leslie’s and my destination was, once more, Rome. Leslie was booked to attend a conference (which she later confessed was one of the most dismally administered academic gatherings she had ever attended). For my part, I would be opting for some solo wanderings before we reunited for one of the most profound experiences of our whole trip – an almost exclusive (eight people; I call that “almost” exclusive) one-hour visit to the Sistine Chapel, and the most authentic Italian lunch in Rome! (Oh, the lunch wasn’t actually “profound”, but it was great.)

All to come in what will probably be two or three more entries, along with a final wrap-up report on some of the amazing tastes of Italy (some of which will be new; others will be reminders of things you’ve already met in earlier diary notes).

So hang in there! The end is in sight.