A pick-pocket in Rome

Although we’d spent five days and four nights in Rome at the beginning of our trip to Italy in October 2008, we had still not visited several of the city’s major sites, gaps which we planned to fill on the last leg of our journey when we’d spend two more days in the city.

Arriving in Rome from Siena in the early afternoon, we settled in at the Marriott on the Via Vittorio Veneto, then headed to the rental agency to return the car. Throughout our trip, we’d worried periodically about how we’d explain the scratch that mysteriously appeared on the passenger's door in Naples. After leaving the car with the attendant for inspection, and headed to the office to await the final charges and explain the scratch. The manager waived away our concerns. The contract remained as originally quoted and additional charges never appeared on our credit card statements. Apparently, scratches are expected or covered.

Relieved that we’d not been socked with a big repair bill, we took the Metro to Vatican City to visit St. Peter’s Basilica. Having walked through many sacred sites in Italy, I was surprised by the silence within the vast spaces of the Basilica – the only sounds those of heeled shoes and an occasional whisper and the guard who scolded Bill for taking a photo of the Pieta. Having visited the quarry where Michelangelo chose the block for this sculpture, and knowing of Bill's thrill at that experience, I was delighted that he'd managed to take the one shot he'd most treasure.

We visited the Pantheon after St. Peter’s and the difference was almost shocking. Despite signs asking for silence in that “sacred place,” the Pantheon’s walls ricocheted with the voices of hundreds of tourists and tour guides, even the audio guides we’d rented were difficult to hear in the surrounding din.

Returning to the hotel, foot sore and weary, we phoned Teresa, my deceased husband Vittorio’s niece, and made plans to meet with her and her companion Giulio for supper. We rested for a while, then showered and went down to the lobby to await their arrival. Giulio was strangely subdued in the beginning, not at all the flamboyant persona we’d met during our first days in Rome. He was probably wondering why we had to get together once more, having spent two full evenings with us when we first arrived in Rome. As the evening wore on, however, he grew more loquacious and by the end of the evening he and Bill were both singing German drinking songs, leaning into each other and belting out “Ein prosit zur gemütlichkeit” as we headed back to the hotel.

We’d been warned to beware of pick-pockets and gypsies in Rome and had been careful, keeping our valuables in thin money belts beneath our clothes. By the end of our trip, however, we’d grown lax. On our last day in Rome, somewhere between the Catacombs of St. Callixtus and the city, Bill’s wallet was stolen. The theft was a work of art, the thief getting inside the many zippered and flapped carry- case that Bill wore around his neck so skillfully that Bill nor I noticed the theft.

Despite broken luggage, an unexplained dent in our rental car, difficulties with the cell phone we’d bought to use in Italy, getting lost more often than we cared to admit, and Bill’s wallet being pick-pocketed somewhere in Rome, we’d visited places rife with memory and created memories of our own. And, though I’d returned to Italy without Vittorio’s children as I’d promised 30 years earlier, his family had embraced both Bill and me with gratitude, laughter, and tears.

That night, as we prepared for bed and our 3 am departure the next morning, Bill took me in his arms and praised my efforts in planning our journey. “You my beautiful Beryl have given me the trip of a lifetime. You are the best and the most brilliant tour guide I could have ever imagined.”

Loathing to end the re-creation of that momentous journey of return, I have taken a year and a half to narrate the highlights of a journey lasting only five weeks. But here this story ends to make way for the telling of other stories.

Visions in Siena

We left Sirmione on Lago di Garda, and headed back toward Rome through Tuscany with its terraced vineyards and olive groves, stone farmhouses, and hilltops crowned with castles and churches arriving finally at Hotel Montaperti in Casserta, an art filled, architecturally pleasing residence among ancient farmhouses and cypress clad hillsides.

After indulging in a swim beneath huge papier-mâché fish painted with brilliant rainbow and circus colors that spun in the breeze, we set out on foot to find something to eat. The Jolly Café and Bar surprised us by hiding a small restaurant where we dined on a delicious risotto with artichokes, paper thin veal cutlets, and salad accompanied with the ubiquitous effervescent water and, of course, house wine. The Italians drink wine so modestly, filling the glass only a tad with an occasional splash for seconds that we almost felt deprived during meals shared in common. On our own, we indulged: one carafe per meal.

Siena that evening, I wondered if travelers such as we were, return changed or improved from such journeys or if memory alone sufficed to justify such bounteous experience. I have memories of trips through Italy with my deceased husband Vittorio and tried to ascertain how they related, collided, and merged with those I was experiencing with Bill. Just as Italy has changed, so have I changed. I like the me I now am, much more than the immature Beryl I was 30 years ago. Yet Vittorio loved that Beryl, a fact that sends me to my knees in gratitude.

Making our usual quota of wrong turns and almost parking in a tow-away zone, Bill and I finally found the Il Campo parking lot and headed down Siena’s ancient cobbled streets toward the Piazza, an immense open square with bricks laid in a fan-like pattern that converge at the Palazzo Publico, each panel representing the various city-states of Tuscany. The Duomo had just closed, but as we walked toward it’s crypt we came across a cross marking the spot where Catherine of Siena was supposedly pushed down the steep steps by the devil without being hurt. I savor these stories, finding it tantalizing to enter the realm of legend in cities so chock full of stories.

At Trattoria Dino, a pleasingly simple restaurant presided over by a handsome young man and several women family members who did all the cooking, a customer -- whose square chin and dark eyes resembled Vittorio’s – looked directly at me. Fearful of wild imaginings, I focused on Bill’s dear face, reminding myself that the dead don’t return in other’s bodies and that Vittorio would delight in the love that led Bill to suggest a return to Italy.

Juliet's Breast in Verona

When we left for Italy, my husband Bill knew we’d be visiting my deceased husband Vittorio's family and friends. He thought maybe he'd meet five or six. By the end of the trip he'd met 24. The final batch of family members waited for us at the bus station in Verona -- Catarina, a fiery Sicilian beauty, who'd helped me connect with many of these relatives was there with her equally spirited mother Maria Rosaria. So, too was a pensive Livio (Vittorio's nephew) and his vivacious wife Marilena.

Perhaps it was the presence of the Sicilian faction that added the spice to our visit, making it one of the most memorable; perhaps it was the four women in Livio’ s life. Whatever the seasoning, the arguments, laughter, and singing that punctuated the time we spent in Verona that made it the day Bill and I recall with the greatest delight.

How Livio’ s family loved their “discussions.” Livio’ s women argued with Livio about what to see and how to get there with as much determination as Livio insisted on a different itinerary. Meanwhile, Bill’s camera panned from one event to the next, capturing the human interactions that so delight him. They continued to wrangle as we walked from cathedral to square – Livio proudly pointing out the restoration projects on which his son Alessandro (Catharina’s husband) was working – the women suggesting other routes. Arriving at the Casa de Giulietta. Livio insisted that Bill should pose for a photo with his hand placed strategically on the breast of her well polished statue, while I joined him. Note the dubious smile. Men and breasts. From babyhood to old age do they ever get over their love of the female breast?

Lunch at Livio’s was punctuated by more exuberant discussion about what to see next, Marilena—knowing exactly what he was up to with his camera--peeped over our heads, grinned at him and waved. With Torricelli as our destination, we headed off in separate cars: the men in one, we women in the other, both groups certain that they knew the way best. While climbing the steeply cobbled streets we met and, amicable that we’d both done “good,” proceeded to the top. From under the balustrades of the old Austrian castle at the summit, we viewed the city of Verona shimmering below us against a backdrop of golden dusk, lights twinkling from windows along the quay and bouncing in brightly colored streamers over the River Adige.

Supper that night, a succulent Sicilian veal, was punctuated with stories of the past. When memories touched on the years when Vittorio and I met and fell in love, Maria Rosaria leaned back in her chair and sighed, "Ah, Amore." I looked around the table at the family gathered there with my Bill and was flooded with gratitude that love wields such power in Italian families, embracing all the facets of life lived to its fullest.

In lovely Sirmione on the Lago di Garda

We departed Trento on a cool misty October 22 and headed from the Alps down to the lake country. The drive along Lago di Garda thrust me back into the past, when I traveled there with my deceased husband Vittorio and our baby Thomas when we stopped for lunch at a small roadside trattoria. The owners, a lovely warm couple with a wide-faced smiling daughter told us they did not open until evening but, seeing the baby, told us to come back in an hour and we could share lunch with the family—a delicious minestrone with crusty bread, greens from the garden and wine. While we waited, we rented a small rowboat and floated happily offshore with the warm sun on our faces and our baby asleep in my arms.

Bill and I were spending two nights in Sirmione, a tiny lakeside town on the peninsula on the south-side of Lago di Garda. Villa Rosa, a lovely family run B&B only a mile’s walk from the heart of the historic town , was family owned and operated. One of the family actually spoke fluent English (the first such speaker we’d encountered on our trip), provided us with a map of the town on which she marked the route to the famed Terme Catullo, the thermal waters visited from ancient times for which the town was noted.

A lovely lovely tree-lined boulevard took us past the Rocca Scaligera, a medieval castle into the town which opens into an ancient arcade filled with small shops, many offering gelato. We succumbed, of course, having found a shop where the banana gelato was slightly gray rather than bright yellow – the sign of homemade vs factory produced gelato – and sat on a wall next to the quay savoring our cones. Having been totally seduced by the dark chocolate and coffee flavors we never did get to try the banana.

The Aquaria Spa was a mystery that unfolded experience by experience. We first had to learn to learn to use the moving lockers by swiping our magnetic watches over a screen. My locker, number 10, arrived on its hanger. Clothes and purse tucked sagely within, the door closed, and off it went--one of hundreds of such lockers on the mechanized rack.

Noting that most people were wearing flip-flops, I thought them very wise. Those floors were slippery plus! Then I saw the posted notice requiring the use of flip-flops. Bill and I slunk along as unobtrusively as possible, managing to avoid being noticed by spa attendants while negotiating the large panoply of thermal options. A channel of heated water lead into a channel of icy water, from there to a sulfur-rich pool to another adorned with massage options of all sized and shapes: whirlpools, rolling beds, powerful jets that forced water over one’s shoulders and heads, another long channel lined with stone seats where we moved from seat to seat deluged by water from above.

Three hours later, our nostrils suffused with the scent of sulfur – an "aroma" my bathing suit carried back to the states where it hung around for several months thereafter, despite many washings -- we showered and walked through the spa gardens back into the pedestrian friendly cobbled streets. A delicious meal of fresh fish, grilled vegetables, wine, and crostini at a lovely outdoor restaurant in the town square, and leisurely walk through the gathering dusk back to our comfortable room at Villa Rosa, ended a very lovely day in Sirmione. Good choice, Beryl, I congratulated myself, realizing that we hadn't seen one other American family during the entire afternoon.

Trento in the Italian Alps

The Grand Hotel in Trento, is a classy old hotel smack in the heart of the city. Delicious room, tasteful décor, scrumptious breakfast buffet, great drinks in the piano bar, and my precious Bill enjoying i there with me.

Trento was on our itinerary, not only because it is a beautiful city in the Italian Alps, but because we wanted to visit with my deceased husband Vittorio’s niece Concetta and her family who live just above the city in Piano di Sopra.

Unlike Teresa, who seemed content to leave us on our own during the day, Concetta, immediately assumed the role of tour director. That afternoon we walk through streets lined with Renaissance palaces, visit the Duomo and descend to the recently unearthed early Christian church beneath it; then sit and sip espresso at a small café on the main square. That night, Concetta’s entire family comes for supper: her two sons, their wives and children fill her small home. It’s all Italian conversation in Trento but we manage to chatter away, and Bill, with his smattering of Spanish and German, fits right in.

The following morning Concetta wants to take us north to Bolzano, so we set off, presuming she knows the way. It is only when we’ve passed an important exit for Bolzano, that we learn Concetta does not drive. She peers over the top of her glasses at passing signs and shouts “Di La!” at the last minute. “Di la?” Bill asks. Concetta does not say “a la destra” or “a la sinistra,” so Bill has no idea in which direction to turn.

Bolzano is a beautiful mountain town, with flowers everywhere, wooden balconies overlooking busy marketplaces bright with fruit, vegetable, cheese, and pastry stands. We have a lunch of beer and sausages in a German restaurant, then wander along the Lauben -- with its medieval arcades and expensive shops.

On the way back to the parking garage, I tell Concetta that I’m sure glad she’s with us because I was totally lost. “I think we are lost,” she moans. "I can't remember how to get back to the garage." The three of us burst out laughing and merrily inquire of passersby where that garage might be. Succeeding we return to Concetta’s house where she's prepared a feast: polenta with fresh fungi (mushrooms) grown by her son Lucca, local gorgonzola and Asiago cheese, and for dessert a chestnut and raspberry torte. Again, the entire family crowds round the table in her tiny living room.

Bill, who’d thought he’d only be meeting a few people in Italy, begins to count them. By the end of the trip he will have met 24 of Vittorio’s friends and relatives. Bless him!

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2009

Forte Dei Marmi on the Italian Riviera

From Florence, we headed to Forte Dei Marmi, a lovely seaside town with exquisite villas tucked behind walls on tree lined streets. After settling ourselves at the Hotel Pigalle a simple, summery B&B only one block from the heart of this fashionable seaside town on the Ligurian Sea we headed to the town center where, at an outdoor café, s little girl of around four approached our table with a pad and pencil, and pretended to take our order. She set off for the table next to us where she encountered a baby in a high chair and decided she’d rather play with the baby.

We’d come to Forte Dei Marmi so Bill could meet some of Vittorio’s good friends and enjoy the sea air and relaxed atmosphere. Giuliano took us and his wife and 12-year-old son to one of the exceptionally fine seafood restaurants in the area. Wanting to share the sea’s bounty with us, he ordered our meal. The first course, was also a first for me -- individual plates of raw fish: tuna, oysters, sea bass, and squid. Granted, the presentation was wonderful and I did my best to enjoy the “fresh from the sea” quality, but I much preferred the shrimp cooked in a delicate base of oil, that followed, a pasta with teeny, tiny clams (found only in the Forte dei Marmi area), flounder with artichokes, and pear, lemon and berry ice. We even had dessert, crème brulé with delicate cream-filled pastry shells.

The following day, in response to his question “What would you like to do tomorrow?,” Giuliano drove us toward the Cavi di Marmo -- the Carrara marble quarries -- stopping on the way at the old mountain town of Colonnata. The bells for Sunday Mass were ringing when we arrived, but we’d not come for Mass, though it was Sunday, nor for the famous Lardo di Colonatta (seasoned lard) produced there, but to view a large block of marble depicting the dangerous “lizzatura” system of transporting the immense blocks of marble down the mountainside via a series of wooden tracks that claimed the lives of many miners. The mines themselves were awe-inspiring -- a working mine more than a mile deep within the mountain, and the “blindingly white sunken amphitheater” where Michelangelo chose the marble for his famous Pietà.

At a restaurant near the Carrara seaport, Giuliano treated us to another feast, this one entirely of cooked fish: tiny octopus, a large fish with lacy red fins and great bulging eyes, varied fresh vegetables in herbed oil, and for dessert, seared strawberries and vanilla ice cream layered in paper thin pastry. When he dropped us back at the hotel, we were so stuffed that we fell onto our bed and slept until 3:30 that afternoon.

Having the evening to ourselves, Bill and I walked in the cooling dark along streets lined with high class shops and beautifully dressed Italian tourists. We bought fruit, bread, cheese and wine to eat in the quiet of our hotel room balcony and were savoring our rustic feast when the hotel manager, who’d been yelling (and I mean yelling) into the phone at the front desk came outside to cool off, noted our feast and the drying socks we’d draped over the terrace wall, shook his head in disbelief, and stormed back inside, leaving us convulsed in laughter and providing one more memory to savor at will.

Impressions of Florence

After numerous turns around a town square outside the walls of Florence, the GPS system leading us to the wrong building in a different section of town with the same address, and several phone calls to Donatella Mia, the proprietress, we finally arrived at Villa Malavolta B&B within walking distance of the city of Florence.

Rather than write about the city with its famous landmarks, I want to focus on my impressions of our stay there, memories that continue to enchant me six months later.

Impressions of our B&B: Donatella, tall and elegant and the exquisite walled villa that had been in her family for hundreds of years. Books piled on tables, on floors and nested in towering bookcases; walls rife with paintings; wooden floors supporting heavy antique furnishings; our blessed room – white and sun-washed, with its comfortable bed and little terrace overlooking an inner garden. On that terrace, accompanied by bird song and under the gaze of an ancient pine we ate chocolates and cheese and apples.

The city Florence with its narrow streets and darkened alleys, the frescoes and sporadic sunshine, people leaning backward to take photos of the wonders above them, students sprawled before the Chapel of St. Margaret, sketching the facade of the church whereDante was married and he first saw his beloved Beatrix. Bill is in his glory, his camera catching more than memorable buildings. He especially adores capturing the faces of the people, their gesticulations as they shop and talk, the arguments loud and often accompanied by laughter and gestures of apology. In Florence on our first night, we took the wrong bus and, at the insistence of a determined red-jacketed woman sitting in front of the bus – empty now of all riders save us – the bus driver turned the bus around and took us to a stop where we could catch the “correct” bus back to the Villa.

A plentiful breakfast of fresh pears and berries, coffee and brioche served in the 300-year-old kitchen launched our very long second day in the city where we visited the sites we missed the day before, sites our hostess said we shouldn’t miss. We walked to the artist’s quarter to dine where she told us the literati and artists ate – Trattoria Casalinga--and where we sat next to a portly, dark-eyed, dark-haired, boil-pocked man who slurped his food with immense gusto. We dined on Bistecca alla Fiorentina, served not in ounces but in pounds and we took the correct bus back to the villa late that night.

On our final morning, I was privileged to accompany the B&B proprietress Donatella – a well-known artist whose works have been exhibited worldwide -- to her artist's studio located on the other side of the garden where she not only paints but builds incredible three dimensional works with neon lights and Lucite. We left our car at the Villa and climbed the tree-lined Via del Monte delle Croce to catch the best views of the city from the Piazzale Michelangelo. We visited the starkly beautiful interior of the Basilica of San Miniato and walked through its terraced cemetery of family vaults and ornate tombs accompanied by music emanating from the basilica as a middle-aged monk drew beauty from the great organ within.