Seeing Italy

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T10:42:00.000-08:00

There's no snow here in Chicago, but both Christmas Eve and Christmas day have been sunny and clear--unheard of! Yesterday I actually took a bike ride along the lakefront. That is not entirely unheard of--about five or six years ago it was about 60 degrees on Christmas Eve, and I took the opportunity to go for a ride back then too. It was definitely colder this time, but not painfully so. I wasn't the only person getting a ride in yesterday!

Nothing about my family's holiday traditions is particularly European, except for possibly the focus on home, hearth, and family--which of course are valued among humans everywhere. Whether you celebrate Christmas or are just enjoying a day off, I hope you have the comfort of people you love around you.

an unusual flower

2011-11-23T04:54:00.000-08:00

I thought at first that this bush had produced an unusual hot-pink flower in late fall, but then I looked closer--it's a lost glove.

A new building?

2011-11-14T05:55:00.000-08:00

How come I never noticed this beautiful structure before?! Oh wait--it's a trompe l'oeil mural on the side of a bank in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago.

Seeing Brittany? Cape Ann, Massachusetts

2011-11-12T08:21:00.000-08:00

Confession: I have never been to the Brittany region of France, but from the photos I've seen, it looks very much like the coast around the towns and villages surrounding Boston. I've visited the area regularly to visit my brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, who live in one of the towns along the South Shore. We always pick a day to visit a small town or two. On this most recent visit, we went to Rockport, Massachusetts, which is on Cape Ann near Gloucester. (Gloucester, you may recall, is the port from which the doomed fishermen of A Perfect Storm set sail.) I'm sure there are tons of visitors in the summer, but we were there in early November.

I love the waterfront geography here--the rocky shores, the little houses all clustered together.

I love the look of weathered wood.

Another day, my brother had to do some business in New Bedford, and I have an old friend who lives there, so while he was busy she and I caught up. New Bedford is a major port and has a large Portuguese and Portuguese-American population. Of course, for me, that means good food. My brother and I went to lunch at Antonio's, where I had the "Chicken Algarvia," kind of a Portuguese-style paella--rice with tomato broth and filled with chicken, shrimp, and clams. When it came out, I gasped--it could've served 10 people easily.


Of course we brought it home.

the end of summer

2011-09-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

It's Labor Day, the traditional end of summer in the U.S. Despite the season's late start this year and a lot of rain, I feel like I had a pretty good one. I enjoyed an outdoor pool near where I live and really made the most of the lakefront. I didn't get to travel as much as I would have liked, but Seeing Italy is all about seeing beauty wherever you are.

It's good to know someone with a boat!

The lily pond in Lincoln Park is a hidden treasure where you can hide from the heat, the noise, and the crowds of the North Side.

At twilight, a waveless lake can look iridescent.

Backyard hammock.

Buckingham Fountain at night.

This summer I was all about the fruit cobbler--blueberry or peach. It may not look like much, but it's good--and so easy. Cobblers are a lifesaver when you've got fruit about to go bad.

The outdoor pool in my neighborhood. Wish it stayed open past Labor Day.

Part of the best skyline in the world.


I finally downloaded Hipstamatic.

City and prairie--taken from Northerly Island.

Clouds are underappreciated.

spicy fish soup

2011-08-16T10:13:00.000-07:00

I've made this fish soup about four or five times in the past six weeks. It's delicious, easy, and perfect for summer (tomatoes!), but it also offers an excellent opportunity to show you how you can take some shortcuts on an "official" recipe to make it slightly less complicated to shop for and make.

Let's start with the fish. No need to buy four types of seafood or go to Whole Paycheck's fish counter. I get Trader Joe's frozen White Ruffy, which is a mild-flavored, slightly flaky fish, but it still holds its shape well enough to work well in the soup. Plus it's easy to break off one fillet, so you can make a small batch of soup at a time--great if you live on your own, since you don't really want to have fishy things sitting around in your fridge for too long. And it defrosts fast too. (I know you're not supposed to defrost fish under hot water, but whatevs, I've been doing it for years.)

Second, the tomatoes. In tomato season I use whatever I get from the farmers' market, and I certainly don't bother to peel them. In non-tomato season, it's all about the canned stuff.

Parsley: I never have this around so I don't bother. I do have a rosemary plant however, and you should too, since the prices stores charge for fresh herbs are ridick.

White wine: Surely you have a bottle open already. If not, why not? Wine makes life better. In a pinch, you could use dry vermouth.

The one thing I do do to make this slightly more complicated is that instead of adding plain water, I typically use some homemade broth stashed in the freezer. But this is easy too--it just requires some forethought. For the first few batches, I used shrimp broth I made months and months ago with shrimp shells left over from another dish. Then I ran out of shrimp broth, but I still didn't want to use plain water. Luckily I had some vegetable broth in there too, which I made a while ago by boiling whatever vegetables hanging out in the crisper that were not yet moldy but had passed their prime. I spiked with a few drops of fish sauce. Delicious.

So that's it. Totally easy, yummy, and healthy too. If you don't like spicy, you can cut out the red pepper, but frankly I think it makes the dish.

beach vacation

2011-05-15T08:04:00.000-07:00

I'm not much for dedicated beach vacations. Generally I prefer vacations with lots of things to do and see. Lying around for several days? No thanks. I think the last beach vacation I took was in college a couple decades ago, when I went with some friends to Jamaica. (And had a great time, I might add.)

Maybe it was the long winter this year, or just that I needed to relax, but suddenly the prospect of doing very little except looking over some water under a hot sun sounded great. So I booked a trip to Isla Mujeres, Mexico, in April, and it turned out to be just what I wanted--pretty beaches, laid-back so I could relax, but with enough to do over about five days so I didn't get bored.

Although it's just a 20-minute ferry ride from Cancun, Isla Mujeres is still an antidote to Cancun's spring break, party-til-you-drop mentality. Although development does seem to be picking up, it still resembles a small Mexican village in many ways, down to the occasional chicken picking its way through the streets.

I went by myself and had a great time. Snorkeling was perhaps my favorite part. I used my swimming goggles to check out the fish hanging out near some rocky bits by the hotel beach, and also went on a group outing to snorkel around an underwater installation of sculptures that is part of the Museo Subacuatico de Arte. Having all these fish flit around so close to me was a wild experience! The group on the tour was terrific--two women from Australia whose parents were from Spain, so they chatted in those raspy Spanish accents with one of the tour guides, who also happened to be originally from Spain; their boyfriends; and a mother/daughter from Minnesota.

I stayed the perfect amount of time--any longer and I would have been fried to a crisp. I'm not all that fair, but that sun was powerful and very hard to avoid, especially since I was out and about riding a rented bike, going to lunch in the town, etc. And since I was by myself, getting sunblock on my back was a challenge! I got pretty red in places, but no major damage, luckily. I don't think I could live in such a climate, but it is really a treat to be able to visit.

lunch is served

2011-05-10T11:06:00.000-07:00

I recently got the OK to work at home once a week, and I couldn't have picked a better day this week than today--it's sunny and really warm, finally--about 80 degrees! Spring has been sooo slow to start here--even at the end of April the trees barely had buds--so this is most welcome. Too bad it's supposed to cool off a little for the weekend . . .

Working from home means a yummier lunch than frozen Trader Joe's meals (they're good, but still frozen meals) or the Corner Bakery. I've been eating a lot of vegetables at home. Asparagus of course are in season right now. I usually just broil them with some olive oil and salt, although there are some more really delicious ways to prepare them here. A poached egg adds some protein . . . and I've really been into this capocollo and Calabrese salami lately. A tiny drop of red wine, and I feel so European eating on my newly flower- and plant-filled balcony.

Think I'll sneak out later for a quick bike ride and/or a swim at the pool--if only the outdoor pools were open!

chiuso per vacanze

2011-04-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

I'm off for vacation for a few days--not Italy though, nor France. It's somewhere closer that I've never been before, but it's not completely unfamiliar. I'll be back soon with some photos and hopefully some good stories!

Italy videos

2011-04-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

I just realized I never posted any of the short videos I took during my trip to Italy last spring.

Here's a taste of the peace and quiet in Parco Maremma.

Also in the park--an animal or insect was making a very loud, strange, slightly alarming noise.

And finally . . . there were a lot of foxes running around, including a pair that at first I thought were a couple dogs owned by the people walking ahead of me. I wasn't quick enough to get them but I did spot this guy a little later.

Sounds of Italy

2011-03-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

Oh no! Thanks to Just Another American in Paris I think I just found yet another way to procrastinate on the Internet. She posted about the Freesound Project, a site on which you can search for ambient noises and other sounds from all over the world. I haven't found too many great files for Italy, but here are a few worth a listen:

Sigh. I want to be there!

&@$%!!!

2011-03-26T17:23:00.000-07:00

OK, so this has nothing to do with Italy, but this was the sight that greeted me outside today. My car up on a cement block and two whole wheels missing. Apparently early 80s cars are popular amongst the gangsta set for pimping out, and Honda Fit wheels are--well, a perfect fit. I found out today (after ranting on Facebook--thank God for being able to rant on Facebook!) that the same thing happened to a friend with a Fit a year ago, only they took all four wheels. There's a pretty decent police presence in my neighborhood, so they must have been really fast. And in a hurry--they left two lug nuts behind. So I've got that to make me feel better.

I have insurance, but it'll still cost me $250 (on top of shelling out $260 for a traffic ticket this past week), and of course it's a huge hassle. I will be buying a set of locking lug nuts tomorrow.

In the big picture I know this is not a big problem, especially since I have the money to handle it, but it still rankles, of course. Luckily a friend offered to buy me a drink. Alcohol--the solution to, and cause of, life's problems.

la neve

2011-02-06T12:34:00.000-08:00

Wednesday morning, February 2, 2011, around the corner from where I live.

It's not very Italy-like around here with all the snow, unless you're talking about the Valle d'Aosta or perhaps the Alto Adige (but we don't have any mountains around here, except for the ones the snowplows have made at every corner). I had hoped we'd sneak past winter this year without a big snowstorm, but old man winter packed a wallop last week. Not sure of the totals, but I bet it was at least 18 inches.

Chicagoans are old hands at dealing with snow and we've got the equipment for it, but the storm still caused a lot of chaos, especially on Lake Shore Drive, where some drivers were stuck for several hours and even all night when the snow started piling up around them. Firefighters finally had to rescue them and the cars were stuck there for at least a day or so while the cleanup went on. But really, any Chicagoan worth his or her rock salt knows to avoid LSD in rainstorms, much less a major, major blizzard that was forecast for days ahead of time.

The cleanup continues, as does an old Chicago tradition of saving the parking space you shoveled out while freeing your car with patio furniture, milk crates, or maybe some faux-architectural garden decor.

Bet the ancient Greeks never imagined their architecture would inspire so many creative applications.

I opted not to "dibs," as the practice is known, because I think it's tacky. A lot of people are doing it, but fortunately I haven't had much trouble finding an open space in the neighborhood when I get home.

Art Institute day

2011-01-25T11:49:00.000-08:00

It was my birthday a couple days ago, and since I went all-out last year I didn't do much--a friend took me out to dinner, I invited some friends to a bar, and I took the following day off from work and went to go see a movie.

A lot of my friends have January birthdays too, so on Sunday I went with friend Gwen and some others to the Art Institute of Chicago to get some culcha. Even though I think the high was like 15 degrees, it was a perfect day to go because of the Bears/Packers championship game, and consequently the crowds were light. As in, no crowds. As in, stare at that painting for as long as you want without someone breathing down your neck and getting in your space, causing you to seethe silently and despise all of humanity, then feel guilty for being such a misanthrope. OK, maybe the last part is just me.

We started out seeing watercolors by John Marin, who was also Georgia O'Keeffe's husband. I actually liked his drawings better, particularly one of a boat that was just a series of short lines, really, and then an image of a canal in Amsterdam made of all horizontal lines. Most of his watercolors didn't thrill me but his technique was really interesting--he would scratch lines in the paint, let it pool down, draw little dots around the painting, etc. It made for some very kinetic works and you could see the influence or at least awareness of the same forces that caused Cubism. A lot of movement in those paintings.

I always have to go visit the European paintings from before 1900, although I wish they had more Dutch and Flemish paintings on view. They always have tons of works by Monet and Van Gogh, who are not my favorite. They just don't move me on an emotional level. My favorite work on this visit was "The Maid" by Francois Bonvin, for the bright red coat and the way it reminds me of a Vermeer. The photo doesn't do it justice. It's like a little jewel, small and shiny and precious. I also like to look at the Hubert Robert paintings of romantic ruins. They're not actual ruins--I don't think there are many that oversized in Rome, except for maybe the Colosseum and the Baths of Caracalla. There are four of his paintings in one gallery, and they're so big you get the feeling you could walk into them and chat with the women gathering water at the fountains and other passersby. In fact I vaguely remember a childhood book where the protagonist did exactly that with some murals.

The Art Institute itself is actually a beautiful Beaux Arts building constructed for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. Today the Modern Wing gets all the attention, but I love the old building, with its pretty courtyards and arches. There are some lovely and peaceful little parks with fountains on either side of the building as well, which never seem to be that crowded.

We finished the day with wine (a Rosso Conero from Le Marche region of Italy) and delicious food at Purple Pig, which I had wanted to visit for a while but it was always too crowded and rather noisy. Thanks to getting there around 4 PM and the Bears/Packers game, they had plenty of open tables and we had a fun, peaceful meal. The pig's ear is the thing to get, but we passed on it for this visit. We did have bone marrow on toast with salt, capers, and parsley; anchovies with arugula, puntarelle (a green that is really rare on these shores) and orange; caponata; whipped feta with cucumbers; fried balls of butternut squash and sage; and jamon serrano with wild mushrooms and a fried egg on bread. It was really delicious and I highly recommend this place.

The day made me wish I worked downtown instead of having to drive to the suburbs every day! There are so many little parks you can relax in and the lake gives a great feeling of expansiveness. In fact I'm coming to realize that living near a large body of water is more important to me than I had realized.

and thus endeth the gluttony

2010-12-31T17:37:00.000-08:00

...well, almost. There's still tonight!

My Christmas Eve dinner was a success. I decided not to make the homemade pasta though. Or rather, I did make a batch of dough, and then I realized that my pasta machine is really terrible. I never thought it was that great anyway but I couldn't even get it to cut the flattened dough effectively--I ended up with a mass of not-quite-completely-cut strands that stuck together. I tried to hand-cut a few but it was too labor intensive. I would have had to make another batch for my guests and I knew I would be too stressed out, so I jettisoned that idea. There was more than enough food already anyway. Which included this beef tenderloin, potatoes mashed with parsnips, and these brussels sprouts. My friend brought triple-cream cheese with fig jam for an appetizer, then we had vin santo (which I carried over myself from Tuscany last May) and cantuccini. The meat turned out really well. I was concerned about overcooking it--I made a leg of lamb last Easter and it cooked faster than I expected, so it ended up being medium to medium-well. It was still good, but I was disappointed. So with the tenderloin I probably checked it with the meat thermometer about five times. All my guests were pleased. I had a lot left over so I sent some home with people and have been eating it cold too. Unfortunately I was too busy cooking to get some pictures.

After everyone left, I realized it had snowed, and I took a bunch of photos of the snow-covered limbs of the tree outside my building.. Then I just sat on my couch with the lights off staring at the Christmas tree. I was really in a state of zen joy that I can't really explain. I didn't want to stop looking at it, so I ended up sleeping on the couch!

And now it's New Year's Eve. I'm not a huge fan of going out and kind of wanted to stay home. But now I'm going to stop off at a friend's for a drink on the early side and then may hit another friend's party later if I'm up for it. It's just as well--I bought some pre-prepared foie gras that I was really excited about eating, and it was terrible. Totally inedible--it had a really pronounced metallic taste. At $35 for two slices, that shouldn't happen. I'm going to call the little wine store I bought it from and see if I can get a refund. But the wine--a bottle of Petite Syrah 2007 from Vincent Arroyo that I bought in Napa last year--was, is, excellent.

And fortunately it's been unusually warm today--50s during the day (although rainy) and only going down to the 40s tonight, so maybe I can wear a short dress without freezing.

Happy New Year!

Christmas decor

2010-12-19T13:42:00.000-08:00

I was pretty pleased with my efforts at Christmas trimming this year, especially the wreaths, which I made myself (ahem).

"What is this thing doing on my napping spot?"

Unfortunately Christmas shopping makes me cranky and now I'm getting sick. Still, I seem to have more Christmas cheer this year than usual, a good thing since I'm having people over for dinner Christmas Eve. I have been looking longingly at recipes for pot-au-feu, which would seem to be a terrific special-occasion dish, but I know all the shopping and preparation on my own is a little too ambitious. Instead I'm thinking of some type of rib roast, plus homemade pasta. And then vin santo and cantuccini for dessert.

Wherever you are, Joyeux Noel, Buon Natale, Merry Christmas, Auguri, and Happy New Year!

Seeing France in New Orleans

2010-12-04T09:52:00.000-08:00

Poor ignored blog! I have meant to put something up for a while if only to push that picture of the dead pig further down.

My friend and I were talking about possibly going to France with her husband's band this fall--well, that ended up getting downgraded to a weekend in New Orleans. New Orleans is kind of like France--but with more crime and to-go cups!

The good news is that the city really is coming back, albeit largely due to the blood, sweat, and toil of the residents, who are really dedicated to their home. And rightly so. New Orleans is a true cultural treasure. There is no place like it in the United States thanks to its history--which I learned a lot about thanks to Cassady, my guide on a Confederacy of Cruises bike tour. Check them out if you go--NO is a great place to explore on two wheels.

We didn't go into the lower 9th Ward, which I understand is still in kind of bad shape, but we did go into other areas of the 9th Ward where some houses were boarded up and you could still see the spraypainted symbols from emergency teams as they searched for survivors and bodies. Still, the area seemed lively and upbeat, which was nice to see.

Cassady, our tour guide

Cassady was a rolling encyclopedia of all things New Orleans. I mentioned I had stopped to get coffee and a muffin at a cafe near the meeting point and he told me about the history of the name of the cafe and probably knew the owners too.

I didn't take too many pictures of food, unfortunately. We did eat a lot of oysters, and our best meal was at Cochon, a contemporary Cajun place that several people recommended to us. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I don't care much for Creole food--it's not my favorite. Cajun, yes, but most traditional restaurants in New Orleans (Emeril's, Commander's Palace, etc) are Creole-inspired, not Cajun. But as you might expect, the town excels at French and French-inspired fare, so our second night we went to Lilette and were not disappointed.

People are so friendly down there too. Cassady said if we got lost or needed a restaurant recommendation to ask a local: "He might mug you later but he'll give you good information!" We didn't get mugged but we did meet a lot of nice folks.


A mobile barbecue smoker

It was the middle of November, but it was quite warm and sunny--in the mid to upper 70s, maybe even 80 our last day there. Of course, facing the onset of real winter weather at home, I thought about how nice it would be to enjoy mild temperatures through the colder months. On the other hand, summers there must be a challenge.

My next house? I wish.

It's all about taking it easy and enjoying life.

I'm too old and mired in the bad housing market to consider moving anywhere else at this point, but if I had a good reason to I'd definitely move to New Orleans. At least I'd like to visit it more often. Actually, I think I am just a little jealous of New Orleanians, the way I am jealous of Italian or French people. It must be nice to be born into that culture and live it every day--something I'll never be able to do no matter how much I try to emulate it.

sick day

2010-08-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

A little summer cold has caught up with me so I decided to stay home from work today. Sometimes I think these short little illnesses are the body's wait of telling us we need to take a break and slip out of the daily grind, so I try to listen. It's nice to be able to lie around all day and nap without feeling guilty about it. Unfortunately, deadlines march on so I do need to do some work, but at least I can do it in bed.

Here are some photos from this summer:

Micheladas are all I want to drink lately.

A turbulent sky over Lake Michigan.

Writing on the balcony. Why yes, that is a manual typewriter. I prefer to use it for writing fiction in the early stages--seems less like work.

Family members from various generations at our reunion in Lake Geneva this summer.

Reader, I ate it. This is a roast pig we had last night at a friend's house. They didn't barbecue it themselves though--they left that to an expert. 'Twas tasty. I should have taken an after photo too.

Seeing Italy in Rome

2010-07-24T09:30:00.000-07:00

More pictures . . .

The Ponte Sant'Angelo at sunset--truly a magical hour in Rome.

Fiori (flowers) in Trastevere.


A fried artichoke at La Taverna del Ghetto

Another street-art interpretation of the Madonna and child.

Granita all' caffe--coffee ice and cream, perfect on a hot day.

A fountain, a possibly ancient tub, and a tiny car--that's Rome.

seeing Italy in Italy

2010-07-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

I returned from my trip almost two months ago but work has been a nonstop joyride since then, so I've been ignoring this little blog.

I fell a little out of love with Rome on this trip--not entirely, but if we are having a love affair, we are at the point where I start to see flaws and am getting a little bit annoyed on a daily basis. I might say, "Let's spend a little more time apart, shall we?" in the hopes that absence will bring the magic back a little bit.

I'm not sure why this was so--possibly it had something to do with some major work issues just before I left, which caused not a little emotional drama for me, not to mention a broken shoulder blade that was still causing me some pain (although I was given the OK by the doctor to go on the trip). Ironically it was probably the most fun and busiest vacation I've ever had there. I met up with NYC Caribbean Ragazza, aka Arlene, at the Caffe Farnese, went to a wine tasting at Vinoroma, met up with friends at their home outside the city, and hung out with a friend who was in town with Pavement.

This was very much an "outside" trip. I didn't feel like going inside museums or churches, for the most part. I had a few things I wanted to see again (some of them for research on a possible book), but mostly I just wandered. And ate.

This was an entryway on the street where I stayed in Trastevere in an apartment. (My front door was covered in graffiti, which is charming in a different way.) I got to look at it for a while as I waited about an hour and a half for the guy from the rental agency to show up. The jasmine was in bloom all over Rome and it perfumed my visit.

Rigatoni all'amatriciana at the no-frills trattoria in the piazza down the street from my place, served by a slim, supremely diffident twentysomething guy whose family owns the place.

I love taking pictures of peeling posters and patchy walls. I have a Polaroid of some peeling wood in Venice that is one of my favorite photos ever.

In general the window displays in Rome pale to those in Paris, but I liked this one, which references the dominant tones of Rome--ocher and mustard. In fact I saw a man holding up paint chips to the yellow wall in a courtyard of a church.

Peeling street art.

I went to an extremely enjoyable wine tasting at Vinoroma, which you can read more about here. Unfortunately my scent-identifying abilities have degraded once again--wine just smells like wine once again. I really have to concentrate and think about it to say what the wine smells and tastes like, when I just want to get to the drinking.

More to come!

Venice in Chicago

2010-05-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

I have often been intrigued by this Venetian-style palazzo on north Lake Shore Drive, one of a very few old mansions left on LSD. While googling for more information, I discovered that it is for sale. For just $4.4 million (marked down from $5.8 million in 2008), you could own this gem, built in 1895 by the architecturally and historically prestigious firm of Holabird & Roche.

Real estate blogs talk about the rooftop deck, but I love that romantic balcony. Of course LSD isn't exactly the Grand Canal and you'll be treated to the sounds of traffic rather than crooning gondoliere, but I love the folly of the place.

current food obsession

2010-04-19T09:17:00.000-07:00

Castelvetrano olives--bright green and tender, the taste the very essence of olive-yness. Even better with some olive oil drizzled over them to notch up the flavor.

In other news, I have scored a room at an agriturismo (with half board, so I don't have to worry about being the only single woman eating dinner in a restaurant) in the Maremma, an area of Tuscany I have always wanted to visit. It's known more for its natural beauty than for art and churches. So looking forward to wandering around the Maremma Park.

Sweet new Italian ride!

2010-04-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

No, I did not buy an Alfa Romeo. But a vintage ladies' Chiorda off Craigslist is almost as good!

I have been riding around in scarf and sunglasses, liberally dispensing "Ciao"'s to passersby.

got a ticket for an aeroplane

2010-04-01T09:03:00.000-07:00

I'm going back to Italy for the first time in five years! That is really too long to go without re-experiencing the peninsula, but that's what buying a condo will do to your budget. I'm planning on staying in Rome for about half the time to reacquaint myself with the other city that is the love of my life and see some old friends (and hopefully meet up with some expats whose blogs I read regularly), and then stay at an agriturismo somewhere, probably in Tuscany, for the rest of the time. I'm thinking about somewhere near the water, which I didn't get to as often as I would have liked on past trips. I'd love to do a return to the Cinque Terre, since the weather was so disappointingly chilly, rainy, and overcast when I went--but I think that might be impractical and frankly kinda boring. I'd also love to go to some of the less-visited cities and regions in the south, like Matera and Puglia, but this trip is definitely for revisiting old places.

The photo is a Polaroid from some gardens in Rome. During the last few months of my stay in 2002, I decided to trade the digital camera for more old-school photography to try to see details and landscapes in a different way.

the old neighborhood

2010-03-27T11:08:00.001-07:00

Here's a view of Via Buonarroti (as in Michelangelo), the street I lived on in Rome, courtesy of Google Earth. My building was the pinky-beige one on the left, by the green car. It was small and a bit institutional-looking--the landlord rented it out furnished exclusively to expats--but more than serviceable. My room looked over a walled-in little courtyard that the bakery next door used as storage. I would occasionally be woken up by the sound of bags of flour being flung into a pile--WHUMP! WHUMP!

That greenery in the distance is Piazza Vittorio Emanuele (not to be confused with the "wedding cake" monument of the same name). Although it's surrounded by gracious 19th-century covered colonnades, when I lived there the piazza was run-down and slightly seedy. Certain days it hosted a food market, which evolved to cater to the immigrants who settled in the area as well as native Romans; it was moved to a nearby location while the piazza was renovated and cleaned up. My friends tell me it's a nicer area now--I'll have to check it out when I go back in May.

contemporary Italian art

2010-02-15T06:21:00.000-08:00

I managed to get to the exhibit "Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution 1968–2008" at the Museum of Contemporary Art before it closed yesterday.
This was one of my favorite pieces, Mario Ceroli’s Le bandiere di tutto il mondo (Flags of the Whole World). It's made of long zinc containers filled with different colored substances--bright red, pink, green dust; charcoal; glass, etc. I didn't see the title or read about it while I was looking at it--I just enjoyed its sheer existence, like a child's paint palette magnified 1,000 percent. There were several signs warning viewers not to touch but I did spy some finger impressions on one end.

Other works that caught my attention included a series of Polaroids by Carlo Mollino and little brightly colored, oddly cheerful doodles by Vanessa Beecroft that were like a combination of animation cels and Daily Candy-like, fashiony sketches--but featuring elongated women throwing up or involved in other vaguely disturbing actions. There was also a black-lit room criss-crossed in white thread that made me feel like I was in Tron.

It was good to see some Italian art other than the ancient and Renaissance-era stuff that the country is known for, although I can't say I came away with any sort of enhanced knowledge about the scene or the country, but perhaps that's because I already know a fair bit about it. I also took my standard approach when viewing art at museums: I just look at what draws my attention and ignore what doesn't. I don't believe you have to look at every single piece of art in a museum, or even that you should. It makes art into homework. Art is not always meant to be understood--it is meant to be experienced. And if the experience of a particular work doesn't mean anything to you--that's OK.

more tales from the past: a visit to Sermoneta

2010-02-02T09:08:00.001-08:00

The courtyard of the medieval castle in Sermoneta, Italia

Here's another entry from the home page I kept while living in Rome in 2001-2002. I used to do little trips around Lazio with my friends Roberto and Rachel once in a while--this was one such excursion.

12/3/2001
This past weekend I went to the tiny hillside village of Sermoneta, not too far south of Rome, with Roberto and Rachel for Rachel’s birthday. It was good timing for me because I’d been wanting to get away for awhile. Surprisingly my guidebook says very little about the town, but Roberto says it is quite popular with Romans for day trips.

When we got in we were starving, so we went to the first trattoria we saw, called the Black Rose. It was good food but we were there for about 45 minutes before our first courses came! I had some really great tortellone filled with porcini mushrooms and truffles, and lamb for a secondo. Rachel had tortellone filled with vegetables and ricotta, but I liked mine better.

We walked about for a bit afterward. There aren’t too many people in Sermoneta, and we couldn’t even find an ATM! It’s very hilly so we did a lot of walking up and down. For dinner we went to Il Mulino, which advertised as its specialty ‘pollo Lucrezia Borgia,’ aka chicken a la Lucrezia Borgia. Roberto asked what it was but they said it was a secret. (Lucrezia was poisoned—yikes!) [Note: I got my facts wrong here--she was rumored to poison other people.] He did order it but I’m not sure we ever figured out what the sauce was—maybe egg and something else. I was still kind of stuffed from lunch and so had homemade fettucine with ragu, and a salad. For dessert I had crepes filled with ice cream with fruit on top. Mm. The proprietor was a sweet old guy and he gave us some amaro on the house. There wasn’t much to do afterward except walk around again and look at the stars. It was really quiet! You couldn’t even hear the highway too well, surprising since it’s not exactly in the middle of nowhere, like towns in Tuscany. It was nice to listen to owls hooting and bats clicking. Except in my room I kept hearing this weird tapping noise, which I became convinced was a ghost. Well, I thought it was probably my bed or the heater, but I couldn’t quite locate the source. It woke me up around 4 or 5 and I couldn’t get back to bed. Aside from being a little freaked out by the sound, I was bothered by the fact that it wasn’t on regular beats, so I was always waiting for another tap. I thought, if this gets worse I’m going to knock on Rachel and Roberto’s door, because they had an extra bed in their room! Instead I just dug around and found some earplugs. I did still hear some even louder sounds a few times but I was determined to ignore the ghost, and so managed to fall asleep until Rachel woke me up at 10 for breakfast. I was surprised she beat me up—R and R are always saying they sleep til 12 on weekends. But she had actually woken up at 8!

We ran up to the castle for the hourly tour. It was actually pretty impressive and well preserved. The Caetani family used to own it, and after they died out in the 1980s a private foundation they started ran it. I guess at some point it was also owned by the Borgias, and Lucrezia Borgia lived there (hence the chicken). There was a hole where they used to pour actual boiling oil on invaders, a covered passageway by which the soldiers walked from one lookout point to the other if they were under attack, some pretty frescoes in the private rooms by a pupil of Pinturicchio’s, etc etc.

When we left we decided to take a detour to the neighboring (and much larger) town of Norma. This was not very interesting; indeed it was a bit decrepit and grim, looking like it had just survived the war. So we headed over to Antica Norba, the ruins of the Roman settlement. This was actually quite nice. There are really only foundations and the like left, stones scattered all about, but there were some great views to the west, all the way out to the sea. Plus there were sheep, who every time I got withing 20 feet of them skittered away en masse, cowbells (or is that sheep bells) clanging, and hanggliders up there! That looked wonderful, like flying. One guy came quite near to us, so that we could hear him whistling.

Then we were starving, so we just managed to squeak in to a restaurant for lunch. I had some great prosciutto, salami, cheese, olives, and bruschetta for an appetizer, then some good veal. Dessert was torta al limone. Quite good. There were a few families having Sunday brunch there, including one that was an 80th birthday party for nonna, who at some points looked like she was going to plop face-first into her plate. Then it was a long drive home, and R and R were kind enough to drive me all the way home, even though I said they should just drop me off at the metro stop. Those guys are the best. We were all tired, and then they had to go right to Roberto’s mom’s house for another birthday fest for Rachel! Yes, being feted is tough.

Good Living in the Napa Valley

2010-01-30T10:13:00.000-08:00

Even Italy can get pretty cold in January, so instead I went to California's Napa Valley to celebrate my mmph-mmphth birthday. It had vineyards, cypress trees, and even a faux Tuscan castle. And, oh yes, amazing food. I think I ate my body weight. We ate out every lunch and dinner, and I have to say my digestive system handled it a lot better than I thought it would--perhaps because the food is so fresh and local.

Grits with egg, whipped goat cheese and "bacon" at Ubuntu. I just wish this hadn't come last because it was so delicious and we were kind of full at that point.

Spiced sirloin steak with trumpet mushrooms and quinoa with carrots at Ad Hoc. What does it mean when one restaurant stands out among a group of amazing restaurants? Something good.

Lunch at Bottega courtesy of my aunt and uncle. After a tough morning of wine tasting, we were momentarily dismayed by the sight of my uncle toting a bottle of Champagne and two bottles of wine--but we quickly recovered and did ourselves proud.

In an attempt to work off some of the food, we took a quick walk in the Bothe-Napa Valley State Forest. I guess in California green = winter.

There were also mud baths, massages, and a dip in an Olympic-sized pool heated by geysers. When can I go back?

2010-01-05T12:49:00.000-08:00

Here's one of the few photos from Rome I have access to (most are locked up in an ancient laptop with a cracked screen--getting them off there has been on my to-do list for a while). This is taken from the Piazza del Campidoglio , possibly the most architecturally pleasing piazza in the world. That's the horrible Vittorio Emannuele monument on the far left (it's just behind the piazza), the extremely ancient church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli in the middle, and Palazzo Nuovo on the right. (You can also see the back of one of the statues of the Dioscuri.)

Palazzo Nuovo is one of three buildings around the square that house the Capitoline Museums, which is worth a visit if you are at all interested in ancient sculpture. They own well-known pieces like the Dying Gaul (if you duck you can see his cheesy mustache) and the Colossus of Constantine. However, I was most charmed by a room full of anonymous busts of men and women. Detached from any sort of pressure to appreciate historical and aesthetic significance, the life of a young woman with a gravity-defying hairdo seems much less remote.

new year's day

2010-01-04T13:08:00.000-08:00

I was pretty happy with my New Year's Day brunch get-together. I gave a nod to Italian and French cuisine by making a prosciutto and goat cheese strata, Sicilian orange and fennel salad, and crepes (chocolate or lemon and sugar). The strata is assembled ahead of time, and crepes are easy. Knowing I'd have little time to cook much else thanks to work, I bought some frozen potato pancakes at Trader Joe's, which are actually really good (and so much easier than ricing and squeezing tons of potatoes!), and croissants. For drinks we had mimosas with both Champagne (well, sparkling wine) and prosecco. A friend brought some Hoppin' John so we even had black-eyed peas for good luck and prosperity. Another friend bought an absolutely amazing coffee cake filled with sweet cheese, which I am slowly, very slowly, nibbling away at. It was a good group of friends both old and new, although as always when hostessing I was sorry I didn't get to talk to people at length.

In further imitation of Italo-French culture, I am now attempting to eat like a little European bird to offset the holiday binging as well as the creeping on of poundage thanks to my desk job. My assistant in this endeavor is an iPhone app called Lose It! I'm soon off to to the Napa Valley for a weekend of wine and food, so the next couple weeks really have to be lean.

My phrase for 2010 is "faith"--not in the religious sense, but rather to have faith in myself, in other people, and that things will work out somehow (and if not entirely to my liking, to have faith that I can accept them).

waspy

2010-01-02T08:13:00.000-08:00

An abandoned wasps' nest in a tree. Or maybe they're just sleeping 'til summer.

new year's eve

2009-12-31T07:56:00.000-08:00

On New Year's Eve 2001 I was in Siracusa (Syracuse), Sicily, with my then-boyfriend M. I remember the next day the euro officially debuted. Sicily was not my favorite place but I would probably go back just for the food.

From the home page I kept at the time:

... A very ancient city indeed. In those days it [Siracusa] was generally limited to the island of Ortygia (which is only about 300 feet away from the mainland), and Ortygia is where we generally looked around, the rest of Siracusa being generally modern and uninteresting. One very odd highlight, if you can call it that, of the modern part is a very strange church built around a statue of the Madonna that was said to weep. Hence the building is supposed to resemble a tear. It’s just ugly, like a big evangelical church you’d see on the side of the highway in Kansas or something.

Ortygia itself is not that big. Almost all of the buildings date from after 1693, when there was a devastating earthquake. Giovanni Lanza took the opportunity to refit the entire city in the Baroque style, again not my favorite. But there were plenty of winding narrow streets, lovely decrepit buildings, and of course, great views of the Ionian sea. The first day there, while meandering through we stumbled on quite a good restaurant that wasn’t in any of our books, but we noticed a Slow Food sticker on the door, so we decided to go off the book for once. Mike had some really excellent shrimp, like nothing I’ve ever tasted. They were barely cooked and quite sweet. I had some sort of tiny fish fried that look like extremely small transparent squid or something. Everything was fresh fresh fresh needless to say.

That first day we also noticed a man selling raw sea urchins in one of the piazzas. You can just eat them raw right there. I really wish we had bought some then, but we weren’t in the mood—it was a bit early—and we thought we’d see him again. But we never did! I think sea urchins may be overfished around there—and he did have sort of a shifty look about him. We also had some great fruit juices—I had some good lemon juice and another day we got fresh squeezed orange juice, with blood oranges. Another day we stopped at an alimentari by the daily market and picked out some cheese and salami. Then we asked the guy about bread, and he gave us some really great stuff, spicy and with bits of olives in it. I wish I knew the name of it. One night we were too stuffed to eat a big dinner, so we just stopped at a panino hut, which seemed to be very popular. They had all types of sandwiches, including…horse meat! So of course M. had to get it. It was tasty—like beef only more so. But I just kept thinking of poor Mr. Ed.

We were in Siracusa for New Year’s Eve. For some reason I felt like we had to go to dinner, so we made a reservation at a nice place. Of course we ended up not being hungry at all, and we were facing a 7-course meal. It was not even that wonderful. At midnight they gave us a bottle of sparkling wine. I didn't really want to be inside the restaurant at midnight, but there was no way we could leave with the bottle without looking like jerks, so we stayed. Afterward we just walked around for a bit, watching drunk people and trying to avoid fireworks set off in the street. Then we went home and tried to ignore the huge patches of mold on the wall of our room. Happy 2002!

For me, I hope 2010 brings a lot more travel, to Italy and elsewhere! May the New Year be joyful and prosperous for you and yours.

Christmas in Italy

2009-12-23T11:44:00.001-08:00

I spent one Christmas in Italy, the year I lived in Rome. The holiday is typically a little more spartan than Americans are used to--there are some lights, of course, but decorations are pretty low on glitz for the most part. There also aren't many Christmas trees--instead everyone pours their energy into presepi, or Nativity scenes. These can get pretty elaborate, with tableaux not only of the holy family but of village scenes, such as women drawing water from the well or even, I remember, a pizza baker, who shoveled a pizza in and out of an oven. Other versions take more artistic tacks--I saw one that was artfully created out of twisted and folded paper, origami-style.

Not that there isn't a festive atmosphere--people are out shopping, of course; the air smells of roasted chestnuts being sold in paper cones on the corner; and there's a Christmas market in Piazza Navona. I remember loading up on amazing profiteroles from a bakery in my neighborhood, having Christmas lunch at Agata e Romeo, listening to choral singers at Santa Maria Maggiore, and for some reason watching Pope JP's midnight mass on TV.

However, it's always nice to be with lots of friends and family at the holidays. I am currently hoping that the ice storm in Chicago today passes in time for me to make it to Boston tomorrow so I don't have to spend Christmas Eve alone and Christmas at O'Hare! Fingers crossed.

more tales of Italy

2009-12-16T15:01:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd post a few entries now and then from my old home page from when I lived in Rome. A home page, kids, was kind of a proto-blog. The main difference is that I was writing for friends and family--there was no expectation that the general public would find or even be interested in the pages.

I've edited a bit here and there for readability and included some explanatory notes.

Some background: I arrived about a week before 9/11. (I'll have to write about the experience of being in a foreign country during a national crisis and not knowing a soul sometime.) To my eternal regret, I was faithful to my boyfriend at the time instead of availing myself of the many attractive Italian men around.

I read this and I am touched by how young and giddy I sound.

11/18/01
What a terrible correspondent I am. No updates, no pictures! Well, I can write something for you now, though I haven't taken any pictures lately. I should be able to rectify that soon, when my brother and Mike [the then-boyfriend] come to visit--I'll be more motivated.

What have I been doing lately? Well, mostly just pottering around, going to my Italian classes, and shopping for myself, under the guise of looking for Christmas presents. I do need to get some warmer clothes, so I have a vague excuse. It hasn't been too terribly cold yet—except for last night! I went out with Rachel and Roberto [a couple I got to know and am still friends with--Rachel is British, Roberto is Italian]. First we went to a pub that apparently is very popular with American students. It was OK, except that I felt really old, as usual!* Then we met some of their friends and went to a bar near Piazza Navona. It was about what you would expect—loud, crowded, lots of semi-drunk people. Not really my scene. But I haven't discovered the Roman equivalent of Simon's or the Hideout [two bars in Chicago I used to go to a lot] yet—if there even is such a thing. Roberto's friends were very appreciative of the waitresses in artfully cut outfits showing off lots of skin, so maybe that's why they put up with everything else. We did want to go to this wine bar, or enoteca, that I've been going to eat lunch at lately—it's very popular at night though, so we would have had to wait about an hour for a table. That would have been nicer, quieter, and we could have nibbled at food with some good wine. Next time maybe.

I did get a chance to speak some Italian to Roberto's friends, although when they talked amongst themselves it was once again apparent how much I have to learn. I could pick up words, and usually get the gist of what they were talking about. Roberto said "You speak Italian very well!," but I'm still very limited. On the way back to the car we walked through a nearly empty Piazza Navona. The piazza is a huge tourist thing, always filled with people, so you can imagine how striking it was. (Lisa [my American roommate] says that her boyfriend and his friends used to play soccer there at night when they were kids.) That's the secret of beating the crowds—just stay out til 3 in the morning! It was really lovely—we also passed the Pantheon, no one around, and incredibly, lots of stars visible. If Mike and I can stay up that late after gorging ourselves on dinner, we should walk around there. But it had become absolutely freezing! I don't have a proper winter coat, just a leather one, and anyway I didn't think I would need much of a jacket that night. But I was pulling my thin scarf over my nose as we walked back. I thought it would be really cold today, but it's not too bad. Actually now there's a thunderstorm, but I like storms.

Friday night I actually went to go see a play in Italian. It was called "Odio e nazisiti in Illinois," so you can imagine that I was intrigued by the title. In English that's "Hatred and nazis in Illinois." I thought there was a slight chance it might have something to do with IL and if so, it might make a good Our Town [a now-defunct section in the Chicago Reader] to talk to the writer. After reading the description I thought it even more unlikely, but I went anyway—I didn't have anything else to do. It was one of those "relationship comedies"—a really neurotic woman who rarely leaves her apartment gets a call from this basketball-loving, normal guy (he actually wore a Bulls jersey in the first act), who is supposedly a long-lost boyfriend. Then (I think) after a long time talking they actually figure out after talking for a long time that he called the wrong number, it's a huge mistake, ha ha! I did actually understand some of the jokes, but the guy especially talked so fast, it was just a blur of rolled r's.

Here's my wacky observation for the week: Italians talk to themselves a lot. You pass them on the street, in the store, mumble mumble, paranoia, are they talking about me? I think they just love to talk so much that keeping it inside their head doesn't come naturally.

Here's another thing I experienced: Desert Rain. No, it's not just a vaguely hippie-ish perfume oil you can buy at Whole Foods, it's an actual phenomenon! Last Sunday I was waiting for the bus in some slight rain and I noticed that my bag was covered in spots of dirt. And then my skirt and my boots, too. Apparently it's dust or dirt from the desert carried in the rain. Which desert? I have no idea. It made a mess though—all of the cars and the sidewalks were filthy. The sky that day was really weird too—if it was in Chicago I would say it was tornado weather—it was sort of orange, and warm outside too. Very odd.

Lisa just came to my door and said, "Are you journaling?" Argh! "Journal" is not a verb!*

*I was all of 31. I didn't know from feeling old.

**Still fighting the battle against this.

2009-12-09T09:17:00.001-08:00

Sometimes, on a bright day, the skyline looks like a toy model that you could pluck from the ground.

A Day Without . . .

2009-12-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

Today is No Berlusconi Day in Italy, a rally against the country's libidinous leader with all the legal troubles (I'm watching the Rome rally live on Rainews24). I wish we Americans had thought of doing this with Bush! Maybe this is something we could consider here in Chicago--a No Daley Day in protest of truly horrifying waste, corruption, and total disregard for the welfare and wishes of the majority of Chicago residents.

Thanksgiving (belated post)

2009-11-30T07:46:00.001-08:00

Via Panisperna/photo by Lalupa

Corey's post on the bemusement of the French regarding Thanksgiving reminded me of the time I tried to explain the holiday to a Spanish friend in Rome. I too had language difficulty--I actually spoke Spanish better than Italian at that point but since we were in Italian class together, we tried to stick to that tongue.

I said that Thankgiving was a day of giving thanks--for food, for family, friends, etc. He said, "So it's a religious holiday then."

"No, not at all," I said. "It's a national holiday--and you know in the States we try to keep church and state separate."

"But who are you giving thanks to?" he asked pointedly.

"Well . . . " I was a little taken aback by this one. Not being particularly religious myself, I falteringly tried to explain that it was a time to slow down and be grateful.

"You're giving thanks to God," he said authoritatively, "so it's a religious holiday."

I gave up and let Enrique think he understood American holidays better than me. Then later I went to a friend's apartment on the Via Panisperna, my favorite street, who was running quite late with the meal because when she went to pick up the turkey, she showed up five minutes after the butcher shop closed for lunch. (In Italy, many stores close for a couple hours starting around 2:30 or so. A nice tradition, but also very frustrating when you need something asap.) Other guests were the hostess' fruttivendolo and his wife, and an American dentist with his two sullen Italo-American teenagers, and a very cute guy named Filippo who seemed interested in talking to me and who I will forever regret not encouraging more.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, wherever you are.

oeuf en sauce meurette--kind of

2009-10-25T14:32:00.000-07:00

Last week I invited some friends over for dinner, a good excuse to make something special. I was considering Julia Child's recipe for boeuf bourgignon, inspired partly by seeing Julie & Julia and partly by the cool fall weather. I have a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking from the 60s that was my mother's. I don't think she used it much--there aren't many stains and some years ago a little card fell out of it from the friend who gave it to her. Looking at the recipe, I started to lose steam myself. So many steps! I am not the type of cook who likes to stand around for hours chopping and fussing. That's why I like making Italian food so much--it's generally pretty simple and tastes delicious.

So I turned to Epicurious, my favorite "cookbook" these days. (I love to plug in items that I have in the fridge and pantry to see what I can do with them.) It came up with a recipe for beef braised in red wine--essentially the same thing as boeuf bourgignon, but a little more rustic. I did not use Barolo--I'd already splurged on a bottle of Margaux to drink. (I'd walked into the neighborhood wine store and they were having an informal tasting with a distributor. Of course the one I really liked was the most expensive. The Curse of Good Taste without the wealth to back it up.) Instead I used an affordable Cotes du Rhone.

It turned out very well--I took some pictures, but I accidentally deleted them at a fashion event this weekend while I was trying to make more room on my memory card. (And frankly a photo of a pot full of some red boiling substance is maybe not so exciting.) Unfortunately one of my friends couldn't make it at the last minute, so there was a lot left over. It was definitely Meat Week over here. Not that I'm complaining.

Around the end of the week I had more of the sauce left than the meat. I recalled reading a recipe for meurette sauce in a blog written by an American expat in France, one of the many expat blogs I check in with regularly. It occurred to me that my leftover broth was basically meurette sauce. I poached an egg, made some polenta, et voila!

As a side note, I have discovered a love for polenta. I like it as a side dish with meaty entrees like this, or even just plain, with butter and a little salt. When it cools and becomes solid, I like to fry it in butter and eat it for breakfast with molasses. I bought a little bag at Whole Foods that is almost gone. All they have at Trader Joe's, where I go for non-produce staples, is the premade kind, so I'll probably have to make a special trip to Whole Foods to get more soon.

Paris in Chicago

2009-10-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

I think I write this post every year (or maybe every season), but I am so powerfully drawn to the area in Grant Park around Buckingham Fountain. It feels so wonderfully Parisian--a wide-open space that reminds me of the Place de la Concorde with carefully tended gardens and wide allées a la the Tuileries. This weekend I took advantage of the excellent early fall weather to take a bike ride along the lakefront all the way downtown.

The chairs are noticeably bigger than those you see in Paris parks, the better to fit our extra-large American bottoms.

While the atmosphere is delightfully French, the food is not. The kiosk run by the Washburne Culinary Institute really needs to step up its game. There is no excuse for a sloppily put together, supremely mediocre turkey and Swiss sandwich with no finesse whatsoever--especially when you are in cooking school.

A friend had the brilliant idea that someone should open up a crepe cart. If they could get a permit, they would clean up. I can just taste that Nutella crepe now! Are you listening, entrepreneurs?

There are even people walking tiny dogs.

the ancient version of the revolving restaurant

2009-09-29T12:45:00.000-07:00

Archeaologists in Rome have uncovered what they believe is a revolving banquet hall in the emperor Nero's Golden Palace. "The purported main dining room, with a diameter of over 50 feet (16 meters), rested upon a 13-foot (4-meter) wide pillar and four spherical mechanisms that, likely powered by a constant flow of water, rotated the structure," says the New York Times.

The palace was the ancient Roman version of the Aaron Spelling mansion--sprawling and flashy. From thecolosseum.net:

The area of the property was 985 feet long by 295 feet in width or depth. Among the other things there was an amphitheatre, a market, and bath-gymnasium complex, served by an aqueduct 75 Km (50 miles) long. Baths were served by a flow of both salted water and sulphurous one from the Albulae springs. Upon the Caelian Hill there were beautiful gardens, zoos, woods and parks where cattle roamed . There were hundreds of statues, grottoes, nymphaeums, porticoes painted with romantic landscapes; multiple waterfalls flowed all over. The lake - where the Colosseum was later built - was surrounded by woods and fake sea villages, and it was so big that ships could manoeuvre in it. The rooms of the palace were decorated with rare stones and mother of pearl; in the banquet rooms the guests were inundated by flowers and perfumes from the ivory ceilings (R. Lanciani, Rovine...). One of the most famous of these rooms featured a circular roof painted with the stars and the planets, that revolved mechanically imitating the movement of the stars.

The Golden Palace, or Domus Aurea, as it is also known, was one of the more obscure and enjoyable sites I remember touring in the city. It was right when I was leaving Rome--I went with my stepmother and sister, pitching it to them as something few tourists bother to visit. (I let them go to the Vatican on their own--after dealing with the crowds in the Sistine Chapel, I wasn't eager to do it again.) I seem to remember the guides saying that after Nero's death the emperor Vespasian actually had it covered up with dirt to erase all traces of Nero's profligacy. I can't find a reliable source for this online, but I like the idea of an entire palace sealed up for thousands of years. At any rate, the structure is completely underground (quite near where I lived in Rome, in a much more humble abode), and they've only excavated a small percentage of it, even though its existence has been known of since the Renaissance. Raphael and other artists used to rappel down into the darkened rooms to take a gander at the wall paintings.

It's quite an eerie feeling to head into the cave-like rooms that are open, and even in the height of summer a jacket or scarf is a good idea as it can get really chilly. The rare stones and mother of pearl are long-gone, but some of the wall paintings still exist, and the scale and size of the rooms offer a sense of the building's grandeur.

the end of the season

2009-09-10T06:39:00.000-07:00

Lifeguard stations in a jumble, ready for storage.

I haven't done much to tie in the last couple of posts to Italy--but surely the appreciation of fiori, giardini, e il lago is molto italiano?

favorite summer spot of 2009

2009-09-08T14:33:00.001-07:00

As you may have figured out, my favorite spot this summer is a section of the lakefront bike path that is actually a little detour off the main path. It is a narrow, gravel stretch between the Sydney Marovitz public golf course and the lake. I like it because it runs right next to the shore, there are weeping willows and the sound of crickets and cicadas in summer, and the traffic on Lake Shore Drive seems very far away.

At either end, various section of land are fenced off for butterfly and bird sanctuaries, or to let it to back to its original prairie nature. A field of pink, purple, and blue flowers at the north end attracts not only butterflies and bees but a surprising cross-section of the public--men on bikes, couples out for a stroll--who stop to admire the view of the blooms.

Sailboats gently sway in the harbor as the golden, early-fall light wanes.

Wistful signs of the end of summer . . . but fall has its own pleasures.

(PS: I just figured out you can click the photos to view extra-large versions of them.)

lake and sky

2009-08-31T13:57:00.000-07:00

Spent the weekend on the beach in Michigan, where the landscape is perhaps not so different from that of the northern French coast. (Certainly the weather, which was freakishly cool for August, felt northern.) There are even vineyards . . . and lots of old barns and houses along the back roads.

For food, though, we went pretty much all-American--grilled skirt steaks and s'mores one night, plus frozen custard and cheeseburgers for lunch one day. We did have an Italian flavor on the second night, with me making a great amatriciana sauce out of fresh tomatoes (N.B., in my version, I do not use garlic--I like to have the bacon-y flavor right out front). The grocery store even had pancetta--they were well set up for us city folk.

The lovely little cottage we stayed in was well-stocked with vintage cookbooks and other books about food. I picked up this one (you may know Ludwig Bemelmans better as the author of the Madeline books) and read it all weekend. Now apparently out of print, it's a memoir of his life as a waiter and eager gourmand in Europe and the U.S. in the middle of the 20th century. It put me a very pleasant Continental frame of mind, for which I was very grateful.

corniche

2009-08-22T11:03:00.000-07:00

e

We had a few really lovely, golden, late-summer days here. Maybe I was in a French mood from watching this movie the night before, but driving along North Lake Shore Drive to work in the morning reminded me of Cannes--something about the combination of the road, the trees on the median and the park to the left, and the sun glinting off the water and the gently swaying boats in the harbors.

It's somewhat odd that given how much the lake is a part of the city--and how huge it is--that we don't have more of a coastal culture. Of course, there are probably many people who spend every weekend on their boats or at the lakefront and would strongly disagree. I wish I knew more of them!

Blogging reminds me daily how pathetic my photography skills are--at least for this one I have the excuse that I was driving at the time. Please use your imagination!

mussels

2009-07-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

Tried out a new recipe for steamed mussels last night from this book on a friend. Although the recipes have French flair, this one respects the Italian culinary ideal of the best ingredients, simply prepared. This is what went in it:

mussels
olive oil
garlic
chopped chili peppers
white wine
tomato sauce

I made a salad from green leaf lettuce using an olive oil, vinegar, and anchovy dressing from a Mario Batali recipe that is supposed to be for puntarelle, which is probably out of season and even in season would be hard to find here. Of course with mussels you have to have frites--in this case baked, chunky-style--and aioli, which I buy because the last few times I have tried to make this mayonnaise-like condiment, it hasn't worked out. This is one of the few recipes where I have to admit defeat.

Mussels are really easy to make and inexpensive too, about $5 a pound (a pound per person is generous). I suspect us non-coastal Midwesterners find the idea of preparing them intimidating, especially when recipes refer to the de-bearding process (removing the seaweed-type substance that comes out of the shell). But the ones at Whole Foods are already de-bearded--just give 'em a good rinse. Then you put them in a pot with the ingredients, steam for about six minutes, and that's it.

The whole meal cost less than $35. (I don't think I've ever gotten out of Whole Foods for less than $50).

old stone

2009-07-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Rome is a bunch of old stones piled on top of each other throughout the centuries--marble cannibalized from ancient monuments to gild Renaissance palaces, rocks heaved in from ruins to plug holes, buildings built on top of older buildings built on top of even older structures. You look at an ocher-colored wall and try to wrap your mind around the fact that it has been the backdrop for events both historical and mundane for hundreds or thousands of years before you existed. For a moment the concept of time seems ridiculous--"How is that even possible, that I am here and they are not?" And then your brain rights itself and you accept the reality of time again, because you have no choice.

This stone wall along the lakefront bike path probably measures its life in decades, but how many kisses, scraped knees, and tantrums (it is right next to a public golf course) has it seen?

smart car

2009-06-25T07:43:00.001-07:00

I've been seeing a lot of these around town lately and finally had the wherewithal to get off my bike and take a quick snap of one. The ones here seem to be two-seaters, but I've actually ridden in the back seat of one in Italy. It was uncomfortable, but doable.

I've considered getting one. Club Monaco and the Smart Car banded together on some publicity push a few months ago (I know--I didn't get it either) and I was badgered into taking a test drive. It handled pretty well, actually. But I'd be nervous about my long daily drive to the office, where I encounter a lot of semis. Semi versus Smart Car = Smart Car pancake. I'm not sure about the lack of passenger space either, but on the other hand 95 percent of the time it's just me in the car. It'd be a nice second car, though. And it would be easy to park--although I'm not sure this would be legal here.

taking a seat wherever you are

2009-06-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

Quite a while ago I somehow got subscribed to the Telegraph's newsletter for expats, which is odd since I am neither an expat or British. I don't like people subscribing me to these things without my permission--it's a huge breach of e-etiquette--but I kept this one for the essays on expat living. Today's relates to the theme of this blog, which is that you don't need to be in Paris or Rome to be happy.* To wit:

Everyone in the world has a routine, the same things to do by the end of the day or the week, but without realising that routine is in itself something to be enjoyed. From London to New York the commute to work is an opportunity to make new acquaintances, chat with the woman who has been sitting next to you every morning for the past two years, or smile at the children on their way to playschool, or simply enjoy the morning air. From New Delhi to Stockholm lunchtime is the perfect moment to try something new: a different restaurant, different company, or simply a walk in the park and a good book.

As one of my favorite bloggers in France has said,

The perfect place?

Is the space

in between
the past and the future,
the empty chair
that calls our
name,
Be here now.
one place
or another

we must take a seat
and
be happy
where we are.

"Be here now" was one of my mother's frequent mantras and I try to remember and obey it--but it's very difficult, especially when you are not particularly happy and would rather be somewhere else, physically and emotionally.

*Although I certainly think it can help!

bambini

2009-06-18T15:49:00.000-07:00

OK, this post is really just an excuse to post some photos of my brand-new nephew. (Isn't he cute?) But it is true that Italians love the bambini. All these expat blogs I read talk about how the Italian neighbors warmed up to the weird foreigners once they had a baby. But that's pretty irksome: so if you don't want to have kids, you have to be the outsider straniera for the rest of your life, I guess. You're not someone until you have kids!

For being spoiled, though, Italian kids are pretty well-behaved. At least in public!

Seeing Italy in Chicago a little too literally

2009-06-09T15:01:00.000-07:00

I once read an article in which a shepherd somewhere in the Middle East or North Africa suddenly spotted an old Roman coin in the earth. So when I lived in Rome, I always kept my eyes open when I was out in the country, much to my friend Rachel's amusement. "Are you looking for your coin?" she'd tease when she saw me scanning the ground.

I guess technically taking an old coin out of the country could be considered stealing a part of the country's cultural history--but nothing like the cache found at a bungalow in Berwyn a couple of years ago. After John Sisto died in 2007, his son knew he'd find a ton of artifacts at the house--and he did. Millions of dollars' worth, including things from the Vatican, ancient statues, and medieval manuscripts. They're finally on their way back to Italy, although some pieces whose provenance cannot be determined will be returned to Sisto's family.

Hmm, come to think of it, I do have a piece of old pottery that I found on the beach in Sicily . . . *

Read all about the treasure trove in Berwyn here.

*Lest you think I've become an international archeology thief, it's obviously contemporary.

old garden statuary

2009-05-30T07:41:00.000-07:00

Or at least old-looking. These were taken at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

Fountains like this one always remind me of the Fontana del Mascherone at the end of Via Giulia in Rome.

The Botanic Garden is worth the drive to Glencoe and a few hours of your time, especially at this time of year, when everything is at its greenest and most blooming. I love to visit gardens whenever I'm in Europe. Gardens in Spain smell the best! I remember looking for a perfume that captured their essence, with no luck.

the double cheek kiss

2009-05-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

While hugs as greeting and (especially) parting gestures are popular in America (especially among teenagers), I have never been fond of hugging anyone other than close family members and significant others. The intimacy of the embrace feels awkward and insincere in most situations. That is why I am an advocate of the European tradition of cheek-kissing.

I prefer to faire la bise because it just seems more impersonal than hugging. That sounds counter-intuitive, but think about it: you're just in there for a couple quick pecks and it's done, whereas with a hug you're all scrooshed up next to someone for who knows how long. And your, um, pelvises could be in close contact too. Plus, let's face it, the mwah-mwah is more chic.

I propose a national campaign to swap hugging for cheek-kissing. Are you with me?

Some tips on cheek kissing in Italy and France:

Which way do you kiss in Italy?

Right or left side?

How to Kiss Hello in France

Or just watch this video:

casement windows

2009-05-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

Casement windows always look charmingly European . . .

. . . especially on a Spanish-influenced apartment building.

The only drawback to casement windows is that you usually have to forego screens, I think. In Italy the windows never have screens, which Americans usually find inexplicable. I think they tend to be quite expensive because windows don't come in standard sizes there, given the long and varied architectural history. But I'm just guessing.

A little bit of Paris

2009-05-21T14:57:00.000-07:00

Maybe I should have titled this blog "Seeing Italy . . . and France . . . and a little bit of Spain now and then." Buckingham Fountain in Chicago's Grant Park always reminds me of one of the big parks in Paris, more so when the area used to be covered with pebbly gravel (they've paved it with bricks--still pretty).

Buckingham Fountain was in fact modeled after the Latona Basin at Versailles, which I'd guess is smaller--this fountain is really huge. Four sea horses symbolize the states bordering Lake Michigan--Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

On hot days the mist from the fountain's sprays carries quite aways and is very refreshing.

the Modern Wing of the Art Institute

2009-05-17T18:52:00.000-07:00

People generally don't go to Rome to see contemporary architecture. But there are a few notable examples, such as Italian architect Renzo Piano's Parco della Musica, an opera house in the north of Rome. Piano is also the architect of the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, which just opened to the public this month. The lines of the structure are admittedly not ones often associated with the popular notion of "Italy," but the notion of harmony and beauty with surroundings are.

bowers and vines

2009-05-16T14:17:00.001-07:00

Vines twisting over a wooden bower. In Italy and France acres of vines are laid out in neat rows, which might just provide you with a bottle of wine or two a few years down the road. I doubt these vines will provide any grapes, but they look lovely in their slightly messy, unpruned state.

2009-05-10T19:54:00.000-07:00

Good friends, good food, and good wine brings a little bit of Italian culture no matter where you are.

hidden gardens

2009-05-10T16:36:00.001-07:00

Hidden gardens are all over Italy. I once went on a garden walk in Florence that gave me a glimpse of the blooms and greenery hiding behind the city's high walls. Sometimes you can peek into courtyards through iron gates or doors left ajar to see terra cotta pots and burbling fountains. I think that's one reason I like to wander through Chicago's alleys--because you can peek into people's yards into a hidden oasis. This one is in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood, also known as the home base of ex-governor Rod Blagojevich.

terra cotta

2009-05-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

These shrubs and terra cotta pots in a neighbor's backyard bring a Tuscan garden to mind. This inspired me to buy some for our building's patio--it doesn't quite resemble the Giardino di Boboli yet, but I'm working on it!

seeing the bel paese in Chicago

2009-05-05T19:16:00.000-07:00

Once, not so very long ago, I spent a totally self-indulgent year in Italy. Back in my hometown of Chicago, I find myself trying to find ways to "see" Italy here, whether in the lines of a building, the quality of the afternoon light, or an excellent lunch. I decided to create this blog to "tease out" aspects of la dolce vita in the Second City. There are things I love (and hate) about Italy, there are things I love and hate about Chicago--this is my attempt to combine the best of both.