28 | November | 2015

Other places we visited on our Italian travels:

Lucca:

Well, what I was expecting and what we got were not entirely on the same page. I had anticipated a day out strolling the historic city with its old town city walls and wandering the streets in search of interesting architecture, something yummy to eat and perhaps stop in at the torture museum (seems everywhere in Italy is doing it, but we hadn’t looked in on one as of yet). When we arrived it became increasingly apparent that something was already happening in town. Something big. All the car parks were full to bursting and cars were parked in all sorts of spots that would normally considered no bueno. What’s more, there were people everywhere attired in all sorts of anime, game and comic inspired costumes. Looked suspiciously like a ComicCon was on, in the middle of regional Italy. On further inspection, it turned out that the annual Lucca Comics and Games convention was on in full force, having started the day before. The town was literally crawling with people, and the town walls I had expected to take a leisurely stroll around was the primary location for all the stalls for the convention. There was also nowhere to park. It took some driving around, but eventually we found a carpark set up to accommodate visitors to the convention, and finally we were on our way to exploring Lucca.

One of the things we had wanted to visit was the local craft beer store, a place that because of its opening hours had changed the intended day of our trip to accommodate this. It was closed on Mondays, and the next available day for us to go sightseeing was Friday. That’s how we ended up in Lucca during Italy’s version of ComicCon. Craft beer is surprisingly difficult to find in Italy. Rome and Florence was not much of a problem if you wanted something from a bar (if it was open), but outside of that it was actually quite difficult. We wandered through the crowds and eventually found the store in question, which was closed off in order to serve beer by the glass to the public during the convention. Figures. However, we spoke to the vendor and they were more than happy to let us into the store anyway for a bit of a sticky beak. So sticky beak we did. Most of their stock was in hiding due to the shop being temporarily retrofitted to serve drinks, but we still managed to make off with a few interesting brews to try.(Plus one for the road, of course.)

The rest of our day in Lucca was spent investigating the various exhibits and general antics of the convention. Really, I could have stayed the entire day and just watched people go about their business (albeit perhaps dressed as a cat or vampire or some such). However, Pisa was the next stop planned for the day, so we eventually left to explore yet another iconic piece of Italy.

While strolling the city walls…

At the Resident Evil display!

Pisa:

Never really thought about the prospect of visiting Pisa. Never really appealed to me all that much. But, since we weren’t all that far away from it, we decided it was worth a stop in to check it out anyway. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a worthwhile trip, and seeing the Square of Miracles in person was indeed much better than the pictures. There were people everywhere taking their cheesy “Look, I’m holding up the leaning tower!” pictures, and plenty more just idling around enjoying the view.

There wasn’t too much more to see in Pisa, so before long we were on the road again to explore the Pisan coastline. We walked along the harbor and watched the fishermen deploy their nets for a while (it was very interesting, never seen their technique before – made me think of one of those claw games but using a net) before finally calling it a day and moseying home.

The early approach of evening made the drive a rather dark one. However, it was nice to see all the castles on the drive home all lit up like Christmas trees. Made them quite obvious and brought quite sharply to attention that there were many more than we had thought. Castles, castles everywhere.

The Square of Miracles

The leaning tower of Pisa. Very beautiful to see in person.

Fishing, Italian-style.

Venice:

We drove out to Venice, choosing the car over the train in the hope of seeing some more of the countryside on the way. It didn’t turn out to be quite as scenic as hoped for, as we discovered low hanging cloud and fog to be a constant and irritating companion for the majority of the drive. So much so, that when we arrived at the Venice airport, the fog had gotten worse to the point of ridiculousness. There was little to see, and our boat trip from the airport parking to Venice only allowed for maybe 30m visibility. It was much the same when we arrived in Venice proper. That being the case, we didn’t make the journey out to Murano & Burano like originally planned. Instead we walked the streets. As many of them as our feet could deal with, since Venice is so small and winding and as complicated as a rabbit warren. We did a lot of exploring. Also came across a lot of dead-ends. Back-tracking was a common occurrence.

No, we didn’t go on a gondola ride. Frankly, paying 80 euro for 20min seemed like daylight robbery. Even more so, when you consider that the gondolas were all lined up in a row nose to tail, making a snails pace journey through the canals like a mother duck and her ducklings. Besides, the gondolas were by and large filled with a large group of noisy tourists. They were very loud. There would be about zero serenity to be had cruising the canals. …And I don’t feel like we missed out on anything by not making the effort. There was plenty enough to see, either way.

We walked the streets, enjoyed the Venetian nightlife, visited a local craft beer bar, tried out cicchetti (the Venetian version of tapas) and generally got far more exercise than anticipated. Although we had some seriously crappy weather, I loved Venice nonetheless. A definite spot worth returning to, and we should have allocated more time to explore the area more thoroughly.

The real unexpected highlight of the trip was actually the drive home. It certainly wasn’t all beautiful scenery (the fog didn’t help), but once we eventually left the coast and headed back inland (this time not taking the toll road and thereby saving us 19 euro) the countryside took a significant turn for the spectacular. It’s difficult to say that the drive was the best overall (since we have been on some seriously amazing drives everywhere we have gone), but I’m hard-pressed to say whether it is or isn’t one of the top three. I simply can’t decide. For all the other driving we did in Italy, I can easily say this drive was the best we did while we were there. The drive was amazing and we were very sad when we ran out of sunlight.

One of the many Venetian canals.

The Bridge of Sighs… I wonder how that gondola got away from the rest of the pack?

The fog did lift…A bit.

The last night in Italy:

It seems every month goes a little faster. With our stay in Prato more or less ended, we checked out a day early to make our way down to Fiumicino in preparation for our flight over to our next stop. We hoofed it along the toll roads, not wanting to make a 3 hr trip into an all day experience. Cost us 19.50 euro for the privilege, but totally worth it to save so much time (at least 2 hours). Wanting to get there in a hurry had more to do with wanting to go check out Ostia Antica than any other reason, and we did indeed arrive with plenty of time to explore. I had wanted to see Ostia Antica and go exploring since we were too late to check out the Forum when we were visiting Rome. It was quite the epic experience, I’d read that it was large, but the reality was a bit more than I bargained for. Seemed like a endless vista of archaeological ruins, the remains of a city long gone. I could have easily spent a whole day just wandering around, although without a guide book it was mostly just appreciating the ruins without too much in the way of understanding. There were some placards, but not many. Enough to be able to identify the purpose of some of the buildings, in a very general way. Another place I’d be happy to return to.

Our hotel for the night we chose for its proximity to the airport, and the fact that it also boasted a trattoria – one of the best in the area. The area was farmland – fennel bulbs and carrots, fields and fields and fields of them. There had to have been enough carrots in Fiumicino to feed all of Italy (and possibly then some). The hotel room was great, although when we got there it turned out there was roadwork right in front of the building, preventing access to the hotel and to the carpark. We did a 10km blocky just to get to the hotel, only to find the approach from the other side was no better. The road noise was horrendous, and they continued to work well past the point of sundown. So much for a relaxing last evening! (Jackhammers and everything – enough to make the floor shake.) Eventually they did pack up for the night, and we were able to enjoy a fabulous dinner in the restaurant. Their specialty was grilled meats, and we enjoyed some excellent T-Bone steak and a mixed grill liberally dressed with olive oil and lemon juice and cooked on the wood-fire grill. The fresh flatbread was possibly the best bread I’ve ever eaten… We also forgot about our potato “chip” experience in Rome, and ended up with a bowl of freshly fried potato crisps with our meal. That was a bit weird. The house wine was decanted out of a giant amphora. That was weird, too (but delicious). I’ve noticed as we try more and more different foods abroad, it has become apparent that the most simply prepared foods are the most delicious, not the complex creations.

…Our last day was a great end to our Italian visit, and the whole trip was a fantastic experience. Italy is certainly worth a second look.

Ostia Antica, or what remains of it.

Ostia Antica…How much longer will it continue to stand?

Interesting bits and bobs we noticed about Italy:

Public transport is not taken seriously by the locals.

We considered taking public transport home after our sojourn about town in Rome, and when we asked the locals about the buses & how to purchase tickets (since you can’t buy them on the bus, and newsstands that sell tickets were already closed for the evening) we were informed in no uncertain terms that no one pays for the bus. Fair enough. It explains a whole lot as to why almost no one was validating their tickets when we were catching the train in Florence…

Supermarkets in Italy:

So what was different here? Well, for one: the bread sucked. Like France and Croatia, if it’s not fresh baked, it’s probably not worth eating. There isn’t any sandwich bread – anything made for that sort of purpose has extended life spans and taste stale fresh from the pack. Nasty. Admittedly, they do market it as being “ideal for toast”, so they aren’t exactly pulling any punches by providing stale bread. As there wasn’t any regular bread, we bought a loaf anyway to use for said toast, and discovered it’s not even packed like a loaf inside the bag (packed in 3 sections sideways, as if the bread was not sliced, but perhaps individually processed like a Pringles chip). I have to say, it creeped me out a bit (maybe it’s Soylent Green!)…And then there was actually toasting the stale pseudo-bread. I’d say that 3 out of 4 times (or worse) I overshot/undershot the mark in producing a normal slice of toast. Attempt 1: Stale. Attempt 2: Still stale. Attempt 3: Stale, but slightly crispy. Attempt 4: Now it’s a crouton. Great.

On the whole, the supermarkets were actually pretty normal. There were the ubiquitous Carrefour hypermarkets, Lidl, plus a few we hadn’t seen before like Conad, Pam and Coop. I was very surprised to find that the fresh pasta selection was largely made up of things similar to San Remo and Latina pasta you’d see in the fresh products area at home. Maybe everyone makes their own.

Rubbish collection…Or lack thereof.

Our place in Prato (likely by virtue of the location in the hills) did not have a rubbish collection service. Instead, all refuse is sorted in the home into organic waste, plastic/metals, cardboard/paper, undifferentiated & finally glass…and then taken to an appropriate skip bin for disposal. These skip bins were often notoriously difficult to find, although we established that they usually lined the streets of the more central parts of town (located there as I suspect there is also no rubbish service within the old town walls – some of the streets are stupid skinny). They were an ass to use, as the bins faced the street and were most commonly in locations with no parking or standing… I’m not really sure how people are meant to use them (unless you are intended to approach on foot from your house and then stand in the busy street). To make things more interesting, all skip types were rarely located in the same spot. Generally, glass bins would adorn almost every corner all over the city (but almost never with the other skips) and the plastics/metals bin was often located on the other side of the busy streets from the rest of the skips. To top it off, the bins were often overflowing, and cursory inspection of the bin contents indicated that the local residents didn’t give too much consideration as to which bin they chucked their rubbish into (except glass, the glass bins were reliably full of glass). I’d say all in all, a bit of a recycling fail on almost all fronts.

Clean Streets…Sort of.

I get the impression that Italians are very house-proud. Always, there are people sweeping the streets with an old-school besom, washing down the stones with buckets of water, scrubbing marks off the streets and walls, and carefully tending their plants. It’s definitely been noticeable that the streets are cleaner than most places we have visited…With the exception of the areas surrounding the waste disposal skips (that’s usually a disaster area), the streets are clean to the point of spotless.

Often the entrances to Italian homes are beautiful and carefully manicured.

Food in Italy:

I had some sort of grand expectation that food in Italy was going to be some sort of amazing experience to rival anything we had tried everywhere else. However, having eaten Italian chow for a month, I can’t say I was particularly impressed. Yes, we did have some amazing food experiences (I’m looking at you, olive-oil flatbread, slow-roasted octopus and wood-fired grilled T-Bone)…But on the whole, things were pretty unexciting. Pizza, pasta, mediterranean style fish & Venetian cicchetti, were tasty, but we have definitely had better and paid less. I guess, unless you are making an effort to visit fine-dining establishments, food from a restaurant is often pretty mediocre, no matter which country you are in.

Bars in Italy:

What gives, Italy? Murray had pinned a bunch of places that he had wanted to visit, based on the very limited number of vendors selling craft beer in Italy. Everywhere we went, we found the same thing: The vendors do not open until 5pm or later. Sometimes, opening at 7pm, and then apparently already shutting by 10pm. Seems like some pretty weird system they’ve got going. That, or shops are particularly crap at opening at what to me, seems like normal business hours. It’s not like we wanted to visit a nightclub, these places at home would have been open from 10am all the way through to maybe 1-2am. Who opens for 6 hours or less, especially in a tourist hotspot (which presumably would also be one of the major sources of trade)? Too strange Italy, too strange.

Craft beer:

Murray ended up giving up on visiting craft beer bars and settled for buying his Italian craft beer online. Many attempts to locate/buy craft beer from actual stores failed, so using the powers of the Internet turned out to be the winning formula. It has been surpassingly weird to find that shops don’t sell craft beer, even though Italy makes a substantial amount of it. Does it all go overseas? Where is it? Maybe there is a secret society like the Freemasons of beer…

Google, I love you…But sometimes you suck.

As I’ve previously mentioned, Google upon occasion will take us on the odd sojourn to places not intended. This happened a few times while we were in Italy. Search for a location, and presumably Google will direct you there. But sometimes, (with all this recent travel it seems more frequent) sometimes, Google will take you to somewhere else. Like it decided midway that maybe you should visit a location other than the one requested (or try to tell you that the location you want actually exists somewhere else). Or take you on a gigantic 10km loop in order to perform a u-turn (when you could have turned around or taken an alternative route). No, with repeated use it has been very clear that Google is not to be trusted. Indispensable, but also not 100% infallible by any means. This happened on the way to Siena, with Google directing us some 20 minutes past the desired location…to an industrial district.

The hills are alive, with the sound of car horns…

Horn tooting. So, as I probably mentioned somewhere, many Italian roads of the not-main-road variety are on the skinny side. The kind of skinny that permits only one car in one direction and often with stone walls on either side (or alternatively, no walls and a sharp drop-off). In Filletole, this was compounded by the presence of many steep hills, blind corners, and surprise intersections. …Making for all sorts of hazards when it comes to trying to figure out whether someone might be coming in the other direction. So people around these parts toot. Pre-emptive horn tooting is apparently the order of the day when approaching any blind corners, and given there are so many of them, the hills of Filletole constantly sound like a horn-tootling convention (plus some drivers are far more enthusiastic than others). Despite the tooting, Mexican standoffs occur. Although it may be good form for one party to back down (reverse out of the road), sometimes when traffic backs up this becomes impossible. Resulting in car-maneuverability Tetris. Plus some people plain suck at reversing and won’t back down (even when it makes no sense/is impossible for the other party to do so). Seriously, if you can’t reverse your car, you shouldn’t drive/live in Filletole. Thank goodness I didn’t have to drive. I’d probably have cried, or lost the car off the side of an area with no guard rail. Or both.

It’s not just car horns the hills are alive with. Meet the Jingle Sheep!

Next stop:

Montenegro. Probably best visited in the warmer months, but thanks to Schengen & the mysteries of not being able to be in multiple places at once during the sweet spots of the year, we are headed there to catch the end of Autumn. Hopefully it’ll still be great! Fingers crossed for good weather…

OWAV

Office with a View

Daily Archives: November 28, 2015

Italy: Other places we’ve been & Notes on uniquely Italian randomness.