Venezia

"Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee, And was the safeguard of the West."
Author: William Wordsworth

The husband has found a new good friend and like puppy dogs they have taken this mild winter day off to do what is shown above. They have driven down south with a boat in tow and will spend the night in a hotel. Thus I have two precious half days to myself.

In the last few hours I have just finished reading:


and was feeling a little cold and wet like the characters in this mystery that trudged through Venice in search of the murderer during the high water season.



I put on the above music, which was a holiday gift, as I prepared a light and warming lunch and when finished eating I continued my immersion in all things Italian.

As I sat on the couch, I tucked my stockinged feet under me and opened Michael Krondl's "The Taste of Conquest" which is about the "rise and fall of three great cities of spice" and once again found myself back in Venice but at a much earlier time when European involvement in the spice trade flourished. And, of course, the first city he visits is Venice. It appears that Venice began with salt and war...no surprise there and since they controlled the trade sold salt to Italy at an 80% profit.


I visited Venice a number of years ago and it is a city that is overwhelming in its beauty and somewhat frightening in it decadence. It is my understanding that because the city is sinking its population is dwindling. All things change and nothing stays the same.

Well, excuse me, must get back to my reading.

Jaded

For those of you who have passports, can you remember the first time you got yours? I can. I was heading out to live in Palau, Micronesia, and while a passport was not absolutely necessary since it was a U.S. Territory at the time, it was a good idea. After all, we were going to be pretty close to Asia and I might get a chance to visit those many exotic and intriguing countries...and I eventually did! I was in my early 20's and had never traveled outside the U.S.A. This passport was like a luxurious cruise ticket to me. I felt very sophisticated and as if the next best part of my life was just around the corner.

As a teenager I wanted so much to get out of that tiny farm town and see the world. I had no money and was barely able to save and borrow for college. But the best part of the world was just beyond my reach. I was so sheltered at that time, that a trip into Denver got me excited! I even considered joining the Peace Corps to insure travel, and while I got the big intimidating envelope they send out, after reading each page, I felt I could not afford the two years as a volunteer. I had to get on with college and get a job.

Kenju had asked in the prior post if I had passed up a trip to Hawaii just so I could cook. I am a little embarrassed to admit that, in part, I did. I am somewhat jaded by my life experiences. While I love each and every unique island in Hawaii, I have been to Hawaii maybe a dozen times. I actually lived on Oahu for over a year when I went to graduate school there. I spent my honey-moon on the big island---which is very interesting life story in itself that I have to blog some day. I have passed through the tropical state and spent weekends recuperating on return trips from living or visiting various parts of Asia.

So, yes, Kenju, I did pass up the trip to Hawaii. I do know that I am not so jaded that had the month been January or February, I probably would have thrown a swimsuit into a bag and jumped at the opportunity. But for now, retirement and free scheduling around my house are still very fulfilling. After all, yesterday I cleaned out the refrigerator for the first time in two years! And today I have on my schedule to paint those two large iron suns that hang above the garage doors so that they match the window frame colors more closely. (Smile.)

Sometimes, being jaded just means you have lived a pretty rich and fulfilling life.

International Gifts

We have a weekend visitor from Korea. He is in charge of a marine laboratory in Korea and while visiting my husband also will be visiting relatives living nearby. As Asians always do, he brought a lovely gift and presented it with gracious charm. The box itself was first wrapped in a silver-gray scarf with writing that meant something about power (?). When I accepted the gift I was surprised at how heavy it was. It is about 2 feet by 1.5 feet in size. He carried this all the way on his trip! When I accepted the gift I am sure it weighed 15 pounds!! Inside is a very beautiful assortment of Korean sweets. Far more than my husband and I could ever eat. We will share at dinner tonight and I will also share some with my grandson who may enjoy them. Now we have to think of something nice for my husband to take on his trip back next month...

The other George

Fourth of July (U.S. Independence Day) is good time to think about those with vision who helped build this country on principles, that while inconvenient for some of our leaders today, are the reason we are still around. Hubby and I took a trip to George's Washington's birthplace recently. This is not the more famous Mt. Vernon area but 80 acres set aside in Westmoreland County, Virginia. The old farmstead used to be 600 acres, and thanks to Washington's interest in surveying, the extent of the original farm, formerly belonging to his parents, is well documented. This is one of several farms owned by his family. While George grew up in a situation of reasonable wealth he was the only child that did not get a formal education, interestingly enough. There is nothing left of the original farm -- no buildings. They are still discovering where they think the original farm was located through an ongoing archaeological dig.

This building above in the distance was at one time thought to have been one of the original structures on the farm, but research indicates it is newer and was built after he died.

There is a visitor's centers and a small traditional garden in the back. Above is tobacco which was one of the primary economic crops during that time. They also grew grapes, and while we asked the volunteer which grape this was, we never could find out.

Below is cotton, another important crop for the South.

These historic places operate on a very tight budget, and if it wasn't for gracious volunteers like the woman below, they would probably be unattended acres of ground.

We walked down the hillside and along the Rappahanock River and then back up into a wildflower meadow that they had planted. It was full of butterflies and bees. The brochure also said that it was a great place for bird watching in the spring and fall and we made a mental note to return again during one of those seasons.HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY in one of the best countries in the world.

Barking up the Right Tree

According to an article I found on the Internet (the pentultimate location for research information) there are "probably 118 species of native trees," This was stated by Robert Zahner, coordinator of the Arizona Register of Big Trees. "Approximately half of those are endemic to the desert Southwest, which means they occur only in southwest New Mexico, southern Arizona, and southeast California, and also, of course, in Sonora, Mexico. Nineteen species are endemic to Arizona, which means their national champions must be in Arizona" he says. In spite of this information I still could not find the species name of these beauties below. Of course, since I did not take pictures of the leaves, I am at a bit of a disadvantage. But while these photos may frustrate amataur botanists, the beauty below should give artists lots of inspiration. (As in my prior post, the photos have been reduced in size, but if you click on them, they are still pretty inspiring.)

















This last little guy gets honorable mention because he is hanging in there!!

Hold your breath now

There was so much beauty on that Arizona trip to Sedona that I think I took over 300 photos. I deleted a few, but the natural beauty of this harsh land lends itself to the most amateurish of us. The weather was variable and one day we even got caught in a light rain and I had an umbrella in my back pack which I used. It was exotic being in the desert during a light spring rain.

If I was a geologist I would point out that "Major depositional episodes occurred in the later Paleozoic, Paleocene, Miocene and Quaternary periods." According to the local tourist page this beauty was "formed from ancient deposits of limestone, mudstone and sandstone when this area was the west coast of a still emerging continent." Hey were are talking 2 billion years here folks. Think about that as you smoke your peace pipe and gaze out over the valley and watch the bluejays perform their mating swoops. We are such a little teeny tiny blip on the surface and in the grand scheme of things. And while we are quite lovely, we don't hold a sparkle to this beauty.



Sometimes you will see granite that formed from the volcanic explosions that has layered over the exposed red sandstone. The exotic presence of this violent geology seems to attract psychics and spiritualists from everywhere. They feel the overwhelming presence of locked time and try to grasp its meaning, share its energies, explain its strength, feel its vortexes. But we are too small and we try too hard (and the commercial exchange of money for this is most annoying).

I reduced the size of the pictures, so I apologize if the digital rendition is compromised. And where you may ask does the red come from?...iron oxides.

The next lesson is on botany and involves tree bark...yes more photos of tree bark that are like Monet or Pissaro paintings. I can hardly wait!

Travel is REALLY so much fun! LifeStory #8

I have to admit that I have traveled LOTS and LOTS in my life. I have traveled across the United States, throughout ASIA and even somewhat in Central America and Europe and Northern Africa. This was due to a promise I made to myself as a young girl that I would see as much of the world as I could, come hell or high water. And, after all of these trips, the airlines has lost my luggage only once. This was on my first trip to my new in-laws in Florida. I didn't panic too much because at 24 you can still look good in clothes that you have been wearing for 24 hours. With the luck of being young, the very next morning a van arrived at my new in-laws door and dropped off the suitcases intact and locked.

I was watching the Today Show a few weeks ago and they were talking about lost luggage. The guest expert was providing tips for when the airlines lost your luggage. He repeated the word "when" and emphasized that he did not say "if."

If you live and travel long enough the world changes and your luck changes. Upon our arrival at our airport in the early evening this past weekend, we noticed a large number of people waiting for their bags at one baggage claim. We lined up like penguins and waited and watched as the intermittent and sometimes static aluminum delivery belt went round and round. After 20 minutes my husband realized that our luggage had not made the transition from Phoenix to Denver to Columbus and to our final destination. (When you travel on 'points' you get to see a lot more of the country than you can imagine or actually want to see.) . Shortly after my husband's realization, there was an announcement on the loudspeaker system that the baggage officials (hiding behind the speakers) were very sorry but they did not know where the luggage from the Philadelphia flight was. They were working on it and they asked for patience. About 50% of the people moaned, groaned and wandered off. We were not on the Philadelphia flight and while wondering how an airline can lose all of the luggage on a flight, we became more concerned about our sweaty but well-packed clothes.

We were rewarded almost an hour later with a blue form to complete regarding our missing luggage. (One of the wives asked her husband if this meant they would get a free flight---she hasn't traveled much I was thinking.) I walked the length of the entire baggage claim area which is about two football fields and I hate to tell you that I saw hundreds and hundreds (not exaggerating) of suitcases and bags that sat on the floor forlornly alone next to baggage claim areas on that Sunday evening. The dozens of strollers alone made me sad for the aching arms of mothers and fathers in our nation.

The announcement that we had been recently moved from yellow to orange in our homeland security settings (much like the settings on your oven) did not assure me in any way as I saw all these potential lethal weapons of mass destruction sitting on the floor as far as the eye could see.
Thus, we went home and to bed.

Hubby got a call at 1:00 P.M. on Monday. "This is United. Are you going to be home for the next 4 hours? " When he answered "Yes." they hung up. They were either planning on delivering luggage or robbing us. So, he waited patiently.

Five hours later I was home and had eaten dinner and there is still no luggage. Hubby called the number that had called him at 1:00 and heard from a computer that they were too busy to answer the phone and to call back later. My guess is that the all-great office of baggage losers had been discovered and passengers were holding them hostage.

After this recent trip, I wondered if the wagon trains crossing the desert had it any easier? I really think that the good ole USA is getting to be more like a developing nation each and every day. It is a good thing I have traveled in the 'third' world or I would have said some of the things that were being said at the airport last night when people headed for their taxis empty handed.

Post Script at 6:00 P.M.

Hubby is currently talking to a computer.....

Now he is talking to someone who clearly lives in India or Pakistan...

Now he is listening to very irritating United Airlines music ...good choice on their part to continually remind us of the company that screwed up...

9:10 P.M. the phone rings. Our luggage has arrived and doesn't appear much the worse for the wear. I wonder where it got to travel?

Loved to Death

On some of the days the sky in the desert was an indescribable blue. Have you ever seen such a color? I didn't do any digital tweaking and for once the camera lense captured what I saw against the white bark of this desert sycamore. The green in the center is mistletoe. They must do a lot of kissing in Arizona, because it was everywhere. (Click the photot for a bigger view.)

The mornings were a cool 45 and by afternoon Sedona hills were warming to a toasty 70 degrees. Perfect weather for hiking if you layered your clothes.


We had not been to Sedona, Arizona for almost a decade and I noticed substantial changes starting with the fifteen minute traffic jam to get to the other side of the hill where we were staying upon our arrival. This place in the desert among the red rocks is being loved to death by soul searchers, mystics, retirees, real estate developers, bike riders, hikers (us), rich Californians and tourists from around the world. The year-round population of Sedona is supposed to be about 12,000 but this is followed by the statement that over 4,000,000 tourists visit each year. The city of Pheonix to the south is growing even faster.

In spite of the initial shock we were able to get away from it all and find some restorative hours studying the flora and fauna each day. We packed light lunches and extra water and always found a challenging or not-so-challenging trail to fill our day.

I still have over 300 photos to sort, but will not post them all here.

Truffles, Wine and Goodbyes

This special journey was coming to an end in just 24 hours. We had seen old and new and were privileged to meet some very special people. If you read the link in the prior blog to Ankhura you will note that both Chris and Christina, owners of the bed and breakfast, had very sophisticated backgrounds. They had decorated the Inn with art from Asia and architecture from Tuscany. They were gentle and intelligent people and made their guests feel totally at home, even though we were much less sophisticated than they. Chris had even done much of the tile and construction work. They had purchased the building from the church and you could tell that in a few short years they were probably going to move onto another phase in their rich lives.

Christina had given birth to both of her two boys in Tuscany and now a third child was soon on the way. They planned to close the Inn in December and her family would come out from Malaysia to stay with her


While showering that morning I noticed the rustic travertine tile which is common to the area and was too expensive for my housebuilding enterprise.


Christina was up bright and early setting a lovely table of homemade yogurt, homemade granola, freshly sliced fruit, coffee, toast and juice on the patio outside.

Chris was squeezing oranges and the smell filled the kitchen as we passed through. Then he changed clothes and we headed out for the truffle hunt he had arranged.

The gentleman who took us us on our truffle hunt brought two of his dogs. He had a full time job working at the local Home Depot, but did truffle hunting on days during the high season which was just starting. Truffle hunting is very competitive in Tuscany, especially for the white truffle which we were pursuing. There were tales of dogs being poisoned because of their exceptional skill in sniffing out the round treasure which could be a deep as a foot underground or just below the surface.


We stopped at a road near a Truffle Preserve but carefully skirted the area since tourists were not allowed inside. The dogs found several small and average truffles and then one excellent truffle the size of golf ball. Truffles can get to be twice the size of a potato. But size is not always an indication of quality. Our guide had brought some photos of the annual truffle fair with some pictures of very large truffles he had found.


When the dogs find a truffle they are commanded to sit and then they are rewarded with a piece of bread. The pigs used to just eat the truffles if the master didn't get there fast enough.



I didn't capture a photo of the larger truffle, but here my daughter is holding one of the smallest. The smell is strong and I could smell it from the other side of the camera lens.

After several hours of hiking along the sandy ravines we were rewarded with a picnic of chicken sandwiches, tomato and cheese sandwiches, prosciutto, capacolla, fresh sliced tomatoes, and red and white wine as we looked across a hillside with a rabbit hunter in the distance.

We could have napped during the few hours we had in the early afternoon before our wine tour when we got back to Montengriffoli, but we had a chance to see the village in daylight as well as the nearby cemetery and so we went walking.





Our wine tour was to a small 2.5 acre winery run by a widow who was about my age. She generously took us through the small and very clean winery and we tasted her Brunello from the vat, then the oak cask and finally got to taste both a young and an old bottle. Quite a privilege since Brunello's are pretty expensive in the U.S. Her bottles are all purchased by a distributer in Canada, so we couldn't buy any.


The tour was given by Guelfo Magrini who has written a knowledgeable book about the Brunellos of Montalcino. He is on the far right in the photo below. The other man was a journalist who joined us and who has studied wines in France, Germany and Italy and has written five books on wine. My daughter thought he was a little full of himself, but we certainly learned a lot about wine between the two men! I bought Magrini's book and am enjoying it thoroughly.

We finished in the late afternoon with coffee in the town of Montalcino at a modern little coffee house. The weather had turned cold and wet, so hot coffee and tea were a great idea.

We got a quick view in the town of the famous wall of plaques on a building off of a main street in the town. One of these ceramic plaques goes up each year as demonstration/comment reflecting the popular opinion of the value of the wine each harvest season. It is a sort of tongue in check response to reflect that even the wine experts have a sense of humor in all seriousness.

Then it was time to return to Ankhura for a dinner by Chris who is a Rome trained gourmet chef. We ate upstairs in a small dining room with lots of candles and near a little fireplace. The other dining partners were a young couple from Germany that had gone on the truffle hunt with us. We were served an eggplant/mozzarella tart floating on a basil-tomato sauce, followed by a pasta with lots of thinly sliced truffles (a donation from our truffle hunter and probably the most expensive thing I have ever eaten--so pungent and special) and then we had a veal steak on a bed of 'lamb's lettuce' which while a little tough, was also very delicious. All of this was washed down with a rather expensive bottle of Brunello which REALLY blossomed with each glass as it was exposed to the air. Dessert was a tart of thinly sliced fresh mountain apples on a buttery crust.

As the evening progressed we headed up to bed and savored the days memories knowing we had a plane to catch in Rome and had to head out by car by 7:00AM.


I have enjoyed writing about this trip as it has been like taking it all over again--getting to savor it twice. Although I left out lots of stuff, still I am glad that I have this journal to motivate me to do this.

The Tuscan Affair

A vanilla Tuscan moon
Through wooden shutters
How sweet the lover's sigh.

The two photos I took of the full moon from the bedroom of my B & B in Monterongrifolli were blurred, but the remembered view in my imagination is always much more beautiful anyway. So, imagine an open window on a cool fall night, antique wooden shutters pulled away to reveal the silhouette of a Tuscan hillside and the quiet blanket of night over all. This was my last night in Tuscany and I came to the full realization then that I had ARRIVED.

But enough of that. With a romance and a temporary but passionate affair such as this, one should always start at the beginning.

Tuscany is a region somewhat known in America due to a number of romantic movies and books such as "Under the Tuscan Sun" and "Room With a View." Sometimes when things are loved to death through literature or media they cannot possibly live up to their reputation and the resulting expectations. Fortunately for us all, this is not the case with Tuscany. It is all the smells, sights and feelings that you read about and see and it is more.

We left Sicily and arrived at the Rome airport. There we rented a car with a GPS and headed out to the mountainous region of Abruzzo. We spent one night in a small abandoned village with a B&B. That is another VERY LONG blog about getting lost as the sun sets, finding long lost relatives, showering with small scorpians, and enjoying a frugal meal of bread, hard cheese, proscuitto, and olives with small boxes of red wine as the haunting wind whistled outside the door and across the stone streets of an Italian ghost town. As if this wasn't exotic enough, after our make-shift supper, we watched an iffy TV cable reception beaming in from Northern Africa of the 2000 movie "The Gladiator" with French-African subtitles!

So, I will skip to warmer and more romantic Tuscany.

We left Abuzzo and drove north to the Tuscan region along the Autostrada which is just like the freeways we have in the U.S. It was not too crowded and there were only one or two 'crazy Italian" drivers and only one or two drivers who insisted that they needed to straddle both lanes in order to drive effectively. The rest of us knew what we were doing and where we were going...well sort of. We were fine except for when the GPS episodically disconnected at the most inopportune times.

We stopped briefly in the medieval walled town of Orvieto for a very nice lunch at a touristy place called The Grotto---now I know where that expensive restaurant in New York got it ideas. Not the expense...but the decor.

This is the outside of the restaurant and when you enter you head immediately down a flight of stairs to the grotto. There is a window to an outside fortressed wall at the end of the restaurant that lets in a little light.


We ordered a bottle of Vernaccia di S. Gimignano---a very nice white table wine. I ordered a ravioli stuffed with wild boar and floating in a buttery sauce, probably too robust for the wine, but like my feelings for art I am confident enough to appreciate things in my unique way. Besides my table mates were getting tired of the robust reds. They each ordered a pasta dish as well, one with a sweet sausage and one with ham. This was preceeded by a nice antipasta plate of cheeses and meats and olives.


We then took a walk to the walls of the city to look out over the country below as the afternoon was starting to wane. (Remember, you eat the midday meal in Italy starting at 3:00, so by the time we had wined and dined it was getting late.)


The city was arty and had lovely things to buy. Very much geared for the spending tourist.


And of course, the city had its important church in the center off of a large piazza at the highest point of the town. This one was most impressive, I must say. More lovely on the outside.


And the tourists were watching the locals who were watching the tourists!


We ended the day with a walking dessert at a world famous gelato place. They had a poster up that showed Alexander Solzenitzen eating gelato there, so we just HAD to try it.



Then trying to avoid putting our arrival too close to dark we reached the Agritourismo farm Locanda Rosati an hour before our scheduled 8:00PM family style dinner. We had brought playing cards and proceeded to sit at a game table in one of the farm-like sitting rooms playing games and sipping the wine brought by our host, Paulo. The dinner meal began in a large rustic dining room with introductions of all the guests and a vociferous welcome from Paulo. Many bottles of red and white wines were brought to the table for us to help ourselves. Then we started with a pate of boar, chicken liver, lime juice, olives, etc. to be spread on some salted puffed breads that were very much like sopapillas only salty. This was followed by an excellent mushroom rissotto, which was then followed by a meatloaf of wild boar, some wild bird and pistachios with a side dish of roasted potatoes. More wine and then a buttery fruit tart. Finally bottles of grappa, limonchello, and mezzaluna arrived and people freely sampled everything. I am not big on sweet liquors, but had fun watching my two mates get a little plastered and silly. After all, our room was only a short walk up a few steps.


Early the next morning we explored the grounds and found a lovely orchard of chestnuts and met our host's sister-in-law filling plastic bags with those that had fallen.


We checked out of the Inn after a breakfast of coffee that was to die for and an assortment of fruit, pastries and breads. We obtained directions to our next stop from their Internet, and thus plotted the day. We had been told that Italy's shopping outlets were on the way so we decided to stop at one called "THE MALL" just to see what an outlet in Italy was all about. There were stores from Fendi, Yves St. Laurent, Valentino, Gucci, Georgio Armani and a bunch of other old guys I had not heard about. These were the kind of stores that, in the states, you would wait for someone to unlock the door for you to enter. Here there was a steady stream of customers going in and out, many rich Asians with lots of bags over their shoulders. Items inside were 50 to 70% off! But since most items started at over $1,000 including simple silk blouses, I had to pass on any souvenirs from this place. (I played mind games in my head on what the ironing board thin 'customers assistants' in their designer clothes were thinking as I entered with my Macy's purse and sporting goods store walking shoes...and controlled myself so that I didn't laugh out loud.)

Then, as we settled back in the car, we read the directions from Chris and Christina to their Inn called Ankhura. They went something like this: Follow the exit to (Tuscan town) and then as you enter the roundabout take the exit to (another Tuscan town) and follow this road up the hill past the exit to (another Tuscan town) and take the roundabout and pass the exit to (another smaller Tuscan town) and head out and past the exit to (a very small Tuscan town) and then go on a gravel road and past (a named road) and head up the hill and pass the road to the cemetary and then you will reach Monterongrifolli.

Park your car at the sign that says "no parking beyond this point" and then go around the church and we are in the back up the street.(At first we thought that the symbol below was the no parking part! I took the photo the next day when we discovered it in the daylight.)



We arrived in the dark after 8:00 after much reading of signs and maps and second guessing and even going down a few blind streets in little unknown towns.

But the place was tremendously lovely and the hostess was graciousness personified. So, now it was time for my well-earned sleep on her lovely Malay linens and you too must rest for tomorrow we head out on a truffle hunt AND a wine tour.