Roma!

ROMA

OK. We're a little out of order since this is about the first 3 days we spent in Italy and Rachel's earlier post about Sulmona was about our 4th and 5th day, but non-linear narratives are so popular now, we think you'll be able to keep up.

On Arrival:

After flying for about 10-11 hours in which Rachel slept much and I slept not at all, we arrived in Rome. We had our first “small-world” moment before we even left the airport when talking with the people we were sharing a mini-van with on our way to the hotel. Her accent sounded familiar to Rachel, and it should have – the woman was from Lenore, West Virginia, a town of about 500 people near Matewan, which is Mingo County. Small world indeed.

The Hotel Piccolo was lovely: balcony, full bath, mini-bar, and located almost at the foot of the Spanish Steps. We thought we needed to rest, but were so excited to be in Rome, we took off to explore the immediate surroundings. First impressions: beautiful, crowded, and confusing to navigate. The beauty was undeniable. Ancient buildings and ruins side-by-side with newer ones. Our hotel was in a very old part of town, even by Roman terms, and the streets were very narrow indeed. There were churches that dated back to the 14^th century, buildings that dated to the 17^th century and the facades, at street level which once were probably full of artesian craftsmen were now home to a veritable shopping mall of high-end brand names like Gucci, Prada, and the like. It was odd to see the juxtaposition of old and new, but this was ground zero for high end Italian shopping. The things the Italians were most proud, or at least known for, were all housed within the same space; ancient architecture and modern fashion. The crowds were unbelievable. There were the Romans, breezing through the public areas and side streets with the grace that comes with knowing something intimately and being able to block out the inconvenient. There were the tourists, of which we added to their numbers, flocking in hoards to sit on the Spanish steps and wander around aimlessly. And then there was the traffic. I have never seen anything like it in my life. Lanes mean nothing, scooters zip around slower vehicles with reckless abandon, delivery trucks, whose sides seem to barely fit in the street itself all sort of swarm any available space to move forward. Consequently, there didn’t seem to be much congestion like at home. Vehicles moved into any available space, regardless of if it was in the right of way or not; the idea was to just move forward. Keep moving seemed to be the rule. Don’t get frustrated, just move ahead. Very interesting.

After walking around for a while we stopped at a café for a coffee. We had a quick tutorial on how not to order coffee, and then we decided that the best place for us in our jet-lagged, post wedding, totally geeked state would be the balcony of our hotel with a bottle of wine. So, we just needed to get a bottle of wine. Easy, right? Looking back, it shouldn’t have been so tough. Eventually, after finding a place called Mr. Wine (what do you think they sell there, Rachel?) and acquiring a relatively cheap bottle of Corsco, we started heading back to the hotel. The streets were winding, and in our quest to find what wound up being Mr. Wine, we weren’t exactly leaving a trail of bread crumbs. We’d left our map of Rome in the Hotel because we had only intended to explore our immediate surroundings, which technically was what we did. Eventually, we learned that the most well-marked store in Rome was the McDonalds one block from our hotel. Following the signs to that got us home and we retired to the balcony to have a glass of wine. Ipod out, tunes gently playing, wine open, we sat back to take it all in. I think we both fell asleep in our chair after the first sip.

So we retired to the bed for a siesta. Woke up a few hours later, asked the concierge at the hotel where we could get dinner and took his advice. Our first dining experience in Italy was nice at the time, but pales in comparison to what we have experienced since. Since Rachel is keeping a rather detailed food journal, I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say it was like eating in Times Square. Lots of atmosphere, not so great food. Ah well.

Day Two Roma:

Any thoughts we had of lazing around our hotel were trumped by the sheer excitement of waking up in The Eternal City. Most hotels in Italy seem very happy to include your breakfast with the price of the room. That’s because for as much as Italy is known for its food, nothing you would eat in Italy before noon is very notable at all. Breakfast almost universally consists of a cappuccino and a pastry. Or as Rachel put it sugary drinks and sugary breads. We had our breakfast on the balcony which was the nicest part of the meal. Then we hit the town.

First stop: the Forum and the Coliseum. We took the Metro there, which was fun. Nice to see trains still tagged up with graffiti. Big graffiti, like New York and Chicago back in the day. I didn’t think it looked like the work of gangs, just renegade artists on a moving canvas. Very cool. We got off the train and came out of the Metro and BAM! There it was. The Coliseum. I don’t think either of us was prepared for it. It was just right there next to the subway station. We scoped out the line and decide the Forum would be a good first bet. Plus the forum was free.

We consulted the map and also found a tourist info building where they had a scale model of the grounds. This was very helpful in helping us understand what all we were looking at. It’s hard to comprehend the Forum because there are actually several of them, all built over several hundred years, and in Modern Rome, they’ve put several multi-lane roads through them. After walking through the ruins we came to this gigantic edifice. It looked old, but we had to consult the map to see what it actually was. It was called National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II and was constructed in the early part of the twentieth Century. It was at the head (or foot) of Via del Corso, one of the main roads that goes across town and served as a sort of modern introduction to the ancient ruins that lie behind it. We climbed the steps and passed all of the military who seemed to be ubiquitous in Rome and from the top of this giant structure we had the best view we had of the city so far. From there we could see, from above, all of the different forums, the Coliseum, countless churches, several of the hills that Rome was built on and the area that our hotel was. It was wonderful to be afforded that perspective since we had been on street level or below since our arrival.

We descended and walked through the most ancient of Rome’s Forums, the one that existed before the empire rose and various Caesars began creating new Forums for the people in their honor. The actual street level of ancient Rome is about 40-50 feet below the street level of modern Rome, so down there is a stillness that no mob of tourists fresh off the Disney tour boat following their guide with the Mouse ears could disturb. We refilled our water bottles at the spring that still flowed on the floor of the ancient forum and decided that the Coliseum would have to wait for another visit. The line there hadn’t gotten any shorter since we had gotten off the Metro and we had both burned off our cappuccino and croissant and were thinking of pranzo (lunch in Italian, a very important word).

Our research had told us that there were a few open air markets that set up in some of the piazzas around town. One was at Il Campo di Fiori and a quick consultation of the map revealed that no Metro stop was anywhere near there, and we had yet to master the buses in town. It looked like it could be walkable, but we had no sense of scale in town yet, so we decided to give it a shot. Walking in Rome is one of life’s great pleasures, especially when you have no real destination. If you are trying to get somewhere specific, like a place that you want to have lunch, it’s necessary to consult the map about every block. One can get off track in a heartbeat, turned around in another heartbeat, and completely disoriented in a third if you aren’t careful.

The maps of Rome are interesting as well. The night before we left, I was reading a tour guide from about 1960 that someone had given me. It had a map of Rome in it, which was the most interesting thing to me. On impulse, I threw it in my bag thinking, “It’s an ancient city, how much could it have changed in 50 years?” I was right. While we had spent some time the day before looking for a new map, everything we found looked exactly like the map that I brought with me from home that was printed in the 60s. There were little differences, but they were subtle.

On the walk home from the Campo di Fiori we found both the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain, two more of Rome’s treasures. Both were no more than a 15 minute walk from the hotel. The Pantheon was cool, inviting, majestic, ancient, and surrounded by centuries of Rome encroaching in on its front steps. It doesn’t cost a cent to go in. There is a hole in the ceiling for god's light and rain to tumble in and holes in the floor for them to escape. The engineering involved in creating a place like that is amazing, more so when one considers what they had to work with. I think that the Pantheon has always been free: a decree from one of the Caesars who ordered its construction.

As amazing as the building itself was, I think we both appreciated the coolness and relief from the heat that it provided. There was a fountain nearby and even the sound of the water, almost inaudible over the chorus of voices of the people of Rome, was soothing and cooling. The largest fountain in Rome is Trevi Fountain, which was practically in the back yard of our hotel. We were there on several occasions, and never was there not a crowd. In the heat of the day, in the dead of night, there were throngs. We passed it for the first time at mid-day, noted its beauty and realized that we couldn’t get much closer than we were, so we decided to come back after dinner.

Dinner that night was one of my personal favorites of the trip. We retraced our steps back past Trevi Fountain, still crowded, and toward the Pantheon, now closed. We were looking for a trattoria, as we had heard that they were smaller, family owned places that were a little less formal than a full-on restaurant. How to choose, how to choose…. we settled on Trattoria Antonio. I think we were sold on the large ham hock on the table just inside the doorway. This was our first really great meal in Italy. As I said, Rachel is logging what we ate in more detail, so I’ll just say that we had a very long, completely unrushed dinner, in what sure seemed like “a little spot”. We were the last ones to leave the restaurant. A gelato finished off the night as we strolled around, not lost, and wandered back to the hotel.

Roma Day Three

I have a thing for public parks. I think you can fairly accurately judge the quality of a city by them. Great cities have great parks. Clint had mentioned the Villa Borghese as being aloft on a hill, breezy, uncrowded, vast and glorious. We spent a morning there. Brought the International Herald Tribune, walked around through the gardens. It was lovely. Never got the view of the city that I wanted, got completely disoriented on our entry to the park, did enjoy the break from the press of people, and the green space, both things that were so absent from the streets of Rome. We had a fine morning. For lunch, we wanted to try a new neighborhood. One of our tourbooks said that Trastevere on the other side of the Tiber was where the real Romans lived, so we thought, sure, why not. We figured out a bus line, hopped on and were over the river in about 10 minutes. What a difference! It was quiet, still, uncrowded, old, much more graffittied and just as beautiful. We decided it was like the Brooklyn of Rome.

I learned, inadvertently and with no negative impact to myself of a scam that is frequently run on tourists. At lunch that day (a light one of pasta) I went to pay with my American Express card. They said that when they tried to run it the bank didn’t recognize it. I was obviously concerned, but also most immediately worried about how to pay for my lunch. Luckily, between the two of us, we had enough cash to pay, which I did and I thought that that was the end, but the waiter and what appeared to be his mother, a lady about as ancient as the building that she was sitting in, were not done explaining to me that the problem was most likely with the magnetic strip on my card because it was not being recognized by the bank. They brought me over to the register and ran my card again and showed me that digital read-out that said that it couldn’t read the card. Then they printed it out for me. All of which I thought was a bit overkill.

When we arrived in Rome, one of the first things we saw, right down the street from our hotel, was the American Express office. After lunch, I told Rachel that I wanted to go there to see what was up with the card. We were to leave town the next morning, early, and I wanted to catch them before they closed. At the AmEx office, the first thing they did was verify that they didn’t run my card and that there wasn’t a charge on it. Oh no, there wasn’t I said. They couldn’t, so I paid cash. Then it hit me. That’s a great scam to run on the tourists. Run the card. Then tell them that it didn’t go through and have them pay cash. The woman behind the counter smiled as she watched me get it. Her eyebrows rose slightly and she nodded subtly. Lucky me. I asked about the other American Express offices around Italy. There are a total of three: Rome, Milan, and Florence. I got lucky again because they were able to give me a new card on the spot. Membership does have its privileges.

We left Rome the following morning. Seeing how all roads lead there, I’m sure I’ll return someday. It’s a beautiful city and I had a wonderful experience there, although I’m not sure I’m in a hurry to go back. I’m more curious about other places that this country has to offer. We took off on a Saturday morning at about 6:30 am. The city was the most still I’d seen it. It was both empty and lit by the sun. When I return, I want to remember that this was the only time that I felt like we had the city to ourselves.

We are family!

Pat and I just spent two day in Sulmona, Italy - my family’s ancestoral home. Some of my distant relatives still live here and since the center of town is a medieval village, I’m confident that much of what we saw is how my great grandparents Dominic Gentile and Anna Quattr0chi left it when they moved to the United States in the early 20^th Century.

When we arrived here, I admit to being pretty nervous about meeting my family members. I wasn’t sure how many family members still lived here, their ability to communicate in English or any expectations they had of us. I was pretty confident that after a couple of days in Rome, Pat and I had both mastered “menu” Italian, but that was about it.

We took a train from Rome to Sulmona – a small ‘burg with a population around 30,000 nestled in one of the Abruzzo region’s many valleys. It’s a dramatic three hour ride that goes through a progressively steep and gorgeous mountain range. Sulmona is best known in Italy for two things – it is the home of Ovid and it is also ground zero for “confetti” – the candied almonds that are enjoyed at many Italian festivities. There are several confetti factories and almost every store front sells confetti and lovely pieces of art crafted out of these candies.

After checking into our hotel, we headed out for lunch with the intention of calling the family on a full stomach. Our first mistake!

We were delighted to find that the restaurant the front desk clerk from our hotel suggested was a Michelin 2 star establishment and affiliated with Italy’s Slow Food Movement. After an antipasta of meat and cheese, a second course of pasta and salad and wine we were pretty full. Just as we were asking for our check, a middle-aged man and woman with a pre-teen in tow appeared in the vestibule. After one look at Pat, the man exclaimed “MC DONALD!” We established that he was Gianfranco Aureli, the son of the relative whose name and address I had been given and that his mother was waiting for us with lunch ready. Even through a messy exchange of broken Italian and English it became clear to us we were going to be eating again and it was probably best if no one mentioned our first go at the mid-day meal to his mother Anna.

We made our way to Gianfranco’s flat – a gorgeous place in an 18^th Century building downtown – where we collected his daughter Maria Elena. She became our life-line for the day. She not only spoke great English but had a pretty impressive vocabulary that trumped that of many 18 year old native speakers of English. Maria Elena is enthusiastic about the art, architecture and history of Italy and we felt fortunate to learn so much about Sulmona’s rich history from her over the course of our visit.

After piling five people into a tiny European car, we made it to the home of Anna Aureli. She is the sister of my distant cousin Livia who lives in Ithica, NY. I’ve met Livia several times but it has been many, many years since I’ve seen her.

As soon as we arrived at Anna’s food started pouring its way out of the kitchen – antipasta, bowls of ravioli, roasted meat, salad, fruit and cake and coffee along with at least three different types of wine throughout the meal. Then, at some point Nunzia (Gianfranco’s wife) determined that what we Americans needed was gelato. A quick trip to the store resulted in two types of gelati (one was a combination of cantaloupe, strawberry and lemon and the other was tiramisu flavored if you must know J ) and whipped cream. Of course, Pat and I were served large portions of both. Then, just when we thought we were done with this super sized meal, out comes the Limoncello and grappa. We were able to get by with only doing a shot of Limoncello at that point.

All through the meal there was much talk of our American family. Anna met my great Aunt Ann and Ann’s daughter Helen Ann some years ago and she knew that Ann passed away a little over a year ago. Although Anna has never met my grandmother or any of her offspring, she knew most of our names.

Anna had gifts for us (and of course we had left all of our gifts for the family in the hotel) – a wedding gift of placemats and napkins along with a lovely basket of flowers made of confetti.

After the six hour lunch (which was preceded by an earlier lunch if you recall) and lots of linguistic Olympics, Pat and I were exhausted from the day and decided to try to politely retreat to our hotel. Gianfranco and his family walked us back to our hotel. Along the way Gianfranco and Nunzia stopped to buy Pat and I a box of confetti and a bouquet of flowers made of candied almonds. Throughout the walk they offered several times to have a dinner of pizza with us if we liked. We politely declined and slid into our hotel room where we slipped into a deep sleep and food coma for the next ten hours.

We agreed to call the next morning as we were again going to have lunch at Anna’s after a walking tour of the town. Anna’s daughter Gabriela would be there with her husband and child.

We woke early the next morning and knew we needed some more tools to make it through the day. First, we both needed an empty stomach! Second, a few more Italian words and expressions needed to be memorized. And third, we needed props such as the gifts we brought, a crude rendering of a family tree I created, and pictures of my family to help bridge some of the communication gap.

After an extremely light breakfast of yogurt and espresso, we took a walk to the main piazza to grab a few minutes of solitude before another exciting day with my family. When I called Gianfranco around 10 a.m. he told me we should come now. We walked to his flat where we found his sister Gabriela, her husband Stefano and her daughter Arianna. Stefano immediately became another language lifeline for us. After a quick round of coffee cake and juice, we were off to see the sights of Sulmona.

Between Maria Elena and Stefano, we now had two interpreters to help us through the day. We began again at the Piazza Garibaldi which is a rather large piazza for a town the size of Sulmona. It also has an ancient aqueduct system in the square. Then we saw several churches and the museum of Sulmona and took a stroll through the park.

After such a light breakfast and all the walking, I was actually hungry at lunch time – which was a good thing. We arrived at Anna’s to find her there with her sister Philomena. They were both busy making lunch and Gabriela jumped in immediately to help. The meal began with a meat and cheese antipasta. Next we had a very lovely broth based soup with eggs and meatballs. It is one of my favorite dishes we’ve had so far on our trip. According to Stefano this soup traditionally also contains nettles but they’re not in season right now.

After a serving of pasta, we then had breaded veal cutlets with artichokes and salad. It reminded me of dinner at my grandmother’s house when I was young. Breaded veal cutlets were always a favorite. Fruit and cake were present yet again but this time Pat and I were both prepared and had taken smaller portions of everything else to save room.

During lunch Stefano and Pat began discussing food and their own favorite “manly” recipes to cook. Pat gave away all his secret tips for making great pizza on the grill and they swapped tips on how to make the best pasta carbonara. Pat made a definite impression when he exclaimed “dammi un cinque” (give me five) at the end of their bachelor recipe exchange.

Once the table had been cleared we were able to distribute the gifts we brought and I had pictures to show of my family back in the U.S. Anna and Philomena are both very knowledgeable about our family who live in the U.S. and were excited to put faces with names. I was also able to use the (very incomplete) family tree to help them further identify people.

They showed me lots of other family photos new and old (from my great-great grandmother to their own children). Philomena was kind enough to give me a photo of my great-great grandmother (who was also named Philomena) which I will treasure as a piece of my family’s past. Through interpretation from Maria Elena both Philomena and Anna explained how attached they feel to Williamson because they now have more family in West Virginia than they do in Sulmona.

They also explained that my great grandparents did not live in Sulmona but a really small place called Badia about five minutes out of the town. Philomena was insistant that we go to see it and meet her sister Teresa and other family members who were apparently waiting for us.

So, we headed to Badia where we learned about a hermitage on the side of the mountain there. They tried to explain that the only man who ever refused an invitation to be Pope had lived at the hermitage in Badia but details were sketchy and much seemed to be lost in the translation. I’ve put this on my list of things to google!

We met several more family members there. All of the family we spent the earlier part of the day with left us in the hands of Carmine, a distant cousin with some English skills. He took us to meet Teresa (another sister of Anna) who was quite a charming lady. She is a poet and a sort of independent spirit. Although we were approaching the twelve hour mark with family at this point, we were so thrilled we had the opportunity to meet her that day.

After two days of trying to piece so much family history together, Teresa gave us a glimpse of the Holy Grail – a family tree she has been working on for years. I was floored and astonished to see how much information she had gathered and somewhat shocked that no one else had mentioned it over the course of two days. We left with a promise from her that she would email me a copy of this document so I could help her fill in many of the State-side blanks and Carmine came up with the idea that we should try to include as many pictures of people as possible in the family tree. As we were leaving we found out it was the one year anniversary of her husband’s death so we were happy to have brought something positive to her day.

Carmine took us back to our hotel and we pretty much collapsed from exhaustion yet again. The next day we took one last stroll through Sulmona before catching a bus to Scanno – an ancient city (circa 1067) with dramatic views of Abruzzo National Forest. More to come on this amazing little town nestled into the nooks and crannies of a mountainside…

You'll find pictures of our time in Sulmona here - just click on the folder labeled "Sulmona".

Ciao!

Rachel