The Early Bus to Baguio

Originally published on The Expeditioner 13 December 2010 (http://www.theexpeditioner.com/2010/12/13/the-early-bus-to-baguio/)

 

Barely seven in the morning, the Victory Liner bus jolts to a stop and the child-sized driver announces in an accent I can barely make out, “Five minutes!”

Ken wakes and shifts in his seat.  He laughs at the sight of me huddled beneath clothes I retrieved from our bag and have draped around my shoulders and over my legs.  In the Philippines, they like their air conditioning set at meat locker.

“Stay here,” he says.  “I’m going to use the bathroom.”

I nod, teeth chattering.

We’ve been underway two hours, having boarded the bus before dawn.  In an attempt to distract me from both the early hour and the artificially induced cold, Ken had bought us a bag of macapuno donuts.  Imagine a Bavarian cream, then replace the sickly yellow custard with a naturally sweet, velvety glob of young coconut.  “Nice try,” I teased, wiping a blot of the gooey elixir from my chin, but he knew I was looking forward to this trip almost as much as he was.

Baguio was the place where in his childhood Ken had escaped the brutal summers of Manila.  In the highlands several hours north of the capital, Baguio got cool enough to grow strawberries.  Ken was excited to visit again—it had been many years—and I was thrilled we’d finally have some time alone.

Coming from a small family, the vastness of Ken’s clan overwhelmed me.  In one week I’d already met dozens of aunts and uncles and cousins and there hadn’t been a day yet when we weren’t setting off to another relative’s house for a reunion.

His parents pronounced us crazy to undertake this trip.  For days the newspaper had carried nothing but sensational headlines and incomprehensible pictures of submerged villages and landslides due to the monsoon rains.  Ken’s mother wondered aloud why we had this death wish.

On the bus, as a couple, we attracted a lot of attention.  Just as in the Manila traffic, where young men in the backs of jeepneys stared and pointed, here, too, we were conspicuous.  I wanted to believe this was because there weren’t many white people in the Philippines at the time—in addition to it being the rainy season, the U.S. State Department had issued a travelers alert due to the recent kidnappings by a local terrorist cell—but I knew it was more because they were unaccustomed to seeing a Filipino man with a white woman.  Back home in New York, I didn’t think of us as an interracial couple; since arriving here, I was reminded at every turn.  Of course, plenty of Filipinas were with white men, but that was different.

The moment Ken is off the bus at the rest stop, several barefooted peasants jump aboard.  They wave newspapers and rice cakes and long sticks of barbecued chicken and pork.  The fatty aroma of grilled meat floods the bus and a smell that would make me salivate at noon makes me want to puke now.  I check my watch again.  Yes, just seven a.m.  The macapuno roils in my stomach.

Because I’m a foreigner, the only one on the bus, because I am white, I’m singled out.  A man with a ragged t-shirt, leathered brown skin and precious few teeth tilts toward me, dangling the pork beneath my nose.  He barks at me in dialect while I try to affect a smile that balances kindness with a clear message:  go away.  The other passengers watch, rapt.

Then suddenly the hawkers are scurrying back down the aisle.  The bus driver is back in his seat.  The peasants jump off the bus, the driver pulls his lever, shuts the door.  I stare out the window.  Have the police come perhaps?  Are the vendors not supposed to be harassing the bus passengers?  Fully awake now, I’m excited by the promise of a juicy story to tell Ken when he returns.

Except now there’s the loud grind and catch of the bus engine starting up, the driver revving the gas.  I shoot up straight in my seat and press my face to the fogged window, peering desperately through the torrents of rain for Ken.  At the front of the bus, the driver is putting on his seat belt and adjusting his cap.  His hands take the wheel at ten and two.  Surely we won’t leave before all the passengers have returned?  I feel the bus jerk as it shifts into gear.  I’ve stopped breathing, though my heart is off at a gallop.  I strive to remain calm, quickly sifting through my options—the last thing I want is to come across as the hysterical American woman.  But the next stop is hours away and the deeper we go into the province, the less English is spoken.  Will there be a police station there, someone who can reunite us?  No one on the bus seems to speak English, so I rely on my eyes to implore my fellow passengers who must certainly remember I had a companion and he’s not back.  I imagine them intervening on the poor white woman’s behalf.  Somehow, though, those who earlier had been so acutely interested in me, in us, are now oblivious, nibbling on their BBQ pork, the fat glistening on their chins.

Finally, there’s nothing else to do.  I rise from my seat, start down the aisle toward the driver.  Wait!, I’ll shout, wait!, not knowing if he’ll understand me, but I’m angry now, I will make him understand me.

Just as I’m about to reach the front of the bus, though, here comes Ken running alongside, knocking amiably on the windows and then, as he catches up with us, on the door.  The driver opens up, Ken hops on.  No sigh of relief, not a wrinkle of concern creasing his forehead.

He holds out a skewer of BBQ pork.  “Want some?” he says.

 

 

Best Meal in Paris

Of all the many, many things I love about Paris (my name is Jude and I have been a Francophile since I was four years old and succumbed to the charms of Pepe Le Pew), the French cuisine certainly ranks at the top.

As soon as I’m off the plane at Charles de Gaulle, my mouth begins to salivate with the thought of escargots swimming in garlic butter, rich foie gras spread on toast points, a bowl of moules sitting companionably beside a cone of pommes frites.  Not to mention the cheeses, the wines, the pastries!

I’ve had some stellar meals in Paris over the years in some pretty spectacular settings, but by far the best was the New Year’s Eve dinner Ken and I shared at our tiny Left Bank hotel.  And when I say at our hotel, I don’t mean in the restaurant, but in our room.  And when I say in our room, I don’t mean room service.

We were in Paris on New Year’s Eve to celebrate not only the new year, but our 10th anniversary.  We had tickets for a jazz club, but had made no dinner reservations since we figured that, like back home in New York, dinner at a nice restaurant on New Year’s Eve was less nice than on another night, not to mention much more expensive.

Instead we decided to make a little French picnic on our hotel bed.  So I made a foray out into the streets of the 6th arrondissement where we were staying, hitting up the boulangerie for a baguette,the fromagerie for fresh buttons of chevre and a chunk of brie, the epicerie for an intriguing egg-aspic-smoked salmon concoction and foie gras and bottles of Badoit, the patisserie for heavenly mini eclairs filled with vanille, chocolat and cafe.  Last stop, the wine shop for  a split of champagne.

The delight in shopping like this–as if I were a Parisian!

 

 

Back at the hotel, Ken and I spread all the food out on the bedspread and sat cross-legged with our feast between us.  No fancy restaurant meal could have made us happier.  We were already having the best New Year’s Eve of our lives.

The Lap of Luxury (Reminiscing)

Last year I was fortunate enough to attend the Sirenland Writers Conference (www.sirenland.net) and the next one is already around the corner!

This post is dedicated to this year’s participants, who are about to discover firsthand what a unique and special conference Sirenland is.

Original Post Date:  April 2010

As if spending a week with a few dozen super talented writers were not enough to make the Sirenland Writers Conference worthwhile, the event takes place on the Amalfi Coast of Italy, in breathtaking Positano.

The View from My Room

With a reputation as a resort area for the Beautiful People (that is, beautiful and affluent), a place like Positano is the stuff of dreams for a middle class girl like me.  Which is to say, just the thought of going to Positano already had me swooning.

We’ve all seen the pictures of the colorful houses perched one atop the other up the sides of the cliffs, as if to add just one more might send them all toppling.  In old Italian movies, we’ve seen the twisty roads high above the Mediterranean that hug the Amalfi Coast (bring the Dramamine!).

The Long and Winding Road

But, oh, the surprise in store for me when I checked into the hotel (albergo) where the conference is held.  Le Sirenuse (www.lesirenuse.com) is one of, if not the, most luxurious hotel in Positano.

In the week before the hotel opens for the season, the Sersale family hosts the Sirenland Writers Conference in high style–and with such graciousness and enthusiasm for the art of writing literature.

Prior to arriving in Positano, I’d spent three days traveling solo in Capri.  That morning, I’d taken the ferry from Capri to Sorrento (in season, there is a direct ferry to Positano) and then the bus to Positano.  I was exhausted when I arrived, having done quite a bit of traveling (and hiking) in those days.

At the front desk, Gennaro was all smiles and ready to check me in.  Leaving my luggage at the desk (someone would deliver it to my room), Gennaro led me through the stunning lobby area, down a flight of marble stairs and through a maze of opulent sitting areas to room #91.

He opened the door, we walked the few steps down the short hallway and then turned the corner.  Perhaps my exhaustion had brought my emotions closer to the surface, but tears came to my eyes at the sight of this room–and the view beyond.

Never in my life could I have imagined I would ever stay in such a place.  I felt–for lack of a better word–undeserving.  First of all, the size.  The room was almost as large as my entire apartment in New York (which, I realize, isn’t saying all that much).  In addition to the huge bed outfitted with Frette sheets and duvet and the world’s most comfortable pillows, there was a sitting area with a table, cushy love seat and two armchairs, a little dressing table area with a window overlooking the water, a desk, an armoire that spanned most of a long wall, and….best of all…sliding doors that opened to an expansive view of the Mediterranean Sea, the beach (the sand darkened by volcanic ash) and that ubiquitous cliff of precariously stacked houses.

And I hadn’t even seen the bathroom yet, with its giant jacuzzi, its plush towels and robes and complimentary Eau d’Italie toiletries.  Or the dining room downstairs, with its lemon trees, the vines climbing the walls, and the chandeliers of hundreds of candles.  Or the myriad terraces, each offering slightly different views, all the more impressive than the last.

Gennaro left me with my key, a heavy golden mermaid (le sirenuse) and immediately I took a picture of it.  A minute later my suitcase arrived, but before I unpacked or did anything else, I shot photographs of every inch of my room, trying to make it seem real.

Even after spending a week there, it still felt more like a fantasy.  The room, the sumptuous breakfast feast each morning, the conference itself, the new friends, the Baci chocolate waiting at my bedside each night–it all seemed part of some alternate life, a life I had somehow stolen and called my own.

After I’d taken my pictures, I leaned on the railing in front of the sliding doors and stared at the beach, the hillside, the fisherman paddling his rowboat out to sea.  It was cloudy, and cool, but it hardly mattered.  I closed my eyes and breathed in the moist air, listened to the gentle crash of the surf against the shore.

I left Le Sirenuse and Positano almost a week ago now.  I have to keep reminding myself that I did not imagine it.  For five days and six nights, I lived like one of the Beautiful People and I felt, well, special, as I’m sure all my fellow Sirenlanders did.  And maybe that’s because we are.

** Mille grazie to Franco, Antonio and Carla Sersale for all they did to welcome us at Le Sirenuse**

The Grand Experiment, Month One

I’d never bought a one-way plane ticket before.  I’ve always loved going away, but it was a given that I’d be coming back.

Five weeks have now elapsed since Ken and I stepped off the JetBlue plane at SRQ Airport in Sarasota and I don’t know that the idea has totally sunk in yet:  we are now Home.

Except it doesn’t feel like Home, not yet.

“Why not?” Ken wanted to know when I expressed the sentiment over dinner last night.

Silly, inane, embarrassing reasons popped to mind.  Off the top of my head, because it was dinnertime, I thought about how I was cooking every night now, as opposed to the two nights a week (tops!) we ate at home back in New York, and how I had to prepare our dinner on an electric stove, which no, I will never ever get accustomed to.  (Given the choice, who in their right mind would choose an electric stove over a gas one?)

Then I thought about how after dinner I’d clean up the kitchen and then either watch some television or read a book, and how back in New York I had constantly wished I had just one free night to do exactly that, yet now that it wasn’t a matter of choice but imposed by tight finances and lack of friends close by, this once dreamed-of alternative was far less appealing.

Next I thought how I still haven’t found a dry cleaner or an affordable nail salon and how every time I go somewhere, I have to get in a car and I feel unsure of how to get there, and as much as I thrill over a sense of discovery when I’m traveling (as Ken will point out when I tell him this), apparently I don’t enjoy it in the place I actually live.

These petty concerns don’t get anywhere near the core of my unanchoredness, of course.  And as Ken pulled me into his lap, I was at least as confused as he was.

“Do you feel at Home here?” I asked, in all sincerity.

“As long as I’m with you,” he said, “I’ll always feel like I’m Home.”

Count on Ken to say such a thing.   Hey, I’m supposed to be the romantic in this relationship and I agree with him, theoretically, but at ground level it’s more complicated than that.

So what’s missing?  What would make our new place, our new town, feel more like Home?

As Ken pointed out, we are still surrounded by all our own things:  our furniture, our books and photos, our dishes, our various mementos brought home from our travels.  We still wake up together each morning, in the same bed we’ve shared for a decade.

We both knew, though, that this wasn’t about our material possessions, though I’m ashamed to admit I do find some comfort in them.

What, then?

Until five weeks ago, I lived in New York my entire life.  I consider the city itself my Home, yet when I really think about specific residences–and there have been many–only two have truly felt like Home to me.

The first one was the apartment complex in Queens where I spent my grade school years in the early- to mid-’70s–my formative years, you might say.  To this day, when passing by the complex on the Long Island Expressway, my stomach hollows out with an inexplicable recognition and, yes, longing.  I remember our huge apartment with the oil painting of the Grand Canal hanging above our couch and our 18th story terrace where, along with the rest of the borough, we cheered that day in 1969 when the Amazin’ Mets won the Word Series.  I remember the way to the pizza nosh where we used to get not only quintessential New York pizza but also frozen chocolate-covered bananas, the Sam Goody where my brother and I would go each Friday to buy hit 45s, the small public library where I borrowed books like Charlotte’s Web and cultivated my love of literature.  I feel like a part of me, an essential part, is still there.

My other Home is the one I just left.  The first apartment that Ken and I would call “ours.”  (The year previous, Ken had moved into “my” apartment.)  We found it on a cold, wet Saturday afternoon.  We were already on our way home for the day, I was coming down with bronchitis and coughing my head off, but one of the real estate agents we’d met earlier that afternoon called and said he thought he had a place we’d love.

Love it we did.  The building in Forest Hills was only two years old and the apartment was virtually brand new.  A two-bedroom, two-bath duplex with an unusual layout, floor-to-ceiling windows, great kitchen and, best of all, a patio where in the summers-to-come we would barbecue and have friends over.

We broke our lease and moved in within the week.  According to Ken’s Filipino tradition, we “blessed” our new home by first bringing in a bag of rice.  And blessed that apartment was.  We lived there five years, through prosperous times and desperate times, though bliss and trouble.  I loved that apartment–we loved that apartment.  I enjoyed nothing more than cozying up on the couch in our admittedly small living room, me with a glass of wine and Ken with a pint of ice cream, to watch a movie on television.  Home was as simple as that.

As I write this on my laptop, my same ole laptop, in our new living room with windows that look out onto the beach, I can see the surfers bobbing on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to capitalize on the windy day.  An enormous pelican wafts by the window.  The temperature is cool for Florida, but very warm by New York February standards, and anyway, the sun is brilliant–as it has been most days since we arrived.  What’s not to love?

We made this move for solid reasons.  We wanted a major lifestyle change, one which would allow for more flexibility which in turn would allow more time to pursue our real passions.  We wanted a more relaxed atmosphere, a lower cost of living and we wanted to flee winter.  Sarasota has provided all these things thus far and so our Grand Experiment is going as planned.

It’s all new, though.  From telecommuting for work, to driving a car to Whole Foods, to the primitive cable service, to not knowing anyone.   Admittedly, nothing insurmountable, nothing time and habit won’t remedy.  We’ve only been here a little over a month; we’ve only finished unpacking a few weeks ago.  I realize it is likely that the more familiar everything becomes, the more like Home it will begin to feel.

More than familiarity, though, Home is about history.  The key is to stop dwelling in nostalgia and to start creating the memories that will embrace me each time I walk through the door.  A sense of Home emanates from the heart, as it has often been pointed out in songs and Hallmark cards.

And naturally Ken is right.  As long as I am with him, I will always be Home.   I suppose I just take longer than he does to let go of what was and look forward to what will be.

Beguiled by the Borghese

Original Post Date:   12 April 2010

On the afternoon of Palm Sunday in Rome, after enjoying a macchiato in the shadow of the Pantheon, I met up with a new friend from the writers’ conference from which I’d just come.  The sunshine was glorious, illuminating the white dome of a cathedral, glinting off Hadrian’s Elephant, toasting our cheeks and shoulders.  Church-goers ambled through the cobblestone streets holding olive branches aloft while tourists squinted at maps and caroused souvenir shops.

We could have easily whiled the day away in a cafe, talking and drinking and people-watching, while the sun showered us with its love, but we were on our way to the Galleria Borghese (www.galleriaborghese.it), which houses a majority of the art collection of Cardinal Scipione Borghese, a nephew of Pope Paul V.   Sciopione apparently had very good taste, having been an early patron of Bernini and a collector of works by Caravaggio, Rubens, Raphael and many others.

Gail and I started on the second floor, an accidental but serendipitous strategy since the museum entry is timed and everyone else began on the first floor–meaning that, for a while anyway, we had the galleries to ourselves.

One room of jaw-dropping paintings gave on to another and we went from one to the next to the next craning our necks at the elaborately frescoed ceilings, pointing at this painting by Titian and that painting by Raphael.  The Caravaggios were on loan to a special exhibition going on over at the Quirinale, but there was still gaping to be done over Jacopo Bassano’s The Last Supper and Domenichino’s Diana.

But the real oohing and aahing was still to come.  Already dizzy from the collection of paintings, we made our way down the spiral staircase to the ground floor where the sculpture rooms beckoned.

Mostly, the Borghese, like much of Rome, is all about Bernini, yet Canova’s white marble statue of Paolina Bonaparte reclining on a mattress is every bit as worthy.  I admit to knowing very little about art, and so I cannot speak to what makes art “good” or “bad,” but as a sentient human being, I was moved by the wrinkles in the mattress which looked like anything but stone, and by the utter tranquility of Paolina’s pose and facial expression.

That said, if it had been the case that the Borghese had room for only a few pieces of art, we would have been satisifed with three particular Berninis.  The fierce expression of determination on the face of Bernini’s David as he confronts Goliath compells you while the chiseled indentations of Pluto’s grip on his victim in The Rape of Proserpine takes your breath away.  To think that both of these masterpieces were finished before the sculptor was 25 years old is almost incomprehensible.

It was his Apollo and Daphne, though, that truly moved me.

Gail and I moved in slow, trancelike circles around this statue that depicts the virgin nymph Daphne turning into a laurel tree in order to escape Apollo.  There is bark where skin should be, her fingers and toes are morphing to twigs, leaves grow within her hair.  Her desperation is physical.  The facial expressions, the opposing textures of tree and human flesh–how this could have been fashioned out of a slab of rock is mind-boggling.  Again, my art education is dismal, but even I know a masterpiece when I see one.

I fantasized about curling up at Daphne’s feet, taking a nap and then waking up an hour later to gaze at her all over again, but it was time to go.  Gail and I took a final circle around, trying to take it all in, to etch it into our memories so we could recall it at any moment.

And to be doubly safe, we made a beeline for the gift shop and bought postcards.

The Next Great Trip

Original Post Date:  May 2010

 

The thing about coming home from an exhilarating trip is, you soar high on those newly minted memories for a few weeks and then–nothing you can do to avoid it–real life brings you crashing right back down to earth. And it hurts.

That’s real life’s responsibility, though, and thank goodness for it.  Because if we didn’t have the job to drag ourselves out of bed for, the rent money to earn, the skillet to scrub and the gym clothes to wash; if not for the shopping for chicken cutlets and fresh thyme, the chopping and grilling, the PTA meetings and the doctor’s appointments, how could we ever truly appreciate the time away from it all?  Just as Friday would lose its allure without Monday, so would leisure travel without our quotidian drudgery.

It’s been four weeks now since I returned from my Italian extravaganza (fairly well chronicled in this blog) and despite my best efforts to resist it, I am once more knee-deep in the wet, clinging goo of real life.  I’ve had some paying work recently, but I need more.  I need to pay my bills.  I need to go to the dentist for an exam.  My stepson is coming for a visit and I need to plan meals.  I need to have a talk with my dry cleaner.  I need to get back on track with my workout regimen, as well as with my pre-Italy eating habits.  There are spring clothes to pull out of storage.  There are neglected friends to see.  There is my novel to be worked on, finished—always there is my novel.

(I exaggerate, of course, when I call it all drudgery.  I enjoy many of those things I listed above, but even the fun activities can get to feel like something to check off your to-do list when life is at its busiest.)

All of which helps to explain why, as soon as I’m home, I start to think about—and resources permitting, even start to plan—the next trip. There’s something to the anticipation that keeps me motivated through the day-to-day, even if that next sojourn is a year away (hopefully not).

So as you read this, I am pondering, fantasizing, weighing a world of options.  Volunteer in an elephant park in Thailand?  Rent a house inProvence for a month?  Roam the bazaars of Fez and ride a camel under the Saharan sun in Morocco?  Experience duende while seeking out authentic flamenco in southern Spain?  Take that trip with Ken back to his native home, the Philippines, but this time explore the provinces?  There’s the rain forest in Costa Rica, the undiscovered beaches inMexico, the veldt in Africa. And if we don’t get to The Maldives soon, they’ll be under water!

The possibilities dribble off my lips in an endless drool, and those are only the places I haven’t yet been.  With only one or two exceptions, I’d also like to return to those destinations I’ve fallen in love with over the years—Paris and Venice and the Amalfi Coast, especially.  (It’s not possible to grow tired of Paris, I don’t think.)

With only so much time, only so much money, the array of choices poses quite a dilemma—but oh, what a delightful dilemma to have! In my free time (that is, when I’m supposed to be working on my novel), I look up flights to Thailand, check the real estate listings in the South of France, compare tour operators for safaris—just to see.  It gets me through my days, my weeks—that wonderful, painful, wistful yearning time between trips.

It makes me shudder to realize that Ken and I are closer to fifty now than we are to forty, but it means the impetus to travel grows more urgent by the moment.  We are healthy and fit and young for our age (or so we like to think), and now is the time to go.  The only question remains, how to decide, and nothing thrills me more than researching and contemplating that answer.

Huffing and Puffing: Positano to Montepertuso

Original Post Date:  April 2010

You work out five days a week, you do a fair job in the nutrition department–you consider yourself to be in good shape.  That is, until you find yourself at a writers conference in Positano, Italy, and one of your fellow fiction writers (yes, I’m talking about you, Cindy Martin!) casually mentions she and some others will be walking up to the hamlet of Montepertuso for lunch.  Would I like to come along?  There’s a terrific restaurant up there.  Well, yes I would, thank you very much!

And my new friend, Holly, you come, too!

As soon as our workshops broke at 12:30 then, off we went.  Cindy and her husband, Cal, led the way for the half dozen plus of us who came along that day.  They’d been to the conference before and had done this hike several times then, and they had done it the day before as well.  How tough could it be?

Montepertuso sits 1,137 feet above the Mediterranean, a fact I only learned after I was home and googled it, but even now the height doesn’t seem very daunting.  High enough to afford spectacular views, but don’t I sometimes climb 2,000 feet on the treadmill at my gym back in New York?  Well, bless that treadmill and its smooth rubber belt, its rhythmic pace, itspredictability.

Because it wasn’t the steepness of the climb as much as it was that instead of hilly pathways leading up, we found ourselves faced with ancient stone steps.  (I emphasize ancient, because they are much higher than modern steps and therefore far more taxing.  They are also more irregular.)

Fifteen hundred steps.  A couple hundred less, incidentally, than the more famous 1700 steps that lead from Positano to Nocelle.

Ten minutes in, I used the excuse of a photo opp to collapse against a wall and let my lungs do their work.  I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so out of breath.   How much longer, I inquired of Cindy and Cal, those show-offs at the front of the pack.  I was going for a breezy tone, but instead I was wheezy.  Cal threw me a smile over his shoulder and laughed, brushing my question off as if it were merely rhetorical.

Holly came over to lean against the wall with me, shooting  me a look I read as, what did you get us into here? I liked Holly.  I hoped she wouldn’t hold this all against me.

Yet, though I would barely have thought it possible, the view as we ascended was even more stunning than it was down at our hotel.  The sun danced on the sea and dazzled the multicolored jumble of houses on the mountain opposite.  We were surrounded by citrus trees, lemon and orange, and in the narrow stone lanes, soccer shirts and jeans and sheets hanging on laundry lines frolicked in the refreshing pre-spring breeze.

We took our pictures, we caught out breath, we were ready again.  This wasn’t so bad.  Really it wasn’t.

Not five minutes later and already my breath had deserted me again.  I couldn’t afford any more conversation if I was going to make it to the top.  We were all new acquaintances, anxious to get to know one another, but that would have to wait.  I wouldn’t be able to talk to anyone when I was dead.

Up, up, up.

Presumably, if you climbed without stopping it would take about half an hour to reach the top.  We set foot in Montepertuso about 45 minutes after we began.  But we made it.  My clothes might have been soaked through with my exertions, my hair might be dripping down my neck, but we had reached our destination and in just a few steps we’d reach the restaurant where we’d cancel out everything we’d just accomplished with a feast, Italian style.

Holly and I attempted as best we could to take a shower in the bathoom sink and when we went out to the dining room, the smiling Paolo welcomed us with a glass of Prosecco.  Now this was my kind of place!

Il Ritrovo (www.iltritrovo.com), which means the meeting place, isspecial.  I’d be lucky enough to eat here twice during my time in the area (yes, I undertook the hike a second time).

Because we were a large group, Paolo suggested he bring us large platters of antipasti, followed by a variety of homemade pastas.  First there were plates of fresh seafood–marinated anchovies, shrimp, mussels, icefish (that was a new one for me)–and charcuterie–prosciutto, speck, salami.  There were grilled vegetables and there were cheeses.  Pastas included a linguine with fresh mussels, a pasta with a simple but divine cherry tomato sauce and, the hands-down favorite, a thick tube pasta with a cream sauce of provolone and walnuts.  And all the while, the wine flowed as freely as the conversation.

Afterward there were cookies and biscuits and tiny cakes along with not only the ubiquitous Limoncello but homemade liquers made of blueberry and apricot.

We didn’t want to leave–ever!–and not just because we were thinking of the long walk back down to Positano  (a walk that would seem easier, but just have a little heart-to-heart with your knees and see what they think).

Just outside the restaurant, near the railing overlooking the sea more than a thousand feet below, we gathered together so Paolo could snap our picture.  I will treasure this photograph always, not only for the memory of that hike, of that meal, but because it contains the smiling faces of some of the new friends I made on my trip–new friends who I hope to be calling old friends years down the road.

I see it in my mind.  Five or ten years from now, at one of our book signings.

“Cindy,” I say (or Holly or Allison or Claire or Gail or Greg or or or), “remember that climb to Montepertuso?”

And Holly will laugh and say, “Yes, I remember how you almost fell off the mountain on the way down!”

“That was funny,” I’ll say, probably with tears in my eyes, because I’m sappy that way.

Rome by the Glass

(Published on http://www.theexpeditioner.com November 2010)

 

Poor Giordano Bruno.  Ten years before Galileo would take the same stance, this former Dominican friar had the temerity to assert that the sun and not the earth was the center of the universe, earning him a spot front and center in Rome’s Campo di’ Fiore, where he was burned at the stake.

Four hundred years plus one decade later, I wait in the shadow of his imposing monument at day’s end, watching an army of street sweeping machines whoosh around the piazza seemingly willy-nilly to clean up after the day’s busy fruit and vegetable market.  A fragrant cloud of squashed flowers, pulverized tomatoes and bruised basil fills my nostrils while tourists study the menu boards of cafes lining the piazza and locals lounge at outdoor tables smoking and drinking wine in juice glasses.

The Saturday night before Palm Sunday in Rome, Holy Week upon us, and the city is more clogged than ever with tourists.  Arriving late this afternoon, I’d navigated my way through the throngs in Piazza Navona, spying no less than half a dozen large tour groups, their guide waving high above his head the polka dot umbrella or the giant yellow daisy or the stick with a bright green ribbon tied to it.  The clients, American and Japanese mostly, followed along like obedient puppies.  I’ve always fantasized about how much more enjoyable Rome would be were its streets not jammed with these packs of knee-socked, camera-toting, menu turistico-seeking people from elsewhere.  Where were the real Romans?  Caught behind one of these gaggles of tourists, no doubt.

And yet, though traditionally I have not been a proponent of guided tours, preferring rather to do my own research and make my own discoveries, on a previous trip to Rome, my companion and I were solicited on the endless queue outside the Vatican Museums and were persuaded to join a small group tour.  If I’m honest, we were lured primarily by the promise of being able to sip coffee in a café while our guide waited on the two-hour line for us, but the real sweetness of the deal turned out to be the astonishingly knowledgeable guide himself, a friendly South African with a Ph.D. in art history, who spewed out nuggets of priceless and juicy information that resulted in a far richer experience than we could ever have had on our own.  Given that successful foray then, with caution, I amended my position.  A carefully chosen tour with a truly knowledgeable, personable guide can lend an extra dimension.

It was this enlightened outlook that had provoked me to sign up this trip for a three-hour tour with the clever name, “Rome by the Glass,” which promised the opportunity to “indulge your inner Bacchus” as a certified sommelier brought you to local, authentic enoteche and educated you on the regional wines of Italy.

Which brings me to be hanging out with the heretic Bruno under the afternoon’s waning sun.  It’s not quite six p.m. when Ettore finds me and informs me I’m his only client tonight, and without further ado, we set off in the direction of our first enoteca.  Ettore points out sights along the way—the Piazza Farnese, one of his favorite piazzas and one overlooked by tourists, the Holocaust memorial plaque and the Star of David on a red wall in the Jewish Ghetto, the captivating Fountain of the Turtles in the Piazza Mattei.  He walks fast, talks faster and, for the moment, all I can manage is a nod, a smile.  I feel shy, the only tourist on a group tour.

Enoteca Il Piccolo is tucked away in a small cobblestone street shooting off the Piazza Navona.  True to its name, the enoteca is tiny—a handful of wooden tables squeezed together in a rustic looking space, bottles of wine shelved along the walls from waist height to the ceiling.  There’s only one remaining table, the one closest to the bar, and I move some boxes of foodstuffs off the chair.  Along the short bar, an array of snacks beckons:  bite-sized pizzas, olives, bread, spinach wrapped in turkey, roast pork.  I collect a bit of everything on a small plate while Ettore engages in a very passionate conversation with the young man behind the bar, presumably ordering a couple of white wines to taste.  When he returns to the table, I raise my eyebrows and he understands.  “In Italy,” he says with a resigned shrug, “everything is a negotiation.”

Naturally our conversation at first centers around wine.  Ettore’s knowledge turns out to be quite vast and I get the distinct impression that as much information as he’s feeding me, it constitutes only a fraction of all he knows.  He tells me there are 450 varieties of grapes found throughout Italy.  He explains about color and perfume and acidity and legs.  Those are just the basics.

Our first taste is a Sauvignon from the Veneto region.  Ettore swirls the wine in the glass.  Note the barely yellow color, like straw.  Note how long the wine sticks to the side of the glass—not long, meaning low alcohol content.  Note the smell—slightly grassy.  This Sauvignon has been served fairly cold, allowing for more perfume while reducing acidity.  It’s a young wine, he says.  Less exposure to the sun, less heat, lend the wine its crispness.  At last we drink.  I hold the wine in my mouth a moment and close my eyes.  I’m not good at this, I feel silly, but the Sauvignon playing on my tongue reminds me of a gentle summer night, a slight breeze riffling my hair, and I think, this tour is turning out all right.

The second wine arrives and Ettore hasn’t finished emphasizing the importance of temperature, using Coca-Cola as an illustration of the relationship between temperature and acidity:  the warmer the Coca-Cola, the more acidic.  And since it takes three minutes to warm the wine by one degree Celsius, a good sommelier will serve the wine a degree or two colder than ideal knowing it will take a few minutes before the customer picks it up and drinks.  Well now, that clears it all up.

By now I’m thirsty and surely our Grecía Salentina has warmed sufficiently, so I pick up my glass.  “This is a more direct wine,” says Ettore, hailing from Compania Avellino, a region on the bottom of Italy’s heel.  He leads me through the steps:  inspecting first the more golden color, then swirling again to show how the legs stick to the glass longer, evidence of the higher alcohol content.  I swirl along with him and wait for the legs to drip back down.

As we drink, the legs of our conversation grow stickier.  The language of wine is so technical, I say to Ettore, commending him on his fluency in English, which prompts him to reveal his secret weapon:  an American wife, originally from San Diego.  He tells me the story of how they met a decade earlier, when he was selling sweet, peachy wine to undiscriminating tourists in Florence.  After getting married, they started their tour company together.  Then it’s my turn.  Learning that my partner’s son is 23, he shakes his head.  “In America,” he says, “he’s a man already, but in Italy he would barely be weaned.”  Ettore himself is an exception, of course, but he laments the immaturity of his male compatriots, noting that even though it is changing, when Italian men marry, most still expect their wives to do all the cleaning, cooking, shopping, child-rearing and handling of household finances.

Time for the next enoteca, and threading our way through the nighttime bustle of the city, we touch upon American politics, the depressed real estate prices in Puglia and his incomprehension about American fashion.  What Ettore can’t understand is why American kids wear their jeans hanging down off their butts.  In Italy, he points out, it’s the exact opposite—the tighter, the better.  “I’ve noticed,” I say, and we laugh like two old friends.

At La Vecchia Bottega del Vino in the Jewish Ghetto, Ettore orders us a plate of local charcuterie and another of cheeses.  While we nibble on prosciutto and speck, bresaola and mortadella, we sample the first of two reds, a Nero d’Avola from Sicily.  The heat of the sun comes into play here.  In most places, the days are warm, the nights cool, but in Sicily the nights are also warm—influencing the taste of the grape.

With the cheese plate comes the lustier Barbaresco, product of Piedmont.  The Barbaresco has the longest legs yet.  We swirl and sniff and sip while we shift now to the topic of children, and I’m surprised to learn that Italy has the second lowest birth rate (Spain is first) in the western world and that few Italian women have more than one child.  Ettore chalks it up to economics, but I wonder.  Whatever the reason, at this point, more Italians are dying every year than being born.  Considering the Catholic majority in the country and the proximity of the Vatican, this is a revelation to me.

Ettore and I are having a good time.  We could linger over this table all night, but his wife is waiting on him for dinner and, after all, this is a paid tour, not a night out with a friend—although the distinction is hardly clear.

By the time we part company, it’s almost 10 p.m., four hours since I stared up at Giordano Bruno.  Given his prominence, I imagine Bruno sees quite a lot of tour groups congregating at his feet.  I reflect on the Inquisition which sentenced the former friar to death back in 1600, when apparently no one had a very open mind.  I’m still skeptical about how many tours (and there are so many in Rome) give you a real feeling for the city, how many take you beyond the standard tourist pabulum, but after my enjoyable and educational night with Ettore, I’ll hold off on burning any tour guides at the stake.

 

What is the one memory you would take with you?

Ten years ago, I watched a Japanese film called After Life http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1605697817/ , the idea of which has forever stayed with me.

In the movie, the recently departed are told to pick the one memory from their life that they will take into eternity.  Given the critical nature of the decision, counselors are on hand to help them choose.  After all, this memory will be recreated and filmed and they will watch this single scene replayed over and over and over again.

In the decade since I saw After Life, I have often thought about what memory I would select, and I have rarely narrowed it down to less than two or three.  Like a menu at a good seafood restaurant, it feels unfair to choose just one.  King crab legs or lobster?  Steamed or stuffed with crabmeat?  That said, most of my finalists come from–where else?— my travels.

There are worse ways to spend eternity than remembering the gentle rocking of the gondola in Venice–Ken beside me, our hands clasped together, staring up at laundry blowing in the wind, at the sky beyond it!  Our gondolier had steered us into a passageway so utterly quiet, we held our breath lest we disturb the silence.  The single sound:  the sensual lapping of the lagoon’s water against the side of the boat.  The beauty, the serenity of that moment defies any words I could slap down here.

Or I might choose the afternoon I spent at the Musee Rodin in Paris on my first trip to the city, my first ever to Europe.  It had been unseasonably cold for May, the sun a stranger, but on that afternoon all was forgiven.  In the shadow of The Thinker, of the Burghers of Calais, the sun reached out, asking forgiveness by warming my shoulders and pinking my nose.  Fortified with fromages and vin rouge from the outdoor cafeteria, I stretched out on Rodin’s manicured lawn among the entwined lovers and I thought, la vie est belle.

If I were going for transcendental, it would have to be a particular pre-dawn morning in the Galapagos Islands.  Five a.m., without benefit of coffee, I clutched the railing at the bow of the ship, scanning the ocean for signs of whales.  (If whales were to be spotted on this trip, this would be the place.)   I was bleary-eyed, having stayed up too late drinking rum with the naturalists, but still I couldn’t fail to appreciate the scene before me.

We were approaching the next island on our itinerary, sailing toward a volcano, the giant sun rising from behind it.  As if that weren’t spectacular enough, seemingly out of nowhere, a school of dolphins materialized in front of the ship, swimming as if they were pulling our chariot.  We early risers, we hopeful whale-spotters gasped as one.  There were dozens of them, their slick silver backs arcing in and out of the water with a grace and synchronicity I’d never before seen.

There was something not just magical, but mythological about the whole scene.  I’m a city girl, born and bred in the urban jungle.  I’d seen dolphins before, but only on TV (Flipper) and at water theme parks.  All these years later, there is still no way to articulate the floaty sensation I felt in my heart in those moments–suffice it to say, I was mesmerized.

I like to think my afterlife is still quite a ways off, so I don’t feel too much pressure to choose yet, though the longer I live and the more I travel, the choice will only grow more complicated.  For now, I test-drive these memories in the less eternal space of meditation.

I’m lousy at meditation, by the way–I can never quite free my mind up enough to achieve a “quiet mind”–yet on a day like today, when New York is chilly and dreary, when all I’ve heard today has been disappointing, I try my best.

I close my eyes and summon up a memory from any of the dozens of trips I’ve made.  I bring it all back, reconstruct the details:  the smell of the Mediterranean Sea or of the damas de la noche or of the garlic in mymoules et frites; the nighttime lull of waves caressing the shore in Positano or of the church bells ringing in Quito or of the blast of the ferry horn in Sydney Harbor; the burn of the silverware on a sunny day at the cafe in Nice or of the rain-clotted sand crumbly between my toes while slow dancing with Ken in Boracay; the velvet of foie gras in Paris, the delightful kick of cacio e pepe in Rome, the sweetness of olives on the Amalfi Coast.

Fortunately, in the here and now, we have no limit to our database of memories.  We can shake them out and prance them around at will.  Though why is it, I wonder, that so many of my most significant memories emanate from my travels?

I think it’s because, taken out of our usual surroundings, experiencing the new and different, we become more ourselves.  If, as I believe, home is in our hearts, travel does not take us farther from home, but rather brings us closer.

I don’t know about you, but I plan to travel as much as possible, collect as many prospective memories as possible before I meet up with the After Life counselor.

And I’m interested–what is your best travel memory?

Arrival in Anacapri (Redux)

Original Post:  19 March 2010

 

My blog has been delayed by some technology issues here in Anacapri, a small price to pay for the privilege of spending three days in such a remote area of an island that boasts some of the most heart-stopping vistas I’ve ever seen. Where does the sea end and the sky begin? I find myself wondering.  Along with:  I never knew what blue was till now. Because in Capri, you are forced to redefine the color.

 

Getting here, however, had its challenges.

My flight from New York to Rome went smoother than you can possibly hope for or expect in 2010, making my $800 ticket seem a bargain (we’ll see what happens on the flight home!).  But following eight plus hours in the air, never sleeping a single minute of it, I felt a bit over-stimulated navigating my way through the train station at Fiumicino with my luggage, onto the jam-packed train, and into Termini Station.  The train to Termini left 15 minutes late, the Eurostar from Termini to Naples half an hour late.  Then, Naples.

Half an hour there may have given me a bad first impression, but the chaos, the filth, the squalor, the angry people.  There was the cab driver who had me follow him quite a long way to his car from the station, without offering any help with my bags, and took off like a sprinter.  He then had me sit in the front seat with him and as soon as we were underway, he stopped for gas, during which he started a fight with the station attendant, gesturing in that mildly violent way I’ve always thought of as an Italian stereotype.

When we had reached my destination—the Molo Beverello port—and I could pry my fingers from the dashboard (I thought driving in Manila was bad!), he now told me the fare was 25 euros as opposed to the 20 he quoted me at the train station.  “Big traffic,” he said, which was the same thing he said to explain the initial fare of 20 euros.  I feel like a sucker now for actually giving him 23, especially after I realized he had dropped me off several blocks from the port!  Let’s just say that the hunched over beggars tugging on my jacket, the cars and motorcycles trying to run me down, the litter in the streets didn’t give me the best impression.

Nor did the ticket office, where two men outside watched conspicuously as I struggled to navigate my suitcase through the closely spaced blocks of concrete, but never offered to help.  The ticket man was gruff, seemingly annoyed that I asked him which of the several docked boats was the one to Capri.

My smiles and buon giornos were not working their usual charm!  Maybe if I’d been less tired…?

But I did make it to Capri, and an extremely friendly taxi driver and possibly the best driver in the world maneuvered up and around the cliffs to Anacapri on the far western side of Capri.  Hairpin curves, narrow roads that at home would have to be one-way but were two-way here, the dizzying heights, the striking blueness of the sea below—way below—no better word to describe it than WOW.

And then, after 18 hours of traveling and more than 24 hours since I’d last slept, I arrived at Hotel Al Mulino, run by a delightful mother-daughter team:  Antoinetta and Simona.  Apparently I am the first guest of the season!  Antoinetta welcomed me with a hug and wishes for a buon cumpleano.  I’d forgotten it was my birthday.  She presented me with a bouquet of flowers and in my room, too, there was a bottle of red wine (which I’m drinking right now) from Ken.  (Miss you, Ken!)

Benevenuto Capri.  Happy birthday to me.