Time Travels with a Donkey

One last Italian instalment for now, as there's only so much I can write (or anyone else might want to read) at one time about food, wine and family.  

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I keep coming back to these photos of two of my nephews, taken on a visit to the donkeys who lived in a field below the agriturismo.  The boys were both thrilled at the prospect of seeing donkeys close up, but when we got near, they drew back.  This guy (the indian chief) told me firmly that his mother wouldn't like it because she's scared of donkeys (slander, but he's six, and projecting.)  

So we talked a bit about the donkeys and I stood between nephews and donkeys as a buffer while we chatted.  I explained that the donkeys were butting the fence because they were curious about us and I leaned over and stroked one of the donkey's noses as I spoke.  And I had the strangest time-sliding moment where thirty years dissolved and reappeared and I was all at once a small girl who had been scared of donkeys and a grown woman who could show her nephews how to pat a donkey and my overwhelming feeling was of amazement and awareness because I am both those people, all at once, altogether.  Somewhere between five and thirty-five, I learnt not to be scared of animals and my five-year-old self is both surprised and delighted.  

These fellas were quite impressed too.

I wonder if he'll remember this in thirty years?

How Do You Say 'Glutton' in Italian?

Yes, it has occurred to me that writing about Italian food is somewhat redundant - it's not as though I were the first person to record my thoughts on the subject.  That said, I thought I would share a few food highlights and hints from my recent visit on the grounds that I always like reading about or hearing about what people eat on their travels.

Coffee
My first coffee of our stay was in Milan airport, just after baggage claim.  There I realised a couple of things. First, a cappuccino is greatly enhanced by a ciambella, a kind of lemon-scented doughnut.  Second, there is a particular protocol at Italian coffee bars.  You order and pay at one counter, then take your receipt to a second counter where the actual coffee-maker (person, not machine), reviews the receipt, marks it and then prepares your coffee.

Prima Colazione
Living in Italy, much as I like the idea, might be dangerous to my health.  My ideal breakfast is essentially coffee + cake - what Elizabeth Gilbert describes as the 'Italian speedball breakfast' in Eat, Pray, Love.  My urge to start the day with caffeine and sugar (ideally some chocolate in there too) is one I try not to indulge to often.  But when everyone else is doing it…. At the agriturismo I compromised.  I had yoghurt and fruit every morning and usually a small sample of the savoury 'special' - the mini frittatas and the small cheese pies, like Greek tiropita, were especially good.  And then I had a slice of cake and a cappuccino.  And then I ran up and down several hills, often with a small nephew on my back.

Pizza
I am a pizza purist.  No complicated toppings, please.  We discovered that my six-year-old nephew shared my exact tastes: we discovered this when his pizza arrived and my pizza arrived and he looked at his and looked at mine and then sweetly suggested I might like to swap.  (I do mean sweetly.  At six, his talent for guile is underdeveloped.)  Instead we shared, and learnt together to say 'pizza con salume crudo, per favore'.  If you like pizza with pepperoni, this is what you should say, too.

Antipasti
Yes, please.  Always.  I loved the roasted red peppers wrapped around a slightly fishy mayonnaise and the raw vegetables with bagna cauda, featuring garlic, olive oil, anchovies and a little cream, eaten fondue-style.

Pasta
The funny thing is I don't normally eat a lot of pasta.  But when it appears as one course among many - and in a relatively modest portions, not the huge vats that get served up in restaurants elsewhere - why, it seems foolish not to partake.  My favourite were tortelli (similar to ravioli) filled with pumpkin and  a hint of cinnamon and decorated with sage.

Secondi
I am still thinking about the pork loin with honey and a sauce made from slightly sour berries.  And the small, crispy potatoes cooked under the joint and flavoured with just enough rosemary.  I would never make it as a vegetarian in a world where such delicious maialino exists - nor for that matter would I survive long without potatoes.  You can take the girl out of Ireland, etc.  I see a potato, I eat it.

Dolci
Even allowing for trends in food fashions, as in everything else, I have never understood why tiramisu fell out of favour.  Sponge fingers soaked in alcohol and coffee, served with mascarpone cream and chocolate.  What's not to like?  In fact, I liked it so much that I had two helpings one night at our agriturismo.  I also have a soft spot for the kind of deconstructed baked Alaska with soft Italian meringue, amazing vanilla gelato and sponge cake we ate one lunchtime.  This may have been the same day as a tiramisu.  I may have rolled home.

In conclusion: try everything; three-dessert days are occasionally appropriate; Italians know their way around carbohydrates; always pack walking / running shoes to work off the indulgence.

Details / i Dettagli

In which I continue to wax lyrical about Italy.

From Milan we got the train to the Langhe (for those who don't know it - as I didn't before last week - it's an area of small hills in Piedmont, in Northern Italy).  More specifically we were staying just at the edge of the Barolo region and that, my friends, means wine.  Really, really good wine.  Three generations of family gathered at a wonderful Agriturismo (essentially a farm with B&B) there to celebrate my brother's Significant Birthday.

When I went through my photos of the weekend, I noticed that many of them captured small, lovely moments.  No big monuments, no major events (apart from the birthday cake, I guess), no historic sites ... just lots of beautiful details in a beautiful place.

For example, watching the men pick grapes and then load up the truck - what amazing colours!  One of my three-year-old nephews asked me in his Greeklish, 'pou páne grapes?' (where are they going, the grapes?)

These striped deck chairs are where I'm planning to spend my retirement, gazing out over the wine-producing hills.

I spent an hour taking photographs of the small church on the property, looking at the patterns the leaves made against the stuccoed walls.

Roof details also feature frequently in my photographs - I like the little cupolas and the weathervane/cross combinations.

I liked seeing an old lady hanging out her washing: all black, including the voluminous knee-length knickers of legend.  I liked seeing more colourful washing hanging from every balcony in the small, hill-top village of Barolo.

For some of my detail-spotting I was helped by my six-year-old Nephew, who found things for me to photograph and then helped me push the buttons on my camera.  Oh, an auntie's life would be much sadder without small boys who adore gadgets.

Gregory spotted this flower, for example, hanging on to the ancient castle wall.

And this lamp on the Via Roma.

And this fresco of Madonna con bambino.

But I was the one who insisting on photographing this Posta Telegrafo + laundry composition.

Being in the company of small boys is excellent if one is in the business of noticing details.  They are happy to spend hours unpicking things, collecting stones and disassembling sticks so that they are exactly the right length.

They are less interested in shrines, but I love to take photographs of them: small houses erected to protect hopes and desires.  This one is dedicated to Beata Maria.

I liked the way the rosy, ochre-y brick stood out against the green hills.

And I liked the way it framed two small red-headed boys.

Details.

And speaking of which:

The place we stayed was Agriturismo Bevione.  Glorious food, comfortable accommodation and the warmest of warm welcomes.  http://www.agriturismobevione.it

Most of these photos were taken on a walk that starts in the village of Barolo (there's a car park below the castle) and ends up, via a trail that winds through woods and vineyards, in Monforte d'Alba, about 5km in total.  http://www.barolodibarolo.com/inglese/itinerari.asp

Four Hours in Milan

I have just come back from four days in Italy and now I have a new to-do list with just one thing on it: ITALIA.

Why oh why have I not spent more time in Italy?  It has all the things I like (food, art, style, scenery, history, great people watching) and it's not as though it were far away.  But apart from a memorable family holiday when I was five (we went to Venice, there was a gondola, I wore a hat, it was fabulous) and a brief trip to Rome a couple of years ago, my Italian adventures have been practically non-existent.      Well, that's going to have to change now, obviously.

In the spirit of making up for last time, I did try to cram a lot into the past few days, starting with four hours in Milan on Thursday with Lady Traveller's Little Sister.  (This post has been brought to you by the number 4 and the letters I and M.)  This photo of a delivery man's bike - and my sister looking admiring - sums up everything we loved about Milan.

Fortified by good cappuccinos on arrival, we headed into the city and our most important appointment: lunch.  We had arranged to go to the Trattoria Milanese on Via Santa Marta, not far from the Duomo.  There are, you might not be surprised to hear, several restaurants called 'Trattoria Milanese' but this came recommended.

We loved it, from the paintings of dead animals on the walls, to the charming waiter, through tortellini and veal Milanese and wine and cantucci and caffe.  We staggered out and walked over to the cathedral.  Wedding cake on the outside, altogether more beautiful on the inside.

We then paid our respects in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele - a 19th century shopping arcade - but luckily we didn't like anything we saw in the window of Versace (or Prada).

On the other side of the Galleria is the Piazza La Scala and though we didn't have time for an opera, we did have fun at the opera shop (mini opera glasses, yay!)  Funnily enough, although lots of other things in Milan are very bling, the opera house is relatively unadorned.

We enjoyed, very much, watching the glamorous Milanese go by, noting approvingly that the city bikes and trams were colour-coordinated.

We wound up the afternoon at the very grand Stazione Centrale which has plenty of cafes, purveyors of snacks and fripperies.  And then it was time to hop on board our train to Turin.

 

Hints to Travel Writers from a Lady Traveller

A hint today from Isabella Bird, quintessential Lady Traveller and inspiration for this blog.

'I'm convinced that actual letters - merely corrected - are the most vivid and popular form of presenting one's impressions of a country.'

Miss Bird wrote this to her publisher, John Murray, and I heard it in an episode of BBC Radio 4's 'Great Lives' (which is great, check it out).  Isabella Bird's early travel books were based on letters to her sister at home, so they have that immediate, intimate style and are - for a Victorian writer - remarkably fresh and accessible.

But this line caught my attention again because it occurred to me that blogging is really a version of what she described.  I occasionally wish my descriptions were better informed or more profound, but I started writing for family and friends and my posts reflect the true, sometimes confused, sometimes inarticulate impressions I had at the time of writing.

When this posts I will be in ITALY and will return next week with tales of pasta and wine and dolci, oh my.

Poppies at the Tower

A few weeks ago I braved the misery of a wet London day to see the poppies at the Tower of London.  A lot has been written about this elsewhere (see here and here, for example) so I won't go into detail except to say that the installation, titled Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Blood, represents every British soldier who died in the First World War.  The ceramic poppies are still being planted, but by 11th November, there will be 888,246 of them.

Even in the gloom the poppies were stunning - perhaps all the more stunning because of the gloom.

Seeing these poppies floating in the mud and the rain in the moat was a visceral reminder of the Flanders trenches.  In a simple, true, powerful way it gave me new insights into John McCrae's poem.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,       
That mark our place; and in the sky       
The larks, still bravely singing, fly    
Scarce heard amid the guns below.        

We are the Dead. Short days ago    
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie             
In Flanders fields.        

Take up our quarrel with the foe:    
To you from failing hands we throw       
The torch; be yours to hold it high.       
If ye break faith with us who die    
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow             
In Flanders fields.

Five Years of Hints

Returning after a short hiatus (unannounced, sorry about that) to celebrate the fact that a) this blog turns FIVE today and b) I am STILL blogging five years in, though sometimes by the skin of my teeth and, it

has to be admitted - more sporadically than I would wish.

During the hiatus I did wonder, as I have done periodically, about whether now might be the time to pack HTLT in mothballs but, as I have also decided periodically, I would miss the blog too much.  So, I will keep blogging and I am resolved to do it at least twice a week (Tuesdays and Fridays), which I am announcing here because I firmly believe the best way to keep a resolution is to tell your friends and family about it and then you'll be forced to stick to it to avoid the nagging.

There may also be a few more posts about museums since, reader, I spend many of my waking moments thinking about them and occasionally those thoughts may spill over onto the pages of HTLT. But, you know, all Lady Travellers have had their pet topics: Lillias Campbell Davidson, for example, wrote an awful lot about bicycles …

But enough about future plans.  I have decided to mark the blog's five-year anniversary with a quick look through the archives and some of my favourite posts.

The very first post, and how this blog got its name
The Cape Town Mean Face
Byron's Boot, Chopin's Piano ... Mandela's Wheelbarrow
Cramaziness - Christmas in Zimbabwe
Taking my eldest Adorable Nephew to a museum for the first time (warning: pictures are almost unbearably sweet)
Roots and Shoots
Hike4Hunger (or that time I spent a week hiking through the Australian bush)
Autumn in Fitzroy
Learning to speak Australian 
One of the funniest travel books of all time
My epic trip on the Ghan
On why I commemorate ANZAC Day
Enchanted Isle
On retracing one's steps
The Sublime Porte

In honour of the occasion, there should be a hint, don't you think?  Say it with me now:
surely none is more excellent in itself and its results, than the power which has become the right of every woman who has the means to achieve it - of becoming her own unescorted and independent person, a lady traveller.