Though not as grand as theDuomo, Sant’Ambrogio, named for Milan’s patron saint, is older, and decorated with bits of Roman architecture even older than itself. All these shots were taken without flash or tripod.
more photos from Sant’Ambrogio:
Category Archives: Italy travel
Travelling in Italy – Tips, Tricks, & Places Off the Beaten Path
top: Venice sunset
Travel Tips
- Rent a Tuscan farmouse from my friends Rita and Lino
- Tour Tuscany, Umbria or Sicily the relaxed way, with Tartaruga Tours.
- Travelling by train in Italy? Go here for all the information you’ll ever need.
- Article: Venice’s Anti-Pickpocketing Squad (read between the lines for tips on how to avoid having your own pocket picked)
- New York Times Italy Travel Planner
Useful online travel forums for Italy:
- Fodors.com Travel Talk
- Travelers to Go!
- VirtualTourist.com – Travel Forum – Italy
- Lonely Planet | Thorn Tree Travel Forum
Imaging in Italy
My friend Tony’s Imaging in Italy site has been updated – do drop in for a visit. For those who missed my report in 2003, Imaging in Italy is a wonderful thing to do in Rome: a photographic walking tour with Tony Boccaccio, who photographed for National Geographic for 30 years, and is an all-round fun and fascinating person, as well as a great teacher. I enjoyed the course and learned a great deal.
Links
maps and routes (for all Europe)
Cheap flights from and within Italy
AT&T USA Direct information for Italy – not the cheapest way to phone home, but it works
Please share your own little-known tips for travelling in Italy
Roman Street Signs
During the Imaging in Italy course I attended in Rome in October, 2003, I was much taken with the ancient signage I found all over – both the lettering and the language were charmingly antique.
Several were on the theme of “do not litter”, in this case “on pain of ten scudi (coins) each time”, by authority of “The President of the Streets”
– a grandiose title, in some cases further amplified with epithets like “illustrious” and “righteous”.
^ It appears that it was at some period customary to put a plate on your home indicating who insured it! Note that both of these logos are still familiar in the modern Italian insurance industry.
This plaque denotes one of the ancient quarters (rione) of the city, with its symbol, a gryphon.
Pinching Italians
Recently asked on the Fodor’s travel forum: “We’ve been told it is customary and acceptable for men in Italy to pinch women’s bottoms. Is this true and, if it is, what is the customary and acceptable response?”
Over the years I’ve lived in Italy I’ve been asked this question several times. And it always makes me laugh because, while it may once have been normal behavior for Italian men, I experienced this kind of thing far more in India (where it’s called “eve teasing”) than I ever have in Italy.
When I was a teenager in India in the late 70s/early 80s, foreign women were considered “easy” and therefore worth a try (verbal or physical), though Indian women out alone were also harassed. I don’t understand what drives men to do this. How stupid do you have to be to believe that some woman whose bottom you grab or to whom you say “Hey, sexy baby” is going to swoon into your arms?
By the end of my high school years in India I had been groped and “hello darling’d” enough to know how to avoid it (as far as that was possible). When I returned for a college year abroad in Benares, I was surprised to find myself the only woman in our group who was never bothered at all. In retrospect, I think I went around that year with such a forbidding expression that no one dared come near me. (I am also taller and heavier than many Benarsi men, which may have scared them off.)
I didn’t know much about Italy when I first began travelling here, so it never occurred to me to expect such. (I was always accompanied by Enrico in any case.) And, in all these years, it’s never happened. Except once, riding in a very crowded bus in Rome, I got groped. If I could have identified the culprit I would have slapped him, but of course these slimeballs judge their situations very carefully, and I didn’t want to slap the wrong man.
An Italian colleague tells me that she’s been groped a few times in the metro in Milan. It’s called palpeggiamento, and the favored technique is the mano morta – the “dead hand” left dangling where it will brush up against something, but the culprit can claim innocence if confronted.
My colleague’s response is to step back hard onto the guy’s foot with her sharp high heel, then turn around and say sweetly, “Did I step on you? I’m soooo sorry.” This or something similar would be the response of most Italian women – who do NOT consider being fondled by strangers to be expected or tolerable behavior!
Someone else in the Fodor’s forum said that her daughter, on a study abroad year in Florence, had been warned by her university to expect verbal and physical harassment, and that the best response was simply to ignore it. She duly was hassled, and, as instructed, ignored it.
It seems to me that the administrators of these college programs are encouraging bad behavior by instructing their students to put up with it, when no one else in Italy would, and the girls themselves would not tolerate such treatment back home. So the Florentines obligingly perpetuate their grandfathers’ myth of the butt-pinching, wolf-whistling Italian man. (Perhaps if we pointed out to these young men how desperately old-fashioned this is, they would be embarrassed into stopping.)
Then there are the American women tourists who, having heard all the stories, claim to feel disappointed if they don’t get grabbed in the street – they feel they’ve missed out on a quintessential Italian experience. Umm, well, the guy who pinches your bottom is surely not one you would actually want to have sex with – it’s not exactly a smooth approach, is it? Wait for the one who hands you a good line and buys you a good dinner. Quite a few tourists have had a great vacation this way, and some have even ended up married!
(On the other hand, don’t be surprised or shocked to learn that he’s already married. Adultery is something of a national sport, and what could be easier or safer than a fling with a woman who will soon be leaving?)
Some Italian terms for seduction can be found here (along with a lot of very rude words).
So… ever been pinched in Italy?
Return to Bormio
My birthday present this past weekend was a trip to Bormio, to indulge in the natural hot spring water as we have before. Enrico and I left Saturday morning, while Ross was in school – we are thankful that she is now old enough to be left home alone from time to time!
To get to Valtellina, you head north from the top of Lake Como and turn right. It’s a deep valley surrounded by high, rocky mountain faces.
As we neared Sondrio, where most of Valtellina’s wineries are headquartered, we debated whether to try visiting any, though I knew from recent research that none offered Saturday visits without advance reservation. But we decided to try Nino Negri, the area’s biggest wine producer, whose offices are a recently-refurbished 14th century castle.
The lady at reception was willing to sell us some wine, but, as expected, said we couldn’t have a tour of the cantina without a previous reservation. While we were choosing a dozen different bottles (including some new to us, one completely new developed to celebrate the re-opening of the castle, and the Novello that I enjoyed so much a few years ago and never was able to find again), I mentioned to her that I had emailed recently about the possibility of a visit. As I suspected, she was the same woman I had corresponded with. I talked about my website and how we had met Casimiro Maulé, the enologist and managing director of the Nino Negri winery, some years before.
“I’ll go see if Dr. Maulé is still around,” the lady said. “He was here just a minute ago.” He was, and gave us an hour-long tour of the cantina, with a head-spinning recital of facts and figures.
What I took away was that Valtellina before the 1900s was one of Italy’s chief wine-producing regions – da Vinci centuries ago mentioned that the area produces “wines that are very strong – and how!” The phylloxera plague that destroyed most of Europe’s vines took a heavy toll on this region as well, from which it has not yet recovered its previous glory. Nino Negri, founded in 1897, is the largest producer in the area now, thanks to Dr. Maulé’s talents as both enologist and businessman… and I will write more about all that when I have time to go into the details.
wine being aged in wooden barrels (barriques) for additional flavor
The winery goes several stories down, covering a city block or more underground in cavernous vault-ceilinged rooms and long, sloping tunnels. On a Saturday, no workers were around, and an eerie silence reigned in which it was easy to concentrate on the all-pervading odohuger of wine – unfamiliar and sour at first, then overwhelming and heady in the room where the first “cooking” of the grapes takes place in big fat stainless-steel tanks.
Other rooms contain rows and rows of wooden barrels two or three meters in diameter, or rows of stainless-steel fermentation tanks, and other equipment, all of which Dr. Maulé explained in every kind of detail – the tour was an education in both the art and the business of wine-making.
You can arrange your own tour, including tasting (and, of course, buying), Monday through Friday from 8 to 12 and 14 to 18, Saturday from 9 to 12:30. Call the winery in advance on 0342 485211 (or write to negri@giv.it) to arrange it, especially if you will need a tour in English as they have to get someone in for that. Nino Negri is located in the town of Chiuro, just outside Sondrio, in Via Ghibellini 3.
(NB: I hope to be able to report on other Valtelline wineries in the next few months.)
As we prepared to leave, it was nearing lunchtime, so we asked Dr. Maulé to recommend a restaurant on the way to Bormio. He said that it would have been easier to recommend one in the other direction (Chiavenna): Lanterna Verde, Passerini (where Enrico and Ross have eaten once before – they tell me it’s good) and il Cenacolo, which we hadn’t heard of and will have to go try sometime. He was less pleased about the options on the way to Bormio, until he remembered a place in Grosio, a hotel called Sassella with “Ristorante Jim” attached, which proved to be an excellent choice.
Jim (named after found Jim Pini), in addition to a very interesting general menu, was offering a “Festival of Pumpkin”, which made me very happy – I adore pumpkin. The little welcoming taster was two different yummy pumpkin-based spreads, with a basket of very good whole-wheat bread. I then had a mixed platter of pumpkin based antipasti (some good, some a bit strange).
For our first course, we had a trio of local specialties (clockwise from upper left):
- Toscanei di baita – a whole-wheat crepe with creamy melted cheese inside and out, toscanei being the name of the crepe while a baita is a mountain hut where cheeses are made.
- Manfriguli alla Grusina – manfriguli are another type of whole-wheat crepe (Grusina derives from Grosio, the name of the town), this time filled with a mixture of breadcrumbs soaked in milk and grated cheese. These are sliced into rounds and then gratined in the oven to a crisp brown.
- Bastardelle di Fraina in Salsa Alpina – bastardelle are whole-wheat ribbon pasta (I have no idea what Fraina means), in this case served with an “Alpine” sauce of pancetta (bacon) and wild mushrooms.
We were full after all that, but there were so many tempting secondi on the menu that begged to be tried. Jim is a Ristorante del Buon Ricordo (part of the “good memories” restaurant group) whose signature dish is cervo (venison). But the Piatto del Buon Ricordo was an expensive piatto unico (single-course meal) that included gnocchi, and I’d already had enough pasta. So I ordered a costoletta di cervo (venison rib steak), which was somewhat disappointing – it seemed very heavy. I might have enjoyed it more had I not already eaten so much.
Enrico made the better choice with a bastone (stick). This was a wooden rod wrapped in a thin layer of pancetta, then a thin layer of beef, and cooked on the piotta (or pioda), a heated stone – a local tradition. Designed to be eaten, as the waiter said, alla primitiva – primitive style:
Seated by a window at street level, we were startled to see a procession of priests and other men/boys in vestments, carrying tall golden croziers – and one carrying a pair of loudspeakers on a pole. “Don’t be scared,” said the waitress. “It’s just a funeral. They’re going to pick up the body from the house. There are only 5000 people in this town and they all know each other so, since it’s Saturday afternoon, everyone will turn out for the procession to the church.”
Sure enough, we soon saw a parade of townsfolk going in the other direction. “They take the old people first,” explained the waitress, “to make sure they get seats in front.”
We finished off our meal by sharing a pumpkin-apple-chocolate cake with pumpkin ice cream and amaretto (dessert goes into a different compartment in the stomach, right?), then coffee to brace us for the drive on to Bormio. The whole meal, including a half-bottle of wine (Inferno; the entire wine list is from Valtellina), cost only 69 euros – a steal by today’s standards. There were many other intriguing items on Jim’s menu – we’ll be going back.
Another thing we’ll be going back for, leaving from nearby Tirano, is the Rhaetian Railway, a little train that goes up the Bernina Alps, reportedly the highest railway in the world (or something; at any rate, it should be a beautiful ride).
We reached Hotel Miramonti in Bormio around 4, and I immediately had to try out the big tub in our “junior suite,” which had a lovely (if somewhat head-endangering) sloped wooden ceiling with heavy beams. We took a nap to sleep off some of that lunch, followed by a walk around downtown Bormio – which didn’t take long, especially as some shops and restaurants were closed. Bormio is mostly a ski resort, and it’s not quite ski season there yet – even less so than usual as this month has been unseasonably warm and dry.
