Shopping in Greve del Chianti
End your shopping day at the wine center, where you can taste “Super Tuscans” and all the other wonderful wines of Chianti.
^ top: This is the only town I’ve seen in Italy with its own logo.
Category Archives: Italy travel
Summer Fun, Italian Family Style
video shot July 27, 2004 – 3.2 MB
Roseto degli Abruzzi
Most Italians spend at least part of their summer vacation at a beach somewhere. Many have vacation homes, others stay in hotels. The cheapest option is camping, but Italian campgrounds have little in common with the KOA campgrounds I remember from some American parts of my childhood.
An average Italian campground has (of course) designated areas for campers and/or tents (some also have bungalows with small kitchens and bathrooms, which you can rent in lieu of bringing a tent or camper – those cost more, of course). There are central bathrooms with toilets, sinks, and showers with hot water. Most also have a restaurant and coffee bar, and a small market where you can get camping necessities as well as food. Some have swimming pools and other recreational facilities – at the very least, table soccer and a few arcade video games. Some have swimming pools, and of course beach access.
The upscale campgrounds also have organized activities and entertainment, such as karaoke, discos, and dance lessons. These are run by animatori (“animators”), young people hired for the summer who all seem to be good-looking, talented, energetic, and endlessly cheerful.
This video was shot at a friend’s campground in Abruzzo, you can probably recognize the young man and young woman who are this year’s animatori. They and the dance class participants (mostly kids) had worked up a little show; parents and other spectators were sitting in rows of chairs to watch.
NB: The word written across the underwear is SO-RP-RE-SA (surprise).
The Historic Villas of Bergamo
Italy, like England, has its share of stately homes, and of owners who can’t afford to maintain them. So some clever person came up with the idea to open to the public some of the historic villas of Bergamo, for a limited time. None of these places is so amazing as to entice a regular flow of visitors, but the three (out of a possible five) that we saw were interesting enough to merit a Sunday afternoon visit.
The noble families who built, decorated, and redecorated these places were not among Italy’s most famous (and famously wealthy) families; their funds often ran short of their ambitions. At Palazzo Terzi, we were invited to admire the imposing fireplace in the main reception room. About four meters high, it featured huge stone lions supporting a massive mantel, surmounted by a shield flanked by female figures. The guide helpfully pointed out that the bottom section was marble, but the top was of molded and carved plaster: “You’d never notice the difference, except that the plaster is cracked in places.”
All three villas were richly decorated with paintings on the walls and ceilings, often with clever tromp l’oeil effects, to make ceilings look higher and walls more intricate than they really are. Palazzo Moroni’s decoration includes a series of allegorical paintings illustrating the virtues a noble family should have, as dictated by a local bishop: antiquity, riches, dignity, valor, knowledge, nobility of blood and heart, sanctity, courage, and luck. The Moroni family crest features the mulberry tree, because the family had made its money (and consequently been raised to nobility) growing silkworms for the Italian silk industry.
Palazzo Moroni also houses a well-known painting, The Knight in Pink, by Giovan Battista Moroni. The guide pointed out that the painting includes a Latin tag which translates as: “Better the second than the first.” No one is sure whether this refers to the knight’s wives, or life experiences in general.
A tomb in Casa Palma Camozzi Vertova gave pause for reflection. “This tomb contains a certain de Augustis, buried in the 15th century” explained the guide (as we could also see from the inscription). “No one knows who he was.” So much for carving your name in marble for posterity.
photo at top: courtyard of Palazzo Terzi
Strangers on a Train
A question that often arises in the travel forums is: “What’s it like to travel in Italy with small kids?”
Speaking from my own experience, it’s great. Italians love kids, and, when you enter a train compartment with a child in Italy, you don’t get the suffering looks that you get when boarding a plane with one in the US. Everyone’s ready to ooh and aah and spoil your child rotten. Well, almost everyone.
When Rossella was three or so, we had occasion to go to Rome by train. We ended up in a compartment with four middle-aged ladies. Three of them were travelling together, and were happy to spend the entire five-hour trip entertaining Ross, who laughed and was charming and sat on their laps.
The fourth lady was travelling alone, and seemed to be allergic to children. She would draw away whenever Ross got near her, and throughout the trip showed clearly, by grimaces and sighs, that sharing a train compartment with a child was akin to being in the seventh circle of hell.
Ross, of course, was not oblivious to this. She tried her best to draw the lady out, with all her most adorable three-year-old wiles. Nothing worked, and Ross was disappointed – she was accustomed to wrapping adults around her little finger.
Towards the end of the trip, Ross looked the lady full in the face and said: “Tu sei brutta. E pure antipatica.” – “You’re ugly, and you’re not nice.”
I made all the polite remonstrances that the occasion demanded, but the other three ladies and I had to avoid looking at each other, so as not to burst out laughing. It was hard to fault Ross, who had spoken the truth as she saw it, with brutal three-year-old candor.
Dressing for Italy: Tips for Tourists
^ top: Ross & Enrico – dressed for a wedding, I admit
Foreign travelers to Italy sometimes ask how to to dress so as not to look out of place among the fashionable Italians. This question is hard to answer; much depends on your sex, age, and personal style.
It’s easiest to start with some fashion don’ts:
- No track suits, sweat suits, or the like, and no baggy sweatshirts. Well, really, no baggy anything.
- No fanny packs.
- No daypacks or backpacks, unless you’re in your 20s or younger.
- No clunky white sports shoes. Younger Italians do wear sports shoes, even when not doing sports, but these are usually sleek and stylish models (including some brands very familiar to Americans), and are never dirty or scuffed or worn down.
- No t-shirts, especially not with big pictures or slogans on them, again, unless you’re under 30.
- No shorts, especially not for men.
Now some do’s:
- In general, Italians dress more formally than Americans. Blue jeans are fine, as long as they are well-fitting, clean, and in good condition (or any damage is intentional and fashionable) – Levis are very trendy and even expensive in Italy.
- Men, always wear collared shirts (polos are okay).
- Wear dark or subdued colors, except in summer. Even then, Italians wear white or pastels, not the bright purples and blues that many Americans like.
- As a tourist you’ll be walking a lot, so I do recommend very comfortable shoes, even though this seems never to be a consideration for Italians, at least not for women, who routinely walk all over town with things on their feet that I couldn’t even stand up in.
- Designer labels are always a plus.
Of course, how you dress is always entirely up to you, and no one is going to jeer at you even if you commit every single one of the fashion “sins” listed above. The question I’m responding to came from people who wanted to know how to fit in, and that’s what I’ve done my best to answer, with some expert advice from my Milan-raised, extremely stylish, teenage daughter. (I admit I cheated – in the photo above, my daughter and husband are dressed for a wedding!)
