tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494Thu, 29 Aug 2024 11:40:38 +0000ItalysicilyfoodhotelsRomemyths and legendschurcheshistoryartsaintsApuliaCampaniaCapriEmilia-RomagnaTuscanyVenicetransportationAbruzziAeolian IslandsBerlusconiBlue GrottoBolognaBrindisiChristmasCourmayeurEnnaEntrevesFlorenceLecceMont BlancPalermoStromboliTaorminaTrentTrentino Alto-AdigeTyrol/TirolValle d'AostaVenetocampingcastlescefalùchianticommunicationseurofrancehikinghorsebackhospitalmoneyravennasiracusatrain travelThe Italian adventures of veteran guidebook author and travel writer Reid Bramblett, founder of ReidsItaly.com.http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)Blogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-1790830783252693328Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:54:00 +00002012-10-25T08:04:07.609-07:00cefalùhistoryhotelsItalysicily The owner of Hotel La Giara in Cefalù led me up to the roof terrace for a low-level panorama across the city. He made a sweeping gesture encompassing the rooftops and said proudly: "You can see the entire history of Sicily right here in Cefalù." "Up on the rocca," he jabs his finger toward the sheer headland that locals call "the fortress" and which shelters Cefalù's perfect little http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2012/10/you-can-see-entire-history-of-sicily.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-1565796733888558836Sun, 03 Oct 2010 18:34:00 +00002010-10-03T11:34:10.987-07:00ItalyRometrain traveltransportation Sciopero. It’s the most dreaded word to any traveler in Italy. If you hear or see the word sciopero (show-pair-oh), perk up your ears ‘cause there’s a labor strike a-coming, and it’ll probably affect your means of transportation. Train workers, especially, tend to strike at the drop of a hat, although city transit systems are pretty prone to it as well. The funny thing is, these aren’t http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2010/10/strike.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-729279118489768975Thu, 02 Sep 2010 02:16:00 +00002010-09-01T19:31:56.618-07:00chiantifoodhotelsTuscany“The best compliment I ever got,” said Roberto Melosi, passing around the homemade lasagne and Chianina steaks from his seat at the head of the communal dinner table. “Was when I asked some American guests whether it was a bother to keep driving back and forth to Florence every day.” He paused to top off the glasses around him with more of his farm’s peppery but light Chianti Classico “The http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2010/09/meal-at-podere-terreno-in-chianti.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-7170304383073648375Fri, 25 May 2007 00:07:00 +00002010-06-11T13:26:00.134-07:00arthistoryItalyRomePalazzo Venezia, Julian Schanbel, and the effects of karmaThe Northwest Airlines employee at the gate assured me, yet again, in a syrup voice that our 4:15pm flight would leave on time. This despite the fact that (a) Frances had just told me the NWA.com web site was showing a 20-minute delay and, (b) it was already 4:05pm and there was, as yet, no actual plane at the gate. I don't know about http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2007/05/chasing-lorenzo-around-rome.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-751591808065520326Tue, 19 Sep 2006 19:05:00 +00002010-06-19T10:47:23.036-07:00horsebackhotelssicilyA horseback ride in the heartland of Sicily Antonio Carlotta and his horse, Pepe, against a backdrop of the Sicilian countryside. My mount danced up to the crumbling lip of a 1,000-foot drop. She didn't seem inclined to stop. I yanked repeatedly on the reins, yelling "Whoa!" in what I meant to be a stern, controlled voice but came out high-pitched and panicky. My brain, often of little help inhttp://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2006/09/sicily-in-saddle.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-3180944616869626654Tue, 01 Nov 2005 01:04:00 +00002010-06-11T13:28:52.473-07:00ChristmasItalymyths and legendsRomesaintsVeniceLa Befana, Babbo Natale, and the shifting focus of Christmas traditions in ItalyIt is around 9pm on the last day of October, All Hallow's Eve. Back home, in America, it is Halloween, and everywhere kids are looking forward to the end of the school day when they can dress up and hit the streets to fill pillowcases with candy begged from the neighbors. Here in Venice, it is simply October 31, the http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2005/10/entirely-wrong-witch.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-2989104136110166665Tue, 11 Oct 2005 08:57:00 +00002010-09-01T11:21:54.311-07:00Emilia-RomagnahotelsravennaI'm a confirmed one-star hotel man. I get a quirky, self-satisfied thrill every time I snag a railroad narrow room with creaky wood floors, a wobbly chair and table rejected by a finer hotel back in 1963, a bare 20-watt bulb dangling on its wire from the ceiling, and a bathroom down the hall I have to share with the rest of the floor. Good nightI downright revel in my thrift. I mentally http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2005/10/good-night-sleep-tightand-thats-all.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-8773764771808145538Sat, 08 Oct 2005 22:46:00 +00002010-06-20T09:53:16.979-07:00BolognachurchesEmilia-RomagnafoodA walk through the culinary side of Bologna—street markets, specialty food shops, pasta boutiques—plus cooking classes and a killer recipe for traditional tagliatelle al bolognese Coils of tagliatelle, tagliolini, fettucine, and other freshly made pasta Every Italian region is justifiably proud of its own cuisine—considers it in fact to be the best in the whole world. But ask any Italian to name http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2005/10/bologna-fat.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-7700673801857253783Sun, 02 Oct 2005 04:05:00 +00002010-06-12T15:02:32.588-07:00Blue GrottoCampaniaCapriAn ill-advised swim into the famed Blue Grotto of CapriIt's the seventh wave that'll get you. Oceans and seas across the world all craft waves the same way. They come in a simple sequence: each wave is larger and more powerful than the last. This sequence builds in a set cycle: the number of waves in each cycle is seven. And it's the seventh wave that'll get you. Counting wavesI've been http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2005/10/up-blue-grotto-without-paddleor-boat.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-936207264789423161Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:01:00 +00002010-06-20T10:04:05.626-07:00BerlusconiCampaniaCapricommunicationsItaly's new Internet laws take a turn for the Facist At public internet terminals in Italy, you have to hold up your passport and let it snap a photo of your vital info before you can log on. You think Bush has got the U.S. press well tamed (Katrina outrage notwithstanding)? He's got nothing on Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's wily master of corporate greed-turned-Prime Minster. Berlusconi: The http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2005/09/big-brother-berlusconi.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-2801066145638665863Fri, 01 Jul 2005 18:56:00 +00002010-06-19T12:01:23.283-07:00foodsicilyTaorminaThe tragedy of the best trattoria owner in the Sicilian resort town of Taormina U Bossu, a great trattoria at Via Bagnoli Croci 50 (Tel. 0942-23-311) in Taormina, Sicily, Italy. In 1998, I had a fantastic dinner at U Bossu, and accordingly gave this seven-table restaurant on a forgotten Taormina side-street a star rating in the Frommer's guide I was researching at the time. The proprietor, http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2005/07/enzo-and-his-hot-love-liqueur.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-788610091496966088Wed, 02 Jan 2002 07:41:00 +00002010-06-11T13:28:44.444-07:00eurofranceItalymoneyRomeOn arriving in Rome the day Europe switched over to the euro, and how I got rid of my remaining lire1 January 2002, A Tuesday I am quite the Eurotrash. Last year I rung in the New Year under the Eiffel Tower. This year I am doing it in Rome. Well, technically the annual odometer clicked over to 2002 somewhere over the Atlantic for me, and I was trapped in a plane (they didn’t even serve us http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2002/01/requiem-for-currency.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-3114328552290445340Wed, 30 Aug 2000 17:43:00 +00002010-06-11T13:28:36.588-07:00castleschurcheshistoryItalymyths and legendssaintsTrentTrentino Alto-AdigeTyrol/TirolOf Martin Luther, the Council of Trent, 19th century Irredentiste heroes, and a saintly death by slipper in the Trentino Alto-Adige region of ItalyThe year was 1545. It was late in November, and the German preacher, frozen to the bone, had barely made it over the last mountain pass on his journey south. He stopped at a crossroads, and before him he saw a pretty Tyrolean city called Trent nestled http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2000/08/three-kinds-of-martyrdom-in-trentino.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-4696430189703481897Fri, 25 Aug 2000 17:32:00 +00002010-06-11T13:28:26.300-07:00CourmayeurEntrevesfoodItalyMont BlancValle d'AostaA meal as enormous as Mont Blanc in the shadow of Europe's highest peak An older British couple shared my four-seater gondola for the long, dangling ride back from Mont Blanc's Aiguille du Midi to Punta Helbrunner. This is the world's longest cable car without any supporting pilons. Instead, an impressive set of cables stretches horizontally between two rocky peaks about halfway along intersect http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/2000/08/heights-of-monte-bianco-girth-of.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-6366425785181722066Mon, 22 Nov 1999 01:45:00 +00002010-06-13T12:24:27.046-07:00hotelsVenetoVeniceThe changing face of Venice amid the acque alte Just about every day I was in Venice, we had Acque Alte. That's when the lagoon backwashes into the city streets, starting with Piazza San Marco (the lowest point of Venice) and then filling in the low-lying calle around the Grand Canal. The air raid sirens go off when the rising waters cause the first gondola moored at Piazzetta San Marco to starthttp://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1999/11/people-who-live-on-glass-islands.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-6440168056337445540Tue, 16 Nov 1999 18:30:00 +00002010-06-11T13:28:19.294-07:00artFlorencefoodItalyTuscanyDinner in a frescoed palazzo accompanied by stories of the '66 Florence floodI had dinner tonight at the apartment of Massimo and Vittoria Melandri in Florence. Their place was beautiful, a 14th-century building restructured in the 19th century, which is when they frescoed all the ceilings and the walls. Gorgeous. What happened to the frescoesThe ceiling paintings in the main salon where we http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1999/11/melandris-mud-angels.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-4754278611531741147Sat, 29 Aug 1998 17:26:00 +00002010-06-11T13:28:09.495-07:00churchesItalymyths and legendssaintssicilysiracusaModern miracles and ancient myths in Siracusa, Sicily This is the story of the Madonna della Lacrime, the Madonna of Tears. A Siracusan family buys a little factory-made plaster plaque-relief of the Madonna back in 1953. They hang it on the wall. The next morning the husband goes off to work, after which the gypsum Madonna image starts crying, at 8:30 a.m. on Aug 29, 1953. Wife calls husband. http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1998/08/madonna-of-tears.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-3589384085142873361Thu, 06 Aug 1998 00:46:00 +00002010-06-11T13:28:01.466-07:00ApuliafoodItalyLecceLecce is one of the loveliest, liveliest towns in Southern Italy, but some of its best secrets hide in the unlikeliest of places I was walking up the street in Lecce near Santa Croce church when someone across at the edge of my peripheral vision started calling out to me in English "Hey! Hello! Excuse me, hello!" As usual — as with the hotel touts at train stations, the man at the postcard http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1998/12/sweet-sweet-heaven.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-3934714145800138960Sun, 02 Aug 1998 05:12:00 +00002010-06-11T13:27:42.885-07:00ApuliaartBrindisichurcheshistoryItalytransportationI spend a day scaring up the best there is to see in the Apulian port city of BrindisiBrindisi is, and always has been, a ferry port. From the days when the Romans extended the Via Appia here from Rome through medieval knights leaving for the Crusades to modern sun-seekers on their way to the Greek Isles, Brindisi has been where you step off the end of the road and onto the high seas. Brindisi http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1998/08/brindisi-waiting-room-of-aegean.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-8440256559354583392Wed, 01 Jul 1998 18:32:00 +00002010-06-19T11:45:06.528-07:00hospitalPalermosicilyIf you have to have a medical emergency, try not to have it in Palermo, Sicily I think I shall revise my maxim about what one must see, beyond the sights, to really experience a country. Before it was just to eat the cuisine (naturally) and to watch some local TV. Recently, I've added shop in the local market and/or K-Mart equivalent. However, I am increasingly of the opinion that to this list http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1998/07/pronto-soccorso.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-953260363309341663Sun, 31 May 1998 05:49:00 +00002010-06-19T11:06:35.973-07:00Ennahotelsmyths and legendssicilyMaking do while shaking up in the myth-soaked Sicilian city of Enna Enna is a city one can see in just 95 minutes—at least, that's how long it took Jay and I to do the major sights (not that most were major...). Admittedly, we did skip the medieval Norman Torre di Frederico II and it's surrounding park, but the thing was way out on the other end of Enna in the new town (the city is kind of http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1998/05/no-room-in-inn-at-center-of-world.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-2662975205483033897Mon, 25 May 1998 16:02:00 +00002010-08-30T09:04:36.849-07:00Aeolian Islandshikingmyths and legendssicilyStromboliClimbing Stromboli, a violently active volcano and the last in the line of Aeolian Islands off the coast of SicilyThe mountain had been rumbling all day, but it wasn't until the setting sun sent sparking streamers across the azure Tyrrhenian Sea surrounding us that Stromboli's fireworks truly began.With a primal roar and a boom that shook the entire island, the smaller of the cones inside the http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1998/05/night-atop-volcano.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-8064880948410926924Mon, 16 May 1994 06:03:00 +00002010-06-11T13:27:10.106-07:00RomeThe Gianicolo (Janiculum Hill) at night Stand against the burnt red cat's-tongue stucco. Press your knees into the rough wall that encircles the crest of green rise called Gianicolo. Let the breeze bite your face. Fill the linings of your nose with the bad cologne from the self-absorbed couple pressed against each other nearby, and the cloy of sleeping flowers in the park below. Listen to the http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1994/05/distant-view.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7892712558644745494.post-8174753362802372076Thu, 02 May 1985 00:10:00 +00002010-06-11T13:26:58.463-07:00AbruzzicampingItalyIn which the Boy Scouts of Troop 236 battle wild boars (sort of) on a camping trip in the Italian Appennine mountainsWhen I was 13 and living in Rome, I was a Boy Scout in Troop 236. Now, a lot of the boys in the troop were diplomat brats, or the children of wealthy folks, and other groups who carry more clout than painting professors—though Dad did have mucho clout when it came to the troop, http://reidsitalyadventures.blogspot.com/1985/05/babes-in-woods.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Reid Bramblett)0