Reid's Travels

Now you can do Budapest in a long weekend

2010-10-20T10:50:00.003-04:00

A view of Budapest

Budapest is the Europe you've been looking for.

It's a city steeped in a wonderfully convoluted past—Romans and Magyars, Mongols and Turks, Austrian emperors and Soviet puppets—yet one that looks to the future, with elegantly odd new buildings going up to replace some of the cement-block scars from the Soviet era.

These mingle with a gorgeous mélange (yes, I said it: a gorgeous mélange) of decorous 19th century Empire structures and decorative Secessionist ones, all jostling for space on busy boulevards.

Budapest is laid along both banks of the Danube: the palatial fortress of Buda rising high above the river to one side, the commercial center of Pest splayed along the flat bank opposite. It is a city of hearty food, forthright and genuine people, fine wines, and those elegant thermal baths.

Those famous Budapest baths

The Rudas Baths in Budapest

Budapest's famous bathhouses range from broodingly 16th century Turkish (the Rudas Baths; www.budapestgyogyfurdoi.hu), to grand Art Nouveau (the famed Géllert Baths; www.gellertbath.com), to button-down modern (the Danubius Grand on Margarit Island; www.danubiushotels.com) with menus of treatments ranging from spa massages and mus baths to nose jobs, cosmetic dentistry, and laser eye surgery.

And, yes, you can do it all in a long weekend. (And, despite all news to the contrary, there is not currently a toxic river of sludge moving down the Danube.)

Getting to Budapest
How do you do Budapest in a weekend? Well, it helps if you live in the greater New York City area, because as of this year Delta Air Lines (www.delta.com)—and staring next year, American Airlines (www.aa.com)—offers nonstop seasonal flights (in about 9.5 hours) from JFK to the rapidly expanding Budapest airport.

Off-season, you can still go, of course, but you will transfer somewhere like Paris or London and the journey will take up to 12 hours.

The elegant New York Cafe at the
Boscolo Palace Hotel (www.boscolohotels.com)

How much Budapest costs
It won't exactly be cheap to fly there—coach class starts around $1,000 roundtrip (though I highly recommend their Business First service, if you have the scratch—I don't, which is why I was only too happy to let Delta pick up the tab for me; speaking of which: yes, it's perfectly natural to hate travel writers).

However, once you are there, everything in Budapest is pretty inexpensive.

It'll cost $6 for a bottle of really good wine, or $1.50 to $4 for a beer even at the trendiest of "Ruin pubs" (semi-legal squatter bars, like the classic Szimpla kert [www.szimpla.hu], in the courtyards of abandoned buildings; www.ruinpubs.com).

A goulash cooking lesson at one of
the upstairs restaurants in the central market

A massive bowl of goulasch will run you $5 to $6, while the priciest main course on a menu may break $10 or $11 (and that's not even for the famed Hungarian fried goose liver on brioche).

At online booking sites like Venere.com and Booking.com, Hotels in the center start around $26 for two people—though around $40 per night is more typical (international chain properties like Ramada or Best Western start at $60 to $90). Simple guesthouses sell double rooms starting as low as $17.

You can bargain in the central market for handicrafts—and they stall owners are refreshingly devoid of shill or tout-ism. They just sit there quietly waiting for a potential customer to ask them a question, rather than constantly exhorting passersby to come peruse their wares. I love it. (Also the prices, where embroidered linens start at $2 to $4 for smaller pieces, and sampler packs of super-fresh paprika half what they would at home.)

Runde Ecke: How an idealogical dictatorship turned calculated cruelty into a daily routine

2010-10-11T02:56:00.003-04:00

They would steam open all your mail, record your every phone call, track your daily movements, and secretly enter your home to copy any document you hadn’t managed to hide.

If they suspected you might harbor anti-government sentiments, they would engage in a years-long clandestine campaign to ruin utterly your personal and professional life—merely to ensure you had neither the time, nor the resources, nor the will to oppose the state.

They were the Stasi, the East German secret police, and their Leipzig headquarters was the Runde Ecke. This stately “Round Corner” building now contains a wonderfully homespun “Power and Banality” museum that documents the Stasi era of terror in the very offices from which they waged ongoing war against their own citizens.

It's a surprising and disturbing window into the everyday middle management of running a dictatorship and reflexively cruel police state.

Dirty tricks, Stasi-style

Though the Stasi museum consists of just a handful of oppressively small rooms off a hall done in the dreary institutional yellows and browns mid-20th century, the glass display cases are crammed with the machines and mementos of a secretive state security apparatus. The walls are crowded with photos, documents, and densely-typed explanatory placards—all, unfortunately, in German, making it imperative to plump €3 for the English audio tour to learn the (often bizarre) details behind Stasi methods.

Why did detention cells have two beds? So interrogators could recruit each cellmate to inform on the other.

What’s with the jaunty school uniform? You could sign up to be a Stasi agent and begin informing on your school chums at age 13.

Did you notice that the handles differ on either side of the doors in the office complex's antechamber? That was so anyone entering it, either from outside to come in or from the inner hall in order to exit, could simply push down the handle to get into room—but once in, you needed a key (or, more precisely, a Stasi member with a key) to get out.

Those accordioned bits of yellow felt individually sealed in mason jars? Suspected agitators would be “invited” to the Runde Ecke for interminable interviews—after which the swatch of felt upon which the suspect had unwittingly been sitting would be jarred.

This created a sniffable catalog for trained Stasi dogs to peruse and they tried to match a scent to any anti-government pamphlets and propaganda that popped up.

Paging Maxwell Smart

The Stasi Museum doesn’t dwell entirely in chilling Cold War thriller territory. The skeletal “Uncle Sam” anti-capitalist propaganda is almost amusing. As my friend Larry Bleiberg pointed out, there’s more than a hint of Get Smart to the disguise kits Stasi agents would use to keep subjects from realizing they were being tailed by the same person day after day—clownish makeup, false noses, and ludicrous mustaches and beards.

Then there are the briefcases containing quick-change outfits. A hard hat, coveralls, wig, and skin-tint were handy if you needed a new identify fast.

The most popular disguise, though, was “photojournalist”—then you didn’t even have to hide your camera in one of the false bellies or super-spy corduroy jackets with lens holes in the zippers and shutter release cables in the pockets.

(Fun fact: the Stasi helped develop the first camera with a silent shutter—the better to spy in secrecy.)

One of the museum audio tracks even includes a Stasi-era joke: A local man wrote a letter to his grandmother in Western Germany (loosely translated): “Thank you for the pistol. I have buried it in the garden.” A few weeks later, he wrote again: “The Stasi have dug up the garden. You can send the tulip bulbs now."

The beginning of the end

Every Monday evening, dozens of Stasi agents and contingents of uniformed police would arrive at the Nikolaikirche on the far side of town to keep a close eye on the church's regular peace prayers. Under oddly Miami-ish columns fashioned like rococo pink-and-green palm trees, the bishop and notable locals—including Kurt Masur, conductor of the famed Gewandhaus orchestra—would make impassioned pleas for a non-violent revolution.

During the Monday prayers of Oct. 9, 1989, the Nikolaikirche was filled to standing-room capacity, and 2,000 people heard the bishop's call to march on the Runde Ecke—but he had one condition. Everyone must carry a candle in both hands, because if you are carrying a candle you cannot carry a weapon, and if you are not carrying a weapon you give the authorities no excuse to stop you.

When the worshippers exited the church, they were met by ten of thousands of other Leipzigers.

Every single one of them was carrying a candle.

In all, some 70,000 Leipzigers marched up the ring road around the Old City to the Runde Ecke. As Horst Sindermann, member of the GDR's central committe, later remarked: "We had planned everything. We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayers."

The Oct. 9, 1989, march on the Runde Ecke helped kick off the Wende movement that would eventually lead to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the entire Communist Block—and would spell the end of the Stasi reign of terror.

Dittrichring 24; tel. 0341-961-2443; www.runde-ecke-leipzig.de; open daily 10am–6pm; free.

Broken boats, injured crews, and other brushes with death: Day 1 of the 116 summer sailing trip, 2010

2010-06-26T09:00:00.019-04:00

Sailing: Day 1

Key Largo to Rodriguez Key. [Repeat]

Our 41-foot Hunter was called Blue Moon, but we nicknamed it "The Camry," because on two separate occasions we found ourselves in a situation in which we could sail it just fine… we just couldn't make it stop.

First day out, we got a late afternoon start because the tides trapped us in the Key Largo Marina. To relieve the boredom of waiting, I arranged to be nearly brained by the anchor of a hanging boat.

In which we almost lose one boat (and I almost die) before we even get out of the marina

Blue Moon was a whole lot bigger than Captain Rhoad’s own boat, a 29-footer (I believe) he keeps on the Chesapeake. So I don’t blame him. He was being forced to get the hang of this gargantuan new boat in a terribly narrow marina channel, in a blasted rush, with the locals yelling at him to hurry up, and at full speed.

This is because, though we had been told we'd be stuck in the marina until 5pm or 6pm waiting for the high tide to open an exit, no one had mentioned that the fuel station, which we had to visit before setting off and which lay just a few hundred yards down at the end of the marina, would be closing at 5pm.

By 4:30pm, we had just started loading our gear and a week’s worth of food onto the boats (most of it was still in the parking lot, being staged and divided between the Blue Moon and our other boat, a 36-foot Pearson called Stargazer), when someone from the fuel station wandered up and warned us of their imminent closure.

We started frantically slinging gear on board both boats. In the process, some people’s personal gear ended up on the wrong boat, other bits were misplaced for the duration, and a few pieces managed to get lost entirely.

Every five minutes or so, the fuel jerks would swing by to remind us of the ticking clock in nasty tones.

Keep in mind there were only four people on this tip who had any idea what they were doing: Blue Moon had 80-year-old Capt. Rhoad, an old Navy salt, Mark and Stew’s former Scoutmaster, and the only one of the lot of us who actually owned his own large sailboat. It also had a hugely under-qualified First Mate, me, who has been sailing precisely once before.

Stargazer had Captain Mark Weiss (who has owned boats) and his able First Mate Stew Lee, both veterans of at least three previous weeklong scout sailing trips.

Stargazer also had Scotty, who has been sailing a few times, but until this trip never really bothered paying attention.

Blue Moon had the Rosenbergs (Ian and his dad Stuart), who do know how to sail, but – with all due respect -- are used to puttering around lakes and bays in one-man Lasers, not taking on the open ocean in a 41-foot sloop. I was mightily happy to have them aboard my boat, but they had a steep learning curve as well.

Nearly all of the other boys were willing and eager to help, but they were, to a man, all landlubbing newbies to whom all the boat terminology (and protocol and operation) was a totally foreign tongue, so at first they got more in the way than anything,

So, while the boys finished flinging food and packs helter-skelter below decks, the officers hurriedly unhooked both boats' various umbilicals and stowed them (water hoses, power lines).

We cast off the Stargazer before its entire crew was aboard, and then quickly cast off Blue Moon in such a hurry we left Ian behind on the dock, still holding one of the mooring lines. He looked a little confused at first, then hurt when he realized we’d abandoned him. He threw up his arms disbelievingly, and said “What?…” Then he grumbled “Aw, man!,” and started coiling his line and turning to trudge up the marina toward the fuel station to meet us.

I probably would have done more to help him, but at the time was busy diving across the deck for my iPhone. In the rush, I had absentmindedly slipped it into my shirt pocket, which was dumb. When I tripped on the jib sheet running below the rail and my chest scraped along the cable of the mast stay, it ripped the button off my shirt pocket and the phone went flying, skittering across the deck. I flung myself after it and managed to snatch it just as it started going over the lip headed for the drink. I secured it in my pants’ zippered cargo pocket, reminding myself later to find my pack in the pile below and dig out the water-resistant cellphone case I’d bought for this trip.

Someone had told Captain Rhoad it might be easiest to back down the marina to the fuel docks, but that wasn't working, so -- with giant fishing charter boats returning every five minutes or so, each dangling 40 to 50 paying passengers form the gunwales and pretty much hogging the marina channel – the captain tried to turn the huge, ungainly, unfamiliar boat around in the tight space.

I was up on the bow, having cast off the last mooring line and stranded poor Ian, standing on call to fend and gingerly rubbing the raw rash on my knee I had just gotten from diving for my phone, when someone suddenly shouted "Reid!" with urgent terror.

I spun around to see an anchor aimed at my skull, about a foot away and closing rapidly. My brain was still trying to work out what an anchor could possibly be doing at eye level, but luckily for my brain my body reacted without awaiting instructions.

I buckled my knees and fell backward, just managing to duck the speeding anchor. At the same time, I reached up my arms to catch the prow of the boat to which the anchor was attached. My brain finally caught up.

“Ah,” it surmised. “This must be that small boat I noticed earlier that was hanging on the far side of the marina.” (Many people with houses on a permanent slip and smallish boats have winch mechanisms to hoist their craft up into a suspended version of dry dock; it keeps the barnacles off).

That sorted out, my brain also starting issuing orders.

I screamed "Reverse! Reverse!" back toward the Captain and did a pull-up on the prow of the other boat to I could lift my legs, plant my feet against the marina's far wall, and try vainly to push a 41-foot boat backwards.

Luckily, the Captain was quick and slammed us into reverse. This stopped our forward motion. Then I saw another problem, one even worse than hitting the marina wall, and screamed back, "Stop! Stop! ALL STOP! RIGHT NOW!"

The anchor-studded prow of the other boat was now fully cantilevered over the bow of Blue Moon, and it had neatly inserted itself between our mainmast stays and the jib, which was furled and trailing its two taught sheets back to the cockpit. In other words, it was a spider web of steel cables, ropes, and masts, and thrust into the middle of it was the enormous end of another boat, bristling with the pointy parts of the anchor. And we were drifting.

There was only inches of clearance on either side of the invading boat, and with the engine churning, current flowing, and tiller spinning, all it would take was the tiniest nudge in the wrong direction for the prow of the other boat to careen across our decks and rip the rigging right off our boat.

In fact, as I watched, ineffectually pushing with all my might against it, our outer stay slowly rode up along the side of the hanging boat and, with the telltale twang of a braided steel cable, sheared off a few inches of paint.

At that moment, Stuart Rosenberg and our crew captain, Jon Pfeil, materialized next to me and threw themselves against the other boat. Using every last ounce of available strength, issuing strangled shouts back to the captain of “Left!,” “Now back,” and, “No, Right! Right! Right!”, inch by inch we were able to push ourselves off while micromanaging the direction, allowing us to unthread the other boat's prow from our rigging.

We got a round of disdainful applause from the Stargazer as we pulled up too moor alongside her at the fuel docks.

[to be sung] Sailing, sailing, knowing we cannot stop…

Fully fueled, we still had to wait the arrival of high tide to get out -- the Blue Moon pulled a draft of five feet to Stargazer’s four, so we always played it safe – so we left Mark and Oliver on the boats and trooped up the road to the Circle K for giant, insulated 64-oz. plastic mugs of soda, not fully realizing the irony of buying a refillable mug from a chain store when we would spend the rest of the week at sea, far away from any Circle K (the Stargazer crew ended up stringing their mugs into a garland in their main cabin).

Finally, we motored out of the long marina channel, made it to open waters, and raised our sails. Soon, the captain let Jon take the wheel, and I plugged my iPod into the sound system to blast the main theme from the “Pirates of the Caribbean” soundtrack. We were grinning and excited. All was well.

We had sailed -- pretty much at random, just to get the hang of the boat -- a grand total of maybe 90 minutes before the setting sun and gathering clouds nudged us to turn south to head toward the lee of tiny Rodriguez Key to anchor. Stargazer had already made the same decision, and was maybe 15 minutes ahead of us.

As we sailed into trickier, shallower waters on the lee of the island, we turned on the engine, lowered the main mast and started furling in the jib.

However, as soon as we had the jib furled, something went WHANG! and the jib unfurled itself again, suddenly and violently, yanking the sheets out of the surprised boys' hands.

In the whipping wind of a gale that simultaneously came down, those free sheets (the lines used to furl and unfurl the jib) snaked wildly around and quickly wrapped around each other to formed a complex Gordian knot. Just then, the sun disappeared and the rain began slashing down in torrents.

As the boat pitched to and fro in the five-foot seas of the gale, Captain Rhoad tried to keep the ship in irons (pointing directly into the wind so your sails don’t fill with it and you aren’t fighting the wind – a fight you will always lose). This kept the jib flapping as Jon Pfeil and I inched our way to the foredeck in the white fury.

We braced ourselves against the deck and the mainstay and used a free line to capture the snaking, tangled, wildly flapping jib sheets and then wrapped the line around a stay to give us some leverage.

We took turns hauling with all our might on the far end of the tangled jib sheets in order to get a tiny bit of slack into the line. This would allow the other person to attack one layer of the multifarious knot. We switched off whenever the slack-producer's fingers gave out and arms went numb from fatigue. We’d make a tiny bit of headway, then an errant gust of wind would blow the jib, yank the sheet out of our hands, and pull it taught -- and the knot tight – again.

After about 40 minutes, with the help of a plumber’s wrench, we finally got the two sheets untangled, which would at least allow us to control and trim the jib. We stumbled back to the cockpit, exhausted, fingers cramped and hands trembling, forearm muscles aching from the unaccustomed exertion. I now know why Popeye has such engorged forearms.

The problem now was, there was no way to furl the jib. That “WHANG!” we had heard turned out to be the jib furling line disengaging and coming clean out of the furling assembly at the base of the mast. It was now nothing more than a spare length of rope.

The Captain and I sat at the bow as we headed out to deeper waters, our legs dangling off the prow and repeatedly dunked into the oncoming (and surprisingly warm) waves as the boat crashed through them. We poked around the furling drum with flashlights and were only able to determine that it was a wonderfully engineered device with a self-contained spring apparatus… and that there was no way to take it apart and fix it without the right kind of tools.

Given the dark and the storm and the wind, the captain didn't want to risk lowering the whole jib assembly with the halyard, since it would require some hand be up at the bow, gathering in the sail as it came down. One errant gust of wind could easily billow the sail, yank it overboard, and sweep into the dark seas any hapless scouts who were up there trying to control it.

So, instead, we made the only decision we could.

We simply kept sailing.

All night long.

We taught boys how to tack with the jib, warning the crew with a shout of “Coming about!” then starting the tack with a call of “Hard to lee!”

Once the boat came across the wind, the man at the wheel would yell “Break!,” which was the signal for the deckhand on the now-leeward side to crank in his jib sheet furiously while the deckhand on the other side let his line out for slack. It was a simple, but precise maneuver, and we now had 12 hours to practice it.

We spent the night pacing back and forth in the safe, deep waters, continually passing and re-passing Rodriguez Key, behind which the Stargazer was affixed to a mooring ball, its crew engaged in such soft, landlubby activities as "eating dinner" and "sleeping."

Luckily, the gale soon abated, the clouds parted, and our perfect heading turned out to be: the moon. So that's where I set my sail. I kept the full moon at my mast for a mile or so, then tacked and kept it at my stern.

The night was filled with stars and salt air. The only sounds were the gentle rush of water along the boat, occasional luffing flap of the sail or soft snap of a line in the wind, and the creaking voice that boats have always had, whether made of wood or Fiberglass. Looking from west to southwest across the velvet sky, we could see Venus, Mars, and Saturn strung out in a line like gems on the pearl necklace of the Milky Way.

Somewhere around midnight, the Captain and Ian's watch (Anthony and Oliver) took over, and Stuart stayed up with them, while Jon and I went below to fail to sleep for a few hours. The younger boys were all asleep on their feet, even the ones on watch, and had to be roused when it came time to tack--or, when eager Oliver was at the wheel, jibe. (Oliver also quickly perfect the technique of steering with his feet so he could use his hands to hold his book, a flashlight wedged between his chin and shoulder. This sharp attention to his duties might explain why he jibed so much.)

Around 4am, Jon and I roused his watch’s two deckhands, Gunner and Pretsch, and came back above deck to continue sailing for the moon until I saw Aurora appear on the faintly lightening horizon. We watched brooding Jupiter rise in the southeast -- accompanied, incredibly, by tiny Uranus, shining bright silver high in the sky.

Finally, the sun came up to warm our soaked and tired bones.

Now that it was daylight we were ready to make headway, but it was still only daybreak So we paced past Rodriguez Key a few more times, glaring jealously at a gently bobbing Stargazer, waiting for them to wake up and debating how early was too early to call, considering the relatively cushy night they’d had.

(The best we’d accomplished in terms of comfort all night was to dash below to the galley every once in a while, grab a handful of roasted chicken, and carry it topside to stuff into our mouths in the dark as we sailed. It all felt very primal and manly, if you overlooked the fact that the birds had all been nicely pre-roasted by the grocery store and neatly packaged in plastic containers.)

Stargazer finally radioed us a good morning, and we told them to get a move on, since all our scouts were now experienced sailors with 14 hours of hard sailing under their belts, whereas their crew was still comprised mostly of passengers who had merely taken a leisurely 90-minute pleasure cruise the evening before.

They pleaded they had yet to eat breakfast. On Blue Moon, we exchanged greasy grins, our chins still smeared with chicken bits, and called them all sorts of synonyms for sissy. Still, we hollered down below for someone on the other watch to figure out where the bagels and cream cheese had been tossed the day before. (The bagels were under a bench; the cream cheese was, of all the miracles, actually in the tiny fridge.)

Finally, on our umpteenth southwest passage past Rodriguez Key (we had altered our pacing a bit to put us on our eventual desired heading), we saw the Stargazer raising its mainsail.

We gave a whoop and raised our own, thankful that we could continue on our current heading without having to turn around yet again and wear our weary trough in the seas even deeper.

We radioed them to hurry up and catch up, and continued sailing merrily across the sun-dazzled waters, our sails and hearts filled with the second wind of a new day and an actual destination: Channel Five and its 65' bridge, which would allow us and our 64' mast to nip under it to gain the leeward side of the Florida Keys, where we could drop anchor in calm waters away from the wind and finally figure out what was wrong with our !@#$%ing jib. It would take us all day to get there, but we could make it.

After 15 minutes of making great time, we still hadn't seen Stargazer come from behind the rapidly receding Rodriguez Key. Couldn't raise them on the radio, either. I gave them five minutes. Then five minutes more.

Finally, wearily, I called for a tack and we turned around, yet again, to head back the way we had come and see what was going on.

Turns out Stargazer had run over its own mooring ball as they attempted to sail away, and its thick rope had gotten hopelessly tangled in their propeller. You may be picturing a propeller at the back of a boat, but that’s only on the outboard motors of dinghies or on the screws of a massive ship. On a sailboat, the prop is more toward the middle of the boat, and the rudder is actually behind it -- that way, you can make use of the wash created by the prop and flowing over the rudder to turn the boat much more quickly.

Of course, putting the prop down there under the middle of the keel does make things a bit tricky if you have to get to it while the boat is still in the water.

During their radio silence since breakfast, Stew and Mark had spent the past hour diving under their boat with knives, trying to saw through the five-inch braided line and free their boat.

They had finally gotten a smaller line untangled so they could raise the thicker mooring line just high enough in the water to hack at it while still at snorkel level. This was key, because now they didn’t have to dive down, locate the mooring line in the murky water, and have time only to give it one or two saws before needing to head back up for air.

However, this was not before the pitching and heaving of the boat overhead had done its damage to the intrepid captain and his first mate. Banging them repeatedly on the head was one thing. Infinitely worse were the barnacles lining the bottom of the boat, which flayed ribbons of skin off their backs and gouged deep cuts into their arms.

After they finally got free (and being good Boy Scouts, after they retied the mooring ball to its line, which was now about five feet shorter) and were back on board and underway, they had to institute a "blood detail" to keep swabbing down the decks, now slippery with their blood, while others swabbed and treated their wounds to staunch further bleeding.

We had been at sea roughly 15 hours, and already had one broken boat, two injured officers, and one thoroughly exhausted crew. Also, our main cabin was filled with chicken parts that had been flung around all night.

Ah, sailing.

Should tourists go to North Korea?

2010-01-28T17:02:00.003-05:00

So, now Americans can visit North Korea year-round (not just during the big showcase Arirang spectacle of creepily syncronized kindergarten kids). See: http://www.northkorea1on1.com

The real question is: should we be going at all? I am sure all visits will be as structured, regimented, and closely guarded as ever (a tourism variant on the old Potemkin Village), so would that stifle any of the potential benefits travel otherwise usually brings--a cultural exchange on a personal level in which people from both nations get to learn a bit about one another and, hopefully, foster a greater understanding.

Or will it be more of the same story: tourists blithely contributing to both the piggybank of a repressive regime and helping further its propoganda machine.

In other words, should travel to North Korea be boycotted, as it frequently is to other despotic countries like Myanmar?

ReidsGuides.com
Travel beyond vacations (tm)

New passport, how to I hate thee?...

2009-07-18T13:35:00.003-04:00

I hate the new passports. I'm not just talking about the truly horrendous digitized photograph of me that makes me look like a shiny, blubbery, 450-pound rubberized simulacrum of myself. That's to be expected (though how, in the digital age, passport photos are getting worse rather than better is beyond me).

I hate the treacly, jingoistic "America the Beautiful" theme that makes every page scream USA! USA! USA! I VOTED FOR GEORGE W. BUSH!

Also why, in a document designed expressly for the purposes of visiting other countries, does every page serve as an ad to stay home and see the wonders of this country? OK, so sure, the first photo/engraving page sports my own hometown sights of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. Clearly, they're trying to butter me up. Won't work.

After Philly's contributions, we get Cape Cod, Mt. Rushmore, and the Statue of Liberty. We get a Mississippi riverboat, places in the west where buffalo roam beneath Teton-y peaks and men in cowboy hats wrangle longhorns, some flat place in the Midwest where wheat and handplows rule, a train in Utah, and a grizzly eating salmon in the shade of a totem pole in the Pacific Northwest, saguaro in Arizona, and a palm tree in Hawaii. This patriotic march of images culminates in a final photo which implies, by extension, that the U.S. also owns the moon and outer space in general. Nice. And we wonder why the rest of the world finds us to arrogant and self-important.

I also hate the instructions that the document is never to be folded, spindled, or mutilated for fear of damaging the Big Brother microchip embedded inside so anyone with a receiver can steal all my personal data. Don't they know what travel does to a passport? The one I sent in to have replaced resembled nothing so much as a wad of damp cardboard with a mash-up of some exotic stamps barely visible in it.

Finally: I hate the fact that I have to memorize a whole new passport number. What was wrong with the old one?

Brooklyn B&Bs

2007-09-23T20:56:00.001-04:00

Here are the closest B&Bs and inns in Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, and Park Slope, Brooklyn.

View Larger Map

Chasing Lorenzo around Rome

2007-05-24T23:55:00.000-04:00

The 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 you, but I've never seen a flight land, taxi, offload, get cleaned, switch out crews, load up again, taxi, and take off in ten minutes.

Right after the woman lied to me about my flight, I noticed a man drop a plastic toploader folder out of his bag as he walked down the terminal. I picked it up, caught him up, and returned his folder.

This will become significant, in some small way, later on in the story of my day spent chasing Lorenzo de' Medici around Rome.... Full Story

The Winter Wolves of Yellowstone National Park

2007-02-15T18:01:00.000-05:00

"We're going to follow that bald eagle up the river," said veteran Yellowstone guide Leslie Quinn as we watched the magnificent bird flap past. Leslie threw into gear his bright yellow Bombadier—a vintage 1960s snowcoach shaped like a gumdrop reclining on tank treads—and crunched up the snow-packed road into the heart of the world's oldest national park....» Full Story

Horseback in the Andes

2007-01-17T00:43:00.000-05:00

Tomas Alarcon trotted his horse up to ride beside mine and pointed to the vertical layer cake of limestone and shale that rose above the ugly scar of a mining road across the valley.

"I climbed those cliffs when I was a child," said my Chilean guide. "And you know what? There are millions and millions of seashell fossils in the rock. Here, at nearly five thousand meters!"

We rode in silence for a minute, pondering the massive tectonic forces that could lift what was once the bed of the Pacific Ocean more than 16,000 feet above sea level and create the cut-glass peaks of the Andes mountains.... Full Story

116-Rafting Montana, Day 3

2006-07-30T00:20:00.000-04:00

On the third day, we broke camp early for a change and drove back through Missoula (pausing to stock up on groceries and, for the adults, to call home quickly and be sure families and work were getting along OK without us) then headed west on I-90 to rip some serious rapids and get a change of scenery along the Clark Fork of the Columbia River.

Got off Rte. 90 about a half-hour west of Missoula at Cyr for the river put-in. While Stew and Dan did the truck shuffle to leave a vehicle at the take-out point, the boys readied the raft and duckies. It too them a while to finish due to the distraction of dozens of bikini clad women all around them also preparing for the river. (Plus one disturbing man: paunchy, pasty, bandy-legged, and wearing naught but a miniscule and virulently colored Speedo.)

In the ogling boys' defense, they weren't the only ones in the group to get "Itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny, red polka-dot bikini" stuck in their heads for the rest of the day. (Trust me, it was red, not yellow--what little of it there was, that is.)... Full Story

116-Rafting the Blackfoot, Day 2

2006-07-29T00:15:00.000-04:00

I was awakened nest morning by a woodpecker practicing his Morse code and the honking of Canada geese. Though hiking can take you to a greater variety of places, river trips trump backpacking in two key areas. You can just roll off your craft for a refreshing dunk in the river whenever you get overheated, and the boat can carry a ton of stuff--think: steak dinners with wine (not that the Boy Scouts guzzle Cabernet, but for rafting or kayaking in general).... Full Story

116-Rafting the Blackfoot, Day 1

2006-07-28T00:14:00.000-04:00

The great thing about having former members of 116 scattered to the four winds is that the troop retains the right to call them back into service at any moment. Agnew and Dave Henderson were tapped to purchase the new van we had waiting when the troop arrived in Colorado. I came along to held lead (i.e.: drive) for the second half of the trip (and Agnew for a week of it). And, when we hit Missoula, Montana late one night, we crashed at Dan Berger's place.

Since graduating from the troop just a few years behind the likes of Agnew and I, Dan has become not only a journalist but also a professional river guide on the side. This meant that, rather than shell out $250 per person per day for a multi-day rafting trip with some outfitter, we were going to get three days on a pair of Montana rivers for free. All it cost the troop budget was the food, the beer, and the cost of renting a couple of duckies--an inflatable type of kayak--to supplement Dan's raft...Full Story.

116-Across the Backbone of the Americas

2006-07-25T23:02:00.000-04:00

"You guys want to take the shorter, easier trail over that low pass, or the longer, harder one straight up that way?" As soon as I asked, I knew I had sealed my fate. Also, John Agnew's. No way six teenage Boy Scouts were going to let their adult leaders take the easy way over the Continental Divide.

Never mind that we'd already hiked eight miles at high altitude in the Canadian Rockies--in some places using knotted chains to haul ourselves up vertical cliffs around waterfalls. It didn't matter that we'd climbed nearly 2,000 vertical feet over the last mile alone.

The boys weren't even taking into consideration that we hadn't gotten to bed until 5am that morning, or that Agnew had arrived from Denver late last night expecting to spend his first day on the trip sightseeing in Calgary.

The vote was unanimous for the thigh-burning, lung-aching, nearly vertical little trail--Canadians apparently don't believe in switchbacks--barely scratched into the scree and dust that led up over the highest pass.

We had managed to drag ourselves out of bed at the crack of 10:30am, backtrack north to Kananaskis, and head up the trail along Ribbon Creek in the Spray Valley Provincial Park, Stew leaving us to it in order to drive around to meet us on the other side.

It threatened rain all day. In fact, it sprinkled on us at Ribbon Falls Lake campground where we stopped for lunch and to keep an eye on the weather while we were below the tree line and within an easy lope of the ranger's station should we need to escape a thunderstorm.

Hours later, at the top of the Divide as we hollered our triumphant yells and frightened a few local marmots, I felt more stray raindrops. It was humbling to realize that those drops landing on my left were bound for the Pacific Ocean, while those on the right would eventually make their way to the Atlantic.

We scrambled down talus slopes on the other side, back into fir forest, then finally to the dirt road where the van and Stew were waiting. After some debate, we had dinner at a park picnic table by a little lake, followed by a long drive during which Agnew and I jerked awake occasionally to see an impressive solitary elk or cavalcade of soft brown deer by the roadside and tried and keep up a conversation with Stew so as to keep our driver awake.

Finally, we finally found some forgettable campground by the side of the road that was open where we could flop for the night. Agnew and I set up my tent and fell instantly into deep, well-earned sleep.

116-Yoho, Yoho, It's over the Pass We Go

2006-07-24T12:49:00.000-04:00

We marched out to the van two by two--we always have to try and confuse hoteliers as to how many more people than we claimed we had were actually crammed into their rooms--and munched on cold, greasy pizza for breakfast as we drove east into Yoho National Park (www.parkscanada.ca/yoho).

Yoho receives a mere fraction of the visitors at world renowned Banff, which is what they call this exact same stretch of wilderness on the Alberta side of the border.

We stopped briefly at Natural Bridge, a Greek-Key–shaped spit of rock over a riotously rushing section of glacial melt-off thundering under the stone and gushing down the stream beyond in a flurry of freezing white water,

We pulled into Emerald Lake intending merely to take a quick spin around its cool, shockingly reflective waters--the deep color caused by light refracting off microparticles of glacial rock--and to point out to the boys the famous Burgess Shale deposit of rare, Cambrian-era fossils of soft-bodied marine animals that have taught scientists more about the emergence of early animal life than any other site in the world.

During our circuit, Stew and I noticed a second trail diverging up and over Yoho Pass. It was only 6.6 miles, so while Stew went to drive the van around to the trail's other end, the boys and I strapped on hiking boots.

Over the Pass
The trail that began in mud flats braided with streamlets and bridged by thick wooden planks quickly gave way to a narrow, steep track through wildflowers. We sang "Yoho, Yoho, across the bridge we go" and, once we realized there were seven of us, quickly assigned dwarf names to each person. Quinn was Dopey, Dan Bashful, Ezra (given his snuffly bean contact low of the evening before) Sneezy, Mike was a natural for Sleepy, Ari became by default Grumpy (though that didn't really fit his character, as even when he was bitshing it was with an infectious enthusiasm), equinamable Karis was Happy, and me, I was Doc. We argued hwo best to break the news to Stew that he had become, by the process of elimination, Snow White.

The elevation gain from the lake to the pass was 1,700 feet. We did the 1,200 of it in one fell swoop over the course of a mile, the cool rush of a nearby mountain stream, invisible off to the left, teasing us as we climbed.

Thunder was grumbling and dark clouds peaking over Emerald Glacier by the time we got to the main falls, so we scrambled across a wide talus slope made up of several old avalanches to the safety of the tree cover. A giant guardian boulder stood athwart the path right at the tree line like a gate to the forest. Just beyond it, we paused to eat apples in the shade of the fir trees while the grumbling storm decided not to hit our valley and moved on.

At pretty little Yoho Lake on the other side of the pass, we hollered a hello to two French-speaking Canadian girls looked frightened that we might decide to stay and ruin their gorgeous (and, until our arrival, quiet) campsite. Stew was waiting for us there, enjoying an afternoon of incredible wildlife spotting: mountain goats, black-tailed deer, elk, black bear, and a grizzly mother with her cub.

The trail bottomed out by a dirt road by the Whiskey Jack Hostel beyond which the trail continued to an 838-foot-high waterfall called Takakkaw, a Cree word whose meaning could apply to the whole region: "It is magnificent."

There was another squall of fat rain as we hustled up the trail, and we got soaked in mist at base, but that didn't stop the boys from scrambling over wet boulders as close to the base of the falls as they could get. Shivering, I retreated along the trail back out of the mist zone.

A Late Lunch and A Change of Plans
We finally got our lunch of cold cuts at some picnic tables near the falls. Of course, it was 10pm, but we called it lunch. In our defense, we thought it was only 9pm because we had made the mistake of determining the time by asking Ezra, and Ezra had not yet reset his watch to Mountain Time (which doesn't, incidentally, start where it should, at the BC/Alberta border along the Continental Divide, but rather over along the ridge of the Columbias, around Glacier NP).

We decided we'd be late enough (like, and hour) picking up Agnew at Calgary, so rather than take the time to find a campground in Banff and unpack so the boys and I could set up camp while Stew went and collected Agnew, we just all stayed in the van and zipped through Banff then hauled down to Calgary where, of course, we made several wrong turns trying to find the airport.

"Let's go back to that seedy part of town and look for a cheap motel," said Stew, so we all piled into the "suite" at the Traveller's Inn motel where I found free WiFi. The boys watched Gremlins 2 while Stew, Agnew, and I chatted until Stew asked, "Is the sky lightening out there?"

"Of course not," I said, blaming the city lights of Calgary as I stepped over Ari in his sleeping bag to jigger aside the curtain a bit more and look out. Sure enough, the sky was brightening. "Oh my God," I said and fumbled for my cell phone to check the time. It was 5am, so we decided maybe it would be a good idea to get a little sleep.

See, although Agnew was still under the impression that tomorrow was to be spent calmly sightseeing in Calgary, he was forgetting that, during a six-week circle tour across the continent by Troop 116, the only bit of the original schedule we ever stick to are the airport dates for swapping out adult leaders, most of whose jobs, families, and stamina only allow them to spend a week or two on the road.

In other words, we weren't touring Calgary tomorrow. No, we had decided to check out early and head back north for a little 14-mile hike over the Continental Divide.

116-Down Mt. Revelstoke At High Speed

2006-07-23T22:14:00.000-04:00

We could tell we were in a strange, foreign land just from the roadside billboards:

"CORN (Coming Soon)"
"British Columbia Improvement Project; End of Project"
"WARNING: Killer Highway Ahead"
"Executive Realty, Call Us First" (and no phone number)
"Studies Show Guys Like Cold Beer (That Was A Waste of Money)"

As we wended our way east on the Transcanada Highway, following the deep blue-green water of the South Thompson River, we were passed by nearly endless freight trains (the boys counted: 118 and 132 cars were the two longest). The river slowly widened into the long, scraggly arm of Shuswap Lake hemmed by low, fir-clad mountains.

We went past the Blind Bay Visitors Center--which doubled as the River of Life Community Church (Stew: "Either way, they'll show you the way")--and stopped at Craigellachie to pay our bemused respects to the Last Spike (Canada's version of the Golden Spike that finally linked their west and east coasts by rail on Nov. 7, 1885).

After many tantalizing billboards, we finally came upon the promised Enchanted Forest ("Climb...Explore...See & Do!"), which was described in guidebook as a "kitschy roadside attraction" involving "numerous fairies and other figures, including a craft pirate, scattered around a forest."

It looked even hokier and chintzier than it sounded: rickety miniature plywood princess castles sloppily slapped with paint. But---and this was the unbelievable part--the parking lot was overflowing with cars and camper trailers. The place was simply packed out. I yelled out the van window at the idiots as we zipped past, pointing out that there were six major national parks just a few hours up the road.

Karis Goes Head over Heels for Revelstoke
Western Canada is justifiably famous for its national parks: Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies of Alberta, Glacier in the heart of British Columbia.

Naturally, Troop 116 ignored those parks almost completely.

Instead, our first stop was unheralded Mt. Revelstoke National Park (www.parkscanada.ca/revelstoke), where we met Jeff Sorenson, a Canadian who's not afraid to say "aboot." In his thick BC accent, he told us about his family's generations of lumberjacking and woodworking as he steered his truck up the Meadows in the Sky Parkway through the cedar and hemlock of the lower-altitude temperate rainforest to the balsams and spruce of the high snow forest as we crowned one of the park's 6,600-foot peaks.

Jeff accompanied us for a walk around tiny Balsam Lake and along a short trail through alpine meadows sprinkled with purple daisies, Indian paintbrush, bluebells, and Queen Anne's lace to a point overlooking the Columbia River hemmed in by the Selkirk and Monashee Mountains.

Jeff's Arrow Adventure Tours (877-277-6965, www.arrowadventuretours.com) was providing us with both the ride up the mountain and a set of bikes so we could coast back down the impossibly switchbacked, 16-mile road for nearly 4,900 vertical feet. "You'll probably get up some pretty good speed," was all Jeff said.

I'd guess we were going about 40 mph when we hit that first hairpin turn. I slowed and turned my wheel, as you might expect someone who has ever ridden a bicycle before to do.

Right behind me, Andy Karis tried a different tack. Ignoring the handbrakes and refusing to steer, he decided to slam in the bushes lining the curve at full speed.

Karis flipped over his handlebars and disappeared into the dense foliage, immediately followed by his somersaulting mountain bike. For all we knew, there was a cliff just beyond, so as the rest of the troop came screeching to a halt, I went pelting back up the road yelling, "Andy!"

After a few seconds came the reply: "I'm OK.... Just someone get this bike off of me."

A Golden Evening
After a dip in the "dangerously cold" waters in town, we cruised through the Salmon Arm and Columbia River valley, exchanging the lower, older, more rounded Columbia Mountains for the craggy peaks of the Rockies. The landscape truly began resembling a less developed version of the Italian lake district. It was glorious, it was gorgeous, and Stew and I divided our time between admiring it and trying to wake the boys up to force them to admire it, too.

We intended to camp in Glacier National Park, we truly did. But one thing Canadians are not good at, at least in BC, is signposting things. This is our explanation as to how we managed to drive into, through, and out the other side of Glacier NP--even pausing to take photographs of a particularly neat waterfall in the distance--without actually realizing it.

Rather than backtrack--never retreat, never surrender!--we continued on into the town of Golden (www.tourismgolden.com). Though the area surrounding the town was packed with hostels (charging a ridiculous US$19 to $24 per person), cabins (from $110), and campgrounds ($14 to $20, at least in the parks), we took our cue from the thick layer of mosquitoes that coated our legs every time we stepped out of the van and opted instead for Packers Place, a handful of cozy, simple rooms above a tavern in the heart of downtown (429 N 9th Ave., 250-344-5951, $46).

Stew and I had a beer in the bar while the boys jogged up the street to order up a passel of greasy pizzas from the inventively named "Canadian 2 for 1 Pizza," which apparently stood for "2 hours of intense flatulence for each 1 slice you eat." Most of us cozied up to the TV in one of the rooms to munch on the greasy pizzas and watch "My Boyfriend's Back," which we all agreed was the world's funniest zombie movie ever, followed by a terribly disturbing episode of "Family Guy" ("Dear Diary: Jackpot!").

116-The Sun Never Sets from Australia to Canada

2006-07-22T23:41:00.000-04:00

Troop 116 was an hour late, but in 116 terms that's about four hours before I expected them. No worries, though, as it took me a full 90 minutes making my way through the Vancouver airport, given the grilling I got from immigration and, later, customs when--for the first time in my life (and I travel an obscene amount)--I got pulled out of line and ushered to the Canadian Customs Interrogation and Cavity Search Division. I seemed to have found my first Cauncks who put a strain on the theory that Canadians are unfailingly polite.

It's tough to travel for more than 25 hours (including a long layover in L.A.) and still be on the same day--proving yet once again that the sun never sets on the British Empire, at least not when traveling from Australia to Canada.

You'd figure the Customs Service interrogators would understand about long Transpacific flights and cut some slack to the bleary, cranky traveler whose brain is fogged from lack of sleep and prolonged exposure to extreme boredom. But no, they only become even more dubious of you when you hesitate or have to think for a second about your answers to their inane questions, each of which is repeated several times, in slight variations, over the course of the hour-long standing interrogation.

See, they're trying to catch you in a lie or changing your story--they're pathologically suspicious of single males with an incoming flight but no outgoing one, and they didn’t seem to buy my tale that an American Boy Scout troop was picking me up and I'd be driving across the Canadian Rockies before turning south into Montana.

I must admit, I got a little nervous when--after x-raying and rifling through my bags twice--one of the two humorless Canuck Customs agents assigned to harass me pulled on a fresh pair of latex gloves as he asked "So, you're not carrying anything else on your person, sir?"

The Shaving of Andy Karis
The majority of the Greater Vancouver population was at the beach on this hot and sunny Saturday afternoon--and Vancouver has a lot of beaches. The boys ogled the sea of bikinis as we skirted miles of shoreline around West Vancouver.

We talked our way into a $25 "Family" ticket at UBC's famous Anthropology Museum, well-stocked with towering totem poles and piles of beaded masks and carved objects, most of them form Native cultures across North America. After about ten minutes inside, Stew suddenly did a Columbo pocket pat-down and announced he had locked the keys in the van. He borrowed a coat hanger from the ticket desk, and ten minutes of grunting and prying and fishing later, we got into the van and headed downtown.

Stanley Park is a peninsular blob jutting out from the tip of downtown and covered in the only urban rainforest in North America. We drove its circuit road and stopped to watch some Pakistanis play a cricket match for a little while and totally failed to understand what was going on or even fathom the basic rules of the game. Still, it looked idyllic, what with the lowering sun casting a golden glow to the grass and outlining the players' white uniforms in halos.

On our way back into town, Karis said he wondered what he'd look like with a Mohawk, so we kept stopping at hair salons, only to be turned away each time as it was around 6pm, closing time. Finally, we found a Korean barber who, when I stuck my head in and said "Good afternoon! Are you closed yet, or do you have time to shave my friend's head?" looked up at the clock and said, "OK, why not."

About halfway through, the barber's wife and small daughter arrived to find out why he hadn't come home yet and just stood in the doorway, confused, watching as a half-dozen Americans snapping photos circled their half-shorn friend in the barber's chair.

In Which We Try to Kill Ezra
After a long search for a pretty sad little suspension bridge (I had been told it was nearly as cool as the one at Capilano--which costs something ridiculous like $20 to cross), we drove back into town to a street by the park that boasted four bike rental shops and a store called "You and What Army?"

It also had a Mongolian BBQ with a sign in the window promising all you could eat for $9.95, so we went in for a cheap, filling meal and to make yet another attempt to kill our Senior Patrol Leader. A young Mongolian stood in the window, using the world's largest pair of chopsticks to toss and turn a pile of meat and veg around a giant flat skillet.

We shuffled down the sneeze-guarded buffet, filling our bowls with four meats, 20 vegetables, and a mix of 16 sauces to hand over to the chef and his giant chopsticks. Unfortunately, one of the sauces was black bean, and someone in line in front of Ezra must have picked it because, by the time we got back in the Van, our resident allergist was snuffling and wheezing and requesting wintergreen snacks, which he claims helps.

We nervously joked that if he got worse we would get to use his EpiPen on him. Ezra got animated and serious. "Nuh-uh! If anyone is going to use the EpiPen it's going to be me. I've been waiting 13 years for the chance to use that thing." Luckily, Ezra was going to have to postpone that date with the EpiPen a bit longer. We stoked him with wintergreen, Benadryl, decongestant, and tissue and kept waking him up during the long ride to Kamloops to be sure he was still breathing.

The first motel we stopped at wanted too much money. The second one advertised "free adult movies" as the first of its tantalizing amenities on the sign. So we ended up at the Rodeway Inn, with beetles in the bed, pubic hairs under the pillows, and a hole punched in the bathroom door. I didn't care. By that point I had been up for 50 hours straight, more than 24 of them aboard the various planes that got me from Australia to Canada. It was a bed, it was flat, and I fell into a blessed six hours of deep sleep.

Biking Vieques' Virgin Beaches and Kayaking the Bio Bay

2006-05-05T23:35:00.000-04:00

I've learned never to argue with a man holding a machete. So when one of our guides, Mark Franco, Jr., whipped out his blade and said "Hey, you want to see something neat?" I simply hung my helmet on the handlebars of my rented Specialized Rockhopper and followed Mark into the jungle.

Five minutes of hacking later, we arrived at the crumbling remains of Playa Grande, the last of the great Victorian sugar cane plantations. Tiny Vieques—Puerto Rico's "little daughter" just seven miles off its eastern shore—was once nicknamed Sugar Island, but the local industry collapsed in the 1930s. This plant struggled along until 1941, when the U.S. Navy took over most of Vieques to use for target practice.

"They relocated the whole village of workers," said Mark as we passed Playa Grande's broken rooms filled with leaf loam, picking our way down its arched brick corridors cracked open to the sky and fringed with garlands of vines. "It didn't take long for the jungle to reclaim it."

I had spent the morning circling the island's western end with Mark and his boss, Karl Husson, owner of La Dulce Vida Mountain Bike. Our tires fishtailed though sandy beachside trails and forded shallow streams as we whizzed past cove after abandoned cove of virgin beaches lined with coconut palms, mangrove, and sea grape—no resorts, no development, and only the occasional anchored boat for company.

We peeked into long cement ammo bunkers, camouflaged by grass roofs and empty save for the tiny bats clinging to the ceilings, and crossed the saddle of the island along a narrow path through thickets of mango and papaya.

After bushwhacking to the remains of Playa Grande, we turned onto the dirt road to Vieques' northwestern tip. Beyond the 1,058-acre nature preserve of Laguna Kiani, a dark lagoon girded by a tangle of mangrove, lay Green Beach. This long swathe of sand must not see many visitors; as I waded into the warm surf, crabs scuttled nonchalantly across my toes, and a curious ray swam up to investigate my ankles.

While Karl broke out the organic snacks, I wandered up the beach to Punta Arenas and stood in the shallows at land's end. The water swirling around my legs ran alternately warm and cool as the turquoise Caribbean mingled with the deep blue Atlantic.

The fact that we could experience this storybook slice of the Caribbean at all was something of a miracle. The Navy continued using 70% of Vieques' 26,000 acres as a punching bag until 2003, when protests and pressure finally forced them to turn it all over to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The island's eastern half is still littered with decades' worth of unexploded ordnance—and is closed to the general public as a National Wildlife Refuge. But while the western end has been entirely cleared of unexploded bombs, it remains gloriously abandoned.

Much has been written of the island's inhabited central strip, and I spent a pleasant afternoon in the low-key village of Esperanza. I hit the self-proclaimed "smallest aquarium in the world" (a few algae-streaked tanks, a tub scuttling with Vieques' clawless lobsters, and room of Taino Indian artifacts), and I scarfed down tostones, jerk chicken strips, and chili con carne on the breezy wood-plank verandah of Banana's on the beachside road.

But it was those jungle-clad two-thirds of the island, off-limits for more than half a century and shrouded in mystery, that drew me to Vieques. To seek out its secret trails, I needed local guides like Karl, Mark, and Tim Raymond, a bear of a man who owned Aqua Frenzy Kayaks.

I hooked up with Tim for a nighttime kayak tour of Mosquito Bay—a name that gives entirely the wrong impression. The cove is crawling not with mosquitoes but dinoflagellates. You can't see these microorganisms—not even with 720,000 of the single-celled beasties swimming around each gallon of water—but since they flash with light when agitated, anything that passes through the Caribbean's best bioluminescent bay leaves a bright blue glow in its wake.

From his kayak, Tim delivered an informative nature lecture in laid-back dude patois as our paddles churned up ghostly effervescent glows and schools of fish shot through the water like turquoise tracer fire.

When we reached the best spot, I rolled off my kayak and swam in an aura of light, my flailing arms and legs leaving trippy echoes in blue. It was sublimely surreal. I filled my cheeks, tilted back my head, and sent a fountain of glowing blue shooting into the sky.

When you go...
Arriving: Vieques is a 25-40 min flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico ($160–$180) using Vieques Air Link (888-901-9247; www.viequesairlink.com), Cape Air (800-352-0714; www.flycapeair.com), or American Airlines (800-433-7300; www.aa.com).

Activities: La Dulce Vida (www.bikevieques.com; day rentals $35, half-day/8-12 mile tours $75).
Aqua Frenzy Kayaks (787-741-0913; two-hour tour $30).

Food & Lodging: Banana's Guest House is a simple Caribbean shack–like joint across from the beach: basic plank-floored rooms with no phone or TV, but with a friendly staff and one of the best casual dining spots along Esperanza's beachside road (787-741-8700; www.bananasguesthouse.com; with fan $65, with A/C $80).

Hix Island House has 13 lofts in four funky buildings that look a bit like Bauhaus-meets-Asia done in poured concrete geometry, with lots of interplay between inside/outside spaces; stylish and hip, with the prices to prove it (787-741-2302; www.hixislandhouse.com; $160-$210 in summer; $220-$295 in winter).

Reid Bramblett is the founder of ReidsGuides.com

Copyright © 2006 by Reid Bramblett

Entirely the Wrong Witch

2005-10-31T20:57:00.000-05:00

It 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 day before the Feast of All Saints. In Italy, the time to play dress-up isn't for another four months and the moveable feast of Carnevale, that Fat Tuesday of partying before Ash Wednesday ushers in the 40 austere days of Lent.

So why is it that the pizzeria I just left is packed with babbling kids, their faces smeared with makeup, pointy hats on their heads and gauzy or silky capes tied at their necks? Why did the marble fountainhead on Campo Santa Maria Formosa have a gaggle of costumed youths sitting upon it, laughing and eating candy? What, in short, the Hell is Halloween doing in the very capital of Carnevale?

I should have been ready for it, really. I knew it was coming. I saw the signs. The stalls on Riva degli Schiavoni that hawk Italian team soccer shirts and knock-off designer scarves to tourists last week added black or orange hats stacked like felt traffic cones. Window decorations across Northern Italy have increasingly featured pumpkins, or cardboard strings of bats and skeletons stretched over the display of pastries. Last night, Rete 4 did a mini-marathon of Simpsons Halloween episodes, and I saw from the ads that tonight most TV channels were planning to screen horror movies.

Chalk another one up to American cultural imperialism. It's often not as blatant as McDonalds and the bad Hollywood action movies upon which most Euro-snobs fixate when denigrating our country's overweening influence on the modern world. Sometimes it's a subtle as changes to the holiday traditions of youth, and that's what I find so bone-chillingly terrifying. For the first time in years, I'm genuinely frightened this Halloween night. I feel witness to the ending of a cultural era, and as a lapsed anthropologist, I can't say I'm happy about it.

I'm also ticked off that they've got the entirely wrong witch in mind, and the wrong holiday in which to stick her. Various holiday traditions from the US and Italy are increasingly becoming jumbled, their meanings disappearing. It's like culture by Cuisinart. Just as Italy already has its own holiday for wearing masks (Carnevale), it has a holiday for witches, too. Only it's not on October 31. It's on January 6. The witch of Italy is a good witch, not a broomstick-riding hag, and she brings—or at least brought—sweets and presents to Italian children on the day of the Epiphany.

That’s why this is not a story of Halloween in Venice in 2005, but rather of the day after New Year's in Rome in 2002.

THE CHRISTMAS MARKET
The Christmas market on Piazza Navona has almost entirely gone over to the generic stalls, games, and toys/candy trailers common to every outdoor fair in Italy. The artisan stalls offering handmade presepio (Nativity scene) figures now make up perhaps only one-fifth of the market. There's still a carousel in the center, and plenty of the toss-the-ring-fail-to-win-the-stuffed-teddy third rate carny games ranged around it.

But most of the trailers and carts in between hawk either two dozen variations on the peanut brittle theme, mass-produced toys and trinkets, ciambelle (donuts) the size of dinner plates, cheap knock-off jerseys of famous soccer players and other calcio memorabilia, or Hollywood-induced Santa-Christmas paraphernalia. However, a few stands at the north end still carry La Befana, the Christmas Witch.

THE KORPORATE KRIS KRINGLE
Now we all know that Hollywood long ago corrupted the kindly old Kris Kingle/St. Nicholas icon to create the treacly, ultra-capitalist "Santa Claus," who has become so commercial that, though legal loopholes and contractual obligations, he can easily be replaced with Tim Allen (The Santa Clause) or Whoppi Goldberg (Call Me Claus) to suit the needs of Disney or Ted Turner, respectively.

This commercialization has been a long process. The Salvation Army has prostituted Santa on street corners for decades--for highly laudable goals and worthy charities, obviously, but no matter how you look at it, this paramilitary Christian organization has in point of fact turned the Santa image into a street beggar, a symbol of cash flow, and that's what I'm talking about here.

Even the kindly Kris Kringle from Miracle on 34th Street is, in fact, no more than the Macy's Santa, shilling for a department store--though the movie is careful not to ascribe to him any miraculous powers or actually answer the question of whether he is, in fact, Santa Claus. The sacks of letters that arrive in the courtroom at the 11th hour are, when it comes down to it, just a happy coincidence brought on by a self-serving postal employee, and even the judge accepts them as proof merely to escape a sticky political situation and selfishly ensure his own position. Seriously. Watch it again: It's an astoundingly depressing movie.

This presents-under-the-tree American Santa Claus has been successfully exported all over the world and has in the process more or less obliterated many local customs, culture, and traditions--which is of course exactly what the French are always griping we Americans do. In Italy, La Befana, the Christmas Witch, used to bring Italian children their presents, leaving them in stockings hung on the fireplace on the day of the Epiphany, January 6. This makes perfect sense, as that's when the Wise Men arrived in Bethlehem with their offerings of gold, frankincense, and myrrh--which collectively still hold the title of Least Appropriate Infant Gifts Ever.

These days it's Babbo Natale--that red-robed chap with a belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly--who leaves wrapped gifts under a Teutonic evergreen in living rooms across Italy, just like they've seen done in countless schlocky American films. La Befana may show up, belatedly, 12 days later to stuff some candy into the hearth stockings along with, perhaps, the Italian equivalent of a lump of coal: a small bundle of twigs, symbolic of the whipping the mischievous youngsters undoubtedly deserve for some infraction they got away with in the previous year.

It's interesting that, although she's lost the majority of her Christmas role (though she's still associated with the season) the Christmas Witch has reverted to the heart of her identity: the noun of her being, rather than the adjective. Santa may have horned in on her territory and stolen her job, but La Befana is still a witch.

SWEEP AWAY YOUR TROUBLES
La Bafana's Christmas gift-giving role has been greatly reduced, at least in this jaded big city. She's now sold mainly as a scaccia guai, one who "chases away troubles" with her handy broom. The broom has long been tied into the mythology of witches, and not just as a means of transportation. It’s also been one of the most useful methods for keeping witches away. In many European cultures, a witch's primary weakness is that she cannot help but stop to count objects (or to untie knots; we still have an echo of this in many personal "my grandma's old house was haunted" ghost stories, which often feature the poltergeist fiddling with boot laces and the like).

One way to escape a pursuing witch is to toss beans on the ground behind you. Cursing, she has to stop to count them--and unlike Rain Man with his toothpicks, she has to go on a bean-by-bean basis. Similarly, the age-old method to protect your home from witch access--before electronic security systems--was to leave a broom propped against the doorjamb. The witch arriving in the dead of night to cast a spell on you is foiled when she has to stop and count the broom bristles, which are so numerous and (in traditional brooms actually made from twigs of the broom plant) so crooked she keeps loosing count and never gets around to committing the witchcraft. Seriously. There are still tons of little towns, especially in Southern Italy, and especially at this time of year, where you can wander the whitewashed alleyways and see a Home Security Broom prudently propped at every single front door.

Obviously this is all assuming the witch is evil, whereas our Befana is clearly a good egg. It's no good looking for too much consistency in witch lore, as females with supernatural powers have been invoked for so many different and diverse purposes across the ages-from the Greek Medea to Harry Potter's brainy schoolmate Hermione Granger--that there's no core, official type of witch in human mythology. She can be good or bad as the story or ritual calls for, and one village's protectress sorceress is to their rival neighboring village an evil hag in league with Satan.

But back to Italy's beneficial Befana--who as a scaccia guai is in reality using her broom to keep other, evil witches away, sort of a double agent on our side. A Preventative Strike Witch, if you prefer. Good or no, she's still a witch, and as such comes in three flavors, as witches always do.

THE THREE AGES OF WITCHERY (OR: AN ACRESS'S CAREER ARC)
This scaccia guai edition of a witch or Befana is the proverbial hag, the mistress of powerful supernatural (or, some would have, evil) forces, with the fearsome ability to cast pure magic spells. There's also the porta fortuna (fortune-bringer) Befana. She's the mother figure, an apple-cheeked grandmamma wearing glasses and wielding the earth-force, exerting the family-based power of command and control from a calm, nurturing center. The principessa (princess) form of La Befana (or any witch) is the maiden, with a young woman's primal power to bewitch and ensnare men.

We still see echoes of this core coven triad even in latter-day tales of American witchery. The Wizard of Oz has its hag witch (the Wicked Witch of the West), its kindly mother witch (Glenda the Good Witch); even the maiden/princess witch (Dorothy herself, of course, who quickly enlists three males to accompany her and protect her on her quest, and indeed shows her own, inherent magic powers in the heel-clicking finale).

It's the same old symbolic three-step that film actresses are always (justifiably) complaining about, that there are only ever the three classic Gravesian roles out there for women: maiden, matron, or screaming psycho-bitch who boils her boyfriend's pet rabbit. (Though, to be fair, the "maiden" role is usually available in both Freudian flavors--virgin or whore--so really, there is a grand total of four female roles in Hollywood. This is what drives so many good actresses to the stage.)

BACK IN THE CHRISTMAS MARKET
In Piazza Navona's market, all three archetypes of Befana dolls appear in the stalls, hung from mobiles along the awning, with backups nestled into rows filling boxes beneath. Though the more traditional Italian Befana is the bespectacled porta fortuna grandmothery figure, in recent years, the elderly hag Befana has taken over the stalls. This witchy sort of witch has been heavily influenced by the American Halloween image (something else they learned from Hollywood; there is no Halloween in Italy), and for the most part she is mass-produced cheaply in China.

However, though hags are far more common now, you can find the porta fortuna, dressed in gingham or in woolen robes, or even in striped giallo-rosso (red and yellow) or bianco-azzurro (white and azure) livery--the colors of rival city (Roma) and regional (Lazio) soccer teams, respectively. One stand, a tiny one that bucks the trend by still carrying mostly artisan-made Befanas and other seasonal figures, actually has a small display mobile that makes the most eloquent statement on this whole, slow cultural changeover: tiny Befanas garbed in the white fur-fringed jolly red robes of Santa Claus.

In person, though, the grandmotherly Befana still reigns. The market has even come up with an Italian variant on the department store Santa: a cramped sleigh "pulled" by a plush, life-sized reindeer, its cabin barely managing to seat an odd, cross-cultural couple: a bell-toting, Santa Clausian Babbo Natale and his companion Befana, both huddled against the cold. "Come get your picture taken with la bella Befana!" cries Santa like a carnival barker as he swings his bell.

A father drags along two bundled Italian cherubs, a boy and a girl both under eight, navigating the strolling crowd with a tired but determined look on his face. "Daddy, who's that?" Asks the little boy, pointing to the Befana. The father looks stunned at first, stops in his tracks, and says with a face of horrified disbelief, "But, it's La Befana!" And then the horrible truth of it dawns on him. His own children recognize Babbo Natale right off the bat, but they have no idea who La Befana is.

To them on this wintery January morning, Christmas is undoubtedly already a fading memory of wrapping papers and batteries-not-included. Christmas itself was over, and this strange carnival of lights, noise, peanut brittle, giant ciambelle, and funny-looking dolls dangling from brightly lit trailer awnings was just something to pass the time on January 2. They aren't particularly looking forward to January 6, as Italian kids have for countless generations, because La Befana doesn't visit their house anymore. At most, the Epiphany merely marks for them the last day of Christmas break before heading back to school.

I watch the little family as the father steers them through the crowds, moving more slowly now, haltingly trying to explain about a witch who flies to your house on the Epiphany, a broom between her knees and sack on her back. Just before the crowd swallows them from view, I see the father pause, pluck from a stall's display two comically oversized socks (in the Roma colors of giallo-rosso), and rummage for his wallet.

Looks like La Befana will at least be adding one more house back onto her rounds this January 6. I bet the boy will even get a mini-switch of twigs; I hope there's some candy to go with it. Just so long as no one gets the bright idea to bring him some myrrh.

The Sisters Picchi & the Nobel Prize

2005-10-13T18:45:00.000-04:00

Why are there a dozen people crammed into Sorelle Picchi, one of many little salumerie (delis) along Parma's Via Farini? More to the point, why are none of them ordering three etti of prosciutto, a kilo of pecorino, and a box of homemade pasta from old Claudio, who stands behind the counter carefully bundling up giant wedges of aged parmigiano in waxed paper, using the back of his long scissors to -thwiiip!- curl the trailing ends of the red ribbon wrapped around each?

They're waiting. All of them are waiting to squeeze through the little gap between the wall and the wooden counter on which rests the cash register and enter the back room, a chaos of white tablecloths, packed with wooden chairs and bustling women serving simple dishes. Turns out, this is Parma's favorite hidden trattoria, open only for lunch and only to those who know which deli to line up in (plus random travel writers curious as to why a salumeria would be packed at lunchtime).

Occasionally joining Claudio behind the counter was one of the second generation Picchi sisters, fat in that comfortable manner of many Italian women in late middle age--double chinned over a chest of truly prodigious proportions--but sprouting oddly thin arms muscular from a lifetime of slicing salumi. "It'll be a while yet." She announced to the waiting crowd upon returning from one of her trips to the back room. "No one wants to detach themselves from the table. We tried to convince the president of the Bank of Rome to go back to work, but he won't budge!" (I figured that this was some kind of joke phrase--the "bank president" a stock illustrious figure to conjure up for an Italian metaphor I'd never heard before--but when I left, I realized the Banca di Roma was, in fact, right across the street--presidentless, apparently, for the moment.)

I spent a patient half-hour watching this Picchi sister alternately work the automatic slicer and a giant butcher knife to create mixed platters of cured meats destined for diners in the back. So when it was finally my turn to squeeze past the cash register and thread back to a tiny table against the wall, I couldn't help but order a plate of affetatti misti myself.

The simple white plate came heaped with delicate tissues of prosciutto, thick leather sheets of culatello, marbled roundels of copa, a thick, fragrant disc of salame di felino (which, I was relieved to learn, comes from a nearby valley called Felino, not from cats), and a hearty slice of strullaghiello, a pink salami made from copa and so soft it falls apart as I try to slice a bite.

The affetatti arrived with a companion plate containing only two jagged nuggets of parmigiano, each the size of a small child's fist, and creamier and more flavorful than any parmesan I've ever tasted.

Normally, I don't care much for Parma's famous aged cheese. Oh, it's fine to grate over pasta or whatever, but not for eating straight. The problem is, cheese platters are designed to be worked clockwise, starting with the softest and mildest sample on the cutting board and then tasting your way around increasingly more pungent, aged, and veiny varieties. There's always a crooked gem or two of parmigiano waiting at the end of the cheesy clock face, which I always dread arriving at but always eat because I somehow get the feeling it wouldn't be very macho to leave it there--as if I couldn't handle the intensity and was forced to give up--and I hate to be emasculated in the eyes of my waiter.

(This personal failing is also what drives me to accept a grappa duro after a meal when what I really want is a prissy, sweet limoncello, and what has led me over the years to eat deep fried whole frogs soaked in vinegar, braised ass meat, camel stew, snails, and sheep testicles, amongst other delicacies.)

But this parmigiano at Sorelle Picchi was different. Strongly flavored without being tongue-cuttingly sharp, and best of all it had virtually none of that awful grittiness I've come to associate with such foods as aged parmigiano and sandwiches eaten at the beach. I said as much to my waitress, and she agreed. "Most people serve it aged too much." She said. "Here, we serve it young, only about 27 months old, so it's still good for eating."

I was pretty confident that going with the "piatto tradizionale" today wasn't going to turn out as it did last night, when I needed generous lubrications of Lambrusco to help gag down the pesto di cavallo, which turned out to be hamburger patties of horsemeat--served raw and cold. Today it's the far more promising sounding tortelli alle erbette, homemade pasta pillows stuffed with ricotta, parmigiano, and a local wild green simply called "little herb" (long like a beet leaf, but sweet like spinach). The rectangular tortelli came in a grid of nine, dressed in grated parmigiano and a pool of melted butter. Ah, this is more like it! This time, I didn't need the Lambrusco to help wash it down. Not that I didn't have a rapidly emptying bottle of Lambrusco in front of me. Just that I didn't need it as a swallowing aid.

As I waited for the pasta to come out of the open kitchen across the room, where more Picchi women were hard at work alongside mamma--one of the original Sisters Picchi (auntie retired a few years ago) who've been running this trattoria/salumeria for 40 years--I glanced around the dining room. As I did, something started tickling at the back of my mind, so I gave it a few moments to wander about in search of the thought to which it belonged. When it finally did find a home in my memory cells, I almost choked on my prosciutto.

Sitting at the head of the table for ten next to me was an older gentleman in a squashed, pale beige fisherman's canvas hat and affecting a white wool scarf wrapped once around his neck and tucked under the collar of his dark shirt. He was eating mortadella like it's going out of style, and putting away his tortelli alle erbette fast and furious, all the while grinning genially and paying close attention to the conversation swirling around his table. His name was Dario Fo, Italy's greatest living playwright and, as of 1997, a Nobel laurate.

He's in town for a few days, co-presenting a three-night series on "Theater in Italy" at the Teatro Farnese. I know this because I saw posters advertising this fact outside the Teatro's doors, and I seriously considered attending before realizing that I know so very little about Italian theater it would be lost on me, and besides I promised myself that tonight I'd get a good chunk of writing done. I had no idea I'd be lunching with the guy in the same trattoria hidden in the back room of the Sorelle Picchi deli.

In fact, the only reason someone so poorly versed in Italian theater can confirm that it was, indeed, the maestro is that I overheard one of the Picchi (the meat slicer) whispering to a regular client as she squeezed though the gap by the cash register, "Hey, did you see who is here today? Dario Fo!" She smiled and shook her head. "That boy sure does love his mortadella."

I wonder if I should have gone over and told him about the parmigiano?

Good Night, Sleep Tight...And That's All

2005-10-11T02:45:00.000-04:00

I'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.

I downright revel in my thrift. I mentally lord it over people who can afford better hotels. In fact, I picture the poor saps shelling out three or four times as much for a room with TV and minibar in the three-star joint around the corner, and I think: suckers! Sure, they don’t have to put on pants and grab their keys every time they want to nip out to the bathroom, but I look at it this way: I could stay here for three or four nights at the price they're paying for one. (I say "could stay" because I can't; I've got to dash off to Modena tomorrow, Parma the day after that, then Milan...more than one night in a city is a luxury we working stiff travelers cannot afford.)

I stand there in my gloriously drab one-star room, stripped to my undies, smugly washing my clothes in the sink (even rooms without baths in Europe usually have a sink). As I round-robin my camera, Palm, laptop, and cellphone battery chargers though the single outlet available, I reflect on my wisdom for preferring one-star rooms—"wisdom" sounding so much better than the slightly more accurate term, "poverty". I am one who appreciates that a comfy bed is all one really needs from his lodgings; anything more is downright slothful. Or maybe avaricious. One of the Deadly Sins, at any rate.

So I am content with my view of the airshaft. I can tolerate the traffic noise filtering through the single pane of glass. I don't mind the lack of a phone that would allow me to go online—just a little intercom handset that connects only to the front desk (which is unmanned after midnight anyway). I can handle rough sheets on a sagging-spring cot.

But there are certain things at which I draw the line.

On reflection, it's a good thing I decided to keep reading the next chapter of my novel, when I really should have either (a) sat at the desk and caught up on entering my research into the computer, or (b) snapped off the 20-watt bulb and gone to bed early for once to try to catch up on sleep, which at this point in my whirlwind trip is becoming rather more important than typing up notes.

But, had I done either of those things, I wouldn't have been lying in bed with the lights on. Had I not been lying in bed with the lights on, I wouldn't have noticed, out of the corner of my eye, something moving against the white of the pillow.

It was a small brown bug. Well, such things happen. I was frankly surprised I hadn't had to go on an half-hour mosquito-killing rampage within the room this evening, as I have on so many prior occasions in a country where windows are left cracked open all day to air out the rooms. I flicked the bug off my pillow, and went back to my book.

Then, my eye caught another movement. It was another bug. This one was inching along the white bulge where I had thrown the sheets back, right up next to the wall, so I squished it against the plaster. It became a smear of bright red blood, like when you smack an engorged mosquito. Eew. Two bugs got me a bit nervous, so I put my book face down and lifted the covers.

Sure enough, there was another bug. I flicked it towards the edge of the bed, but it somehow managed to land right back on the sheet. I flicked it again. Same thing. I was inadvertently working the thing up towards my pillow, my disgust briefly overshadowed by amazement that the bug kept zipping back onto the bed every time I flicked it off into space, as if the white sheet were some kind of insect magnet. Finally, frustrated, I just pinched the thing. More bright red blood. By now, my hand was next to my pillow. Suddenly, I shuddered. I scooted my butt to the edge of the bed, then lifted the pillow.

Underneath were about six of the little brown bugs.

I leapt from the cot, doing a little frantic jig and rapidly burshing my arms, legs, shoulders, and torse down with my hands. What the hell was this? The Third World? The Middle Ages? How does a hotel in Europe get bedbugs in this day and age?

I didn't ponder such things for long. I was too busy stuffing my charging cords back into their case, collecting my laundry from the line I had strung out the window, gathering up my scattered books and papers, and jamming it all into my suitcase. I scooped up my shoulder bag, heaved the heavy suitcase, and stealthily made my way downstairs.

Why the stealth? Not sure. I think I was afraid I would get caught and forced to remain.

At the bottom of the stairs, separating the reception desk from the room access and front entrance, there was a metal accordion grate like at a shop. I had already scribbled a note in Italian: "That bed was full of insects. I am not staying!" I spindled the note and shoved it through the ring on my room keys, tossed it through the grate to land on the floor, and quietly let myself out the front door.

Where did I go? Why, to the three-star hotel around the corner, of course. The young guy who eventually arrived at the check in desk to buzz me in, blinking 1:30am sleep from his eyes, said they were all out of single, but he could give me a big room at a reduced rate. As I handed over my passport, I apologized for the late hour and explained what had happened. He looked up from the check-in form, horrified.

"But, where were you staying?" The Al Giaciglio, I told him. He shuddered and made a face like someone had fed him awful medicine. "Ah! Al Giaciglio. That place..." He trailed off, shaking his head as if to rid it of the foul name he had just uttered. "You didn't pay already, I hope." No, I told him. "Bravo," he congratulated me.

As he handed me the keys and a remote control for the TV, I got a case of the flailing arm willies that shimmy shook me from head to toe. "Sorry," I said. "I just... It's like I can feel them all over me."

He nodded, knowingly. Then, with concern: "You want a drink or something?"

Although I took a 20-minute shower, scrubbing myself all over repeatedly, I still keep feeling them: little tickles on my ankles, my shoulders, my back, my forehead, my neck. I keep compulsively brushing myself off every time a hair on my leg or arm moves. The early evening mosquito bites on my face and neck that had stopped bothering me hours ago are once again tingling, causing me to swipe at nothing.

So here I sit, in a wonderfully bland room in the Hotel Minerva, next door to Ravenna's train station. My laundry is hung all over the room to dry. The TV over on the table is keeping me silent company. My electronics are all snuggled into their outlets in the various corners of the large room, and I am about to use the phone line to go online and post this tale.

Oh, sure, I appreciate all these amenities and conveniences, and the neat lines of the otherwise indifferent modular furnishings actually help convey a sense of supreme cleanliness, for which, at the moment, I am supremely grateful. Still, I'm paying more than twice as much—and damned happy to do so—as I would have had I not snuck away from Al Giaciglio and its bedbugs in the middle of the night.

Despite tonight's adventure, I remain a one-star hotel man at heart—in fact, tomorrow night I'll be bedding down in Modena's youth hostel. But you can be darned sure that next time, before I agree to take a room, I'll be checking under the pillows first.

Bologna the Fat

2005-10-08T20:27:00.000-04:00

They call this place "Bologna the Fat." And for good reason.

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 just one region, one region in all of Italy, that's known above all for its culinary prowess and he'll admit: it's Emilia-Romagna.

In Modena they make the world's best balsamic vinegar; in Parma the best aged sheep's cheese (parmigiano) and cured ham (prosciutto di Parma). And the regional capital? Ah, you must mean Bologna the Fat.

Bologna is the birthplace of tortellini—little rings of pasta stuffed with savory meats and gooey cheeses. This is the land that invented the ragu sauce atop tagliatelle alla Bolognese. The local cured meat named mortadella remains so wildly popular the world over (particularly in school lunches) that most culture call it simply "bologna"—or, if you prefer, "baloney."

Life in Bologna centers around the kitchen. These people just love to eat—and eat well. To get under the skin of this city, forget making the rounds of the churches, museums, and monuments. Instead take a morning to explore the gastronomic side of Bologna: its street markets, wine bars, fourth generation grocers, traditional pasta makers, and storied chocolatiers. Start early, around 8am, to mingle with the market workers, professional trattoria chefs, and home-kitchen master chefs out doing their morning shopping.

Begin three blocks east of Piazza Maggiore, just off Via Castiglione at Paolo Atti & Figli (Via Caprarie 7, 051-220-425, www.paoloatti.com), purveyors of Bologna's finest baked goods since 1880. Under high frescoed ceilings, crisply aproned saleswomen bustle about arranging fresh pillows of pasta into rows in the glass display cases. The signs at each tray of pasta translate as, "Classic ravioli—we put our art into it!" And, "We make our tortellini one at a time." Flower dusted women, their forearms burly from decades of kneading, come puffing out of the back room shouldering enormous trays stacked with steaming loaves of bread.

Down the block, the corner of Via Drapperie is marked by stacks of salami and pendulums of prosciutto in the old-school "supermarket" of A. F. Tamburini (Via Caprarie 1, 051-234-726, www.tamburini.com). Though it's too early to be thinking about lunch, keep this place in mind for another day, as it makes for a great cheap meal stop. In the back of the shop—past the glass displays of cured meats, aged cheeses, and fresh yellow pastas—there is an always crowded tavola calda section, an Italian cafeteria serving filling portions of prepared pasta dishes and roast meats for €3.50 to €5.50.

Turn left onto Via Drapperie to enter Bologna's main street market. On your left you'll see another Paolo Atti outlet, and across the street is the Drogheria Gilberto (Via Drapperie 5, 051-223-925), its entrance marked by a suit of armor grasping a bottle of the family's wine. Pietro opened the joint in 1905, followed by his son Oreste. Now it's in the hands of the third generation, Gilberto and Elisabetta, and their sons Danilo and Michele, the quartet selling chocolates, candies, liqueurs, marmalades, and preserves (both sweet and savory) from shelves stacked almost to the 15-foot ceilings. There's always a free sample of some lying around; last visit, I scored brownies.

From here, the market beings in earnest. Fruit and vegetable stalls groan under the weight of purple-fringed artichokes, crinkly bunches of arugola, sleek indigo eggplant, pink pomegranates, orange zucchini flowers, pungent mushrooms, tiny susine plums, pointy San Marzano tomatoes, mounds of grapes, trays of chestnuts, garlands of fiery red pepperoncini, and ropes of garlic.

Where Via Drapperie meets Via delle Pescherie Vecchie are a pair of fishmongers always mobbed by bolognesi waiting patiently on the water-slicked cobblestones, numbered tickets clutched in their hands, admiring the Styrofoam trays of squid, scampi, octopi, anchovies, every type of fish, and live—if terribly cold—lobster wiggling their feelers feebly and mazzancolle (a kind of giant Adriatic scrimp) scuttling their little yellow legs en masse whenever someone's knees bump their tray.

Turn right up Via delle Pescherie Vecchie. At no. 7B is a typical butcher ship, but look at the name above the door: Macelleria Equina. Yep. The bolognesi do love their horsemeat (though, unlike their brethren in the Veneto, they don't usually go in for the gammier, stringier donkey).

Just beyond the next fruit stand, turn left into the Mercato Clavature. This covered market is looking a bit down at the heels these days. Signs taped to the walls proclaim that renovations are underway. "Ha!" says Signora Mazzetti, who runs the drogerhia (dry goods stall) and is vice president of the market workers association. "They've been saying that since 1995!"

The stated plan has always been to take out some of the central stalls and install a café—but the building's owners have instead slowly let the place run down as, one by one, tenants move out. Of the 20 shops and stalls available, only seven are currently going concerns—and those seven must cover the same total rent that was once split 20 ways. "We 'insects'," says Signora Mazzetti. "We can't go to the comune [town hall] ourselves to get some action. We must wait for the owners to do something." She clearly deplores the condition of her market, but is desperate that it survive and return to its former glory.

More than half-empty, and dimly lit by an outdated electrical system, Clavature does look a bit dire at the moment. "We want a market with life," says Mazzetti. "But the owners..." she trails off with a defeated-but-defiant shrug of her lower lip. It's out of her hands and mired in the bureaucracy; there's nothing she can do but hang on. Just inside the market entrance, a gypsy woman in colorful rags with a babe in arms pulls faces of exaggerated suffering, begging from passersby.

Backtracking to continue down Via delle Pescherie Vecchie, you'll pass lots more fruit and veg stands, and, at no. 3C, an herbalist—Italians are mad for homeopathy and herbal remedies; but just peek in get an idea of what a commercialized one looks like, as we'll be visiting a real, artiginal herbalist in a bit.

At no. 3A hangs the sign for La Baita Formaggi, another traditional deli with an excellent selection of cheeses—eight types of mozzarella, six kinds of ricotta, and (count 'em) 21 different varieties of pecorino—in addition to the usual mortadella, salami, and both kinds of prosciutto (the world-famous prosciutto di Parma, selling at €26.90 per kilo, and the even pricier, gourmet-beloved prosciutto di San Daniele, from up in the Friuli mountains, going for €31 per kilo.)

When you hit the main square, turn left down Via dell'Archiginnasio, an arcaded shopping street stretching along the left flank of the cathedral. By now, you're probably ravenous. Wanna spoil that appetite? Pop into the grand doorway at Piazza Galvani 1 and head upstairs for a peek at the flayed statues and the marble dissecting slab for human corpses in the Teatro Anatomico (see box "Europe's Oldest University").

At the corner with Via Farini sits the chic Caffé Zanarini, a sleek, modern bar where besuited and bespoke shoppers from the high-end Cavour shopping gallery next door, and students from up the block, mingle over superior espresso, sublime pastries, and platters of free crostini and teensy sandwiches.

Turn right onto Via Farini, which becomes Via Carbonesi. At no. 5, step into the divinely scented shop of Majani, chocolatiers extraordinaire since 1796 (051-656-2209, www.majani.com). About €4.50 will buy you a sampler baggie filled with their greatest hits—one each of the chocolate "tortellini" (in milk, dark, and white, each filled with a chocolate cream), a selection of the famous cremini Fiat napoleons, and a few scroza (thin sheets of dark chocolate, roughly accordioned up into a bar).

Across the street sits the Bolognese outlet for Il Regno Vegetale (Via Carbonesi 10A, 051-263-792, www.regnovegetale.com), a minuscule "reign" for 51-year old Orazio Martini and his rigorously traditional practice of the ancient art of herbalism. "We only use natural plants and herbs in our medicines and cosmetics," he declares proudly. "No chemicals—as in 90% of the 'herbalist' medicines you see today. And we sell exclusively our own products," Martini continues. "Not some multinational pharmaceutical corporation's version of herbal medicines that's made mostly of chemicals."

You could say Maestro Martini has a chip on his shoulder, but he is an artisan living in a world of mass production, so it's hard to fault the guy. He eagerly shows the engraving of a medieval monastic herbalist printed on his shop's fliers. "You see? We make our products the same as they did in the Middle Ages." He frowns. "Well, almost the same. Now we use machines to press it into pills"—he levers his forearms until his cupped hands press together in demonstration—"We use technology to help. But the ingredients, they are all natural...so there are no side effects!"

Orazio says he has always been intrigued by plants. When he was about 20 years old, it hit him. "Like a bolt of lightning!" He says, wide-eyed. "I knew, all of a sudden: 'I have to be an herbalist'—but in the old style. So I studied for a few years, and I learned about it, and now I've been making my cures and cosmetics for 23 years." His diligence and devotion to tradition has paid off. In 1999, the University of Pavia declared his anti-wrinkle cream to be the best on the market. "And," Orazio Maritni finishes with a flourish. "It’s made with exclusively natural ingredients!" His eyes glow with triumph.

Turn right up Via de' Gombruti, then sidestep left on Via Porta Nova to visit the Stregate Tea Shop at no. 7A (051-222-564, www.stregate.it), its air scented with more than 160 varieties of tea piled into numbered crocks on the shelves. I know: you're thinking: Tea isn't Italian! Well, they got coffee—espresso and cappuccino alike—from the Turks, pasta from the Chinese, wine from the Greeks, and tomato sauce from the Native Americans, so what, really, is Italian cuisine if not borrowed? And besides: this shop smells incredible.

Continue north up Via A. Tostoni. At no. 9A, La Braseria Sfoglia, you can peek past the sales counter into the back room to see bologna's famed sfoglini rolling out fresh pasta in great sheets then cutting it into strips using rolling pins set with rows of plastic discs. Some strips are cut narrow, destined to be coiled into bird's nests of tagliatelle, tagliolini, fettucini, and other noodles. Other strips are kept broad then cross-cut into squares, each of which will receive a dollop of filling then be deftly folded into those little winged pasta-pocket rings we call tortellini.

Turn left onto Via Ugo Bassi, then left again onto Via G. Marconi to pop into the church of San Francesco—those impressive and intricate tombs-on-stilts by the roadside just south of the main entrance belong to several 13th century law professors from the university (boy, they treated profs right back in those days). Behind the church's high altar inside sits an incredible, massive marble altarpiece sculpted in 1388-92 and bristling with saints in niches, martyrs standing on balconies, all topped by a comb-tooth row of lithe pinnacles. OK, so it's not culinary, but few tourists bother coming into this church, so you can have it all to yourself.

On the north side of the piazza begins the narrow, arcaded Via Pratello. It doesn't look like much at this time of day—though you should definitely grab some lunch at Trattoria Fantoni while you're here (see Dining), or, if you want something lighter, at any of the numerous take-away pizza shops or kebab shacks. But after dark, this street transforms into one of the hoppingest scenes in Bologna. It comes alive with trattorie, pubs, osterie, and wine bars. To whit: a pleading homemade sign scrawled onto a sheet hangs from one window: "Your right to party ends where my right to sleep begins."

Return back east along Via Ugo Bassi. In the second block, on the left just after a little food shop, is the blink-and-you'll-miss-it entrance to the Mercato delle Erbe. This covered market houses 36 specialty food shops and 72 fruit and vegetable stands—much more of a going concern than the Mercato Clavature, though make sure you get here before they close up shop for the lunch break around 1pm. Exit the market on the back side, onto Via Belvedere. Free of those bland modern structures that have grown up around the Via Ugo Bassi entrance, this 1910 temple of gastronomy can only be appreciated in all its orange and yellow Neoclassical grandeur from the back side.

Just across the street from the market's back steps, at Via Belvedere 7B, is Le Sflogline, another traditional sfoglini shop run by a trio of smiling ladies who spend their days making fresh pasta, pastries, and simple lasagne in tiny take-away foil containers.

Ok. This is Italy. All the fine food in the world is worthless if there isn't a fine wine with which to wash it down. Continue wending your way east and north to Via Marsala and the Enoteca Italiana (Via Marsala 2B, 051-235-989, www.enotecaitaliana.it). If it weren't for the crowds, you'd never suspect that this blandly modern wine shop with its crooked, cheaply varnished bar and racks of bottles in the back has won Il Sommalier magazine's "Oscar dei Vini" as the best wine bar in all of Italy in 2000 and again in 2002.

Once more, pinstriped suits an silk dresses mix freely with the tatty sweaters, leather jackets, and untucked shirttails of students—but everyone here is a genuine wine aficionado, debating the merits of a Tuscan Sangiovese/Merlot/Cab mix as compared to a Bordeaux cru (though the vast majority of the 35 fine wines available by the glass are Italian, not French). Elbow yourself a spot at the chipped bar, place your in the capable hands of the barrista, and ask for a plate of bread, salami, and mortadella to fortify yourself for an evening sampling some of the greatest wines Italy has to offer.

Bologna the Fat, indeed.

Up the Blue Grotto without a Paddle...or a Boat

2005-10-01T19:06:00.000-04:00

It'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.

I've been counting waves for a good ten minutes now, and my arms are aching from hanging off the precipice so long, peering into the darkness of the tunnel. Is it my imagination, or is the sea getting rougher? I know the sun is getting lower and lower, and I can't hang around forever—nor, for that matter, can I hang on all that much longer, physically.

I can't figure out whether I'm psyching myself up or psyching myself out, but there is one thing the tiny rational portion of my brain is sure of: this is easily the stupidest thing I've done in quite a while. It's even stupider than two weeks ago, when I followed a goat path several hundred feet above the Grand Canyon floor past the point where even the mountain sheep were looking at me as if to say "Uh, dude? Even we don't try to go that way."

And to think, the emergency €20 bill folded up in my zippered pocket could have bought me the easy way into the Blue Grotto.

When most people arrive at the mouth of the Grotta Azzurra for the first time, few actually realize they're at the entrance to the world famous Blue Grotto of Capri. They're expecting to motor into a vast sea cave filled with unearthly blue light. Instead, the boat that brought them around the island from Marina Grande (€8.50) has stopped dead in the water, in the shadows of a high rock cliff, and is being swarmed by tiny rowboats. The tourists are then divided into small groups and genially forced overboard to clamber into one of the rowboats bobbing in the waves, where they are told they have fork over another €8.50 per person to the oarsman.

Each rowboat, loaded down with fleeced tourists, starts pulling toward a tiny gap in the cliff where the rocks meets the crashing water. Just to the left of this gap, a thin metal chain is anchored into the rock. The chain runs, horizontal to the water, into a dark hole no more than three or four feet high. As each wave crashes against the cliff and is funneled through the hole, the open space between the surface of the water and the ceiling of the dark tunnel shrinks to under three feet. Then, with the next wave, two feet. Then one foot.

When the seventh wave hits, the water claps together, spurts back out from the top of the tunnel, and the hole disappears completely.

At this point, the tourists in the rowboat look at one other nervously. If they knew that a trip to the Blue Grotto was going to entail threading such a dangerous needle in a frail little rowboat, they probably would have stayed back in Capri Town and spent that €17 on gelato and cappuccino.

As it is, the sequence of waves cycles back down, the tunnel reappears, and suddenly a series of rowboats comes shooting out of the hole, each oarsman leaning way back--almost flat on his back--and hauling on that chain to pull his boat through quickly. As soon as the hole is clear, the boats waiting outside paddle quickly up to the entrance. The oarsman in each grabs the chain, and shouts to his little clump of tourists, "Please to lie down flat on you backs so you don' bump-a you head." And with no further warning, he begins hauling on the chain, sweeping the boat through into the dark tunnel.

At least, that's how I assume it still works. I haven't actually been inside the Blue Grotto for years. I did it with my parents back when I was 11 or so, and again 12 years ago when I came to Capri with a group of friends. It was fun, it was neat, and I saw no particular reason to waste another $20-plus on it again—especially as you have to tip heavily in order to stop the oarsman from singing (poorly) Neapolitan folks songs while you're in there for the whopping two-minute audience that each rowboat is granted.

That's why I'm here now, clinging to two convenient handholds in the algae-slicked limestone, my bare feet balanced on a shelf of rock just under the water, leaning out to peer into the Blue Grotto's dark entrance, counting waves.

It's around 5pm, but that's just a guess. I left Villa Eva some time around 4:30 for the half-hour walk to the Blue Grotto, and I left everything, including my time-telling cellphone, back at the hotel. All I brought was a towel, which I left back up the path piled atop my shirt and shoes, into one of which I stuck a business card (to help identify the body—see? I'm a responsible guy). It's early October, the very tail end of the tourist season, so the rowboats have knocked off early for the day, and the entrance to the Blue Grotto is empty. Empty and quiet—except for the crashing of waves.

There's no one else around, which makes it that much spookier to be leaning out over the pitch-black mouth of a sea cavern. The solitude also makes it seem that much more bone-headed of an idea to think I can swim into the grotto, especially with such a strong current sucking in and out—I can feel it against my calves—and with every seventh wave swallowing the tunnel whole.

The main problem is that I'm on the right side of the tunnel, and that anchored chain is over on the left. It can't be more than five or six feet from where I'm balancing on the underwater rock ledge, but there's the whole sucking current/crashing waves thing going on within those five feet. I'm wary of trying to shuffle across on the bit of rock ledge, as once I were to leave the safety of the wall I would have nothing to hold onto, plus I know from past experience that black sea urchins nestle into the rocks of Capri just below the waterline, and that their five-inch spines can pierce right through your foot and come out the other side.

Distracted, it suddenly registers with me that the last set of waves nearly kissed the top of the tunnel, so I brace myself for that seventh wave, which sure enough comes along and swells the green water up to my chest. First it tries to force me toward the tunnel, then—after the splashback of water closing off the tunnel washes over my head, it changes its mind and tries to drag me away towards the sea.

Shaking water from my eyes, I suddenly gasp and let go of my left handhold, a piercing pain throbbing in my pinkie. I look into the hole where my hand just was, and see a mottled dark green crab with thick yellow hairs on his legs is waving an outsized pincer claw at me as if to say, "Go ahead! What are you wating for? Just you try to stick your hand back in my hole, buddy, I've got plenty more where that came from!" I hiss at him, and yell at him, and puff my cheeks to blow on him as hard as I can, and otherwise try to get the bugger to budge. He just fixes me with those beady, dead black eyes and waves that claw menacingly, refusing to back down. Grumbling, I find another, far less stable handheld, and turn back to the tunnel to start counting the waves again.

'OK, was that wave two or three of the new cycle?' I think to myself. Then, cross at the crab, and at myself for being so damn analytical about the whole thing, I say out loud "Ah, the Hell with it," and, during a trough between waves, launch myself through the air towards that chain on the other side of the tunnel.

It isn't until I'm about halfway across, a new wave surging up behind me and my fingers reaching toward that dangling chain, that the thought passes through my mind: 'I wonder if there are any sea urchins where I'm about to land?'

I splash into the water, my left hand closing about the chain, the forearm slamming into the rock behind it. As I vaguely register with relief that no urchin spines seem to be piercing my body, the incoming wave sweeps me along and helps carry me into the tunnel, the chain slipping rapidly through my palm.

Funny thing is, once I get inside, it's all much easier. I haul myself all the way through the tunnel and into the grotto itself, which starts to take dark, shadowy shape above and before me. I avoid looking back toward the bright entrance so as to better let my eyes adjust. I still can't see the far walls, but I can hear the scattershot echoes of the water splashing against them, under the constant, cycling roar of incoming waves, their sound amplified by the tunnel.

Ten feet or so in, the chain swoops up, away from the water, to anchor somewhere into the rock at much higher level, so I can no go no further and still use it as a lifeline. I tread water, clinging to the chain that's now a good arm's length above my head, and let my eyes continue to adjust to the darkness. I can begin to make out the pale stone of the ceiling soaring away from me and the walls widening to each side. The water, though—that famous glowing azure water—is dark. It's blue alright, but a shade of blue just shy of black.

Damn. I tarried too long. The sun's too low in the sky. The effect of the Blue Grotto has been turned off for the night. All that silly fear and senseless bravado for nothing.

Well, might as well get a little swim out of it. The current that was so concentrated by the narrow tunnel isn't nearly as strong even this short distance inside, so I steel my fears and let go of the chain to paddle a few feet further into the cave. Just so I can gauge how strong the current really is, I turn to look at the only fixed point of reference I know of, the tunnel entrance.

Which is when the true extent of my own idiocy finally hits me.

The famous glowing effect of the Blue Grotto is created by the daylight from outside refracting through the entrance tunnel and filtering through the limpid water. That is to say, you cannot see it if you're staring toward the cave-dark of the back walls. You gave to be looking towards the entrance.

As soon as I turned around, I realized I was swimming in liquid lapis lazuli. My arms and legs were windmilling around a field of pale blue so intense it looked fake, like the light from a neon sign. The effect was so shocking, it actually made my jaw drop (didn't know that jaw-dropping happened for real; though it was just a metaphor), whereupon, of course, I started shipping water down my throat. Once I get the coughing and sputtering out of the way, I scramble to unzip my pant's pocket and yank out the waterproof camera I had bought earlier in the day, and started snapping a few giddy photographs.

The waves and current weren't strong, but they were definitely present and persistent. After so much time spent hanging around at the entrance, and all that adrenaline wasted on worrying and getting myself in here, I realized my out of shape bod wasn't going to permit me to swim about and fight the pull of the sea for too much longer. Besides, the eerie, intense, impenetrable blueness all around my pale, flailing limbs was starting to creep me out.

Unbidden, the words "Monster of the Blue Grotto" floated into my mind—a local legend I managed to conjure up, just now, out of thin air as I treaded the glowing water, spooked by being alone in this sea-filled cavern. I could almost feel my invented monster grabbing my ankles and jerking me under the water. All they would find would be a shirt, towel, and shoes with some travel writer's business card in them. Silly, I know, but YOU try putting that sort of thing out of your mind when you're swimming around a giant, echoing, sea cave all by yourself, a place as sinister and dark above the water as it is bizarrely opaque and bright below.

I paddled back over to the point where I could lunge up and grab the chain again, and that helped calm me down a bit. I took a few more pictures, then treaded water, hanging off the chain, facing the tunnel, and started counting the waves again.

The seventh wave came. It filled the entire tunnel, blocking the air and the light, and then rolled over my head, raising me higher than the chain for a moment. When the tunnel reappeared and the water level fell to a deep trough, I started hauling myself along the chain, through the tunnel and toward the setting sun.

I passed the territorial crab, who set to waving his claw again when he saw me, and scrambled over the rocks to the little rowboat landing platform at the trail's end. As I hauled myself up to the platform's railing, I scared the hell out of a young French mother and her little blonde girl, who were leaning over to peer towards the tunnel entrance. They stepped back to let me slither up and over the rail, and I stood there, dripping and grinning like a maniac.

"Ehh… Bloou Gra-TOH?" The woman asked, hesitantly. Yes, I replied, wiping water off my face, this is the Blue Grotto. "The boats?…" She asked, and I explained that they left around 4pm. "No boats?" She asked again, seeking confirmation.

"No," I replied. "No boats." Then I smiled mischievously. "But you can swim in!"

She laughed a bit nervously, and stammered something about how the water was probably too cold. I was already bouncing up the trail toward my towel and little pile of clothes. No, I called back, the water was really just right.

The fine art of packing light (a.k.a.: always know where your towel is)

Big Brother Berlusconi

2005-09-29T23:39:00.000-04:00

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. Back when he got the country's Top Job, Berlusconi refused calls to divest himself of some his businesses, claming to see no conflict of interest between his and his companies' holdings and the greater good of serving his country.

No conflict of interest? Before he was PM, this media mogul was Italy's Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch, and Disney Corp. all rolled into one. Italy, you see, has seven main national television channels: the three state-run RAI networks—inventively named, in the great tradition of the BBC, RAI 1, RAI 2, and RAI 3—the three private channels owned by Mediaset—Italia 1, Rete 4, and Canale 5--and tiny little Telemontecarlo, which a few years ago, apparently feeling left out of the number club, re-branded itself as "La 7."

Two guesses as to who owns Mediaset. I'll give you a hint. It's the same man who now, as Prime Minster, has direct control over the three RAI stations as well.

Yep, Sivlio Berlusconi personally controls a whopping his 98% share of Italy's national television market. Did I mention he also happens to own the nation's largest publishing house, and as a sideline publishes several of the country's most widely-circulated daily newspapers?

Well, apparently this near-lock on the flow of information in Italy wasn't enough for old Silvio. I can only imagine him sighing with envy over the kind of control exercised by Kim Il Jung in North Korea. Which is why, this fall, Silvio has set his sights on the last great bastion of information available in Italy: the Internet.

On September 26, a brand-new Italian law went into effect. They call it Anti-Terrorism Law 155/05--one of those ridiculous "let's show the public we're doing something, at least" legal Band-Aids that won't amount to much more than a massive waste of time and bureaucracy. The new law requires every Internet cafe, every hotel with a Mac on an ADSL line, and every pub with a PC stuck in the corner to photocopy of the identity card or passport of anyone wishing to use the Internet, so that the government can track what they do online.

OK. Italy is (understandably) getting a bit jittery about the specter of a terrorist attack. Britain and Spain have both suffered bombings due to their participation in Bush's war, but—all due respect to Poland and the Federated Republic of Micronesia—the next major US ally in the Iraq war is Italy, which has so far gone unscathed (unless you count the attacks on Sharm el Sheik, which is a bit like Italy's Cancun).

In fact, on Monday they're going to kill 26 manniquins, gravely injure 312 amateur actors, and close off all traffic in a vast triangle of Rome's historic center from the Colosseum to Piazza della Repubblica to Piazza Navona. It's all part of a test to see how the Eternal City's emergency response teams would react to a series of suicide bombs (in this case, faked with smoke cannisters) going off at the Colosseum, on the Metro, and on the famed no. 64 bus as it cruises down Corso Vittorio Emanuele II on its way to St. Peter's. (This time, though, they'll do without the fake blood that turned a similar exercise in Milan into such a farce.)

But this frighteningly Orwellian turn of events with the Internet law doesn't seem as if it'll be able to do much good in the end, anyway. No one seems to be able to explain satisfactorily just how keeping these kinds of tabs on surfing will help them catch the bad guys. All the bad guys have to do is find some bar with a few Internet terminals on unsecured WiFi, loaf around outside, and use their Palmtops to surf. I've found spots like that in every town so far--and we're talking teensy places, like Sorrento, Anacapri, and Positano. Imagine how many there are in Rome or Milan.

OK. So the law is, in the end, not only useless, it's fundamentally unenforceable. So that means it's merely a big pain in the neck for all us non-terrorists out there—beyond just the issues of violation of privacy, concept of free speech, and other high-falutin' ideals.

Let's say your hotel keeps hold of your passport, as many do (in order to register the information in it later at their convenience, rather than now at yours), or you decide to leave it in your hotel or room safe rather than cart it around with you—for safety reasons, or because you are headed to the beach to swim, or whatever. That means you can't just pop into an Internet café whilst you're out and about to check email or dash off an "I'm in Capri, aren't you jealous?" email to friends back home (or, ahem, update your blog).

There's also been a (totally understandable) knee-jerk reaction amongst the providers of many free WiFi hotspots to yank the plug, as they have no way of knowing, let alone collecting data on, who might be piggybacking on their signal, and yet they would be held responsible for breaking the law.

As for me, it means it's back to the old hotel room phone line or finding a good, clear cell signal and suffering ultra-slow (and expensive) dial-up when I want to go online with my own laptop.

So here's to Big Brother Berlusconi, doing what he can to keep Italy safe from video poker players, teenage porn downloaders, students researching papers, lovers trading mushy IMs, road warriors checking in with the office, tourists booking hotel rooms, and travel writers doing their jobs.

Oh, and on the off-chance that a highly-trained sleeper cell might slip up and decide to pop into an internet café in order to broadcast a mass email detailing its secret plans to blow up the Colosseum, the terrorists as well.

Cybercafes and Internet points in Europe

The Saint & the Sea Monster

2005-09-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

The man could hold his own against sea monsters, so they say. He could also exorcise the possessed like nobody's business. His name was Saint Antonino, and he gave up life as a hermit to tend to the spiritual well being, demonic possessions, miracle granting, pirate attacks, and general carpentry needs of the people of Sorrento.

Antonino didn't even want the job. He would have been perfectly content to continue living his isolated life of prayer up in the mountains, building hillside oratories on the orders of St. Michael the Archangel, with whom he chatted regularly. But when the Lombards came rampaging through the region—remember, before they settled down in Milan to become industrialists, the Lombards were one of those Barbarian hordes from the wild side of the Danube who helped bring down the Roman Empire—the saint hustled down from his hermitage at Montecassino for protection on the plains. He took a cell in the Benedictine Abbey of St. Agrippinus, was soon named its Abbot, and set about performing miracles—though in his down time, the saint was far more fond of tending the abbey's vineyards, and puttering about town doing odd carpentry jobs.

Sorrento's adopted saint died on February 14, AD 626—must be rough, sharing your feast day with a Big Ticket saint like Valentine—but he didn't let a little thing like death get in the way of his ministry. He's been watching over Sorrento ever since, saving the town from everything from Saracen attacks to the Black Plague, as well as answering the panicked prayers of many a Sorrentine sailor caught in a tempest.

His real specialty, though, is exorcisms. Whether you're possessed by demons spawned from the depths of Hell, or by a mild skin ailment, Antonino's your man. With such power residing in the venerable bones, it's little wonder that, when Turkish conquerors made off with the saint's arm in1558, a Sorrentine merchant made the journey to Constantinople to buy back the relic.

The appreciative locals in return have given him, not one, but two statues in prominent squares (Piazza Tasso and, of course, Piazza S. Antonino). In both statues, the saint is shown treading victoriously upon the neck of a sea monster that looks a bit like a toothy porpoise. It's not. It's meant to be a whale.

Details on the legend of Antonino's most famous miracle differ, but the upshot is: a distraught mother came running up to the abbey, wailing that whale had swallowed her child whole. Antonino wasted no time. He strode down to the sea, called the monster from the depths, and with the force of his oratory forced the cetacean to spit out the boy, alive and well (though presumably covered in whale slime). Jonah really coulda used this guy in his corner.

You can still see what are said to be the monster's actual bones—they are certainly whale ribs of some sort—mounted high on the wall to the right of the main doors in the vestibule of S. Antonino. The town built this grand—but unfortunately baroqued—church around the saint's tomb so as to have room to leave ex votos of thanks in return for their patron's intercession on matters ranging from saving foundering ships to helping survive breast cancer.

Floor-to-ceiling glass cases surround his tomb in the crypt under the unfortunately baroqued church of S. Antonino, and these cases are wallpapered inside with silver talismans. One case is devoted entirely to legs; another to images of be-suited men and women in long dresses that look as if they were copied from the cover of some 1940s Madison Avenue Better Villas and Vineyards mag. Many are labeled simply "Per grazie ricevute"—in Italian, the word for 'thank you' (grazie) is the same as the word for 'grace', so this double-meaning message it thanking the saint "For grace received."

Other cases are a motley arrangement of body parts cured, the thin silver ex votos shaped and stamped with graphic anatomical detail—backs, chests, throats, lungs (one or both), breasts (one or both), heads, hands, eyes, mouths, hearts, and whole torsos opened up like a cadaver in Gross Anatomy 101 to show the GI tract in exacting detail.

Several cases behind the altar are stocked with silvery babies, some alongside blurry snapshots—many neonatal—of the miraculously cured infant in question, and a letter gushing thanks and grace—"Grazie! Grazie! Grazie!"

As you turn to leave the crypt, you see that the entry wall is lined by more than 30 prints and paintings of 19th century shops tossing in stormy seas, with S. Antonino popping out of the dark clouds in an aura of light to raise on arm and save the devout mariners (as in foxholes, there are no atheist sailors during a tempest). The paintings were donated by grateful captains and crews. The most recent one is a photograph, dating from the 1950s, and clearly that captain was taking no chances on the Sorrentine seas. The name of his motorboat: the "S. Antonino."

The Dangers of Dinner in Sorrento

2005-09-27T22:23:00.000-04:00

Sorrento is one of the very few places in Italy where it is easier to eat badly than well.

Mark it down to a constantly changing clientele—why bother putting yourself out to cook a great meal when the tourist you're making it for is going to be gone tomorrow, never to return? The food at Hotel Loreley was just a step above Boyar'dee. The grub at Taverna dell '800 was only decent. And there's one place, tucked into a cave halfway down the switchback road to the Marina Piccola docks, where I once got food poisoning—though my traveling companion, J, got it even worse; started throwing up on the ferry over to Capri.

This time, I'm wary, so I've reverted to an old habit picked up in seventh grade in Rome: scooping up the hard little pellets that have shaken out from between the tough petals of umbrella pine cones, staining my fingertips black with the layer of sooty dust on their shells. After I've collected a good handful's-worth, rattling around in my pocket, I find a quiet corner and a good sharp rock. It's a delicate art, cracking the thick shells of pine nuts without squashing the tender pinoli within. It's laborious (no wonder the suckers cost so much shelled), but the meat tastes so much sweeter when you have to work for it.

Since a man cannot live solely on pine nuts and fruit filched from low-hanging branches, I do have to find restaurants for dinner. The only place in town where I've ever had memorable meals is the massive La Favorita O' Parrucchiano—and even that one is quite touristy. Green waist-coated waiters keep up a brisk two-way traffic on the terraced staircases between the kitchen and the dining patio up top, carrying laden platters up and empty trays down, calling out table numbers and orders to a woman sitting at a lonely table to one side, scribbling furiously at an array of still-open restaurant checks spread out on the table to keep them up to date.

The food, at least, is of very good quality, and the jungle-like dining patio is lovely, hung heavy with vines, pomegranate and lemon trees, and other signs of Mediterranean lushness. Shame I can't do anything about the inevitable guitar-mandolin duo—though it's a sight better than the piped-in schlock at most Sorrento restaurants—who are strumming their way through the Play List of Approved Sorrento Songs for Tourists: O Sole Mio, Funiculi Funicula, My Way, Tu Vo' Fa L'Americano (a weird mambo number from the 60s poking fun at a Neapolitan who pitifully apes everything American), and, of course, That's Amore!

I swear to God, if the moon hits my eye like a big pizza pie one more time, I am going to go Audrey Hepburn on one of these guys and smash the guitar right over his head. Plus, I keep catching myself whistling Funiculi Funicula, which must be annoying not only to me but to anyone within earshot. Little wonder that one gets stuck in my grey matter; it was one of the world's first successful commercial jingles, commissioned to inaugurate the funicular (cable car) up Mt. Vesuvius.

Given how fully Sorrento has been given over to the mass tourism machine, I'd argue that it's really a place for folks who really don't want to be in Campania in the first place. They just want to check the region's Big Ticket sights (Pompeii, Capri, Amalfi) off their list, and Sorrento is the most convenient base from whcih to do it. Sorrento also happens to save folks from many of the little inconveniences of being in a foreign country.

This place is no tourist-friendly it's boring. English is without a doubt the first language in town. A ridiculous number of English-style pubs try to entice people in with blackboards promising to screen upcoming rugby and (British) soccer matches. Even the tourist office is installed in the entrance to the old Grand Tour-era Circolo dei Forestieri—the Foreigner's Club. OK, so I admit I always repair here in the late afternoons, in some pale imitation of Grand Tour style, in order to catch up on my notes and sip a Campari-soda while watching the sunset fire the surrounding cliffs, the night slip over the triangle of Vesuvius across the way, and the lights twinkle on around the Bay of Naples.

Sorrento is bursting at the seams with giggling German schoolgirls, Americans and Aussies teetering along under their impressively large backpacks, and British package tourists letting down their hair for a Mediterranean holiday—the women donning spangly skirts in showy colors, the men opening their shirts to the sternum to display pale or sun-reddened pecs. I don't mean to poke fun at any of these people. I just wonder why they came all the way to Italy, to one of its most beautiful corners, and then all ended up clumping together in this relatively uninteresting town, spending time in each other's company at the pubs, rather than seeking out some place more genuine, more Italian.

Instead, everyone congregates here to sip overpriced cappuccino or catch gelato drips with their tongues while having the same five basic conversations, with slight variations:

"Did you see that brothel at Pompeii? [giggle]"…"Oh, you simply HAVE to do the Blue Grottto. The boatmen even sing for you! (I know; the trick is getting them not to.) No, it's on Capri; you can just catch the boat over and be back in a few hours."…"Did you hear, Fred got pickpocketed at the Naples train station!" (Sadly, a likely story. Even more sadly, that's the one bit of Naples most of them ever see—and it serves Fred right for not keeping his valuables in a moneybelt). Then there's in inevitable debate on whether to ride to bus down the Amalfi Coast and back, or just relax in Sorrento tomorrow.

Oh, and: "Where are you headed to next?" (Most common answers: "Home" and "Paris.")

Not me. I'm in Sorrento for two days, largely to give myself a chance to recover from jet lag in a place where I won't be tempted to sightsee, go sniffing around for odd and interesting things, or otherwise try to get any work done.

Yeah, sure. That plan only lasted until my second morning.