Abruzzo Alien

Found while walking along the beach, apparent image of alien burned into trunk of palm tree by rising sun, red path in background is a bike path.

Country Home; What you do on a weekend

We have friends who have a country home about five miles away from the beach and in the beginnings of the foothills. We spent Saturday there eating and socializing with them, their five year old daughter and some other guests. The house is in the beginning of the foothills so it remains cool even when the beach is getting warm. We grilled out fresh sausage, arrosticini (tiny bits of meat on skewers, grilled to very crispy), pork chops and veal burgers; along with that we had fried breaded zucchini and eggplant, tiny cubes of a fresh soft white cheese with spicy oil, salad, crostini, fresh fruit (featuring great fresh cherries), prosciutto and melon, a unique cream filled yellow cake with lots of icing and fruit on top, water, wine and caffe.

On the property, in addition to the new house, there is an old house and also a number of wild flowers including wild poppies. Posted somewhere on here are some photos of some of those things. (I seem to have little control on where photos appear and am not sufficiently motivated to learn how to control them.) Click for full size, click again for even larger, these images are greatly reduced in quality from the originals due to file size limitations of the blogsite. My favorite is the last, that being the crinkled, dying poppies.

Flowers and an Ant

Above are a couple of local weed flowers. If you look closely on the thistle flower you can see an ant who got in the photo. A detail of the ant is at the top. Weeds, or flowers, are the same here as anywhere. These photos were done as I was looking for some color block images and saw these flowers. If you double click on an image it should go to a larger size. The original images were shot in RAW format with files too large to download online so the images here are somewhat degraded from the originals.

Pizza & Wine

We usually walk to a local caffe about 10 each morning and on our way back yesterday we ran into a friend who invited us to his house for pizza that evening, actually pizza at 7:00 P. M., which is a bit early but he explained that it was because two of his grand children would be there and they like to eat earlier. So yesterday we had pizza at 7 P.M. Not in any way a remarkable event, though the pizza was quite good, except that after having just written about Italians, pizza and beer, I saaw everything I wrote refuted.

We started the meal with fresh local cheese, bread and home made white wine from my friend's brother's vineyard. The rest of the meal consisted of three different types of pizza, semi-freddo (a sort of ice cream and cake combination that is a personal favorite of mine), fresh strawberries, caffe and a home made bay leaf flavored liquor. The interesting thing to me is that white wine continued to be the drink of adults throughout the meal. The children drank cola and orange. Red wine from the same vineyard was available and at the table but no one drank it.

While I believe my prior reporting regarding drinking beer with pizza is substantially and overwhelming correct as to what occurs usually, what this dinner proved is that Italy is as diverse and mixed in individual approaches to what is drunk with what as any other place. I cannot recall drinking white wine with pizza any other time, I can recall red wine and pizza on many occasions, particularly many years ago, but never white. The point of all this: never take too seriously any observation that usually this or usually that is done; on any given occasion anything may happen.

Birra

Most people associate Italy with wine but in fact a lot of beer is consumed here. Years ago Italians consumed wine with their pizza, today most have pizza and a beer. Wine remains a staple of most home meals and of food in restaurants but there has always been a mix of beverages available. There have always been Italians who drink no alcohol and some who prefer soft drinks to wine or beer.

A typical Italian grocery will devote as much shelf space to beer product as to wine. In both cases that is very ample space. Most Italian beers resemble most popular American or European beers, being very mild flavored lagers. A brand popular here, and also available in the US, is Nastro Azzuro or literally Blue Ribbon. A few American brews are available here, most commonly Budweiser (American brewed and imported) and a few micro brewery types. Not surprisingly, Northern European beers are popular the largest selling being Heineken, Beck's and Stella Artois.

What is also available here are Europeans ales and other more full bodied and higher alcohol content beers. My favorites, and very popular here, but never as popular as the Heineken type, are: Trappistes Rochefort 8 and Duvel. The Trappistes beer is brewed in a Belgian monastery and also available with the numbers 6 or 10. The number are not directly related to their alcohol content but do correspond to rising alcohol contents of 7.5%, 9.2% and 11.3%. These are beers that start to have wine like alcohol contents. I usually drink 8 because 10 is not always available and 6 has a similar but more watery taste than 8. I understand that 6 is hard to find in the US but here it seems to be always available and 10 is difficult to find. Rochefort 8 is a full flavored beer that is a joy to drink. Because of its full body I never seem to want to drink as much of it as I would a more watery beer which is probably a good thing considering the 9.2% alcohol content. If you have never tried it, I highly recommend trying one.

When I want a change or when we are having pizza, I drink some Duvel beer, another Belgian ale but this one more like a typical mainline beer. It has an alcohol content of 8.5% and a taste much more like an American beer than the Trappistes Rochefort. It is not a light beer but resembles American beer before light beer became the dominant type. Duvel is a great pizza beer where the Trappistes beers are, in my opinion, too flavorful to accompany pizza. Duvel is stocked pretty much everywhere in Italy, and Europe, but is outside of the popular beer base of the like of Heineken. Duvel's lighter taste makes it easy to drink in large quantity, so you have to beware of its alcohol content.

While these are my favorites, the good news is that most grocery stores stock a pretty full range of Northern European Ales, mostly from small specialty producers. The Belgian, Dutch and Flemish breweries produce some remarkable ales that always surprise me. If you come to Europe on vacation you should not miss the opportunity to try a few.

To Rome and Back

On May 15 we drove to Rome and back. We went to see some old friends who were on part of a Rome-Greece-Turkey-Egypt-Rome tour. It was fun to see them and to be in Rome again. It is easy to forget how shocking it is for new visitors to see ancient Roman ruins on every turn. Our friends were staying at a hotel a couple of blocks from the Colosseum and we wandered around in the area for a short time. I think they had been to Rome before but not for a long time and their prior visit was very short. In any event, it was fun to see how interesting they found the "stuff" everyone in Rome just lives with. We had a nice lunch, talked about old friends and poker and returned in a light rain.

I was interested in the driving statistics. It was a total of 121 miles from our door to their hotel and took exactly 2 hours 15 minutes. That's not too impressive until you consider that it includes driving in Rome. It took about 1 hour and 45 minutes to get to the end of the autostrada inside Rome and another 30 minutes from there to the Colosseum area. The good news about the Roman drive was that it was on a Sunday so the traffic was, by Roman standards, light. Maybe not as bad as many American cities during rush hour but close. We also managed to average 42 mpg which includes some city driving, going through the mountains (while there is a tunnel a little longer than 10,000 meters that everyone refers to as "under Gran Sasso," in fact there is a substantial climb to get to the tunnel) and long stretches at 140 kph (about 85 mph).

Our friends gave us a DVD made and edited by one of them of a get together of a group of former public defenders. We enjoyed watching it when we returned. It's quasi-surrealistic, but very enjoyable, to sit on the Adriatic coast and watch video of the gathering of a group of former colleagues in a park in Ohio. Probably like coming from Ohio to see old Roman stuff, aka ORC, that just sticks out everywhere.

Chocolate

When I think of chocolate, I think of Switzerland. And our recent visit to Switzerland confirmed that they make some of the best artisan quality chocolate available. However, I have never seen a people more obsessed with the making of and eating of chocolate than the Italians.

Any respectable town has a chocolate shop; not just a shop that sells chocolate but a shop that makes chocolate and makes it own molds and candies. Often the chocolate shop is in conjunction with a caffe but often they are free standing.

Chocolate is in everything: breakfast food, cakes, cookies, ice cream and then just pure chocolate bars. Every supermarket has a large section devoted to chocolate; not chocolate candy but pure chocolate bars of every quality, kind and description. Italians think eating chocolate for breakfast is healthy so the sort of breakfast cereal that Americans see as unhealthy is seen as a good breakfast for children.

Perugia has probably the most prominent annual chocolate festival though many other cities also have chocolate festivals. When the Perugia festival is in full swing every local tour agency schedules day long bus trips often with specific tour schedules.
Ferrero SpA is one of the largest corporations in Italy and the family that owns it has recently become identified as the richest family in Italy (though they now live in Monaco). It not only makes Ferrero Rocher chocolates, the little round hazelnut and chocolate balls but also makes Nutella (a national obsession), Tic Tac mints and the whole line of Kinder branded products (while little known in the US, Kinder is a very prominent and wide ranging brand of snacks in all of Europe). Ferrero SpA is privately held, has annual revenues in excess of 6 billion euros, about 9 billion dollars US, employees 21,500 people, produces all of its products on machines engineered and built by its own engineering department, is famous for is obsession regarding the secrecy of is formulas and has never held a press conference.

The prominence of chocolate in Italy is not readily apparent because it is so seamlessly integrated in all aspects of food that it is easily overlooked; however, when one becomes conscious of it and looks for it, its presence is very obvious. I have fallen victim to its overwhelming presence. I always liked chocolate but did not eat it every day. It's difficult to avoid it when a piece or two of extremely good chocolate is frequently placed on your saucer when you have a caffe. That, coupled with its prominent display in every store, has done me in.

Beach and Hill Town

About 2 miles from the beach where we live is a hill town that is about 800 feet above sea level. The view from that town, looking west (i.e. towards Rome) is above. The large mountain is Gran Sasso d'Italia. Please click on a photo to see it full size.



We live near the ocean and near the beach. A very small section of the beach is reserved for fishermen using small boats. It looks like the above. They are the remaining fishermen from an age passing them by. I ride my bike past their landing almost every morning. I have yet to see one who is not very old. In a few years they will be no more. They leave most of their equipment and boats open every night. I am sure someone has disturbed them sometime but I do not know of it. In the late morning their wives gather at this spot an await their return.

Until recent times (which means within my lifetime), few people who lived in the hill town and near it had been to the beach. My best friend took his father to the beach, for the first time, around 1968. He waded in up to his knees and no further. He was wary of the ocean. A huge man, standing 2 meters, he had worked his entire life on his farm and never been to the beach.

Return to Abano

Two weekends ago we returned to Abano Terme with some friends and their four year old for a long weekend. We all had a good time but the four year old probably find more pure joy in the hydro jets of the spa than anyone else. We also encountered a heat wave that we did not know was going to continue but has.

We have had remarkable spring weather for Italy with it being just below 80, dry and sunny nearly every day for the past two weeks. There is a prediction for rain one day this week but otherwise a continuation of unusually good weather.

This weekend our beaches were filled with sunbathers wearing swim suits (but no one in the water, it remains much too cold). We did not see that last year until sometime well into May.

Pescasseroli

Two weekends ago we went to Pescasseroli, a small town south of L'Aquila and located in the National Park of the Abruzzo. The National Park of the Abruzzo is one of the best preserved nature areas in Italy. It is filled with roads that lead from one scenic view to another. To a degree the roads are much like driving on the high corniche of the riviera but with land views instead of the sea. Pescasseroli has been gentrified and is touristy but with some taste and style. It serves as a center for mountain hiking, mountain climbing and nordic and alpine skiing.

The town is a very pleasant place to walk around and all of the surrounding area has some natural thing of interest. The town is filled with shops that offer fresh local food and artisan quality goods ranging from clothes to art to useful tools for mountain climbing. Most of the trees in the area are conifers but there is a sprinkling of other types particularly in the city. The national park acts as a refuge for endangered species; particularly, the Appenine bear, wolves and chamoix. The Appenine bear is sort of a very small, and genetically distinct, version of the American brown bear found in the Smoky Mountains but is shy and avoids contact with humans if possible.

While the real beauty of the national park is to walk or climb in it; the drive through it is a pleasure if you enjoy small mountains roads. The well maintained roads are long and winding with many hairpin turns and scenic views. Visitors with cameras are a more common site than the natural animals.

On the way back we stopped at a roadhouse (La Fattoria) (literally: the farm) outside of Roccaraso that from the road appeared to be a very simple trottaria or osteria. I hoped to find a classic trattoria serving excellent home made food with simple surroundings. Much to our surprise when we entered this very outwardly simple looking restaurant we found a beautifully decorated and semi-elegant place with a great and sophisticated menu. (These same family runs another very nice restaurant in a nearby town and its name would translate to "The Shack.") Apparently they cater to the visiting skiing crowd who made some of the customers but they also had some hikers and some very well dressed customers. We felt quite at ease and had an extremely nice meal.

If you come to Italy and have an extra day, a trip to the National Park of the Abruzzo and to Pescasseroli is well worth your time. It is truly Italy off the beaten track. There are virtually no American tourists here but many European tourists. Not to say there are no Americans in the area, a large group of American retirees have purchased homes and live in Sulmona, another city in the park area.

Castelli

Castelli is a physically small town with a population of 1,530 on a hillside (elevation about 1,666 ft.) on the east side of Gran Sasso and fairly close to where we live (about an hour's drive). It is famous for the production of maiolica ceramics. Maiolica were extremely popular with Europeans 500 years ago and retain a substantial number of collectors and admirers today. The Russian Tsars were particular fond of Castelli maiolica and a large collection of it exists in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

Castelli continues to produce maiolicas today but also has a thriving business in modern ceramics. It attracts collectors worldwide but primarily from Europe. We have been to Castelli on several occasions and never seen Americans, a rather unusual absence for a city that is a rather large tourist draw for Europeans.

It is a very small (I can't imagine how the Russian Tsars found it), pleasant hill town and easily walked (warning: to see the whole town, requires some severe up and down hill walking; however, it is possible to see a substantial portion of the town without any extreme walking). The area around Castelli is very beautiful, most of it being part of the Gran Sasso national park. The roads to Castelli are well maintained, offer great views and many twists, turns and switchbacks. It's worth the drive just to go there.

Shops selling the local ceramics are also located on the approaches to the city. The prices in these shops are as good as in the city and the selections are also good, though each shop, in the city and outside the city, carries some unique ceramics. The prices for Castelli maiolica are better at the city (both inside and near) than anywhere else we have found. Distributors sell Castelli maiolica throughout the Abruzzo and in many parts of Italy but always at a higher price.

While almost everyone comes for the classic Castelli maiolica, the modern ceramics are also very interesting and creative. Several shops are devoted exclusively to them.

As a side note, in a small local bar, we were served some of the best coffee we have ever tasted. Curiously, in an area where the going price for coffee is .90 euro per cup this bar charged us only .65 euro.

For another view of Castelli see this blog entry. I agree with all of it, especially regarding the restaurant but not with regard to modern ceramic work.

Clean Freaks

Italians are clean freaks. Sometimes this doesn't appear to be true, especially in big cities that are tourist areas or in many public areas but in Italian homes it is immediately obvious. If you have the opportunity to visit an Italian home you will notice it is remarkably clean, not just ordinarily clean but like military barracks clean. There is no dirt, no dust and frequently the house and its belongings look like they are not lived in.

As a result three chains of stores flourish that sell nothing but cleaning products and things related thereto. Near us are one of each: The largest chain: Acqua e Sapone (Water and Soap); the next EuroPlanet Casa and a smaller chain Prodet. (There are web sites for each of these, I did not hyperlink them because I thought no one needs to see another retail website.) Essentially they each do the same thing: sell cleaning supplies and implements for the home, bath, body, car, jewelry, shoes, grill and anything else you can think of to clean and probably some you have not. So you get a store the size of an American drugstore that is stocked with nothing but cleaning supplies and implements.

It's obsessive compulsive heaven here. One frequent complaint of expats is the length of time it takes to do laundry. Older washing machines generally have minimum wash cycles of 60 minutes; newer ones will have one cycle where the wash cycle is as short as 30 minutes. Many Italians opt for 90 minute wash cycles with water at 90 degrees C (194 degrees F). Washers here have only cold water hook ups and use internal heating elements to heat the water to a designated temperature. On many machines, the coldest water cycle you can select is 40 degrees C (104 degrees F). When you explain to Italians that Americans use cold or warm water with much shorter wash cycles, they are shocked. We saw they same thing in some German friends of ours who bought a home in the US. They were certain their clothes were never well washed. In fact, there is no perceptible difference.

Here, Mr. Clean becomes Senor Lindo (same bald head). He does not come in just one type or several types of cleaners but in unique formulations for every type of dirt or surface imaginable. I gave up trying to count the number of different Mr. Lindo formulations the stores carry. There have been attempts to introduce all purpose cleaners here but generally they have not been well accepted.

So if you go in the store and look for stainless steel sink or counter top cleaners, you will not just find several brands to choose from but also several different choices from each brand depending on the type of dirt on your counter top and on the variety of stainless steel you have. This holds true for every imaginable cleaning situation. One of those quirks of another culture.

Castel di Luco

We ate with some friends at Castel di Luco on Sunday. Please click on the hyperlink to the website, click on the English version and look around. The welcome photos of the castle in Summer, Winter and at night do not capture how nice the area around the castle is. It is about a thirty minute drive from us and about 12 miles from a major city in the southern Marche, Ascoli Piceno in the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga national park. For more information on the very small area near it see, Acquasanta Terme.

While at the castle I picked up a brochure that gives a lot more information about it. The castle dates to at least the year 1052 when it is mentioned in some Papal documents stored in the cathedral in Ascoli Piceno. In some respects the castle is very small compared to other castles I have been in but inside has plenty of room. It is also remarkably well preserved perhaps due to the fact that substantial portions of it are actually carved from the Travertine rock that it sits on rather than being brick or stone set in place (that is to say, part of the castle is still part of the earth). The owners have been careful to preserve old Latin graffiti that were scratched into some of the walls at times. Like all good castles, it has rooms for wine making (the holding tanks being carved into the stone), a cistern, a jail, an oil room and a place to gather snow for preserving meat in the summer. The Via Salaria (the old salt path that played an important role in the establishment of Rome) passes by the castle and can easily be seen by it.

The restaurant and rooms are impeccably clean but well preserved areas that feature old murals (I do not believe they qualify as frescoes but I could be wrong) and original medieval architecture. I am happy to report the food is excellent and for a fixed price of 35 euro per person is a great bargain. The following is a catalog what each person got for 35 euro (that includes tip and tax): bread, water, wine, three plates of appetizers, two plates of first serving, two plates of second serving, desert, desert wine, liqueur, and caffe.

Appetizers included: a plate of meats and cheeses, a plate of appetizer pastas (such as ravioli stuffed with a chopped chestnut and honey filling) and a plate of deep fried herb seasoned ricotta, some balls and some fingers.

Firsts included: a plate of seasoned rice wrapped in leaves covered in a cream zuchinni sauce and a plate of cannelloni stuffed with ground mixed meat and covered with a tomato and meat sauce.

Seconds included a plate of roast pork and a plate of roast lamb.

Desert include a single plate with several small deserts on it including flan, cantucci (what Americans commonly call biscotti (in Italian biscotti refers to any cookie)), and several other small desert pastries; with desert came home made cooked wine must, which was some of the best I have ever tasted and following desert came Meletti anisette (a world famous local brand from Ascoli Piceno) and caffe.

As many Americans think Italian restaurants serve food on large plates "family style," I feel a need to explain that in the region where we live this is never done. When I write above that we received plates, it means each person received his or her own separate plate of the particular food.

Notes and comments on the food: All of the dishes were local specialties and included fresh local food and seasonings. Certainly something like meat stuffed cannelloni is not a local specialty but the particular stuffing and the sauce and seasoning of the sauce make it that. The same is true of each of the items on the menu. I thought each individual dish was excellent without exception. Of particular note, the roast lamb was probably the most tender and best tasting lamb I have ever eaten.

When you read this you must think, we ate a lot of food; and indeed we did. It was all excellent and the meal would probably be a bargain at triple the price. In fact, this same meal, in a similar setting, in tourist overrun Tuscany, would probably be 200 euro per person. A benefit of living in an area visited almost exclusively by European tourists, and mostly by Italian tourists, is that prices remain extremely low. If you ever want to eat at Castel di Luco, make sure you call first, they don't open for less than ten reservations. They are usually open but we have had to postpone one trip because of lack of reservations (that being during the dead part of winter). In the Spring and Summer, the probability is that not only are they open, they are completely booked.

Norcia

Norcia is a city in the Region of Umbria about 60 miles and an hour and a half from us. As good as seeing Norcia is getting there. For about half the drive, the road follows the very scenic Tronto river valley with high hills and mountains on both sides. Then to get over the mountains, you can choose to take the old road which is a well maintained but very twisty climb up, across and then down the mountains or the new road which is much straighter, partially by reason of a long tunnel, and quicker. The old road is the sort of classic mountain road that reminds me of scenes out of movies. The new road is much more convenient, not as scenic, but still a good drive. The old road does get a scenic road designation from the Italian Automobile Club.

Norcia sits in a relatively flat valley surrounded by high hills and mountains. It is famous for sausages and ham made from wild boar, for prosciutto crudo made from domestic pigs and for truffles. The area around Norcia is famous for mountain climbing, hiking and skiing and the city serves as a base for those activities. Not unexpectedly, what one finds in Norcia are meat stores, truffle stores, restaurants and sporting goods stores.

The meat from Norcia has a recognizable taste and is almost always designated as coming from Norcia. Most of the sausage shops hang sample of their sausages outside so a walk through Norcia is filled with the smells of the sausages.

An interesting fact about Norcia is that the old walls of the city have remained intact despite some severe earthquakes and that the walled in center of the city is essentially flat. Norcia is also the birthplace of Saint Benedict, the patron saint of Europe, and his twin sister Saint Scholastica. A functioning Benedictine monastery is in Norcia and it would be an unusual trip there not to see Benedictine monks walking through the city, always very quickly as though they are in a hurry to get somewhere.

Norcia has changed to accommodate tourists; however, it is not as swamped with tourists as many other Italian cities. It remains a pleasant place to wander about and the scarcity of vehicles in the central part of the city allows you to imagine life without the automobile. Large parking areas are located outside the city's two main gates and this is where most people leave their vehicles. Inside the gates things range from touristy to residential areas that appear to be unchanged by the modern world. Certainly inside the buildings plumbing and electricity have been added but a walk down the narrow streets today is probably much like it was when most the buildings were constructed. The tourist shops, for the most part, specialize in sausage, mountaineering equipment and antiques. The sausage shops, while touristy, are also genuine, in the sense that they attract many locals and other Italians who make the trip to buy the unique sausages and meat products of Norcia. Besides these shops Norcia has a full array of shops one would expect to find in a medium size city.

While there is some art to see in Norcia, for the most part, the thing to see in Norcia is the city itself. An ancient city, it is a pleasure to spend a half a day learning the city and then eating in one of the local restaurants. Being flat, walkable and walled, you can never get too lost and are constantly exposed to how the residents live. It is not a Rome or Florence but you will probably learn more about how Italians live by spending half a day here than either of them.

Updated Fuel Cost Calculations

It wasn't long ago that I posted with regard to fuel costs but after recent price increases I thought I would run the number again and here is what they look like now taking into account changed fuel prices and currency exchange rates:

Assuming a US premium gas price of $3.73/gallon and Italian diesel prices of 1.435 euro per liter or $7.69 per gallon, I did the following calculations:
In the US we typically drove 18,000 miles per year at 20 MPG and used 900 gallons. At $3.73/gallon that would cost $3,357/year.
In Italy we drive 11,000 miles per year at 42 MPG and use 262 gallons at $7.69/ gallon for a total cost of $2,015 per year.

The effect of urban living and lack of suburbs combined with high mileage vehicles is remarkable.

Correction: In an earlier post I discussed a fuel efficient BMW 3 series diesel (163 hp, equivalent to about 205 hp gasoline engine, that does 0-62.5 in 8.1 seconds) and cited the mpg in British gallons instead of US. The correct fuel mileage is 4.1 liters per 100 kilometers or about 58 mpg US. Still not bad for a peppy, good handling vehicle. I notice it is not sold in the US but if you look at the BMW UK site, or any European country site, you will find it.

Salsicce sotto strutto and AgriService

Salsicce sotto strutto is literally sausage under lard (using a "secondary" word for lard, in Italian "lard" is "lardo") and it is truly sausage under lard. Sold in large clear glass jars, the jar appears to be all white with only an occasional spot of something pink pressed against the glass. The jar states the indredients as: carne suina, sale, pepe, aromi naturali, strutto and olio di semi di girasole or pork, salt, pepper, natural flavorings, lard and sunflower oil. It comes with the advice to store it in a place cool and dry. Inside the jar are 3 to 4 inch long sausages surrounded in the lard. Note: Sometimes the sausages are smaller or larger but these medium sausages represent the most common.

This is raw pork sausage cured by air drying it. Once fully cured, it is placed in containers, today usually large glass jars but it is also possible to use ceramic pots, and hot lard is poured over it. It is usually eaten raw by peeling the sausage, mixing the meat with some fresh seasoning and spreading it on bruschetta. Of course, first you have to extract the sausage from the jar, scrape off the lard and then wipe off the lard. A lot of work to eat pork sausage but it tastes great.

Since salsicce sotto strutto is not usually made commercially it has to be gotten from a farmer you know or purchased from a local AgriService or a specialized deli. An AgriService is a farmers cooperative store that only sells produce and meat from the local area. They exist in most part of Italy, frequently receive some government support from the regional government and help preserve foods and types of food preservation and preparation that might otherwise be lost. The foods sold in them are fresh, organic and very high quality. Some AgriService, and ours is one of them, have a restaurant that serves only locally grown food and specialize in traditional foods and traditional preparation.

Our friends, who I mentioned with regard to making prosciutto, used to make salsicce sotto strutto but have stopped because it was too much trouble. I should mention that they have a whole second "kitchen" in the barn that is used for processing meat such as this. Our friends still make the same sausage but now they either air cure it or cook it and eat it fresh. We had a meal of grilled fresh home made pork sausage at their house a few weeks ago and it was very good.

We went to some friends' house Saturday to celebrate the purchase of a new car (people celebrate new car purchases with a meal with friends and sometimes take the car to a local shrine to be blessed). We took with us two jars of salsicce sotto strutto we had purchased at the local AgriService. This was not a surprise, this celebration had been planned at pension celebration (people celebrate when they receive their first pension check) and everyone volunteered to bring some specific food. In addition to salsicce sotto strutto, we had home made ravioli stuffed with ricotta cheese, first with a butter and sage sauce and a second serving with a seasoned cane sugar sauce and then, served salsicce spread on bread and also a plate of speck, a northern Italian cured ham product. The ravioli with cane sugar sauce was interesting as it is traditionally served only near Carnevale, which is Tuesday. Maybe because you only get it once a year, the ricotta stuffed ravioli with this sweet clear light syrup sauce is very enjoyable.

Prosciutto

Most Americans are familiar with prosciutto, the flavorful Italian salt cured ham. The prosciutto we are familiar with is "crudo" though it usually is just called prosciutto in the US. In Italy prosciutto comes as "crudo" or "cotto." Cotto is just like boiled ham and comes in as many variations as in the US. The designation "crudo" indicates that the ham is a raw product that has been cured with salt and hung to dry. Similar, though very different tasting, hams are made in Virginia and Kentucky in the US. While cotto may be flavored as in the US, crudo is almost always salt cured and then hung to dry and finish for various, usually extended, periods of time.

There are also many types of crudo but they depend on flavor and texture differences from what the pig was fed or ate and the conditions of the curing. Some of the best prosciutto comes from Norcia, a city and an area, famous for its sausage and truffles. Much of the sausage from Norcia comes from wild boar that have fed on wild truffles. It has a unique, and I think, very good taste. Prosciutto from Norcia has a special flavor from the local mix of things to eat. The pigs are allowed to roam a bit so as to get a mix of food and also a few truffles but they are not wild pigs. There is a conflicted relationship between the sausage industry and the truffle gatherers, who are often the same people, because while the wild truffles give the wild boars their exquisite taste, the wild truffles are much more valuable when found by people and sold at the market.

Another extremely good prosciutto is from Tuscany. It has a more mild, delicate and refined taste. Very similar, and considered the best generally available prosciutto is San Danielle. It has a taste almost identical to Tuscan prosciutto but is extremely soft and moist. Equal quality prosciutto is always cheaper here than in the US but is still expensive. San Danielle goes for about 30 euro per kilo or about $18.50 per pound and Norcia sells for about 24 euro per kilo or about $15 per pound.

Many stores also offer the option of having their best prosciutto hand cut. Usually, it is San Danielle that is hand cut and then the price rises to 40 euros per kilo or about $25 per pound. When the hand cut option is available, you will see a large prosciutto locked into a specialized sort of vise and a knife and sharpening steel resting on the vise. A skilled clerk, curiously usually not a butcher, will cut the amount you request. The cuts are slightly thicker than the thinnest machine cut but still very thin. There is no taste difference that I can discern (though many Italians would disagree with me) but there is a texture difference that is substantial. If you buy hand cut prosciutto it is usually to be used as appetizer or with melon and not for sandwiches.

We have friends who make their own prosciutto from their own pigs (that are completely organic). It is deceptively simple, first the ham is buried in salt on a slanted rack that allows juice to drain into a sink. After about a week, most the salt is scraped off and the ham is hung in their cellar, amidst their fruit, wine and oil, for about a year. (I have read long articles that go into great detail about how to cure a prosciutto ham; apparently our Italian friends forgot to read them.) That's it. Taste varies from pig to pig and year to year. Always at least very good, sometimes exceptional. Best smelling cellar I've ever been in.

Next: Salsicce sotto strutto.

Sidewalks and Cell Towers

Our town has the worst sidewalks I have ever seen. When the present core of the city was developed, mostly after 1955, the city allowed individual owners to decide what, if any sidewalks to install on their property. The result is a potpourri of elevations, surfaces and slants. Also, many owners decided to install small elevated border markers between their sidewalk and the next. Today they act mostly as traps for the unwary, especially at night. Within a few yards it is not uncommon to encounter several elevations and an equal number of different surfaces including, tile, concrete, asphalt and marble. Many people just walk in the street.

This sidewalk situation is not a common occurrence in Italy as most cities have specific regulations requiring uniform sidewalks somewhat similar to American cities. Our city has done that in the areas that have developed more recently but the main business core remains a constant walking hazard. It doesn't seem to bother anyone much; my speculation is that a population that largely grew up in ancient towns with no sidewalks and cobblestone streets isn't concerned with a lack of sidewalks.

On the other hand, we have excellent 3G cell coverage including high speed mobile internet and not a cell tower in site. In the rural countryside you can find a cell tower but only rarely. In cities, technology has been used to provide excellent coverage without towers. I cannot recall seeing a cell tower along the approximately 60 mile stretch of coastline that I am familiar with. Sometimes what you don't have is a benefit.

Virtual Tour of Sistine Chapel

It may be that everyone else has seen this but I just ran across it and thought it was as good a souvenir as you could possibly have: See this virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel.

La Locanda

One of the real joys of our area is a restaurant known as La Locanda though it is correctly called La Locanda della Tradizione Abruzzese. I assume the correct name is the full name because the name La Locanda is used frequently in Italy for restaurants. La Locanda translates to "inn" and in the traditional universe of Italian restaurants would be among the lower categories; however, it has become fashionable for upscale restaurants to adopt this word as part of their name. The first time I ever encountered this was probably more than thirty years ago when visiting the Cipriani restaurant, Locanda Cipriana, on the island of Torcello in the Venetian lagoon. Despite its name, the Locanda Cipriana is one of the nicest restaurants I have ever had the opportunity to eat in and well worth a journey, not to mention that the easiest way to get there involves walking through most of Venice to catch a boat to the island.

But back to La Locanda near us. If you have not already, I suggest you follow the hyperlink above to the home page and watch some of the photographs. While the restaurant is nice and the food very good, one of the most unusual things, for an Italian restaurant, is the front lawn and playground area for children. Since the pictures were taken the restaurant has made a major expansion that allows it to seat an additional 500 people for weddings and other celebrations. One of our Italian friends told us that the smallest weddings she ever saw here involved at least 200 guests so 500 is not an unusually large reception hall here and I have seen it filled on many occasions.

We tend to eat at La Locanda at lunch when it has specials that offer bread, bottled water, house wine, a choice of soup or one of three pastas, a choice of one of three meat or fish dishes, salad and coffee for 12 euro. In touristy areas of Italy such menus are common but unfortunately are frequently of low quality. La Locanda is located some distance from any tourist attraction and relies solely on locals, and at lunch, local business persons for customers. To attract that clientele it is necessary to have all the food be of very high quality and it is. We usually have some fruit for desert that adds another 3 euro to the bill but the opportunity to eat a large, high quality meal for 15 euros seems like a bargain to us.

At night La Locanda becomes a full restaurant and is particularly know for its steaks that are served on pietra da lava or, literally, lava stone. To me it doesn't look like lava stone but appears to be stone about the size of an American red brick that has been coated with a black enamel. The stones are heated extremely hot and the partially cooked steak arrives on top of the stone on a platter with various steak sauces. You cut up your steak and finish cooking it on the rock with the sauce of your choice. All this is a little unusual for Italy but the owner trained in France and worked in Canada for many years. The steaks are from Abruzzo Marchigiana beef and are excellent. These cattle are grown in the US.

The jewel of the steak at La Locanda is Chateaubriand with vegetables for two for 34 euro (17 euro per person). More than two people can eat, it only requires the addition of water and wine and desert to be a complete meal. It is served on a side tray so each person can take the meat and vegetable of their choosing to finish cooking on lava rock.

One of the joys of living in the Abruzzo (because of the lack of tourism) is that restaurants are generally extremely reasonably priced. La Locanda is my favorite example of that phenomenon, more to follow. I have compared restaurant prices between the Abruzzo and northern Italy, mostly Tuscany and Liguria, and persistently come to the conclusion that prices here for a similar quality restauarant are about 40% of the prices in Tuscany. Good for the pocketbook, bad for the waistline.

Frasassi Caves

This post is short because I believe others have done a better job than I can of explaining a local attraction. Please click on the hyperlinks for excellent photography and explanation.

The attraction is a relatively newly discovered, post WWII, cave system a little north of us called the Frasassi. Since the web site for the caves has better explanations than I can provide I have not posted any photos. Don't forget to click on the little British flag on the right side of the web site for English language and make sure you look at the galleria fotografica. Also, a good YouTube entry is available. Searching Wikipedia will also produce a few photos.

The outdoor panaromic view shown on the YouTube entry looks like most of driving around the mountains of the Abruzzo, especially on the way to Gran Sasso or Norcia. More on those in the near future.

Fuel Prices and Total Cost

I frequently get asked how we live with the high European gas prices. Here's some thoughts on that: With the recent rise in crude oil prices, diesel in Italy today is $7.10/gallon. Prices here are adjusted daily very much like in the US. Just like in the US increases are passed on immediately but decreases have to wait for the oil to pass through the pipeline.

We have an automatic Ford Focus with a 136 HP 2.0 liter turbo-diesel that is about the equivalent of a 170 HP gasoline engine. The automatic transmission is actually a computerized robotic double clutch transmission that is totally unlike prior automatics and similar to the VW DSG transmission. This type of Ford Focus body is supposed to be available in the US next year though I don't think the particular engine will be. Being a fairly powerful engine in a relatively small car, it delivers good performance and still averages, city/highway, 42 MPG. A diesel being at its best on long distance highway cruising, I have gotten in excess of 55 MPG on long trips. Ford Focus's have a reputation for having a good ride, handling very well and excellent reliability. The German equivalent of Consumer Reports found that the Focus is the most reliable car sold in Germany. We have had the car almost a year with no problems of any kind and had similar experience with a prior Focus.

Despite taking three long trips this past year, the closeness of everyday things and more walking has limited our annual mileage to 11,000 miles. In the US we drove cars about 18,000 miles per year.

Taking those facts into consideration and assuming a US premium gas price of $3.25/gallon, I did the following calculations:
In the US we drove 18,000 miles per year at 20 MPG and used 900 gallons at $3.25/gallon for a total cost of $2,925/year.
In Italy we drive 11,000 miles per year at 42 MPG and used 262 gallons at $7.10/ gallon for a total cost of $1,860 per year.

I was a surprised when I saw the results as I thought our costs in Italy would be a little, but not much, higher. I decided to plug in the best I experienced in the US and that would be 18,000 miles per year at 21 MPG and $2.75 per gallon, which gives a cost of $2,357. At worst, when we lived in Las Vegas I was getting 18 MPG and paying $3.50+/gallon which would push the annual cost to $3,500.

I am still a bit surprised that we can meet our transportation needs without curbing them in any way and with a car that has good performance, rides well, handles well and is very reliable for less annual fuel cost than in the US despite such high fuel prices. One factor I did not take into account is that a turbo-diesel engine adds about €2,000 to the cost of a car. To be fair, used cars hold their value much better in Italy than in the US and the added cost of the turbo-diesel can be almost fully recovered at the time of sale as they are much more desirable as used cars than gasoline engined cars.

A favorite car here seems to be the BMW 320d, a 2 liter turbo-diesel with 184 hp, equivalent to about 230 hp gasoline and averages 45 mpg. BMW makes a special fuel efficient diesel (BMW 320d Efficient Dynamics) that has 163 hp, equivalent to about 205 hp gasoline, goes 0-60 in about 7.5 seconds and averages 58 mpg. Amazing statistics for a car of its size and questions why engineers should bother with electrics that handle poorly. The high fuel prices here motivate most people to seek out high mileage cars.

Bikes Part 1, Entertainment

While I was out riding my bike along the seaside bike path yesterday (Sunday) morning, I noticed what appeared to be race wardens taking up positions at various intersections and also encountered groups of racing bikes coming at me and passing me. I guessed this meant there was a bike race scheduled for the morning and I was correct.
We usually go out for coffee about 10:30 as, it seems, does most of Italy. It seems to be the unofficial coffee break time and the caffes are always crowded from about 10:15 to 10:45. Come at 11:15 and you may only find one or two people in a caffe. Sunday is a slight exception as the hour seems to move to 11:00. Our guess is that this is due to the fact that many Italians like to stay up late on Saturday nights and, aided by the siesta, late means 3 or 4 in the morning. So about 11:00 we were walking to our favorite caffe, technically a pasticceria because of its pastry business and lack of alcohol, when at an intersection a race warden raised his stop sign. In a moment the breakaway of about 6 riders shot past us and about 200 meters behind them the dense pack of maybe 200 bikes arrived also at high speed.
Seeing so many bikes, so close together and traveling so fast, is always exciting and more than a little scary. While helmets offer a little protection, the bikers essentially have no protection against falls other than trying to slide. Almost all the riders are age 20 to 30 and I think they probably have to be that young to do something so dangerous for no reason other than to win. Sometimes the pack is talking as it passes but not this day; the only noise was the slight mechanical noise that well adjusted racing bikes make and the rush of wind caused by the pack.
If you have never seen a bicycle road race I highly recommend that you see one once. If possible one run on a circuit course so that you have an opportunity to see several passes. Bike races in our town are usually on a 2 to 3.5 mile (actually 3 to 6 km) course with 15 to 20 laps. In Italy you can stand very close (within a foot) to the passing bikes, making it feel like something more than sitting in a stadium watching a game. You can see the intensity in the riders faces and, at least for me, it is always amazing to feel the strength of the wind of the pack.
We walked on, had coffee and on the way back got to see one of the last passes. Italy never fails to entertain. This morning is market day, a diversion of a different sort.
I plan to write more on bikes, to explain where and what I ride daily and about the night race held in the sometimes dimly lit street of our city last August.

Civitella del Tronto

Civitella del Tronto (hereafter Civitella; yes, there are other Civitella's in Italy) is a town near us and a favorite place of mine. The changing photographs on the city's website give an idea of its excellent military position which was the reason for the location of most Italian hill towns. Imagine the photographs with Civitella with only cultivated fields near it. One of the photographs is a view to the ocean, for most of the life of Civitella nothing existed between it and the ocean except similar walled hill towns.
Civitella was also a Papal colony and part of the Papal states. Civitella was the last city to surrender during the war for the unification of Italy. That surrender is sometimes recorded as March 20, 1861 but is usually celebrated on March 17.
As an aside, most of Italy is celebrating the 150th anniversary of unification this year though Luis Durnwalder, the president of the ruling council of Bolzano province of the Sud Tirole region has said it is not an event to celebrate for his area. This is something akin to one of the US states opting out of celebrating the fourth of July. Here everyone is so used to this semi-autonomous region expressing its love of all things Germanic that it was hardly noticed. If you've connected on the hyperlink you can see that Mr. Durnwalder is not the most Italian looking politician you've ever seen.
But back to Civitella, it always reminds me of San Gimignano, a small tourist attraction a short distance from Sienna. I had the opportunity to see San Gimignano many times during the early 1970's. When we were bored or had nothing else to do we would drive to Florence, Sienna or San Gimignano to while away a Saturday afternoon. At that time I thought it was very crowded but apparently today it receives many times the visitors. Civitella attracts a fair number of European visitors in the summer and very, very few Americans. I have been there many times and have never seen another American though a review of the sign in book at the fortress museum reveals a few American visitors.
Other than June, July and August, Civitella has few visitors. A trip there during the off season lets you wander around very narrow old cobblestone streets where you will meet only a few locals and no vehicles as all but small emergency vehicles are stopped at the city gate. The crooked, narrow streets, more properly alleys, with relatively high buildings make it usually a shadowy dark walk. It reminds me of walking in the residential areas of Venice before the tourist explosion. Tourist restaurants and local restaurants remain open but have few patrons and lots of atmosphere. It doesn't take much imagination to understand that what you are seeing is how things were hundreds of years ago. We have gone there on several occasions and seen no other tourists or only a handful at the fortress museum. As you can probably tell, I highly recommend it if you come to Italy and have time for a detour or want to see something without the usual set of tourists. One of my great fears is that we see it in a television tour guide's list of undiscovered sights.
Other than to wander the old streets of town, the main site is the museum of the fortress. I strongly urge you to use the hyperlink to look at the site and to have Google translate activated. It is a very well preserved fortress and in recent years the Italian government has modernized the museum to make it worth a trip. Admittedly, almost all of the museum relates to military history but the reason for the existence of all of the Italian hill towns was to provide security from successive waves of invading armies after the fall of Rome. Civitella is interesting because you can see where sentries of the fort could see along all of the valleys approaching the town and, if necessary, alert the people working the crops to get within the walls of the city. The extremely good strategic location is much more obvious on top of the fort than when you approach it.
Another curious matter is the very good view of the ocean. Probably, until recent times, very few of the people of Civitella ever visited the ocean but they have a great view of it. In a straight line, Civitella is about 13 or 14 miles from the ocean; a distance that made travel difficult and dangerous. With the arrival of the Fiat 500 in 1957 that all was about to change. I have met many people from similar hill towns who never walked on a beach or put the foot in the ocean until the 1960's.
If you travel to Civitella there are several restaurants available. One is a stand out, good enough to rate two spoons and forks in the Michelin Red Guide for Italy, Zunica. We have eaten there several times and found the food to be consistently excellent. While other food is available, the restaurant serves a changing menu of local, fresh specialties that won't be found other places. It also has a few rooms to let if you want to spend the night in a medieval hill town, we have not stayed there but I looked at a room once and thought it seemed very clean.
Civitella has been a favorite of mine for more than 30 years for its well preserved character and lack of tourists. I highly recommend it.

Abano Terme

It had been a while since we had gone anywhere and we decided to do something special on super bowl weekend. After a little thinking, that something developed into a long weekend at a spa. After first trying to book reservations at a spa we had previously visited, Galzignano Terme, we settled on a the Abano Grand Hotel at Abano Terme.

Abano Terme is a city in northeastern Italy, about 6 miles south of Padova, located in an area known as the Euganean Hills. It is famous for hot springs and mud baths and has been a thermal spa since the time of the Romans. The Euganean Hills are the remains of very old volcanoes, they are low, rounded and covered with green foliage. They are unusual projections in an area that is otherwise flat.
Before this trip, we had stayed at spa hotels at Galzignano Terme, another thermal spa city in the same area and deriving its waters from the same volcanic activity. Despite their proximity, the two cities are only about 9 miles apart, the waters differ greatly. We found the water at Abano Terme much less irritating to our noses than that at Galzignano Terme.

At Abano Terme, we stayed at the Abano Grand Hotel. While a relatively new building, being about 11 years old, it was built to look like and have the feel of an extremely well maintained grand old European hotel. It has the nicest and largest hotel bar I have seen in Italy as well as a very nice smoking room and a beautiful card room with about 10 green felted bridge tables. The dining room is what one would expect. The well decorated rooms are very large, we stayed in the smallest which was about 500 square feet. I was reminded of the Bellagio in Las Vegas. One of the reasons we chose the Grand Hotel Abano was the food reviews I found posted online. I could not find one person who thought the food at the hotel was anything other than extraordinary. General reviews of the hotel were about 98% positive, itself an unusually positive number. Even the couple of bad reviews could not find fault with the food in the restaurant. Our experience confirmed these reviews and I personally found the food and the service to be as good as any I have had in Italy.

The pools of the spa begin indoors, where they are quite large, and go outdoors, where they are even larger, through plastic curtains that resemble vertical blinds. The water comes from the volcanic springs at about 200 degrees. The spa cools the water to 97 degrees in one pool and 91 degrees in another. When we there the early morning outside air was a little above freezing causing large clouds of steam arise from the hot waters in the pools.

The pools and the spa have a large number of whirlpool jets and different types of settings, shallow, walking, hot tub style and of course the ever present, masochistic, very cold tub (the only thing we didn't try). Compared to other spa we have experienced the assortment was larger and more varied. The most impressive is an array of three stainless steel tubes about 10 feet high located near the pool that shoot out three streams of hot water similar to what you would expect from fire hydrants and landing about 20 feet into the pool. They are painful to have hit you directly but a short distance away in the water they provide a good massage. They are activated by pressing a button and are only on for about 10 minutes at a time.

Abano Terme (pop. 19,000) exists for tourists and it has made its city core off limits to vehicles and designed it for pedestrian traffic. Additionally, it has a new area that sequences buildings throughout a large grassy mall area that was different than anything I have previously seen but I am sure exists else where. Both areas have a variety of shops, caffes and restaurants mostly aimed at tourists though we observed a substantial number of locals on the streets and shopping.

For other things to do near Abano Terme, Padova is a short distance away with some very significant art including what many believe to be one of the seminal works of the Renaissance, Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel. While it looks mild today, it was one of the first times in 500 years that an artist had dared to depict emotion, motion and depth of field; thereby defying the religious ban on anything seen as glorifying man. Venice is near, with all that it is. Both Venice and Padova are easily reached by car or train. When I have stayed in Padova in the past and traveled to Venice, I never checked a train scheduled because the trains run so frequently, about every 5 minutes.

We had a great weekend at the spa and I would recommend it to anyone thinking of traveling to Padova or Venice as an alternative to staying in one of the cities.

Urban Living

We live a little off the center of a small coastal city, about three blocks from the sea. While the city itself is relatively small in population, it is part of a string of contiguous coastal cities that, taken together, have a population of about 300,000. Most of the buildings in our town are four to five stories tall with the ground floor being retail, office or commercial.

This creates a living pattern that encourages walking to shops and stores rather than driving. I decided to make a list of stores and shops within three blocks of us, though I think six blocks is a reasonable walking area. While my list is far from complete, I think it makes clear the large selection of merchants near us: Caffe's (too numerous to count), pizzerias, restaurants, one large supermarket and several smaller ones, bakeries, several butchers and a poultry shop, banks, pharmacy, clothing stores, fruit stores, a florist, gas station and car wash, card shop, office supply store, lawyers, medical doctors, dentists, hardware, pet supply, the beach itself and numerous related shops, police, air conditioning sales and service, travel agencies, leather stores and a leather processor, tobacco shop, pastry shop, herb store (like a health food store but only dealing in herbs), beauty parlors, barbers, bicycle shops, plumber, specialty hardware, fire extinguisher and alarm store, drape and curtain shops, white goods store, specialty cleaning goods (more on this in a later post) , motorcycle store, motorcycle equipment store, mattress store, kitchen supply stores (2), home furnishing stores (2), betting parlors and slot rooms.

If you widen the walking area to six blocks it incorporates every thing you need to live and would include the post office and train station. Add another three blocks and you would include BMW and Volvo dealerships, Avis car rental and several body shops, not to speak of duplicating many times over the previously listed shops and restaurants. On Monday mornings, the market starts one block from us and stretches three blocks north to a one block square piazza where the main market is located.

Unless it is inclement weather, we find it takes longer to drive somewhere and find a place to park than to walk directly to it. Fortunately our area has four mild seasons and we have had a particularly warm and mostly dry winter.

Because of the convenience of the stores, there are always many pedestrians on the street. Additionally, as street crime is virtually non-existent here, people are not afraid to walk places. With a bakery, butcher shop, supermarket and the best pizzeria in town, all within one block of us, we never lack for food, not necessarily a good thing.

Other things within one block: veterinarian, beauty parlors, herb shop, fruit stand, caffes, fresh pasta shop, leather store, florist, moped dealer, driver school, clothing store, jewelry store and a slot room.