Expounding on Italy – My 300th Post

Spaghetti with Clams – Le Marche

What a wonderful and sometimes intense set of responses from my previous post - The Italy Rules. I want to take a little time today to expand and expound on some of my thoughts and provide further insight into traveling in Italy.

1. Italy Guides - Here is my short list of who I would travel with and why in Italy.

• The Rome Digest - This new and wonderful consortium of talented Rome guides includes my dear friend Katie Parla, who is my champion of all things Roman (pork, gelato, beer, wine, art, history, and life) If you are going to spend time in Rome, and you should, let the Rome digest draw a map for you
• Venice - Row Venice Nan McIlroy is one of the most knowledgeable people in Italy regarding living life, eating well, and getting out on the water. Don’t pay 200 euro for a snooze on a gondola. Pay less and get out there and learn to do it yourself. Easily one of the greatest experiences I have ever had in Italy
• Tuscany - Judy Francini will cook with you and teach you what it means to truly experience life in Tuscany. Reach out to her. She has been cooking successfully for her Italian husband for years. She will teach you how to impress anyone.
• Puglia - this is a bit biased but I can vouch for the unbeatable quality of Southern Visions Travel. Antonello Losito leads this superior company leading the most authentic excursions into Italy’s tastiest region. From 1 day to 1 month, these guys are amazing
• Le Marche - Mariano Pallottini - the best guides are sometimes not guides. For this truly under-the-radar region no one can show visitors the ropes like Mariano. Please tell him I sent you.
• Travel for Teens - If you would like to send your son or daughter on one of the most amazing experiences to be had. I strongly suggest using Travel for Teens. Managed and operated by a group of passionate, intelligent, and experienced men and women, TFT is the leader in volunteer and cultural travel in Italy for students. Ask for Ned or Nick and your young adult will be blown away
• For other Italian regions I have friends of friends and would be happy to do some research for you

Final Friday Photos – Friuli

Trieste Canal

Friuli Friday Photos Finale is my final Friday blog of 2012. These shots are from an extraordinary spring adventure in Friuli-Venezia-Giulia and one from the Veneto just next door. We are in Northeast Italy here, in a land still seeking an identity after changing hands frequently in the 19th and early 20th centuries. I never would have thought I would have eaten the best sauerkraut of my life in Italy, and I did. Tall people, Fascist art, pork  in a dozen ways on one plate, my kind of weirdness shared with friends. Nicolas Emery, the famous Rubicon explorer, his fiancée Giulia Laveto (aka juujee), and of course The Schmee were all present and on board for wine, food, and Friuli.

The Most Influential Blogs of 2012

True for me and these fine bloggers

The Most Influential Blogs of 2012 is my tribute to some of the finest work on the web done by caring curators of quality and passion. These individuals and their work gives me cause to pause on my birthday today to celebrate along with them because of what their influence means to my work. For those of you looking to find truth in advertising, look no further than these fantastic sites.

The Blissful Adventurer – 2012 Blog of the Year

The Blissful Adventurer – 2012 Blog of the Year

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the link from Cara Olsen to her outstanding blog This Little Light and saw she had selected me among a few of her very talented peers as Blog of the Year for 2012. Cara herself had received the honor and as the protocol dictates shared her love and recognition with other writers she admires in the same vein. Cara, as many of my readers already know, is a novelist/blogger of exceptional mettle and integrity. Her work proves one can have faith and a firm grasp of the human condition and that they are not mutually exclusive. To be chosen by such a talented scribe is truly a blessing in these end of 2012 days. Thank you Cara Olsen. You are blessed and blessed with good taste

Hipstamatic Haiku Sunday

Hipstamatic Haiku Sunday is back and bolder than before. Hipstamatic iPhone images post-processed, imbued with magical lyrics and shared in a stream of consciousness format to entertain, prod, and provoke. Enjoy the countdown to the holidays.

scratching away now
solid as before he looks
down upon us in awe

Sonoma Valley – iPhone 5 Photo Friday

Old Oaks in Autumn – Copain WInery

iPhone 5 Fun Photo Friday besides being a lovely title replete with alliteration is my first foray into the natural world with my new iPhone 5. Since studying under Sam Krisch (one of the leading iPhone photo artists in the world) for a brief period I feel my universe has opened and I am now capable of creating images that range from the ethereal to the theatrical. This is how my mind works, this is how I see things in the light. All the world is truly the stage and I, merely a player with a piece of technology that finally render my inherent disabilities somehow functional. (more on this another time)

Sicily – Theatrical Friday Photos

Roadside Ruins (click image to view full-size)

Sicily – Theatrical Friday Photos - Is a journey across the enigmatic island using photos that conjure emotions reminiscent of the theater. I am more and more returning to my theatrical roots and seeking inventive and resourceful ways to tell you my stories. This is one of them.

We left the airport at Trapani in a rented Fiat Punto our Garmin Nuvi GPS device had not been updated in 3 years, and roads in Sicily are museums for allied bombing runs from the 1940s. Then, there was this structure in its abandoned glory. Nino Rota played in my head and I fought the urge to look for sheep to herd. In reality I barely took enough time to stare at the gorgeous wreck before getting lost a few more times on the roads that go and go yet no distance ever seems overcome.

Hipstamatic – Fun Photo Friday

Rodin Sculpture Garden – Stanford University

I suppose I should remember to put a title on the post!

Hipstamatic fun photo Friday is a joyful exploration of the depths in iPhone photography that help me to document The Blissful Adventurer. These images represent my particular vision of the images I see and are intended to alter mood and shift perspective. Hipstamatic is an application for mobile phone cameras that has inspired me since its inception and I hope very much it remains a fixture in the app world.

Mt. Etna – Volcanoes, Vines, and the Holy Spirit (part 3 of 3)

Palmento Santo Spirito – Mt. Etna

Mt. Etna -Volcanoes, Vines, and the Holy Spirit is a 3 part series on how I came to meet Salvo Foti, the preeminent voice on traditional (ancient) winemaking on Mt Etna. I am releasing my post now to celebrate Salvo’s visit to San Francisco this week. Salvo Foti will be pouring wine and discussing how he makes the magic this Saturday at Biondivino is San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood from 6-8PM. Come out and enjoy the wines and say hello to yours truly as well as the great Salvo Foti.

Part 1 Part 2

We walked all together through the vineyards at Palmento Santo Spirito and saw vines as old as 150 years resting next to new plantings. The cycle of life in Sicily is as clear as anywhere I have seen. Ancestral vines keeping watch over new ones managed by men following ancient rituals to the tune of making wine without the use of electricity. I assumed Salvo was kidding till he walked us through the dark and dank rooms of the Palmento and explained to us how the grapes are carried up the ramp by hand and into the lava stone pool where they are foot tread to break the skins and allow the juice and pulp to run free into the rock tank below. The temperature outside over 90 degrees while the stone and the vented windows keep the inside temps at 75 or less. This was how the Romans made wine said Salvo and yet they say what I am doing is illegal. Two thousand years of winemaking precedence cannot be wrong but the EU says it is illegal. I want to know so much more.

Lava Fields from the last eruption

The Georgians met us at dinner. They were in town to bury a religious icon in the vineyards of a French wine distributor from the UK.  His wife, a former winemaker at the famous Solaia in Tuscany and her brother an aspiring winemaker himself from Australia who had interned with the enigmatic Frank Cornelissen were part of the crew that evening along with a contingent of the hardest working members of I Vigneri. We had all convened on Etna like some backroom episode of “Wine Fantasy Island” and Salvo was certainly our Mr Roarke.

We dived straight into a magnum of I Vigneri’s signature Etna Rosso, Vinupetra. It was compelling in its uniqueness and strangely familiar in its weight. This infant vintage was only recently bottled (by Vinupetra standards) and its youthful fruit and exuberant acid were a lovely spoil to the fresh Randazzo sausage on the grill. Galen and I drank like Americans and ate like Italians. Salvo says Galen never stops talking in either language. I laughed heartily when Salvo said Galen spoke Italian better than him and I smiled broadly when Galen affirmed this. Italian was not Salvo’s first language after all, it was Sicilian. After tasting the Vinupetra I am certain his second language was wine.

Vineyard worker bags on the tool shed

There were no sparks from the volcano on this night. The smell of sulfur wafted in and out of the air and I wondered if it was all from the volcano herself or was it the sulfur/copper mix sprayed minimally on the vines to prevent rot. The cool night air pushed me to drink more vigorously and I was so pleased to see the ubiquitous bottles of Coca-Cola absent from this Italian dinner. The Foti children have never had McDonald’s and do not get soft drinks. The ancient Vigneri would like this. They would want them to drink wine, to commune with strangers, and perhaps to indulge in the occasional smoke.

At the end of our pizza meal the night before Salvo asked my wife and me if we wanted a cigarette. When we told him that we did not smoke, he simply asked “why not?” I had to ask myself this same question looking at a man 10 years my senior, in better health, more contented than I, and living with vines, volcanoes, and the Holy Spirit in his backyard.

The Highest Vineyard in Europe – Mt. Etna

Please visit us tomorrow evening with the wines of Salvo Foti at Biondivino in San Francisco

Mt. Etna – Volcanoes, Vines, and the Holy Spirit (part 2 of 3)

Hotel Parco Statella – Randazzo, Sicily

Mt. Etna -Volcanoes, Vines, and the Holy Spirit is a 3 part series on how I came to meet Salvo Foti, the preeminent voice on traditional (ancient) winemaking on Mt Etna. I am releasing my post now to celebrate Salvo’s visit to San Francisco this week. Salvo Foti will be pouring wine and discussing how he makes the magic this Saturday at Biondivino is San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood from 6-8PM. Come out and enjoy the wines and say hello to yours truly as well as the great Salvo Foti.