I'm headed again to Italy. Here's how I prepare

I'm not thinking about monuments -- except the Pantheon, my favorite building in Italy -- nor am I likely to visit many museums.

I am instead, as an Italophile preparing for a trip to Italy this summer, thinking about ciambelline -- see the name of this blog! -- and where I will be eating them and how to find the largest, freshest ones at each stop along my route.

And I'm picturing myself walking the streets, almost obsessively, as a way to reclaim my adopted country. (I won't be happy unless I walk all day.) I'm thinking about window-boxes full of flowers and all of the other small workaday jewels I hope will pass before my eyes when I touch down in Italy.

I am thinking about my own private itinerary, especially in Florence: lingering under the window of our old apartment near Santa Croce in Florence; visiting Bar Simone across from the turbine plant where I worked; stopping by piazza della Repubblica because I had to thread my way under its arch and across its lovely cobblestones so many evenings on my way home when I lived in Florence; making a beeline for Costa San Giorgio and via Erta Canina and all the other hilly streets on the Oltrarno where one can get a good walk and a stunning view all at once.

Also: Mercato di Sant'Ambrogio, where I did my produce shopping, making sure to walk through Piazza dei Ciompi on the way (in the hopes the antiques market is still there). Also: any place where Italian words will be on display. So bookstores -- but also grocery stores. Plus, the sandwich shops along Via della Vigna Nuova, and the Arco di San Pierino where druggies used to prowl but now tourists consult maps on their iPhones.

I'm fantasizing about the beach towns in Puglia I'll visit for the part of the trip down South. I know that will be the most languorous leg of the trip, and I am already imagining the Pugliese wine (Nero di Troia, Aglianico, Primitivo, ecc) I'll be consuming along with bruschetta and spaghetti allo scoglio from beachside cafes as good as what you'd find in a city.

In other words, I am making a mental list of my must-sees, and more often than not they consist of tiny corners of Florence (and to a lesser extent Rome and Puglia) where I feel I can best breathe in the Italian way of life.

I'm also thinking about about what I will buy. What mementos will follow me home and insinuate themselves among my belongings, serving as little bursts of Italophilia in my daily life.

Well, I'll buy books, it goes without saying (thinking of perhaps shipping a crate home, in fact -- no joke. The literary translator's indulgence?).

Also, coffee, of course (Caffe Kimbo and other Southern Italian brands that are a bit hard to find in the States). Saffron, Italian breakfast cookies (if for no other reason than to distribute them to Starbucks for a teaching moment). Also maybe a new coffee canister. And another darling red and green "mokina" coffee maker, like this one.

And magazines of all kinds (including the political weeklies, maybe a cooking mag, and the world's most beautiful travel magazine: Bell'Italia). Plus postcards, brochures, stationery. Papery vehicles of Italian artistry, in other words (particularly vibrant in Florence where the decorative arts were much prized during the Renaissance).

I also fantasize about conversations I will have in Italian when I arrive. (Hey I'm old -- this is how I get my jollies! Too much wine and I am not jolly the next day). Conversations with friends, conversations with baristas (soccer will come up) and fruit vendors and the taxi cab driver (che casino!) and the signora waiting for the bus who's worried there might be a sciopero (labor strike).

And what I do to prepare for this onslaught of conversation and kibbitzing is listen to podcasts and watch movies and of course read Italian. Though I've found in recent years it's best, before embarking on a trip to Italy, if I consult newspapers, magazines and web sites rather than bury myself in, say, D'Annunzio. What are Italians talking about now? That's what I want to know. That's the talk soup I want to slip into once I arrive (even if it includes the name Salvini).

Here are some books I'm reading:

Lezioni di Tenebra, Helena Janeczek (who just won the Premio Strega!)
Non ora, non qui, Erri de Luca 

I'm also listening to podcasts, including this one.

Here's a movie I watched to gear up, with the amazing Italian actress Alba Rohrwacher:



Last but not least, a song from my personal, ready-get-set-Italy soundtrack (used in a film I want to see so badly, Il Nome del Figlio, with Alessandro Gassman).



Andiamo!

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Ho vinto! Winning a PEN America translation grant

I swear I rarely have the privilege of saying "I won" but I can truly say I have won a grant to continue work on a translation of an important Italian book that I desperately want to bring to the English-speaking world.

The award is the PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature, part of the prestigious PEN-Heim Translation Grant program (given by PEN America, which is probably the most important literary organization in the US, and one that is on the front lines, fighting for writers' freedom to express themselves without fear or repercussions all over the world).

And the book is Mariateresa Di Lascia's 1995 novel, Passaggio in Ombra (working title: "A Walk in the Shadows"), which won Italy's top literary award, the Premio Strega.

You can read about the other wonderful projects that won PEN translation grants here.

Long live Italian literature -- particularly literature by women authors!

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Post-Italy trip journal ('bits' journals)

It's been a long time since I've published part of my journal and an equally long time since I put out a call for the "bits" journal. It's the diary where you jot down little observations, thoughts, bits of inspiration. Who has one they want to share? Here's a slice from mine, at the moment last year when I had just returned from my trip to Italy:

May 24, 2017

Arrived last night alle 6 from Torino/Milano/Fir trip…and even though I only went to bed at 9, I woke up a mere six hours later and couldn’t go back to sleep not because of jet lag or my internal body clock or anything like that but because I couldn’t turn off the Italian conversation and thought generator in my mind! It’s 3 a.m. and I’m thinking of one more thing I want to tell Giovanni and an idea to share with Irene, and thoughts about collaborations with Luca and bits of conversations held during my delightful trip to Torino, Firenze and Milano. I’m walking down streets in these three stupendous cities and commenting as I go….in Italian, of course, sempre in Italian, or some weird mix of Italian and English.

Oh Italy, damn it, you’ve effin’ done it again! Why would I ever want to be just thinking in English, quando invece posso permettermi what I call the bifurcated mind, forever divided between the two languages. But not an orderly division but rather a wonderfully Italian brand of caos where a thought begins in English e finisce invece in italiano.

One more thing, as I am writing in my journal: CROSS OFF 'ITALIAN TRIP' from the "to do" list….Bell’e fatto!

May 25, 2017

I find myself trying to extend the lease on this burst of Italian life that has taken over me – an esprit de corps that develops when Jeanne spends a week walking miles upon miles each day through Italian cities that return the favor with delights and curiosita’ around every corner.

I feel this energy draining from me as I go back to driving everywhere, as I go back to having to connive walks out of Leo, to a city where walking is simply not the Flaneur tradition I love so much…

Can we call this the American paradox? Oh what a wonderful country, what a country of innovation and industry and possibility…but I feel so much more alive in another country (!!!). Part of the blame goes squarely to Atlanta but it ain’t like it’s the only city in America where it’s not easy to live the walking life style.

I worry even about how to go back to a life that’s so sedentary…Yesterday all I wanted to do was walk and I struggled to come up with places to walk….

*

My tongue still wants to form Italian words…The Italian conversation generator in my mind is still running in the background. I need to take advantage of it, perhaps to write something!

Poesia? Ce la farei? L’unica cosa che mi appare ‘facile’ che poi non lo e’. 

It bears mention that I am super thin and full of energy! Why? Well, of course, I just came back from “my spa.”

June 2, 2017

I was there, I was really there, and waking up way too early this morning, I remember – I was there, and now I am so far away, and the trip to Italy is receding in the distance and last week – when I was still there – might as well be last month. I’m back to my car-centric life, back to a life spent with so few interfaces, that IS the way I like it but somehow in Italy, I’m okay with constantly “interlocuting” with this or that other person. It seems natural. Like being in motion – being in motion in Italy feels so normal. Here, there’s just so much space to traverse before you reach a point of interest. Is it simply the “other”?

June 13, 2017

I appear to be writing a travel story for CNN – seems impossible since it will fulfill one of my writing goals for the year – and here are some of the thoughts that may or may not make it into the final version:

I’d somehow forgotten how lovely it is that in Italy the baristas talk to the customers – I mean really talk to them. It’s actually worth learning Italian for.
                                                   ***

When I saw a barista point to multiple sizes of paper coffee cups at a bar at the Milan airport, it set off a small death somewhere inside of me. I’d never, ever seen something like that before at an Italian bar. Coffee used to come in two sizes: espresso – a little baby shot of coffee, as we all know now – or cappuccino size. Which is the size of the standard coffee cup in Italy. Period.

But some things never change. Outdoor booksellers still meticulously set up their wares, in the case of Torino, underneath the porticos. That means no rain interferes while you browse the widest and most random selection of Italian books you’ve ever seen. Ancient art books, obscure foreign political treatises, well-preserved comics, everything … They’re permanent fixtures in Italian cities – this, in a country of non-readers. Who buys the books? I don’t know and I don’t care. I like to think that in Italy some things, for better or for worse, are still done despite an assurance that the profits will be small. Very small. As I perused the books, I liked to think the booksellers knew that for a literary type like me, nothing beats glancing at titles and flipping through books outdoors, while occasionally glancing up at a bike crossing the piazza or the Renaissance church across the way….

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Writing about Tabucchi's Viaggi ed altri viaggi

"It’s a travel writer’s job to enchant us with tales of lands we’ve never seen—and which we may never see. But it seems like a particular phenomenon when the travel writer is enticing you to visit a land where he, too, is a foreigner. 

"So infectious is Italian novelist Antonio Tabucchi’s account of his travels in Portugal in the original Italian that one cannot wait until the book is translated into English to write a “review” of it. Not that Tabucchi sounded like a foreigner when he wrote lovingly of Portugal and of his second tongue, Portuguese. Quite the opposite. But that’s often what acolytes and converts sound like: They are more fervent than the natives."

To read the rest of this essay on Tabucchi's book of travel essays, Viaggi ed altri viaggi , please click here to visit Three Percent's web site.

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My Year in Writing (2017)

I began writing an annual 'Year in Writing' roundup after I discovered a 2014 piece by the writer Alexander Chee where he catalogued the many career milestones he'd wracked up that year. A year in review, as it were, but for writing. It looked incredibly impressive (he was the guy who came up with the Amtrak Writer-in-Residence idea) and something I wanted to do, probably because he is an extremely accomplished novelist who also publishes some fantastic travel writing! (He is).

Nonetheless I took the plunge, even though I'd never before written a post summing up the year in anything, writing or otherwise. As I wrote last year at this time, "You manage what you measure, right?"

For a long time, as I said then, I wasn't in any way measuring how much I wasn't accomplishing in the world of writing. 

But I'd say Bennington pretty much changed that. Once I enrolled in the MFA program there, I began to see possibilities -- and to use the words of Charles Bock, an author and Bennington alum, I also began to see writing as my permanent side job.

I've now begun to set writing goals for myself each year -- concrete objectives, some of which are definitely within reach. 

(There are also 'non-concrete' goals, like collaborate with Bono on a project. Yes that Bono! And no, it's not a joke! For me, at least).

This year, I wanted to publish something in a national magazine and I also wanted to publish some travel writing.

And....I did both! Although I should I say I did both with ONE assignment, rather than two.

I wrote two long stories, including a destination piece on Atlanta, for Delta Sky Magazine (you know, the mag in your seat pocket when you fly on Delta). As a longtime Delta flyer, I was thrilled to land a piece in a magazine I've cheerfully read many times! Plus, it was truly travel writing! You can read those pieces, plus a short profile of Mayor Kasim Reed, here.

There was another bit of travel writing that inspired an equal measure of pride because it was for CNN Travel (whose stories I occasionally edit as a contract editor for CNN) and because it was an honest-to-God personal essay about Italy (you pretty much can't beat an assignment that allows you to wax poetic about your version of heaven). I'm also proud to say the piece, entitled "You Can Return to Italy," gave me a chance to lay out my personal traveling style -- what I call nostalgia tourism. Where you have a private list of stops that allow you to take the pulse of a place you know so well. You can read the piece here.

A few other milestones:

*On the literary translation front, I published my first translation (for Drunken Boat).

*I also reported on Italy's largest book fair -- and the positioning of Italian women authors -- for the bookworld website Literary Hub. It's called, "Where are all the great Italian women writers?"

*I said goodbye to Atlanta through a 3,000-word personal essay for the AJC's Personal Journeys rubric, which appears on Sundays. What an honor! As soon as I knew we'd be leaving Atlanta, I began writing the essay in my head. To have an editor actually want to print some of those thoughts, well, it's cool (Thanks, Suzanne!). You can read it here. 

I wouldn't want to paint too rosy a picture. I think you'd all know already if I were some super successful writer! I didn't publish anything in The New York Times this year, which, after the high of my essay and reported piece last year, was a grave disappointment. I was hoping The Gray Lady needed me! She does not. But you can still read the essay I wrote (about recording Leo's first sounds and words) here. 

There were many other writing milestones I did not reach, such as polishing a short story and moving forward on a longer project I've begun.

As I've said before, it wasn't an Alexander Chee year (he's so successful now, he doesn't write his year in review anymore!). But there's no question that as a writer, I'm not where I was a year ago or two years ago. A little more than five years ago, I wasn't even writing every day outside my job as a journalist.

And besides, taking stock of the year that's about to end isn't an exercise in comparing yourself with someone else. That won't work. And it isn't the point, is it?

So about those fiction projects I didn't get to: Shall I put them on the list for next year? I think I will.

Last but not least, where is YOUR 'Year in Writing'? You know who you are. Post it here in the comments or on Facebook. 

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Dear Marie Kondo

Dear Marie Kondo,

I know that your book has helped many people pare down, and since a relocation has consumed me for much of 2017 – moving away from my Atlanta home of 9 years to begin a new life in Connecticut – I thought it might make sense to seek you out.

If I got it right, you tell people to ask -- as they inventory their things -- does it “spark joy”?

Except, Marie -- can I call you Marie? -- you don't understand how many things spark joy for me.

Or merely incite some kind of emotion inside.

Or, in the case of Elmo Peter Elson, represent a line in the sand. He’s my childhood teddy bear – and he’s dressed in my childhood clothes (a blue windbreaker with a faulty zipper and riotous 1970s toddler pants). I can’t throw him out now. (No, I don’t know why his name is Elmo Peter Elson.)

Elmo’s making the journey along with a cassette tape of U2’s “Boy” album that’s unspooled, and half-used notepads engraved with the name of my deceased uncle and a button for a failed political campaign where I volunteered 20 years ago, plus a vintage pin from Bayonne, N.J., my father’s hometown (because sometimes other people’s mementos, especially one’s parents, are even more potent than your own) and the pregnancy tester stick – positive! – that forget ‘changed my life’ – it gave me the life I didn’t know I was even craving. Also: bus, train and plane tickets, mainly to and from Italy, and a lot of Lira – Italy’s old currency -- that can no longer be used. But they’re like my bank statements from Cassa Di Risparmio di Firenze, which remind me that I was lucky enough to live long enough in the city of Dante to open up an account at the Florence Savings Bank. (I’ve also kept the Enrico Coveri scarf Melanie gave me and the plastic shopping bag she used to give it to me because while it is a relatively ordinary yellow and green plastic bag it is also instantly recognizable as a bag not produced in the US or used by a US retail establishment. Reason to keep it.)

Plus writing journals.

Lots and lots of journals, including ones from grammar school that I find unreadable (some thoughts should be kept inside, I’ve concluded.)

Lots of letters, too, including the one from a very dear friend that remains unopened and will likely stay in that virgin state until we die. You see, Marie, it’s a condolence card. Everything there was to know -- and everything we didn’t want to know -- is discernible on the outside of the card. Her careful handwriting, our names, the date stamp the week Mike’s father died -- without any need to open it. She is sorry and we are sorry and nothing can be done to erase the death that occasioned the card. To paraphrase the poet Donald Hall, the dead stay dead. So it’s still sealed but my God, Marie, how can I throw it out? Her kindness can’t be discarded.


I also still have Doug K.’s business card. In fact, I have two of them. I know what you're thinking -- who uses business cards anymore? Especially one for a man I last spoke to back in 2000. No, I don't need it. But you see, I do.

We named Doug Security Director of the Year in 2000, back when I was an editor on a trade pub that covered security systems and metal detectors and locks with audit trails.

He'd done such a bang-up job in his position as security director of -- wait for it -- the World Trade Center, that he won the annual contest that year. Security Director of the Year. In Doug’s case, it might as well have said ‘of the decade.’ His picture was on the cover and everything, with the two towers looming behind him. And then on Sept. 11 – you know the year -- I tried calling the number on the business card but I couldn't get through. You see what I mean, Marie? I've got to keep his business card. I need something to remember him by. Just like the page I ripped from an old calendar of New York. The last image I have of those Twin Towers. Where we went after we saw "Annie" on Broadway with Uncle Pat and Aunt Maureen, before they had children -- a thousand years ago, give or take.

Read Delta Sky Mag (& fly Delta jets!)

If you've flown Delta anytime this month, you might have read one of the stories I filed for Delta Sky Magazine about Atlanta!

If not, you can find there here.

I wrote a destination piece about Atlanta, centered around the Beltline rails-to-trails project (called "City in the Forest") and a snapshot of Atlanta's economy, which you can see in the photo here.

I also wrote a short profile of Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed (where I compare him to a competitive athlete).

Thanks to all of my friends who snapped photos of the magazine while in the air!

As the sign at Hartsfield says, Fly Delta Jets!

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Writing about Italy for CNN Travel

A trip to Italy for me? Swoon.

A trip to Italy that leads to an essay in CNN Travel? Days and weeks of swooning.

Read it here! There you'll also find my very own photos, from my trip earlier this year to Torino and two years ago to Rome (including the one above).

Godi!

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Jacket made of wind

A lost entry from the Leo diary: "I wish I had a jacket made of wind." Me, too, my imaginative friend, me, too. 

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Dear Leo: Happy Birthday!

Dear Leo,

Five years ago, I looked like the person in the photo -- I was that person.

Atlanta was gripped in a heat wave -- I learned at Fernbank the other day that we set a record of 106 degrees shortly before you were born! -- and I was gripped in a revolution. In the final days of my pregnancy, I had moments in which I almost felt as though I were going insane, unable to sleep and still unable to peer into the little face I so longed to see.

It wasn't all bad, though. Indeed "adventures in mind-expansion" is what I called the final month. As I wrote in the journal that would soon become my constant companion, "My mental acuity is sharpened if only in the sense that I seem more able or maybe just more willing to study all angles of a situation. At the same time, I appear keener to let minor annoyances or concerns go."

Dove sono finite le scrittrici italiane?

Colleghi italiani!

Ho scritto un brano per un sito Web, Literary Hub, il quale parla di libri e il mondo delle lettere. Per precisare, intendo: il mio brano è dedicato al mondo di lettere italiane!

E quel brano pone una domanda importante: dove sono finite le scrittrici italiane più importanti?

(In inglese: "Where are the great Italian women writers? Jeanne Bonner visits the Salone del Libro to look beyond Ferrante." Quell'ultima parte -- 'oltre Ferrante' -- è importante)

Cioè, esistono le scrittrici brave ma come mai non hanno piu' successo in Italia?

Come mai la maggior parte degli autori su quasi qualsiasi elenco dei libri piu' importanti dell'anno sono uomini?

Con questa domanda in mente, sono partita per il Salone del Libro a Torino il mese scorso -- alla ricerca, appunto, delle scrittrici italiane.

L'articolo l'ho scritto in inglese, ma qui voglio fare un piccolo riassunto.

Nel brano cito alcuni esperti, comprese Loredana Lipperini e Tiziana De Rogatis, le quali hanno partecipato ad un incontro durante il Salone dedicato ai libri di Elena Ferrante.

E durante la discussione, è saltato fuori qualche commento che mi ha colpito molto.

Tipo: In Italia "pesa lo sguardo dei maschi nei confronti delle scrittrici."

La Lipperini ha aggiunto che Elsa Morante, riconosciuta ora come una delle scrittrici piu' importanti del secolo scorso e della letteratura italiana, "venne accusata di sentimentalismo" quando le sue opere furono appena uscite.

De Rogatis invece ha messo fuoco sul fatto che quando si parla di un protagonista di una prospettiva cosidetto 'universale,' in Italia più che altro, si parla di un protagonista maschio.

Puo' essere una sfumatura innocente ma quali sono le conseguenze per le lettrici? Dove lascia le lettrici (e lettori) che cercano protagoniste che rispecchiano la vita da donna?

Per precisare, De Rogatis ha fatto questo commento su "I giorni dell'abandono" di Ferrante, ad esempio, "Ho provato delle emozioni enormi."

E certo!
 
 La Lipperini ha detto che all'estero "è consueto parlare del genere," ma della possibilita' di parlarne in Italia? Nulla da fare. O perlomeno, c'è ne meno entusiasmo -- e meno collaborazione.

Dopo la discussione, ho intervistato De Rogatis, e lei mi ha detto che certo, le cose stanno cambiando un po', con lo spunto della Ferrante, ma è "un processo piu' lento in Italia."

Ha aggiunto che c'è ancora "una casta maschile" letteraria e academica che si occupa del settore dei libri (che lo gestisce).

Insomma, ha detto, c'è "ancora strada da fare."

Inoltre vorrei accennarvi un brano che ho citato diverse volte nel mio articolo per Literary Hub: "Maschilismo e letteratura, cosi ci perdiamo noi uomini?" L'ha scritto Luigi Spagnol per Il Libraio e pone una domanda importante che ben o male solamente uno scrittore maschio potrebbe porre.

E non solamente quella domanda. C'è anche questo: "Perche' ci ostiniamo a non voler leggere il mondo attraverso, anche attraverso, gli occhi di grandissime artiste che hanno l'unico difetto di appartenere a un sesso diverso dal nostro?"

Poi lui controlla i vincitori di tutti i premi più importanti letterari. Indovinate un po' che ne vince la maggior parte?!

Io ho aggiunto un'altra cosa al mio brano per Literary Hub: E' da 2003 che una scrittrice non vince il premio Strega!

Si che le cose stanno cambiando. Basta dare un'occhiata alla cinquina per il premio Campiello (comprese Alessandra Sarchi e Laura Pugno -- che bello!).

Ma come ha detto Tiziano De Rogatis al Salone del Libro, c'è ancora molto strada da fare.

Vi invito di dare un'occhiata al questo mio articolo (potete trovarlo qui) -- e fatevi sentire!

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What I bought in Italy -- Italian trip diary (2017)

Summary for this post? How about: What you buy in Italy when you're an Italophile, traveling mainly for the nostalgia, with the sure knowledge that the things you really want to purchase are mainly found at the supermarket, the newsstand, the bancarella of used books under the portico by the church, et al.

Or as I've said before, my favorite souvenirs are my receipts -- a trail of all the good places to eat, drink, read books and browse other wares that I found along the way. And of course, Italian receipts, like everything else in Italy, are slightly different than American receipts. (Printed on a slippery paper stock, and imprinted with the shop logo in a way that you'd like to make a t-shirt from one.)

What's in the picture? Oh the usual:

*Lots of Caffe Kimbo (which actually comes from Naples but which luckily can now be found throughout Italy (and online), yay, thank ya Jesus);
*Italian biscotti because, really, you just have to have what they have; we have not mastered the art of the Italian biscotto, when we're talking about the breakfast cookies they dip in their coffee
*Lots of copies of Bell'Italia magazine;
*Fancy schmancy chocolates from Venchy's outpost at the main Torino train station;
*A copy of Dylan Dog, the seminal Italian fantasy comic, for Il Nostro Inviato, aka Mike, who I think didn't even knew how great a gift it was;

*And, of course, a few new Moka coffee pots from the fantastic Bialetti home store in Torino because really I cannot have enough of them (I have one stashed at my mother's, one stashed at Mike's sister's house, and it's helpful to have a travel model to bring along on trips....you get the picture).

It used to be that one of the best parts of the post-trip ruminations was taking this "group picture" of acquisti (I even wrote about it for Catapult!).

Now it might just be having "someone" model items that you bought! Like a super cool Milano jacket for my super cool Leonardo (Milan is an important city for a guy named Leonardo, after all!).

Italian trip 2017: photo-a-day #10 Parole italiane

Best of Italy: parole italiane. Italian words. Any Italian words. All Italian words.

In this case, it's a two-fer. A sign commemorating the 150th birthday of the Italian daily La Stampa in Piazza Castello in Torino.

Not my paper, but what of it? I'm a newspaper lover from way back. So I love that this sign marries two sides of my life: the news business and the Italian language business (as it were).

Il Futuro E' Quotidiano. Literally: The future is daily. Bello, proprio bello.

Italian trip 2017: photo-a-day #9 Room with view

My room with a view -- at a friend's house in Florence during my trip to Italy last month.

(Was it really last month, already?)

The view? Well, I see the hills outside of the city in the background and the gorgeous garden of the Four Seasons Hotel in the foreground.

I see orange tiled roofs and greenery. I see Mediterranean sunlight.

I see and hear Italy: the birds chirping, the clatter of utensils as someone sets the table, the distinctive whir of the carabinieri vehicles.

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Italian trip 2017: photo-a-day #8 ... Caffe + dog

They love their cafes in Turin, they love their coffee and I guess they love their dogs.

Snapped at Caffe Vittorio Veneto two weeks ago, as I embarked on one of my countless early morning marathon strolls.

The Vittorio Veneto is considered one of the city's historic coffee bars. It's also, I note for early risers like myself, one of the few in the Piazza Castello/Via Po area of Torino that opens at 6.

I drink coffee first thing, without exception! So does the signora in the picture -- who also apparently walks the dog first thing.

Cheers!

Italian trip 2017: photo-a-day #7 Hiking Pistoia!

I want to say the highlight of my trip to Italy last month was hiking with my friend, Giovanni! Talking about forest cleansing.

How can that greenery be real? Oh but it is. Where we went -- the mountains outside of Pistoia -- well, I would not be able to re-trace my steps easily but that's the whole point.

Let the Italians take me where they want!

Which Italians? These Italians. These super awesome Italians. Mille grazie Veronica e Giovanni!

Italian trip 2017: photo-a-day #6 Crazy dry cleaner

Lots of stops when I return to Italy, and most are of a very personal kind of tourism. Like checking to see if "the crazy dry cleaner" is still in business.

Suffice it to say, he is (or at least his business hasn't -- yet -- been replaced by another "snack stop" for tourists).

Phew! For a moment -- I mistook the block -- I thought he'd closed.

He was our dry cleaner when we lived in Florence -- his shop is located just around the corner from our old apartment, near Piazza Santa Croce.

Italian trip 2017: photo-a-day #5 Torino courtyard

Will someone tell me if I've failed so far to make the case that Torino is astonishingly beautiful?

That hidden treasures await you?

What do they do in this courtyard? Who lives in this gorgeous building? Whose days begin looking out of that window at the grassy little field in the center of the courtyard?

To be sure, all Italian cities are riddled with tiny hidden courtyards -- but the key is "hidden." One rarely sees them. In Turin, just turn your head while heading down Via Po toward the river or Via Roma toward the station. They're there. They sometimes even house businesses like florists.

One can imagine someone wheeling into the cortile on a bike, gleefully putting an end to the commute (such as it were) by hopping off the bike and sniffing the air, with a premonition about dinner...I have a premonition that I may never return to Torino, if only because it seems almost ridiculously lucky to get two chances to explore such a wonderful city! More to come.

Italian trip 2017: photo-a-day -- #4 Fresh peas!

Just follow them. Go where they go, do what they say, ask questions but don't obstruct.

Those are my unspoken rules for being with Italian friends. It was a strategy that when I was a student in Siena reaped such travel gold that I insisted on going to live in Italy full-time. My Senesi friends took me to places that I could probably never find again -- some abandoned castle in Vescovado di Murlo, thermal baths in Southern Tuscany, a discoteque all'aperta out by a small airport in the countryside.

When I was in Italy last week, I had the chance to go hiking with my friends Giovanni and Veronica and again, they took me to a place that I could probably never find again. Two places, in fact. The second, in the low mountain range outside of Pistoia, that was so silent, so remote and hidden, that I felt as if my footsteps were trampling over the footsteps of the ancient Romans who'd sown the path. No tourist signs, no official place to park where you fed money into slot. Just the most intense greenery I've seen in a long time, and a serenity befitting the Buddhist converts who have taken refuge in this corner of Tuscany.

Oh and of course after you hike (or really do anything in Italy), you eat. In our case, a tiny restaurant in an old mill beside a stream (where else would they have put a mill?) where the waitress read out the menu, which is to say, read out the menu in her mind. We left a small window by our table open so we could hear the babbling creek below us.

We were hungry so we had pretty much everything, including these fresh peas (stunningly good) and a swiss chard involtino filled with baby veggies, plus I had the fresh pasta with a ragu of rabbit (don't tell Leo!).

Buon appetito!

Italian trip 2017: photo-a-day -- #3 Fiori!

Sure, we have flower boxes in our windows, too, in America but they never look like this! What exactly is the Signora feeding these flowers in Milan that they look like something you'd bring to a wedding?!

I became obsessed with window flower boxes during my last trip in Rome when I photographed several in Piazza Navona, and it might even have been the moment I decided to admit (once more) that I had it bad (for Italy) and it wasn't good, to quote the old blues song.

I cannot for the life of me understand why more tourists don't visit Milan. It's stunning beautiful, like any major Italian art city, but also chic and modern!

I had really only a few hours there, before bedding down for the night, and catching my return flight to the US. But I made the most of them, strolling before dinner from my hotel down via Brera into the Brera arts district, where I took this photo, past La Scala (where fancy Milanesi were filing in the famous theater for the 8 p.m. symphony performance), through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele (oh if our malls could look like that), around the Duomo, and then ultimately down Via Orefici and Via Dante toward the Castello Sforzesco. Troppo bello! Especially for a walking enthusiast, such as myself. I basically threaded my way through the city from one pedestrian area/piazza to another.

(I really think American cities could take a page from this book -- we have beautiful buildings in our downtowns, even if they may be abandoned or underused. Can we give people a place to stroll? Can we build some squares? We'd have to contend with the homeless population, but then again, in Milan, you're contending with the strolling vendors who seem to think I need a woven bracelet of the kind I wore when I was 12).

Anyway, to sum up: Cheers to the gardener who lives at this home in Milan! You made my day.