Serenade heard from our balcony in Sirmione

Marching Band in Sirmione at Lake Garda

Italian Internet followup

Fortunately, our hotel in Venice has internet included (most of the places we've stayed have not) so it's given me a chance to waste some time looking into why we've had such poor coverage.

So with a little research it appears Italy passed a law in 2005 requiring anyone providing internet access to collect an identity document from the user. So every hotel, every internet cafe, every place that provides access to customers must collect this information? Why? To increase security and prevent terrorism. Awesome.

Some other enlightened Italian views towards the web are chronicled here: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090504/0148494730.shtml

"In Italy we are one hundred years back"

We have encountered four pretty consistent challenges in our time in Italy. First, the road signs are terrible. In France (with the exception of our first day driving, in Paris), when you drive far enough in a straight line, you’ll eventually find a set of signs that tell you the direction of the next town few towns and the more significant distant ones or you will find a sign that says “Toutes Directions,” which lets you know if you continue driving straight you will find such signs. “Toutes” became an indispensible ally in our quest to get places.

Italy has some concept of Toutes – as we passed through about twenty kilometers of tunnels going from the French Alps down into the Piedmont, direction Turin, we occasionally saw a sign reading, “Tutti di directionze” which, in theory, should perform the same task – get the driver to a useful signpost that can help him or her make a decision. No such luck with the latter, though. The signage in Italy is terrible. One intersection will have clear signs getting us to where we want to go; one intersection later, we’re left to just figure it out. As a sign of Italy’s true randomness, we discover afterwards we guess correctly about half the time.

While in Alba, leaving our charming B&B to head to Barolo for some wine tasting, we drove around the ring road surrounding the town twice looking for a sign pointing to Barolo but seeing nothing. Driving through roundabout after roundabout looking at the signs pointing to every destination nearby but Barolo, we realize in a pique of clarity there’s a small chance that the one roundabout without any signs to other towns might be the one we need to get to our destination. Third time around, we choose the roundabout, only to see a sign for Barolo about 500 meters beyond the roundabout. This has been altogether too common an occurrence.

In Italy, many towns have signs with white bulls eyes directing a driver to the city center. These signs are immensely helpful, when they actually work. Unfortunately, all too often the signs are only deployed at every other intersection, requiring a guess at any diverging road without a sign. Again, the 50% rule. We have tried to get into Verona twice now, and the inconsistent centro signs have foiled us both times, adding twenty or so minutes to our travel as we reverse and try again. And, occasionally, again.

Our second challenge has less to do specifically with Italy than it has to do with the inconsistencies of the European Union. When I picked up my car in Paris, the Hertz attendant was very clear to tell me the car can only take Sans Plomb 95 or 98. Nothing else. As long as we were in France, our first 1700 kilometers were fine. Once we crossed into Italy, it all changed. No Sans Plomb 95 or 98 were available. No Sans Plomb at all. Whereas France had one choice for diesel, Italy has two. They have only one unleaded, and it bears nothing in common with the French term.

Banking is similar. In France, it was easy to find banks, particularly those of my bank, HSBC. Italy, true to an Economist article I read a year or so ago, is severely underbanked. Finding ATMs has been difficult and HSBC isn’t even allowed to engage in personal banking in Italy, even though they have branches in many small towns just across the border.

Our fourth problem has been in getting information. We eventually make it to the Verona tourist office, no thanks to Frommers, which lists it on the side of the Roman arena opposite from where it is – curse you Andrew Murphy, the terrible cartographer of our book. Tara goes up to the help desk and asks, as it says in our book to do, for information about the Veneto wine regions. She pulls out a map of Veneto and circles three areas near Verona, saying we can find wines from each of those areas. Tara asks, “so we just go there and its obvious where we can taste?” She says of course. We turn to walk out and I ask for the Frommers book. I take it back to the counter, flipping it to where it discusses the wine region and tasting and say, “in my book it says you should have a list of wineries that allow tasting. Do you have such a thing?” The person behind the desk looks at me for a moment then turns to go to a cabinet of neatly stacked pamphlets, maps, and brochures, digging through them to find us two items – a map specifically of Valpolicella and a second map, by Italian Touring, of all the wineries that allow public tasting. I thank them and, as Tara and I start walking to the door, we start giggling – of course we could get the information we needed, once we showed we knew exactly what we wanted them to give us.

And finally, the internet is almost impossible to find. We located one open wifi spot in all of downtown Alba. In France, Tara would have her iPod Touch or I would have my iPhone open searching for open connections if we needed to look something up; the list of networks would sometimes be a dozen long. Even if most or all of them were locked, France was using wifi. Not so in Italy. Walking through Milan performing the same technique, it was rare to find even one locked wifi connection. Thankfully our hotel had (flaky) access. And to get that, we needed to give them a copy of our passports; in return we received the network’s WEP key and a unique username and password that expired after ten hours of use.

After leaving the Verona tourist office and making two grocery stops where we could not locate an electric hot water kettle, we finally make it to an internet point, a small café about 2 km outside of Sirmione. We go in and ask if they have WiFi. No. Can I connect my computer to their internet connection? No. He walks us to the back to two computers that were likely manufactured before the dot com bust and asks if we want to use one or two of them. Just one. He asks us for identification – preferably a passport. Tara digs through her purse and gives him both of our passports. “With one computer, I only need one passport.” As Tara was loading up Firefox, I asked the barista why every time we sign onto the internet, everyone takes it so seriously, often asking for copies of our passports.

“What year is it, 2009? In Italy we are one hundred years back … before Christ. Do you know what I mean by this?”

All this pretty much sums up our Italy experience so far.

A chicken on the way to Burgundy

After leaving our “gypsy caravan” in Versailles behind, we made our way onto the highway, heading west towards Fontainebleau then south towards Lyon. Though our day-trip to Chartres and back technically saw our little Peugeot challenge the highway, it was really when we merged onto the A6 that this really began to feel like a European road trip.

I’m shifting gears and weaving through highway traffic while Tara is browsing our Burgundy and Rhone Valley travel book, trying to get a sense of what we can do on the drive. The book mentions a town called Sens, describing it as a picturesque medieval town with a nice Gothic cathedral. Tara knows I have a weakness for cathedrals, so we figure out what exit we have to take and head to downtown Sens.

We arrive near the town center and park next to the tourism office. It’s Sunday, about 11:30, so that’s closed and we know there’s a chance the cathedral is in mass. However, Tara tells me there’s a Les Halles in the town and it’s near the cathedral, so we chance it and start walking up to the town square.

The almost-deserted town square.

The 20 feet high wooden doors to the cathedral are shut tightly. A few restaurant owners are setting up outdoor seating in the square in front of the cathedral, with maybe 5 older men sitting by themselves wearing fisherman hats sipping espressos or beers, seemingly waiting for their families to emerge from the mass. Tara has an anxious determination to get out of the square before we figure out what to do next, but I’m just looking up in wide-eyed wonder. No building in my line of sight can be less than 200 years old; most of them look like pieces are nearly medieval. Even the pharmacy, the neon green cross, is in a building made of stone and wood that might easily be found in a medieval recreation.

We make our way through the square, past some buildings, where we find the Les Halles, the indoor food market, which too is shut. It’s only open Tuesday through Saturday. Making our way back to the square, we sit inside one of the restaurants – inside, because after hitting a high of 85 degrees during our first week in Paris, it has steadily dropped to the low 60s of that day and all Tara packed was a light sweater.

Tara and I order espressos – Lavazza, an Italian brand I hadn’t seen advertised yet. As we sit, sipping our coffee, the church bells begin to chime – it’s now noon. The doors to the church swing open and throngs – actual throngs – of people emerge. We settle our bill and head over to the door where maybe three hundred people come out of the cathedral to the sound of the triumphant organ – the miracles of mass are complete.

After most of the attendants leave, we entered through the large doorframe, the organist still vigorously playing her tune. Slowly walking down one side of the arcade, it occurred to me I might not have encountered a real mass since college. The air was somehow more charged than I remember. The bishop – I recognized the white frock with red accents – said his good-byes to many attendees he clearly knew, or at least recognized. We saw several families come in to the cathedral with babies and children dressed in elaborate white dresses – the bishop might be christening this afternoon too.

Before I could ask Tara if we could watch, she leads me back to the square. On our earlier walk, before the coffee, we had passed a butcher with an especially inviting selection of rotisserie chickens. Before we entered the church, we had already decided to return to the butcher to buy a chicken and eat it at the next rest stop. We returned to the butcher to now find a line eight deep, many just emerged from the service. Two of the rotisserie racks were missing – they were behind the counter, next to the awards and certifications the butcher had been awarded. The line is slow – the elderly woman at the front is ordering small cuts of many kinds of meats. But one by one, each person places his or her order, the butcher patiently fulfills it before acknowledging the next customer.

One woman requests a small game hen – all the whole poultry we’ve seen so far looks as if it had just been plucked – so he takes the hen, lights a Bunsen burner behind him on a counter, and sears the last of the feather ends off the bird. Another person orders a rotisserie chicken “with juice”. He takes a jar, walks over to the rotisserie, and ladles the juice and fat at the bottom of the machine into the jar.

The chickens on the rack are AOC chickens - Appellation d'origine contrôlée – which is to say they’re a particular chicken with a regional certification (think Champagne) such that only chickens raised in a particular way and from a particular place can truly be called Bresse.

We finally get to order a chicken – 15.70 euros for the whole thing – that he packs into a double-thick wax paper rotisserie chicken bag. We quickly make our way back to the car, hop onto the highway, and stop at the first exit we can find. We sit at a picnic table with a knife, half a baguette, and an open wax paper bag devouring the parts while the wind whips around us, trying to blow everything away. Amazing!

The Best Pizza Truck in Briancon

After a picture perfect day in in the Alps - hiking, thermal baths, a wildflower walk - we were starving. Fancy French food (i.e. - the only cuisine available at our hotel) would not satisfy, I wanted pizza. Yes, I was hit hard with a craving for pizza. Despite the fact that we will be in ITALY tomorrow morning, I needed pizza for dinner. We drove off in the direction of the largest town around keeping our eyes peeled not just for a pizza place but for a pizza place that was actually open in the sleepy pre-summer season valley. As we descended into Briancon, there it was like a beacon - the Pizza Truck. After a moment's hesitation we turned into the parking lot and went up to the truck's window to place an order. We selected the grande chorizo pie and sat to wait while the pizza maker tossed the fresh dough and slid our pizza into his tiny oven built into the front window of the truck. Ten minutes later a steaming, delicious pizza pie emerged. Ahhh. 

Puppets in Lyon

The highlight of our stop in Lyon was a 2.5 hour walking tour of the old city. Towards the end of the tour we encountered puppets partying in the streets - apparently the town's puppet museum had just reopened after TEN YEARS of renovations. It was awesome to see everyone dancing and cheering with the puppets. 

La Monastille

The road twisted and turned in the green rolling hills as we zoomed deeper into the Burgundian countryside. After a few wrong turns we finally pulled up to Francoise Moine’s bed & breakfast in an18th century house in a small village (well, not exactly a village – its more like a clump of houses at a crossroads).  Francoise opened the door with a smile; good smells of cooking food and an active fireplace wafted out behind her. After being shown to our cute yellow bedroom in the old stone house, we settled in for three nights. The highlights of our stay with Francoise were the dinners at her long wooden dining table. The first night we were the only guests who were a) Not French b) Under the age of 65. Thus, we attracted a lot of curious attention as our fellow diners tried to understand why two young people from bustling Manhattan wanted to vacation in the middle of nowhere in the French countryside, where the only noise in the still air was a mooing cow. Two of the six spoke English well enough to relay the rapid fire questions from the rest of the group and translate our answers– we covered everything from if we voted for Obama to if we ate ducks in the US to what wine we intended to purchase in Burgundy. As Francoise served the cheese course she asked us how many cheeses we have in the US and shared a bon mot from Charles de Gaulle about the abundance of French cheese varieties: “How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese?” Staying with Francoise was so special because it was a taste of what life is like in Burgundy and a more personal glimpse of a French home. It was sad to leave…and we can’t wait to return.

Chartres

The labyrinth painted on the floor of the cathedral in Chartres was, for me, the most memorable part of our visit to this gothic masterpiece. The spiritual meaning has been lost over the centuries; in fact, the labyrinths that were once common in Gothic cathedrals have mostly been destroyed.  It was striking to see all of the people walking the maze in intense concentration. I watched for awhile trying to discern their motivation – tourists quickly pacing through the legendary 11 circuits, two young women walking meditatively in bare feet while pausing at each bend, the man standing still in a shaft of light, his eyes closed and his palms raised up. Everyone was experiencing something different yet powerful by following the painted lines. Leaving the cathedral to finish our drive to Versailles, I was warmed and touched by this simple display of people finding meaning in the Chartres labyrinth. 

The French internet was down

So since we left Paris, traveling to Varsailles and through Burgundy and Beaujolais down to Lyon in the Rhone, none of the places we’ve stayed have had internet. Since both Tara and I have grown accustomed to just-in-time information, this has been a difficult thing to adjust to. We have been walking around towns, waving my iphone in wifi mode around trying to find an open network that didn’t require a password or account to use. This has led us to standing outside hotels, tourist offices and, in one case, a kindergarten – receiving puzzled looks from parents as they dropped off or picked up their children.

But fortunately, we still have our stories - which will now get posted, a bit out of order.

"no poulet pour vous"

While Paris has allowed us to experience some incredible restaurants, among our favorite ways to eat lunch and early dinner here has been to visit bakeries, food stores, and butchers to acquire what we need to assemble food ourselves. Our local bakery Av la Motte Picquet has seven different prepared sandwiches on that-morning baked baguettes ready for us to take on any of our daily adventures. On Rue Cler a shop specializes in servicing the lunch crowd with poulet, sausage, or boudin noir sandwiches and a side of frites, if you are so inclined. The too-many-to-catalog little gourmet stores have pate and prepared salads (fennel and goat cheese, roasted eggplant) available in little containers, just enough for two to share. Many of the butchers have rotisseries in their shop – rotisseries where the drippings from the rotating chickens fall on small fingerling potatoes at the bottom of the machine.

So it has been that when we have not gone out for incredible well-prepared dinners we have eaten at home or picnic style at one of the many gardens and lawns throughout Paris. Our second day in the city we walked past a butcher on Boulevard Saint-Germain shortly after noon, a butcher that had a rotisserie where the chicken meat looked like it was completely independent of the bones, it was so tender. We rushed in and bought a chicken – 15 euros – and ran it home, devouring it before taking a nap.

We have talked about this chicken almost daily since. Tonight, after exploring the old, windy streets and red light district on Monmarte for nearly six hours, we decided a chicken – a full rotisserie poulet – would pair nicely with a Provencal rose we had been saving and should be enjoyed this evening in front of the Eiffel Tower, on a lawn where hundreds of French students seem to gather every night to enjoy one another’s company over food and drink, watching the glitter of the Eiffel Tower as it performs a light show every hour from 10 PM onward.

But after six hours of walking Tara is tired and hot, so e decide to head home. We arrive shortly before 6 PM and, as Tara gets comfortable at home, I get ready to head over to this little boucherie, J Fournier at 256 Boulevard Saint-Germain. Walking down, all I can think about is the succulent, seasoned chicken and an éclair we had eaten somewhere nearby on the way to the Rodin museum about a week before. We didn’t know it at the time, but that coffee flavored éclair might have been the best we have had so far in Paris.

I arrived at J Fournier around 6:30, about an hour before they close. There is one more chicken in the rotisserie. Pay dirt! I get on line – 5 deep – and wait expectantly to ask for “un poulet.” But it is not meant to be. At 50ish year old woman, baguette in hand, points to the rotisserie and says the words that end my quest, “un poulette, s'il vous plait.” I don’t even wait – I turn around and leave the store.

It occurred to me on the way home that such an incident is unlikely to occur in the US. Most stores would stock enough chickens to be sure everyone who wanted one could buy one, even if that meant having leftover at the end of the day. It ensures no one is unhappy, because saying “we’re out of that right now” is something most shopkeepers hate to tell their customers. The Parisians, at least the ones we’ve encountered to date, are less … bothered in delivering that news. At restaurants, clothing stores, and even butchers, they’re all too ready to create situations where they will have to say, “sorry we’re out of that.” In short, in the US they’d say, “here’s your chicken.” In Paris, I am more likely to hear, “no poulet pour vous.”

It would be easy to say, “why don’t they just make more chickens?” But, based on the taste of the one we were lucky enough to purchase, that would not be sustainable. The butchers prepare a certain number of chickens to meet the needs of the people who can’t cook without it dominating their main business of cutting up meat to sell. The rotisserie is a small corner convenience sitting in an odd corner that would likely be otherwise unused. There are enough chickens in the rotisserie for the butcher – that I couldn’t get one is just a factor of getting there too late.

With nothing to show for my walk, I start retracing my steps from there to the Rodin museum, certain I can find the boulangerie that sold us that transcendent éclair not just a week ago. After walking up one street, down another, and up again a third, I find it. And they still have eclairs. And baguettes that look terrifically crispy even from 8 feet. I happily use the 5 words of French I know, relying on gestures and the LED of the cash register to assist with the barrage of words I don’t understand. Handing over 3 euro 50, I walk out with an a single piece of wax paper folded into a bag around my éclair and holding another piece of wax paper wrapped around the middle of a baguette.