Day Trip From Rome Due

I don't want to brag, but have you noticed how awesome my Italian is becoming? Because that word in the title is not due as in the the bill is due, it's due* as in I can count to ten(dieci!) in Italian. Sometimes I can count to 16, but I usually get tripped up around 17 because it switches from the number being in front of the dici to being behind the dici and I'm all, Really? I'm already trying to pretend the alphabet doesn't have  j, k, w, x, y, and z in it. Can't we keep the numbers in an orderly, straightforward fashion? And I thought maybe they were just a little lax on a complete alphabet, but then I was doing my homework and it was to answer the questions in each section. Section A, Section B, etc..... until it went straight from Section H to Section I. And then I thought my book was missing a page and I was all panicked because I wouldn't have all the answers completed on my homework because I had a faulty book and then I realized, Oh! They are not fooling around. They really do not use J and K. 

* The editor in me is well aware that the due in the title should be italicized because it is a foreign word, but I can't figure out how to do that on my computer, so just pretend it is.

So! An hour outside of Rome, at Canale Monterano,we strapped on our backpacks and spent the day hiking through the gorgeous woods in the Riserva Naturale Monterano. We took Sookie with us, but allowed Stella to curl up on her bed at home because her poor 13 year old hips would not have enjoyed the steep climb and uneven terrain. Two year old Sookie , however, suddenly was one with her terrier blood and she flew through that forest and scrambled up rickety staris and boulders like she was running in a dirt dog competition.

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 It was one of those times that you can't believe you are so close to a major city. It was stunning and surprising and had wild horses and thermal sulfur springs that people think have healing properties and the healing properties that we noticed was that the smell was very close to making us empty the contents of our stomachs, so I guess that's sort of cleansing.

aqueducts

thermal sulfur springs

volcanic rock deposits

lion fountain by Bernini

Day Trips from Rome : Civitta di Bagnoregio

We all love Rome.  There will never come a time when you are lint-rolling the dog hair off of every imaginable surface and bemoaning the lack of activities in the city.  Okay,you may have two small dogs that seem to shed to the point they should be bald, so you might spend an obscene amount of time trying to stop its accumulation. But as for activities, there is always something to do in Rome. 

  However, if you have seen the Coliseum 241 days in a row and you question your desire to make it 242 times, you may want to look outside the center of the city for entertainment. For instance, if you want an experience to which most tourists aren’t privy, head to IKEA on a weekend. You will there witness entire families—grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, the neighbor’s kid and some people they don’t know but who were standing nearby—-  spilling over into every nook and cranny and heatedly debating the merits of the Helg verses the Flytta.

Or you may want to consider somewhere a little less Swedish-meatball-y. And that’s where the day trip comes in. Because not only does Italy have old stuff in Rome, it has old stuff everywhere. If you head out from Rome a mere two hours in any direction, there will be somewhere wondrous to explore.  These photos are of Civitta di Bagnoregio, located 90 minutes from the Coliseum. It’s pretty darn spectacular.

This is...awesome

So yeah. Pope. Election.

But let's discuss the things that directly effect me. My lemon tree  has had green fruit on it for so long that we were pretty sure my faulty Italian had resulted in the purchase of a lime tree. The lemon-lime tree, however, is bearing yellow fruit. Which means it's a lemon tree. Growing on our balcony. AND all three of my pots of cilantro are reaching for the stars like they're on Star Search. If you are too young to remember Star Search, think all the various talent shoes currently on the tee-vee rolled into one. And maybe google Solid Gold with Marilyn McCoo and Dance Fever with Denny Terrio. Prepare to be amazed.

Guess how many of our landlord's couches are currently residing in our home. If you guess NONE, you are correct! After 8 long months, the only furniture in our place belongs to us. Of course, we don't have hot water again, but let's focus on the positive.

I'm taking Italian lessons once more.  No, I'm not doing any better than all the other times I've taken Italian lessons. But that's okay because I still bargained and bought 4 shirts and a sweater at the mercado for under 20 euro. Who needs Italian when you can shake your head sadly and walk away and then get the price you wanted? Plus the Italian guy selling bread at the bakery even told me Italian is a difficult language to learn. And our cleaning lady (yes, we have a cleaning lady. We would be driven out of Italy if we didn't have one. It's just what one does here. And when it Rome...c'mon, just give me that one, it's been a long time since I've utilized that cliche.) is already awesome is so many ways , but now she helps me with my homework. So I clean our toilets. Totally fair trade.

And best of all, we have  found a truly fantastic song that I play heavily on repeat. I gave up swearing for Lent, but just so you are aware and warned, this video and song has BAD words. But it's still ...awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktCWU6R-CNk

guida

Sometimes it's the little things that make you feel like you are surviving just fine in Rome. Maybe it's knowing to always bring change. Maybe it's knowing to check that your metro ticket was properly stamped. Maybe it's knowing that trying to unfold clothing in certain stores will cause an outrage as severe as if you had tried to shove said item into your purse and walk out of the store even if you explain to the clerk that you are a Certified Folder who spent TWO years in the Benetton school of folding program. This may stop them in their tracks and they will ask, "Benetton where? Benetton in Italy?" And when you shamefully admit it was a Benetton in America, they will order you from the premises. Which will be fine because you didn't have the correct change anyway.

What makes me feel like I am surviving just fine in Rome is driving on the "back roads." Anyone can drive on highways.Well, more or less.Okay, sort of. It's the back roads with their unmarked one-way streets and infinite lane possibilities  and lack of laws that make the Wild Wild West look like it was ruled with an iron-fist. This is what makes me feel I'm doing okay. Are you three lanes over but need to make a left hand turn? Not a problem. Is there a car going slowly on a one lane road? Well, heck join the cars passing it on both sides. Red light ahead? Know that nothing short of four cars abreast is going to cut it. And first one there has dibs on what will constitute the lane. Someone honking because you are stuck in traffic? If you don't wave your hand at them in a bah motion, you will ruin their entire day.

I won't exaggerate: I can't text, talk on the phone, smoke a cigarette and read the newspaper while I'm driving. I haven't yet reached that level of Jedi training. But I can drive over the sidewalk to pass another car with the best of them.

La Valle della Caffarella

I love Rome. I really do. But I've spent nearly mumble mumble years living in the country. Country Proper as in a traffic jam is getting stuck behind a tractor and you can tell the season based on which pasture the cows are grazing. So imagine my absolute delight when a lovely new friend took me to a park off the Appia Antica. Not a beautifully manicured picturesque Villa Borghese park, but a hope-you-don't-get-ticks-park. People were tending to their gardens and the earth was so dark and rich and hopeful ; I just wanted grab a hoe and get to work. The sheep meandered with nary a fence in sight, bamboo was growing wherever it could, the streams were clear and babbling. The country girl in my blood was positively singing. You could hear only birds, the air smelled like grass and mud...it was impossible to believe that  that city of Rome was in full swing just ten minutes away.

and meanwhile, in other parts of Rome:

if we can relocate the pair of pants from the bench and find another shoe, we are well on our way to making an entire outfit ! Stay tuned!

boiling water for dummies

Trying to get a handle on this whole cooking thing in Italy is like a baby deer learning to stand. With four hooves tied behind its back.

Most recipes call for garlic in quantities ranging from "a lot"  to "a ton" (still working on my metric system skills). Okay, so I needed garlic. Easy enough. It's Italy. Garlic is a staple. Except that I couldn't find it. Not in any size. I wasn't being all COSTCO/Sam's Club American or anything; , a small jar of minced garlic would have been fine. But it turns out that garlic doesn't come in jars. It grows in the ground, someone picks it, drops it off at the market, and then you are expected to do the rest! It comes in bulbs.Bulbs. Like I was trying to repel a vampire. Unless you believe in  Twilight vampires  and then I guess you have to hang a wolf around your neck.

So I took home these "bulbs." I hadn't the faintest idea what to do with them. It looked like they had some kind of husk on them. So I peeled that off. And then some additional peeling and then I chopped it up a lot. So annoying. My brother-in-law taught me a trick to remove the garlic wrapping but I can't repeat it here because I think it's copy-written.And I asked for a garlic press for Christmas.

And onions! I can't bear to cut onions. The smell is so overpowering that not only do I cry, but I am forced to seal the onion peels in a ziploc bag and put them outside or I'm in sensory overload. And then my lovely grocery store in the States (what's less annoying, calling America "the States" or the "US"?) started selling them in a nice plastic container pre-cut.And from that day on, I vowed to never again cut an onion. If the grocery store didn't have them pre-cut, I just made something different for dinner. Perfs. Italy does not have plastic containers of pre-cut onions. See above paragraph on garlic.

I also now grate my own cheese.It does not come already grated in a plastic bag with a top that you can easily reseal. Sigh.

Because here, God help me, here everything is fresh. (Don't quote me, but I'm starting to think that may factor into why the food in Italy is so amazing.)You make everything from scratch. Unfortunately, our kitchen is barely equipped for the first round of humans that used electricity. I boil water on the stove and make toast in the oven.

My son asked for mashed potatoes and not one of the stores here seemed to have that nice brown box with those flakes that you pour liquid into and they become mashed potatoes. Y'know, like sea monkeys. 

Finally I looked in an American cookbook because my Italian cookbooks are way past those kind of basics and just assume that you have already mastered such things as turning your goat's milk into cheese. My American cookbook is very remedial and assumes that you believe all your food comes in a package and/or through a drive-through window.

Step one was peeling the potatoes. I dug through my drawer of kitchen tools looking for my apple slicer (sort of like a potato peeler, right?) and lo and behold, I discovered that I own my very own  potato peeler! I think my mom must have snuck that in there when she was helping me pack.

And after I peeled the potatoes, I had only to boil them and add milk and butter and mash them and then whip them. And then my son ate them!

So I'm getting there. I haven't burnt a grilled cheese for ages and  even I have to admit my bucatini with amatriciana sauce is decent. And I can still whip together a smuggled-into-Italy box of American Kraft macaroni and cheese like nobody's business.

it's election time up in here

In America, we are partial to supporting political candidates by putting signs in our yard. And along the highway. And pretty much any place there is a spot of soil in which a sign can be shoved. I haven't read any statistical evidence, but my guess is that these signs are more to annoy neighbors and passing motorists than anything else. Was an election ever won or lost based on the amount of signs one had? Does anyone even read these signs?

 I simply can't recall a conversation in which SueBob and I were having coffee and she said, "I have been following the debates and have a chart in my kitchen listing where each candidate stands on the 'issues'. I thought I weighed all of the information and made a decision based on these facts, but then I saw that Cookie Jo had 10 more signs per yard than Big Bird. So I am totally switching my vote."

 

In Italy, or at least in Rome, they are a bit more hard-core. Rome is a very green city , but rather than stick some measly signs in the grass, Rome COMMITS. They jackhammer some holes in the sidewalks and jam in towering metal billboards to display their candidate love.

 Joggers, bikers, dog walkers, families with strollers..everyone does their best to dodge these metal monstrosities, but they are the teensiset bit of an huge pain in the ass inconvenience. And an eyesore.

Finally it was Showtime.<insert jazz hands> 

People appeared, slapped on what seemed to be wallpaper paste, popped on some campaign posters and called it a day.

Now, when one political candidate puts up their slogan in the middle of the sidewalk, what do you think all the other people with their student council posters are going to do?  

In America, the retaliation lawn signs of the opposing political party would probably start sprouting up like rabbits or dandelions (I'm a country girl). Or some well-intentioned teenagers would spend an evening or two driving around and driving through people's yards or on highway medians and mowing down signs. Just good 'ol fashioned, harmless fun.

In Rome, however, the sidewalk only has so many places a hole can be drilled. So more signs are plastered on top of the old signs are plastered on top of the new signs and so on and so on and so on (I think that was a shampoo commercial). And it's winter, which means it's the rainy season. And there is a surprising amount of wind as well. And now our previously beautiful neighborhood looks like this:

I know that there is only so much one can do, but I really hope the graffiti-ers can pretty this up.