Jersey Shore, Italy

Maria, our Persian hostess at Hostel Lodi here in Rome, where Sean and I are rounding out our Italian tour, played this song for us when we told her we just had a day at Ostia Beach, Rome's answer to the Jersey Shore. Cabanas, deck chairs, card games, big umbrellas, outdoor showers, concession stands, and leathery octogenarias in speedos and bikinis passing shirtless musclebound guidos (real Italian guidos!) and slack-pantied young girls along the waterline, a triumph of Italian humanity on parade before the eager eyes of two incredulous, giddy Americans. Our "deck beds" were perched just a few yards back from the water where all the action was happening. An ecstatic young boy playing with his toy car in the sand under the watchful, patient eye of his silver-haired, paunch-bellied and shirtless granddad; a young girl walking backward along the shore, very slowly, with eyes closed, so as not, it seems, to turn her back on the sun; a large, large woman of indeterminate age with breasts spreading from chin to to waist and arm to arm tucked, just barely, into an ample tent of a bikini top. I could go on. It was literally spectacular. And the water was fine.

This was our gift to ourselves after glutting on museums and ruins and crowds, a fine way to ease out of Italy and in to a US state of mind, which will be tomorrow's project. We awake at 7 am and catch the Leonardo di Vinci airport train at Termini Stazione at either 8:52 or 9:22, catch our first flight at 12:10, our second in Munich at 3:40, and our third in Montreal at 8 pm (EST), landing at LAX, knock on wood, at 10:50 pm. We will try not to sleep on the flights so we will be utterly exhausted when we hit our pillows somewhere around 1 am, more than 24 hours after starting. It is funny, to say the least, to sit here in Rome at 10:15 pm knowing that my sense of time will be scrambled beyond telling in a matter of hours, and that, by Wednesday, I have to be back in LA mode, prepping for classes, et al. Bizarre is a word.

Our trip back to Rome from Florence went without incident, an easy train ride marked only by the anomaly of being offered an espresso from an actual Illy espresso cart pushed by a train steward, complete with espresso machine perched on top, ready to whip up a doppio for the asking. At Ostia today, we half expected to see a cabana boy slinging espresso at the shoreline. But no. Just schlock hockers.

I am exhausted from the sun. My next words about this adventure will be spoken in person. This blog will resume when I next find myself abroad. For now, ciao.

A nice wild boar's head reduction

Siena is famous for its wild boars, both in the forests and on your plate. Walking around the walled medieval city, along lanes paved unevenly with large smooth stones shadowed by pockmarked, contiguous brick walls, it isn't uncommon to see a stuffed boar's head, with or without spectacles and other accoutrements, hanging like a sign outside the door of your friendly neighbo(a)rhood butcher shop.


















Sienese butcher, depleted tourist.

It became a running joke between Sean and I, when we arrived in the old city on our bikes, that what we really needed to nourish us back to mental and physical equilibrium after 9 hours in the saddle (66 miles of pavement and 44oo feet of vineyarded and forested hills) was a nice boar's head reduction, a fantastical elixir derived from simmering a famous Sienese boar's head in a cauldron for at least 2 days, letting the meat, fat, and cartilage, not to mention the eyes and brain, dissolve into a uniform gelatinous sauce to be poured over everything we eat: pasta, bread, vegetables, coffee, you name it. If this little flight of fancy doesn't give you a sense of the lunacy that followed our grueling, life-altering adventure on two wheels, nothing will. Not even these pictures:













25 miles and one long climb in, Dudda, Italy.













Above breathtaking Lucolena, Italy, after our hardest climb, the 30th mile or so. The forests up there remind me of Santa Cruz.













Vineyards, vineyards everywhere, and not a drop to drink! No but really, there were tasting rooms everywhere. Wine, however, was the last thing on my mind. Water! Somewhere around the 40 mile mark.













Ca. 40 mile mark, with plenty to go.













The home stretch, sunflowers and sunbeams and bumblebees (not visible, though they were enormous), a few miles outside of Pianella, Italy, 10 miles from Siena, give or take.

I have neither the time nor the wordsmithy to adequately write about the ride in any detail. I will say this: we confirmed yet again how difficult it is to stay on the route as planned. Italy just doesn't provide the traveler with very good signage. What road is this? Your guess is as good as mine. Just keep your eye out for a name you recognize and go thataway. When we arrived in Greve in Chianti, I knew something was amiss. We weren't supposed to arrive in Greve. We were supposed to skirt it in the hills to the east. Having learned that the piazzas are the place to get water and info and other essentials, we rolled into a fairly large specimen and located the informazione office, now closed for siesta (of course). But in Italy almost everyone is approachable and forthcoming with helpful answers, and we duly discovered that the next left turn up the main drag would take us, steeply and windingly, into the hill town of Dudda, and hence back to the route as planned.

But then I had an accident.

In the piazza, I failed yet again to get my cleat in the pedal in time to avoid a pair of pedestrians trending toward my path and I fell over, breaking my cleat and essentially hobbling me for the rest of the ride, unless I could find a replacement. And as these things go, we had spied a bike shop on the other end of the piazza, which surely would have replacements, right? Well, they too were closed for siesta, and just as I was cursing my fate and my clumsiness, the proprietress comes back and unlocks the door, and hearing me lament my misfortune, informs me that yes she is now open but no she does not have anything that "specialized" (her shop sells mainly bike-related clothing and other non-mechanical items). Woe is me! But wait! There is a bona fide bike shop just down the road called Something-uzzi or -azzi, and this is something they are more likely to carry. So we ride very slowly down the main street with eyes peeled for bikes in window displays or on the sidewalk but find nothing. We split up and reunite with only disappointing news. Then Sean asks a local. The shop is down that side street near the creek. We check. There it is (with no signage)! Closed for siesta. Hell, we're hungry anyway so we find a cafe (The Jolly Cafe) around the corner and eat what might be one of the five best meals of our trip. My caprese (yes I ate mozzarella) was so fresh I could taste the cow, and Sean's rigatoni was world class. It had some kind of coconut milk/porcini/red pepper sauce that blew my mind. We have both sworn to try our hands, respectively, at this miracle of flavor.

Our repast over, we returned to the bike shop, bought replacement cleats, screwed the right one on, and headed up, and up, and up. The next 45 miles seemed, in retrospect, to take place over several days. A different stage of experience came with each bend in the road; a new day dawned with each unfolding vista. We suffered, we rejoiced. I saw 2 young deer bound across the road in a blink. Unidentified little black insects with yellow spotted wings seemed to rule the ecosystem up there. They were like butterflies but smaller, and more like dragonflies in shape. Primeval forests heavy with moss and creepers sprang up after miles of vineyards. Just indescribable beauty. It came in snapshots, those pockets of relief from the pain in my legs and lungs when the road would relax its punishing grade for a minute or two. I found that within seconds of recovering normal respiration, I would instantly be floored by the sights and sounds and smells around me. More often than not this inevitably gave way to more punishment, but reward just as likely would follow again, and the so the cycle (no pun intended) went.

We thought the descent into Siena would be just that: a descent. And until we reached the perimeter of the city, it mostly was. But once we made that right turn toward our hostel, we faced another 4 km climb, this time in mad traffic with dangerously low blood sugar. I was incensed. Sean was woozy. Rage fueled me all the way to the Soggiorno Lo Stellino on Via Fiorentina, 4 kms. outside of the city center. I don't know how Sean made it. Sheer will power no doubt. We checked in, utterly depleted and sweaty and jittery from hunger and exertion, climbed the two flights (!) of stairs to our room, carrying the bikes on our shoulders, showered, and immediately began the hunt for food. Our host recommended the pizzeria a few doors down, and we went. I drank a half liter jug of red wine and gorged on bruschetta, green minestrone, and penne arrabiata, and returned to life. It was an unbelievable feast, and our waiter reminded me of Ducky from Pretty in Pink, but Italian. We ate there again the next night, had the same waiter, and feasted just as royally. We were regulars. The other tables were full of locals, many with small children playing with their glasses and their pasta and pizza. It was very pleasant. I loved it there. I'd go back to Siena just to eat there.

Tomorrow I'll post some photos of the city, but I think I've already mentioned my favorite thing about Siena, aside from the ride there.

What, no koozie?

The title of this post refers to my incredulousness at the paucity of koozies in the Old World. And by paucity I mean total absence. How am I properly to commemorate my Grand Tour (Part Due) without a koozie emblazoned with an image of Botticelli's Birth of Venus (witnessed in all its stunning freshness this morning at the Galleria degli Ufizzi), or Giambologna's huge-buttocked Oceanus, or at the very least, a begging Roman gypsy? The Duomo? No koozies. The Ufizzi? No koozies. The Colosseum? No koozies. The countless sidewalk vendors hocking their landfill-fated schlock? No koozies. The navel of Western civilization? I spoke prematurely.

But I digress. It has become a running joke between me and, well, me, to pronounce in a voice as shocked and offended as I can muster as we pass a museum gift shop or merchant's stall, "What, no koozie?!" It's probably not funny. It isn't funny. But I say it anyway. That's what I do. I repeat unfunny things until the sheer repetition begins to border on funny.

Speaking of funny, the feeling in my legs and back and other parts not to be named after riding my rented Willier Triestina full carbon racing bike, with Sean on an identical steed beside me (unless he was in front of me or behind me), through the hills in and around Florence, Sieci, Montefiesole, Rufina, Castiglioni, Borselli, and Pontassieve for 7 hours in 95 degree heat yesterday is a kind of funny. Not a bad kind either, but unusual. Neither of us had ever ridden distances, elevations, or durations so much as approaching the 50.77 miles (81.71 kms) and 3110 feet (947.92 meters) of climbing we squeezed out of our undertrained, overexcited bodies. I don't think I can explain in any detail the thoughts that went through my head, because aside from "this is beautiful!" and "I am in such pain!" relatively little went through my head. Stopping at the occasional, timely water spout, which in Italy are ubiquitous, and in the higher elevations, ice cold and clean, unlike any water I've drank, Sean and I would share a look that said, "Are we really here? Are we really doing this?" Sometimes we would say the words aloud, but there was really no need. To that effect, here are some photos to do my speaking for me, although the proverbial thousand words that each picture speaks fall far short of the experience. (Those of you who are reading this will hear more from me in person after I have had more time to process the experience. Plus, we are riding another 50 miles to Siena tomorrow, where we will be staying for 2 nights, most likely exploring some of the country down there by bike as well.)

The riders, day 1, above Olmo, Italy.

Action photo, day 1, Adam climbing the Tuscan hills toward Polcanto, Italy.

Injured by a banana, day 1, somewhere on the Via Faentina, Italy.

Much needed rest stop, day 1, Polcanto, Italy.

Last espresso and slash before descent back into Florence, day 1, Molinaccio, Italy.

Beside the Arno, hot as blazes, day 2, Sieci, Italy.

First climb of day 2, vineyards and villa above Sieci, Italy.

Windmill at top of first climb, day 2, Montefiesole, Italy.

First descent, day 2, below Montefiesole, above Rufina, Italy (in background).

God-sent cold water spigot near a chiesa on a very long, hot climb, Castiglione, Italy.

Much needed break, Castiglione, Italy.

A small slice of shade, Castiglione, Italy.

The chiesa, Castiglione, Italy. Many more kms. of climbing ahead of us.

Map of ride 2: Florence, Rufina, Castiglione, Rimaggio, Borselli (the blessed top of the climb), Pontassieve, and back.

A graph of ride 2: elevation in meters on the left, distance in kilometers on the bottom.

Tomorrow, we do much the same as yesterday, but this time we make a straight line instead of a circle, from Florence to Siena:

51 miles, 4200 feet of climbing, and 2 days in an ancient city with only the barest of essentials, just what we can carry comfortably on our backs. We take the train back on Saturday, when I will resume this record of our two-wheeled adventure in time and space, on new roads through old countryside. No dragons or unicorns yet, but here's hoping.

What would you give for a falafel and some epic statuary?

I awoke the next morning at 8 am to the diminutive beeping of my wristwatch alarm and pretended for 45 minutes that this was my apartment, and this was my morning routine, and this was my life, showering, dressing, putting on the moka pot, and preparing for a day's work. Morning bells from a nearby chiesa rang their tinny song, a sound as old and unchanged as the layers of ruins still lying beneath the streets of Rome, yet to be unearthed.

We heard something like this every morning, afternoon, and evening, on the hour.

It baffles the modern American mind how anyone as modern and progressive as the Europeans undoubtedly are can tred their battletorn, bloodsoaked palimpsest streets without constantly thinking about the next stratum of history that will inevitably overlay their own. Probably, they perform the same mental maneuver that Los Angelinos perform when forgetting the immanent Big One that is already rumbling beneath our feet.

John Cabot University, where the International Conference of the Henry James Society is being held this year, and where I was scheduled to give a paper on James's Roderick Hudson yesterday morning, is situated on a small street called the Via della Lungara running below and parallel to the riverfront avenue (the Lungotevere), about a 10 minute walk from Via della Luce, 16, my beloved temporary home. Ever punctual, I arrived with plenty of time to spare, which I mostly used to sip espresso and mourn the loss of a tiny screw that held the left arm of my sunglasses to the frame. I have since jerryrigged a replacement out of a staple, bent and twisted to hold the arm loosely in the joint without stabbing me in the eye or face. But this will not do for our rides, which begin tomorrow. I have inquired in two different ottici (optical shops), neither able to help me. I may buy a cheap pair from a street vendor near the train station, unless I can find one of those stretchy bands to fix them snugly to my face. Very fashionable.

At John Cabot, I was the second to go. I read the thing, fielded a couple of questions, spoke with one admirer of my paper at length afterward, he offering to publish my paper or a longer version of it in the Revue française d’études américaines, a peer-reviewed French journal of American studies, and me flattered and accepting his offer. Then I cut out of there, into the blazing sun reflecting off of the cobbles and bricks and travertine of the sunken street, hurrying back to the apartment to meet up with Sean. Part of me wishes I had factored more time into our itinerary to spend at the conference because there were at least 2 other panels I would have liked to see, and it would have been nice to have more face time among my peers. Because I now actually feel like one of their peers. But alas, when in Rome, do as Rome demands, and see as much of it as you can before boarding your train for Florence. To that effect, Sean and I properly took in Trastevere, venturing off our now well-trod immediate neighborhood and up along the narrowing cobblestone alleys into the hills overlooking all of Rome. There is a forest up there, and beyond it is the terracotta immensity of the Eternal City, laid out like brocaded sea of domes and campaniles and basilicas and arches and slanting rooftops, and beyond that lay the hills, and to the west, the Mediterranean (not visible through the haze of the afternoon heat and humidity).

I do believe I have the vapors, Janiculum Hill, Trastevere, Rome.

View of Rome from Janiculum Hill, Trastevere, Rome.

On the way back down, we stopped in at the Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere. I'll let the photos speak for me this time:

The altar, Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.

The frescoed ceiling, Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.

The wall-mounted organ, Basilica di Santa Maria in Trastevere, Rome.

Back at the apartment, we met with our temporary landlord, who for some unaccountable reason Sean calls Silvestre, which is not his name, and although I could easily look at the business card he handed us on the first day to determine what his name in fact is, I do not. The name has stuck. We get out deposit back, give the keys to Silvestre, learn that the A/C, which we thought was busted, is not in fact busted but simply on the wrong setting, which with all of our futzing with the remote we never discovered, and say arrivederci to Via della Luce, 16, shedding a single tear (inside) as we shuffled down the uneven pavement to the main street to catch a cab to Stazione Terminale, where we deposit our bags in the high security bag deposit room (EU$4 per bag), grab a falafel (one of the few reliably vegan, and reliably delicious, alimentary options available in Rome, where it seems only in the proximity of the train station can one find a meal that does not involve pasta, pizza, gelato, or carni), retrieve our bags, take some shots of the human variety clustered on the platforms, board car 9, grab a Birra Moretti (me) and a doppio (Sean) from the concession car (6 cars down), listen to Schubert, Liszt, and Debussey (me), read the New Yorker (Sean), write a little (me), sleep a little (Sean), watch the scene turn greener and hillier, and arrive in Florence an hour and fifteen minutes later, a little beat but very happy to be on the cusp of the real reason we came here, to do the thing that inspired us to travel all these miles, to ride, to ride, and to ride some more.

Our apartment is very close to the train station, and thus, as I mentioned a minute ago, the neighborhood is replete with falafel shops. In fact, there are three just below our window, which overlooks the truly prodigious Mercato Centrale, the one-stop shop for all things vegetable, mineral, and animal (mostly animal: pics forthcoming). Not only that, but just down the narrow, Vespa-congested viale lies a miracle within a miracle, Il Dolce Vegan: baked goods (pasti), pizzas, pig-nose focaccia rolls, and a full menu of contorni, primi, and secondi (dishes for all seasons, including lasagna) with not an animal product to be had for the asking. Sean discovered this gem, and needless to say we hit it our first morning.

Il Dolce Vegan apple danish, dopio, and very popular Ray Ban aviators, which it seems are handed out to Italians at birth, so I guess Sean must be Italian, Florence, Italy.

Thanks to Sean's generally superlative research skills, we learned to avoid the Duomo and the Uffizi in the morning and early afternoon, opting instead to take in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, which is housed in what appears to be a medieval campanile (clock tower) and church, and which is supposed to be a "second-class" museum in Florence. I guess compared to the Uffizi, which we have yet to see, and which by all accounts is unimpeachable, the Bargello is second-class, but my god! Why have I never heard of Bartolomeo Ammannati? Or Badinello? Or Giambologna? Aside from the exaggerated buttocks, Giambologna's Oceanus, in the open-air gallery of the Bargello, crushes all art from the 17th C on between its enormous, exaggerated marble ass.

"Look upon my cheeks, ye mighty, and despair!" Giambologna's Oceanus, Bargello Museum, Florence.

Giambologna's Jason and the Golden Fleece, Bargello Museum, Florence.

The Bargello also houses Donatello's famous black marble David, in case you were wondering where you can see it. I especially like his old school carabinieri's hat (I didn't get a photo because Sean had the camera and was in a different gallery, but you can google it, and you should). I also had a quick nap in a chair in the high-ceilinged gallery where they keep the Donatellos.

After the Borgello, a drink at a local cafe. Then to the Duomo, where we waited in line in the brutal late afternoon sun for a half an hour of heat that could soften steel and were quickly chastened for our sweaty cynicism when, dodging Chinese women selling shawls to immorally outfitted European girls in short shorts and tank tops, we entered the vertiginous womb of the church. No tour of Brunelleschi's famous dome, alas, as it was Sunday and they close it off on Sundays. The cathedral is immense and sparse compared to the others I have seen, but no less edifying in its cool enormity. Thankfully, the campanile was open for business, and EU$6 later we began our spiral ascent to the bellfry, squeezing against the cold stone walls to allow descending tourists to pass, each of us hugging our particular swatch of rounded corner to make as much room for traffic in the ever narrowing nautilus as possible. At each loggia, we took a look over the edge,

High on the Campanile, Duomo, Florence. The sky of Florence reminds me of LA's pristine blue, with its cloud here and cloud there and all but unbroken azure for league upon league.

We befriended a Japanese traveler named Kaito, with whom Sean rapped in Nihongo (Japanese) for a few minutes after we took each other's pictures.

The walk down built up our momentum for the walk home, and ten minutes later we were enjoying a falafel and relaxing before a walk to the Arno River for some people watching and dusk-bathing.

View of the Ponte Vecchio, the shoppingest bridge in the world, from the Ponte Alle Grazie, Florence.

Dark descended, and we were hungry again. Sean took some shots of window displays in the very ritzy streets near the river (Feragamo, Prado, Gucci, et al.) and we called it a night, embracing the thought that tomorrow, we'd be mashing the hills of Tuscany.

First ride: Florence, Fiesole, Polcanto, Olmo, Florence: 34 miles, 3200 feet of climbing.

To be continued...