Monthly Archives: September 2009

Tuscany to Venice

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Tuscany to Venice
Our time in Tuscany coming to an end (sad face), we made the drive from where we were staying in Radda in Chianti to Venice.  The first several days of driving through Italy weren’t completely terrible, but I was definitely ready to be done with the car.  I’d had enough of driving windy roads through mountains.
You don’t need a blow by blow of our drive, so here are a few little tidbits that I found interesting.
Driving on small country roads in the mountains requires constant concentration and gets very tedious after a while.  Driving on a freeway in the Italian mountains requires a completely different kind of concentration.  It’s the kind that requires you to concentrate on the bends in the road while simultaneously not getting killed by the trucks that are required to go slower in the right lane and the BMW and Mercedes drivers in the left lane who take the speed limit as only a suggestion.
While we’re on the topic, the idea of a speed limit in Italy is funny.  Even on the craziest curvy roads Italians were going well beyond the posted speed suggestion.  You could always tell when there was a non-Italian tourist driving because we were the ones with the trail of cars backed up behind us.  Thankfully, passing zones were only a suggestion as well, because I got passed all the time, even in the middle of turns.
Despite the inherent insanity in most Italian drivers, they surprised me as incredibly courteous whenever I needed to get over in their lane.  They would often slow down to let me over; something unheard of on American roads.
Best rest stop food I ever had was in Italy.  Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like much, but the sandwiches we had at the Jersey Turnpike-like fuel and food stop were better than sandwiches you would get at many delis in the US.
Well, my driving adventure in Italy is completed., for now.  I say for now because I would go back to Tuscany in a heartbeat.  Absolutely loved it.  I definitely think their could be an anniversary trip to Tuscany in our future one day.  I hope someone has a merit badge or an “I survived driving in Italy” t-shirt waiting for me back home.

Our time in Tuscany coming to an end (sad face), we made the drive from where we were staying in Radda in Chianti to Venice.  The first several days of driving through Italy weren’t completely terrible, but I was definitely ready to be done with the car.  I’d had enough of driving windy roads through mountains with crazy Italian drivers.

You don’t need a blow by blow of our drive, so here are a few little tidbits that I found interesting about driving on Italian freeways and in Italy in general.

Driving on small country roads in the mountains requires constant concentration and gets very tedious after a while.  Driving on a freeway in the Italian mountains requires a completely different kind of concentration.  It’s the kind that requires you to concentrate on the bends in the road while simultaneously not getting killed by the trucks that are required to go slower in the right lane and the BMW and Mercedes drivers in the left lane who take the speed limit as only a suggestion.

While we’re on the topic, the idea of a speed limit in Italy is funny.  Even on the craziest curvy roads Italians were going well beyond the posted speed suggestion.  You could always tell when there was a non-Italian tourist driving because we were the ones with the trail of cars backed up behind us.  Thankfully, passing zones were only a suggestion as well, because I got passed all the time, even in the middle of turns.

Despite the inherent insanity in most Italian drivers, they surprised me as incredibly courteous whenever I needed to get over in their lane.  They would often slow down to let me over; something unheard of on American roads.

Best rest stop food I ever had was in Italy.  Yeah, that doesn’t really sound like much, but the sandwiches we had at the Jersey Turnpike-like fuel and food stop were better than sandwiches you would get at many delis in the US.

Well, my driving adventure in Italy is completed, for now.  I say for now because I would go back to Tuscany in a heartbeat.  Absolutely loved it.  I definitely think their could be an anniversary trip to Tuscany in our future one day.  I hope someone has a merit badge or an “I survived driving in Italy” t-shirt waiting for me back home.

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Siena

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Those of you that know me well know that I’m already back home from the honeymoon. Even though I didn’t have Internets access all the time, I kept what essentially equates to a travel journal most nights when we got back to the hotel. So everyone can share in our experiences while in Italy and Switzerland I’m going to continue posting my thoughts from the end of each day. This is the first of the rest of those posts.

Today was a little more simple than our previous days.  We headed down to one of the other more well known cities in Tuscany, Siena.  I had heard very positive things about Siena from friends before our trip, but I really didn’t know what to expect.

Getting to Siena was pretty easy, but figuring out where the parking lots were was kind of a pain.  In Italy, you can generally can get directed to parking lots by following the blue “P” signs.  The only problem is that the signs don’t always differentiate between a large lot and street parking reserved for residents of the neighborhood.  Let’s just say the situation resulted in an unexpected tour of less interesting parts of Siena.

Once we got the parking situation sorted out, we set out into the city.   While the visit was really enjoyable, there wasn’t a ton to go into in detail so I’ll just hit on a couple of the more interesting points.

We started with a visit to the home of and church dedicated to one of the many St. Catherines, this one living in Siena.  The church was pretty huge with some really interesting chapel areas, but the most noteworthy (and sort of creepy) thing was the fact that they had St. Catherine’s mummified head in the church.  We weren’t able to find the English language literature behind the story, but there it was.  And she’s still revered there, as there was, what I assume was a local, praying fervently to her.

One of the guide books we’ve been using is the “Top 10” series where they tell you the top 10 things overall and in certain categories about a region or city your visiting.  A couple of the overall top 10s for the Tuscany region were the piazza and duomo in Siena and I now know why.  The piazza is a pretty simple open area, but it’s the biggest in Tuscany, maybe Italy and it’s a fantastic place to go hang out.  Lots of merchants and restaurants around the outside edge.  There’s also a really nice fountain that sits on one side for more viewing interest.  Generally, it would be a cool place to go grab a quick bite or some gelato and hang and out and people watch.

The Duomo may have ascended to the most impressive church that we’ve seen on this trip.  Its humongous and there is so much to look at that you have a hard time taking it all in.  Really ornate alters, an amazing ceiling, a very unique set of columns that support the roof that is striped with different colored marble stones, and a series of 59 artistic tiles adorning the floor.  I don’t really think I could do a suitable job of explaining it in words so I’ll post some pictures as soon as I can get them in shape to be posted.

Overall, the visit to Siena was a really nice one.  The city is really interesting to look at as you wander through the narrow streets.  The other major drawback besides the difficulties of parking is that the city is extremely hilly so if you visit, wear good shoes and be ready for the up and down.

We had sort of a slow day today.  A combination of a late start and earlier closing times on Sunday resulted in a less filled schedule.  We headed down to one of the other more well known cities in Tuscany, Siena.  I had heard very positive things about Siena from friends before our trip, but I really didn’t know what to expect.
Getting to Siena was pretty, but figuring out where the parking lots were was kind of a pain.  In Italy, you can generally can get directed to parking lots by following the blue “P” signs.  The only problem is that the signs don’t always differentiate between a large lot and street parking reserved for residents of the neighborhood.
Once we got the parking situation sorted out, we set out into the city.   While the visit was really enjoyable, there wasn’t a ton to go into in detail so I’ll just hit on a couple of the more interesting points.
We started with a visit to the home of and church dedicated to one of the many St. Catherines, this one living in Siena.  The church was pretty huge with some really interesting chapel areas, but the most noteworthy (and sort of creepy) thing about the visit to these locations was the fact that they had St. Catherine’s mummified head in the church.  We weren’t able to find the English language literature behind the story, but there it was.  And she’s still revered there, as there was, what I assume was a local, praying fervently to her.
One of the guide books we’ve been using is the “Top 10” series where they tell you the top 10 things overall and in certain categories about a region or city your visiting.  A couple of the overall top 10s for the Tuscany region were the piazza and duomo in Siena and I now know why.  The piazza is a pretty simple open area, but it’s the biggest in Tuscany, maybe Italy and it’s a fantastic place to go hang out.  Lots of merchants and restaurants around the outside edge.  There’s also a really nice fountain that sits on one side for more viewing interest.  Generally, it would be a cool place to go grab a quick bite or some gelato and hang and out and people watch.
The Duomo may have ascended to the most impressive church that we’ve seen on this trip.  Its humongous and there is so much to look at that you have a hard time taking it all in.  Really ornate alters, an amazing ceiling, a very unique set of columns that support the roof that is striped with different colored marble stones, and a series of 59 artistic tiles adorning the floor.  I don’t really think I could do a suitable job of explaining it in words so I’ll post some pictures as soon as I can get them in some shape to be posted.
Overall, the visit to Siena was a really nice one.  The city is really interesting to look at as you wander through the narrow streets.  The other major drawback besides the difficulties of parking is that the city is extremely hilly so if you visit, wear good shoes and be ready for the up and downWe had sort of a slow day today.  A combination of a late start and earlier closing times on Sunday resulted in a less filled schedule.  We headed down to one of the other more well known cities in Tuscany, Siena.  I had heard very positive things about Siena from friends before our trip, but I really didn’t know what to expect.
Getting to Siena was pretty, but figuring out where the parking lots were was kind of a pain.  In Italy, you can generally can get directed to parking lots by following the blue “P” signs.  The only problem is that the signs don’t always differentiate between a large lot and street parking reserved for residents of the neighborhood.
Once we got the parking situation sorted out, we set out into the city.   While the visit was really enjoyable, there wasn’t a ton to go into in detail so I’ll just hit on a couple of the more interesting points.
We started with a visit to the home of and church dedicated to one of the many St. Catherines, this one living in Siena.  The church was pretty huge with some really interesting chapel areas, but the most noteworthy (and sort of creepy) thing about the visit to these locations was the fact that they had St. Catherine’s mummified head in the church.  We weren’t able to find the English language literature behind the story, but there it was.  And she’s still revered there, as there was, what I assume was a local, praying fervently to her.
One of the guide books we’ve been using is the “Top 10” series where they tell you the top 10 things overall and in certain categories about a region or city your visiting.  A couple of the overall top 10s for the Tuscany region were the piazza and duomo in Siena and I now know why.  The piazza is a pretty simple open area, but it’s the biggest in Tuscany, maybe Italy and it’s a fantastic place to go hang out.  Lots of merchants and restaurants around the outside edge.  There’s also a really nice fountain that sits on one side for more viewing interest.  Generally, it would be a cool place to go grab a quick bite or some gelato and hang and out and people watch.
The Duomo may have ascended to the most impressive church that we’ve seen on this trip.  Its humongous and there is so much to look at that you have a hard time taking it all in.  Really ornate alters, an amazing ceiling, a very unique set of columns that support the roof that is striped with different colored marble stones, and a series of 59 artistic tiles adorning the floor.  I don’t really think I could do a suitable job of explaining it in words so I’ll post some pictures as soon as I can get them in some shape to be posted.
Overall, the visit to Siena was a really nice one.  The city is really interesting to look at as you wander through the narrow streets.  The other major drawback besides the difficulties of parking is that the city is extremely hilly so if you visit, wear good shoes and be ready for the up and down.

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Gaiole, Meleto and Brolio

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Though the day didn’t turn out like we had anticipated, Cris and I agreed it was the best day of the trip so far. We set out looking for vineyards to tour and wines to taste. We ended up finding a bit more and a little less than we’d hoped.

First let me say that navigating the Tuscan countryside is not for the directionally challenged. Addresses aren’t exactly the easiest to come by for some of these sort of remote places and some maps are better than others.

So armed with two maps and a GPS we set off and promptly went in a directions we shouldn’t have gone in to try to find what we were looking for. We’re blaming that on the brochure that said the vineyard was in Gaiole when it wasn’t. So we drove to the town and found no winery, but we did find a local cycling race and a small wine shop that sold us a bottle of wine from the vineyard we were actually trying to find, but couldn’t. After watching the beginning of the bike race and buying some berries from a little produce stand in town we set off the find Castello Meleto.

We were told by the desk at our hotel that they give tours regularly on the weekends and that no reservation was needed. Shocker, women like to get married in old castles with amazing scenery as a backdrop. Little tip if you’re going to visit Meleto on a Saturday call ahead to see if anyone is getting married there that day. When we got they we were told the three o’clock tour we were planning to take was in doubt because they were dealing with a 200 person wedding. After sitting in their little shop for a while trying to plan our next move, much to our delight, the lady came back and told us they could squeeze us in for a very quick tour before they got really busy with the wedding.

The castle was small but interesting and had some beautiful artwork on the walls and ceilings. The most interesting aspect of the castle was that a theater was built into the complex which was really unusual for a medieval castle.

Beyond the building, they grounds and surrounding area were completely stunning. I will definitely post some pictures when we get back home, but if you had given me a glass of wine and a hammock, I may never have left. We also did a quick tasting of their wines and came away with a couple of bottles of their classic Chianti as part of the fee for the tour.

After leaving Meleto, we headed for a another castle not too far away for another tour and tasting. Castello Brolio has a couple claims to fame. It is the birthplace of classic chianti, and the count/owner of Brolio set the standards for the mix of grapes for chianti that is still used today. In my opinion, the most interesting fact about the castle is that since being purchased from an order of monks in the 1400s it has been with the same family, which still lives there today. Though the family still lives there, they allow self-guided tours around the walls, gardens, and family chapel. The chapel was small, but beautiful and had some incredible mosaics inside. The true highlight of Brolio was the view. The scenery from the walls of the castle may have been the most stunning I’ve seen. When I imagine Tuscany in my mind, the view from Brolio is what I pictured.

By the time we finished with the Brolio tour it was starting to get late in the day so we headed back towards our hotel. Earlier while at Meleto we figured out where the first vineyard we wanted to fine was and it happened to be on the way back to our home base, so we headed that direction. After a nice drive on Tuscany’s lovely winding roads, we came to the “driveway” for the vineyard. It was one of the unpaved roads we had been warned about by our hotel front desk. Imagine some of the most ridiculous climbs they make in the Tour de France and then make that road unpaved and rutted. The incline was ridiculous and it wound through a tiny, tiny hamlet on the side of a mountain. And then, when we get to the gate it was closed. And I don’t mean closed for the day closed. It looked like there was a chain on the gate that may not have been open for a little while. With nothing else to do, we precariously turned the car around and headed home.

Despite the small setback it was a really awesome day. We got to taste some great wine. We happened upon a few completely unexpected treasures. And we got to see some of the most amazing scenery I’ve ever come across. Exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for when we decided to come to Italy.

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Volterra and San Gimignano

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Our travels today took us to Volterra and San Gimignano. These two communities are small towns in the Tuscan countryside that were perched up on hills for defensive purposes. Being that they are hill towns, the views of the surrounding countryside are truly beautiful, but getting this view takes some work. From my perspective, the work is worth it.

They both are historic little towns with a rustic feel, though they in many ways survive on the tourism trade these days. Narrow brick streets wind through centuries old buildings, many of them containing artisan shops, tratorias, and gelatarias.

Volterra is famous for Etruscans and alabaster. The Etruscans were an ancient civilizations dating back to BC times and there have been some significant archeological discoveries near the town. You can also look down from the city walls at the ruins of an ancient Roman theater just outside the city. Cris quickly fell in love with the alabaster shops, especially when they had the alabaster lit up and glowing. Volterran artisans are famous for working the often white stone into vases, bowls and a variety of other items. As a memento of our visit we bought a small alabaster vase to remind us of our time there.

San Gimignano, also known as the “medieval Manhattan,” is more well known for the centuries old towers that make up its skyline. At one point it had over 70 towers and now fourteen still stand. One is still available to go up to the top to get an amazing view of the surrounding countryside. I also really enjoyed the two central squares in the town where a lot of the visitors mill about. One of the more, we’ll say, interesting parts of the trip was the torture museum. Neither Cris or I can figure out why she wanted to visit this museum except for some strange holdover from law school and confronting questions on the legalities of torture.

Possibly, one of my favorite parts about our visit there is the main church, which dates from the 11th century and most of the artwork dates from the 1400s. The artwork was my favorite part of the church. On the top section of one wall it told the story of the birth of Christ from the time the angels came to Mary to the adoration of the kings and shepherds. On the bottom section of the same wall, with the panels ordered in the opposite chronology, the story of the crucifixion was told from the last supper to the resurrection.

On the day I collected a significant number of photos and Cris made some serious progress in the postcard department.

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Our Days in Florence

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So today was our last day in Florence and we drove down to our hotel in Tuscany. My thoughts on Florence.

Unfortunately, both Cris and I agree that Florence was a little underwhelming. From my perspective, I feel like I’m comparing everything we see to Amsterdam, which may be my favorite city we’ve ever visited. Florence is definitely a beautiful city with a great deal of history to appreciate. One thing that stuck out in my mind were the extremely old streets “paved” with large stones fit together, which trumped the cobblestone streets of the old towns in the US. Very, very old world.

In a weird sort of way, Florence is most beautiful when viewed from a distance. The times when we were able to stand at a higher point in the city and look at it with a landscape view is when it really shown. The walk up 463 steps to the top of the Duomo dome was completely worth it as that might have been the best view that we saw while we were there. There were a couple of other places where the vistas were truly impressive, like when we went to the Boboli Gardens and looked back at the Duomo from there.

The problem with Florence comes when you look at it a little closer. For a city that old with as much history, you would think that its citizens would have much more consideration and pride for it. The city is kind of dirty with graffiti everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere; even on some of the oldest, most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen. It was really quite sad to see. There was also a serious dog feces problem there. Before we went to Amsterdam we heard from multiple people that there was dog pooh everywhere, but never saw any. Don’t hear anything about it in Florence, and it was everywhere to the point where you have to constantly look down while you walk, and take care not to get hit by a car or scooter when you step off the sidewalk to dodge it.

I also didn’t have the best vibe from the people there. I always felt like someone was trying to sell me something or get me to come into their restaurant to buy their food. And it wasn’t as if they were saying, “come in here so you can eat good food.” They were simply saying “come eat in here so I can make a buck.” No warmth or welcome, but just buy crap from us. Its sort of funny because I felt like the Italians in Florence had the sort of arrogance that the French are always stereotyped as having. It also sat a little poorly with me that every single Italian guy we passed looked Cris up and down in a completely obvious way. I’m usually not very territorial when it comes to her, but when you’re trying to have a nice romantic honeymoon in Italy and every Italian dude you pass is trying to undress your new wife with his eyes, it makes it a little difficult. Cris thinks I’m overreacting, but she wasn’t paying attention.

Other random bits I didn’t like about Florence. All of the museums charged a decent sum (18 eruo or almost $25 dollars per person) and none of them took credit cards, which is annoying. The Galleria Academia, which is where Michealangelo’s David is, is way overrated and exists solely for the purpose of displaying the David, which really is impressive by the way. The Uffizi, which is the premier museum in Florence, was disappointing in comparison to the National Gallery in London or the Muse de Orsay in Paris. If you’re a premier museum, you shouldn’t have your paintings arranged so that people have a hard time viewing them because of glare from the lights on the paintings. That’s just amateur crap.

Some positives from our time in Florence. I really did like the David and I was much more impressed with it than the Mona Lisa. As Lewis Black says, Jesus is real big in Italy and the most beautiful example of this adoration is the Chiesa Santo Spirito. Completely unassuming from the outside, the inside is truly beautiful with a lot of religious paintings around the walls and an incredibly ornate alter area. The Palazzo Pitti, where the Medici, family used to live, is really an incredible place. We lucked into and loved the private free tour of the royal apartments and the royal bathrooms. They also had a costume museum that had Italian clothes from the Medici family on, that Cris really dug. And lastly, Cris was thoroughly pleased with her find of a gelateria that had 71 different flavors of geleto. For Cris, gelato is happiness in a cup…or cone.

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Wedding Weekend Whirlwind

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Okay, so the last week or so has been a complete whirlwind. I left DC last Wednesday for Missouri where we took care of the final preparations for the wedding. Headed up to St. Louis on Friday to pick up tuxes and spend a little time with my family, who were starting to come into town. Um, the rest of it is sort of a blur. I know we had an awesome rehearsal dinner at Fleming’s. My mom put together some really nice decorations for the room there and my sister and brother-in-law put together a really incredible little video of pictures of Cris and I through the years and they interviewed our friends and family and mixed that in.

I’m really glad that we’re going to have a lot of photos from the wedding days because I felt a little like I was driving through a small town and I blinked. What I do remember is that the weather really cooperated with us and gave us a beautiful day, we had excellent food, music, and cake at the reception, and Cris looked perfect. I don’t think I really could have asked for much more. We also stayed in a really nice B&B on the wedding night and had a great breakfast in the morning.

The blur continued starting our honeymoon. Our travel plans took us from St. Louis back through DC to Frankfurt to Florence. Despite leaving almost 45 minutes late from St. Louis, we were able to run, literally, and catch our plane in DC and made our red-eye to Frankfurt. The Frankfurt airport might be one of the stranger and yet most efficient flying experiences I’ve ever had. Even though it was a huge plane for a trans-Atlantic flight, we disembarked onto the tarmac where we were greeted by a shuttle for our transfer to our regional flight to Florence.

Since we were entering the EU we had to go through passport control. The shuttle wound through what looked to be a really big airport complex directly to the door for passport control where our armed “guide” walked us in and then out after our passports were checked. We walked out the door straight back to our shuttle which drove us straight to our gate and then after we went through the gate, our shuttle drove us straight to our plane on the tarmac again. As Cris put it, it was a funny play about German efficiency.

Our arrival in Florence was pretty uneventful. The airport in Florence is very small and easy to navigate. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel and after getting our things set in our hotel room, we set out to start exploring the city.

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WC Qualifying: US 2-1 El Salvador

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It was essential for the US to get a win tonight in Salt Lake City, and we came through with a pretty solid performance. Generally speaking, I would say we played well. Our attack was able to create several very good chances, even beyond the goals we scored, and we were able to possess the ball much better than we have in past matches.

Usually, our most dependable aspect of our game, our defense, wasn’t up to the quality of our more recent performances. Part of that is obviously due to the absence of Oguchi Onyewu, who will be back Wednesday after serving a one match suspension for yellow card accumulation during qualifying. Chad Marshall was a serviceable stand in for Onyewu and the injured Demerit, but his lack of experience at the international level showed from time to time.

The most problematic aspect of our defensive game tonight was our ability to clear the ball out of the box. Jonathon Bornstein’s failure to solidly clear the ball led directly to El Salvador’s goal, and the clearance problems continued for others through the rest of the match.

On the subject of Bornstein, I think he’ll be one of the first sent to the bench once other defenders are well enough to play again. One of the most worrying problems with Bornstein is his defensive positioning. Too often there is a significant amount of space for long balls played over the top that outside attackers are able to run on to and cross the ball into the box. Additionally, his offensive abilities are also clearly lacking. Though his lack of crossing ability is concerning, the bigger issue is his penchant for giving the ball away in our own half. He doesn’t appear to have the poise or confidence on the ball to calmly bring it down and find the feet of one of our central midfielders when we’re trying to transition from defense to offense.

In a bit of a departure from the norm, our attack tonight was solid and lively. The combination of Michael Bradley and Benny Feilhaber was a little more attack minded than Bob Bradley usually ops for, but it fit this match and worked well. Dempsey played well and Donovan has clearly found his best position at outside midfield instead of striker.

Donovan has been able to settle into a position at midfield because we have finally found a pair of strikers that are able to both help create and finish goals. Altidore got on to the end of an excellent cross that he put away and simply put, Charlie Davies is the real deal. Its hard for me to single out what I like about Davies right now, because it’s pretty much everything. His physically abilities are obvious, but his intangibles are the source of his success right now. He has exceptional anticipation of where the ball is going to go and he creates chances from that. He also uses every bit of his strength to play bigger than his size and he never gives up on a play. If he continues to improve like he has over the last year, he will fully establish himself as our top offensive threat.

Qualifying continues for the US Wednesday in Trinidad and Tobago. T&T sits in last place in qualifying, but this cycle has already shown that there are no easy road games in CONCACAF, and with the top four teams all within a point of each other every game is a must win.

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The Return of College Football

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I sit here writing this post watching the first college football game of the year, and the world is a better place than it was yesterday.

Though the teams are completely irrelevant, NC State is playing South Carolina and its freaking great. I love pretty much everything about college football. Even the teams I hate I love because I love to hate them. (Florida and Miami) Well okay, I just hate USC, but there a special case and its not really their fault the media still wants to have their babies.

I love the competition, I love the pageantry, I love the rivalries, I love the bowl games, I love arguing about the bowl games, I love… I think you get the idea.

And now that its half-time, I’m reminded how much I love College Gameday and its total goofiness. Best pre-game, post-game, and half-time show in sports.

Okay, its time to get back to basking in the glory and watching the game.

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