In Italy and OLD!

First, pictures here.

Wow, what a wait. Big things happened to me this last month. First off, I went to Italy and toured most of the country for two weeks with Jolene. It was a fantastic trip and along the way I finally turned 30!

I realize most people hate hearing younger people say they are old and I know young people think if you are older than them you are old anyway, but yeah, I'm gonna say it. Now I'm old. Yuck. I hated turning 30 and I hate being 30, but here it is. What can I do? Nothing I guess. Spending my birthday in Italy is probably the best way I could have passed this milestone in my life, so it was as it should be.

How was Italy? It was fantastic of course. Oh the stories I could tell! Uh, you want me to tell them? Well, I've got bad news. I think it's because I'm old now (ha ha, gotta get those in there) I just don't feel like writing as much as I use to. Heck, I didn't write that much to begin with but now it's worse. Maybe it's not so much old as it is lazier. Or maybe I'm just busy. I don't know. I'm moving in less than four months and I've just go so much to do it's overwhelming thinking about it at times. Anyway, I'll get as much of this out as possible, but it's better if we meet up in person over dinner or lunch to talk about my trip. But please, no Italian, I don't like Italian food*!

The beginning of this trip story starts out like so. I told Jolene awhile ago that I had a lot of vacation time, about 60 days or so and she told me she's always wanted to see Italy. These two events combined to create a once in a lifetime opportunity for us. The problem was, much like many people I'm sure, that we'd always say, well this month is bad, lets go next month, or February is no good, the darn Olympics are going on, or I hate you right now and can't stand to be on a plane for 12 hours with you. You know, the small stuff would keep forcing us to put off the trip.

What finally made us go through with it? I'm moving that's what. By March I had accrued 90 days of vacation time and I was leaving my job in October. Not a great idea if you don't want to waste your vacation time. I told Jolene, in April we are going to Italy.

So April rolls around and work is like, you can't take any time off this month, we are too busy. WTF? OK I tell them, I'll stay, but I need the month of May off. They said sure and I rushed home to tell Jolene all about it. First thing we did was email our friends who had just moved to Italy not 7 months ago. We figured it would be good to meet up with English speaking friends before we set off on an adventure of backpacking randomly through a country that neither of us spoke the native language.

Randomly backpacking? Oh yes, did I forget to mention this was one of my trips where I was just planning on taking a back pack, no hotel reservations and no itinerary and just touring the country? It was. Why? Because apparently I'm to lazy to make a damn itinerary, that's why!

Well, April comes and goes and so does the first half of May. We still haven't heard from our friends, nor do we have any hotel/hostel reservations made anywhere. The only things we do have are plane tickets for the 12th and unlimited train tickets for 6 days. I figured we were set. I just need a few things to set the trip up. Good hiking/walking shoes and a big back pack like mountain climbers use. I had everything else we needed, or so I thought...

Here is where I have to stop and say to myself, how could you not even think through things for the first day? My plan was, stay up all night and sleep on the plane. Since Italy was 6 hours ahead of us and the flight so long, we'd be saving the price of our first nights sleep by doing it on the plane! Genius I thought. Apparently I'd forgotten the 720 other times I've flown and hadn't been able to get a good sleep on board. Old people have problems remembering things you see.
Well, what seemed like 40 hours after we were dropped off at BWI by our friend, we arrived in Italy. Sleepy, so very sleepy. As we stumble out of the terminal, with NO clue how to get to the train station (we were winging it, remember?) this red-headed woman and sharply dressed man assault us in Italian and start talking gibberish. After a few dazed moments, I realize it's our friends Nate and Shawn. She's dyed her hair red and I'm suffering from major lack of sleep and I didn't recognize them. After a few moments I realize their gibberish is actually English and a greeting at that. They tell us, not one hour ago they checked their junk mail folder and realized we were on our way that day and they rushed to catch us at the airport. Holy smokes I though, what good luck. What good luck indeed. Our entire trip would be a mixed smack on the cheeks from lady luck. Always the sweet with the bitter!

It turns out my friend Nate was off from work that week and they were both willing to drive us around the town they live in which is near the mountains (I'll post pictures if I get the OK from the family). They were even kind enough to drive us to the top of the mountain closest to their home where we checked out a cool lake and ski resort. At the end of the day, I was falling asleep while trying to talk, so they took us back to their 3 story mansion (OK, it was just a house, but it was awesome) and let us stay the night before we headed out the next day. The awesomeness that was meeting up with them, cannot be put into words by me, so I'll just say this. I'm glad our trip started out as it did.

The next day, Jolene and I headed out on our own (after being kindly dropped off at the train station by Nate) and headed for Milan, but we never got there.

Jolene was smart enough to bring a Lonely Planet Italy guide book (I WON'T travel without one of these again, it enhanced our trip immeasurably) with us and after reading about Milan, we decided Verona would be a much cooler (for us) city to visit, so we head straight there and arrived a few hours later.

I think now would be a good time to remind my friends and inform the random internet readers that I don't like Italian food. I despise the Olive Garden and can barely stand Macaroni Grill. The one place I do like is Bertucci's, and even then, only the pizza. The real problem is I don't like noodles, a major problem when talking about Italian food.

OK, and now I think it would be a good time to tell everyone that Italian food (in Italy) ROCKS! We could not stop eating from morning until night. I was eating about 4 times a day and that does not included the ice cream (Gelato) which I consumed at least once a day, but sometimes two, with multiple scoops each time. There were days where I would eat two or three pizza by myself and then there was the noodles. God the ravioli, spaghetti, rigatoni, all to die for. What the hell happened? I don't know, but it was awesome in Italy. The flavor of everything was a million times better than here and nothing more so than the cheese and tomatoes. I'll say it again, a million times better. This is all I can write about the food in general for you, because you just have to go there yourself to experience it. It was just good and thinking about it won't bring it back for me so I'm trying not to. Just trust me when I say you need to go and eat there. Also, we were walking around with 30 pound back packs on, so luckily for us, we did not gain any weight on this trip. If it wasn't for the walking, I would have easily put on 15-20 pounds. When I get to a city that had a specialty food or dish, I'll mention it and describe our experience with it.

Back to the trip. Verona. The city of lovers I think. They had a Romeo and Juliet house here, with the balcony and the statue of Juliet here that everyone rubs. Of course me and Jolene rubbed it! I even got a picture of myself on Juliet's balcony, which was funny because when I went up there, all the people at the bottom where like, why is there a guy up there, in like nine different languages. I just wanted Jolene to hurry up with the picture taking because it was a little weird. They also had the wall where all the lovers write stuff, we passed on writing anything, but I got a cool picture of Jolene by it.

Verona also has the Roman Arena which to be honest I can't remember anything about except that Jolene took a picture with a guy dressed up as a gladiator and I ate a lot of gelato. Then we headed out of Verona.

After seeing the mushy love stuff that Jolene wanted to check out, I was ready for a man's city. The home of the greatest car company in existence. The home of Ferrari, Maranello Italy.
To get to Maranello, we first headed to the larger city of Modena, of which Maranello is a suburb. The only thing that really interested me about Modena was that a bus could be caught to Maranello from there and that on Sunday's in the summer the great car companies of Italy (Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, etc) would send out some of their newest creations for the public to view. Since we were not there on a Sunday, I was just interested in the bus ticket to Maranello.

We ended up running into a Scottish family who were also going to the Ferrari museum and I struck up a conversation with them. It turned out that the Italian bus drivers were on a some sort of strike (you get that a lot in socialist Europe) and weren't working or something until noon. Not wanting to waste any time, I asked the father of the family if they would like to split a cab with us to Maranello. They seemed like a nice family and they also all talked just like Sean Connery. Even the mom. Penis mightier indeed.

When we arrive to the Ferrari museum, the Scott is nice enough to pick up the tab for the ride out there. It must have been our wrinkly clothing or huge back packs that made him think we were stretching our money. There is no way he could have known how little we make at work!
I thanked him and we hurried into the most expensive musem on the planet. You first enter and are immediatly confronted by the gift shop. This place has awesome T-shirts that have Ferrari embroidered on them with Ferrari seat leather. I would have bought one to show you guys, but at $60 each, they were a tad bit expensive. Then I looked at getting a cap, but for $40, I again had to pass. It looked like I wasn't buying a suvenier from that shop, but no matter because I was more interesed in going inside to look at the cars.

I won't bore you with what was in there (hint, think Ferrari's) because you can just look at some of the pictures I took, but I will mention one Ferrari. The Enzo. Named after Enzo Ferrari, who died in 1988, I believe this is the only street legal F1 car a normal person can buy. And by normal, I mean obscenely super rich normal because the car cost over a million dollars when it was released a few years ago and Ferrari only made 399 of them. They were sold out instantly and there is no way to get one. Here I was standing beside one though. All I can say is, cool moment. Oh, they also had that car that that famous racer won like 4 record breaking world champion ships in, but it just wasn't as cool as the Enzo.

After the cool museum tour, I inquired about a factory tour. They are available I was informed, but the tickets are expensive. About $400,000.00. Sounds a bit high, but remember, you get a free car with it. I thought it over and decided that we should just head back to Modena for dinner.

At dinner, I experience my first great super-joy of Italian food. Up to this point I was really enjoying everything we had to eat, but I hadn't had anything super special yet. Well in Modena that was about to change. Modena is known for their Balsamic Vinegar. Now, I know what you are thinking. BV? Isn't that for salads? Well, yes, yes it is, unless it's BV from Modena. You see, these fine people age their BV in barrels. Anywhere from 3 to 30 years. Is there a difference? Well does my cat shed hair? Yes, oh god yes. We both decided to try meat dishes served Modena style. The meat is marinated and then cooked with a special BV sauce. The taste is so sweet. So delicious. So delectable. So good, I considered buying a $100 (yup, that's a hundred) dollar bottle of BV to bring back. That stuff is pricey there (more expensive the longer it's aged), but damn worth it. Like aged wine, you get what you pay for. Since returning home, I've had some Modena BV, but not being aged it just tastes like normal BV in a fancy bottle. Until you taste the aged stuff, trust me, you have no idea how good it is. I'll say this now, I think that meal was my favorite as far as flavors go the whole trip. You MUST try it out if you are ever in Modena. After eating our fill, we decided to press on.

Next up was a cool little place we heard about called Cinca Terra. What Cinca Terra means (pronounced Chinca Terra) is Five Cities and it's used to describe five incredibly little towns built high on the cliffs of Italy's Western coast. This place sounded to cool to pass up so the decision was made to head there next, but to get there we had to go to La Spezia first.

La Spezia was a cool little navy/port town and had a nice bay. We decided to check out their bay before heading to CT and stopped to get some pictures. It was here that I spotted some old (several hundred years) cannons they had point out toward the sea to protect the city. I told Jolene, hey, why don't you hop up on one of those and I'll get your picture. She seemed to think this was a good idea. Sometimes my ideas seem to make good sense, until you try them out.
When she hopped up on it, the momentum from here huge back pack continued to carry her forward and she was thrown off the cannon faster than I could take the picture. It was a shame to because it would have been a great picture! this resulted in several very black and blue and purple bruised on her legs and ass which made it seemed like I was beating her when no one was looking. It also caused a bunch of Italians who were watching us to start laughing like crazy. To her credit though, Jolene just got up, shook herself off and got back on that cannon.

The Soprano's season finale is about to come one, I'll finish this tomorrow and get the pictures up!

I'm back.

OK, so after La Spezia we got our special passes and headed for Cinca Terra. As we approached the first town, we could tell it was going to be awesome because we started passing some seriously awesome vistas on the way there. Cliffs, mountains, and ocean all greeted us, we thought we'd seen it all. When we finally did arrive though, our breath was taken away, it was incredible.

The towns are built on the edge of the world. The area is magnificent. The citizens of the towns are farmers and through the generations their farming techniques have actually kept the fantastic cities from slipping off the cliffs into the seas below. It really is hard to comprehend unless you see it for yourself, so jump over to the pictures and take a look, you won't be disappointed.

There are many paths that actually go into the mountains here and one that connects all five towns. Jolene and I decided to take this path and it was a five hour trip on foot which we did in two days. This allowed us to see all five towns close up and get familiar with the the cliffs and olive groves first hand. Cinca Terra is know for two major things (other than the fantastic location). Lemons and salty anchovies. I'm a fan of lemons, but not the anchovies. We both decided to put aside our feelings and try out their specialties.

While we were there the annual lemon festival was going on. I must say, that first off, the lemons there are very unique. Not so much sour as super bitter and oval shaped like a football. We tried items from lemon alcohol, lemon candy/chocolate, to lemon marinade. Very unique, but horrible overall, just to darn bitter.

Next up was the salty anchovies. I was scared. I hate anchovies so much, that if someone orders it on half a pizza in America, I can't even eat from the other half because the smell is to strong. I couldn't pass the chance up to try them here though. We decided to order them and give it a shot. We both took a bite of our anchovies on toast and it was hard. It actually tasted like biting into a salt bar with a strong fish flavor. Man, I have to say pass, unless you really like that flavor...

OK, this is turning into a three day process. Check back later for more story. In the meantime, check out the pictures, they don't have captions yet, but at least you can look at them.

Here is the end of it all darn it!

We went to Rome, then Naples, then Florence, then Bologna, then Venice, and finally home. Why not more detail? Because you've all freaking asked me about it in person and I've told you. No one online has posted any comments asking for more info, so I can only surmise that no one reads my damn, boring blog. So that's it. End of story. Email for more or post a damn comment. Or don't. I don't care.