Schmap! A Guide To Rome

Check out the widget in the right panel.  It is a very cool web-published travel guide to Rome and it features a photo taken by my wife, the international photo-journalist.  After we returned from our vacation in Rome earlier this year, Nancy posted some outstanding photos of our trip on her Flickr page.  The editors of Schmap!, no doubt scouring the internet for quality photo work, expressed interest in her work.  They ultimately selected her photo of the Fountain of Triton for inclusion in their guide.

This guide can be downloaded to most web-enabled personal devices such as the Apple iTouch, the iPhone, of course, and probably any smartphone, as well as blogs or websites.

Nancy at the feet of Triton.

I am married to an international travel photojournalist

Well, you knew that already from her Flickr pages. But go here to read an interesting online article about the opening of a recently discovered pagan tomb from the second century A.D. under St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The author asked Nancy for permission to use a couple of her photos for the feature.

Pizza - What it is and what it ain't

Speaking of pizza, here’s the deal. I love America, I really do, completely, without reservation, and well beyond the limitations of reason. And we do so much so very well. But when it comes to pizza...well, we just don’t do it right.

Here in America, the focus is on the wrong things. The primary problem is foundational, and it is that the quality of the crust is basically ignored. Even the word crust marginalizes it’s importance. All mass produced pizzas basically see the crust merely as a delivery system for the toppings. The quality of the bread is not even a consideration, evidently, in domestic pizza. In Italy, the crust itself is a thing of beauty, simple, but savory, textured and flavorful. It helps that virtually every pizzeria has some type of classic brick oven, like this:

Secondly, the toppings are all wrong. In fact, the culinary philosophy that underlies our pizza is so compromised, so stunted, that our cultural expectations of what a great pizza should be fall far short of what truly is possible. We don't even know what we are missing, sadly enough, so mediocrity has become our benchmark of quality, represented by Pizza Hut, Papa John's, et al.  First and foremost, only fresh ingredients should be used to top a pizza. I really can’t emphasize that enough. After the unbelievable taste of the pizza bread, the single most startlingly delicious thing about genuine Italian pizza is that ALL of the ingredients are fresh. Tomatoes (Roma or Campari, mostly), spinach, zucchini, bell peppers (raw or roasted), onion, garlic, meat. ALL OF THEM. FRESH. (Well, okay, except for the anchovies...salt-cured, packed in cans).

(In fact, let me take this opportunity to assert here that unless you are going on a 6-month sea voyage or stockpiling for the coming apocalypse, there simply are no acceptable uses for canned mushrooms. Those wet, slimy, nasty little giblets do not belong anywhere, and absolutely never, ever on a pizza.)

And, by the way, in Italy, probably only 50% of the pizza available use some type of tomato sauce as a base. It’s only one of several possibilities and it is not a requirement.

Thirdly, there’s the cheese. Forget about the packaged, pre-shredded cheese-like products from Kraft, Sargento, Yoder, etc. that hang in the cold food section of your grocery. I’m not 100% sure that stuff is even cheese and neither are you. That is what they are putting on your pizza at your typical pizza restaurant. When you make pizza at home, you need to NOT use that crap. I know it’s easy and cheap. That’s because it’s not real. So suck it up and just get the real, actual ingredients that God intended you eat. Look, most of your major grocery chains have specialty cheese sections over there by the deli. What you need to do is buy a ball of fresh mozzarella, for starters. It looks like this:

It’s probably made in Wisconsin, not Italy, but that can’t be helped and it will still be a vast improvement over what you are used to. While you are there, pick up some REAL parmesan cheese, not that stuff in the little green can.

Fourthly, meat toppings on Italian pizza are wonderfully varied. They use a variety of locally produced sausage, pepperoni, pancetta (sorta like bacon), prosciutto, ham, veal, lamb, and assorted seafood. What you won’t find is hamburger. No ground beef. I don’t know why this is the case, but I know I certainly did not miss it.  I really could do a whole post on the wonders of prosciutto, by the way, but I will probably spare you.

Now, just a little bit about construction. In America, we want our pizzas to be covered, edge-to-edge, usually with as many different, processed ingredients as possible on a canned, gooey, red tomato-ish sauce. Possibly we do this to hide the tasteless, doughy bread underneath, but really I think it is because we have this sad, misinformed idea that more is always better. If a little bit is good, then more must be better. This is usually wrong in all areas of life, but especially with food. Without necessarily making a broad sweeping indictment of our contemporary culture, when it comes to food, in America it seems we often try compensate for a lack of quality with an overwhelming quantity. (Ever been to a Cracker Barrel?)

In Italy, you will have fewer ingredients on your pizza. No thick melange of garbled, confused flavors. No heavy spices. Instead, the fresh flavors of two or three high-quality ingredients blend and expand in your mouth. You might have some sprigs of fresh baby arugula sprinkled on top, or a little chopped oregano. It might be lightly drizzled with a sweet olive oil.

And let me just say this. Life is too short for cheap olive oil. Don’t buy the store brand. Get the good kind, the genuine Italian extra virgin olive oil. Get the best you can find.  I promise it makes a difference. The cheap stuff is not good and the good stuff is not cheap...and that is a principle that holds for most things in life.

In Rome we ate a lot of pizza. Every place was different and unique.  Most of the places were family owned and every pizza we had was far, far better than anything we’ve found available in restaurants here. One of our favorites was Pizza Boom, near the street market on Via Trastavere. But the very best place was recommended to us by our Italian friend, Federico the First, who told us, “You must not eat pizza just anywhere in Rome. You will go to Forno. It is the best.  But you must go before noon.  It is very important.”


So we went to Forno Cerulli, arriving about 11:45 AM for lunch.  It was tiny and packed with local Italians.  It was clearly a place that did a huge business.   There were no tables or chairs, just a long deli style counter on one side and a narrow bar at which one stood to eat on the other side. Several employees were working at full throttle to service the hungry, amiable throng.  Most people were getting their pizza to go, but we crowded in with a few others to eat and watch the action.  

Federico was right.  It was the best.  More on our friend Federico later.

One Month Ago

One month ago today we arrived in Rome, jetting in from Frankfurt. I blogged about that here.  On Sunday, the 20th, the following day, I made the following journal entry:

Slept late. Went to the market in southern Rome near Stazio Trastavere about 2:00. Cruised around, bought some stuff. On the way home, we ate pizza at a local sidewalk pizzaria called Pizza Boom, and it was wonderful.


Came back. took nap until about 6:00. Tried to go to Chiesa di Santa Maria in Trastavere (sp?) and did make it to that area, but were unable to find the actual church. We did find some wonderful shops and and restaurants nestled in the alley ways. We had a gelato, Strawberry and Kaffe And after walking and shopping a bit, decided to eat a marvelous little place called Pizzaria Pan ‘Uto. I had a antipasto, pasta with a ham, mini-lamb kebobs, chocolate cake, and espresso. NCP had a bruscetta w/roast artichoke tapenade and a wonderful pizza that consisted of salmon, mozzarella, light olive oil, and topped with some kind of fresh herb post cooking, then a fruit cheese cake, and an espresso. It was all wonderful. I enjoyed being able to see the cooks make the food, the pizza crust was incredible...made on site, of course.

Then we went to a record store, FM Non-Stop Music and bought a couple

of albums, G'lam House, Vol. 4, a collection of Italian remixes by various artists, compiled by Andrea Gelli. A lot of it is kind of downtempo and chill, but very nice. Great version of the Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” Some of it is kind of jazzy, kind of latin, all very groove-centered. Also bought “Illusioni Parallele” by Tiromancino, an up-and-coming band from Rome, recommended by the DJ/proprietor in the store, who was very cool about playing sample tracks and making thoughtful suggestions. He says Tiromancino’s music is electro-pop, but kind of alternative, not real mainstream. Can’t wait to hear more of both.

Hear some of Tiromancino's music here.

We rode the very last tram and then the very last bus home, getting in about 12:15 AM local time.

Art, History, and Architecture in Rome

One of the principal reasons we like to travel is to experience and learn about other cultures, in particular through art and history. Nothing opens one’s mind and expands one sense of and appreciation for other people more than actually going and seeing where and how they live.

Art and history are so intertwined in Italy that it is difficult, and probably pointless, for me to disassociate the two. It is seemingly impossible to consider either one without invoking the other.


The architecture of Italy is fascinating because it reflects both art and history, form and function, in very visceral, immediate way. When one enters the Pantheon, for example, one is compelled to consider simultaneously it’s obvious massive structure, profoundly classic design, and the astonishing constructional detail that goes into each square foot. And then comes the appreciation for the fact that it was completed in 125 A.D. under the authority of the emperor Hadrian. Considering that, still today, it holds the record for the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome, and remembering that the building utensils of the time were mostly primitive hand tools made by other primitive hand tools, one is quickly overtaken by a sense of awe. The intricacy and intelligence of the design, and the surpassing beauty of the richly colored carved marble components is incredible. Incredible because of it’s age, because it has survived and continues to thrive some two thousand years later.


Throughout Rome, one sees ongoing restoration and preservation. Italy truly understands and values it's historical significance, to be sure. Just as we observed in Vienna a few years ago, there is an army of workers whose perpetual function is to protect, restore, and preserve the historical and artistic treasures. Something is being worked on all the time.  

More than once I marvelled at the careful and precise methods employed by construction engineers and contractors to simultaneously provide for the installation of modern necessities such as indoor plumbing, ventilation, cooking facilities, and reasonable access while at the same time retaining as much as possible the original look and feel of an ancient building.

One of the things that impressed me so much in all of these ancient structures, was the quality of the maintenance. Looking closely at one of the Pantheon's massive pillars, for example, one sees careful patching and repair work in places. But this is repair work that is most often several centuries old, performed by unknown contract artisans, long dead, using classic technique.

The same type of maintenance, repair and restoration was evident in the statuary rooms of the Vatican museums as well. The Vatican museums were fabulous, by the way. That is a "must see" if you go to Rome, and I will probably have a separate post on that at some point.

Again, I direct you to Nancy's Flickr page for her outstanding photo work.

Cobblestones

Many of the roads in old Rome are paved with black cobblestones, called sampietrini and they are, for the most part, a specific kind of porphyry, an igneous rock.  They come in different sizes and Rome is famous for them. These large ones are on the footpath in front of the Arco di Constantino, adjacent to the Colosseum.  Most of the stones used on the heavily traversed urban roads in central Rome are actually smaller.  

Here is a short, interesting article about the sampietrini.  It turns out they were invented and adapted as a paving material in the mid-1500's, under the authority of Pope Sixtus V, who looks very grumpy in this picture. (Frankly, most of the papal portraits we saw are pretty stern...it must be grim work.)

As it turns out, the current municipal government of Rome is beginning to replace it's cobblestones with that newfangled asphalt, which is making lots of other folks unhappy, too.  

Thoughts on Rome

We've been back from our wonderful vacation in Italy a week now.  The paucity of posts is due primarily to the fact that within two days of our return I had to prepare for and then work a tradeshow this past week, representing my company, ProAudio.com.  This required substantial time and concentration above and beyond my normal work catch-up.  It was time-consuming, hard work and largely unblogworthy, although I may come back to it at some point.

However, the break has given me the opportunity to distill some of my impressions and observations about our trip.  I am no longer interested in blogging it chronologically, but I do intend to approach it topically, discussing the aspects that I found most enjoyable and interesting.

First, for an outstanding collection of excellent photos, check out Nancy's Flickr page.  Her camera is much better than mine, her artistic eye is impeccable, and her pictures are all great.  I will likely borrow some of her pictures as needed.  She continues to edit and add to her pages there.  Feel free to comment on the photos or ask her a question. Flickr is her Blogger.

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There is so much to see, so much to love about Rome.  One of Anthony Bourdain's aphorisms is "Be a traveler, not a tourist," and that is what we always try to do.  We certainly participated in a number of tourist activities and saw many of the most notable sites, but we planned our trip on our own, eschewing the many pre-packaged tours that are available.  Instead, we read as much as we could, talked to people we know who had been there, and plumbed the depths of the internet for information, making our own decisions on where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do.  One of our goals was to immerse ourselves, as much as possible in one short week, into the culture and life of the people of Rome, and I feel like we achieved that.  We figured out how to ride the buses, how to read the street signs, how to buy a train ticket and, generally, how to move around like the Italians do, and that really increases the quality of the adventure.  

We were blessed with beautiful weather.  Some days were overcast, but the temperature was in the 60's and 70's during the day, and just perfect for walking the streets of Rome.  And walk is

what we did.  We easily did at least 5-7 miles a day, and it is a town that requires footwork in order to see it properly.  The streets are narrow and serpentine, the sidewalks undulate, expanding and sometimes contracting down to nothing.  It is a maze and it is amazing,  Often I would consult our little street map and find that we had wandered off our intended path.  Many of the streets are what we would call alleys here in America, and some are literally only about 20 yards long.  And yet each one has a name and is a destination in its own right.  Each has a history much older than our country.

I really enjoyed observing the people.  A lot of my pictures depict street scenes of people walking around against the beautiful background of stucco and marble buildings.  Rome attracts people from all of the world, obviously, but one of the things that we observed is that no one enjoys this city more than the Romans themselves.  Day or night, there are hordes of people walking, talking, eating, roaming, working, playing, smoking, shopping, and generally imparting an uptempo, vibrant energy to the streets.

In the piazza at the base of the Spanish Steps

Some of the sights really defy adequate description, too.  It is remarkable to find these gigantic, ancient structures, architectural masterpieces, really, of ages long since gone in the middle of this busy city.  Check out this breathtaking view, taken at sunset, the first day we were there, near the Colosseum:

Rome Update...4/24/09

We're still here and still rockin' it Roman-style.  We'll be coming home on Saturday.

Most, but not all of the internet problems have gotten worked out.  There were a number of intersecting issues that are far too tedious to go into that made it difficult and impractical for me to "live-blog" our Rome trip.  Bandwidth problems persist, too.  However, we have some cool stories and about a billion great pictures that I will share when I am able.  I also have a wonderful iPod Touch experience, to share, among other things-that little thing earned it's passage, for sure.

Anyway, it'll be like watching Uncle Billy's and Aunt Flo's home movies and slides of their vacation trip out to Hoover Damn (did I spell that wrong?) last summer, only much, much more interesting to all of you since it it is me and Nancy in Italy.  And it might go on for weeks, so you've got that to look forward to.  Yep.  So don't plan anything for the next month or so.

So, uhm...ciaio!

Dateline: Frankfurt, Germany 4/19/08

The timewarp that accompanies intercontinental flight has set in. My watch and my body says it is 3:00 AM on Saturday, but all of the local clocks and the sun, if one were able to see it through the gray overcast sky, indicate that it is, for all practical purposes, actually 9:00 AM.

The United flight from Dayton to Chicago’s O’Hare was quick and uneventful.

At O’Hare, we walked at least a mile until we at last found the Lufthansa terminal. It was just two little reception desks, a couple of departure gates, and a huge, milling multinational crowd. For some reason, Nancy’s phone didn’t work in the airport as she tried repeatedly to call JP. That was a disappointment. Check in was no problem, but the ticket agent was unable to seat us together, which was a bummer, considering it’s a 13-hour flight. The aircraft was a 747, so even though we were only a couple of rows apart, there was no way to converse.

Nancy and I both tried to negotiate with our neighbors to swap seats, but it didn’t work out. She was seated next to a very nice Indian gentleman, but he was sitting with a group of friends. He was willing, but she didn’t want him to give up his friends. Plus, swapping seats with me meant sitting directly behind the bulkhead in the middle row of 4 seats. Not exactly an ideal spot.

I was sandwiched between two women. On my right was a portly German grandmother whose only English was “I don’t speak English.” No problem, I don’t speak German and so we couldn’t really communicate well on the whole swapping seats deal. In that way that one can and, in such close proximity, must surreptitiously espy on one’s travelling companions, she made me smile several times when she would pull out a stack of photos from her her purse and rifle through them. The pictures seemed to be of her family and her recent trip to America. Each time she sifted through them, she would pull to the top a picture of two very small newborn babies, probably twins, lying on a bed together. She would gaze at this picture for some time, then reshuffle them, and put them back in her purse.

The woman on my left was of indeterminate age and origination, possessing a reserved and somber demeanor. When I asked her if she would swap seats with Nancy, she hesitated, frowned, and then with some reluctance said that she might. She got up and went over to where Nancy was to check out the location, it seemed, but then frowned again and said that she just wasn’t comfortable doing that. She returned to her seat beside me, seemingly embarrassed, but not quite apologetic. That seemed a bit odd, and there was not, at that time, a forthcoming explanation, so we had a weird vibe going on for a little bit. And Nancy and I kept our assigned seats.

In the course of the flight, I spoke some more with this woman because I wanted to know her story. She was born in Greece, on an island, had grown up in Australia, and had for the last 20 years or so lived in Chicago. From the context of our discussion, she must have been in her mid-60’s, although she looked much younger. She told me that she had, over the last few years and as a result of a singularly bad experience, become very fearful of flying and that she simply could not easily change seats or make changes to her flying arrangements. During our take off, as well as during some minor turbulence over Canada, she was clearly tense and ill-at-ease. She has issues, clearly, but her reticence was rooted in phobia, it seemed, not incongeniality. We talked about flying and a bit about our families. She apologized for not being able to help us and I told her that was fine. She was on her way home to Greece, it turned out, as her father as dying and she hoped to be there with him. I wished her the very best and asked the Lord to bless her. I think she is in for a rough couple of weeks. And she had three more flights after ours, each on progressively smaller aircraft, before she reached home.

We are about to board the plane for the last leg of our journey, from Frankfort to Rome.

Vacanza a Roma

Here are some pics of our hotel in Rome, harvested from the fabulous wide-world internet webs.

Residence Pierre Et Vacances Dehon-ii Giardino Phamphilii Hotel

61 Via Leane Dehon Rome, Italy 00165

Here is the description:

The Residence Dehon is a holiday apartment complex blending modern and traditional styles set in the typically-Italian parkland of Rome's Villa Doria Pamphili, two kilometres from the Vatican City. Bright, air-conditioned studio apartments, spread over two buildings, all open onto furnished balconies (terraces on the ground floor) offering views of the surrounding gardens. Each apartment features a living area with a TV and telephone, private bathroom, and kitchenette equipped with hotplates, a refrigerator, and cookware.

Guests can take in the garden surroundings on the terrace or take a dip in the outdoor pool. The restaurant opens out onto the terrace, offering guests the opportunity of an al fresco meal when weather permits.

We got an incredible deal on it...about a $100 a night, which is way below the normal rate. 

And it is within walking distance of St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican, and numerous other outstanding locales.

Lord willing, I'll be liveblogging this avventura romantica and will post photos and reviews of our journeys

April in Rome

The Colosseum

In April, we are going to spend a week in Rome.  As in Rome, Italy.  While in Rome, we intend to do as the Romans do.  

As in most things of life, when it comes to international travel arrangements, who you know is more important than what you know.  Thanks to our pastor, we were able to secure an amazing deal on a great apartment not far from downtown.

Yesterday, we ponied up the bucks for the airfare.  Getting there really isn't as expensive as one might expect, only about $2600.

Between now and our departure, we will be thinking about and planning our itinerary.  We intentionally did not latch on to some kind of tour package, preferring instead to chart our own course.   We will certainly be doing some touristy things, and we hope to spend at least a day in Florence, but we really wanted the freedom to explore Italy on our terms.