Last Friday the Temple of Romulus, located in the Forum of Vespasian, was open for viewing. Like the Pantheon, its interior was preserved when the pagan temple was converted to a Christian church in 527 known as the basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano.

Eternally Cool has information on the program.

Another aspect of the Archeologia d'Estate is Moon over the Colosseum – Flavian Nights". Pay 15 Euros and you can take a night tour of the Colosseum.

Enjoy Rome at night, if only to avoid the heat.

Live out in the country long enough in Italy and you'll come across garishly colored signs announcing various food festivals called Sagre. These represent your chances to eat well and cheaply during the summer season, without having to get the kitchen all heated up.

Every weekend thousands of these things are held across Italy. You can join in easily. The hardest part at the good ones is to find a parking place. In the country we just leave our cars anywhere. Your mileage and tolerance for breaking the law may vary.

In any case you'll be herded toward a table with a list of all the foods on offer. Just pick the dishes that sound good to you, pay up and head to a table while they take care of your order.

A village in our vicinity in northern Tuscany recently held a sagra as a benefit for their sports teams. In the picture is a plate of meat we bought for €7, cooked over a wood fire and emerging mighty delicious. There's a sausage, three ribs, and a pork chop.

Buon appetito.

La Spezia was always an important port in Italy. It's fitting that the Festa della Marineria be held there. The festival celebrates "the arts, culture and traditions of the sea". You'll see antique sailing vessels racing each other in regattas and more.

We went on Thursday, when things were just getting set up. Marine antique dealers held to one side of the waterfront, displaying all sorts of things you might want in your house--or not, depending upon whether a nautical theme suits you.

Old sailing vessels were scattered throughout the port area. Folks strolled between them, gawking at the polishing being done as the ships were being readied for the festival. A huge, articulated metal statue of a woman was being hoisted unsuccessfully to a standing position. At noon, thundering cannons announced, well, noon I suppose.

There are special seafood meals being served in the local restaurants in honor of the festival (you have to have a coupon, as far as I know). La Spezia has a suprising number of restaurants just inland of the port area. For a town that's on nobody's lists of places to visit before you die, La Spezia is actually quite nice.

A walk up to the Archaeological Museum rewards you with not only fine artifacts for viewing, but the museum is inside a castle; the views down to the port are quite nice. The walk up the stairs is not.

The Festa della Marineria runs from the 11-16 of June. I didn't find any info in English, but here's the official site in Italian.

Surely he jests! But no!

The Committee of Freedom, (an Orwellian moniker, doncha think?), has nominated Mr. Berlusconi to follow in the famous footsteps of the likes of Baroness Bertha Sophie Felicita von Suttner (née Countess Kinsky von Chinic und Tettau) and Yasser Arafat.

Evidently, Silvio Berlusconi had a key role in bringing peace to Israel and Palestine. Long may that peace hold.

If you read Italian, you can learn all of Mr. Berlusconi's key roles in promoting world peace and prosperity by going to the Silvio Berlusconi Nobel website. A couple of warnings are in order before you click on that link, however. First, there's loud and cheesy "music" you can't turn off. Second, you'll encounter frequent bolding of text, a trademark of Berlusconi nemesis (and nemesis of many) Beppe Grillo. (Or maybe bolding is an Italian political trait. I'll get back to you on that.)

Perchè Silvio Berlusconi? Perchè indeed.

This spring Puglia was awash in wildflowers. We were lucky enough to spend four nights at Masseria Li Mennuli, where we sampled the delights of Italy's southern coast.

Francesco was a great host, and his Passito, a sweet dessert wine produced on the estate and made from Gewürztraminer and dried Muscat grapes, was superb. Francesco also bottles a fine Primitivo, the wine of the area around Manduria, and it was top notch as well. We learned a lot about Puglia from Francesco and his close neighbor also named Francesco.

Below is a short Video compiled from our Puglia stay.

To stay in this area of Puglia, see the following links:
Masseria Li Mennuli
Masseria Li Reni

We were passing through Fossombrone in the Marche region on our way to the Autostrada at Fano when we decided to stop for lunch. Passing a wine shop, we took a quick detour to see if they had anything local and interesting we could take home. The owner waxed poetic about the quality of the Marche's liquirizia, a black licorice digestivo. She then went on to tell us about the local specialty "cocktail", the: Moretta.

Moretta is one of those local coffee drinks. You could call it a type of Caffè corretto, coffee "corrected" with a few drops of liquor. But its way more complicated than that. Preparing a proper Moretta is a ritual, we found out after lunch.

After eating, we, like the rest of the locals, made our way to the little bar. I ordered a Moretta. Everything stopped while it was in production.

The barista took a metal steamer and put small but equal amounts of liquirizia, brandy and rum in it. Then she cut a hunk of lemon rind and dropped it in, along with a bit of sugar. She steamed the whole works until it was quite hot, then poured it into a small glass, which ended up half full. Then she removed the lemon and tilted the glass under the espresso spout and let fresh coffee gently slither down the sides of the glass; a proper Moretta is made in layers--liquor on the bottom, coffee on top.

By golly it was good. I suspect the strong steaming the booze got took some of the alcohol out of it, because it didn't have an overwhelming alcohol bite to it.

Ask for a Moretti if you're so inclined next time you're in the Marche near the coastal town of Fano. You won't regret it. Even Martha tried it, and she hates coffee.

As you can see in the picture, luscious strawberries are showing up, even in this northern Italy market in Pinerolo, where the Giro d'Italia just passed through.

There are also some very spiny artichokes and lots of asparagus.

Risotto with asparagus is simple to prepare. We warm some broth and add the chopped up stems of asparagus to the broth to cook a bit, then we brown the rice a little in a butter/olive oil combo, then start adding the broth and the stems, stirring frequently. When the rice is just about finished we add the tender tips to just barely cook them. Finish with some Parmigiano Reggiano, and you're done!

The Italian blog Zoomata is featuring a incendiary article called "Financial Crisis Puts Italian Men to Work at Home." It turns out Italian men, even unemployed ones, don't help out with the housework very often. The statistics sound real bad. Did you know that " 90% (of them) have never, ever, ironed a shirt"?

Whoa! Those thugs! They should be shot, eh? Forget the fact that I've had two wives (at different times, thank you very much) and neither of them had ever ironed a shirt as far as I know. I figure it this way: you make busy work, you finish it yourself.

Ok, so I'll admit: I'm not one of those wimpy men who say, "awright, I'll share the housework with ya, 50-50. It's only fair."

Because, frankly, it's not.

I'd be willing to become less "Italian" and do some housework if women would sign up to some simple demands to even the playing field. Here they come.

Numero Uno: When you're driving home from work and your little Chrysler/Fiat is making some ear-splitting noise that wasn't there before and sounds expensive, you are heretofore forbidden to say, "Honey, the car is making a funny noise and I really need it tomorrow to go to Milano for a business meeting. Could you rebuild the engine tonight after you do the dishes and iron my taffeta business meeting gown?"

Numero Due: When the faucet is dripping, instead of crying out "Honey, water is dripping from the kitchen faucet" you get out the wrench and plan on 45 trips to the hardware store to get the correct fitting just like you'd expect him to do. Whoever is bothered by something fixes it. If there is no "women's work" then there can be no "man's work" either.

Numero Tre: If you want an olive from an unopened jar, you'll just have to crack the darn thing open using the edge of the marble sink. I'm watching the Giro d'Italia until laundry time.

I suspect there'll be comments. Have at it.

If you were in Italy right now, chances are a multicolored, undulating snake of a line of bicycles with professional riders is coming to a blocked-off country road near you soon.

It's the Giro d'Italia--where the leader wears pink. Proudly. The Giro started in 1909, and took off some war years, so this is the 100th anniversary for the race. (Find out more from an informative Transparent Language blog post)

The Giro is pretty much at the height of its modern popularity right now with the inclusion of Lance Armstrong in the bunch. Lance probably won't come close to winning the Giro this year, but if you really want to follow vicariously the life of a professional bike rider, you can sign up to twitter and follow @lancearmstrong.

Lance is racing for free, and has over 3/4 of a million people following him as he rides the Giro. He tells great stories of the journey, 140 typed characters at a time.

Yesterday, for example, while peddling along with the peloton, he spotted the owner of a pensione he had stayed in when he won the Settimana Bergamasca in 1991. Mamma Elena was standing by the side of the road watching the race and waving a sign. Later, she visited him in his hotel in Bergamo. She's now a spry 89 years of ago. Lance even left us a picture of her.

Imagine, these days you don't have to rely on traditional media to tell you second hand stories of personalities who tour the globe.

We'll be in the lovely Val Chisone when the gang comes through on Tuesday. You can follow us as we watch and interview some fans of Italian bike racing: @wanderingitaly and in this very blog, of course!

Ok, I have to admit, Gallipoli is my favorite town in Puglia--so far. The picture tells the story. Pick a warm, sunny day. You'll be seeing blue.

Yes, I know that Lecce is the "Baroque jewel" in Puglia's crown. Lecce is wonderful.

Gallipoli, though, is a seaside village that isn't entirely devoted to tourism, but rather to the enjoyment of folks who head down for some rest and relaxation. Plus, people still make a living fishing in Gallipoli. You can walk the little streets of the historic center and discover little places like Corte Gallo, a virtual outdoor ethnographic museum with all manner of cultural items you'd expect to find in the houses of a small fishing village maybe 40 or 50 years ago. People have just assembled these things and stuck them artistically to the walls spanning two courtyards. Fabulous!

If you have an apartment, you can go down to the fish market and talk to the friendly folks there, who will sell you impeccably fresh fish (mussels, 2€ a kilo!) or will have fun guessing where you're from.

If you don't like the look of fish fresh from the sea, you can choose to have your them served to you right on the shores of Gallipoli's jutting peninsula with the little houses as a pastel background to it all.

I found Gallipoli friendly, inexpensive, and full of life and vitality. Try it. You'll like it--even when you're blue.

Where I come from, wine is a specialty drink. Bottles of it cost $7 and up. You can get cheaper, but you get what you pay for.

Not in Italy. Sure, there are fine wines costing an arm and a leg. But there is also vino sfuso. The biggest vino sfuso operation I've seen is the one at the Museum of Wine in Manduria, home to Primitivo di Manduria.

You not only get a glimpse of wine production in the good, old days, but you can also taste some fine bottled wines.

Or you can step up to the pumps, declare your favorite wine, and a very nice woman will stick a nozzle in your bottle and off you go with 5 liters of your choice.

So, you want to save money on your Itlalian vacation? Just rent a vacation home in the heart of Pulia and get your wine where it can cost less than a Euro/liter.

We all crave those non-touristy places, don't we? Usually the problem is that those places are untouristed for a reason. There are no tourist facilities, no one to explain everything to you.

I've just been on a whirlwind trip around Puglia. We went to a lot of tourist places in Trulli country. Yes, Alberobello was fine, Locorotondo gleamed white in the sun, the trulli poked their heads into the sky proudly...

But you know which place I liked best? Manduria.

Ever been to Manduria, a town of some 30,000 people in Puglia? You might have gone through it without noticing much, but Manduria is loaded with things to see in a day or two.

Let's see, there's the wine museum. You see, Manduria is the center of Primitivo di Manduria wine production and the museum not only shows off the old tools and methods that folks in these scenic parts used to make their wine, but it offers tasting of some top quality primitivos, and even has a sort of wine station where you can fill your bottle for a Euro or two a liter from pumps that look just like gasoline pumps but are much cleaner.

Then there's the archaeological museum. It's not enormous, but its devoted exclusively to the local culture. Manduria is a center for ancient Messapian settlement. Ring the bell at the museum and you can see the artifacts manufactured many thousand years ago by the local Messapians, like the vase in the picture.

We happened upon a photography session at the museum featuring uncleaned artifacts from a recently excavated tomb. I asked if we cold film them. The answer was "yes". You won't get that kind of answer from big city museums, where paranoid researchers guard against public viewing of artifacts until after publication, which sometimes never comes.

Pliny the Elder mentions a spring in Manduria (he called it Mandonion) which never changed its level, no matter how much water was drawn or added. You can see it today, or tomorrow for that matter--and with the same entrance ticket you can also see the Messapian walls that surround Manduria, an important stronghold of the Messapii against powerful Tarentum (nearby Taranto).

There are also some wonderful places to eat in and around Manduria. And don't get me started on the wine shop or the friendly pourer at the enotecca.

How did I find out all these things? I stayed at a masseria, a large family farm (some were fortified against the frequent pirate attacks from the coast). Each day I gleaned information from the owners on where to go and what to see.

The cool thing is that you can too. Check out these masserie. You won't regret not staying in a hotel. And believe me, the rural life is a heck of a lot cheaper than the city life.

We're staying in Masseria Li Mennuli for a few days and wow, do I like Puglia all over again.

Yes, we've had some spring rain. We've also had some spectacular light and clouds, including a big ol' rainbow today.

Some Primitivo vineyards are under water, and folks are worried. We're just south of Manduria, where the famous Primitivo di Manduria comes from.

We've learned a lot. Like "Primitivo" doesn't have anything to do with primitive. It's an early ripening grape, so the word relates to "primo", or the first to harvest.

As far as restaurants go, we've not had a bad meal here. The seafood is top notch, and the traditional dishes, like fave and ciccoria and wonderful.

And the festival season has started already. The picture above is from the local St. Baggio festival.

Next week is a big week. Tomorrow, the 25th of April, is Liberation Day in Italy. Our local market town, Sarzana has already had its solemn celebration, a small gathering with lots of big speaches.

After a stop in Panzano for a book signing, we'll be off for Puglia.

I love Pulia. I did a 7 week archaeological survey there. I'll never forget the olive groves. In summer, each tree was treated with great care, the ground below swept of living things, each tree sitting in the center of a raked sand zen garden.

The constant and droning song of the cicadas reminded us that it was summer.

Then there was the wine. Primitivo, a relative of Zinfandel, was a favorite. The owners of many restaurants served carafes of it at a ridiculously low price for something so incredibly flavorful. It was like the spirit of the land itself.

As we walked along the land making up the heel of Italy's boot, we were amazed at the cultural artifacts that had surfaced. You'll find evidence of Greek settlement, Roman coins, clay pipes and other treasures underfoot. It was hard to make sense of though--after wondering why artifacts appeared in profusion on one side of a stone wall while nothing at all showed up on the other, we started to pay attention to modern culture--and found it was common practice to sell soil so that olive trees could be grown just about anywhere you could get a truck to. That meant you'd find Roman coins in beach sand on a hill 30 km from the nearest beach. Hmmm.

So the trip should be very interesting. We'll be staying at the Masseria Li Mennuli. We'll have a great time making videos and pictures; letting you know what to expect from a villa rental--and how much more rewarding it is compared to staying in a hotel. Join us for the trip.

For real time updates, you can follow us on Twitter. I'm @wanderingitaly.

I've spent the week thinking of those out of the way places I love in Italy. Take for example Tuscany's Maremma. It's probably the least known area of Tuscany. Last year we spent part of it on the wild coast of Monte Argentario, at the spectacularly isolated La Trappola. The area is full of the things you come to Italy for. There are spectacular hill towns like Pitigliano, great wine and a very tasty cuisine. Summer festivals are culture rich--or sometimes just rich. The Bugatti International Meeting is being held on the last weekend of May this year in Massa Maritimma in the Maremma.

I also think of Puglia, always on the list to take from Tuscany the prize of "best place to visit in Italy." I did a long archaeological survey there, and found the culture fascinating. Yet Puglia is just too far down the boot for most people who have short vacations. It's a shame.

Then there's Lazio. You land in Rome, see the Forum, Pantheon, and the Colosseum, then you take off for Florence or Venice. Well, what about the Etruscan tombs at Tarquinia? What about the spectacular summer food and wine in the Castelli Romani, just south of Rome? What about the porchetta for crying out loud? And there's Ostia Antica, a real port city, where you can see the well-preserved ruins of ancient apartments and small take-away food stands instead of one rich person's villa after another, like you do at the famous resort towns of Pompeii or Herculaneum.

This year we'll explore some of these out of the way places, which are best explored from a rental villa, where you'll have quiet nights. You'll need them with all the excitement of seeing places your friends didn't have a clue about.

It's fun to be in Italy at Easter, especially when you're in a village.

After a walk that took us to the next town over, we returned to find one of our neighbors puttering around in his cantina. I said "ciao" to him and by the time Martha came around the corner he had a bottle ready to hand her.

Then, around noon, Martha puttered around just long enough so that Francesca came out and asked her if we were alone this Easter. We were indeed.

"Well," said Francesca, "we have lots of ravioli--why don't you come around one?"

At one we sat down to some bruschetta and some of Armando's prize winning salami along with countless slices of culatello. If you don't know what culatello is, you haven't lived--that's all I can say. It's the tenderloin of prosciutto, the single, central muscle of the leg of the pig, cured in the same way as ordinary prosciutto. Mmmm.

Then there was the ravioli in a veal sauce.

Of course, that wasn't all. Not by a long shot.

There was the meat course. Lamb cooked with olives. PLUS roast capon. Peppers stuffed with anchovies and capers and preserved in olive oil. Then fragole, strawberries. Then two large chocolate eggs were slashed open with a sharp knife, as was a finger. Ooops.

Then coffee. Then grappa.

Then I went home and took a nap.

Easter is like that in Italy.

After a cold Tuscan winter, we've returned to our house in the Lunigiana. It was chilly last night. We turned on the heat, which heats the water in the taps and also provides warm water for the radiators.

Nothing happened. When I turned the knob to get pressure into the system like you always have to do upon returning, water poured out onto the floor.

What follows, although a true Italian miracle, is the reason our returns are so tense until we know everything is working. Try to find an Italian plumber at 5 pm on a Friday! You might was well start counting the number of days (or weeks) you'll have to shell out for a hotel before one is likely to make an appearance. It's chilly at night here, and the thought of cold showers wouldn't entice us to stay at any cost.

Luckily, our neighbor Francesca knows everyone. One phone call and some pleading was all it took to get a plumber to agree to take a look.

He had a fine look. He mumbled something about needing a technical expert. Then, then minutes later, he got the thing to work.

You can't always count on miracles. But it's safe to say that your vacation rental will be better maintained than a house that stands empty half the year.

We need to take a break from travel on occasion, even during vacation. Certainly you've said to your sweet honey, "geez, if I see one more danged church...."

If you've been smart and rented a villa, you at least have a place to retreat to. There you can have afternoon tea, a ritual that reminds you that you're living, not just traveling.

There are outside rituals that you can participate in, too. The Italian passeggiata is one of them. In the evening, right about cocktail hour, folks get out of the house and slowly stroll over some selected streets of the town center. Old men like me can sit in a bar with a glass of wine and watch, ogling as appropriate. That's ritual to. And if you go to the same bar every night on your vacation, it becomes a more deeply embedded ritual. Soon folks come to expect you.

Eventually, if it all works out well, you'll feel like you're living wherever you are at the moment. You're no longer just a traveler, you're at home in the world.

But watch out. If you get good at this, you'll want to buy a house and set down roots.

The cool travel guide has an interesting post on the reward of rituals when we travel.

Evolution is an interesting thing. Festivals, for example, evolve with time. They take a core idea and modify it through the years using whatever technology is available to make a point in the most dramatic way.

Take the Scoppio del carro for instance, a Florentine festival held on Easter morning. You see, Pazzino di Ranieri de' Pazzi declared Jerusalem a Christian city during the First Crusades by rasing a banner on the defensive walls. For this, Godfrey IV de Bouillon gifted him with three chips of stone from the Holy Sepulchre of Christ which he took to Florence in 1101 and used to light the "new fire"--Christ risen at Easter.

The fire was distributed to the citizens, first on foot, then on a cart. Eventually, the cart became the launching pad for some spectacular pyrotechnics:

During the early 1500s, the "colombina," a dove-shaped rocket holding an olive branch in its beak, was introduced; it is ignited by the holy fire, setting off the entire cart in a series of explosions.

Today you can see the festivities of the Scoppio del Carro in front of the Baptistry of St. John near the Duomo in Florence. There's will be flag throwing, holy water sprinkiling and...

...a sizzling cart that explodes with fireworks, the latest incarnation of this Easter celebration.

See: Italy Magazine: Scoppio del carro in Florence for a detailed look at the festival and some video of it. See Easter in Italy for more Easter events.

That's good news for sanity, both in law and on the highways. Driving in Italy has never been as sluggish as recently, and a law aimed at merely increasing revenue is not a good law.

Read more: Speed traps 'must be signposted'

No, I wasn't referring to the refrigerator of your villa rentals. It will be clean. The "fridge of horrors was a term evidently used by Italian Agriculture Minister Luca Zaia to describe an icebox full of counterfeit "Italian food."

''It will be a refrigerator chock-full of all the disgusting things we have confiscated in the last eight months,'' Zaia explained, stressing that only around one out of ten products with labels claiming to be Made in Italy are actually authentic. ~ 'Fridge of horrors' to be unveiled

The haul of disgusting goods includes: pasta produced in Arab countries, Chinese mozzarella and United States 'parmesan'.

Ok, I'm with the Italians on the one item with which I'm familiar. Parmesan is indeed disgusting. It is used as salt by us Americans to ad zip to intentionally undersalted food which we've been tricked into believing is good for the ol' ticker.

It is expensive when used as salt. It may even be expensive as cheese from Parma, since there's a glut of the stuff in Italy these days.

I've been thinking lately of some of my favorite places in Italy. I'm hooked on Perugia, and Umbria in general.

Perugia is the capital of Umbria, but the population is only 160,000 or so. The city is large enough to be interesting (I spent a month learning Italian there and wasn't bored a single minute) and small enough that you never feel the grit and crime of a big urban center.

I haven't yet found a bad restaurant in Perugia. Sitting in the courtyard of the Hotel La Rosetta when the waiter brings out the whole baker's pan of truffled lasagne and cuts a piece for you is one of life's great experiences. There's nothing like a cloud of truffled steam wafting toward your nostrils. Really. La Rosetta has a huge menu that changes daily.

There's lots of ancient stuff under Perugia. In fact, if you end up in the Piazza Partigiani (there's parking there), you get to the city center via escalators that whisk up through a castle and some medieval houses, now underground. How cool is that?

And even though panhandling reaches an apex during the Perugia Jazz festival, it's worth it. Yes, there are lots of concerts you'll have to pay for--but there's a whole lotta music for the popolo in the piazze too.

If you have a car and 25 friends, you can stay in the Castello di Magrano, too. That'd be a treat!

Here's an interactive map of Perugia.

Happy travels.

Yes, according to the latest poll, Sicily has been awarded the 2009 BIT Award for being the best destination for Italian tourists.

I'm not an Italian tourist, but I like Sicily, too. Despite my usual loathing of Baroque architecture, I really found myself liking the Sicilian version, which you'll find expressed in the city of Ragusa, shown in the picture, a stunning hillside package of narrow lanes, unusual balconies, and some darned fine restaurants.

Someday I'll return to further explore the Val di Noto in the southeast, especially the oddly named town of Scicli.

Last night we chowed down on one of the simplest and most satisfying pastas in our repertoire: Pasta with Greens and Sausage.

You need a fat sausage for every two people (your choice), some washed and chopped greens (left fairly wet--I like mustard greens), a bit of chopped onion, garlic, and olive oil. Grated Pecorino or Parmigiano cheese to taste at the end.

Put the water for the pasta on to boil, plenty of it.

Saute the garlic and onion. Slit the sausage and drop small bits into the saute pan, hack them with a wooden spoon if they're too big. The sausage doesn't have to completely cook before you add the greens. If the greens are fresh and young enough not to have woody stems (or you don't use the stems), they'll cook (steam) quickly with the top on the pan.

Add the pasta of your choice when the water boils. I use something stumpy, like penne. The "sauce" or "condiment" shouldn't take any longer than the pasta.

When the pasta is almost done (a tad too al dente) drain and add it in the saute pan to finish cooking for a couple minutes and come together with the "condiment." If it looks dry add some pasta water that you've reserved.

Add the cheese and serve. You can add some red pepper flakes at the end as well if you like.

Mmmmm.

The thought of a vacation in Umbria scared me at first. It was that "The green heart of Italy" thing. In America's green heart, you see, even the farmers have pretty much bought into the myth that just about everything you put in your mouth is bad for you except engineered industrial crap food. So, oddly enough, you have a hard time get anything decently edible in the area of the world's most fertile soil unless someone brings you something from their garden. Heck, they're mostly making biofuels now instead of good eats.

But Umbria is different. They have wine for one thing. Good wine. And where you have wine, good food is bound to follow, and in Umbria it does. Sure, Tuscany gets all the applause for its wine and cuisine, but there are four Umbrian wine roads. Why, you could rent a villa and set out each day to visit all sorts of wineries and drink wines you've maybe never heard of, like Sagranitino from the slopes around the town of Montefalco. Here are the roads:

• Etuscan-Roman Wine Road
• Trasimeno Hills Wine Road
• Canticle Wine Road
• Sagrantino Wine Road

There is little on the web about Umbrian cooking. I find it a bit more interesting than Tuscan cuisine, but maybe only because it's different. Instead of Tusany's white beans, Umbria has very tasty lentils. If Tuscan cuisine is "cucina povera" the cooking of the poor, then Umbrian cooking seems to take the concept further; the food is earthier. Dishes with black truffle, another Umbrian specialty, are numerous in Umbrian restaurants.

Umbria is the only landlocked region of Italy, so don't expect a lot of seafood. Sausage is wonderful in Umbria, in the fall, there's lots of game. Priests are made fun of in Umbria through the primi piatti. Strozzapreti is a hand-rolled pasta whose name translates into "priest choker". Yes, the greedy priests of old would likely have choked on them when they wolfed down the fine dish--in Umbria Stozzapreti (or strangolapreti "strangled priests") become a form of gnocchi or dumpling.

If you're tired of the crowds and large towns of Tuscany--come to Umbria. It's only a short drive away, but a much more rural and laid-back environment. It's not like you haven't heard of Umbria's larger towns: Assisi, Spello, Spoleto, Todi and Perugia are all Umbrian and worth visiting.

The picture above is of the Eturscan walls and gate of Perugia, the capital of Umbria.

So, where indeed does God vacation? Of course you know. Italy. At least according to Jerry Springer, tabloid talk show host and once mayor of Cincinnati who was born in the East Finchley tube station in London.

So where does Jerry Springer vacation in God's country?

Every summer we go to Italy. We love the Tuscany area, Capri, Portofino, the Amalfi Coast. We love England and Cape Town in South Africa. We've been to Italy maybe 20 times. It's probably where God vacations—the people, the scenery, the food, the opera—to go and see Italian opera in Italy outdoors is really nice. ~ 'Where God vacations,' Italy never gets old

You can see opera in Verona "all'aperto", meaning outdtoors in the open air, and in this case in the Roman Arena. Many of the ancient monuments of Italy are given over to modern performances. I've even seen "Our Town" performed in Italian in a roman theater in Sardinia. God probably got more of the Italian than I did though.

Imagine--you're driving through your favorite Italian town when the light turns yellow. You've got time, so you head into the intersection and Wham! the light turns red so fast it makes your head spin.

Italy's T-Redspeed system uses three cameras to catch intersection miscreants in 3D detail and store their license plate numbers so they can be billed €150 for each infraction.

It's a high tech system that Stefano Arrighetti is responsible for programming. But alas, Stefano got greedy as Bernie Madoff and most of his victims.

He's accused of conspiring with 63 municipal police, 39 local government officials, and the managers of seven different companies in order to rig the system so that it would turn from yellow to red quicker, therefore catching more motorists. The scheme was uncovered by Lerici police chief Roberto Franzini, who noticed that the number of violations were too high for a period of months and, after some investigation, found that the lights were changing way sooner than usual. ~ Italian red-light cameras rigged with shorter yellow lights

So take care when approaching traffiic lights in Italy.

And I'm glad that all this was discovered by someone from Lerici. Lerici is a Ligurian coastal town on the gulf of poets that has a nice castle to visit. You can take a boat to the Cinque Terre from Lerici if you are so inclined, and there are no stop lights on that particular stretch of water...

If you've ever been to an Italian bank--maybe to change money--you are probably not surprised at the title of this blog post. You could spend that amount of time just making a withdrawal, or at least I feel that way sometimes. It's one of the things about Italy I'm not particularly fond of. Italians seem to take it in stride. Well, most of them anyway. It's probably always been like that.

But, the story here is that an 82 year old man went out the wrong door and ended up downstairs, next to the boiler. He was forced to stay there over the weekend, when the bank was locked up. No water. No food.

He survived--something he might not have done if he'd actually had to make a deposit.

The Italian city of Lucca faced accusations of "culinary racism" on Tuesday after it banned new foreign eateries from opening in its historic center. The city council recently voted to deny new licenses to any bar or restaurant whose style of cooking was non-Italian within the Renaissance-era walls encircling the city center. ~ Reuters

Well, ok, that's good for us tourists who are appauled every time some corporate house of food horrors sets down in a medieval center. The story doesn't mention if residents feel deprived of alternative cuisines, but the Tuscany regional government put out a warning against 'gastronomic or culinary' racism.

"The defense of quality is one thing, discrimination is another," Paolo Cocchi, the regional councilor for commerce, said on the region's website.

I have news for Paolo. Defense of quality is discrimination. After all, discriminating taste is seldom considered a bad attribute.

Italy has raised up its cuisine by discriminating against crap food. We haven't done enough of that in the US.

Ok, so you're a student and what you'd really like is some cheap crap food. No problem, the four kebab shops already gracing the center of Lucca can continue operating.

Usually, I wouldn't call doner kebabs crap food. I actually like them. But they're salt and fat bombs. A study in London found:

The worst offending kebabs managed 1,990 calories before salad and sauces were added and almost 350 percent of a woman's saturated fat intake. ~ Rueters

So, um, even if you're near penniless, maybe a little gastronomic discrimination is in order.

I can't wait to return to Italy (in two months) to see what the reaction is to the new administration's fresh start. I'm sure my neighbors will be giddy with delight. I hope I have some money to spend.

Barack Obama's choice for U.S. Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, said a strong dollar is in the United States' interest.

"Geithner, in written response to questions from the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, said a strong dollar "is in America's national interest." ~ Obama's strong dollar policy may be for real

Yippee. Rent a house in Italy and celebrate with your Italian neighbors. They'll probably bring the Franciacorta, Italy's best sparkling wine. If not, go out and get a couple bottles. We travelers deserve it.

"Alitalia's seamless transition this week from being a national carrier to a private airline was a ''brilliant'' operation, according to the head of the International Air Transport Association (IATA)." ~ Alitalia transition 'brilliant', IATA chief says.

Italian bureaucratic ineptitude is legendary, at least if you read reports on the web. But somehow, things do get done. Sometimes even well.

New blood is changing the way the airline operates. And that's exactly what Alitalia needed.

I think about that as the US government considers throwing vast amounts of money at bankrupt car companies who have been making cars that nobody wants for quite some time now, all because those kinds of cars make a lot of profit when you happen to sell one to an unsuspecting owner. I'm driving one now. It's a rental. It's also the biggest piece of crap I've ever driven.

It's big, but inside they've managed to make it feel cramped. The glove box is right in your lap. The doors are the thickness of a bank vault, which is supposed to make you think you're safe, but are hard to get around when you try to exit the darned car. The horn honks when you try to lock the doors. It also honks at other times when it deems necessary. Who asked for this "feature"? Certainly not the neighbors.

So what does America do when the Big Auto Makers fall into an intellectual design coma? They throw out the life preserver! Here, more of the taxpayers money! For free! Just keep up what you're doing! But do more of it!

Why not let them die and let people who want to serve the public take over and make a better product that people actually want?

I'll take an Alfa Romeo any day. And as soon as Alitalia has a non stop flight from San Francisco to Rome, I'll take that, too.

Sometimes when I go inside an Italian church known for its horde of art, I cross my fingers, hoping the art isn't a line of "Madonna with Child" kinda things.

Been done before. Lots.

Now I'm sure that the artists relished the assignment. Find their village's prettiest young thing and coaxing her into showing a great deal of cleavage (or more) for religion, art, and all that's good in the world can't be a bad way to pick up women. But the results are all a little (here he gazes towards the heavens, hoping for a lack of thunderheads) boring.

On the other hand the church has been kind to artistically challenged fools like me, introducing lots of artistic excitement in their Martyrs series. Don't you feel your heart race, just a little, when you see a young buck called Saint Sebastian leaning against a tree with five arrows sticking from various tender spots on his well-toned body, as if he has just backed away from a picnic and is gazing over the pleasant scene before him?

There are others. I'm particularly attracted, if that is the word, to Saint Agatha. If you knew her, you would be too, I'm sure. Here's a little thumbnail sketch to whet your hunger for more:

"St. Agatha’s attributes are shears, tongs, and breasts on a plate. She’s invoked against diseases of the breast, earthquakes and lightning. (And eruptions of Mt. Etna in Sicily!) Her feast day is February 5th. Agatha is the patron saint of Catania, Sicily and is one of the patron saints of Malta."

Yes, religion can be quite strange at times. In a good way, of course.

Although I didn't know it at the time, I had Saint Agatha in my viewfinder when taking this picture in the Duomo of Castell'Arquato in Northern Italy. Brutal but odd. She's totally ignoring the pincers being applied to her breasts.

If there ever was a painting that conveyed the attributes of quiet acceptance of a Holy calling, this might be it.

Anyway, if you've ever been thrilled or repulsed by a picture in a church but had no idea what was going on, then you should really check out Slow Travel Italy's Saints and Art.

That's right, Ancient Rome is getting cleaned up. There will be new lighting. They will clear away the scaffolding, the fences, the open digs.

It will again be easy to snap a picture in the forum. You won't have to find the odd angle for your shot that doesn't feature modern metal gleaming in the Roman sun.

They're even thinking about an "integrated" illumination system for the entire area. I suspect that means that during an outage, there will be blackness for as far as you can't see.

In any case, it seems to me that they're taking the Rome out of Roman. To me, Rome has always been a bubbling cauldron steaming with life, some of it ancient. I'm actually afraid that cleaning it up will make it all seem so sterile, so unreal.

Rome, unlike other capitals of culture, is based upon the working stiff. The cuisine comes from low off the hog. In fact, most of it comes from inside the hog. Get yourself over to the Testacchio district to find the "real" Roman cuisine.

So if follows (if you're still with me) that the archaeological sites should feature ferile cats, open digs, overgrown pathways and grumpy guards.

Heck, it's Rome for Pete sakes.

(Read more: Improvements to Ancient Rome)

But I did my part at our own neighborhood Festa di San Silvestro. Yes, we gathered for a communal meal. I made the traditional cotechino with lentils, a dish meant symbolize the dream of increased wealth, combining the "coin-like" appearance of the lentils with the "richness" of the pork sausage.

Well, it tasted darned good, so I'm just going to blurt out, "2009 is gonna be a heck of a year!"

I hope you're going to travel. It's important to get out into the world before someone figures out an easy way to ruin it (for profit or for religion). We need to make some friends out there, wherever "there" is.

So head over to the Lunigiana, my neck of the woods in northern Tuscany, for some panigacci. Heck, have a huge Fiorentina, a beefsteak bigger than the plate. There's lots to discover out there. I've spent lots of time in the Lunigiana and haven't even seen all of that, much less all of Italy.

Airlines are dropping their idiotic "fuel surcharges" and maybe that'll convince you to rent a villa with some of your friends (one of whom is a great cook) to explore Italy together. Life doesn't get much better.

You can quote me on that.

20 years ago you seldom heard of the sparkling wine made in northern Italy's Veneto region called "Prosecco." Its an easy to drink sparkler that goes well with food.

Today Prosecco is everywhere. You hear of it all the time. It's gotten so popular that foreigners have started to produce bottles (and cans!) they label as "Prosecco." According to an article in the New York times:

"One product, Rich Prosecco, is made by an Austrian company whose ads feature Paris Hilton. In some, she is naked and spray-painted gold. What’s worse to some producers, the product is sold in a 6.8-ounce can, in gas stations as well as stores, for around $3." ~ Italian Makers of Prosecco Seek Recognition

You see, Prosecco is the name of a grape, so it's pretty much free game for winerys to plaster on a label. But, it's also the name of a town, so perhaps the producers of Prosecco will have a leg to stand on in European courts when it comes time to recognize the origins of the wine..

In any case, it's quite safe to sit down at an Italian bar and order a Prosecco; it won't cost you much but makes a great aperitivo in the early evening. Order it and you might be surprised at the little nibbles the wait staff will set upon the table. Enough for a light meal sometimes.

Prosecco makes a fine New Year's celebration drink, especially if one of your resolutions is to start saving money on "Champagne."

There is a pleasant trend ramping up in Europe: turning the Supermarket back toward its roots in the grand covered markets of Europe.

Eataly Turin, housed in an old Vermouth factory just outside the Lingotto center, is one of these successful transformations. Slow Food consults on the products. You can go there to shop, eat, drink, or get educated on where food comes from. Producers of goods on the shelves are profiled.

It's odd seeing tables with people socializing, eating great food and drinking wine right in the middle of the supermarket. After you get used to it you end up thinking, "gee, what a great idea! Fill a store full of the sustainable production from farmers who care, then cook it up for folks who want to eat in a lively environment."

You can have a full meal, munch on tapas, or fill your wine bottles from huge barrels. Or you traditionalists can just shop for great products that have the blessing of the Slow Food people.

And there's an Eataly recently opened in Milan as well: Piazza 5 Giornate, inside COIN, floor -1

Go. Eataly if you can.

Italia Oggi has just released its ranking of Italian provinces for quality of life. This year, Siena topped the list, rising from 6th last year.

So, if you're thinking of a long term stay in Italy, you can do worse. Then again, top quality-of-life often tracks with price-of-food-in-a-restaurant.

Ravenna rose from 8th to 5th. Ravenna is often overlooked by travelers, but if you haven't seen the mosaics, you should.

The biggest rise was Rome, which zomed from 58th to 29th position on the hit charts.

Falling hard was Bologna, which remains one of my favorite cities to visit, which went from 4th to 21st.

Source: Siena tops quality-of-life charts

Where do you buy your nativity scene characters? One of the most famous markets is found on a narrow, medieval street in Naples known as Via San Gregorio Armeno. Police shut the place down recently, after a battle with unlicensed vendors. All is well now.

You know what the favorite characters are at the moment? Obama is in. So are Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy.

Yes, Italians have been known to add recent characters to their presepe. The photo above shows a section of the enormous 19th century nativity scene found at Caserta's royal palace, which includes Italians of the day sitting down for a meal of pasta.

You can visit Caserta as a day trip from Naples.

I miss real milk. You know, the kind the milkman put on your doorstep. It had the cream floating on top. In winter, if you forgot it, a gush of milk, captured as if part of an ice sculpture, rose majestically out of the bottle top.

We don't get that anymore. Despite the legendary, mythological reproductive powers of the milkman, he's gone. What we get when we drive our SUVs to the supermarket has the cream taken out and other noxious chemicals put in.

But slowly, insidiously, there have been appearing fresh milk kiosks in the north of Italy.

Dang, it's what I like about Italy. When the economy tanks, people look for even better things to put in their mouths instead of cheap, industrial diluted things.

Anyway, the picture above is of a fresh milk stand in Brisighella, in the Emilia Romagna, a nice place to visit.

Pinerolo has just got one too, according to the Bella Baita Blog, and it dispenses the real thing.

Did you know that humans are pretty much the only animal that partakes of other animal's milk? Strange, eh?

Mario Resca, who was head of McDonald's in Italy for 15 years, has been appointed as Italy's director general of museums and archeological sites. It is not such a popular appointment.

An online petition against the appointment has so far attracted more than 1,000 signatures from art curators and museum directors around the world.

Mr. Resca hopes to get more visitors into Italy's museums, as well as attract manufacturers to Italy's heritage sites as backdrops for product launches, according to the Telegraph.

Does Italy need to "sell" its heritage? Why, you'd think; after all, "the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, attracted 1.5 million visitors a year when the British Museum in London pulls in close to six million."

The thing is, the population of Florence is around 364,779, according to Wikipedia. London has 20 times the population. So, in light of the size of their respective cities, the Uffizi does quite well. What would happen to Florence if the number of visitors to the Uffizi quadrupled in a year? I wouldn't want to be there in the crush, I'm telling you.

Besides, the British Museum is free to all.

You could get a lot of people to chow down on Big Macs if they were free. There's no secret to that sauce in today's world.

Benzina is gas for the car to Americans, Petrol to Brits, and the price of it is going down. Yahoo reports that recent prices have dropped to 1,17 euro, the lowest in three years.

With the Euro falling, all those economic disasters might be converging to make a vacation to Italy reasonable again. Of course, it's all a wash if the recent downturn is affecting you as well, but hey, where would you rather be in miserable times, enjoying a decent 2 Euro bottle of wine in Tuscany, or paying $9 for a bottle of miserable sludge in America?

I'd go with Tuscany. Trust me on this.

Take olives for example. They're quite bitter right off the tree. You wouldn't want to eat one unless you're a glutton for gastronomic punishment. Over the years, many ways to deal with that bitterness have been developed.

You can use lye to cure olives. Lye was a common ingredient in soap for many hundreds of years, so you would have some around. Lower grade lye can be used as a drain cleaner. Funny what ends up in our food, isn't it?

But the easiest way to cure olives, leaving a slight bite of bitterness behind, is to just salt cure them. On the Tuscan coast, you just mix your fresh olives with lots of sale grosso or coarse salt and leave them in a warm place until they pucker up like in the picture.

Funny how simple things are sometimes, eh? We've just forgotten how to work with many ingredients, and let factories churn out inferior versions of the stuff we cram in our mouths. That's a pity.

Two groups make up the interesting parts of Pitigilano's history: the Etruscans who left interesting cuts in the soft tuff or tufa in the woods around Pitigliano, and the Jews, who were trying to escape the brutality of the Papal State to the south and who left a legacy underground.

You can visit the caverns cut underground near the Synagogue, which was restored in 1995, which includes cisterns, baking ovens, wine cellars and narrow, ancient passageways.

You can also take a drive in the country and see the strange "roads" called "Vie Cave" on the signs (although they're almost certainly not roads) that are cut through the soft rock by Etruscans. These aren't far from Pitigliano.

You'll also want to taste the wine of the region, especially the Bianco di Pitigliano, a dry white and one of my favorites in Italy. It goes quite well with fish.

Take a look at the picture above. Doesn't it make you want to be there right now? It was taken in November.

The medieval core, on the side of a hill facing the harbor, with its winding, narrow streets, is still a compelling and exhausting walk. At the top is the chapel dedicated to sailors all over the world. Take the kids. There are plenty of statues inside with featuring folks holding the severed heads of saints and sinners alike.

And the day, finally, was warm and beautiful, with threatening skies that just hung a in the sky, deep gray-blue, to enhance the photos. Travel in the off season can be a challenge, but for me a usually rewarding one.

Some folks from the US don't like getting questioned about their politics. It's easy in Italy, because the rejoinder to the question "how could you have elected Bush" is "how could you have elected Berlusconi?" In other countries it's not so easy.

Of course, we've just elected someone else. Someone, hopefully with some ideas of his own. We hope we can travel again freely, without fear of the dreaded question.

Mark Morford has a list of things Americans should do now that Bush is out of the way. Number one on that list?

Make new travel plans. Yes, the dollar has been gutted. Yes, a small espresso and a day-old sourdough baguette on the rue du Cherche-Midi will cost you 97 dollars. But if you can afford it, now is the time to plan a new European jaunt.

Why? Easy: No more foreigners scowling at you. No more shameful hiding of your nationality. No more telling that hot barista you're from Canada and instead confessing, with even a tiny hint of Obama-infused national pride, "I'm American," and then not apologizing and feeling that sickly sense of mortification. Incredible.

If you've never heard of Mark Morford, well, you should read his column. His prose is lively. He minces politicians, not words.

Here's the whole column: Sodomy and gratitude: Nine perfect ways to prepare for the End of Bush. Can you believe it?

There's a lot to be said about the country life in northern Tuscany, especially in the fall. People are generous with their hand-made products. Yesterday, in fact, a neighbor gave me a bottle of his wine. It was quite good.

But it's hunting season here in northern Tuscany. Aha, not so good. Well, at least it's noisy. The weapons seem sort of semi automatic. Lots of lead is getting burried in the fertile soil around here by the sound of it.

So heck, we're going to take off to southern Tuscany tomorrow. Monte Argentario to be exact. We're going to be staying at La Trappola.

Monte Argentario looks a whole lot like an island on the map. But if the map is detailed enough, you'll see that there are little bits of land that attach it to the mainland of Italy. Sea currents and the Albegna river conspired to produce silt that became what the Italians call tomboli. So now Monte Argentario is attached, and between the tomboli is a marsh, a protected home to lots of animals you can frolic with photographically if you have a long enough lens.

The place has been occupied for a long time. First mention of it dates back to 24 AD, but there are prehistoric caves as well. It's in the sea lanes, so ownership of the bit of land has passed through a lot of hands. It should be a great place to discover.

Plus, I'm looking forward to staying in a villa just like some celebrity from Roma. We'll have reports, photos, and even some video of the place for you. Stay tuned.

One of the great things about Italy is that you can hop an inexpensive train and be in a completely different environment in a few hours.

Yesterday we basked in the Tuscan Sun, today we're off for the watery Disneyland of Venice, where we've been invited to get our hands dirty in a mosaics workshop.

Tourists have many options for keeping arts alive. You don't have to be traveling every moment to have a meaningful European vacation, just stay put a while in your Italian villa and check out the painting classes or the fresco classes, or take part in a photography walk in a park. These are the things the fast travelers never see. It's a whole new world, a whole new way of travel. You can actually meet the locals, and complain about your politicians, or your health care or the lack of it.

When I was a boy scout, many eons ago, we had an exercise that was meant to demonstrate to us what we could see in a very small area if we looked hard enough. A yard square was marked off with string and we were to catalog whatever we saw while staring at that tiny patch of earth. It's really amazing what you will find if you stop a while and pay attention to detail. Bugs, mostly, but still...

On a trip from Altopascio, a town along the Via Francigena pilgrimage route and famous for its bread, through Pescia and over to Montacatini Terme, we discovered Vellano, pictured above.

I'm not saying we were the first people ever to see Vellano. I mean, there's a rental property and one of those perfect trattorias beside the road that passes by. By perfect I mean a place to eat that has simple wooden tables and traditional chairs and overlooks the valley and the monastery that sits along the edge of town. You know the food is simple and good, like all the food in Italy that's not gussied up for foodies.

So I thought I'd take a few pictures and find out what's going on in town by checking the web when I got home.

And so far I've found nothing of the town's history or attractions. Nada. Zilch.

But it's beautiful, no?

So now I know we'll have to go back some time and eat at the trattoria and ask some questions. Or, better yet, you can hop in your rental car and see for yourself, and tell us all about it on your personal web page or in the comments below.

After all, this morning a Euro can be had for $1.28. Just this spring a Euro would have cost you $1.60 or so. That's quite a decline in a short time.

There were plenty of porcini up north in the street markets of Torino yesterday. We spent a day at the recently remodeled Reggia di Venaria Reale, north of Turin. The royal residence was built in the mid 1600’s and had fallen into disrepair. I can report to you that the restoration is wonderful. But...you know, there's just so much glorious excess your eyes can take in a day, and if you see everything, they say you've hoofed it for 1.5 kilometers.

The day itself was fabulous, and ended with a glass of wine sipped slowly in the main piazza of the town of Venaria Reale. What surprised me was that the town outside the palace was a very interesting place to stroll, with restaurants and cafes that featured decent food and drink for a reasonable price in excellent surroundings. A stroll down the main street was better than a stroll in the Palace gardens in fact, at least this time of year.

Don't hesitate to came to Italy in the fall. It really is the best time to visit. Rent a villa, bring a great book, buy a good bottle of Barolo and you won't mind being stuck inside when it rains.

Until the Barolo runs out that is.

I like this city. It's not as expensive as other large Italian cities. You can get a big lunch for under 10 Euros.

The variety of cheeses here is incredible. Piemonte region produces over 160 different versions.

The spine of the city starts at the train station and goes north until you reach Piazza Castello. There are lots of arcades to duck under if the weather turns inclement.

But what I really like are the huge piazzas lined with some of Torino's best architecture, where people stroll or sit on a bench and people-watch, or go to a bar for an aperativo and a bite to eat before dinner time rolls around at about 8.

I'm staying in the Lingotto center's new Meridian Art+Tech Hotel, designed by Renzo Piano. It fits the original idea of Lingotto as a high-tech manufacturing facility perfectly; lots of steel, glass, and enough odd-looking lights in my room alone to brighten up a city the size of Cleveland.

What is this Bottarga thing? Fish eggs, but not caviar. In Sardinia, the roe of Muggine, gray mullet, is dried and then either grated over pasta, or machined and put in a bottle so you can spoon it out.

The Sardinians are clever enough to have mullet farms in order to harvest the roe.

In any case, you can sprinkle or grate Bottarga over warm Tomino cheese or over pasta. Martha just returned from Sardinia, bringing a bottle of "machined" Bottarga, so we just bought some fresh ravioli stuffed with shrimp, ricotta, and squash blossoms, cooked them in boiling, salted water for three minutes, drained them, then drizzled them with oil and sprinkled the Bottarga generously on top.

As you can see, it looks wonderful, eh? A true one pot gourmet feast, a great treat for your vacation.

Just in case folks are picky, you can just tell them it's bread crumbs on top of their pasta. It won't be until they take a bite that they'll suspect something fishy is going on.

But today I went to the other market, the one that actually works for folks instead of against them. The food market.

Here's what ticked me off about food markets and money. Until today I was under the distinct impression that only folks in the US were strickened with the disease that leaves a shopper so mesmerized by the sight of food merrily trundling down the conveyor belt that s/he forgets to get the money out or start writing the check to pay for all that stuff.

Data collected as recent as this morning shows that my assumptions were incorrect. This odd behavior is apparently not, as I had assumed, genetic.

For there before me with her 346 items piled high in front of her was an Italian woman who for all the world looked like she had been struck dumb by God, as if her blood had thickened and her limbs become clogged and perhaps she would, at a moments notice, start speaking in tongues. To the ceiling no less.

In short, her behavior, as her culinary choices passed by the red laser and were entered into the database, was quite similar to American politicians during a crisis; stand there and look completely idiotic.

In any case, by the time the last few gigabytes of her enormous number of items were safely stored in the database, a line had formed that threatened to extend to the trippa department, and hardly anyone wanted that.

It was at this moment that the women came out of her trance and finally began searching for her wallet. It is absolutely amazing the number of places it might have been but wasn't. People were talking. Some were playing chess. One had been removed with some sort of liver problem and was resting comfortably in (the) hospital.

I, of course was observing. I had had the foresight to purchase prosciutto, a cured meat which isn't likely to go bad in check-out lines.

You can't go wrong with prosciutto, salami, and some hard pasta. These are odd and disturbing times. You need things that last long and cost little. The prosciutto was on sale. €10 a kilo. It almost made it all worthwhile.

It's hard to find a town that's noted throughout the world for not one but two of its food specialties: In this case Parmiggiano Reggiano and Prosciutto di Parma, cheese and ham.

Everyone knows them. Every country capable of making cheese from cow's milk tries to make Parmigiano Reggiano, usually under a name that suggests the real Italian name, like Argentina's Reggianito, but doesn't shout it for fear stiring up the ire of the Italian discoverers.

What got me started on this topic was today's lunch. I made risotto with sausage. It took a while to cook and I was starving, so, while I had the Parmigiano on the cutting board, I thought "now's the time to break off a chunk..."

So I did. I ate a bit, then thought lustily about the slices of prosciutto in the fridge.

Now the prosciutto is another story. There was a special on it at the market, making the price a tad less than €10 per kilo. So my etto, or tenth of a kilo, cost a single Euro. That's darn near a quarter pound of something that usually costs upwards of $30 a pound in the states.

For me, this might be enough reason to come to Italy and stay in a vacation house for oh, maybe a year. Ever few days I'd sit on my sun-drenched terrace with my chunks of Parmigiano Reggiano and my slices of prosciutto and my glass of wine from the €2 bottle and thank my lucky stars I was here. Every third or fourth time I'd drizzle some (real) balsamic vinegar (from nearby Modena) over the cheese and eat it with good, forno a legno bread and that ham...

But did you know there's another ham that's even more refined than Prosciutto di Parma? It's called Culatello di Zibello because it comes from Zibello, a town near Parma (so close that it's sometimes called Culatello di Parma).Culatello is essentially the inner muscle of the leg from which prosciutto is made. It's "lightly salted, stuffed into a pig's bladder, tied to give it a pear-like shape, and then hung 8-12 months to cure in farm buildings in the Bassa Parmense," according to Kyle Phillips, About.com's Italian food guru.

What I like is the story of how Culatello came about. Seems this guy was making typical prosciutto. The aim when you're curing prosciutto is to salt it as little as possible so that the flavors of the meat dominate, not the saltiness. Well, he used too little for the conditions, and the ham started to go bad. Since he knew it went bad from the outside, where the bacteria get in, he "saved" his ham by cutting off the outer meat and salting and curing the inner muscle. He aged it in a cave and when it was done a whole new taste and texture of prosciutto was discovered, which we now call Culatello, or "little backside."

There are lots of ways to turn cauliflower into a topping for pasta, but most contain the secret ingredient: anchovy. It's a nice combo.

My recipe is very simple. It's for folks who don't want to end up doing a lot of dishes. After all, you're on vacation, no? It takes a pot to boil the cauliflower--and later the pasta, and one to saute the ingredients you see above, plus some olive oil and the optional ingredient: peperoncini, hot red peppers.

It's a white dish, so you can also add chopped parsley at the end to give it some color.

Ingredients: Pasta (I'd use penne), a head of cauliflower, garlic to taste, 4-6 salted anchovies, olive oil, and grating cheese.

Boil the water, then add some salt, a short palmful of sale grosso big salt crystals for a large pot. Add the cauliflower and boil it until it's quite soft.

Remove the cauliflower and let sit on the board to cool while you chop the garlic and anchovies. Heat a pan, add 4 tablespoons of olive oil or so and add the garlic, anchovies, and hot peppers and cook until the garlic is soft.

Start the pasta. Chop the cauliflower (or put it in a bowl and squash it with a fork) and add it to the pan to warm in the oil.

When the pasta is al dente, drain and add to the pot with the cauliflower, garlic and oil. If the pasta doesn't coat with the sauce, add some fresh oil and give it a toss while it's still on the heat.

Then all you need to do is turn it out onto the plates and serve with the grated cheese.

Variations: You can add chopped tomatoes, or cover the pasta with homemade breadcrumbs. It's a gutsy sauce, so it goes well with whole wheat or farro pasta if you prefer.

For all of you out there who might be traveling this time of year and wonder if the festival season is winding down, I can offer a resounding "no." It's not every day that there's an infarinata--where folks flour each other like they do squid before being dropped into hot oil--but we've been to several fall festivals where flour was made into bread and not wasted. One featured a foot race, after which there was a feast based on focacette, little round breads baked on those terra cotta teste you see warming up in the picture.

The air in northern Tuscany is crisp; there's a bit of a breeze. Still, you can eat outside at lunch time, as we did yesterday, and it's great to walk in temperatures that peak in the comfort zone, which for us is in the high 60s, Fahrenheit of course.

Next week begins the wine harvest and the festivals that accompany it. The Lunigiana is ahead of everyone else in this regard. Cool mountain evenings have arrived to retard the maturation of the grapes, so it's time to see if anything can be done with them to make them into wines that aficionados appreciate.

The little bit of rain we've had recently brings hints that the wild mushrooms might pop out of the ground and reward us at some time before winter sets in. It's been a strange, dry fall.

Still, there's wine, truffles, wild mushrooms--how can you fail to not like the fall "shoulder" season?

While you're here, look for anything made in a forno de legno, a wood fired oven. There's nothing like doing something primitive to make food taste better.

Americans tend to shun anchovies, especially the salted ones. But they're in there for sure, lurking sublimely in good Italian regional cuisine.

But now, elements of anchovies will start appearing in American orange juice, according to Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern (from a story in the NY Times).

Sure, you won't get the fishy taste (they say). But what will happen to the price of anchovies once they start using the oils in them for fad nutrition? Will the price of the flavorful little fishes skyrocket, as corn did when they started using it for biofuel?

Is it time to invest in anchovy futures? Will Italian cuisine suffer? Is this a US plot to punish Italy for its devotion to fine food in a time of declining living standards likely to crash further as normal, law abiding citizens are forced to bail out the failed mortgage schemes of greedy bankers around the world?

So many questions, so few pizzas.

The sardine can of an elevator whisks you and many others up to dizzying heights in seconds, then lets you out on the roof of Milan's vaunted Gothic cathedral, where you can wander amongst the Gargoyles, statues and carvings for as long as you can stand it.

It's not as easy as being taken up high on an elevator and dropped off though. You're actually walking on the roof tiles in many places, and there's more stairs to climb and uneven surfaces to walk upon. Yet it's worth the trouble. Walking on a cathedral roof is not something you get to do every day. And hardly anyone falls off...

The last time I visited the Duomo it was shrouded in scaffolding for restoration and cleaning. Now only advertisements mar the view of the front of the cathedral. How long they'll stay there is anyone's guess. Filthy corporate lucre and the modern church seem to have a darn close relationship these days.

Somewhere in Ascoli Piceno in the Marche region, the Italian food formula seemed to go awry for just a second. Somebody was undoubtedly sitting in a cellar one night, a bit buzzed no doubt, and thought, "hey, why don't we get some really big olives, stuff them with ground up meat and garlic and some other things, then bread them and deep fry them?"

Well, I'm glad this all turned out ok in the end and nobody sober nixed the idea. I like Olive Ascolane. A few of them are perfect with an aperitivo in a bar. I get them at our local market at the place that sells the spinning chickens for €7.

Even if you don't know Italian, you can point to these golden orbs (see the picture above - don't you just want one?!) and indicate you'd like a few. Then when the vendor slides a big, fat, spoon under them and starts filling a bag you can just say, "basta!" and he'll likely stop within the next two scoops.

You should at least learn the word "basta." You might need it when a vendor or ne'er do well starts bugging you. It's a good word to know.

Well, that's basta for now. I've got Olive Ascolane to eat.

Over the years I've been traveling, the treatment of archaeological sites has changed quite a bit. It used to be that you excavated a site, built a ticket office, then put in some steps and guard rails to protect folks from falling into moats and other nasty holes, and then let in the tourist hordes.

Today, things are done a bit differently. Yes there are still guard rails and those pesky ticket offices. But folks are now thinking about what activities can be held inside their restored monuments.

We came across the Fortezza di Sarzanello (pictured above) on a drive the other day. The Fortezza is just outside the interesting Ligurian city of Sarzana. Despite being quite a way from the sea, the Fortezza's hilltop location gives it a view of the Mediterranean, as well as a view of the fortified town of Castelnuovo di Magra in the distance.

But what's unique about this castle is that it holds monthly "historic" dinners "with crime" inside its stout walls, Cene Storiche con Delitto. Evidently you can solve a crime while eating medieval chow by candle light, if my bad Italian serves. All for €35.

Or, if you're not near Sarzana, you can see an opera or play at a Roman Amphitheater. I saw the Italian version of "Our Town" in Sardinia a while back. There's something to be said about sitting on ancient marble and having the sea be the backdrop for a drama being played out before you. "Uncomfortable" comes to mind.

You see, the smart folks brought seat cusions. The Americans brought a bottle of wine.

Then, like all addictions, mine grabbed me by the throat. I went to language school.

And eventually, I bought my own place, a rural hideout. An apartment that was once an attic where my downstairs neighbors once hid from the Nazis.

Then, slowly, I began to learn the ways of my neighbors. Good grief, they seemed self sufficient! After all, in my Palazzo there are men who produce both white and red wine, a woman whose salamis have won competitions far and wide, a man who makes honey, and several who make polenta.

No, I don't mean these guys sit and stir a copper pot of polenta for hours. I mean they plant little plots of corn, dry it, and mill it this time of year to have it for the winter. (They make their wives stir the polenta, I'm pretty sure.)

But what are the cannons that blast away day and night in my little Tuscan village this time of year? Well, I found out soon enough, but you'll have to view my video. (Yes, Fellini would roll over in his grave. Maybe twice.) It's about those cannons and their relation to the corn the locals make into polenta: Cannons and Corn.

One of the great things about staying a while at your destination, as you do when you rent a villa or have your own "casa vacanza", is that you have a chance to learn of all the weekend festivals in your immediate area.

Signs of them will be all over town. Some, like sagre, celebrate food. La Sagra di Porcini, for example, would likely consist of celebrating all the ways the local folks prepare funghi Porcini, or Porchini mushrooms. You'd sit down for a communal meal with all manner of Porcini dishes you might order at the little kiosk they've set up. It never costs much, and the wine will be local and cheap.

Other festivals celebrate the good times of the past. Lots of festivals, especially in Tuscany, include Renaissance-garbed Sbandieratori, the flag throwers. You see a young practitioner of the sport above, doing his thing in the city of Aulla in the Lunigiana.

Hotels are for businessmen who have no need for this interesting cultural manifestations, I figure.

We looked over the balcony last evening to see our neighbor Enrico unraveling and cleaning the bright orange nets they arrange at the foot of olive trees to catch olives at harvest time. He explained that the ulivetto or olive grove was just over the hill, and we should visit, as it was in a beautiful spot. He pegs the harvest at the middle of October.

So we made plans to walk up the hill and see it the next morning, then go to the Saturday Open Air Market in Aulla. Enrico assured us that it wouldn't rain, maybe a few sprinkles in the evening...

Well, it's raining cats and dogs, gatti e cani.

Which means that we probably won't be going to the local sagra di porcini, a communal feast of porcini mushrooms, the promise of which has had our mouths watering all week. Enrico commented on those plans as well, waving a finger and making that tsk-tsk sound Italians make when you're wrong about something.

"It hasn't rained in 3 months. You won't get having fresh porcini, don't kid yourself."

Oh, yeah. We hadn't thought about that.

But with this rain....

The difference is that now I like the results. You see, I've been in Italy since Sunday. Every time I look at my little widget, it has lopped a full cent off the cost of a Euro.

Right now the little ticker quotes the price of a euro at under $1.40. The traveler from the US hasn't seen this exchange rate in over a year. And the good thing (for overseas tourists) is that the European economic signs for the future aren't good at all, reflecting the opinion that the Euro will continue to show weakness. Make no mistake, we're all doing badly, but "the US just might be doing less badly than everyone else" is the word from the traders. Gloom is good sometimes, no?

After an almost sleepless night, a result of the "cannone" or large canons blasting away all night to keep the cinghiale (wild boar) out of the corn with probably some remnants of jet lag thrown in, we arose to an absolutely perfect day, sunny and clear as a bell, the Apennines all aglow. Who says bad things about off-season weather? He should be shot. So should the cinghiale, and he'd go good over polenta.

Anyway, after throwing on some clothes we went to the Fivizzano open air market, food, household items, clothing, and porchetta trucks circling the Medici fountain in the center of town.

We bought vegetables, of course.

But that wasn't the half of it. When we entered our favorite butcher shop to get some sausages and chicken for a mixed grill, there was the most beautiful torta d'erba I'd ever seen sitting in a glass case like museums use for royal jewels. Our wedge of it is pictured above.

It was still warm from the wood-fired oven, stuffed with all manner of field greens and potatoes. We're having it for lunch and dinner. Mmmm.

And just in case you want to see what shopping at the Tuesday morning market in Fivizzano is like, and what the food costs that we bought, check out the movie: Fivizzano Tuesday Market.

Happy shopping!

There are lots of differences between the two countries, but one thing I've noticed: there's hardly any indication you've entered a German town. I mean there's no sign giving the name of the town when you enter, and no sign saying you're leaving, as you always find in Italy. Things get confusing at times.

And then there's the food, of course. I have to say, the food we've had in Germany this trip has been quite good, especially for the weather we've had, which is cool and drizzly. Venison stew with spetzel, rabbbit tenderloins with grilled quail and foie gras. Not bad stuff. But still, we can't wait to get to Italy, to get back a little lightness and freshness to the food.

I have, in fact, produced a short video about the bags Martha and I are taking to Frankfurt (and beyond) tomorrow, along with some information on why we pack them as we do. You can view it on YouTube.

Oh, and the suitcases are loaded with clothes that have been rolled rather than folded. They come out less wrinkled that way, we've found.

Spaghetti all'Amatriciana is easy enough to make. In the US we have to substitute pancetta for the guanciale unless you happen to live in a big city where you can get lots of international raw ingredients.

Eternallycool sends notice that Italy has released a stamp celebrating the Sagra degli Spaghetti all'Amatriciana, the feast day in Amatrice celebrated at the end of August. I'm sorry I missed it.

I can't wait to get my hands on one of these stamps though. It'll be one of the few I've heard of that I'm anxious to lick.

Most people with a four year old computer and a digital camera could make a web site that sucks for free.

The Italians paid €100,000 for the symbol of the web site. It was that red and black letter "i" with an oversized, green letter "T". I'd have done better for less than half of that.

Manfredi Ricca, business director at the Italian unit of Interbrand, says the government's renewed efforts should focus on clarity of vision and that an "orchestra conductor" should be hired to coordinate the ideas of all of Italy's government entities and regions.

I'd take the job, but I've had a hard enough time trying to get a residence permit, being a journalist and having the San Francisco consulate as my local consulate and all. I've never conducted an orchestra of web developers either, but if they're throwing money away, I can get nice oboe sounds from just about anyone.

Got a note from Andrew Zimmern of the television show Bizarre Foods the other day informing me that he'll be doing a show in Sicily this season on the Travel Channel, for those of you in the US who get it.

I immediately wondered what bizzare foods were left after Antony Bourdain ravaged the place for television a while back.

In any case, a little research shows that two of Zimmern's favorite markets are in Sicily, the Vucciria Market in the centro storico around Piazza San Domenico, and Ballaro Market in the Albergheria district.

Anyway, the Sicily episode of Bizarre foods will air on November 16th. I'll be in Italy, without a television. You know, there's that television tax and all.

(What's your favorite market in Italy? Leave a comment!)

In Sardinia, I remember a joint called the Pizza 2000. Yes, a plain pizza cost you 2000 lire, or about a dollar. The place was close to the hospital, but we never needed those services. Some folks ate two pizzas in one sitting, despite the fact that the pizzas hung over the plate.

Recently though, there has been a real surge in prices for pizza.

So chefs from Campania put some pizza ovens in the middle of town and baked pizzas for everyone to publicize the cost: Chefs protest against pizza prices. They say a pizza, properly done, shouldn't cost more than three and a half Euro. Good for them.

Remember, all you need is a forno al legno (a wood oven), some San Marzano tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil from Campania, and 'mozzarella di bufala' to eat right.

I don't either. The interior of Sardinia is filled with countless treasures, including the people who carve out a living there. Unlike Berlusconi's fake Roman baths, there are actually working Roman Baths in the Sardinian countryside, still fed by hot springs, that you can be awed by without having to spend 10 Euros for a beer if you get thirsty.

As I grow older I find myself more and more attracted to the countryside (all the more reason to rent a house, apartment, or villa there). Here is where traditions are upheld. Here is where the McDonalds and Starbucks aren't.

A recent trip to Sicily, we visited the workshop of a master Sicilian cart builder who lives just outside Agrigento. He's trying to maintain the Siciilian cart tradition while the government pleads it has no money for a museum to house these icons of rural Sicilian life.

While big business gets the government money, the little things that show the true colors of a place get pushed to the back burner. E sempre cosi, the Italians say, "It's always like that."

The purpose of this ramble is to tell you to get out into that wild place and dig hard for treasure. Like the winter truffle, they don't come easy but they're worth a fortune. Whether it's the interior of Sardinia or the coast of Sicily, or the hidden treasures of Campania or the Lunigiana, seek them out before they put in a starbucks to replace the barista who knows the location of the Etruscan tomb that nobody visits.

And by all means take a virtual visit (at least) to Is Cannoneris forest, Sardinia.

Sometimes I really don't understand folks who think they can "do" Florence (or Rome, or Paris, or Piano di Collecchia) in a small fraction of a day.

Florence is a beautiful small city, and has a lot to see. I made a mistake by not staying one or two nights there. I thought I could visit and see everything in a few hours. Wrong !!

Thus speaks Mr. Apa Kabar. Yes, Apa, wrong indeed. You see, not only didn't you see much, you forgot to take a minute (or an hour) to let it all soak in, like those guys in the picture. Sometimes a destination requires a particular state of relaxation to do it justice.

Last year we spent some time in a wonderful villa in the hills above Florence. A downhill walk took us down through narrow country lanes, pleasant and leafy, sometimes with stacked rock walls alongside--arriving at the Ponte Vecchio, pictured in the distance above, in a half hour or so. What a glorious walk!

I'll let you in on a little secret. I'm not much for Florence in the summertime. I didn't come to Italy to hear English spoken with the same frequency you might experience in, say, Chicago. I didn't come for the sweltering heat.

But in the off-season, Florence can rock. In a villa looking down on it, Florence can be the twinkling light on the horizon that makes your wanderlust seem like less of a disease.

Take time; see Florence right. Rent a villa. Take a look at a map of Florence's major attractions.Go to the Mercato di San Lorenzo, Florence's central market (it's near the train station) and get yourself something to eat at a trattoria (or something to take home to your villa).

Don't be like Mr. Kabar and think you can "do" Florence in a couple hours. Sheesh, Italians take that long just to eat.

High on a hill, Cortona is surrounded by the underground tombs of the Etruscans, who built a great society in Italy by the 6th century BC.

It is widely believed that the Etruscans were fun loving folks who lived in great joy amongst a plethora of fine art. Of course, most of what we know of them comes from fantasies derived from their funereal art, so you can come to your own conclusions.

Here's what the Heritage says about their Italian collections.

Here's more information on the MAEC: The Etruscan Academy Museum of the City of Cortona

While you're there, take the short walk out of town and visit the hermitage of Le Celle.

Later, of course, there came reports that some adulterated wine existed that actually could do you some harm, all sold in boxes costing less than two euros.

So how do you counter the bad vibes that wine in boxes has received? You put good wine in those boxes.

Italy’s Agriculture Ministry has recently stated that some fine Italian wines that receive government quality guarantees will be allowed to be sold in boxes. We're talking DOC wines here. DOCG wines will evidently be bottles only for a while.

You gotta admit, wine in boxes makes sense in a polluted world faced with dwindling and increasingly expensive fuel. According to a NYT op-ed piece, "A standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters of wine and generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when it travels from a vineyard in California to a store in New York. A 3-liter box generates about half the emissions per 750 milliliters. Switching to wine in a box for the 97 percent of wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons, or the equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars."

Since every one of those 400,000 cars seemed to be at rest on the freeway today, I'll pledge to do my part. A box of vino is on the shopping list.

One of my favorite dishes this time of year is simply pasta with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and cheese. I chop the tomatoes while I cook the pasta in abundant salted water (real salted--as salty as the sea, none of that "half teaspoon in 5 gallons of water" garbage the food dunderheads on the tee vee tell you). When the pasta is done I drain it, add the chopped tomatoes, some oil, and then mix and sprinkle some cheese on top. It's done. It's easy. It's mighty tasty.

Of course, you can spiff the dish up with some crushed garlic. Or, you can go to your local store's deli department and buy a couple tablespoons of pesto and add it too.

It's not just me telling you to add pesto to your fresh tomato pasta. Nope, the Genovese who settled in Carloforte on the island of San Pietro off the south west coast of Sardinia make their pesto with fresh tomatoes, so you're eating the real deal.

The folks of Carloforte are known for their Tuna fishing prowess. You might see tuna stomachs drying in the sun if you go there.

If you need a story to tell your friends after visiting an Island they've never heard of, tuna stomachs floating in the breeze might be just the thing to start things off with.

Carloforte celebrates a tuna festival, usually at the end of May to the first days in June. They also have a Cous cous festival in May.

You gotta love those cross cultural currents flowing through the Mediterranean...

I'd head right on over to the local tourist office.

Tourist offices in Europe have become increasingly sophisticated over the years. A visit to one isn't limited to grabbing a map and a couple of brochures. Today you are likely to find that a reasonably sized tourist office maintains a list of local guides, who, for a fee, will take you wherever you want to go and explain it all to you.

Yes, you can be independent travelers and still go on a tour, except you're in charge of what you see and how deep you want to go into the details.

You're also likely to find a list of local festivals. In summer, there's a sagra celebration pretty much every weekend in rural areas. A sagra celebrates a particular food in season; it may, for example, celebrate watermelons or prosciutto, and a whole menu will be built around that food. You step up to the window and order whatever you want to eat (or point to random things on the printed menu if you don't know the language and you're not a squeamish eater).

Attending a sagra is a fine way to meet the locals and eat cheap. In the Lunigiana, where I have a house, it seldom costs us more than 15 or 20 Euro for a full Italian meal at a sagra, incuding, usually, a bottle of local wine. In America, I couldn't buy the wine for that price.

And the locals love it when I pull out my camera and start photographing the food. Well, they laugh anyway...

Now I've heard that a church in the Wyke Regis area of Weymouth, Dorset, which dates from 1172, has a 16th Century stone pulpit which is dangerous.

Why? Evidently because you might be an older person on drugs who approaches the pulpit in dim light and tries to climb the stairs to it--and then you might fall and crack your noggin. That's the part the government is interested in.

The church had to make a pledge that they won't allow persons like the one above to be tottering in the pulpit. It was that or adding an unsightly guard rail.

As a traveler, I'm outraged. It seems that if a monument isn't entombed in scaffolding then they've added something cheap and unsightly to something previously photogenic.

Don't government folks have better things to do?

See: Lord protect us! Now even the pulpit in a 836-year-old church falls victim to health and safety.

Hold on, those biometric passports are "fakeproof." Any government that's spent lots of money on them will tell you that. But...

New microchipped passports designed to be foolproof against identity theft can be cloned and manipulated in minutes and accepted as genuine by the computer software recommended for use at international airports. ~ ‘Fakeproof’ e-passport is cloned in minutes

Yep, when you try your darnedest to eliminate folks and their common sense from your security chain, technology trumps technology. Forever.

Here's the thing. There are three thousand passports in circulation that could be used to arm anyone willing to pay with a (machine) valid passport. That's because these 3000 passports were formerly in a van transporting them from a high security printing facility owned by 3M . The van's driver just had to stop for a candy bar. Meanwhile, his partner stayed in the unlocked van. Guarding the passports. He gets this visit from some armed dudes...

And the passports are gone. Poof.

So I take back what I said about common sense. Perhaps it's in recession. Heaven knows everything else is.

Anyway, 3000 passports are out there ready to be cloned.

Have a nice day.

In Italy, lots of stores and services are shuttered in August, including restaurants. We Americans can't fathom why this is. Heavens, we'd be out there capturing the tourist dollars that flow in, then (forced to) take our two days of vacation in January.

Ok, so which culture is wackiest? My money is on the country with the high murder rate.

In any case, August is also the time that the great cathedrals are pretty much emptied of folks who support them. I don't mean the folks that gawk at the art and leave. I'm talking, of course, of the (mostly women) who attend and participate in mass and confession in the impressively huge structures.

Yes, cathedrals have always been bulwarks, rocks of salvation and all that, their towering steeples and bell towers reaching toward the heavens...

Well now they're making blow-up churches for the beachgoers of August. Italians have tried it once before, but Sardinian winds deflated expectations.

So if you're planning on vacationing along the Adriatic coast in the Molise region and see a big, rubber church anchored in the midst of those carefully arranged lounge chairs that mark Italian beaches, send a picture, won't you?

This month you have Barga Jazz running the whole month in the Garfagnana's most visited town. Out at Torre del Lago you can see and hear the Puccini Festival: Madama Butterfly, Turandot, Tosca and Edgar will fill the evening air.

Marina di Pietrasanta offers the Festival "La Versiliana" which offers everything from ballet to Jesus Christ Superstar in its lineup.

Viareggio has an August "Festival Latino Americano" on tap.

If you've rented a home in the Lucca area of northern Tuscany, you should sign up for the Lucca and its Lands newsletter.

And don't forget all the "sagre" held in even the smallest communities in the countryside. You'll find great local food and sometimes music at a sagra. You find them by driving around and observing brightly colored posters tacked to everywhere cars might stop. That's how we found the Sagra Dell’Anguilla a Gassano last year. It's the eel festival of Gassano in the Lunigiana, where you'll sit at long communal tables and let the locals serve you what you've ordered at the ordering window.

We used to have to send letters to a hotel and hope they spoke enough English to write our names in the reservation book (and hope they actually received the letters in time). Not any more.

In any case, did you know that if you stayed at a place like La Rocca, you can hire someone with a falcon and a few hawks, and he'd come over and start slinging meat into the air so that you could photograph the hawks' agility in picking it from the ether before it hit the ground?

Or you can hire a group of Sbandieratori, those flag throwing dudes who perform in Medieval costume with drums and flags and even do a show with cross-bows aimed at a candle.

There are so many possibilities for interesting travel these days. And just think, your contribution to the free spirits who do these kinds of activities not only keeps good people gainfully employed, but keeps the old traditions alive as well.

As a tourist, you have responsibilities you know.

Yes, they get you in airports, poking through your undies for liquids in excess and wanding your body like Tinkerbell unfettered. But what happens on the mean streets when you're not looking?

"THE FOREIGN Office hav