Chapter Closed

I have been sick for a couple of weeks.  Still not 100%, but I am rolling up on being back in the states for a month now.  I gotta get this whole Italy thing wrapped up so I can move on to some van stories.  After leaving Taranto, Francesco, and the whole cooking experience, our first stop was Bari.  I was interested in this city for a couple of reasons.  First, because I was told it was really beautiful.  Which now that I have been there, I would classify as something of a stretch.   Really it is a very 80s modern, and frankly kind of ugly city, but contains an attractive historical district complete with tiny, curvy little streets.   It was a good practice for Venice which was coming up.  Also like Venice, it was good for discovering places you can only find once.  We found a four dollar margarita but then by the time we were thirsty we couldn’t find it again. 

My main reason for traveling to Bari is due to it being the burial spot of Saint Nicola.  In America, this is the person we call Santa Claus.  The cathedral was interesting.  Very simple white stone on the outside.   On the inside, it was again a very simple in design with stone arches between the center columns.  But the ceiling was astounding!  Almost entirely gold.  The crypt in the basement was beautiful as well.  So much of the beauty of a church can be in their basements.  There were a number of paintings and statues of Nicola.  …I just wanna say, he was a lot darker skinned than we Americans have been lead to believe.

We went out for pizza one day.  Nothing special.  I cooked one night and the second night we were back out.  We had a good meal at Trattoria La Baresana.  I had a really fresh, wonderful salad with lovely, tender artichokes.  Then a pasta with oil and tomatoes.  Most of the other entrées contained squid or mollusks. 

Our next town… Honestly, I ended up here by mistake, was Lecce.  It was the first place I booked in Italy.  Then, shortly before leaving the states, I realized I was staying there because I can’t spell.  I had intended to go to Leuca, another hour south and on the coast.  It is the spot where the Adriatic and Ionian seas meet.  Sometimes there is an interesting color difference between the two.  Ah well.  That’s why there’s next year’s trip.

The black truffle pasta at Doppiozero.
It had a flavor so much different than
truffle oil.

On first arriving in Lecce I had an amazing black truffle pasta at Doppiozero, next to the church at via Guglielmo Paladini 2.  It is a little over priced and the restaurant was very popular with tourists.  I have only had truffle oil in the past and I have really wanted to like it.  I have tried fairly hard in fact.   But I find its flavor off-putting.  Still, I am not going to give up.   I keep trying it from time to time.  That’s what led me to the discovery I had this day.  On the pasta there were paper thin slices of truffle and I loved it!  The flavor was so much less intense than the truffle oil.  After our cooking experience with squid, then the city of Bari all I wanted from lunch was pasta that didn’t have arms.  I got so much more.  Very happy.

The AirBnB was most worthy of its honor, being the first one I booked.  The primary architectural feature of many buildings in Lecce involved lots of arches.  This stonework apartment had high cathedral domes over the two main rooms.  It was a fascinating living space with a small kitchen off to the side.   I do miss American kitchens.  I was able to cook two dinners in it, but it was a study in planning as I juggled one square foot of counter space to make the small space work.  Honestly, back home my cutting boards are larger than the countertop of this kitchen.

Lecce was beautiful.  Very similar to a town I was in last year in southern Sicily, Noto.  It was filled with intricately carved, sand colored buildings.  The insides of some of the cathedrals are unbelievable.  The arches and complex curves in the stonework were positively mesmerizing.

Our last destination stop was Venice. It is a beautiful city.  I love taking black and white photographs there.  Something about them appears even more timeless than what I can produce in the other cities.  They are instantly recognizable, and black and white removes all the distraction of the bright colors,  simplifying the photos to their design.  

Last year I heard Venice as a destination, during the time I would have been there, had some problems.  A year long draught, a stalled barometric high pressure zone, and an annular tide all overlapped.  Many of the canals ran dry.  What was uncovered did not smell good.  This year I am happy to report, everything was just fine.  There were a lot more people than the last time I was there in 2022.

I had one movie location I wanted to track down.  In the opening of _The Italian Job_ Donald Sutherland and Mark Wahlberg are walking across St Marks Square toward the pillars where thieves would have been hung in the old days.  We did make it there but it was a mass of people.  Briefly we landed in a cafe until The Nerdist leaned over to me, menu in hand, and said,  “They want sixteen euro for a cup of coffee!”  We moved on.

After Venice we had a day to kill in Florence and she was able to experience a few wine windows.  Then it was on to Fiumicino the location of the Rome airport and then on home.  First stop was Boston where I had a massively overpriced lobster roll.  Then on to St Paul Minnesota to stop in the office and have a coney at the Gopher Bar.  The Italian adventure was over.