Italy 2011

Italy still has the tradition of closing things in the middle of the day. Probably not in Rome, Florence, Naples, etc., but in the smaller towns the tradition is still strong. In Lecce things closed down somewhere between 12 and 1 and stayed closed until 4 or 4:30. It is hard to get anything done in the middle of the day except having a leisurely lunch. The restaurants are not closed.

Even the churches close down. We were talking to some English people who went to a nearby town for the day (Otranto) and found that the churches closed between 12 and 4. “Who ever heard of churches closing for lunch?” they said. Who indeed?

In one of the “Under the Tuscan Sun” books she talks about how the siesta kind of gives you two days every day. You have a morning at work, then come home and have a big meal and a nice nap, then get up and do a few things and then go to work again from 4 to 8.

I suppose this is hard for people who live far from work and can’t go home. It is more a tradition for an older time when you lived close to work. We took the early train from Sorrento to Naples when we traveled to Lecce and there were lots of people on the train at 7 am, probably working in Naples and living somewhere along the Bay of Naples. The train takes 70 minutes from Sorrento to Naples so it would not be possible to go home for lunch.

Italy has this wonderful tradition of the passeggiata, that is, an evening walk starting an hour or two before sunset. People of all ages walk around the town from kids to grandparents, school kids, young families, everyone. They walk around, the stores are all open and so some people shop, lots of gelato is consumed as well as other treats, last night I had a cotton candy and a nutella and rice crispies crepe.

The old walled towns are ideal for this with their picturesque, winding streets. Lecce had an amazing passeggiata on Saturday night, the streets were filled, all the lights were on, there were clowns on the square making balloon animals, there were other performances, they had human statues, they had people playing instruments, and everyone is town just walking around and enjoying being with everyone else. And, for Italy, fewer people talking on cell phones as they walked.

Surprisingly it was almost as big on Sunday night. Lots of things close down in Italy on Sundays, especially any local transportation like non-national trains and buses.

One of the pleasures of travel is to get into a town and be confused and then, over a couple of days, figure out where everything is and where you like to go, where you like to have coffee, where the markets are, etc.

When we first got to Lecce it was windy and we had a bad initial impression of the town. It was less windy the next day and perfect the next day. We got to like Lecce a lot: very few tourists, a nice relaxing town, lots of churches.

Also we started out at a B&B where we didn’t like the room, too dark, and only stayed one day. Then we moved into the Prestige B&B and had a lovely room, up two floors, 46 narrow marble steps, which seemed like a lot at times. The room had a big window out to the street and a small balcony. It was all white and sunny and cheery. We had a great time just hanging out in the room, reading and web surfing, enjoying the day and the street sounds.

The churches around Sorrento all had electric candles: to light a candle for someone you drop your 50 cents, or whatever, into the box and flip the switch for the candle you want to light and a little electric bulb at the end of the candle goes on. I suppose they come around every once in a while and switch them all off. This seems less than satisfying to me.

In Lecce all the churches had real candles that you could light and put in the holder and they would burn down. Maybe I’m old-fashioned but they seems to be what lighting candles it all about. Well, I guess it really means I am secular and not religious because maybe what lighting candles is all about is the spiritual side of things. Whatever. You can make the same arguments for electric candles as for hot air hand dryers but I don’t like either one.

In Ostuni we are back to the electric candles.

Traveling is so different now than, for example, when I was in Europe in the 70s.

Cash machines: it is so easy to get cash, the bancomats are all over. Hint: get a Capital One card, there is no international transaction fee, it is 3% for many cards.

iPods: I have two, one for backup. Wynette has three, tiny, small, and big so that she has her whole music library. I am listening to “Big ideas” lectures. We have natural sounds for sleeping on the plane.

iPad: with a bluetooth keyboard, just about as good as a laptop and very small and light. Wynette is playing Scrabble with Logan and Mr. CPU (who has an amazing vocabulary). It has the Kindle app so we have all our books. We have an ssh app so Wynette can edit her web sites. We load in the pictures from the camera using the photo adapter. We use the WordPress app to blog and add photos to the blog.

Kindle: I am very happy with my Kindle. I got one of the third-gen ones. I have several books for reading. We also have four guidebooks: Frommer, Lonely Planet, Rough Guide, and Rick Steves. It is handy to have them all available. The downside is that you can’t look at two at the same time but have to go back and forth. Also it is hard to page through them or switch between two places. Also only one of us can look at them although the other one can use the iPad. The maps are a bit too small to see on the kindle at our age. We use the iPad to expand maps that we can’t see on the kindle. Overall though the kindle is a big winner for books and guide books.

Cell phones: we got Italian SIM chips for our t-mobile phones, 15 euro each. It is very handy to be able to call back and forth when we are meeting. Also handy to call hotels about reservations.

Posted by Wynette: We often see dogs on the streets. They always seem quiet and well behaved. Sidewalk cafes make it easy to take your dog with you when you go for ice cream. We saw these women in front of (yes) a gelateria. Note the stylish clothes (compared to English ladies, earlier post.) And the sweet doggie playing with the woman’s hand while she chatted with her friend.

Here’s a dog sleeping in a shop window in Sorrento.

Post by Wynette: Lecce is filled with baroque architecture. There are something like 50 huge baroque churches here. I don’t really like the baroque style very much (miss the stunning simple 1000 year old churches in northern Italy, such as the duomo in Florence) but I think anything like that was destroyed here and everything rebuilt in the 1500s. But, I do like this (picture below). I believe there is a legend about a wolf associated with Lecce but I haven’t gotten clear about it.

Post by Wynette: Charlie posted earlier about our hike around Capri where we had a long long stretch of nothing but stairs. I think they went on for at least 1/4 mile, probably more. All uphill on steep steps, no handrails to pull yourself up with or balance on. (Deb, yes, come to think of it, it was very much like hiking up out of the Grand Canyon. But, thank goodness I didn’t have a backpack. And it wasn’t as far! And I was careful not to pick up any rocks. 🙂 We’ve encountered lots of stairs on this trip. Below is pic of stairs to our current B&B. This is only about 1/4 of the total stairs for this. But, I’m getting stronger and they aren’t really bothering me too much. (I think my knees are better now than in previous years.) Our landlady, Renata, told us how good stairs are for us.

Post by Wynette:

Charlie did a post earlier about gelato (ice cream) and another about how well the Italian women dress. Today I couldn’t resist taking this picture. Two English (??) ladies in decidedly unfashionable yet comfortable clothes and floppy hats sitting on a bench outside a gelateria eating their ice cream. I was hoping they wouldn’t see me take their picture but think one of them may have.

The Italians all seem to dress well, men and women. The women especially though seem dressed up all the time. They have stylish clothes, scarves, boots, etc. We noticed this yesterday when we saw a German tourist couple. They stood out in terms of how dressed down they were. Certainly Wynette and I are exactly the same but we don’t see ourselves.