Another Bullet Point on the Resume, file under 'Published'

In the past, Kimberly shared that she got a chapter published as part of her academic life; of course, this was a fairly technical article for people in her field, which, honestly, is kind of boring if you're not into 'corpus linguistics'. [ducks]

But now, she can really brag: she's been published on the interwebs, where not just anyone can voice their opinion randomly and without consequence (ignore that you are reading this on a blog, where we can voice our opinion randomly and without consequence).

If you go to this website, which is apparently the travel section of the San Pellegrino water company, you will find Kimberly's photo journalist skills on display.

If you go to the first article on the front page, Slow tourism in the City: introducing urban trekking in Siena, and scroll through the pictures at the bottom, you will come upon this picture of me and Kimberly's mom or sister (I can't tell) walking through the streets of Siena (yes that's a street in Siena, not a sidewalk or alley; they don't allow cars in the city, which is kind of nice):

I haven't read the article, but at the bottom are the credits, and look, there's Kimberly (they even spelled her name right):

21. Walking through Arches - Courtesy of Kimberly LeVelle - www.flickr.com/photos/33948778@N00/

Of course, the beauty of her subjects (and I don't mean the arches) is most likely the reason why San Pellegrino chose this photo.

I tried to get them to send us some cases of water in exchange for the use of the photo (I love that sparkling water, but it is awfully expensive, especially compared to the tap in our kitchen, which apparently is free), but in the end we decided we would just go for the glory.

This little excitement has also reminded me that I should really start recollecting out trip to Italy this past summer and upload a lot more of those photos, of which there are literally hundreds. Hopefully, I actually do it this time. If not, feel free to heckle me like I'm Karl Rove at the University of Iowa.

If those links above don't work, go to www.acquapanna.com, and search for Siena, where you'll find the article.

High Class

When we were traveling in Italy, we did a lot of eating and drinking of wine. We tried our hardest to eat and drink whatever was the local specialty.

When we were in Siena, we found a nice little wine shop. The old man inside spoke no English, but he took a liking to us and was opening bottles for us to taste. We were able to determine that he and his family had a small vineyard where they were starting to produce their own wines. The quality was pretty good and the bottles pretty cheap, so we ended up drinking a decent amount of his wine while we were in Siena.

Since they had started making their own wines, they were converting their shop to sell their own wines and were trying to get rid of everything else. In the corner of the store was a 'Everything for 18 €uro' shelf, so I went to investigate while Kimberly and family talked to our new friend. I noticed that there were some pretty nice looking wines, including one of the Italian B wines (in Italy, they have Brunello, Barolo, and Barbaresco wines, which are all of high quality. They rank in a certain order, from most bestest to least best, but I can never remember that order; I just know they're all supposed to be pretty good). There was one that had a price tag on it for 7o €.

Not really understanding the situation, I confirmed with him that everything, and I stressed the everything, on the shelf was 18 €, even if marked with a different price. He said that, yes indeed, all the wine was 18 €.

Since I had never tasted one of the Italian B wines, and since this one seemed to be on sale at an amazingly reduced rate, I decided to spend the money (18€ = ~ $25) and try it out. Kimberly's mom and sister, who were traveling with us at the time, actually carried the wine back to the US for us. I am their debt for this task.

Anyways, last night we decided to open the bottle, since we were having some baked pasta. We figured a nice, Italian red would go perfect.

We opened the bottle and were blown away. The wine was pretty amazing.

After dinner, while savoring the rest of the bottle, we decided to do a little research on the bottle. It turns out the wine was definitely worth the 18€. We could have bought half a plane ticket with that bottle of wine.

Sometimes, you just stumble on a good deal. And fortunately for our taste buds, we jumped at the chance.

Shaky Hands make for Blurry Pictures. The label says:
Poggio all Oro
Brunello di Montalcino
Castello Banfi
Riserva 1995

Held Prisoner in an Italian Restaurant

Eating in Italy is one of the better things you can do in life, as we've reported on several occassions in the past. We hear people over here complaining about the food all the time, saying they get better food in San Francisco or New York. These people are idiots and don't know what they're doing. Ordering polenta in Naploli, or Eggplant in Milan probably isn't going to work out well, since most of Italian cuisine in regional. Do some research, eat the local specialties and you'll be fine.


Italian restaurants move at their own pace, often very slow. In this regard, I can understand the frustration with travellers, especially ones with a tight schedule. Fortunately, we have no schedule, so a 2 hour lunch is fine with us.


But there have been 2 notable exceptions.

In our firt go around in Siena, we went to a little hole in the wall place (in Italy, they're all holes in the walls). After getting screwed out an outdoor seat by the hot guy, we got stuck in the back of the restaurant with the other Americans. No big deal. We were hungry and wanted to eat.

So we perused the menu and choose our food. Some rabbit, some pasta, some veal. Then we waited for the waitress to come.

And we waited.

And we waited.

Since Italian service i slow, I didn't want to look like some American who couldn't deal. So we waited some more. It was an on-going discussion as to how long we should wait. We decided 30 minutes was enough.

When I went to talk to the bar, they were shocked, SHOCKED, that we hadn't been helped and he would help us personally. They then proceeded to tell us that half the menu was no longer available.

In the end, the food was good and I got a free glass of Vin Santo (sweet dessert wine) out of it, but it was annoying none the less.

The second instance happened just the other night here in Lucca. We had a great meal, including raviolli, papparadalle, and cutlets milanese.

Once we finished, we asked for the check. And waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

At this point, we were trying to do everything we could to get the waitress' attention, including staring, waiving money, etc. She obviously thought it was someone else's reponsibility to get us the check, you know, like the fairy godmother.

After 20 minutes (I learned a little bit from the first time), we finally asked for the check again. The waitres acted like it was the first time we asked and promptly brought the check over.

The problem in both these situations is you can't do anything. We could have left the restaurant without ordering, but on a sleepy Sunday evening, we ran the chance of there being no other available retaurants. And we could have walked out on the check, but really, we couldn't.

We're learning the Italian way, but it has its limits. Next time, maybe we'll only wait 15 minutes.

It Happened Again

If you ever decide to come to Italy, you should learn this word: sciopero. It means strike. I've written about it before, regarding the air traffic controllers and then the gas stations.

Well, they've done it again. Starting at 9 pm last night and lasting until 9 tonight (10, depending on what news you read), the trains are on strike.

We were supposed to move on to Lucca today from Siena. But yesterday when we went to the station to look at tickets, we found out about the strike. After frantically trying to get bus reservations, and running straight into the wall that is Italian bureacuracy, we had to change our plans. One extra night here in Siena, the trip to Lucca pushed back a day.

It's a good thing we have flexible plans, otherwise, the Italian train people would be getting one nasty letter.


[We were just checking the national strike website (yes, they have a website devoted solely to strikes) and couldn't find the train strike. Apparently, there are some rumors that the strike didn't happen. Apparently, you can't win with these things.]

View from my bedroom window (part 5)

Sienna.



It is purely by luck that we are here today in Sienna. We thought we were headed to our agriturismo villa tonight, but when we called to confirm figured out that we were a day early. This is the best mistake so far! We were FORCED to spend a day in Sienna, my so far favorite city in Italy (no offense to all of the lovely Italians in my family and their hometowns intended). Sienna is serene after the chaos of Florence, small and sweet and beautiful.



And this is the view from my bedroom window.

The View from Our Bathroom Window

Kimberly has been reporting on some of the beautiful views from our various bedrooms in Italy. But the best hotel view so far has to be this one:

This is the view you would see if you were sitting on the toilet in our room at our hotel in Siena.

Yup.