Gelato standings . . .



Fragola has taken a decisive lead after a visit to Blue Ice the Campo de Fiore . . .

Connoisseurs may object that this is akin to awarding a gold medal to soft-serve vanilla from the local Dairy Queen knockoff, to which the committee responds, "Your point is?"

Cotto



Another restaurant plug:

Cotto . . . good food, and a truly friendly staff. Pretty much a tourist-oriented place, but not bad because of it.

Just off Via Nazionale, around the corner from the piazza and a few blocks from Termini.

At the Vatican




Still standing . . .

The last installment in the Rogue Warrior series, Holy Terror, took place partly in Rome, and it was fun visiting the Vatican again to check out the scene of some of Dick's adventures. It was good to see that the door he used to pursue some of the bad guys at one point has now been secured; I discretely checked.




Locked. Good.

They've also beefed up security a bit, though to be honest . . . no, I better not go there.

The rotunda looked none the worse for wear...




Saints, prophets . . .

On the way out, I looked up at one of the windows, and for just a second, thought Dick had returned . . .



The man himself? Can't be . . .

I think it was just my imagination, but with Richard Marcinko, you never know.

Hey, the guy saved the Pope. There's no limit to what he can do . . .

Jimmy

Jimmy was a SEAL until he messed up his knee. There's a story in that - he says a medical officer screwed him over - but it's long and involved and due to be told at another time. For now the point is that he has a slight but noticeable limp, and though he'd changed quite a bit since I last saw him - his hair is in a ponytail, his dress is European hippie - I knew it was him coming up the steps as soon as I saw how he was walking.

He's still a shooter, but he does it with cameras; he makes his living these days as a photographer. In Europe, and mostly industrial/commercial type stuff, some catalog things and advertising, which he says doesn't pay as well as you'd think, at least not for him.

He's been trying to break into fashion and art stuff lately; when I asked why he doesn't do combat gigs for news services, he laughed and said: "Which would you rather look at? Beautiful babes or people bleeding?"

After we met near the Tiber, we crossed over and he took me down some back street (a mile? two miles?) from the Vatican. All of a sudden we were in the middle of a street (more like an alley) party. People were dancing via an Ipod hookup to Italian covers of Beatles songs. Not only was the music in a different language but the style mixed some late neo-pop with 50s rock 'n roll with Euro techno-pop - very dislocating if you paid too much attention to it, but intoxicating if you just went with the flow.

The crowd - there had to be close to 150 people there - was heavily female, ranging in age from 18 to 60. Every woman looked like a model.

There was a table with wine and glasses (real glass), though almost no one seemed to be drinking. I fixed that.

"Shang-ra-la," Jimmy told me as I poured us some red. "Just don't talk politics."

I didn't.

Later on, I asked him how he got hooked into the party, which apparently is a regular thing, two or three nights (and early mornings) a week, with a fairly set crowd. (No way I would have been welcomed - and I was welcomed - if I hadn't been with him.)

"I kind of fell into it," he said. "Friend of a friend of a friend. They were so-so about letting me in. Then they got cool."

"Why?"

"Dude - I told them I was a SEAL."

At the Coliseum



The line to get in is behind the line in front, which is of people looking at the line to get in. It's longer inside. If you time it right, though, you can almost breeze through.

Ancient Rome is one of the sub-themes of my trip (gelato and Chianti are among the others), so naturally I had to visit the Coliseum, even though I've been there before. It's a lot more tourist-oriented than most of the outdoor ruins, which is both good and bad - there's an admission charge and a long security line. There are also tour groups; as elsewhere in Italy, you can cut the line by joining a tour. English speaking guides - most of them look like British college kids on vacation - hawk their tours to people waiting in line.

I didn't take the tours, so I don't know if they're a good deal or not; my guess is that they're probably worth it if a) you know very little about the Coliseum and/or Roman history, or b) the line is long and the weather is hot.

Another way you can "cut" is by buying a pass ahead of time on-line. I bought an archaeological pass that allowed entrance to a number of different sites, including the Forum (basically across the 'street'). After I got through security - not exactly onerous - collecting the ticket wasn't hard, and I was free to wander through the first and second centuries on my own . . .



They built a partial deck to give you an idea of how the flooring worked. There were two levels below, where they kept the animals and slaves.


The Coliseum has to be Rome's number one tourist attraction, and there are a number of tourist-oriented free-lancers around. I haven't seen the outright scammers I saw in Florence there; maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but my sense is that the authorities here have a somewhat better sense of propriety.

Or maybe my cynicism is just being melted by the heat . . .

There was a gypsy lady with four parakeets, all with clipped wings. She sat by the curb of the ancient road, the birds on her box - she wasn't selling them, so what was she doing with them? Getting kids to hold them, I guess, and maybe for that someone would toss a Euro or two. Except all the kids around her seemed to be family . . .

But far and away the best free-lance attraction were the guys dressed up as ancient Roman legionnaires, etc., who would pose with tourists for 5 Euros, hairy legs and all.




For 5 Euro, you too can conquer Rome, or at least a Roman . . .


One of these guys, working the crowd by himself up near the Forum, had a British accent. I was going to ask him if he'd run into Arthur while on duty in the far-flung reaches of the empire, but he was busy making faces to a tall, dark German girl . . .

I chose my hotel sight unseen and sans recommendations, based more on its location (and price) than the amenities. That isn't to say that it's a dump - far from it. But it's surprising when the amenities it does have turn out to be pretty decent - a good price on internet access (as long as I use their business center), free minibar (2 beers a day), and breakfast.

Yeah, I know, breakfast is generally included at most European hotels , but this breakfast is actually good. At least if like pastries - they have these little lemon tart things are addictive. Different cakes, thick Italian bacon . . . (Sure, there's healthy stuff like fruit, and even eggs . . . you think I'm here for my health???)

But the best thing about breakfast is the cappuccino, fresh made. (Unlike the hotel in Florence, which served, gag, instant cappuccino - just add spit.)

The trick, though, is to get more than one. It's not because they're cheap; they just don't understand the concept of caffeine addiction. Or maybe they do and they've decided not to be enablers.

In America, you might slide your cup to the side and look plaintively in the direction of the waitress or captain, subtly asking for a refill. That doesn't work in Italy - the cup is simply whisked away.

Begging, in poorly accented Italian, does work. So far, I haven't had to get on my knees, but I am prepared.

Welcome to Roma; give me your money



From the company website . . . Termini doesn't look quite as cool as that in real life, but it is better than Penn Station.


Cash only

We took a train from Florence to Rome. The ride was late but uneventful - I even remembered to cancel my ticket.

Roman cab drivers are notorious thieves, especially when they pick up people at Termini, and the one who picked us up was no exception. Drove us a few blocks out of the way, then tried to charge us twice for the bags. I showed him - made him change a big bill.

Twenty bucks for six blocks . . .

I'd say karma will get him but not the way he drives . . .

The guys at the restaurant where we had a late lunch more than made up for it with complimentary limoncello . . . hey, it wasn't my fault they left the bottle...

Savonarola

I mentioned San Marco in the last post.

The Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola came to San Marco in 1490 and began preaching about the coming apocalypse, which he saw as imminent. It was a bad time for Florence - the Medicis were losing their grip; the French king would soon invade Italy and do battle with several city states, including Florence. Savonarola interpreted the chaos - and the decline in living standards for the middle class and poor - as a sign from God. He railed against Florentine decadence, including homosexuality, which was tolerated especially in the upper ranks of society.

Turning against the Medicis, who'd once been his patron, he essentially became the leader of the city when the French attacked and the Medicis were forced into exile in 1494. Among other things, he organized a burning of what he termed pornographic art in the Piazza della Signoria. (The main and most important town square, outside city hall. That's where the Uffizi is today. The episode is usually called a 'book burning' but books were no where near as plentiful in 1494 as the term suggests.) Under Savonarola's influence, sodomy became a capital offense.

Though the government of the city had been elected, the people eventually revolted, and after a riot in 1497, Savonarola was arrested, 'tried', and burned at the stake in a fire that lasted several hours, as the authorities sought to reduce every bit of his remains to ashes so there'd be no relics for his followers.

But Savonarola's memory was not stamped out. His portrait, disguised with the attributes of another Christian martyr but recognizable to his followers, was added to paintings by Fra Bartolomeo. The movement to redeem his reputation continues to this day; there is currently a struggle between different factions in the Catholic Church on whether or not Savonarola should be canonized at a saint or not. (Some of Bartolomeo's work, masterful in its own right, is on display at San Marco. And just for the record, I'm way over-simplifying the complicated politics, which involved the popes as well as the Medicis and French king, responsible for Savonarola's rise and fall.)

The Medicis eventually returned to power. As religious as Italy can seem at times, strict religious puritanism has never had mass appeal here.

Smile while I rip you off


Out in the small Tuscan towns, even the ones that are basically tourist traps, people are generally nice and extremely honest with strangers.

Florence, however, is a different story. The areas outside the city center - where real people live - are fine, as friendly as you could wish for, but the closer you get to the Duomo, the more you have to watch for scams. Most of them are either obvious or dumb - the guy at the bar who tried to charge me for a coffee I didn't have (dumb, since you're required to give customers a bill with everything listed), the vendors who sell paper cut up dolls that supposedly dance (a hidden string helps, though of course they fail to mention that).

For the most part, the restaurants in the tourist areas are pretty upfront about how they're ripping you off - a pizza for one can cost 10 Euros ($16), and a plate of spaghetti's in the same neighborhood. That's pretty much how it is near any tourist attraction, worldwide. Truth is, the real problem is the exchange rate; a year and a half ago the price - adjusting for the location, of course - wouldn't have seemed outrageous at all. And usually, the tourist-oriented food in Italy is still fairly decent, more than the equivalent of what you'd get at a similar venue in NYC. Or at least I think so; I try to avoid obvious tourist traps in my hometown.

I generally avoid them in Italy, as well, but in this case I had to stop for lunch at a little dump of a place called Donnini Pasticceria, which translates roughly as "Eat here only if you're an imbecile, which is how the staff will treat you."

The place gave dumps the world over a bad name. The pizza appeared to have been cooked the day before Julius Cesar was assassinated; the spaghetti was in his lunch box when he spit on Brutus. The uni-sex restroom - common in Italy - wasn't clean enough to puke in.

No biggie, even if the prices were absurdly high. I could have lived with it all had the waiter-hawker-maitre de above, who after taking the bill came back with my change and said rather confidentially, "You know, the tips are never included in Italy."

Now that's almost true - tips and charges for service are rarely added to the bill in restaurants frequented by Italians. But in tourist areas especially, many restaurants add both a cover charge and, very occasionally, a service charge as well. Techincially, the cover charge is usually listed as a charge for bread, per person, and appears that way on the bill. 2 Euros is pretty common. I don't know if that's to get around some obscure Italian law or established custom. One custom I do know that's very established is tipping - as a rule, Italians don't. And they don't feel bad about it either. (Tourists are often semi-expected to leave about a ten percent tip; if you're with Italians, though, they'll generally talk you out of it as bad form.)

But I digress.

As I said, some restaurants in tourist areas charge for both - and they even say they do. As this one did, right on its menu. So obviously my friend thought I couldn't read, English or Italian.

I neglected to tip him. An oversight, surely.

But what the hey. I guess he didn't hold a grudge, because the next day he smiled when I returned with a camera to take his picture ... next to the sign that said service was included in the bill...

The moral of the story: steal from me if you must, but don't treat me like a complete imbecile when you do it. A run of the mill fool will do.

Carlo

I'm meeting Carlo near the Academia, the museum where David hangs out in all his homo-erotic glory. Even though I'm a good fifteen minutes early, he's already sprawled over a table at the cafe/bar when I walk up.

"Ciao," I say.

"Yeah. don't order a beer, for christsakes. I don't want people thinking I hang out with touristi."

"I don't look like a tourist?"

He squints. "If you keep your mouth shut, you might get by. Order a cafe. No, let me."

Actually, I want water. It's about 90 degrees out and I'm sweating buckets.

"Better than beer, I guess." He launches into a tirade about how Florence is being overrun by tourists. Like I couldn't see that coming.

Carlo talks like a Florence native, but he's actually an American. He's lived in Europe since the late '70s or '80s. He claims to have been in advertising, but all his stories have to do with late Cold War spying. They also generally involve an "f-in commie scum," though every so often he'll sprinkle in an "honorable Rusky." Maybe he really was in advertising; most ex-spies don't disparage their old opponents quite so badly.

He's retired, though he's not sixty yet. At least I think he's retired; ask too many personal questions and all you get is a deeper scowl in reply.

"The Ukranians are the worst," he says, continuing his anti-tourist tirade. "Throwing all their black market money away. Money they probably stole from the Russian -- "

Carlo stops mid-sentence. I follow his eyes to a pair of slim young women standing near the door, looking for a table. They're wearing silk dresses that stop about mid-thigh and look painted on.

"Tourists?" I ask.

"Ukranians." Carlo gets up. "Scusi."

He walks over to them, says something in Italian, then switches to another language - I'm guessing Ukranian. They laugh, and walk over to our table.

"We're going to the Acadamia," he says. "Interested?"

It's not the museum he's asking about. I beg off. Which is just fine with Carlo. He winks.

Later, he sends me a text.

"Touristi. Gotta love them."

Hotel minibars

So we're in Florence.

The beer in my hotel's minibar is 7 Euros. At the current exchange rate, that's somewhere around $11.66.

Makes the prices at Yankee Stadium look cheap.

San Gimignano

San Gimignano is a little town in the Tuscan hills that's like a lot of little towns in Tuscany - surrounded by vineyards, olive groves, and sunflowers; filled with tourists - except for its towers. At some point during the middle ages the local swells decided to show off by adding towers to their homes. (No worry about Freud then, obviously.) Several dozen were built; fourteen survive.

According to the guidebooks, that is; I was too lazy to count. The towers aren't open to the public, but they get the town into the guidebooks, and along with its location on one of the main meandering sub-highways in central Tuscany that's enough to bring a steady flow of travelers.

Lenny's a photographer who splits his time between San Gimignano and Newhaven in southern England, though having been to Newhaven I'm baffled as to why.

'Sunflowers.' He says the word as if it's a prayer. 'Sunflowers.'

Not every photo he takes here is of sunflowers; just ninety-five percent. Of course, they're just for "art"; you can't buy them in the local shop. (Though there are plenty of other sunflower and landscape shots there.)

'Come back tomorrow and I'll make your photo,' he tells me.

I beg off. 'I don't want to break your camera.'

Lenny nods knowingly. 'Too true. Too true.'

On the train

Stephan did something for Naval Intelligence, though what it was exactly none of us were ever sure. He came out of the Navy as an officer, in need of a job and looking after. Somebody, I think it was Paulie, got him a job on the railroad. So for a million years now he’s been a conductor, working late runs.

I saw him the other night, late coming out of Hoboken. He looked more like a ghost than he’s ever looked, which is saying something.

He took my ticket and didn’t acknowledge me. It wasn’t like the train was full of people or anything, but that’s Stephan.

Twenty minutes later he came back and sat down next to me.

“Train hit a deer last night,” he said, without any prelude. “Took the head right off. Still by the tracks. If you look carefully just after Mahwah, you’ll see it.”

“How you been, Stephan?” I asked.

“Mmmm,” he said, and got up.

I looked, but never saw the deer.

Where I'm supposed to be



Bucharest . . . The traffic jams make me feel like home. I ordered nice weather, too...

Softball questions . . .

So my travel agent screwed up and instead of sending me to Romania I ended up in northern New Jersey. It was an understandable mistake and I'm sure a lot of people don't know the difference. So far it's been unending fun and if I squint at the signs just right they look like they're Romanian.

Some of them are probably written in Romanian, part of the New Jersey transportation department's campaign to make getting around the state even more impossible than it already is. I'd slow down enough to identify the alphabet but traveling at anything less than the speed of a Bruce Springsteen song is dangerous here.

Fortunately I spent some formative years in the state and every so often I pass a landmark that looks familiar. There was a cemetery I passed last night where I'm sure I puked in when I was fourteen or fifteen. Several times, in fact.

The puking, not the passing. Once I saw it I found my way easily.

I still have some time here but so far I haven't gotten lost and even have learned a thing or two. The tour started with a reading group that graciously allowed me to sit closest to the door and didn't even bother to insist I check my weapons. They asked easy questions, too, like, "Who's your favorite author?"

The last one who bought me a drink, of course.

They got a bum rap

PHILADELPHIA (Oct. 22) - Philadelphia is home to the least attractive people in the United States, a survey of visitors and residents showed on Friday.

I can think of twenty places worse just out of the cities I've been to in the past year . . .