Wales Watching

All the food in one place. You’re welcome. Galette in Salerno: Candied oranges in Amalfi: Candied orange peel in Amalfi: Caffe con Leche—think espresso-flavored heavy semi-whipped cream—from God knows where (we drank a lot of these): Lemon granita from Amalfi: Gelato (ricotta and chocolate-rum flavors) on brioche bun in Salerno: Champagne in front of the …

Amalfi climbs up the crease between two steep ridges. It’s the town that gives the Amalfi Coast its name. As we disembarked the bus, my first thought was that I could feel the jaws of the tourist trap closing around me: Amalfi is lemon-orchard country: the pottery is painted with lemon motifs, the culinary stores …

All my photos are of blue and green smears through a smudged window, so I appropriated this one from Google. Credit where it’s due: I always thought of Italy as dry, like in the Spaghetti Westerns, but the Amalfi Coast is lush and heavy, almost tropical. The bus ride from Salerno to Amalfi along the …

My newest aphorism is this: Put your nose to every grate… …because you never know when you’ll find a secret medieval chapel on the other side:

Because I live under a rock, I’d never even heard of the Amalfi Coast until Rachel put it on our itinerary. Over the 48 hours of our stay, it climbed onto my Worldwide Top 10 list. We stayed in Salerno, a medium-sized city on one of the slightly less spectacular stretches of the Amalfi Coast. …

I came back to Cardiff. I saw that my camera roll ran into the quadruple digits and the last thing I’d uploaded was Rome. I’m working on conquering my metric ton of backlog posts. The caffeine should help, although even my beloved Barker Coffee has nothing on Italian cappuccinos. Here’s a pretty sunset picture to make up for …

I wasn’t sure what it was, either. The Pantheon is one of those things you hear about via cultural osmosis without thinking hard enough about it to Google it. So here’s what the Pantheon looks like from outside: (Here’s the roof under the portico—more recent, I would suspect, because Rome is much too damp for …

Dear Nila, You asked me to light a candle for you in a church in Italy. I wanted to do it in the Venetian cathedral Santa Maria dei Frari, my favorite cathedral in the whole world. Behind its towering but unpromising brown brick facade, Santa Maria dei Frari houses the most magnificently vast nave, with …

There’s already a black-and-white version of this photo in the “Roman Holiday” post, but the colors are so pretty I think it bears re-posting. The Spanish Steps were built around 1725. They get their name from their proximity to the Spanish Embassy. Incidentally, see the peach-colored palazzo immediately to the right of the stairs? That’s …

We remade Roman Holiday (1953). Aubrey Hepburn sticks her hand in the Mouth of Truth: Rachel sticks her hand in the Mouth of Truth: I stick my hand in the Mouth of Truth: Aubrey Hepburn buys shoes: Rachel buys shoes: (I buy a keychain): Aubrey Hepburn drinks champagne in front of the Pantheon: Rachel drinks champagne in …

Spent our first day in Rome shoe and keychain shopping and our second recreating Roman Holiday (post coming soon). We changed our plans, cancelled Tivoli to give ourselves another day in Rome, and spent our third day visiting the forum and colosseum. I’m still uploading the photos. We also spent a great deal of time …

My owl keychain has become a pirate (it lost an eye), so I’ve been looking for a new keychain all semester. For some reason I’ve become fixated on the idea that the keychain must be a Roman legionary. This is more difficult to find than you would think, even in Rome. On our first day …

Rachel and I took the train from Verona to Rome, where the lovely Stefano and Stefania, cousins of a family friend, adopted us for the night. First they drove us to a hilltop village just outside of Rome, where they fed us the best Italian food we’ve ever tasted. There was truffle fettuccine, peppered noodles, …

My cappuccino: Rachel’s cappuccino: Also, a waiter mistook me for Rachel’s mother. I’m still trying to figure out whether I’m amused or offended. Rachel is three months older than I am.

I didn’t know castles came in brick. Castelvecchio in Verona is a very beautiful, very strange fortification. It was built privately by the Scala dynasty, rulers of Verona, in the mid-14th century and stocked with mercenaries from other cities. The Scaliger dynasty (think poisoned daggers and you’ll have a pretty thorough grasp of this family’s …

This is the house that drew Rachel to Verona: Since at least the 19th century it’s been known as Juliet’s House, probably because it at one point belonged to the Capiletti family, whose name may have given rise to the Capulets (though conversely, the similarity between the names may also be what gave rise to …

Window-shopping in Verona, we wandered through a custom embroidery boutique. A man behind one of the old-fashioned Singer sewing machines called Rachel over and told her to spell her name for him. He slid a slip of paper under the needle and this is what he produced:

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. —Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Being more a comedy girl myself, I was unaware that Romeo and Juliet was set in Verona until Rachel, English major and Shakespeare nut, put Juliet’s …

A cute young Italian found Rachel and I wandering the sidewalks of Mestre looking for the bus stop. He spoke about five words of English and Rachel speaks about five words of Italian, but we managed to communicate that we were looking for the Number 2 Venezia bus. He walked us to the stop. There, …