Italy | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Italy

From To-Do to Tourist

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

Part 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

“Tourist” has always struck me as a bad word, even as I’ve filled the role. When we go out here in Italy, I take care to wear nice clothes and speak Italian… as if locals could possibly overlook my freckles and accent. I have a proper horror of becoming one of those intruders who bosses her way through other cultures with too-loud laughter and flip-flops on cobblestone streets. All the same, the Italians were the ones sticking out like dissonant notes as we wound our way down the Amalfi Coast three Saturdays ago. Despite the shimmering sunwaves, locals trudged the beach in coats zipped tightly over sweaters. I had only to imagine the sweat pooling in their Armani boots before realizing I didn’t mind looking like a tourist so much. Sleeves up, camera out, adventure on!

Through the archway - Note the tour buses

The town of Amalfi looked like I’ve always envisioned Caribbean cruise stops—gimicky souvenir shops, colorful paint jobs, and a wealth of sunburnt tourists. But instead of dance halls, it had cathedrals, and instead of coconuts, it had lemons. Correction: LEMONS. Asteroid-impersonating, substance-abusing, borderline-pornographic, “holy crap, is that a fruit?!” LEMONS that were sixty different kinds of impressive. In addition to crates of these yellow footballs, shop owners offered an array of lemon-themed products that would have done Bubba Gump proud: lemon liqueur, lemon soap, lemon jewelry, lemon chocolate, lemon glassware, lemon pasta, lemon candles, lemon zesters, and a teensy bottle of lemon perfume that I immediately claimed as my own. One vendor even gave us each a slice of freshly peeled lemon to eat, sour pulp and sweet pith combining in a magical springtime flavor. We were powerless to resist.

We spent the day with absolutely no plan except enjoyment—the perfect antidote to my to-do list disorder. My only jobs for the afternoon were to wander the sun-dappled streets of Sorrento eating gelato with my family (tough, huh?) and to lean out the window like a breeze-drunk puppy as we drove the coast. Not a mop in sight, just the bright April air and peace. Every vacation should be so lucky.

If I could, I would take you all back with me to breathe in every blue nuance of the Tyrrhenian. We would stand above the Emerald Grotto memorizing every sparkle of the sea and the mysterious architecture of cliffs. You could help me amuse my husband by gasping after every one of the bajillion bends in the road and swooning over each bloom of wisteria. You would help me find friendly faces and flesh-eating zombies in the rocks above. We would soak up the sunshine like the thirsty sponges we are and come home smelling faintly of paradise.

Three weeks later, I still haven’t written a to-do list.

22Apr

Pot-Smoking Ants

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

Part 2 (Part 1 here)

Dan and I approach vacations the way pot-smoking ants on a budget might. We pack smart, arrange for the cheapest accommodations that will let us sleep without fear, and then get busy chilling the hell out. We’ve been perfecting our technique for the last six years, and we have a pretty good ratio of relaxation to insanity by now. It works wonders, too; nary a trip goes by without granting us a story to tell.

Take this last Good Friday, for instance. Not that we remembered it was Good Friday—those first magical kilometers of the Amalfi Coast had driven everything but beauty out of our minds—but we could not have planned a more unique overnight stay had we tried. As we drove through the quaint town of Minori looking for directions to the campground, shopkeepers and homeowners busied themselves nailing red cups to their outside walls. “Any idea what that’s all about?” I asked Dan. “Not remotely. Any idea what turn we’re supposed to take?”

We soon figured out why not even the omniscient Google Maps could provide us with directions to the campground: It was smack-dab in the middle of a mountainside lemon grove. No roads. Just steps… and steps… and steps. “I think this is more than 80 steps,” I panted down to Dan as we lugged our children and camping gear up the uneven stone staircase. “The website said 80!” he answered dubiously while I took my sixteenth break. We counted some time later, and here’s a question for you mathematically-inclined readers: Are 80 and 254 the same number? My aching muscles are not as sure on that point as the website writer apparently was.

False advertising aside, the campground was worth every one of those 254 steps. Not only were we setting up tent in a fairyland of ripe lemons and glossy leaves, but the children’s playground featured two gentle, snuffling ponies. And from our site, we could look down across the treetops to the town nestling like an old friend up against the sea.

Once the sun set, we tromped down the hill and drove toward town for supper, only to be stopped by a policeman in the throes of excitement. “Park there! Turn your lights off! Now!” he whisper-shouted, pointing to a 10-foot-high burning cross. We obeyed, wondering what in the world we had gotten ourselves into. Every light in the town had been turned off with the exception of thousands upon thousands of red candles. Oh, and the burning cross of course.

We had to park in front of the KKK cross

“KKK?” Dan and I asked at the same time. Two minutes later, as if eager to corroborate our frightening first impression, the flame-lit streets filled with white pointed hoods and gowns. I have never seen anything outside of movies with which to compare that ghostly parade. Hundreds of white hooded figures marched quietly up the street, brandishing candles and lanterns, then a brass band somewhere in the darkness began to play a dirge. Men in their funeral best walked by shouldering a coffin atop which lay a horrifying, emaciated figure of Jesus, while others followed closely behind carrying the gaudiest statue of Mary I had ever seen. I felt at once anxious for people to know we weren’t Holy Week participants but also amazed that we ended up in just the right place and time to see something new. Eerie, yes. Skull-itchingly creepy, yes. But worth seeing all the same.

We eventually escaped from the clutches of the Good Friday parade and tracked down some pizza, limoncello, and a complimentary Jehovah’s Witness for supper before hiking back up to our campsite. The girls giggled themselves silly in the tent while Dan and I soaked up the starlight. Civilization, with all its hustle and bustle and joy-starved intensity, felt worlds away; we could breathe again. The four of us fell asleep together like accidental woodland creatures in our tent, the scents of lemons and the sea mingling on the April breeze. And as simple as that, our one night’s stay turned into two.

Part 3 to come.

15Apr

The Ghost of Happiness Past

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

Part 1

The lemon perfume brings it all back, nostalgia setting in after only three days back home. Perhaps this makes me a drippy sentimentalist, but I’m okay with that. This was a trip worth feeling drippy and sentimental over.

It all started on Thursday. The spouse who comes up with 90% of our insane great ideas casually mentioned over lunch, “Hey, I have tomorrow off work. Want to go camping on the Amalfi Coast?” Try as she might to get bogged down in details, the practical spouse’s latent whimsy had been triggered. “Sure!” I chirped while sprinting for the grocery store.

As often as spontaneity gives me spasms, it’s one of the things I love most about our little family. How a day can morph from average to incredible in the space of a sentence, how my husband and girls are always ready to take on the world. I don’t thank them nearly enough for stirring up glittery waves in the life I would all-too-readily leave stagnant. “We’re standing on memories!” Natalie announced when we piled out of the car at Herculaneum on Friday. Glorious.

Herculaneum is not exactly on the Amalfi Coast, but how could we pass up the opportunity to explore a city once buried in 20 meters of volcanic debris? We couldn’t. We entered houses last occupied two millenniums ago, pushed strollers up cobblestone streets, imagined ourselves serving restaurant patrons from the giant clay cooking pots… and my heart stretched a size or two larger as it always does when I discover new corners of the world. A real person painted that fresco. The neighborhood women bathed together in that tub. The owners of this house must have had an unbelievable view of the sea. The ghost of happiness past never fails to take my breath and replace it with a reverent joy.

Natalie and Sophie consider ancient city ruins their own personal playground, which assures me that this crazy life we’ve brought them into is a good one. It’s the future Dan and always hoped for—watching our laughing children play balance-beam in an archaeological dig. History and future, projected together on the sun-dappled stones… with a splash of silliness, because we’re really still twelve.

Driving away from the ruins through the never-ending outskirts of Naples was a noteworthy experience in itself. Neapolitan traffic is a noisy tangle of bent-fendered anarchy, and we were utterly fortunate considering that we DIDN’T DIE. On the main one-way street outside of Herculaneum, four cars were disregarding the stoplight. A delivery truck and sixteen scooters were driving the wrong direction. Several motorists had ventured onto the sidewalk, and everyone involved was using his horn in lieu of the brakes. I took no pictures because I was busy narrowly avoiding death, but I desperately wish I had at least videoed the rotunda. The Rotunda Of Bedlam And Nearly Certain Demise.

Despite being a mere three hours’ drive from our city, Naples is a different world where trash piles line the streets and laundry flaps off the edge of crumbling balconies. I never realized how grimy southern Italy would feel compared to the breezy affluence of the north. Whenever we spotted a well-kept house, Dan and I nodded at each other like experts—“Must be Camorra”—and drove a little more quickly. I was relieved to get out of the city and catch my first glimpse of La Costiera Amalfitana…

…And by “relieved,” I mean mesmerized, breathless, smitten. My daily dose of beauty for the next decade lay right before us. Sparkling sea guarded by intricate rock formations, purple wisteria sunning itself on garden gates, hillsides hidden beneath ripe lemon trees… Descriptions do so little justice to a part of the world that is, at heart, a sensory feast. Just trust me that magic was alive and generous around every bend of the road.

Look for Part 2, coming soon to a blog near you.

7Apr

Second Opinion

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 5 Comments

A Middle-Eastern man walks around our building playing the one song he knows on his accordion. It sounds like a sea lion in distress, and Sophie wakes up from her nap in terror. The man stands under our window shouting “Signora! Signora!” and squawking away on his instrument for a solid five minutes while I try to comfort my sobbing baby. I know he expects me to toss down some coins, but I’m more inclined to toss the refrigerator at him. I think of pretending not to see him and dumping a bucket of water out the window. I think of yelling at him to go away, to stop tormenting us with his horrible playing. I think of throwing a euro coin at his head so hard it sticks… but he cornered me into giving him a euro once before, and I’m still seething at his undeserved gain.

I have a long-standing animosity toward illegal immigrants. Maybe not all illegal immigrants, but the ones who want something from me… the tall African men selling knock-off watches by the station, the short Indian men shoving roses toward us on dates downtown, the Albanian beggers canvassing the trains, the kerchiefed women knocking on our car window. I tell them “No, no,” avoiding eye contact and adding up their annoyance as criminal charges in my mind.

I’ve had ample opportunities to judge my reaction to foreigners since moving to Italy, where countless refugees take advantage of the long and unprotected coastline. It is my understanding that European laws require incomers to stay in the country of entry unless they are specifically accepted by other countries, so Italy’s larger cities are full of clandestini—unwanted immigrants with little hope of finding legitimate work.

An acquaintance of ours routinely yells at beggars to go get a real job, and I get why he’s angry. But my husband’s approach is the one that stops me in my tracks. He waves hello and smiles at the Pakistani windshield washer who works the traffic light by our house. Dan lets him squeegee the front of our car for a euro or two and asks him how his day is going, and the man’s face floods with light. His job has to suck—standing in an intersection all day asking belligerent motorists if he can wash their windshields—but he always answers cheerfully with many thanks and good wishes. He also takes care that his window-washing crew never hassles us like they do the other vehicles.

I did a mental backflip when I realized how different my husband’s actions were from my own… how, for him, the inherent importance of people applies even to those whose source of income is annoying us. I’m embarrassed to admit that this is hard for me to remember. Prejudice against other races and lifestyles is something I learned early enough in life to become instinctual, and when I see a peddler, my mind instantly buzzes with superiority. I hate that compassion is never my first instinct, but at least it’s started piping in as a second opinion.

Instinct: That accordion player is terrorizing my child. He must die.

Second opinion: He probably can’t find any other work and is counting on his musical talent (however dubious) to support his family. Just think what awful circumstances he must have come from if playing an accordion for tips is a better living than what he could find in his own country! And you can at least be glad that he’s not playing a tuba. Put down the refrigerator.

Third opinion: My husband deserves a hug.

18Feb

Star-Crossed Lunch

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 7 Comments

(a story… with pictures)

Lunch woke up on the wrong side of the bed today.

This:

Photo credit: Epicurious

was the plan—soft homemade gnocchi in a creamy, lemon-zested sauce with tender peas and spinach. Commence drooling. I tend to save the best for last in my weekly meal planning, and this promised to be something special. Plus, spinach turns anything into a diet dish. (Feel free not to debate that last point.)

But lo and behold, the peas?

had developed rigor mortis.

3Jan

Tums for the Soul

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Since blogging last, I have:
Baked cookies for everyone we know, and them some.
Taken girls to the doctor for seasonal maladies, discovered the doctor was not in, and tried again the next day. And again the next day. And again…
Finally Skyped a doctor friend in the States at 1 a.m. to find out if we should be panicking over Natalie’s fever or not (Answer: not).
Finished Christmas shopping.
Loaded up on groceries.
Cracked the code of crunchifragilistic caramel corn.
Used up the last of our wrapping paper.
Painted.
Made a mental list of the dumbest holiday song lyrics ever (Winner = Emery’s “God, please make a way for Santa’s sleigh”).
Put Sophie back to bed 4,687,721,003 times.
Concocted a white-chocolate-blood-orange cheesecake that will be the death of all other cheesecakes henceforth, amen.
Hosted Christmas Eve Brunch, complete with Christmas Casserole, games, and intense theological discussions.
Watched our girls open their gifts and hit the ceiling with explosions of sheer joy (a tent! a dollhouse! finger puppets! story books! Legos x 10⁴⁸⁰!).
Hosted Christmas Dinner, complete with chili, cornbread, and assorted fight-and-make-ups.
~~Guzzled~~ Delicately sipped ~~three gallons~~ a bit of eggnog.
Read an entire book cover to cover (over the course of three days… but it totally counts).
Edited and uploaded reams of photographs.
Conquered the slopes with my new snowboard.
Worn the same sweater three days in a row.
Rolled sushi with the hubby (a fork may have been necessary at one point… shhh).
Gone on a hot date.
Wound up lost on spaghetti-sized mountain roads in the dark.
Attended two parties.
Swept under the shoe pile (lordy).
Been asked by a new acquaintance if I’m expecting a boy or a girl.
(Note: I am not with child. Not even remotely.)
Eloquently told the new acquaintance, huh?, at which point he dashed away.
Laughed.
Cried.
Laughed.
Cried.
Cried.
Cried.
Cried.
Laughed.
Been kissed by hordes of Europeans in celebration of the New Year.
But not gotten any spumante.
Twisted and shouted.
Participated in Italian group karaoke.
Finally finished a giant puzzle that Dan and I gave up on several years ago.
Climbed Mount Laundry and lived to tell about it.

The one thing I haven’t done is sat down to write, which had a lot to do with the flurry of guests and baked goods and teething Sophies. It also had to do with the stampede toward 2009… life getting off the couch to boogie, and my perspective getting trampled into the chocolate-stained rug. Symptoms of my new year include sweating palms, hair loss, and repeated trips to the chocolate bowl.

I’ve had over a year now to get used to life with two little ones, but I honestly feel more overworked than experienced these days. Soul-searching is limited to five minute bursts between dirty diapers and boiling pasta until my mind is impossibly fragmented and just. wants. sleep. You know that feeling, yes? Last New Year’s Eve, I had inklings of a lush, creative beautyscape ahead, but this year, I’m swerving along a tightrope with a chasm of housewifery below and aspirations obscured by neon signs flashing “Selfish! Selfish!” and “Untalented: YOU!” Miles away from champagne and fireworks, I know.

My belly has been an awful character lately (aside from making people think I’m pregnant, though that is certifiably awful): gnawing at me from the inside-out, tying itself into knots, whispering with clenched teeth that 2009 will be a wasteland. It won’t. I have to believe it won’t, but damned if it doesn’t look just like dirty bathrooms and tumbleweeds from here. Anyone have a burst of inspiration to share? An extra sprinkle of optimism? Some champagne-and-fireworks wishes that I can pop like Tums and transform my stomach from a gremlin to an upstanding citizen again? Because I’m not so good with tightropes, and Mount Laundry’s no longer waiting to break my fall.

18Nov

Arpeggios

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 1 Comment

It’s that month again. A cough here, a drippy nose there, and then increasingly miserable viruses playing arpeggios on our lungs until spring. Poor Dan and Natalie always get the worst of it… bronchitis… ear infections… antibiotics and nebulizers and mountains of damp tissues. I usually weather through the mess with the special dispensation granted to mothers, but this past weekend knocked me flat. My personal cold settled in with a sonic-boom headache, and at first, I felt pretty trendy—finally joining the ranks of migraine sufferers and all—but spending the whole day in bed is not nearly as glamorous as it sounds. Especially when your own head is staging a coup d’état.

After a rush of writing productivity last week, I’ve been melting into the couch… playing a lot of Lego Indiana Jones, watching a lot of “Alias” re-runs, and pretending I don’t notice November sneaking by. Thanksgiving #1 is this coming weekend, and I am not ready for it. In the States, we always invited over college students and friends with no where to go for a feast and games; it was always a special and relaxing day. Even last year, for our first Thanksgiving in Italy, I cooked the traditional meal for a large extended family who had taken us in, and we had a fantastic time. However, I’m dragging my feet this year… maybe because of lingering sickness, but more probably because I’m reluctant to face the stark reality of a whole year gone. Time moves quite a bit faster than I do now.

Blah, blah. I’m sorry, it must the head cold talking. Have I told you about my new dishwasher yet? (Love.) Or that all-from-scratch pumpkin pie with dark caramel sauce and swirly whipped cream is on the menu for Saturday? Or how Sophie travels the house all day long finding books and toiletries and DVDs and dishes and laundry and dust bunnies to bestow on me? (With creation’s cutest smile, of course.) Or that I found strawberry-mango tea and Southern Comfort in the same grocery trip? Or how my sweet husband cooked for me all weekend, including a scrumptious Greek dinner? Or about the possibility of a girls’ night out next week (the first I have taken in… um, two years? for reasons entirely my own fault). Or about Natalie’s hugs?

So many things to be thankful for… even head colds, which help me slow down and inspire Greek cuisine and draw our dear little family together under blankets and heaps of love.

Handy considering it’s that month again!

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