Time Travelers-The Italian Countryside: Our Choice

        When in Italy if you only go to Rome or Florence or Venice then you are missing the ‘real’ Italy. The tourist areas have their benefits. They have all the attractions such as the Coliseum, the Rialto Bridge or the “David’. But they are also filled with tourists from all over the world, have subways and trams and line-ups to get into everything. They are often hot, bothersome and expensive.

Nonna

My cheese guy

            For my wife and me we have seen all those things, some of them a multitude of times, but we have fallen in love with the Italian countryside and the magical spell that it casts upon us. The real people live there. They are our special attractions. In a way it is as if we have jumped on the time machine and travelled back to the days of our youth when times were much simpler. You watch the old man walking with a cane, wearing his tweed coat and his tam talking with his friends, sharing a stiffly laced coffee or playing cards.

Nonno and his Friends

You see the old nonna walking down the street, hunched over from years of sweating over her marinara sauce or her homemade pasta she has rolled out by hand or helping plant and hoe the garden plot. She might be carrying a cloth bag full of fresh goodies from the cheese man or the vegetable stand or the butcher’s small store. She walks everywhere.

The Views from the Small Towns

Piazza



Small streets

Pedestrians Only

            The small towns have a magic of their own. They often sit high atop a hill surrounded by green fields dotted with olive groves or lined with the familiar sight of carefully terraced vineyards.

 

Around the town is a wall marking the old city or ‘centro’ usually entered by an arched gate of some sort.

The Gate

Once inside there are small roads that can be only travelled one way because you could never get through with two cars. The back streets often are available only to pedestrians or motorcycles. These tiny streets and walkways  form a network a spider would be proud of. The main road inside usually leads to a piazza at the top of the town where the church might be, a tower once used to defend the town folks from the invasions by the next town to the right or left or a place of meeting in one of the local bars.

            Here between the hours of 8:00 am and 12:00 and then again from 4:00 pm until whenever the town is alive with shopping, encounters with old friends, having a coffee at a bar and the eventual discussions that lead to the wild hand gestures that the Italians are known for. In the in-between hours the town closes up, there is an eerie silence on the streets and the real Italians are inside their homes or at a restaurant having their large meal, pranza, which might last for two hours or so.

I don’t know how they can eat so much and still remain so thin. They don’t seem to have a large breakfast like we do, only an espresso(which can set off a high metabolic rate) and a brioche(pastry) of some kind. But at lunch and sometimes at dinner it seems like antipasto, first course(primi), second course(secondi) and dolce to follow are the rule. Add the requisite bread and wine and perhaps a grappa or a limoncello afterward and the long lunch comes to a close. Perhaps a sleep period or nap follows and then it is back to business again.

Artichoke Pasta

The people of the countryside are likeable and friendly. They are willing to give you help when lost or sometimes like the restaurant owner in Potenza Picena, guide you to your destination. They love it when you speak to them in their language and will slow down their own speech to accommodate you. Yesterday the chef at a restaurant that specialized in artichokes came out and spoke to all the people at the four tables and told us about his specialties. When he saw us he said he would speak ‘lentemente’(slowly) so we could understand him. He was very pleased when I told him I had selected two of his artichoke dishes for my lunch.

 Meals in these towns are produced by chefs that are proud of their work and their craft. They rival any of the finest meals I have had in some of the more expensive restaurants in the cities. The Moms and Pops who run these family establishments take their time to explain their foods to you and in my case, when asked, are proud to show me their kitchens. I haven’t had a bad meal in any of these countryside osterias, ristorantes or trattorias.

This is why we tuck ourselves away in small apartments run by the nicest people like our old friends Michael and Liliana or our new friends Azzurra and Alissandro. Bed and breakfasts or ‘agritourismo’ is the way to go. Driving down the hills and valleys of these back country roads to get to one of these places is worth it because at every turn a new view awaits you and who knows a new friend.