An old Italian proverb says “a day without pasta is like a day without sunshine.” My husband and favorite travelling companion, Richard, and I were ready for some pasta and for our fourth trip to beautiful Italy.
This time, though, we would go to the less travelled corners, at least for us.
Varenna, Lake Como
Switzerland, just over the lake, is squalling and thundering when we arrive. In Varenna, one of the small villages strung like pearls around Lake Como, a little white dog in front of our bed and breakfast dances on his hind legs barking at another dog on a balcony nearby as we look around, too dazed from traveling to enjoy our first meal in Italy – spaghetti pomodoro.
Several days later, new friends Renata and Antonio invite us for a “tipico” Italian lunch. We can smell onions sautéing when we arrive and can see the table set outside under a grape arbor. Antonio pours chilled white wine and together we laugh and talk even though we do not speak each other’s language.
Antonio, a fisherman from Sicily, has made us risotto with pan fried perch filets that he caught that morning on Lake Como. Renata passes us a bowl of small sardines marinated in vinegar with strips of sweet onion and carrots, which Sylvestro, the cat, watches with slitted eyes.
Somehow, I manage to tell them I simply can’t eat a fish whose head is still on. Antonio shrugs, “No problem,” and eats the whole bowl himself. Sylvestro, who has been hunting lizards, bursts out of the hibiscus bushes when Antonio puts the leftover fish down on the grass for his supper.
To a castle and a church
A sign, “Per Castello Vezio,” is intriguing, and we follow it to the castle high above Varenna. We find a drawbridge, a dungeon and even a full suit of rusted armor discovered when the castle floor was excavated.
There are tame predatory birds there, and I am dismayed by the forlorn, dreaming owls and hawks tethered to the ground. One, a rare eagle owl, follows me with his eyes as I walk by. I fantasize about cutting his leather tethers and watching him soar into the sky until he is out of sight.
Olive trees grow everywhere (olive trees being “that most humble and generous of plants”). They were first planted by soldiers in Julius Caesar’s army who retired in Varenna and were allotted 13 slaves each by Rome – that being deemed the minimum necessary to live a decent life.
While walking back to town, rain begins to fall in freezing silvery sheets, and we race into the only shelter around, the 14th-century Church of San Giorgio. Thunder booms and ricochets around the dark church, empty except for us.
The heavy oak front door bangs open and shut as hail blows in from the Alps. Candles under the Virgin Mary on the wall, painted with her bare feet floating off the ground, flicker wildly, nearly making her sail sweetly away and out of the church.
On the back wall of the church are faint remains of frescoed people struggling in the arms of a green monster, looking miserable and cold as the front door continues to bang open and shut.
Orta San Giulio, Lago d’Orta
A small boat ferries us across to the mysterious floating Isola San Giulio in the middle of the lake to see the Church of S. Giulio.
The nuns, who have taken a vow of silence, care for the church and for Saint Giulio who is encased in a glass crypt beneath the altar. His hands have been raised to heaven in prayer for more than 1,000 years.
In the church is a stone box containing the headless body of a man named Minufo, killed and beheaded by marauding Franks in 575. Perhaps his head is in there, too, but I don’t know because I can’t read the Latin inscription.
Signs everywhere exhort visitors to respect the nuns’ vow of silence, but everyone is whispering. We walk around the island on the “path of silence and reflection,” trying to be silent. On a wall is a stone statue of a dwarf. We wish we knew his story, but, alas, not all things can be revealed to tourists.
Cagliari, Sardinia
A short one hour flight from Milan takes us to Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia.
At the Archeological Museum there is a rare collection of small bronze figures called “Bronzetti,” which represent the indigenous 18th-century B.C. Bronze Age Nuraghi people of Sardinia.
They are in glass cases tucked into shadowy, cave-like display areas where the small figures in tunics and curled hair strut and pose. There are warriors threatening unseen enemies, a flute player, a hunter returning with his game bag and two men wrestling.
In the absence of any written language, the Bronzettis are the only existing evidence of the ancient Nuraghis.
Herculaneum
The Circumvesuviana train lurches into Herculaneum, or as it was called, Ercolano. Ercolano was a wealthy seaside resort town in 79 A.D. when Mount Vesuvius erupted and all 4,000 of its inhabitants perished, killed by super-heated gasses spewing from the volcano.
At the archeological museum in Naples there are plaster casts of people who tried to escape the blast of heat which, in two-tenths of a second, would dissolve them into nothingness. One, a Roman soldier, was hit so violently that every bone in his body broke except for one in his ear.
A malnourished young slave girl cradles a baby, a chained dog struggles without hope for a millisecond before dying. Hundreds of skeletons were found by a seaside stone boat storeroom. They waited too late to escape the massive boiling hot cloud bearing down on them.
The Circumvesuviana train, too, is boiling hot, and crowded. We had been warned about pickpockets on the train and as Richard stumbles out in Sorrento, he cries “I have no pockets! They stole my pockets!”
Praiano, Amalfi Coast
It is the season to harvest olives, and the man in the garden next door is hitting the branches of his olive trees – whack! – knocking them into nets spread below the trees. I am above his garden, walking, high above Praiano, and can see other farmers doing the same.
Suddenly, a half dozen men and women come running around the corner, all carrying long sticks and dressed in white robes with black sashes.
“We are late for our Hokeido class,” one breathless woman tells me, as they rush by.
They disappear around a corner, looking like a white dusting of pastry chefs. I am delighted by this chance encounter with the Far East in the middle of Italy.
San Domenica
Our friend Gennaro has offered to take us to a shortcut to hike to San Domenica.
He points and says “See the trail? Keep the water tank always on your right. Richard, come look. See?”
We thought we understood, but somehow wandered off the path. Up we climb, up mossy limestone steps cut 1,000 years ago. They are slippery and narrow, and we grab onto saplings, tufts of tall grasses, rock walls, anything to keep from plunging down into the sea far below.
It is a green-black kind of dark; birds are singing, unaware of the danger we are in as we climb higher and higher in the wrong direction. Although we can see the convent in the distance, we know we will never make it and turn around.
I am covered with honeysuckle flowers and scratches. We stumble out of the woods, bleeding, onto the main road. Just then, bad luck. Who passes by? Gennaro.
“How did you like the walk?" he asks, not noticing that Richard’s arm is bleeding.
We have to tell him we couldn’t find it. Gennaro is so astounded by this that he stops his car in the middle of the Amalfi Coast road, waving the angry vespas, cars and tour buses by so he can discover the reason for this inexplicable ineptitude.
We are unconcerned, however, knowing we will come back next year, and this time we’ll follow Gennaro’s instructions exactly all the way to the convent.
Durango resident Esther Greenfield is the author of two books, Tough Men in Hard Places and Reading the Trees: A Curious Hiker’s Field Journal of Hidden Woodland Messages.
