I was in Benano with our friend Deborah to open the house for the 2011 rental season. We were working frantically and wondering how we could possibly finish everything in time for our first guests.

Stuck stateside yet again, I was quietly plotting to squeeze a professional photo shoot of our house into the few hours between the end of the renovations and the beginning of the rental season. I surfed the web in search of the perfect photographer for this most delicate of jobs. I say “delicate” because time was short and Karen was frazzled.

I was very, very stressed. Picture one of those contestants on “Fear Factor.” We were coming down to the wire, with lots still to be done. I was terrified that a houseful of jetlagged Americans would arrive before the hot water heater was hooked up or the beds made. 

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to me, Paul had found the perfect photographer for the job: Gianni Fantauzzi. Pronounced “Johnny Fawn-tout-see.”

Gianni is, in fact, a very busy wedding photographer. I’m not drawing any Bridezilla comparisons here. Really. And he had studied still life photography in London, so he speaks English flawlessly. Paul exchanged several pleasant emails with Gianni as the plot thickened. I had no idea any of this was going on. That was the idea.

With the last of the craftsmen preparing to leave the house and the cleaning crew about to show up for what promised to be a three-day scrub-down, Paul skyped me and ever-so-gently introduced his idea for a photo shoot. I’d practiced sounding nonchalant in front of the mirror. I dismissed his photographer idea out of hand. I think he could tell I was annoyed. Ya think? I swear she thought I said we should bring in a pornographer, so I repeated more slowly “photographer.” She wasn’t buying it. I decided to fall back and play for time.

Paul was great – really supportive and understanding of the impossibility of adding another big item to the “to do” list.   I really slathered on the salve. He invited me to sleep on the idea to see if it became any more appealing. What choice did I have? I was confident that, as the day of the first guests’ arrival drew closer, she would realize that the house had never looked better, and it was now or never for its long-awaited “glamour shots.” 

On the Wednesday before our Saturday opening, I was finally beginning to believe we would actually finish everything on time. This was the opening I’d been waiting for, so I pounced. Paul calmly forwarded his emails with Gianni and suggested I give the poor guy a call, if only to sound him out. I finally knew we had a chance. Before suggesting she call Gianni, I had briefed him on the whole situation and trusted him to seal the deal.

Gianni couldn’t have been more agreeable. He came the next day to scout for a Friday shoot, one day before the guests’ arrival. I could tell immediately he was perfect for the job. He was pleasant, engaging, and professional as he went room to room. To top it off, despite his perfect English, he encouraged me to speak Italian to give myself practice, unless something really important came up. Oh, this guy is very smooth. Well played, sir!

About an hour into his visit, Gianni said, “I have to tell you something in English because I want to make sure you understand. This is amazing – I have an appointment to take photos in Benano tomorrow. I’m shooting a new tile floor for the catalog of the company that made the terra cotta.”

Keep in mind that Benano is tiny. The whole village would fit on a football field. Because ours is the only house with recent construction (“recent,” as in since World War II), I said, “The floor you’re shooting has to be ours.” Cue that awful “It’s a Small World” song. 

As it turned out, our tile-maker was so impressed with what we had done with his tiles that he will feature our floor in his company’s catalog. Imagine, at a time when slipping a photographer into the house on the last possible day was but a figment of Paul’s fertile imagination, the publicist producing the catalog had independently hired “our” Gianni, of all the photographers in Italy. Sixty million people in Italy, and I stumbled across the one who already was scheduled to be in our house that Friday!

The story has a happy ending, as Paul and I both count Gianni as our friend. Have a look at a selection of the “glam shots” he took.

One final aside: It’s ironic that I found a wedding photographer beause Karen and I had no photographer when we got married 20 years ago. I hired one but forgot to give him the address of the church. At least I made sure Gianni got to the right place at the right time.

]]> http://postcardsfromumbria.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/our-italian-wedding-photographer/feed/ 5 Karen IMG_0712 Rocca-di-benano-Orvieto-623 (2) Rocca-di-benano-Orvieto-355 (2) Rocca-di-benano-Orvieto-518 (2) Rocca-di-benano-Orvieto-587 (2) http://postcardsfromumbria.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/the-truth-can-finally-be-spoken/ http://postcardsfromumbria.wordpress.com/2011/06/15/the-truth-can-finally-be-spoken/#comments Wed, 15 Jun 2011 15:03:55 +0000 Karen http://postcardsfromumbria.wordpress.com/?p=1379 Keep reading →]]> Construction?  What construction?

Yeah, there’s been a dearth of construction-related news here.

As the months and then years dragged on and our theoretically minor renovation project grew in scope and complexity, friends often asked how the work was progressing. My response?

Silence.

I couldn’t possibly talk about it without exposing my abject fear that the project would never end — and certainly not before June 4, the scheduled date of arrival of our first guests. How could I possibly have posted pictures like this, taken in March?

The new stairway under construction

Granted, it was a huge step ahead of where we started….

Before

… but we were at a point of no return.

Unlike last year, when we were able to put the project on hold and open the house for the summer rental season, there was no turning back from a hole in the floor where we wanted stairs to be.  So I wrote a nary a word and posted nary a pixel.

Thing is, I was scared witless (or something that rhymes with it).  Time marched on while we (“The Benano Split” — Paul and I and our friends/co-owners Jeff and Robin) anxiously awaited news of progress. Meanwhile, unaware of our angst about the construction schedule, our 2011 guests were paying their deposits and buying their tickets.

But it all came together just in time.  It was if we had written the plans.  And, in fact, we did.  We planned for it to be finished by early June, but maybe we should have been more specific … it was originally intended to be completed in June 2010.

After

But we’re so happy with the results that the extra year hardly seems to matter anymore.

Here’s another set of before and after shots:

Find the outline of an old arch in the wall

See the new arch that replaced the old doorway

More to come.

Roman baths have fascinated me ever since I listened to The Teaching Company‘s Roman history course.  These baths were built around 300 A.D., extended over 30 acres and could accommodate 3,000 people at once.  (Stop and think about that!)  There were gargantuan pools for hot, lukewarm, and cold bathing, a vast suite of changing rooms, gymnasiums, two libraries, meeting rooms, theaters, concert halls, and gardens.

Piazza della Repubulica

I’m completely beset by how ginormous the baths were.  The church, huge though it is (huge enough to be the one used for state events), was built into a relatively small part of the ruins of those baths.  Rick Steves‘ Rome guidebook walks you through the church as if through baths themselves.

The piazza in front of the church, Piazza della Republica, was built along the outer edges of  the baths, so one can use that outline to begin to imagine their size. In fact, I had an hour break in the sun’s activity (damn that daylight savings time – I fell for it again), so I walked a few blocks from Santa Maria and the piazza to another church, San Bernardo,

San Bernardo

that was built inside a huge column that marked one corner of this huge complex of baths. So a big part of the fun of visiting Santa Maria is being able to understand how big the baths were. It boggles the mind.

At the “sunstrip,” the fun really begins.  It’s a little similar to a sundial, but it’s not round, so I don’t know what else to call it. It’s a long brass strip embedded in JUST the right place on the gorgeous marble floor. And there’s a hole up ingeniously hidden up in some crown molding that lets the sun in at JUST the right angle. So the sun shines on the floor and as the earth moves, the sunspot makes its way toward the brass strip.  And when the sun gets to the brass strip, TA DA — it’s noon!

TA - DA !!!

Except when it’s daylight savings time.  And you have to account for the difference between here and Greenwich Mean Time.  So the TA-DA ! moment happened at 1:13. Which explains why I had over an hour to kill in the middle of the day.

There are several reasons for this euphoria: early this morning, one of our Benano neighbors told me to use tu (the informal “you”) instead of Lei (the formal “you”) when talking with any of our neighbors.  This was a huge deal to me.  She said they are all one big family and I am a member of that family. Cue Mary Martin, Julie Andrews, and the chorus!

Then I went to Castel Viscardo, the very small town about 2 miles from Benano — the go-to town for the ATM, gas, the closest restaurant, the pool we make available to guests, a few bars (Italian bars are more like cafes), and several small shops.  And, as I now know too well, The Law (I Carbinieri).  But I’ll get to that in a minute.

I stopped at the hardware store for clothespins and communicated my need despite having neither any idea of the word for clothespins nor my dictionary.  Guess what!  Saying, “after I wash my clothes, I dry them, outside, on a line…” substitutes for the actual Italian word — if one uses the appropriate charade gestures, of course.  Once the purchase was complete, the sales clerk, who I had met before, told me she had seen me running in the mornings.  She recommended a nice route that’s flatter than the routes I had been running.  Dulcet strains of “Getting to Know You” crept into my head.

Next stop was the small grocery store, where I was remembered by Serena and Marta, the warm and welcoming clerks.  We had a nice chat, and I discovered that they sell in their little store the fresh pasta made in the shop down in Orvieto that I had just managed to visit for the first time.  Parking is hard to come by around the Orvieto pasta shop, so it took me years to get the nerve to get in there. And now I find out that their pasta is available right here in Castel Viscardo.  And that Serena had seen me running in the morning.  Who wouldn’t be humming “Happy Talk” on their way out?

Ready to celebrate my magnificent morning, I went to the bar for un caffè before returning home.  And that’s when things got interesting. I was preparing to pay and leave when an officer of the carabinieri (sort of the national police – and, unlike the local police, these guys are authorized to carry guns) came in and started asking something about a car.  I might mention here that I had noticed that my car was alone in front of the bar.  In my defense, though, I want it noted that when I initially parked it, it was one of several.  Anyway, the barista started asking the regulars about a car and finally I said maybe it was mine.  She said no, it’s an Italian car.  Oops!  I’m driving an Italian car.  And it turns out I had parked it on the wrong side of the street.

But I had an advocate.  My barista friend explained to the officer (shall we call him Sheriff Taylor?) that I’m una straniera (a foreigner) and I didn’t know any better.  I scurried out to move the car, dropping lots of mi dispiace‘s (I’m sorry’s) as I zipped by Sheriff Taylor.  When I returned to pay my bill, my barista friend laughed at my concern and said, “it’s OK — he’s not a bad man.”

Just like Anna in “The King and I,” I whistled a happy tune all the way home.

Paul and I just visited a store full of old things the Romans left behind.  The store – rather, the beautiful showroom/warehouse — also carries things that people from the Middle Ages, like those who first inhabited our house, left behind.  It’s called Lacole, and it defies an American’s concept of an antique store.  They have things like the stone trim around old church windows, well tops (we saw one with the grooves from the ropes clearly evident), tiles, and stone sink basins.  They also make authentic-looking new furniture out of beautiful old wood. Where better to look for some of the finishing touches for our renovation?  This was the real Restoration Hardware.

If you have 2 minutes to watch their YouTube video, you’ll understand why Italians probably think our “antiques” are a little quaint.

Lacole is a bit north of Perugia, Umbria’s capital, so we made a nice day trip out of our shopping expedition and stopped for lunch in Perugia.  It’s about an hour and a half from Benano and makes a very delicious destination.  (Does “Perugina chocolate” ring a bell?)  There’s also a large international university there, and a lively spirit.  (And did I mention the chocolate?)  A friend from Seattle, Perugia’s sister city, once gave me a list of restaurant recommendations she read off a Perugia/Seattle calendar.  We’re working our way through that list, which is copied below for anyone interested in the details.

We considered stopping in Todi for dinner on our way home from Lacole, but chose instead to come home and eat at our version of “Cheers” in this area – Ristorante Nuovo Castello in Torre Alfina.  Connie’s simple but delicious spaghetti alla cippolla never disappoints, and it was good to see our friends there again.

Over dinner, we agreed that the highlight of the day might have been when the owner of Lacole, the antique store to end all antique stores, acknowledged the steep price of one item with an almost apologetic, “It’s Roman.”

Perugia Restaurants:

• Ristorante Altro Mondo
• Osteria Il Gufo
• Ristorante Il Padrino
• Pizzeria Mediterranea
• La Taverna
• Trattoria del Borgo
• Ristorante La Rosetta

Here’s a tip for anyone staying near Orvieto and contemplating a day trip into Rome or Florence:  it’s eminently doable, but simply rolling out of bed whenever you please (as we did) and showing up at the Orvieto train station (as we also did) with the intention of hopping a train to Rome (as we had) puts you at risk of a brief interruption in marital bliss (as we had), hereinafter referred to as a “BIMB.”

Here are two ways to avoid this and get the most out of your day-trip-by-train.  First, don’t try it on your second day in Italy – you’ll be too jet-lagged to get moving early enough to make the most of your time in either city.  Instead, do it on a day when you feel like getting up and out the door a little early.  You can get to Rome or Florence by train before 10 a.m., but in each case count on catching a train that leaves Orvieto before 8 a.m.  (One Florence-bound and five Rome-bound trains do.)  Don’t worry, the train’s rocking motion will help you recapture the sleep you bypassed.  And it’ll be easy to find a train that gets you back to Orvieto in time for dinner (say, 7 to 7:30), if not a nap beforehand.  This requires carefully studying the train schedule.

Which brings me to my second way to avoid having your day trip to Rome or Florence start off with a BIMB:  one of you must be willing to find your “inner train geek.”  Italian train schedules are readily available online.  This easy access helps you familiarize yourself with the schedule and its symbols well ahead of time, long before you have your loving spouse breathing down your neck accusing you of misreading it.

Obviously, the definitive schedule (“orario”) is on the wall of the train station on the day you’re traveling.  I find these schedules hypnotic, causing me to stand there for what must seem to Karen like hours, mouth agape in full fly-catcher mode.  I dart back and forth from “Partenze” (the outbound schedule) to “Arrivi” (the return schedule), calculating trip duration (e.g., the fastest to Rome from Orvieto takes 52 minutes), and noting train types (the fastest are Eurostar, Intercity, and Euronight) and schedule changes for holidays (“festivi”), of which the Italians have un sacco (a lot).  If you’ve mastered both the schedule and your traveling companions’ normal vacation pace, don’t be afraid to swagger to the counter and order up round-trip (“andata/ritorno”) tickets, rather than buying two one-way (“andata”) tickets.  This should save you time on the other end.

One last piece of advice:  if you’ve got time to kill before the next train leaves for Rome or Florence, instead of cooling your heels inside the station’s sterile lounge, consider distracting your family or loved one with a coffee or spremuta (fresh-squeezed orange juice), or else a quick and cheap (€1) ride up the Orvieto funicular, which you can catch just across the street from the station.

Artist's rendering of K&P, post-BIMB

My Italian didn’t work quite as well in the meeting with our architect and contractors, but I would have missed half of a conversation in English about the kinds of finishing details we discussed.  (For example, I didn’t know the English word for a heavy, two-paneled ground-floor door on the outside of a thick stone wall, but now I know Italians use the term mercantile.)

The work on the house exceeded my expectations.  Since I was last here, our amazing and colorful team of contractors built an interior staircase that provides easy access from the first-floor kitchen to the ground-floor terrace, and they opened up a new window in an upstairs bathroom.  Permission to cut that window opening in the three-foot stone wall came only after we were able to prove to the authorities that there was historic precedent for it.  (We have a photo, which I will post later if I can find it, that shows the outline of a window in the stone wall.)  We’ve thus opened a view that was closed off many hundreds of years ago.  Seeing it for the first time, it occurred to me that the view from that window probably hasn’t changed a bit in all that time.  It still looks out on the same hill, the same forest, and the same fields farmed in the same way, with the same broad plateau beyond.

Loyal readers (that’s you, Mom and Paul) already know of my fondness for Gianlorenzo Bernini, the sculptor and architect whose work decorates Rome and — please don’t think me shallow for mentioning this — starred in the Dan Brown book and Tom Hanks movie “Angels and Demons.” Visiting Bernini’s masterpieces is a perfect way for people like me who aren’t naturally drawn to museums to appreciate art. It also turns out to be a fine way to spend a day in Rome — see “My Roman Holiday” for one such day earlier this year.

On my walk through Rome last week, I branched out beyond Bernini … and liked it very much.

Borromini

I started the day with a good look at the magnificent facade of a Borromini church near my hotel.  Sant’ Ivo is inside the walls of the old Rome University, and it’s only open to the public a few hours a week.  This morning, drinking in the beauty of the facade was enough for me.

Poor Francesco Borromini — he was so overshadowded by Bernini, his contemporary and eventual rival. It sounds like he was a tortured guy. The guidebook I was using interpreted his use of convex and concave curves as an expression of his internal conflict.  Whatever.  All I know is they sure are cool.

Bramante

Trying to beat the heat, I hustled across the river and up the Janiculum Hill to see Il Tempietto, a glorious little dome-on-the-ground, the Renaissance masterpiece of Donato Bramante, a predecessor of Bernini and Borromini. Il Tempietto was closed the last time I tried to visit it, so my enjoyment was laced with the self-satisfaction of having conquered the sometimes-bewildering schedule for visiting churches in Rome.

Bernini and Borromini in the same block!

My next stop was a two-fer: a small and incredibly rich Bernini church (Sant’ Andrea al Quirinale) a few steps away from a small and striking Borromini church (San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, aka San Carlino). It was amazing to see one right after the other and compare the different ways these contemporaries created majestic places in such small places. Both are oval … but that’s about where the similarities end.

I was especially eager to spend some time in Sant’ Andrea, and not just because my last visit was cut short by the bare-shoulder police. (My friend Carol and I had forgotten to take something to wear over our sleeveless tops and the caretaker or usher scowled at us until we left.) Rather, I read that Bernini himself was particularly fond of this church and that in his later years he would spend time inside, just admiring it.  If it’s good enough for Bernini, it’s good enough for me. I would have relished my time there under any circumstances, but the idea that I was doing what he had done himself was particularly moving.

Borromini’s comparable masterpiece is on the corner no more than a block away from the Sant’ Andrea, and I’m glad I had my Michelin’s guide with me.  It calls this church, his first full-scale work, the one that “probably shows his genius at its best.” More important, though, the guide pointed out the ingenuity, beauty and importance of the facade, which is hard to appreciate because it is so close to the street. Without that prompt, I would have missed one of the best parts of this gem simply by failing to cross the street and look back.

So while I still love Bernini, Borromini is #1 on my list of “Socially challenged Swiss Italian architects of the Roman Baroque that I would most like to have with me if I were stranded on a desert island.”  (Um, I’m not the only one that keeps that list, am I?)

But before I get to Benano, I have a couple of days on my own in Rome.

I got my first caffè and spremuta (delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice) before even leaving the airport!  And as if I would have forgotten, I was reminded that I’m not in Kansas (or Ohio) anymore.  The man next to me at the coffee bar ordered a caffè corretto (“corrected coffee”) — espresso with a shot of grappa.

That was at about 8:00 a.m.

So off we went. Assisi is a well-preserved medieval city situated just above the broad Umbrian plain and nestled against the side of a mountain. We started our visit at Santa Maria degli Angeli, a huge church built in the 16th and 17th centuries to envelop the tiny and very modest 9th century chapel where St. Francis basically founded what we now call the Franciscans.

The church-within-a-church is very striking and moved even me. But then my Assisi apathy returned as I spotted the many ways the ingeniuous designers incorporated crowd control into the church. It was, after all, built to accommodate the hordes of pilgrims — the tourists of their day — who were flocking to Assisi in the first few centuries after his death. To start with, there’s a humongous souvenir stand-lined plaza out front and massively proportioned entrances to the church.  I felt downright cycnical and decidedly un-Franciscan contemplating this church cum convention center.

Joining large tour groups identified by the distinctively colored scarves shuffling through the crowded glassed-in hallway to see (but not smell, much less touch) the mystical thornless rose garden didn’t help my mood. And someone really needs to assure me that no one has clipped the wings of the dove that appears to sleep peacefully in the hands of the St. Francis statue in the breezeway. Please tell me that’s not a prop.

As we headed into town, I was able to remind myself why Assisi is what it is. It honors a man who was a spiritual leader, who devoted himself to works of charity, and who was rightfully revered for his love of nature and wild creatures. Images reminiscent of Graceland gave way to appreciation of the authentically good reasons there are crowds to be controlled.  My attitude appropriately adjusted, I helped Mom order up a memorial Mass for my saintly grandmother, then we drove a few minutes up to the actual town of Assisi.

We parked in a modern and user-friendly parking structure and walked up to San Francesco, a large and Very Important Church (VIC) in a country of many large and important churches.  We noted the irony that this grand and imposing church was built in honor of a man who devoted his life to the poor and sought simplicity and modesty always and in all things.

Due to its VIC status (and maybe the warm weather), we explored the church in two parts. We started with the lower church, dense with rich frescoes. There’s so much there that it’s hard to absorb and I regretted being an art ignoramous.

But first, we broke for lunch — and I was touched again by my Assisi ambivalence. My remarkably bad gnocchi and Mom and Paige’s mediocre pizza contributed, but my real problem was how thoroughly the town markets its saint. Having spent my career amongst some of the greatest marketers in American business, I really have nothing against it. But soap is one thing … sainthood is another.

We returned to San Francesco to visit the upper part of the church. Sated with beauty and filled with strong and conflicting emotions, I was about ready to go when it was time to meet Suzanne, my friend from Ohio and art professor extraordinaire. Her understanding of and enthusiasm about the art brought me around again.  We returned to the basilica, and her spirited “best of Giotto frescoes” tour brought me around again. Understanding a bit of the magnificent art made everything sparkle.

Suzanne is back at home with her family  now.  This, though, might take some of the sting out of missing her terrific tour.

At its core, Assisi is a remarkable place of beauty and a monument to faithful spirituality.  I’m determined to work a little harder to overlook the nearly inevitable commercialism and seek the inspiration of the countryside and the monuments to this man who still represents so much good to so many people around the world.

Just as Suzanne helped me appreciate its art, I’ll turn to another expert to help me develop an insider’s fondness for Assisi (maybe we can start with a good restaurant recommendation), and I think I have just the person: Anne Robichaud of “Anne’s Italy” is a friend of a friend who lives in Assisi and helps visitors get the most of their visits to Italy.

And in the meantime, I’ve modified his prayer, with apologies…

Lord, make me appreciate Assisi;
Where there is commercialism, help me see sincerity;
Where there are crowds, people of faith and commitment to the good saint’s ideals;
Where there is a megachurch, Francis’s humble little chapel …