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Il Dolce Viaggio: Northern Lazio and trip conclusion


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The afternoon of our last travel day was here and we still had a substantial list of towns and sights to get through before we drove the final stretch of highway to Fiumicino. The first order of business was to find lunch so I decided to make our next stop Soriano nel Cimino, the largest town left on our list. Soriano nel Cimino's somewhat unwieldy moniker distinguishes this town in the Cimino region around Monte Cimini from the similarly named town in Calabria. It is not a clifftop town like the others we had recently visited but the historic center does sit atop a steep hill, so when we parked as close as we could to the center we were greeted with familiar views of rooftops and a green valley.
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We had parked just a minute's walk from Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, the site of the town's rather restrained eighteenth century brick neoclassical cathedral. A strange monument suggestive of an obelisk decorated with religious symbols and enveloped in a spiraling white battlement stood on a platform in front of the cathedral. A quick review of Google Maps indicated it was not a permanent installation.
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The kids had started complaining about being hungry so we sat at the first cafe we saw and ordered them a pizza and a chicken sandwich. This would buy us some time to choose a restaurant for ourselves. As we waited for the food to arrive I took a stroll and found myself on an uphill street with colorful houses that reminded me of Latin America. At the end of the street was the Porta Romana, a faintly peach-colored arched gate with peperino ornamentation that was built in the eighteenth century as a reproduction of the Porta Pia in Rome. From outside the gate I could see the town's main attraction, the foreboding eleventh century Castello Orsini that occupied the crest of the hill.
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By the time I got back to the table there was still no food to be seen. They hadn't even brought the bottle of water I'd ordered. There was no one to be seen inside the cafe so I helped myself to a bottle of water from the fridge and gave it to the kids. A few minutes later the waitress stopped by and made some kind of excuse about the food not arriving and bustled out again. I decided to take another walk, this time in the opposite direction towards the castle. The gate to the hill neighborhood was unfortunately swathed in scaffolding. On the inside I discovered steep cobblestone streets and stone buildings that were practically sitting on top of each other. Eventually I reached the highest point I could get to at the foot of the castle, which was only open on weekends. I didn't regret this much as we'd seen our fill of castles and valley views.
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On the way back down I passed the fifteenth century Fontana Vecchia, another landmark of the town. I returned to the cafe to find that the kids still hadn't been served and there was no staff to be seen. It had been well over half an hour by now. I plunked down three euros for the water and we went back to the car. I had already found a much better prospect for lunch anyway. Our route took us back through the piazza where we saw the cafe staff had returned and were in animated discussion next to our empty table. We didn't see any food though. We considered waving to them but thought better of it. We got a very nice view of the hilltop castle on the way out of town as well.
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Baita La Faggeta allowed us to kill two birds with one stone, as it was the top rated restaurant in Sorano nel Cimino and also adjacent to the renowned beech forest called La Faggeta del Monte Cimino. It was a fifteen minute drive into the middle of nowhere from the town center, however, so we would have been in dire straits had they been closed or full. Fortunately neither proved to be the case and e were seated at an indoor table quickly enough. The restaurant's specialty was meat, which suited as fine and we were soon tucking into steak and grilled lamb. My only misstep was being unable to resist the stewed venison. I regretted this as I always do after ordering stewed meat in Italy because it is invariably a thin, wine-based preparation that in my opinion completely obliterates any flavor of the meat. The restaurant's bar had been turned into a wine storage area with the counter packed with bottles and cases piled up underneath.
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The restaurant was located adjacent to a trail leading into the forest and we followed it inward just far enough to be completely surrounded by trees. I wouldn't describe our family as being particularly attuned to nature, although we have done some interesting hiking in Iceland and the American Southwest. I tried to get the kids to experiment with a few moments of quietness to appreciate these natural and beautiful surroundings but they were more focused on who could find the longest branch to use as a walking stick. I decided to press on before anyone got injured.
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Back on the road we passed one of the ubiquitous straw fields of central Italy. These fields are marked by cylindrical bales of golden straw that are scattered seemingly randomly around the fields. This one was particularly beautiful and very easily accessible from the road so I pulled over to take some photographs. Mei Ling and Ian joined me although the other kids declined. We had to step carefully so that the sharp, rigid stalks of straw couldn't jab us through the gaps in our sandals. The cylinders reminded me of the sections of fallen columns from ancient Roman ruins. The internal rings of the bales were more reminiscent of petrified tree trunks. It felt amazing to be a part of this idyllic landscape.
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Sacro Bosco is a sixteenth century sculpture park outside the town of Bomarzo. It's also commonly referred to as Parco dei Mostri (Park of the Monsters) as well as the Gardens of Bomarzo. The park's construction was commissioned by an Orsini duke in the sixteenth century to memorialize his wife who had died prematurely. I've always liked sculpture gardens but never had the opportunity to visit one that was more than four hundred years old. After we paid our rather steep entry fee I had to cough up another euro for the kids to play with a cheesy fortune-telling machine that was a mock-up of the Mouth of Truth from the Santa Maria in Cosmedin church in Rome. We had avoided this tourist trap during our stay in the capital only to have it track us down here. Spenser put his hand in the mouth and an LED display pretended his palm was being read. The verdict (translated from Italian) was rather harsh: "You are evasive and not overly loyal. You may be very disappointed by risky undertakings. In times of crisis, you sometimes lose control. Capricious and changeable, you will struggle a lot to make your way in life. Indication for a marriage that could bring misfortune and suffering or, hardly, great joy. You have gone through disappointments, in life and in love that have marked you deeply." Kind of rough for a nine year old. After sharing the first sentence I decided to keep the remainder to myself.

The park itself would have been kind of boring for me if I hadn't been aware of its antiquity. The sculptures were al carved from local greyish stone and most had a similar grotesque theme. I did enjoy the stone chapel and one of Hannibal's elephants crushing a Roman soldier. According to the information posted at the entrance the sculptures were created according in the Mannerist style but I didn't see much resemblance to the late Renaissance paintings I was familiar with.
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I have to say the kids did an admirable job of keeping themselves entertained in the park despite the humidity and the total lack of meaning that the place had for them. I think they sensed to some degree the mischievous spirit of the long-dead sculptor responsible for these creations.
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Bassano in Teverina is a tiny village whose surname reflects its proximity to the Tiber River in Lazio. There was only one thing of interest to me in the town, the world's only hidden belltower. When the town's clock tower was constructed in the late sixteenth century on the site of the much older Church of Santa Maria dei Lumi, the builders erected it around the church's belltower instead of tearing the belltower down for reasons that have been lost to posterity. This unusual architectural feature was only discovered in the 1970's when the rubbish that filled the space between the exterior and interior buildings was cleared away during renovations. I didn't have high expectations that I would be able to enter the tower as I knew that visits were only allowed with a guide and I had made no advance arrangements. Furthermore we were arriving just half an hour before the six PM closing time. The kids were sleeping as I parked in a spot close by the tower and Mei Ling was more than happy to keep an eye on them instead of joining me. The clocktower was a rather plain affair, providing no suggestion of any mystery within its interior. As I expected the entranceway was locked and there was a sign that entry was forbidden without a guide. No one was in sight. It felt as though I was completely alone in the miniscule historic area. I did find a nice belvedere with views over the Tiber Valley, an entirely different area than we had seen previously.
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I wasn't particularly disappointed to have missed the hidden belltower, feeling that I had given it my best effort and it hadn't been tremendously important to me anyway. As I walked back towards the car I noticed a doorway that said "Ticket Office" that I hadn't seen previously. I stepped inside and saw a young guy at a desk. Rather surprised, I asked him in Italian if this was the ticket office for the belltower. He replied in excellent English that it was and introduced himself as Christian, a tour guide. It turned out that he was ready and willing to give me the tour of the clock tower despite the late hour and it would only cost me five euros. He was quite disappointed when I insisted that we whittle the tour down from an hour to twenty minutes at most because my family was waiting in the car. We walked back to the tower and Christian let us inside. I got what I had really come for almost immediately, the understanding of how it appeared to have one tower entirely encased within another. Both were constructed of stone blocks although the outer wall appeared to have had a thin layer of modern concrete-like material applied to its surface. The space between the two towers was about two and a half feet, enough for a broad-shouldered man to walk through.
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I was largely dependent on Christian to fill in my knowledge of the tower as information online was lacking. Even though his English was excellent I had some trouble following what he was explaining. It was difficult to see the belltower because by necessity we were right up against it, but mirrors had been placed against the inner wall of the watchtower to facilitate examination of the belltower's outer wall. Unlike the solid clocktower, the belltower had an open construction with archways and columns on every level. The columns had a variety of shapes and designs. Some had strange stone figures embracing them with their face buried while other figures seemed to be gripping prodigious erections. Christian claimed these were Etruscan statues and when I inquired how the Etruscans could have worked on a Gothic church built a thousand years after they were eradicated by the Romans, he averred that the builders of the belltower had repurposed the statues from other sites. In the end I came away from the tower with more questions than answers but I had the satisfaction of accomplishing my mission of seeing it.
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Our last night's accommodation was not really in Fiumicino, but in a suburb about twenty minutes to the north. We were situated on a featureless street in an area that seemed somewhat industrial, but the cottage itself was spacious and comfortable. There was clearly nothing to do in the immediate area so we decided to get an early dinner, hopefully at a place where I could convince a waiter to sing Tanti Auguri a Te to Spenser. The next day was his actual birthday but we would be spending all of it in transit and I didn't want him to feel cheated. The closest area with decent restaurants was a little beach town named Passo Oscuro. We picked the best rated one we could find which was set back a few blocks from the beach. When we arrived we were so relieved that it was open and had a table for us that we didn't really notice that there was only one waitress. Once I saw her running around frantically taking care of all the customers I figured it would be pointless even asking her to do the birthday song. The menu selection was fairly small but we put together a decent meal and then ordered for dessert. There seemed to be a slight lull in the bustle of the restaurant so I quickly ducked indoors and caught our waitress without any dishes in her hands. I was able to explain the situation in Italian and to my surprise she seemed quite enthusiastic about the idea. Soon afterward she came out to our table with the desserts singing Tanti Auguri a Te quite loudly. Spenser's had a candle in it as well. She was doing a much better job than Cleo's waiter had in Sardinia. I joined in with her so she wouldn't have to finish the verse on her own, although the other diners simply stared at us.
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After dinner we drove down to the road that passed alongside the beach but we couldn't see much due to the buildings. On another night we might have parked and walked over the to the shoreline but we had already done far too much that day. Passo Oscuro was surprisingly busy despite the late hour with small kids playing near the streets and large groups of teenagers and young adults hanging around the cafes and bars that were still open.

When morning came we cleared out of our cottage and made the drive to the EuroDrive center where we had picked up the car. There were only a couple of staff there so it took a while to check us out and then the younger agent gave us a ride to the airport. He was in a glum mood because someone had hit his car that morning and knocked him into another vehicle. Because the offending driver had taken off without leaving any information, our agent's insurance would have to pay for the damage for the third car. I was surprised to hear about these events because we had not seen a single accident during forty-one days on the road in Italy, although we had seen plenty of cars with minor damage. I told him about our close call on the penultimate driving day and he didn't seem too surprised.

Fiumicino Airport was hectic and our check-in line was prodigious but we got through security and our flight left very close to the scheduled time. Our Lisbon connection was much more pleasant this time around because we weren't already exhausted from a Trans-Atlantic flight. We headed directly to the Mercado in the Lisbon Airport that we remembered from the inward journey and treated ourselves to a feast of hearty Portuguese food and dark German beer.
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I killed a couple of hours of our four hour layover browsing in a bookstore with a good selection of English books. I spent most of it leafing through Siddartha, which I had never read during the period of my life in which I used to read. I'm not a devotee of Eastern philosophy but I thought it was interesting how Hesse communicated that an understanding of the world can only be achieved through lived experience rather than through teaching. It matched up fairly well with my obsession with travel and my general alignment with the unfortunately-named theory of absurdism. The store had a selection of weekly newsmagazines with interesting covers. I had seen one of these on a cafe table in Tuscany the day after the assassination attempt and thought about grabbing it but an elderly pensioner got to it first. That entire episode was one of the most bizarre in recent memory, from the improbability of some untrained sociopath getting such a dangerous vantage point to missing Trump's head by just an inch, resulting in such dramatic and iconic photographs. Seeing the photos with headlines splashed across them in foreign languages reminded me of the enormous weight the United States carries in the world and how sad it is that we no longer seem to be capable of leading it.
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While in Lisbon I began reading about the massive CrowdStrike outage that was causing hundreds of flights to be grounded and cancelled in the United States. At first I thought it wouldn't affect us and then I soon afterwards I saw that our flight home was delayed by twenty minutes. Here we go, I thought. I imagined sleeping on the floor of the airport overnight. I kept a close eye on the board but the departure time didn't get pushed back again. Eventually we went to the gate and boarded without incident. The delay turned out to be completely unrelated to American technological issues. Nine hour full flights in cattle class are never fun but I consoled myself that at least we weren't doing two eleven hour legs back to back as we had at the conclusion of the last summer trip. I'd unthinkingly packed my sleeping pills and my contact lens case in the checked luggage so I didn't sleep a wink. There was sunlight during the entire flight until we were approaching the east coast of the US. I was able to watch the last rays of sunlight disappearing over the cumulus cloud cover.
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By the time the taxi dropped us off in front of our house it was already ten PM, far too late to do anything except wolf down some instant noodles. As we walked towards the front door we were overwhelmed by a strong stench of carrion. I looked around and saw the rotting opossum lying on the bricks in the driveway. It's always good to get a welcome home present from Mother Nature. Getting rid of that thing would be a fun task to add onto the massive list of chores that awaited us now that we were home.

It's been a week since we got back which is enough time to reflect on whether I got everything I hoped for out of the trip. Overall I feel we accomplished my main goal, which was to create a host of vivid memories that are unique enough to last for a lifetime. Our life in Miami is pretty good but the days are similar and events tend to repeat themselves so on average the memories aren't as distinct. Traveling with the kids has made the last twelve years feel like a long time even though it sometimes seems like the blink of an eye since we welcomed Cleo into the world. I also feel like I have a much deeper appreciation of Italy, from its culture to its landscape to its history. Gaining a deeper understanding of the world is something that's very important to me, even if it comes just one country at a time. I can only hope that the kids will retain some of those strong impressions as well. I think I could have done better using the language but it is difficult when the ability of Italians to speak English has become so ubiquitous. I noticed a substantial change in that area from our last visit to the mainland just ten years ago. As it was, by the end of the trip I felt confident in my ability to take care of my family's needs even when there was no English spoken. Perhaps least importantly, my Italy travel map looks much better than it used to. Still no Piemonte or Trentino but not really sure if I need them. Campania and the other southern regions will be addressed at a later date, probably many years in the future.
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Regarding the details of the journey, I think my decision to solidify our itinerary several months in advance was the right one. We got exceptional results with our accommodations by reserving the best values before they were taken. Some of the places we stayed in were really unique and memorable, such as in Alghero and Lucca. The forty-four days away from home was a little long for Mei Ling and the kids but it was necessary if we were going to knock out the islands and the remainder of northern Italy that we hadn't covered on the last trip. If I could do it over the only things I would change would be to reduce Milan from three nights to two and to reduce Parma from two nights to one. The Milan to Parma stretch was as close as we came to a low point during the trip (it was still great) but then Cinque Terre rescued us. I need to remember that spending one night in a city and moving on is no big deal. We did it almost everywhere in Sardinia and Corsica and it never felt overwhelming.

Our experience with food was probably helped by keeping expectations in check. It seems like sacrilege but I'm generally not impressed by the quality of restaurant food in Italy. I've often said that one is more likely to find an amazing Italian restaurant in the United States than in Italy. That's not some jingoistic crack as all the best Italian restaurants in the United States are run by Italians. The vast majority of restaurants in Italy offer relatively small selections of local specialties along with crowd-pleasers like steak and pasta. Local specialties are most often minor variations on a theme. There's very little attention paid to customer requests regarding the doneness of meat, with most being served medium well or well-done. Pasta is often mildly to moderately overcooked and vegetables are boiled to a gelatin. We aren't walking into just any restaurant either - I study reviews to make sure that places are beloved by Italians and internationals alike before we commit. I also know how to use a menu to assess the level of cuisine a restaurant aspires to - any place that emphasizes pizza is immediately dismissed. I do think travelers in general tend to overrate restaurants, perhaps because they mix their excitement to be in new surroundings with genuine enjoyment of the food they are being served. I think overall our restaurant experience in Italy was better on average than on our trip ten years ago, not so much because of outstanding meals but because we've gotten better at avoiding the terrible ones. Only three dinners stand out in my mind as excellent - L'Imperfetto in Castelsardo, Le Don Quichotte in Ajaccio (France), and La Veranda dei Pescatori in Varenna. There were several that were mediocre but none that were so awful as to be memorable.

I'll probably come back to this at some point in the future as I write the earlier chapters of my blog and the photos jog my memory. My next job is to make the final arrangements for our upcoming two week trip to the American Midwest which will be devoted to state fairs, water parks, and other fun events for the kids to reward them for putting up with six weeks of punishing walks through dilapidated historical town centers in Italy. After that we'll have four solid months to forget about travel and focus on our lives in Miami before the cycle begins again in December. All I know about next summer is that we'll be headed back to China - most likely Guangdong and Hunan. If I can keep that section down to three weeks than we'll have three more to spend in some new country - possibly Tanzania? Stay tuned.

Posted by zzlangerhans 19:39 Archived in Italy Tagged road_trip family family_travel travel_blog tony_friedman family_travel_blog soriano_nel_cimino passo_oscuro sacro_bosco bassano_in_teverina

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Your journey is very impressive! Thanks for sharing your discoveries and insights!

by Vic_IV

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