Spain 2000

Spain 2000

August 31 - Friday, September 1
I saw the first great sight of my trip to Spain while flying southwest from Amsterdam — Paris. There was no mistaking it for anywhere else; Paris is the largest city in Europe. I strained to see the great sights -- the Eiffel Tower, the long boulevards, the Arch de Triomphe, but inconvenient clouds impeded my view.
I could positively identify nothing else until we approached the Pyrenees. Far off to the right, the Bay of Biscay shimmered in the sun. Biarritz lay along the coast in clusters of green. The terrain changed radically as we passed over the mountains. The French are fond of quipping that Africa begins south of the Pyrenees. And yes, from the air Spain is radically different from the voluptuous rolling hills of France. If France is feminine, then Spain is masculine, hard, sere and uncompromising. The appearance of the country from the air is almost surreal: oddly-shaped patches of browns, earth reds, ochres, carved with difficulty from the stubborn land, and stippled with dots of blackish green.
We dropped slowly to earth and I was finally in Spain, a dream since the summer of 1968, when I first read James Michener’s Iberia. I’d explored Spain only through its cuisine and its music, but its essence remained a mystery.
In the Madrid airport I became hopelessly lost trying to find the baggage carousel. I raced from terminal to terminal, certain that my abandoned bags would be carried off by someone else. I needn’t have worried. When I finally retrieved my luggage from the carousel and asked directions to the bus for town, I was immediately stopped by a stone-faced member of the Guardia Civil. He demanded to see my boarding pass and baggage claims. When he was satisfied that I wasn’t trying to carry off someone else’s stuff, he waved me on with a reptilian smile. Just as I arrived at the curb so did the bus. The fare into town was ludicrously cheap — a good sign of what was to come. The bus, after a short ride through dusty suburbs, deposited me in the Plaza Colon.
According to the map the Hotel Monaco is only a few blocks from the Plaza, so I donned my sunglasses and set out, charged with energy. The Monaco was farther away than I thought and the day was hotter than it seemed at first. By the time I reached the Gran Via, I was panting and my face gave off that unhealthy heat signaling the onset of dehydration. But the hotel was close; I pressed on.
From the end of World War I to the 1950s the Hotel Monaco was an elegant brothel famed throughout all Spain. Even the king, it’s said, came there to, well, come there. The elegance has long faded, but the vague suggestion of a whorehouse remains, evident in small details. The lobby is sumptuous, furnished with gilt mirrors and an overblown mural of some feminine spirit in the toils of ecstasy. The desk was manned by a male clerk of startling beauty (he would be a welcome sight on subsequent returns to the hotel.) Alas, his English was even more primitive than my Spanish. Eventually cutting through the linguistic fog we finally established that my room had indeed been reserved by Señor Delamere, and that one of our party had checked in half an hour before. This was Steve Dumble, the only one of our quartet whom I didn’t know.
I piled my bags into the tiny elevator, which painfully creaked up to my room on the second floor. This room had decidedly not been the chamber of the royal favorite. It was small but neat, with a comfortable bed and a small fan which turned out to be a godsend through the warm nights. The extravagant decorative scheme of the lobby ended at the elevator. This room’s decor had stopped in its tracks somewhere around Rita Hayworth’s early career. The bathroom was so tiny that one could perform virtually any duty required by simply turning in another direction, squatting or rising as the occasion demanded. But I didn’t care. I was more than ready to get out and explore the city, so I unpacked a couple of things and called Steve’s room. If I was going to be touring Spain for twelve days with a perfect stranger it seemed a good idea to meet him as soon as possible.
Steve Dumble is an affable man, tall, heavyish, with short hair, glasses, and a salt-and-pepper goatee. He emanates hearty good will and in less than two minutes after meeting we were firm friends. And what do new friends do? Well, they can set out for a bite to eat.
We settled on a sidewalk café near the Puerta del Sol, the Armenia. Over a couple of beers and some indifferent tapas, we filled in the details of our lives. Steve lives in Swanage, South Wales with a partner named David, in a reconverted stone water tower which they have cleverly adapted into a home. Steve has performed in a considerable number of Gilbert and Sullivan operettas in the bass-baritone roles. He has known David Delamere for ages. In fact, David introduced him to his partner.
After our little refreshment, we wandered on to explore Madrid further. We stopped at another bar for two coffees, then walked half a block to the Plaza Mayor, a flagstoned meadow almost completely deserted in the hot haze of siesta time. A pigeon-bespattered equestrian figure of King Philip II dominates the square, but our focus was the tourist office. We wanted primarily to find out if there were any music or theatre events going on in the city, and I was looking for something in particular.
The zarzuela is something like an operetta but with a pronounced Spanish flavor. I was acquainted with them through a handful of recordings and wanted to explore the form better, preferably through performance. But the clerk at the office told us sadly that we were both too late and too early: a couple of zarzuelas had been performed in the summer and more would come later, but the official season was not yet started. Well then, I reasoned, I could compensate by buying more recordings. Here in Spain they would surely be easier to find.
The bullfighting season was still going strong, and the next performance in Madrid was scheduled for Sunday afternoon at six. I knew I’d need a hat, so I began my search immediately in the shops lining the Plaza Mayor. I found nothing in my size, but on Sunday morning the large outdoor market El Rastro would surely provide something suitable.
For dinner, we stopped and made reservations at a restaurant recommended by my guidebook, La Barraca, then returned half an hour later. This is a well-established place known for the best paella in Madrid, and since paella is my favorite dish in all the world, this was clearly the right choice. It has been a Madrid fixture apparently since the 1950s. Pictures on the walls show Cary Grant, Grace Kelly and her prince, and Arthur Rubinstein all dining happily — though not together. The restaurant meanders through several cozy and discreetly lit rooms, with copper pots and decorative plates on the walls. As soon as we sat down I was seized with a powerful thirst; we ordered a large bottle of mineral water. We chose to dine on one of the special all-seafood paellas, accompanied by a marvelous red rioja, El Coto. The paella was perfection and the restaurant itself is an attractive place, so a return was inevitable.
Reluctant to bring a perfect evening to a close, we walked a couple of blocks north of The Monaco into the Pink District, the lively gay area of Madrid, for coffee. It had been a long day since I left Boston, so I left Steve to explore and was back at the hotel and in bed by midnight.

Saturday, September 2
I was awakened at 9:30 by a jangling phone. It was David. He and Fred had arrived late the previous evening and they were eager for me to come down and join the party. I performed my ablutions on the double, even hopping into the shower with my watch on (it survived its bath). With mounting joy, I sped down to the lobby, and arrived to hugs and kisses. David is one of my closest, dearest English friends. I’ve known him for fourteen happy years, and we began to plan this trip two summers ago. We were joined during the planning stages by Fred Evans, a mutual friend who lives in Wrexham, North Wales. Fred is 62 but seems much older, with the starchy and pedagogical air of a retired schoolmaster, which in fact he is. He is also a shrieking hypochondriac, inclined to pamper himself like Aunt Pittypat. That isn’t to say that Fred can’t twinkle; he can, especially when the talk turns to show music, Sondheim in particular.
After a coffee in the lobby we moved down the street to a corner bar for a fairly unconventional breakfast consisting largely of seafood, then lit out for the Prado.
At the Plaza de Cibeles we turned down a wide boulevard shaded by enormous plane trees, the Paseo del Prado. Inside the museum, we split up; it’s impossible for four people to go through an art collection at the same pace and an artist is inclined to linger over favorites. They agreed to meet me at the entrance at 3:30.
The Prado needs no introduction; it is one of the world’s supreme museums, and the greatest collection of Spanish painting on earth. Everyone’s favorites are the masterful canvases of Velázquez. Las Meninas in particular benefitted by being actually seen; in reproduction, one fails to appreciate its impressive depth of field. Fans of El Greco can find in the Prado everything they can possibly want; I admire the painter without really liking him. I was drawn to Goya’s so-called black paintings, the tortured expression of a mad old man. But I stood longest in front of Bosch’s great triptych, “The Garden of Delights.” In this unbelievable fantasia, even hell is attractive. The work has been recently restored, and it glows like paradise itself. Four hours later I still hadn’t seen everything I wanted to see, but I couldn’t keep my friends waiting. By the time we met, they had already eaten, so I had an ice cream on a stick as we walked beneath the plane trees.
We stopped at an outdoor café for beer, then headed for the Plaza Mayor. The ice cream hadn’t made much of a dent, so I stopped at a small, dark café. The burly barman made me a sandwich of manchego cheese while two old people, his mother and father, entertained me as far as our mutual incomprehension would allow. Out of frustration I lapsed into Italian — and hit pay dirt. The father was from Venice. I extolled the charms of his native city at impassioned length and the old man beamed with delight. The sandwich was plain and good, if a bit of hard work to chew; the cheese is flavorful and similar to parmesan, though not quite as dry.
David and Fred hadn’t seen the Plaza Mayor yet, but as it was again siesta time it didn’t take us long to exhaust its arid charms. On the previous day Steve and I had found a chocolateria nearby which we’d hoped to return to, but now it was closed.
Steve went back to the hotel to rest. (Rest? What’s that?) David and Fred and I wanted to see the Palacio Real, which dominates the western end of the city. The inviting gardens of Plaza de Oriente are spread before it like a green banquet, so we sat beside the gardens at a café and had another beer. It was around 7:00. The day was cooling off as the rich clear blue of the sky deepened. The Palacio Real itself was just an 18th century pile, with no more architectural distinction than Buckingham Palace. Walking to the public gardens at the side of the palace, we were surprised to see countryside behind the palace, the bare hills of central Spain. The city abruptly ends at the palace walls, with no fading off into suburbs. The Manzanares River runs below the palace but we couldn’t see it.
After going through the part of the gardens allowed to the public, we headed back toward the hotel. I stopped at a large department store, El Corte Ingles, to look for zarzuela CDs, and found five. I returned to the hotel and collected the chaps, and we walked three blocks north to Chueca Square for a pre-dinner drink at a busy café under the dusty trees. (We hadn’t yet fallen into our later gin-and-tonic routine.) Shortly it was time to return to the restaurant where we’d made reservations.
The Carmencita was formerly a local tavern for impoverished intellectuals, established in 1850. It is now a modest and attractive restaurant. The waitress in charge was very frank about not speaking English and my Spanish, I’m sorry to admit, was virtually worthless — though pronounced beautifully. We were given a plate of bright red chorizo, huge wedges of bread, and we ordered a by-now obligatory bottle of red rioja. I started with vichyssoise garnished with a dab of black caviar. The soup was sinfully creamy, like mainlining cholesterol. But no matter: it was here and I was ready for it. My main dish was partridge, served cold in a savory fruit sauce. It was heavenly, but a pincushion of small, treacherous bones. Only the dessert was a disappointment, a pot of custard devoid of sweetness, served with a separate pot of honey.
I was in bed before midnight.

Sunday, September 3
We met at 9:45 in the lobby and took the Metro from Chueca Square to El Rastro. This huge outdoor market goes on for the better part of a mile on Calle de la Ribera de Curtidores, spilling out onto the adjoining streets. First we stopped at a bakery for coffee and obscenely decadent pastries bursting with marzipan. After going through the market for about a block, we lost one another momentarily. I suggested that if we did so again, we should meet at the subway stop at 1:30, and in under a minute I had lost them again. I enjoyed the pushing crowds, the delicious weather, but nothing tempted me. I did find my straw hat, a pert number which cost me the equivalent of about $4.50.
At the café by the Metro stop, we had a pitcher of sangria. Spanish sangria, it turns out, is much less potent than its American cousin, more like a light wine punch and very sugary. But it was a hot afternoon and we slurped it up greedily.
The day was too lovely to take the Metro again, so we strolled north toward the Plaza Mayor. Our eye landed on Taberna la Percha; the posted bill of fare tempted us to try it for lunch. We had a good deal of sport over the hilariously innocent translation of the menu, which featured such quaint items as: illustrated salad, smashed eggs with ham, breadcrumbs of the shepherd, and (this really got us going) meatballs of the parish priest. The fixed menu was a bargain: a great seafood salad, rough red wine, and roast lamb which, oddly enough, I didn’t dislike. We finished with flan, sheer rapture.
Our chocolateria was nearby. Now we would have our treat. The Spanish, I was told, prefer their chocolate richer and denser than we do. But the chocolateria was again closed. Back at the hotel, we separated. This was my first chance to see a bullfight, so I took the trusty Metro to Las Ventas, the bullring in the northeast part of the city.
I said goodbye to my brave compañeros. They had other, less bloody plans: the ballet.
Las Ventas is large and architecturally a treat to the eye, Moorish brickwork and tiles, arches and arabesques. I took several photos of it, and dodged whizzing cars to reach a traffic island so I could shoot the whole structure from across the street. A gust of wind blew my hat off and carried it into the middle of a huge patch of prickly stuff. I waded into it, and a familiar, pungent scent rose to my nose — rosemary. I broke off several twigs and put them into my bag. Back at the box office, I bought my ticket, but no one was admitted till five. A seller in front of the ring sold me all my postcards, and I wrote a couple while waiting for the ring to open. When the gates parted I found my seat easily, only about 5 rows up. The corrida didn’t begin till six, so I drank a couple of icy beers and a bottle of mineral water while I wrote more postcards.
The ceremony began with a parade, with the toreros proudly walking before the horses. This group, the cuadrilla, marches around the ring to festive band music, just like in the movies. Then the actual corrida begins. There were six different contests between man and beast. Each followed a pattern which varied little; the first match was typical (though each bull and each matador had his own personal peccadillos). The bull was released from the chute; he burst into the ring with a taurine fury that took me by surprise: I’d expected a fairly placid animal that would be gradually goaded into fighting. This huge black monster, speckled with white about the hindquarters, had only one thought in his massive head: to do as much damage as he could do to as many men as he could reach. The first matador was Martin Antequero, an exceedingly handsome young man who looked more like a Harvard sophomore than a haughty torero. Of all three matadors, he had the most stylized, balletic style. He addressed the bull with silken disdain, his pelvis thrust forward insolently. Considering the sheer massiveness of this particular beast, I was impressed with his willingness to put his cojones in such obvious danger. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before the first address of the bull, the animal chased all the men around the ring. It was odd to see them scrambling to hide behind the burladeros, the panels parallel to the sides of the ring which I had assumed were for emergencies. Not so: they ran like rabbits from the moment the bull appeared. The matador, to his credit, stayed mostly out in the open. After a bit of this cat and mouse business, the picador trotted out on a horse padded as extravagantly as a Wagnerian soprano — and with good reason. The horse, incidentally, is blindfolded. Any sensible horse without a blindfold would probably wrest the lance from his rider, pole vault over the edge of the ring, and head for the border. After the matador played the bull awhile, the bull inevitably charged the horse, attempting with all his might and main to penetrate the poor animal’s interior regions. During the bull’s attempt at exploratory surgery, the picador sends his lance into the bull’s shoulder to weaken him and cut his shoulder muscles, then it’s time for the banderilleros to attempt to place the banderillos. These men had the trickiest job: stabbing the barbed, satin-flounced sticks into the bull’s shoulders, two at a time. (Generally they did well, except for one man in a green suit. He was clearly terrified of the bull, advancing on him crabwise out of sheer naked fear. He was inept in placing the banderillos, and was frequently booed.) When the bull was thus weakened by the picador and banderilleros and losing blood fast, Antequero exchanged his magenta and yellow cape for a small scarlet one. With this cape he played the bull with shorter, more delicate strokes, then pulled out a sword and drove it as far as he could into the bull. The sword didn’t go in far enough to do much damage, so it was withdrawn and another attempt was made. When the bull, weakened from loss of blood, finally sank to its knees Antequero dispatched him with a dagger stuck into the base of the skull. All the contests but the last ended with this thrust of the dagger. After the bull is killed, three horsemen come out with a sort of yoke attached behind their mounts, and drag the fallen hero around the ring and out the gate. I’m told that the bulls are butchered and the meat given to the poor. I hope so.
The next matador was Curro Gea, who looked, from my vantage point, something like the weak-chinned matador in Ferdinand the Bull. He was skillful, but without a discernible style. A compact black bull hurtled out of the gate. First came the obligatory chase, then the picador’s work, but at this point the bull appeared to be disqualified. Six or seven brown and white bulls were let into the ring. Our little black bull made a few aggressive moves toward them, but eventually he trotted out with them and a new bull was introduced. The same process happened again, but on the third try, the bull was finally dispatched.
The third matador was Tomas Lopez, young and good-looking, in a blazing suit of lights in purple and gold. His style was excellent, very stylized and graceful. While knowing little of the sport, I observed carefully; I imagine that Lopez is a very promising torero. His bull was a brown, blunt beast, short-legged and ferocious enough to satisfy anyone. The kill went well and quickly, but again, the dagger was required to finish him off.
All three matadors took second bulls. Antequero was more elaborate and balletic than before, Gea markedly less effective than his first time out. During Gea’s contest, the green-suited banderillero was humiliatingly inept. It took three tries to place the banderillos and he was so clearly terrified that the crowd howled a storm of disapproval. By now I suppose the poor man is looking into the exciting world of flipping hamburgers, or some other non-aggressive form of beef.
The last bull of the day belonged to Lopez, whose performance was excellent. His last bull was a superb match for him, large, brown, a ton of muscle, gristle, and ferocity. This bull was very determined to stay alive. Lopez’s capework was brisk and efficient, but his first sword only went in about three inches and had to be withdrawn. This served only to madden the bull. On the second attempt, the sword went in up to the hilt. It must have punctured a lung; from the bull’s mouth spewed what seemed to be gallons of blood. It was the only clean kill of the afternoon, but it was also very disturbing to many in the stands. I heard one woman nearby plead, “Oh, please someone, kill it!” But the killing had already been accomplished; the bull snorted forth a final quart of gore and sank lifeless to the sand, to great cheers and general clamor. And it was all over.
I was curious before the corrida began as to what my attitude would be to the whole experience. Well, I wasn’t nauseated, and was quite impressed with it as spectacle. If I lived in Spain I might go to other corridas, but I doubt that I could become a true aficionado. I hated to see the blindfolded horses attacked by the bulls, though they appeared to be unhurt. Bulls must die, of course, or masses of people would not be streaming into Burger King and Ponderosa and Wendy’s. But toward the end I felt a pang of species disloyalty and wouldn’t have minded seeing one of the bulls’ tormentors punctured or tossed into the stands.
Back at the hotel I finished up my postcards and read the last pages of my Patricia Highsmith novel. The boys came in from the ballet starry-eyed, the final chords of Giselle ringing in their ears. We returned to La Barraca and had another fabulous paella. The waiter we’d had before beamed with pleasure at seeing Steve and me return with two more patrons in tow.

Monday, September 4
I awoke at 8:45. We had arranged to meet at 9:45 in the lobby. I raced to the Puerta del Sol, where I’d seen a Cambio with a good exchange rate. They weren’t open yet so I raced back to the hotel; Steve and David had gone for the rental car and would be returning at 9:45 sharp and I didn’t want them to have to wait. But in Plaza de San Luis a café beckoned: I hadn’t yet had a cup of chocolate. It was everything I’d hoped for: thick and dense, and so sweet I marvel that Spain isn’t a nation of diabetics.
The car was a green Peugeot with exactly enough room for our suitcases and no more. Shopping for large items would have to be sharply curtailed. I had no cash, so a return to the Puerta del Sol was imperative. Luckily Steve found a place to idle the car while I made my transaction and mailed the postcards.
We rode north out of Madrid, and I was dismayed to see how much of the wonderful city I’d missed, broad boulevards lined with smart shops, parks and palaces and a magnificent triumphal arch at the northern gate.
The countryside was both lovely and stark, and very mountainous. The nature of the landscape kept changing; there was even a stretch that reminded me of Quartz Mountain State Park, near my Oklahoma hometown. On the opposite side of the road stood a slim tower of a ruined castle, but we hurtled by so quickly I couldn’t shoot it. I didn’t know it then, but many castles still lay ahead.
Our goal was the Escorial Palace, Philip II’s monument to his power and glory — oh yes, and God’s. Philip was an utterly humorless king, alleged to have smiled only once in his life: it was reported to him that a batch of heretics had been burned to death. The palace was remarkable, a forbidding fortress brooding over a lovely town, San Lorenzo de Escorial. We walked into a bar for lunch. I ordered a bocadillo (sandwich) of ham and crusty bread, accompanied by a café solo (my old friend espresso). The bocadillo was so good I ordered another of omelet and chicken; it was heavenly. We walked through the leafy town to the palace, but it was closed on Monday, so we trudged back to the car and pressed on to Segovia.
Do you believe in love at first sight? We came down out of the mountains around a curve — and gasped with pleasure at the city before us. Segovia appears from this approach to be in a valley but it is not. Segovia is a spectacularly sited walled city, the first of three we visited. This lower end of town is fronted by the most impressive sight I saw in all of Spain: a magnificent Roman aquaduct. Taller than a five-story building, graceful as a line of birches, it’s a brilliant piece of engineering. This aquaduct has stood for almost 2000 years and was in use well into the nineteenth century. Now it remains as a grace note to an incomparably beautiful city.
We found our hotel easily. The three-star Infanta Isabel, recently redecorated, is neat and comfortable. It’s a dozen steps from the Plaza Mayor and as unlike the Monaco as it could be. Segovia’s main Plaza is a lovely open space ringed with locust trees so green and lush they looked freshly-washed. A lacy wrought-iron bandstand stands in the center of the square. From the northwest corner, a spun-sugar Gothic cathedral rises like a golden wedding cake in the sun.
I unpacked hurriedly and went out to get a few shots of the cathedral. When I picked the boys up a few minutes later, we walked back down toward the aquaduct. As it was Monday – and siesta time — the town was very quiet, only a few intrepid tourists about. David went up to an old church to enquire if we could visit, but it turned out to be a monastery and therefore off-limits unless we were willing to commit to vows of chastity. I for one was not. In a small square a statue of Juan Bravo stood halfway up a flight of steps, looking like the Angel of the Lord with a bit of Billy Budd thrown in for good measure.
At the bottom of the steep streets we came to the aquaduct. It was even more impressive approached on foot. When I’d finished shooting it from every flattering angle, Steve shouted down to us from the top: he’d found a flight of stone steps. We all joined him, Fred muttering about his heart. I couldn’t help but note that he looked damned healthy for a dying swan. At the top a comely young German with long hair offered to shoot me with the aquaduct as background. I fought down the impulse to ask him for further, more intimate favors but he was with a small group and soon moved off. Seeing the aquaduct from this angle I was filled with admiration for that great Roman achievement, the engineering genius which helped conquer Europe.
The great cathedral where Queen Isabella was crowned is ethereal and spacious, dreamlike in its amber dimness. The organ is an instrument of some note; David was eager to find out if there were any recitals scheduled, but was dourly informed that the organ was only played during divine services. How sad, I thought. Throughout Italy, churches are used for their musical capabilities at every opportunity, both sacred and secular. David inquired of several people if CDs were available, but nobody seemed to know or care.
The others required a rest but I still wanted to explore, so I set out on my own. We parted at a lovely little park with children playing under copper beeches. I wandered down a narrow winding street to the western end of the city. Segovia is shaped somewhat like a ship; if the aquaduct is the stern, the Alcazar is the prow. Its towers soar above the trees, a standard Disney-issue fairy-tale castle. We were to visit the following day, so I merely wandered through the ornamental gardens. By the entrance, two large chestnut trees were cacaphonous with clacking, metallic birdsounds – I hesitate to call this racket birdsong. I looked up to see a parliament of odd blackbirds, hundreds of them, larger than starlings but not quite crows. Their clatter finally drove me away. I walked over to an open space to my right, where the road winds back along the city wall. Below the city lies a valley thick with trees. The present drops away. I walked past the Alcazar entrance again to the other side. I leaned over and looked down, suddenly wide-eyed at the sheer drop to another deep valley. Far below lay a monastery, a church, a winding road. I turned back toward what I assumed to be the center of town. The road followed the city wall, and at times I seemed to be walking within the city, sometimes without. I stopped to look at a tangle of wildflowers growing by the side of the road: purple echinacea, tiny delicate poppies of an almost incandescent red, and banks and banks of foaming, frothy white flowers. They had an odd odor, not exactly unpleasant but a magnet for bees. (David told me later with disgust that I’d been admiring something called Russian vine, despised throughout Europe much as we do kudzu.).
There were several roads I could have taken. I didn’t have a map so I trusted to luck. The road kept dropping; eventually I hoped to arrive back at the aquaduct — and did. Consulting a map later, I saw that my walk had taken me halfway around the city walls. It was now early evening and people were starting to come out of hiding: old people, teenagers, children, groups of friends. The Spanish, I note, are much more sociable than Americans. They love to gather in small groups and eat and drink and talk. It’s an evening phenomenon very much like the Italian passeggiata. Americans would do well to emulate this, but our society is too fast, too breathless, and disinclined to support a custom from which there’s no financial gain to be made. Pity.
I strolled along enjoying the sweet evening air, the people in the broad boulevard, and along the way I found another CD shop, where I bought six more zarzuela recordings.
Back at the hotel we decided to go with the guidebook recommendation again: the Méson de Cándido is cited as a place no visitor should miss. We were seated upstairs in a room which suggested an alpine hunting lodge: rough wood, wonderfully romantic murals executed by a master artist -- and photos of visiting celebrities. Decorative elements grew organically from the room; nothing seemed to be placed by a decorator. Just outside the open window stood the aquaduct, palely lit against the velvet sky.
We ordered two bottles of rioja, Ribero del Duero, rich and red with a pronounced notes of cherry and spice. I started with little red peppers with bread and mushroom stuffing, then slices of roasted wild boar in a rich brown sauce. The boar was gamy but good, garnished with cherries and slices of baked apple. Dessert was a baked Alaska. It was as good, as decadent as anything I’ve ever eaten and I almost levitated with pleasure.
After coffee, we repaired to Steve’s hotel room for something that very quickly became a cherished custom throughout the rest of the trip: brandy and conversation before bedtime.

Tuesday, September 5
I woke up dreaming I’d been performing an equestrian act in a tattered little itinerant circus, with my old friend Marianne Cary.
On the previous afternoon walk I’d found a pastry shop across the street, filled with wondrous things. We had arranged to meet at ten; it was still early so I walked across. I ordered too much: four little ring-shaped pastries, gooey with ultra-sweet frosting. The bitter café solo was a necessary corrective to the excruciating sweetness. It was served by a dull-eyed slattern more concerned with talking to her boyfriend. This oaf sprawled bonelessly on his stool and dumped his paper trash on the floor, little caring that she would probably be the one to clean up.
Once together, our aim was to tour the Alcazar. To get in, we had to cross a narrow drawbridge over a moat, another heartcatching drop. The castle had everything it was supposed to have, but much of it was reproduction. A fire had run through many of the apartments in the mid 19th century. But in the chapel where Ferdinand and Isabella wed was an original alterpiece, blessedly undamaged, a lively work portraying Saint James (Santiago de Compostela) lopping off the heads of the infidel.
Lunch was in the dark and amber-lit Restaurante La Tasca, around the corner and down a crooked street from our hotel. To simplify matters we had the set menu, chicken noodle soup, wine, a celestial fried trout, easily boned. The flan for dessert was eggy and rich. An attractive Israeli family asked us to take pictures of them, and when we parted, I recommended they try the Méson de Cándido for dinner. We split up again and I arranged to meet David at 6:30. Returning to the boulevard down by the aquaduct I stopped at a coffee house for another thick chocolate. This one had orange syrup added — no real improvement on perfection. I found another CD shop and made another haul, then went back to read The American Scholar and a newspaper. I had luckily found The London Times at a kiosk in the Plaza Mayor.
Before meeting Steve and Fred, David and I scouted the area for restaurants. We settled on the Restaurante El Concepción on the Plaza Mayor, a most fortuitous choice. This, we all agreed at the end of the trip, was our finest evening; everything was magically right. We watched the perfect sapphire sky gradually turn to peacock, then purple. The cathedral, a mere twenty steps off to our right, was softly illuminated, a rich gold against the changing sky. A scrawny boy with a sure, expert touch played classical piano a few tables away. Any sour notes he might have played were easily absorbed by the chatter of the patrons and the cries of children happily playing in the square. He began with Scarlatti and Mozart, then worked up to Satie and Debussy. I’m passionate about turn-of-the-century French and Spanish music, so I ventured a request. Some Albeniz? No, he didn’t know any. Granados, surely? No. He brightened momentarily when I mentioned Turina, but could only play a few bars with confidence. No matter; we still enjoyed everything he played. Two old pusses closer to him seemed mildly offended that anyone would dare interrupt their gossip with mere music. Eventually they powdered their noses and trotted away.
The set menu here was exceptionally fine, with a number of choices. I had, along with the inevitable red rioja, a superb risotto nero: bright bits of cuttlefish glowing in the black inky rice. The main course was bonito on a bed of sautéed vegetables. Dessert was an unearthly treat: thyme ice cream — thyme! — floating in a confit of raspberries.
In the Spanish style, we lingered over our meal as long as we could. It seemed a shame to bring this carnival of sensual pleasures to a close but Fred was chilled so he went back to the hotel early, thus missing the postprandial brandy in my room. I went to bed drunk on the evening itself, not the wine, not the brandy, but Spain, seeping into my soul.

Wednesday, September 6
I hated to leave Segovia, but other undiscovered treasures lay ahead. A bank near the hotel gave me the best exchange rate to date. Breakfast was in the hotel, and superb. We piled into the Peugeot and drove straight back to San Lorenzo de Escorial to see the palace. I enjoyed touring through it, but I toured alone. We were quickly separated when I stopped to linger over the superior collection of paintings. Thinking that the others had gotten ahead of me, I accelerated my pace but at some point I must have passed them, for they were nowhere to be seen. I finally fetched up at the exit cooling my heels for the better part of an hour, trying to suppress the nagging feeling that they had finished and were combing the town looking for me. Finally they came walking across the vast courtyard in front of the cathedral, to my great relief.
Lunch was at an outdoor café, the Alaska. (Many bars and restaurants and small hotels throughout Spain have American place names.) I had a wonderful seafood soup and paella.
The next stop was the only sight on the trip I didn’t enjoy. The Valle de los Caídos, the Valley of the Fallen, lies a few miles outside San Lorenzo. An enormous cross sits high on a mountain peak, a memorial to those who died in the Spanish Civil War. (A cross seems to me a perverse symbol for Franco’s dictatorship.) Below it, burrowed 820 feet into the side of the mountain, is an enormous basilica built by captive Republican slave labor. It’s a prime example of fascist chic: the overt worship of power easily overwhelming its ecclesiastical elements. Franco himself is buried below the high altar, opposite the founder of the Falangists. I was relieved when we left this smug, vulgar display and drove back down the mountain towards Avila.
Avila’s Hotel de Jardin is just outside the city wall. True, the front courtyard and lobby are thick with luxuriant plant life, but on balance this mom-and-pop operation is less like a garden than a roach hotel. There was no point in seeking out another: we were only to stay one night. My room was large, neat and plain, but the tiny bath off it was rank with a pronounced smell of sewage. I resolved to spend as little time in there as possible.
We walked into the city through a massive gate and found the tourist office opposite the cathedral. A pleasant young woman gave us maps and advised us where to go outside the city walls for a magnificent view at night. Across the way was the cathedral, a fine example of the early Gothic style, and older than most of the other churches we visited. The light in the chancery was inviting, a soft orange glow, but one had to pay to get in and they were closing anyway. So we repaired to another sidewalk café and began another cherished (British) custom: gin and tonics in the late afternoon. I hadn’t drunk any sherry since I’d been in Spain, the country that produces it, so I blithely ordered a manzanilla, mouth watering in expectation. The barman dutifully brought me a cup of tea, Manzanilla brand. He seemed mildly offended that I wanted sherry instead of this fine libation, but admitted that they had no actual manzanilla. I gratefully accepted a glass of fino instead.
Off to the side of the city is a narrow park with high trees, where elderly couples sat enjoying the mild late afternoon. The park overlooks the terraced town below and the hills beyond. More of Avila is outside the city walls than within. We walked south along the walls and re-entered at the gate opposite the Church of Santa Teresa. Here the great Catholic mystic lived as a girl; the garden she played in is preserved. The church itself is a modest gem of the late baroque, but Teresa’s chapel off to the side was the attraction. It is small and dark and dimly lit with candlelight, but the altarpiece is surreal, a frenetic rococo fantasy. All of it, every inch, is richly gilded. I sat there for a few minutes drinking it all in, and after a clutch of worshippers left, I managed to take a couple of shots without flash. This would have been a hard sight to top so we didn’t try.
The Puerta del Carmen towered above the rest of the city walls. I suspect it’s a later addition. This gate is topped by a wild tangle of stork nests. To my disappointment, no birds were currently in residence; perhaps they were out delivering babies. Outside the walls the low sun against the battlements made for a good picture, and I experimented with shooting against the sun.
At the Café Felipe in the Plaza Mayor we stopped for another gin and tonic and discussed our options for dinner. We decided on the Hostaria Bracamonte, which we’d recently passed. The Bracamonte has an elegant interior, very high style, and the food reflected this. We ordered a bottle of the house red wine. I started with empanadillos with meat, savory little pies. When the fish proved unavailable, I ordered the escalope del dia, a fried filet of pork. For his starter, David had a langoustine soup which I won’t soon forget. By this time he was laughing at virtually anything I said and a mild witticism brought forth a soup-spewing guffaw, which spotted me liberally and brought the party back to sobriety.
After the meal, after nightfall, Fred went back to the hotel, thereby missing the loveliest, most ethereal sight of the entire trip. David, Steve and I hiked across the river to the Mirador de los Cuatro Postes, a Roman temple Christianized by a cross in the center. This, the girl at the local tourist board had told us, was the perfect vantage point from which to see the city at night. Ghostly Avila drowsed in the moonlight, its unbroken walls lit softly with hidden floodlights. The centuries melt away and we saw the city much as it was when it was built nine hundred years ago.

Thursday, September 7
On the road to Salamanca, we stopped briefly to give Fred a daylight view of the city from our moonlit observation point. Morning robbed the sight of much of its magic, for the sun was still low and an early morning haze lingered.
The landscape changed rapidly over the miles. A valley of boulders became a plain with short scrubby trees. About a dozen miles out of Avila we stopped at the little town of San Pedro del Arroyo for croissants and coffee. I ambled down the street to a bank, where a heartbreakingly handsome young teller gave me the best exchange rate yet. (For the rest of the trip I mostly went to banks to exchange money.) On the other side of San Pedro the harsh, stony landscape changed to flat hot fields of wheat and sunflowers. It was here on this pitiless and sun-parched plain, Fred informed us, that the armies of Wellington and Sir John Moore clashed with Napoleon’s marauding forces. As we approached Salamanca a black cut-out of a bull stood presiding over the fields in the distance. When we reached him, he stood taller than a billboard. No lettering, no detail, just the black figure of a bull. Fred says they’re found all over Spain and advertise a kind of sherry. The symbol of the bull is so well known that he needs nothing but his silhouette to make his point.
In Salamanca we found an underground carpark and began searching for a hotel. We had rooms reserved in Zamora, some thirty-odd miles to the north. David had made them in desperation, because an enormous arts festival in Salamanca had caused a run on rooms. After four or five tries we were successful: the Hotel Condal had fine rooms at reasonable rates and they even called our Zamora hotel to cancel. David and Steve insisted on having single rooms, but I was willing to double with Fred for the two nights here. Our room was modern and sparkling clean, in short, everything our Avila hotel hadn’t been.
After settling in, we walked a couple of blocks to the Plaza Mayor, a large baroque square humming with people. The square is considerably smaller than Piazza San Marco in Venice but it has much the same spirit. Technicians were setting up for the musical events and an air of excitement crackled through the noontime heat. The festival was beginning that day.
The Restaurante Dulcinea looked promising, but we weren’t allowed in until one o’clock. We killed time by walking through the busy marketplace near the great plaza. People who haven’t yet been to Spain would never guess how plentiful the seafood is, even here in the flat central plains of Castille. In this market I saw more teeming varieties of seafood than I’ve ever seen anywhere, at any time. The two crowded floors featured every kind of foodstuff: fruits and vegetables piled into colorful pyramids; vast banks of meat, including organs I had no wish to identify. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the carcass of a rhinoceros freshly butchered and displayed on a bed of ice, a parsley wreath around its ears.
The Dulcinea’s set menu was plentiful and good: paella as a starter, then stewed chicken, falling-off-the-bone tender. Afterward, while everyone else took a siesta, I explored the town. The Gran Via was almost deserted, but I walked its length in search of a newspaper in English and a place to read it over a drink. I ended up at the great Convent of San Esteban, an impressive edifice faced with gothic lace, and with a fine modern sculpture of St. Francis presiding over the front courtyard. A young man on a bicycle stopped, tossed a small camera at me and asked me to take his picture. I talked briefly with a brisk young Scotswoman with a mouthful of bad teeth. They looked like a display of French country cheeses -- a most unsettling sight. After a few pleasantries I moved on.
Leaving the great cathedral for a later visit, I walked down the Rua Mayor and found a coffee shop, all gleaming chrome and mirrors, filled with students reading and talking. I ordered a lemon ice tea from a lovely young Japanese girl and settled down with the London Times I’d found.
Back at the hotel I met the boys and told them I would meet them later. A laundromat around the corner was attended by a pretty blond girl who took my coins and proceeded to do everything for me, even providing the soap. I was directed to an area with comfortable chairs and sofa and a television, more like a living room than a public facility. I settled down and read my American Scholar and soon she told me it was done. Everything had been neatly folded, so I tipped her liberally, which I’m sure must be the custom.
We’d arranged to meet at one of the sidewalk cafés on the Plaza Mayor. David and I ran to two more CD shops I’d found, where I made another raid on their zarzuela section. Fred and Steve joined us and we went into the Cathedral of Salamanca. This was my favorite church on the trip, magnificent, and more welcoming than most. Its upper reaches are filled with light, pouring through a ring of windows just below the dome.
Afterward we parted again, to meet at 8:30 for dinner. I went into a small antique shop — and flirted outrageously with the handsome owner — then spent the rest of the time strolling through the city. Roving bands of folk musicians marched through the streets. Some were small brass bands with modern instruments, others played medieval instruments like shawms and tabors. Still others accompanied dancing troupes in folk costume. A couple of times I witnessed two instrumental groups accidentally meeting in the street, their contrasting musical styles blending into a comical cacophony. I also discovered by walking beyond Puerta Zamora that a bold modern city surrounds old Salamanca.
In my perambulations I had stumbled onto an attractive place to eat, The Valencia. It was tucked into a pocket off the street, a candle-lit outdoor grotto. Our plump young waiter advised me to have the gazpacho. It was creamy and pleasantly sour, probably made with yogurt. Savory fish croquettes came next. I ended with fig tart, unlike anything I’ve ever had before, and marvelous.
Fred again took a pass on the post-prandial concert in the Plaza Mayor. It was Indian music, which sounded even more exotic here in the middle of Castille. Brandy and bed.

Friday, September 8
We were told that except for eating places Salamanca would be closed on this great festival day. So I slept till ten. The evening before I’d established that the Internet Café would be open at eleven, so for 500 pesetas (about $2.70), I spent a pleasant hour on the web reading The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and the Times Book Review. By now I was developing a sharp appetite for some good hard news, specifically, on how the presidential campaign was progressing. It was a pleasant little taste of home.
In the Plaza Mayor, several music events were starting up. I stopped for an empanada de bonita. It wasn’t tuna, as I’d expected, but a smear of tomato sauce with chopped vegetables. It was good but not very filling, so in the Rua Mayor I went into a bar for a veal bocadillo on a hard roll and two short beers, then walked toward the river. The Rio Tormes runs sluggishly under a Roman bridge, my real destination. To my disappointment it was in the midst of renovation and therefore closed to all traffic, even pedestrian. Instead, I wandered along the embankment listening to birdsong and the lazy hum of insects. It was a very hot day and relentlessly sunny, with that ever-welcome, hard porcelain sky overhead. There was no humidity and the shade was comfortable. Salamanca isn’t the farthest south I’ve traveled, but it felt like it.
During my afternoon coffee I was serenaded by a scruffy trio, more interesting visually than aurally. They came into the café to play a guitar, lute and recorder and sing at the top of their voices. After a while, silence seemed more agreeable, so I bought a bottle of mineral water and went to the Plaza Colon. Sitting on a rough granite bench just below the statue of Columbus, who points dramatically west, I read my magazine under a pleasant chorus of birds high in the plane trees and dark firs that ring the square. In Spain I’d hoped to see more exotic birds, but these were mostly sparrows, those little gray citizens of the world who know no borders.
By now a museum I couldn’t get into earlier was open. Salamanca’s Museum of Art Nouveau and Art Deco is unique in my experience; the museum is in itself worth a visit to Salamanca. The central hall makes a stunning first impression. It’s topped by a stained glass ceiling supported by lacy art nouveau columns and depicts a jungle rife with flowers and birds. The museum is spacious and cool, and the galleries lead naturally from one to another. First I looked at the novelty porcelains, dime-store figurines — from all over the world — that I’d always taken for granted. Items one might overlook at a garage sale became fascinating in a museum context. The highlight of the first level was a display of art deco figures, females in exotic and balletic poses, from before the Great War up to the 1930s. I had always discounted such figures as kitsch. But seen en masse and softly lit in glass cases, they had a kind of distinction, and even looked suspiciously like high art.
Upstairs I found a tiny gallery of furniture, disappointing, for the art nouveau style achieves its highest expression in furniture. Half of the upper level was the gallery of dolls. I expected to find this boring but I was absorbed for the better part of an hour. True to the museum’s focus, these were all products of the years between the Yellow Nineties and the Dirty Thirties, from cheap throwaways to costly works of art for the daughters of privilege. Many of the costumes were created with the artistry normally lavished on the wardrobes of financiers’ mistresses. Careful observation provides insight into the female children of each period — how they were regarded by their elders, the expectations of them as girls and as women, and the relative values placed on girls and on boys. I was left with as many questions as answers. Why was such a wealth of detail lavished on a nun doll, from her elaborately made-up face to the meticulous workmanship of her garb? Why on earth would a doll manufacturer painstakingly dress a doll as a grieving widow, in black bombazine and netting, jet beads and black fur, with glassy tears coursing down her cheeks?
Most of the time I walked alone through this gallery. Or did I? The effect of being alone in a room with hundreds upon hundreds of lifelike dolls was almost sinister. It occurred to me that dolls are oddly comparable to clowns, those other figures one step removed from humanity — or even more disturbing, to ventriloquists’ dummies.
I met the boys in the hotel lobby and we wandered up and down the town looking for a restaurant. Unfortunately we settled on the Roma, a restaurant thoroughly unworthy of its noble name. It wasn’t a bad meal, merely an indifferent one. Our dining experience started badly when I looked over at Fred’s salad and saw movement — a tiny cockroach exploring the whorls of his lettuce. Fred merely flicked it onto the floor and remarked dryly, “When you’ve traveled in India...” I rather admired his sang-froid but it put me off my feed. I felt on firmer ground with dessert, vanilla ice cream.
Afterward we sat at a café table on the Plaza Mayor with a bottle of red wine and listened to a tiresome concert of Celtic music, which quickly bored me. Whether halfway through a bottle of rioja or stone cold sober, most Celtic music sounds to me like plodding variations on “The Irish Washerwoman” played in different keys.
Back in our hotel room, we had our brandy and cashews and discussed musical theatre. The topic turned inevitably to Sondheim, and Fred positively blossomed.

Saturday, September 9
After breakfast I sped over to another music shop and bought my final CD of the trip — twenty was the grand total. I can justify my extravagance by the price: the average CD cost me around $6.50. No banks were open in central Spain and next day was Sunday, so the hotel kindly cashed two of my checks at an excellent rate.
Getting out of the city was like running a maze, and was much more difficult than getting in. Steve was uncharacteristically intimidated by the hairpin turns and narrow lanes. A haze lay over the land as we sped back toward Avila. At a little town called Barraco, two sweet young muchachas served us cold beer and tapas: crisp bacon rinds, pickled herring, fried pieces of fish in a thick tomato sauce. We ended with ice cream sandwiches.
Halfway to Toledo the road wound through the valley between the Sierra de Gredos and the Sierra de Guadarrama. Several large lakes lie among the passes. We pulled over for a breather and I took some good shots. Soon after that we drove through miles and miles of forest, all umbrella pines. I thought fondly of Rome, though these pines were not so tall. We saw at least three ruined castles.
It was uncomfortably hot when we arrived in Toledo but our hotel, the Maria Cristina, more than made up for it. Our rooms overlooked a fine bullring, but we were told that no corridas were scheduled. The hotel stands a couple of blocks outside the city walls. Leaving Fred behind, we walked through a park and into the city, through the Puerta de Valmardón. The city is undergoing a considerable restoration of the walls; workmen were also laying a new road of old stone, and a dark charcoal gray dust rose all around us. Hurrying past this, we began a climb up a steep hill to the heart of the city. We were sweating and panting with exhaustion by the time we reached the center, the Plaza de San Vicente. The streets are narrow and twisted, virtually unchanged since the middle ages. We saw a bar ahead, not a mirage and more than welcome. We got seats at a table outside and went in to order tapas and beer. I had pickled herring and something I’d seen throughout our trip, ensaladilla rusa: Russian salad. It’s made of potatoes, peas, and carrots in light mayonnaise, and was quite good. Our large schooners of San Miguel were icy cold and we poured them down our throats. My head was spinning as we continued our climb, but I was glad we’d stopped for fluid replacement.
There are two museums in town we felt we couldn’t miss. The first, the Museum of Contemporary Art, has a modest if not terribly important collection. The building itself is a beauty, and the true attraction. It was formerly a private home, an old-fashioned city house with an open courtyard in the center. I had an instant desire to live in this wonderful building of spacious plain rooms in dark wood, white plastered walls, steps faced with Moorish tile.
We wandered through the town to the other end, to a small plaza dotted with spindly trees struggling to remain alive in the cruel heat. This looked out over the deep Tagus River valley far below. Toledo, like Segovia, is walled and dominates a high promontory. A broken Roman bridge spans half the river and rich villas are set among the green hills.
Next we toured the small El Greco Museum. The essence of the collection is a series of portraits of the twelve Disciples, all elongated and greyish and emaciated, like most of his work. (His models could clearly have used more fiber in their diet.) There were a handful of other portraits here, too, and a few paintings by El Greco’s contemporaries. I suppose they were included by way of contrast with The Master, but I found most of these works livelier than his dour, hollow-eyed saints. Still, one has to admire the painter’s originality and his strict adherence to his own unique vision. For better or worse, El Greco is inimitable.
Back in the real world, we tottered down another hill to a shop, blessedly air conditioned. It’s one of hundreds dealing in the metalwork known as Damascene, one of the city’s specialties, a kind of workmanship in which intricate gold and silver designs are worked against a black surface. After demonstrating the real work they produced, the proprietress, an Englishwoman, showed us samples of the cheap stamped stuff found in many of the souvenir shops.
Across from the shop was another green park overlooking the La Mancha countryside. I got an ice cream on a stick and — absolutely vital — mineral water. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Sinagoga del Tránsito. The friezes running around the top of the sanctuary were like lace spun from light. Attached to the museum was a museum of Sephardic Jewish culture, but they were on the point of closing so we gave it the old once-over-lightly treatment.
That night Steve didn’t feel like going back into the city; I’m sure he found the steep streets as daunting as I. Instead of going out and leaving him alone, we ate in the hotel restaurant. This turned out to be the best food of the trip, and best of all, we ate in air-conditioned luxury. The waiter recommended a local red wine, Gran Valdad. This was the first of our wines from La Mancha, light and dry and with a distinct undertone of fine brandy. And this exquisite bottle was the least expensive wine on the menu! David and I both began with the Fisherman’s Stew, which I would match against the finest bouillabaise in Marseilles. (David thoughtfully refrained from spewing me with it.) My main course was baked salmon with tiny clams and tender young vegetables. The champagne cream sauce served over these treasures was a culinary miracle. I admit I sopped up every drop of the excess with chunks of bread. If a dollop of this celestial sauce had landed on the floor, I blush to think what I might have done.
The conversation at dinner sparkled, till the end, when it turned sobering. The subject: amour. Poor Fred has given up any dream of ever finding love and saddest of all was his reason. He actually admitted that he didn’t want to share his things, his house, with anyone. I marked his words to hold in my mind as a warning.

Sunday, September 10
I had intended to wake early and walk around the circuit of the city’s walls before the heat became oppressive, but the exertions of the day before had taken a toll and I slept till ten. We’d agreed to meet for lunch at Plaza de San Vicente, so I spent the late morning exploring the interior of the town, hills and all. Plaza de Zocodover is a triangular square of shade trees and sidewalk cafes. It’s disfigured by the golden arches of a McDonald’s, which I scrupulously avoided, as I would in Boston, Kyoto, Venice or Gotebo. At a bar I had the classic Spanish breakfast, churros and chocolate. The latter was more like standard issue hot chocolate than the thick orgiastic syrup I’d expected, but it was still good. The churros, which look something like albino dog dumplings, tasted of the corn oil they’d been fried in. Dipped in the chocolate, however, they were divinely guilt-inducing.
I rambled about the town for a couple of hours (can one be said to ramble up a 45 degree incline?) then met my friends for lunch in Plaza de San Vicente. The Restaurante Palacio wasn’t terribly palatial, but it was filled with happy diners and the food was plentiful and cheap.
Next we toured Toledo Cathedral, one of the largest in Christendom. The Transparente is an altarpiece of figures in marble, bronze and jasper. Its saints and angels playing musical instruments appear to tumble out of the great dome in a cascade of baroque excess. Light pours onto the figures from an unseen skylight, and one almost expects the whole galloping mess to fall to the floor in a heap of arms, legs, and viols. It’s deliciously over-the-top and utterly unforgettable. The Sacristy is a treasurehouse of great paintings, notably El Greco’s The Disrobing of Christ. Centuries of silt, dust, and smoke have darkened these magnficent pieces to near-invisibility. Even the Goyas, the most recent paintings, could do with a good scouring.
The Hostal del Cardenal is a hotel-restaurant quartered in the former summer residence of Cardinal Lorenzana, just inside the city walls. This was our happiest setting for a meal — except for that perfect evening in Segovia. Here one dines in a garden. It was lovely to relax under the tall trees as the temperature dropped and speculate upon the availability of the waiter’s splendidly built assistant, thus cleverly combining two of my favorite deadly sins, idleness and lust. I started with a delicate, fragrant crayfish soup, and continued with partridge in casserole, another minefield of tiny bones but very much worth the effort. The wine was the first and only white we had on the trip, another from La Mancha. It tasted provocatively of sherry and must be made from the same grapes, or perhaps it’s aged in the same casks. Dessert was marzipan, another specialty of the city, and coffee. Brandy, courtesy of darling David, finished a near-perfect meal.
We walked back to the hotel through the park, enjoying the soft lights glimmering in the trees and listening to a strolling trio of musicians wailing plaintive songs from some unspecified eastern European country.

Monday, September 11
The breakfast buffet provided by the Maria Cristina was a banquet; I gorged without shame. We left Toledo in a roundabout way, driving halfway around to the other end of the city to see it from below. Our last sight of Toledo was the squat, foursquare Alcazar standing guard over the town.
We returned to Madrid by way of Aranjuez. This small city is the site of a royal summer palace built in the 18th century. We didn’t tour the palace, preferring to walk through its more inviting gardens and fountains instead. The gardens were the inspiration for Joaquin Rodrigo’s great guitar piece, the Concierto de Aranjuez. The fountains, liberally decorated with writhing cupids and dolphins, gods and goddesses, were spouting water in a display worthy of Versailles.
We stopped in the center of town and had tapas for lunch. I bolted my bocadillo and beer and left the boys, determined to buy a light and capacious shoulder bag to carry all my CDs and camera back in, but without success.
Madrid wasn’t very far. Somehow we sailed blithely past the right turnoff to get into the center of town. I realized this just as we flew past the bullring, Las Ventas. “Turn around,” I said, “We’re passing Madrid!” We got off the expressway and headed for what my instincts told me was the right direction. I wasn’t entirely certain, so after a while we stopped and I ran around to the trunk to retrieve my Madrid guide. As it turned out, we were headed straight for the Plaza de la Independencia, and I was able to bask in my newfound glory as a navigator.
Back at the Monaco, Steve and David dropped Fred and me, and went to return the car. Our gorgeous hot-eyed desk clerk was on duty. My new room was an improvement on the previous one, featuring more mirrors and open space, and charmingly, windows between the bath and the bedroom. I didn’t stay long but made a beeline for El Corte Ingles and immediately found the shoulder bag I wanted. We had agreed to meet for dinner an hour later, one more time at La Barraca. But I trotted off alone, for there was one more great sight I wanted to see before leaving Madrid.
The Parque del Retiro can be favorably compared to Central Park in its beauty and variety. Formerly a royal preserve, it’s now open to the public. I didn’t have time to do more than explore a corner of this green Elysium. Many of the Parque’s avenues are named for Spain’s former New World colonies. Starting from the Plaza de la Independencia, I wandered down to the Estanque, a lovely lake alive with waterfowl. A somewhat pompous monument to Alfonso XII overlooks it. The monument is a semicircular colonnade with a tall pedestal in the center, surmounted by an equestrian statue of this quite insignificant monarch. This was the time of evening when people emerge to socialize: lovers and musicians, old ladies and children, superannuated hippies and businessmen, all enjoying the passage of afternoon into evening.
I returned by way of the Prado to pay homage to the glowering statue of Goya outside the north entrance, then walked briskly back to the hotel just in time to meet up with the boys for our evening gin and tonic.
Our last meal at La Barraca went slightly off, but only at the end. We gorged -- yet again — on fabulous paella, washed down with another faultless rioja. We also took care to order the baked Alaska in advance, as the menu advised. A young couple sat down next to us halfway through our meal. As they were served a baked Alaska, wheeled out with great pomp and set alight, we looked on with gleeful anticipation of our own. When our time came, the restaurant couldn’t accommodate us. We had to assume the couple had been given ours so our tip was correspondingly smaller. We left with Fred fuming and spouting like a teakettle, indignant that we’d left a tip at all. But then, he’d been the only one to save room for dessert.
Back at the Monaco, our elevator got balky and I discovered that my mustard seed of claustrophobia had suddenly ballooned into a watermelon. After we escaped and I calmed down, we sadly said our goodbyes, for my flight in the morning was an early one. I was sorry the vacation was ending on a down note, but then, goodbyes are inevitable. Traveling with three friends had been a new experience, and a good one. The night was suffocatingly hot and the tiny fan mounted high on the wall barely stirred the air. I was still badly shaken from my ordeal in the elevator, and it took me a couple of hours to fall asleep. I was certain that this time I’d be plagued with jet lag when I returned. (I was wrong.)

Tuesday, September 12
My 6:30 wakeup call came five minutes after I dropped off — or so it seemed. But I wasn’t tired. Indeed, all day long I hummed with energy. I checked out quickly and walked up the Calle Barbiere to the Chueca Metro stop. The sky was still dark, and a hush lay over the city. My subway connections were made smoothly and I ended up at the airport a comfortable two hours early. I checked my bags and spent the last of my pesetas on a hearty breakfast and a bottle of good Spanish olive oil for Tom and Holly.
My KLM flight left Madrid exactly on schedule. The Northwest connection at the Amsterdam airport, however, was a sad succession of screwups. A taxi strike in the Netherlands made the aircraft personnel an hour late; then a hole was discovered in the baggage department and we had to wait for advice from some technician in California; worst of all, after the baggage hold had been okayed, some imbecile decided at the last minute not to fly. It took Northwest a full additional hour to remove her bags from the hold, during which time I thought of an exciting new place she could put them. I breathed a sigh of relief when we lifted off and left Amsterdam behind. It was good to be on my way home.

Rome and Lecce

ROME
September 2007

The first thing I noticed about Rome when I stepped out of the train was the balmy weather. The pharmacy sign near my hotel showed a temperature of 73°, and for the rest of my sojourn in Rome, it never varied more than a few degrees. Even in Lecce, far to the south, the temperature only rose to the upper 80s, and then, only for a couple of days. I trundled my bag over the rough cobblestones to my hotel, luxuriating in the balmy air, relieved to be headed for my hotel after a full day’s travel. I was staying in a new neighborhood, the Esquiline hill, near the train station, so I could make an easy, unhurried getaway to Lecce three days later.
My hotel, the Auditorium di Mecenate, is on the fourth floor of an apartment building. The elevator was one of those wire cages beloved of small European hotels. The clerk, a smiling Indian with gleaming white teeth, asked when I would like breakfast and assured me that it would be brought to my room. This, five steps off the lobby, was small, Spartan but stylish, and impeccably clean.
Even though I hadn’t slept on the plane for more than a few fugitive moments, I set out with great gusto, delighted to be back in my favorite city. Dusk was gathering, and my first thought was of food.
I strolled into the city’s historical center, reacquainting myself with cherished sights and streets. The Fountain of Trevi was glutted with thousands of tourists, as usual, but they can never detract from its voluptuous grandeur. The Pantheon at dusk was at its most ethereal, wonderfully quiet in spite of the crowds. The vast bowl of its dome absorbs sound like a sponge. Piazza Navona, my favorite public square, was sprinkled with dozens of artists selling their wares -- none particularly skillful and most fairly ghastly. The great attraction, Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers, was the unhappy prisoner of scaffolding and orange plastic webbing, with only the foot of the River god Amazon easily visible. Disappointing, I thought, but at least it’s under repair rather than being neglected. Rome does take care of its treasures.
I found a restaurant with an interesting tourist menu, L’Arcara, and upon settling down, realized that I’d eaten there before, on two earlier visits. The walls and napery are all the same color, a soft salmon, creating a warm, womblike feeling. Dinner was gnocchi, Roman Style (an intense tomato sauce), veal medallions, and a salad of bitter greens.
Paris may be the most beautiful city in Europe, with Prague a close second, yet their glories are most fully appreciated in the daytime. But Rome at night! No city can hope to compete with its warmth and unearthly loveliness. The buildings, painted in shades of terracotta, pink, gold, cream and ochre, are bathed in soft yellow streetlight, intensifying and softening these colors. The basalt cobblestones, worn to a satin finish by the feet of millions, glow like jewels. Everything is touched with magic, and the thousands of years of history seem to hang like bats in the shadows. In these winding streets of the historical center, all is hushed, the noisy traffic of the nearby Via del Corso forgotten.
I made one last stop: to buy a pear gelato, tasting exactly like the flesh of the ripe fruit. (How do they manage to do this!?) Walking back to my hotel, I was stopped by a handsome young Italian in a car, looking for directions to Trastevere. I was amused to be giving directions to a native, and the fact that I was actually helpful pleased me all the way back to the hotel. I dropped into bed at ten, having been awake for 36 hours.

The next day was September 11. A block from my hotel is the Vittorio Emmanuele II Park, a wide, lovely space with a subway stop below. I spotted one of the most beautiful trees I’ve ever seen, a gnarled trunk topped with cascades of round green leaves hanging down like trumpet vine. Holding down the corner of the park is a huge ruin, the Porta Magica, the remnant of a former villa built by the Massimo family, part of its structure built onto an earlier ruin.
I bought my train tickets to Lecce, then walked down the Via del Corso to the Galleria Alberto Sordi, named for the beloved film star. (Imagine an American mall named for a star, say, the Humphrey Bogart Center.) Here I found a great, great bookstore, Feltrinelli, where I bought an Italian musical based on “Roman Holiday” and had lunch in the caffé. This turned out to be a shopping day, and I hit at least a dozen profumerie (scent shops) before I found a bottle of my favorite cologne, Acqua di Selva, which I’ve used since 1963. (The clerk was a dark, slight man with depthless black eyes and a warm smile, deeply attractive.) Later in the day I bought a small bronze goat, which means that I now have the beginnings of a collection, as I bought another in Dublin two years ago.
Once more in Piazza Navona, I decided to give the art a closer look. Perhaps my first impression had been at fault. The oil paintings were the worst, the watercolors only slightly better. The pernicious influence of Thomas Kinkaid seems to be starting to infect the Italians as well. The feeling I got while strolling among the stands was how much better I am than most of these, which didn’t really please me. I really wanted them to be better. One painter, a sloppy old woman from the pastry tube school of art, displayed work so bad that my heart was wrung with pity. The many portrait artists were better, though their work was generally so prettified and flattering as to be worthless. The caricaturists were the most skillful of all, though some were so mordant that in sitting for one, one’s self-esteem might well be permanently damaged.
To refresh my eye, I walked down along the antique shops and artisans of Via dei Coronari, then turned to the river. Walking along the Lungotevere under the towering plane trees I watched the traffic hurtle madly by, suddenly grateful to be on foot. I have never seen traffic madder, more frenetic; a careless jaywalker would be immediately slaughtered. I was getting a bit tired, so settled on a step of the Ponte Sant’Angelo to watch the students and young lovers it seems to attract. Eventually I got up and crossed the bridge, studying the ten angels along its length. These are the products of some of Bernini’s more gifted students, and perfectly embody the baroque style. They swirl with such a sense of frozen movement, of life itself, they might almost be intended as spirits of the dance.
Ahead was Castel Sant’Angelo, originally Hadrian’s tomb, one place in Rome I’d never managed to explore. It was too late to visit the museum inside, but a banner advertising a current show made me determined to return the next day. This was “The Triumph of Idiocy.” It was not a tribute to George W. Bush, but to the “prejudices, follies, and banality of the Europeans.” Three satirical artists of different periods were featured: Daumier, Georg Grosz, and Goya.

AN EVENING’S PLEASURE
My evening’s goal was Teatro Marcello, a large Roman ruin, part of which was now adapted into a building of apartments for the elderly, part still being excavated by archaeologists. I was to attend an opera concert that night. I took the long, but easier way, along the Tiber. The low sun filtering through the leaves of the plane trees gave the impression of walking along a curtain of nature’s lace, a swirl of yellow, green and fawn. Edward Thomas once wrote that “the past is the only dead thing that smells sweet” but the scent of the dead leaves was a rich, autumnal perfume. Along the water were tour boats and other pleasure craft, already draped in their winter coats, awaiting the crowds of spring.
I crossed the busy Lungotevere as the architecture got more interesting. An unidentified moorish palace, a gallery of shops dating back a couple of centuries, then at last the Museo Ebraico, glowing like burnished gold in the sun, just before it sank below the Janiculum hill.
Teatro Marcello was not easy to find from this direction. Walking through a series of alleyways I saw far below a pit with a stage and chairs arranged in rows. A voluptuous redhead was fiddling with a microphone, so I shouted down, “Dov’e l’entrata?” “Over there,” she replied in English, pointing. I trotted through a few more alleyways and finally found the ticket stand, then began to look for a place to eat. This was a little snack bar in the shadow of the Vittorio Emmanuele monument.
Before the concert I bought a vanilla gelato and settled down on a block of travertine marble to savor it in the soft Roman evening. Pure pleasure, but better was to come. The concert was by two New Zealand (!) sopranos, the bulk of the music by Puccini. I found a terrific seat in the center. The first out was Emma Fraser, still a student, but with a confident stage presence. She seemed very promising, despite somewhat uneasy top notes. The second singer was the girl I’d seen at the microphone, Anna Leese. The program quoted the London Times, describing her as “a star in the making.” I could immediately tell why. Her voice was richer, darker, of dramatic soprano quality. She also turned out to be a first-rate actress, which is rarer. Her first aria was from La Boheme. Her strapless gown and jewels seemed to drop away to reveal the rags of the young, doomed Mimi, as she acted the role as well as singing it perfectly. The two singers alternated for the rest of the program, which was so well-received that we got an encore, a duet from La Nozze di Figaro. This was also very coyly, cleverly acted.
Returning to the hotel, I took what I hoped would be a shortcut through the momuments. I knew it would be safe when I saw that Michelangelo’s magnificent Campidoglio was not deserted; Marcus Aurelius glowered down from his horse, reluctant to release his hold on the ancient city he once ruled. I found a passage to the Via dei Fori Imperiale. Descending the hill, I was brought almost to tears by the beauty of the sight. No one who hasn’t seen Rome at night can comprehend how gorgeous, how mysterious, it is. Rome’s fabled past is right there, so present one can almost hear the clink of armor, the murmur of Latin voices from the era of empire. The monuments -- Trajan’s column, Caesar’s forum, the temple of Antoninus and Faustina -- are dimly, artfully illuminated, with just enough left in shadow to fire the imagination. I lingered as long as I could, and very, very slowly walked up the Esquiline hill to my hotel.
An art gallery on Via Cavour was still open so I stopped. The show was a series of monumental photos of nude warriors, treated in a sort of pointillist, half polarized style. The handsome owner was very friendly, and I got the (perhaps wishful?) impression he might have even been more so if a long call hadn’t come in on his cell phone. They were on the point of closing, so I moved on.
This day I’d tried out a new theory of mine. By walking slowly, not rushing, and taking everything at a leisurely pace, one might keep from getting tired. It doesn’t work.

A PALIMPSEST OF TIME
Going into the morning subway to Castel Sant’Angelo a charming young Briton (who reminded me of my nephew Toby) gave me information on buying my ticket and changing lines. When I emerged from the Lepanto stop, it was still early so I walked along Via Cola di Rienzo, stopping for a caffé and browsing through a bookstore. (I love Italian book cover design, quite different from our own.) It was cool and cloudless, like every other day I spent in Rome, with a sky of dazzling sapphire blue.
Castel Sant’Angelo is a perfect metaphor for Rome, a palimpsest through which one can the great eras of the city and city-state, one age clearly merging into another. The shell is a medieval fort, built around the original Hadrian’s tomb. I got my ticket and walked around the circular path to the bookstore in back. The walls of the tomb are a mad, irrational jumble of boulders, smaller rough stones, and bits of marble embedded in concrete. This was originally faced with marble, and decorated with columns. Inside the building itself, one descends a flight of stairs, then up a long, winding tunnel leading to the upper floors. Funerary urns are set along at regular intervals, none of them, presumably, containing the ashes of Hadrian. At the top one crosses a dry moat, and emerges into a sunny courtyard, presided over by a huge stone angel. Just off this is the art gallery, the Sala di Apollo, as fascinating as any exhibit it might show. Gorgeous frescoes cover the walls and vaulted ceiling, a Renaissance artist’s update of the decorative Roman style one finds in the ruins of Pompeii. Arabesques and floral forms merge into animal forms, angels and gryphons and lions and hares mate and converge. You might think this style of decoration the true forerunner of surrealism. I spent far more time looking at these frescoes than at the exhibit.
But this was a feast, too. I began with the prints by Daumier, of bathers at the beach. Here the satire was gentle, poking fun at the varieties of the human body. I moved on to the prints and drawings of Georg Grosz, the expressionist whose bitter vision of Weimar Germany became even more scathing in the Nazi era, requiring his escape to America. Life in George Bush’s America makes one appreciate even more Grosz’s loathing of corruption. His social conscience was eternally on fire, and even his American work is mordant and unsparing.
Blackest of all were Goya’s prints showing the horrors of the Napoleonic wars, expressing the despair at the human condition at its most unsparing, its most unforgiving. His vision of humankind is almost terrifying. Here, too was a prefiguring of surrealism, anticipating the actual movement by a century.
Needing a sweet vision to cleanse my mental palate, I ascended to the parapets, possibly the best views of Rome. Below me, in dazzling sunlight, lay St. Peters basilica, and the dramatic bend in the Tiber where one enters Vatican City. There was a caffé here, so I got a bottled water and settled on a marble bench to enjoy the view. How could I have been so lucky with the weather? And why, on four previous visits to Rome, had I never entered this marvelous edifice?
The next level up contained the Farnese apartments, the luxurious quarters of Pope Paul III. What uncommon splendor he lived in, while lesser catholics lived in squalor and heartbreaking poverty. One salon was covered from floor to dome with grand Renaissance frescoes, presided over at one end by Hadrian, the other by the Archangel Michael, a most unlikely pairing.
In another salon was an exhibit celebrating the life of Guiseppe Giacosa, playwright and the librettist of three of Puccini’s operas, La Boheme, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Two more salons displayed original costumes, photos, letters, and sketches for sets and costumes.
And at last the rooftop, swimming in sunshine, surmounted by another colossal Archangel Michael, this time in bronze, and far more ferocious than his fresco counterpart.

ST. PETER’S
Off to the side of Piazza San Pietro I bought a fantastically delicious panino of cheese, eggplant and chicken cutlet on a sesame bun. Simple fare, but delectable paired with a bottle of much-needed water. I sat on a low balustrade surrounded by plump Italian matrons, a swarm of pigeons pooling around my feet, crooning as if to coax a few crumbs from me. It was bliss merely to sit. I’m a marathon walker, but even a Sherman tank needs to stop for gas once in a while. Not far away stood a large red-faced man with a daunting walrus mustache, great gobs of mayonnaise dripping from it. I had extra napkins and he chortled and grinned like Teddy Roosevelt when I gave him some.
There was a huge throng waiting to get into the basilica, because of security, of course, the bane of our troubled times. It moved surprisingly quickly. Ah, the huge interior: from the sublime (the undeniably great art) to the ridiculous (a line of gape-mouthed pilgrims queued up to rub the toes of a bronze Jesus, presumably for luck). The greatest masterpiece of all, Michelangelo’s Pietá, was so far away, and surrounded by glass, that it might as well have been in North Dakota -- but safe from madmen with hammers, I suppose.
Outside again, I headed for the Gianicolo, the vast park overlooking the city on the west side of the Tiber. Thinking I might find an entrance to it on its west side, I walked up Via Fornace, but could find no entrance. I returned to the bottom of the hill again, and tried the Viale di Mura Aurelie, but again with no luck. Always to my left as I toiled up the hill was the park, guarded by a high wall. It took a good 45 minutes to walk to the southern end before I found an entrance. This led to Piazza Garibaldi, his huge equestrian statue presiding over the city, even higher than the top of Castel Sant’Angelo. Again, magnificent views of a breathtaking city, making me wonder if Paris is really that much more beautiful by day. Young lovers were draped over the walls, children played among the busts lining the street, depicting heroes of the Risorgimento. From the high walls I could even see the Apennine mountains, blue-grey in the distance. This was a revelation, seeing Rome, for the first time, not just as my beloved city, but as a jewel in a larger setting.
Outside the Park was the Paolo fountain, commemorating Pope Paul V. From a gorgeous baroque edifice, water poured into a cool blue semicircle from the mouths of dragons. It’s far larger than the Trevi fountain, but more classically restrained in style.

BY TRAIN ACROSS ITALY
I slept for an unprecedented ten hours, and was wakened by a lovely young Russian woman with my breakfast. My train didn’t leave till noon, so I checked out and strolled the neighborhood, stopping to browse the bookstalls in Piazza Repubblica. Besides the vast banks of art books there were more porn DVDs than anything else. O tempora, o mores. At the Stazione Termini bookstore, a grand emporium, I bought a P.D. James mystery and a Herald Tribune. I returned to the hotel to read the latter (and pick up my bag), and the young Russian gave me a glass of juice. I was glad I’d left her a sizable tip on the dresser.
On the train I settled into my seat opposite a tall, friendly student with huge hazel eyes, and opened my book. We rolled out of town, through San Marcellino and on through wild, lovely countryside, the Tyrrhenian sea clearly visible for long stretches. At the hilly town of Caserta we stopped for over an hour -- there was a fire on the tracks up ahead. Finally lurching into action, we passed Benevento (it’s a good wind that blows nobody ill) and on through Bovina. Immediately after this we were out of the mountains and onto a long, flat plane for many miles thereafter. Cervaro, Foggia, Barletta, Bari, Ostuni, Brindisi, and finally, Lecce.
Francesca was waiting for me on the platform, a bright figure in pink, her welcoming smile a great jolt of energy to me. She told me that Toby was due to fly in on Sunday. We drove immediately to her parents’ house, where I’d enjoyed myself so thoroughly in February. I’d seen Giacomo and Angela only a couple of weeks before, but it was still a joyous reunion.
A hot meal prepared by Angela was waiting. She’s a very talented cook, able to whip up a feast with a minimum of fuss. Pasta (orrechietti, a favorite of the region) and shrimp with mixed vegetables, a local fish, fileted and baked to a sublime tenderness, a cold octopus salad and of course the local vino rosso.
After the meal, we took a passegiata, the evening stroll beloved of all Italians. Brenda, Giacomo and Angela’s scruffy little dog, pattered along merrily at our feet, delighted to explore the city too. Although it was now between eleven and midnight on a Thursday, the streets were thronged with people. Lecce is a university town, so most of these were students. We met Irene, Franci’s best friend, and her brother Stefano and after a brief chat, headed home and to bed.

MASSAFRA
In the morning Angela and Giacomo and I headed toward the coast to Massafra, a few miles northwest of Taranto. This was where Giacomo used to work, so we stopped at an old haunt of his for a fine lunch, which featured zuppa di ceci, a bold and satisfying chickpea soup, a wrap with prosciutto, mozzarella and tomato, and finishing with a fruit macedonia. This could be described as a fruit cocktail, but was as radically different from the American canned variety as one could hope, fresh local fruit tossed together into a celestial treat. In town, Giacomo had business with his cousin, a lawyer, so Angela and I set out alone.
Massafra’s most noteworthy feature is a deep ravine that bisects the town. Caves are carved into the sides; these were used in ages past as homes and hideaways, some even made into chapels. This ravine, which widens downward toward the sea, is crossed by an iron bridge, and less fortunately, is disfigured by new houses and apartment buildings. These are built right to the edge, and have damaged the caves to some extent. We met Giacomo’s brother Nunzio, and Nunzio’s brother-in-law Mino. Mino is a handsome man in his 70s who lived in America for a dozen years before returning to his hometown. His English is charming and expert, and he served as a translator for Teresa, a guide from the tourist office who joined us. With Angela as chauffeur, we set out for a highly entertaining tour of the town.
First stop was a crypt from the 13th century, a primitive chapel carved into the limestone from which the town rises. The remains of frescoes in the Byzantine style were amazingly well-preserved -- what was left of them. These beautifully stylized figures have managed to survive in spite of local indifference, neglect and outright vandalism. Some primitive people from an earlier age even dug out holes in a few places, in hopes that treasure was buried in the wall behind them. According to Mino, they will probably continue to deteriorate and will eventually be lost. He grew bitterly pessimistic on the subject of his fellow townsmen, whom he sees as selfish, lawless, and concerned only with doing better than their neighbors. His scorn extended to Italy itself, a country all too willing to let its treasures decay.
Further on, we descended into the canyon itself. Going down the rough limestone steps, I admired a pretty bush, one of hundreds of different flowering plants and trees in the ravine, bursting with roundish leaves and frilly lavender flowers. On these bushes grow capers. I tasted a bud; unprocessed, it is bitter and characterless. But the flowers had a faint suggestion of the familiar caper scent. We were going down to visit another chapel, carved into one of the caves. In the forecourt to the chapel was a fig tree bursting with ripe fruit. We pulled off several and ate them. These were a treat, soft and easily pulled apart, a treasury of seeds like tiny garnets within the tender, sugary flesh.
This chapel was a bit more ornate than the previous one, and someone had half-heartedly attempted to preserve a couple of the panels, but the attempt hurt more than helped.
At the bottom of another deep ravine a short drive away is a baroque church, the Chiesa di Madonna della Scala, carved out of the rock. One walks down over two hundred steps to reach it. The church isn’t particularly noteworthy, but in a crypt off to the side are even more elaborate frescoes than the ones we had seen. These are far better preserved.
Back in town, we parted from Nunzio, Mino and Teresa, and I was shown the local castle (every town in Salento appears to have one), with a small but good museum featuring the local wine and olive oil industry. We drove to pick up Giacomo at his cousin’s office, but they were not finished. Angela went out to the balcony for a cigarette, but the mosquitoes (and smoke) drove me inside. Other clients were waiting, and proved to be friendly and curious about me (they don’t receive many American visitors in this corner of Italy). One middle-aged lady had the fattest feet I have ever seen, like soft loaves of dough stuffed into tiny silver sandals, toes bursting out at the ends like piglets escaping under a fence. Her husband had the severe, sunburned beauty of the very old in this part of the world.
Giacomo’s business done, we repaired to a little bar around the corner, stopping to chat with an acquaintance of theirs, a young man named Michele. On the sexiness meter, he went right off the chart. After a beer and a snack, we were on our way to Taranto.
Taranto is the largest town in the region, a navy town. A wide, deep canal leads to a piscina where ships are berthed. Giacomo looked for a parking space while Angela and I strolled along the seawall. The evening air was cool and smelled of the sea. Lovers walked arm in arm; young sailors skylarked in small groups, laughing. After a gelato and a sit-down at a central piazza, we headed home. But there was one more surprise in a day full of them.
In Maduria we stopped at what I thought at first was a rock concert in the town square. Wrong. It featured regional music, with a few dancers, and was held in celebration of socialist unity. The dancers kept changing, but three girls never left the floor. All were lovely, but one was gorgeous, a thin wisp of dark girl with wild, gypsy hair and tireless feet. She twirled about to the primitive rhythm like the spirit of dance itself. Angela and Giacomo danced together, alive with the spirit of the music, unwilling for the evening to come to an end. The music sounded to my untrained ear like endless variations on the tarantella, played by a band consisting of guitars, tamborines, an accordion, recorder, and two instruments I couldn’t identify. We got cups of the local wine, rough and sweetish, and eventually drove home to a much-deserved rest.

CASARANO
In the morning, Angela, Giacomo, Francesca and I set out for Casarano, around thirty miles to the south of Lecce. First stop was an ancient church built in the middle of the fifth century, the Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Croce. Outside, it’s a construction of simple boxes. Inside, however, are jewels of paleo-Christian art, well-preserved frescoes on walls and ceilings. In the apse, the elaborate geometrical mosaics are unusual for their period, showing an attempt to depict three dimensions.
Outside, we met Antonella (a cousin, I think), a woman with olive skin and pale blue eyes dramatically ringed with dark lashes. At the tourist office I was given booklets and maps, and then we stopped at a caffé for iced coffee and a snack. Dominating a main street of the town is an ancient palazzo decorated by a line of carved stone brackets, decorated with depictions of the faces of the men the builder had slain.
We went to visit Antonella’s grandmother, an ancient beauty of 95, quite frail but intensely alive to everything going on. Her little courtyard garden off the kitchen was a pocket Eden, with pepper plants and flowers growing in rich profusion. I was encouraged to try one of the peppers; my mouth returned to normal some time later. Afterward, we met Antonella’s parents and brother, with his young son Eduardo, a four-year-old bursting with energy and charm. He desperately wanted to join us as we drove out of town.
We headed down the coast to the town of Torre San Gregorio, and ate at Ristorante da MiMi. I’m fairly certain that I’ve never eaten in a more beautiful spot. The outside terrace, covered with a canopy of cane, faces the Ionian sea. Tall trees on the terrace grow through the canopy. Bathers a short distance away frolic in water so blue as to defy belief, and the sky was utterly without clouds.
For a first course we had spaghetti with clams and mussels, swimming in a sauce of butter with a hint of cayenne. Next came a local fish, roasted with slices of lime, big enough to serve us all, the tender flesh falling off the bone. Everything was served with a local white wine. An unforgettable, golden afternoon.
After a while, we headed south, to Santa Maria Leuca, the southernmost point of the heel of Italy’s boot, then north along the coast toward Otranto. The sea here had become so blue as to aspire to purple. Here on the coast the vegetation becomes tropical, flowers pouring forth from every bush, palms (my favorite tree) in rich profusion. As the sun sank lower we reached Grotta Ciolo, a deep ravine leading down to the sea. Several swimmers were still here, far below, and the air was like wine. We continued up the coast to Castro, lorded over by another vast Aragonese castle. Salento is something of a crossroads of the Mediterranean, visited and sometimes conquered by the Spanish, Greeks, Phoenicians, and Turks, all leaving their cultural or architectural mark. Castles and fortifications, architectural details on later buildings, sometimes only the memory of a great tragedy remain. Otranto, for instance, was the site of a bloody massacre by the Turks, in which three hundred of the city’s population were beheaded. Their skulls are preserved as a monument in the cathedral.
Back home, I was presented with an incomparable gift: a five-liter can of the local olive oil, produced by one of Giacomo’s family connections in Casarano. Later I stopped by to see Nico and Mario, the friends next door whom I grew so fond of when I visited in February. A happy reunion.
Mario is a steady, stable figure, reserved and deeply attractive. He’s always reminded me of Richard Tucker the opera singer, but better looking. Nico is dark, olive-skinned and voluble, with jet black eyes and eyebrows. He speaks a fair amount of English, and speaks it better than he thinks. He’s also a tireless flirt, a great nipple-tweaker and earlobe tugger, which not everyone would find agreeable. I do. Mario has written a number of books and operates an antiquarian bookstore. Nico cooks (superbly) and cleans, and this seems to be a most effective partnership. It is, to all practical purposes, a happy marriage.

TOBY AT LAST
On the way to Bari to pick up Toby at the airport, we stopped at Monopoli, a beautiful town where I experienced a new taste: the fruit of the prickly pear. It was sweet and tender, with a bright orange color, but studded through with small, hard seeds. The sensation was something like eating an overripe persimmon peppered with birdshot. Afterward we strolled down along the seawall. Below, a man sat on a rock, carefully peeling and eating freshly caught sea urchins. Then after seeing a small, perfect castle, once the home of King Carlo V, we returned to the car and headed north.
Next stop was a gorgeous seaside town called Polignano a Mare, so popular a spot (and no wonder!) that we had trouble finding a place to park. Finally, on a little spit of land overlooking the beach we stopped for lunch. Angela had packed sandwiches and beer. The sky was cloudless as usual, and a soft breeze blew through our hair and I could gladly have stayed here for the rest of the day. We were joined by a couple, a very stylish blonde and her companion. Surprisingly, he turned out not to be a male model, as one might suppose from his looks, but a lawyer from Lecce.
There was a caffé a short walk away, so we went there for a sit-down, looking down on water that varied from bright turquoise to malachite green, astonishingly limpid and inviting.
In Bari, Toby’s plane turned out to be late (Alitalia, after all) so we dropped Giacomo and Angela off at IKEA, and Francesca showed me the city. This turned out to be the first Italian city I’ve seen totally without charm. It’s dirty, crime-ridden, and if it has attractions, I didn’t see them. Franci spent some time there as a student and hated every minute.
In all fairness, Bari’s airport isn’t bad. Eventually Toby’s plane came in, and we were all glad to see him, no one more than Francesca, of course. We drove home in great spirits, Toby had a shower, and we joined Mario and Nico for dinner, with flowing wine and a non-stop chatter in Italian -- and a little English.

GALATINA
In the morning, I went with Nico and Mario to Galatina, a small town some 20 miles away. Mario was seeing his publisher, Congedo Editore, and introduced me to his editor, Francesco. Mario thought he might be interested in my artwork, so I left my business card. As Nico and I departed to see the town, Francesco gave me one of his products, a beautiful color guide to Lecce.
The church of Santa Caterina dell’Alessandria was the finest, most fascinating church of all that I visited on this trip. Splendid frescoes from the 13th century -- in mint condition -- cover every wall and the ceiling, their style an agreeable bridge between the medieval and the Renaissance. They all seemed to be from the hand of the same artist (or his studio). If so I never learned his name.
Before returning to Lecce, we stopped at a vineyard, where Mario and Nico bought several jugs of the local wine, red and white. This was a very streamlined operation, with siphons coming out of the floor, leading to the vats below. In addition, there were bottles of finer wine for sale. We were poured samples. This seems a good place to inject a note on the wines of the region. The most widely available red is called primitivo. This is a stronger wine, more robust in flavor than one generally finds, though not without subtle qualities. It has, I later discovered in the classic way, a higher alcoholic content. All over Salento one finds olive trees, seemingly in the billions, but there are many vineyards, too, all producing splendid wines.
Back in Lecce, Angela had prepared lunch featuring a roast chicken, peppery and savory. Attending this feast were Angela and Giacomo, Mario and Nico, Franci and Toby, and me, and also Angela’s mother, Carmela. Afterward I climbed to the roof and read for an hour.
In the evening, Nico and I strolled through Lecce, passing through the public gardens. This is a magnificent formal park set about with wooden benches, beautifully tended trees and flowers, with a lacy gazebo in the middle. I knew I would return, and in fact did several times. As in so many parks throughout Italy, stone busts of Italian statesmen and writers lined the walks.
On the way to Mario and Nico’s antiquarian bookshop, we stopped to visit with Rosie, in the next shop over. She’s an Australian, married to a courtly Italian gentleman whose name escaped me. We had a nice long chat, and she revealed that she has a hunger for books in English, which are harder to find in this corner of Italy. So for the rest of my visit, whenever I finished one of the books I’d gotten for the trip, I brought it to her.
I visited with Rosie for at least an hour. She’s a great film buff, and we share a particular affection for “Sideways.” When we got to the bookshop, Mario gave me an autographed copy of a book he’d written, Lecce Fantastica, a compendium of anecdotes, esoterica, sketches and odd tales about the city.

SAN CATALDO
The next morning I had the only disagreeable experience of the entire trip, a visit to a bank. I wanted merely to cash a traveler’s check, and was kept waiting for a full fifty minutes as the dull donkey of a teller, phone in one hand, calculator in the other, called on at least three co-workers to get it right. I hadn’t thought to bring a book with me, so I could only fume and wait. The only entertainment I could eke out was to doodle caricatures of the other patrons on a scrap of paper. I fumed for an hour afterward. Subsequent check-cashing was done at another bank and never took longer than fifteen minutes.
I was swiftly put in a good mood by Nico. We drove the ten miles to San Cataldo, a seaside resort I’d glancingly seen on my previous visit. The sun, predictably, was out in full force, and a gentle breeze stirred the palms. We drove a mile or so past the main beach, parked the car among several others, and walked north for about ten minutes. Immediately we spotted friends of Nico, a middle-aged couple. Luca looked, apart from being stark naked, like a college professor, with pale hornrimmed glasses and studious air. (I learned later he’s an actor.) His wife Pia has flaming red hair (on her head, at any rate) and was thoroughly charming. We chatted for a minute or so and proceeded up the beach.
We settled down near a pile of driftwood. As we were undressing, along came another friend of Nico. Salvatore is young and slim and friendly, with fine dark eyes. He’s a student at the local university. Nico and Salvatore chose only to sunbathe. Just lying in the sun has always bored me intensely, so I plunged into the Adriatic (senza vestiti, of course). The water was perfect, neither cold nor warm, but cool and with occasional warm currents swirling through from time to time. On New England beaches I rarely venture out farther than my waist, as my imagination conjures up all sorts of sea creatures all too willing to drag me into the jaws of death. I always imagine that great white sharks are lurking near. Here, however, I felt no such qualms, and swam out a full fifty yards. Alone in the sea, rocked by the gentle waves, I swam for most of an hour, then joined Nico and Salvatore onshore.
I would never describe myself as a beach person, but I guess I am now. We stayed for a full five hours, and I could gratefully have stayed longer. As I was armed with an enormous tube of 45-protection sunblock -- and Nico to slather it on me -- I never came close to being burned. Having entertaining company fed my pleasure, of course, and it was liberating in the extreme to talk frankly about anything and everything. Sex, naturally, was the most common topic. My only problem was that a combination of sweat and sunblock kept my eyes stinging. Toward the end, Nico left us alone to go for a run. The low sun seemed hotter than at midday, so Salvatore and I found shade under an outcropping of straggly cedar, reeds, and beach debris.
When Nico returned, it was time to go. Walking slowly back to the car, we were joined by Luca and Pia, and I’m sorry that it was the last time I saw them. Like everyone I met in Italy (except for that bloody bank teller) I felt that warmth that could easily turn into friendship.

SON ET LUMIERE
That evening, Angela and I walked to the vast courtyard alongside the Church of Santa Croce for a light and sound show. Odd doesn’t begin to describe the experience. There was a constant musical undertow, a guitar and keyboard background. Only two performers were featured, a bald male singer who projected a dazzling sense self-importance, and an actress of hypnotic power. The singer sung in some unknown tongue, writhing and posturing fatuously, all but blowing kisses to himself. Neither Angela nor I could make sense of the language, which I think may have been Arabic. The music was unspeakably tedious, but luckily was interspersed with narration by the actress. I could understand many words but could not string them together to make any kind of sense. This woman was electrifying. She could have recited Good Night, Moon, the Gettysburg Address, or the lyrics to “Mairzy Doats ” in pig Latin and she would have held the audience in complete thrall. At the end, Angela told me that it had been a mythological tale, but that she was still unsure about what the music contributed. We stopped for some bottled water and walked home.
I have now known Angela for eight months, and we’ve only spent about three weeks together, but feel like I’ve known her always. There is something about her that would warm a stone statue. She and Giacomo, despite our difficulties in communicating, have clearly forged a firm bond.

DOLCE FAR NIENTE
In the morning, after some shopping in the historical center, I made my way to the newer part of Lecce, where there are many blocks of smart shops. I had lunch at a little tavola calda, ordering some mixed vegetables, a kind of meatloaf, and a bottle of beer. Partly through the meal I got the sinking feeling that the meat might have been horse, which is sometimes served in this part of the country. It did have a certain Alpo-like texture. The waitress assured me that it was not, but by now my appetite had flown so I left the remainder. By now the shops were closed (at 1 p.m.), so I strolled to the public gardens, an oasis of order and calm. At home I read my novel, had coffee with Giacomo, and in the evening was picked up by Toby and Francesca to go shopping at Ibercoop. This is a large, modern shopping center at the edge of town. We dropped Toby off for Aikido, then returned to have dinner with Giacomo, Angela, Nico and Mario. I had packed my bags earlier, and would spend the rest of my stay with Toby and Francesca. It was a lovely end to the day, with Toby eating a late dinner, and pleasant conversation. It was like being with my own kids.
The next day was spent much like this one, except for an explosion of music at the end...

CUTROFIANO
Angela and Giacomo and I drove for about 45 minutes to a small town farther south, Cutrofiano. There was a huge American-style pizzeria there, Jack ‘n Jill, with American beer advertisements all over the walls. One of them was for Sam Adams, brewed a few short blocks from my home in Boston, and I felt a twinge of homesickness. It didn’t last. The main attraction, however, was not the food. Seven musicians performed music of the Provincia da Lecce, and a livelier performance I have never enjoyed. The place was stuffed to the rafters with people, mostly university students, all utterly mesmerized by the music. Most people have a general idea of what a tarantella sounds like, and much of the music was in this driving, hypnotic style, or at least a variation of it. The musicians played non-stop for over an hour, and what little space remained on the floor was taken up by dancers. After a short break they continued. I felt like I was getting right into the bloodstream of Italy. Most American visitors see the great cities and the great art, and never get this far into the life of this surprising country. But here I was.

ANOTHER BEACH
Late in the morning, Francesca and walked to the Piazza del Duomo to meet her friend Nadia, a student at the university. She’s Tunisian, and was looking for an apartment in town. She’s a very pretty girl who dresses in western style, but she was unable to join us for coffee as she’s observing Ramadan.
Afterward I was dropped off at Nico and Mario’s. Their friend Angelo was there, making a cactus garden with different colored levels of sand. Nico had prepared lunch, tortellini in a sauce of butter and sage, simple but profoundly flavorful.
Nico, Angelo and I drove down the coast to Torre Inserraglio, a few miles north of Gallipoli, on the Ionian Sea (in the arch of the boot). This is, in summer, a gay beach, with a convenient pine forest nearby for dallying. Angelo went for a walk while Nico and I picked our way delicately over the rocks to the seaside. This is a beach without sand, only the deeply pitted karstic rock so prevalent in Puglia. We had to cross a field of these rocks, leaping agilely from stone to stone. It was like making a journey across a lunar landscape. There was no one about except a friendly older man, Francesco, who settled down near us. Eventually he donned flippers and goggles, and with a string bag, plunged into the water. In a few minutes he burst to the surface, shouting triumphantly and holding aloft an octopus he’d caught. For food, of course. In no time he had caught two more.
Francesco had declared the water to be bitingly cold, so I remained on my towel, soaking up rays. Nico, however, decided to take the plunge. He stood it for about ten minutes, then with teeth chatterering, emerged for me to rub him down. His skin was so cold I was grateful I hadn’t joined him.
Back on the road, Nico played American popular music on the CD player. He’s a huge fan, with a distinct preference for Sinatra. We all sang along, and although my memory for lyrics is spotty, “Lollipop” and Doris Day’s “Que Sera, Sera” came flooding back. We stopped for a beer and I was able to wash the salt off my hands at a fountain. Heading back in the dusk, we suddenly had a blowout. Nico and Angelo fixed it in about 12 minutes (it would have taken me even less time, as I would have called AAA) and we headed home.
At Giacomo and Angela’s I waited for Toby and Francesca, and then we walked to Trattoria Nonna Tetti, a favorite restaurant of theirs that I’d fallen in love with on my last visit. There was a wait, so we walked to “Road 66” (sic), a bar with an American roadhouse ambience. Toby and I had a beer and we returned to Nonna Tetti. It is becoming my custom to order the fantasia, the daily special, and this did not disappoint, being pasta with fresh seafood. Heavenly.

THE COASTAL ROUTE
I had a leisurely breakfast with Franci, and then was picked up by Angela and her mother Carmela for a drive down the coast. First stop was a peasant farmer’s market in San Cataldo. (It’s worth remarking here that in Italy ‘peasant’ is not a pejorative term as it is in America.) The fruit and vegetables on display were unbelievable: huge, ripe peaches the size of softballs, delicate little mandarin oranges, green and black olives in vats, and vegetables of every description. I bought a bag of mandarinos and Angela loaded up with tomatoes and peaches and a couple of loaves of bread.
We took the lovely coastal route southward, with Castro our ultimate goal, not for any particular reason, just as a point of reference. In fact, we never reached it. Paradise number one was the town of Melendugno, where I wisely bought a disposable camera. High over the sea stands the crumbling Torre del’Orso (bear tower, though there are no bears in Italy). Below them were bathers frolicking in the surf, in water of astonishing limpidity.
Lunch was an incredible pastry, a rustico, light and flaky and filled with molten mozzarella, bechamel sauce and tomato, the tomato sauce innocent of acidity. It couldn’t get better than this, I thought. I was wrong. The gelato afterward was a rich, fudgy chocolate laced with rum, the most intense I’ve ever eaten. I can now say that I have been to the mountaintop; I’ll never have gelato better than this. I tried hard not to faint from ecstasy, for the ladies could never have carried me back to the car by themselves.
Farther down the coast, but still in Melendugno, was Torre San Andrea. This smaller cove is dominated by another tower, this one honeycombed with tunnels, with bathers draped across the stones soaking up the sun. Every now and then someone would dive into the crystalline waters below. But for my clothing I would gladly have done the same.
Santa Casarea Terme is an ancient spa town. The baths are housed in a Moorish style castle, the Palazzo Sticchi. This proud queen of the sea is painted in pale pastels, in stark contrast to the intense colors of the sea below: deep navy blue to azure to turquoise. The sun sank lower, so we hurried on to paradise number two, Grotta Zinzusula.
This deep, cavernous grotto is a great gaping hole in the side of the land. We entered at sea level and climbed upward into the dark. Flocks of pigeons chortled softly on the rocks near the entrance, their cooing magnified by the echo of the cavern. A narrow path leads into the cavern, Dantesque and dimly lit. Although the path eventually came to an end, the cavern continues far below sea level. A guide was lecturing a group about the fauna of the cave. The sole sea dwellers here are blind albino shrimp whose diet consists solely of the guano dropped by the bats. M-m-m-m, yummy.
As it was late in the day, we decided to miss Castro, and turned back north, inland. Angela noticed a sign for La Cutura, a huge botanical garden, and turned in. This, paradise number three, was the highlight of a day filled with unforgettable sights.
Admission included a tour guide, and we walked through with a group of about twenty people. In the gardens I saw the tree that had so captivated me in Rome, and the guide identified it as a Japanese pagoda tree, sophora japonica. We were led from one type of garden to another. One section even had some wildlife: ducks, swan, geese, and somewhat incongruously, two fearless blue-eyed emus. They stalked along their pen beside us, as if curious as to what species we might be.
As darkness fell, the group diminished to about ten, and we were shown the cactus garden, with huge ghostly forms, some as tall as trees. An annex, a large greenhouse-type structure was arranged into several large rooms, each showing the cacti of a different country. Mexico and South Africa were represented, as was the American southwest. In the dim, bluish light the cacti seemed to assume shapes and character even more monstrous -- though of an unearthly beauty. Our dwindling party, now about six, walked back toward the entrance through dramatically lit trees as the soft night fell gently over our shoulders -- magical, ghostly, and profoundly peaceful. My inner child was simultaneously excited and soothed.
Back home, Angela, Toby and Franci and I had a magnificent meal together. I’m going to come home hopelessly spoiled.

AN ART TOUR
In the morning I took what I expected to be a short stroll through the town. I stopped at the first caffe I’d visited on my first trip to Lecce, and the same dazzling, black-eyed counterman was still there. There is no art museum in Lecce, but the churches are always reliable as displays of art. In the first there was only one really good painting, of a saint being slaughtered by two Saracens, a placid and wholly unrealistic look of pious contentment on his face. Most of the other art I saw was typical Roman catholic dreck, dark, muddy and executed by men of far greater piety than talent. Worst of all is the sculpture, various saints with rickety haloes studded with electric fairy lights, attended by vacuous putti (cherubs) with the wide-eyed stare of Barbie dolls -- if more fully figured. I had to reflect: Christianity, in particular the Catholic church, has given the world a treasury of great art, some of it sublime. But 95% of it, painting and sculpture at least, is overblown, maudlin garbage.
Touring the shops, I found one gallery devoted to the work of one artist, Sandro Greco. He has some small reputation, but to me he seemed merely a meretricious hack. Mere scribbles of paint on a panel were framed and displayed as if created by Monet. I didn’t see one piece that had a particle of value. The old lady in charge of the gallery was one of the faithful, however, and continued to hector me about the artist’s virtues. I tried to edge politely out of the shop. Finally I glanced at my watch, and with a look of mock horror, pretended I was missing an important appointment. I hurried out the door with relief.
Back at the apartment, Toby had returned home from work for the midday meal, but without Francesca. With confidence and unabashed brio he began to prepare lunch for me. I’d never seen my nephew cook before, and he set about it with an expertise that he must have absorbed from Holly’s DNA. Into a pot went a kind of pasta that I’d had before, a sort of thick noodle resembling dreadlocks. He tossed some cherry tomatoes, thinly sliced carrots and onions into a skillet of hot olive oil, and had soon created a lovely, bubbling sauce. “Michael, there should be some cheese in the refrigerator,” he said, and after he’d ladled the sauce over the pasta, I took the block in hand and started grating away while Toby put the pots into the sink.
“Toby, this cheese sure is grating oddly. It’s coming out in little pills, not flakes.”
He turned and his eyes widened. “Uh, Michael, that’s not cheese.” It turns out I was grating a bar of massage soap which has to be refrigerated to keep from liquifying -- which it was now doing into the pasta.
“Well, lunch is on me,” I sheepishly said. We walked a couple of blocks away to Il Ghiottone and lunched on risotto. I felt terrible for Toby. He’d created what surely must have been a culinary masterpiece, but then I guess I’ll never know.
That night the three of us walked through the city to the small, chic Ristorante dei Due Corti. They serve up specialties of the region prepared with flair, rich, spicy, and complex. This is truly haute cuisine at its best. The antipasti of vegetables, meats and cheeses were indescribable, thrillingly seasoned with capers, oil, and even a trace of mint. My main course was stuffed calamari, terrific but almost anticlimactic. Our leisurely passegiata home wended, not by accident, by a gelateria favored by Toby and Francesca.

PIZZA AND BEER, ITALIAN STYLE
The next night, we picked up Francesca’s best friend Irene (since childhood), and we drove to Gallipoli. This ancient town originated on a small knob of land sticking into the Ionian Sea, then expanded inland. Nobody in the car had a kind word to say about Gallipoli, but I liked it. A squat Castilian castle, bristling with cannon, guards the harbor. We parked and were joined by Irene’s boyfriend Vito. An architectural student in Rome, he’s short and dark and quite pleasant. There was a bit of rumbling about looking for an ATM, then we went into a restaurant recommended by Nico, D.O.C., the meaning of which I never found out. A menu board outside advertised “ostrich, Maryland style,” which I cannot envision by the wildest stretch of my imagination. Not even this exotic dish could bring in the customers, however; we were the only ones in the place. D.O.C. was expensive, with a bleak and overstyled decor in silver, red and black, and the waiter was anything but friendly. We left with little regret.
Vito called his mother, who recommended Vesuvio, on the way out of town. This was a much better choice. Even at 10 p.m., the place was full. Our handsome waiter was Albanian, and the restaurant hostess was noteworthy for her magnificent decolletage. Her breasts were straight out of science fiction: full bowls of gelatin jiggling so spectacularly that even I noticed them. We ordered two huge platters of antipasto, one seafood, the other a fabulous mound of grilled vegetables. Beer was the tipple of the evening, as we ordered the specialty of the house, pizza. Only one pizza was necessary. This prodigy among pizzas was the width of an ordinary one, but the length of an ironing board. It came at us in sections: margherita, melanzane, and sausage and chicory -- marvelous. Afterward I drew on the paper tablecloth, which has become something of a custom by now. We didn’t return to Lecce till 12:15.

INDIA, ITALIAN STYLE
The following evening, Giacomo and Angela and I went to a movie, Viaggio in India, which was more interesting than good: slow, tedious, but sometimes remarkably beautiful. I understood perhaps 2 percent of what was being said -- or going on. For instance, about 45 minutes into the film, the protagonist got on all fours and started pouring out his anguish to a bronze brahma bull, which made not a particle of sense. The final footage, which included shots of suttee on the banks of the Ganges, was at least visually arresting, and the corpses seemed to be real. Still, it was anything but a documentary, and pretentious as hell.
This was only my second time in an Italian cinema, which contrast interestingly to the ones in America. There is no brightly lit, hard-selling concession stand, only a few bags of chips on offer. Could this be still another reason Italians aren’t generally fat? Coming attractions are shown, but there are no flashy ads or admonishments or messages. Halfway through the film, the film stops abruptly for a five minute lights-up break.

ALBEROBELLO
I settle myself uneasily into my seat. To begin with, the seat belt doesn’t work. I grab hold of the strap over the door, and suddenly we’re off. The car hurtles through the streets of Lecce. We pass through a stop sign without so much as a pause, then another, and another. At last we’re on the open road and I heave a sigh of relief. Carmela and I are off to see the town of Alberobello. Carmela is Francesca’s grandmother, a stout woman of about seventy. Her eyesight’s bad, but somehow we stay on the road. And we had better, as we’re going over 80 m.p.h. Prayer suddenly seems like a logical idea.
Alberobello, a sizeable town, is noteworthy for being constructed largely of trulli. A trullo is a round peasant hut made of stones, tapering to a cone on top, usually surmounted by a smaller inverted cone, then a knob. The sides are generally whitewashed. This is a basic building unit, and a house may be constructed of several of these, from one, to six or more. The effect is something between a fairy tale castle and a gnome’s dwelling, and they must be seen to be believed. Trulli are native to this northern part of Salento and nowhere else.
We drove north toward Brindisi, and then hooked off toward the west. After about an hour we stopped to rest Carmela’s eyes. Every muscle in my body was tense: trying not to look terrified is damned energy-consuming. Soon we pressed on. We stopped at a filling-station cum caffé for coffee and a cornetto filled with Nutella, which brightened the day considerably.
The towns of Francia Martino and Locorotondo were lovely but we didn’t stop. Arriving in Alberobello, we had some difficulty parking as there was a religious festival in town, the feast of Saints Cosma and Damiano. In the 18th century cathedral, I admired the modern frescoes, primarily by two artists. These are beautifully stylized, an admirable compromise between the classic and the contemporary. Suddenly the church emptied.
Outside, the procession of the saints was beginning. The celebrants were lined up along the sides of the main street leading to the cathedral. Like salmon going upstream to spawn, Carmela and I pressed in the opposite direction, stopping occasionally to watch. Just like in the movies, two garishly colored statues of the saints were hoisted on the shoulders of the faithful and conveyed in great pomp toward the church, a brass band following. When we reached the bottom of the street the crowd started thinning out. Nearby was a parapet where I could see the town stretched out below, an endless fantasia of trulli, whitewashed and neat, under a startling blue sky.
We stalked about looking for a good place for lunch, Carmela rejecting each one in turn with a snort. Eventually we found a stand where I bought rolls, prosciutto and a rough native cheese. Carmela pulled me over to a caffé table and proceeded to make the sandwiches. Predictably, we were shooed off by the waiter, so we ate them standing under trees in the central square. I thought longingly of all the nice places we could have eaten, but what the hell, it was just food. And it was here.
On the way back to the car it was all uphill. Carmela puffed like a steam engine, so I gave her my arm and we toiled uphill together. For most of the day I had carried her capacious handbag -- which I suspect contained bricks -- so I was almost as exhausted as she when we got back to the car. She gave me a broad smile and once more we were off in a cloud of dust.
On the way back I appreciated the effort Carmela had gone through to show me this astonishing town. We stopped at least four times for her to rest -- once for a short nap. The first rest was in front of the gates of a lovely little villa outside Locorotondo, with extensive gardens in front. The chatelaine of the villa came out to see if anything was wrong, and Carmela assured her that she was just tired. The lady disappeared, and soon reappeared with coffee and two rolls stuffed with cheese and macerated tomatoes, a beautiful gesture of hospitality. The rest of the drive back was uneventful, a blessing considering the speed at which Carmela drives.
She let me off in front of Toby and Francesca’s -- alive. I resisted the urge to kiss the ground, remembering that the Leccese don’t always clean up after their dogs. As I came in, Toby was just leaving to give an English lesson. I flopped down on the sofa and fell into a short nap. It had been one hell of a day.
That night I treated all of my hosts to dinner at Trattoria Nonna Tetti, so unforgettable and joyous feast that I wish I could be sitting there still.

The next day, Angela came over with lunch, a heavenly fish dish with rice and peas and a tomato sauce. After she and Francesca left, I read Walt Whitman to Toby while he rested his eyes. Early in my visit, he had contracted a bad case of conjunctivitis, and it had gotten steadily worse. Today, the eye was no better so he stayed home from work.
That evening, my last, I went with Giacomo and Angela to a presentation across the street from their house. The program was in three parts, none of which seemed to have anything to do with the others, and all were a challenge to my Italian, a test I’m afraid I failed. The building is a former monastery, and the courtyard is one of the most ethereal, lovely spaces I’ve ever seen. It is surrounded by twenty-eight columns with a loggia behind. The columns in the creamy local stone were softly lit from below, with potted palms spaced about. The audience sits facing a high platform, and when we arrived the first part of the presentation was in progress.
We were given plastic cups and asked to crinkle them up, then attempt to tear them apart in strips, though to what purpose, I never learned. The second part was an interview with a very confident man that lasted for about an hour. The young woman interviewing him asked one question, and it was like flicking a switch; he began and simply ran on. When he came to a stop everyone leaned forward. It was like a merry-go-round grinding to a halt. Another question, and he was off again. Midway through, a pianist came on. I immediately brightened and sat up straight in anticipation of some music. The pianist sat and played -- three notes. There was more chatter, then four or five more notes, then more talk. This was maddening. Finally, he played a few bars of Mozart -- and stopped again. It was all quite frustrating, and made me realize anew how little Italian I know. The final talk was by a mathematics professor, sort of a “fun with math” talk.
Afterward I had pizza and beer with Giacomo and Angela at their favorite local spot, and then went home to the kids. Toby and Francesca are preparing a vast party for the 13th of October. I did some calligraphy for the envelopes, then went to pack my bag. Amazingly, I managed to cram everything into my bag. Had I added a couple of aspirin, it might have burst. It was almost a relief to acknowledge that I couldn’t possibly buy another thing.

ROME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN
In the morning Francesca went to the station to pick up Rachel and Gordon, Toby’s good friends from home. I had only two hours to enjoy their company and then it was time to leave. Toby was still in bed, so I said goodbye to him, with real regret. Franci drove me and my two-ton bag to Piazza Tancredi, where we picked up Angela, then drove the few short blocks to the railway station. Giacomo and Nico were already there. Suddenly I bitterly hated to leave. Francesca assured me I’d been no trouble. How very dear she is! Nico kissed me goodbye, promising to visit me in the U.S. Angela had disappeared, and returned with a panino, water, and a huge bar of chocolate. They saw me all the way to the waiting train and Giacomo lifted my bag aboard. Hospitality like theirs is rarer than rubies, and more valuable. We said our goodbyes and I was off.
How could I possibly express my gratitude, my jubilation at having made such wonderful friends in Lecce? Angela and Giacomo, Nico and Mario -- not only am I overjoyed at having them become a part of my life, but so deeply pleased that Toby, whom I look on as a son, has become such a happy, well-adjusted part of this world, this family. And of course Francesca has stolen my heart.
Arriving in Rome in the early evening, I did little more than check into my hotel, do a little window-shopping, and eat a fine dinner at Il Buco (a long-standing tradition). My room was bigger and better this time (same price) and I settled down for a long sleep, exhausted but utterly happy.
In the morning I bought my train ticket to the airport. As I didn’t leave until 6:00, I had the rest of the day for sight-seeing. After a short sojourn in the church of Santa Maria dei Angeli, I strolled across the Piazza della Repubblica to Palazzo Massimo, a superb Roman archaeological museum. There were a bevy of young students in front of me, and perhaps I was thought to be a teacher, for they let me in free.
There were the usual Roman portrait busts, which I have always found utterly absorbing in their lifelikeness. In their myriad details a true life is delineated. A statue of a Roman condottiere looked, with the addition of ten years and thirty pounds, remarkably like my cousin Doug. I passed through slowly. In one small gallery were three marvelous examples of Hellenic statuary. The one that delighted me most was the massive figure of a worn, weary Greek boxer; an exact replica of it sits in Roger Williams Park, a mere fifteen minute walk away from my house.
On the upper floors I found some of the greatest sights to be found in all Rome. In one dimly lit gallery were the frescoes from the Villa of Livia. This was a large, four-walled garden, with a delightful variety of trees and flowers, creeping vines and shrubs, birds flying and resting on branches, the entire work rendered with the utmost delicacy and accuracy. I cannot imagine how it was transported and installed in the museum. The rest of the frescoes were no less impressive, huge, complex, delicate. Some were nature scenes, some mythological scenes, others geometric fantasias. This museum is now my favorite in Rome, surpassing even the Capitoline.
There was a splendid gift shop in the museum, but I didn’t linger long. By now I was ravenous. My last meal in Rome was a tall beer and a heavenly Quattro Stagione pizza. I walked up the Via Veneto for my last gelato, a pistachio, the most expensive and least distinctive of the trip.
I am utterly without superstition, but as always, I chose to throw my coin into the Trevi fountain to assure a return to Rome. On the walk back up the Esquiline hill I bought a wallet, and returned to the hotel for my bag.

In the Rome airport, my bag was clearly far over the weight limit, but I wasn’t charged extra; a friendly smile and a pleasant word can accomplish wonders. I flew to Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, where I had an eight-hour layover, too short a stay to find a hotel, too long to enjoy. I was surprised to find that after 11 p.m. this huge, bustling airport is deserted, the shops closed down. I found a Starbucks that stayed open all night, and settled down with my book, the collected stories of Roald Dahl. I can never sleep in airports, but eventually I set off to make an attempt at it. Trudging from one spot to another, looking for a chair, a table, anything to nap on at least kept from getting bored. Then a little past 3:00 -- bingo -- the place was suddenly buzzing with activity, people swarming about, shops opening with a bang,. Toward 4:00, I managed to find a recliner, a “comfort chair” in my departure terminal but by then I was almost afraid to drop off in fear of missing my plane. The flight back was relaxing, and I read the entire way. Back in Boston, I was greeted by Tom, and then drove home. A perfect trip. Yes, another one.