Tag: Home Life

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Kait’s Adventures has moved from Blogger to WordPress

Kait's Adventures on Blogger

Google’s Blogger has been the home of my travel blog since the beginning in 2010. Blogger has been good to me. I even made $56 from people accidentally clicking the ads I had on the side bar, but I’ve moved the site to WordPress, now.

As a blogging platform, WordPress allows me to control the look of the site much more than Blogger does. Blogger only has a handful of themes, compared to the limitless WordPress themes out there, which are also more easily customized.

With self-hosted WordPress, I now keep all my content with my own web-hosting provider, which I’m not sure if is a good thing or not. I trust Google not to lose my data more than anyone. Still, nice to “own” it a little more. I appreciate how easy they make it to export all my past posts out, so can bring the past 5 years with me to my new blog.

Some people think that Blogger will go the way of other Google products that have been discontinued to make way for Google Plus. Google themselves uses Blogger for announcements, so I don’t know. But it does feel a bit like abandon-ware over at Blogger. Another good reason to leave.

Blogger gave a way for readers to subscribe and receive new posts via email. However I have no idea who was using this feature and have no way of getting their names out of there. My new site here has a sign up form to get emails from me. If you like that, please sign up using the form here to get emails from me when I put up new posts. Here, I’ll put the form right here for you.

Isn’t that neat?! I’ve no idea how to do something like that in Blogger. There is also RSS if that’s more your thing.

WordPress makes it so easy to add little widgets, like the search and translate bars on your right. OK, Google does search and translate and widgets, too. But I like these better.

WordPress also organizes posts in two ways: Categories and Tags. Categories have a hierarchical structure, which makes them perfect for location info here in my travel blog, in my opinion. And tags work just like tags normally do. So if I write a post about things to do in Rome, I can give that post the Italy, Lazio, and Rome categories and some tags like travel, restaurants, or whatever I’m talking about.

I think this organization combined with being able to place widgets prominently makes this site much easier to navigate than the old one. Before, if I wanted to find an old post, I would Google “Kait” with the name of the post in order to find it. Now, I have my own little search bar, or I can probably quickly find what I’m looking for from the Places widget.

Also my front page is so much prettier now, with pictures and little excerpts from my most recent posts. Before it was my most recent (or specific, if arriving via a deep link) post with previous posts concatenated after, forming a seemingly endless page. This also meant there was no way to read the “next” post if it existed.

The old site will live on at its blogspot URL, kaitsadventures.blogspot.com, frozen in time for as long as Google keeps hosting it.

So that’s all. I just wanted to announce my new shinny website for my blog. Happy travels!

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Ian and Emily’s Visit

View from the stone wall of Tarquinia

My college friends from San Francisco, Ian and Emily have been trying to plan a trip to Italy for a while. Ian’s schedule is pretty busy with his startup, Artillery, who are doing console style games in HTML. But they finally made it this July, and Rome was their first stop!

They got in late on Saturday. We didn’t know if they would have eaten or not so we had a cold dinner of buffalo mozzarella, ricotta, prosciutto, bread, and those types of things ready for a dinner as light or heavy as one would want.

Sunday Daniele was off from work, so that was out excursion day. We went up north, just over the boarder into Tuscany. There we spent the morning at the Terme di Saturnia  (pictures). These are natural Hot Springs made of different pools. It was crowded since it was a Sunday in the summer, but we still had a little pool to ourselves some of the time.

Terme di Saturnia

In the afternoon we stopped at the small historical center of Saturnia. Then the very cute medieval town of Montemarano. Both of which are still on the Tuscany side. Our last stop was Tarqunia, an important Etruscan city and a little bigger than the other two. Tarquinia was having a special culture day, so we were able to enter and walk along the top of the ancient city walls and climb to the top of one of their towers.

Tower that is part of the stone wall of Tarquinia
Tower that is part of the stone wall of Tarquinia

At the end of this long day we had some nice thin Rome-style pizza from Dal Bersagliere, along with some fried appetizers and beers.

On Monday Emily and Ian took to Rome’s historical on their own. They saw most of the big sites.

Tuesday was Daniele’s 31st birthday. Ian and Emily continued seeing Rome’s center during the day, then after we all went out together for the evening. We started with Aventino Hill, where we polished off a bottle of prosecco with some cheese, boar sausage, and crackers while watching the sunset. Then we went to the restaurant Betto e Mary, which is known for its Roman cuisine. Daniele ordered some authentic, but unique, appetizers. He, Ian, and Emily all had some horse meat, veal intestines, cartilage, and pasta in a sauce made from the meat of a cow’s tail. I had cacio e pepe, basically a peppery mac ‘n cheese. After dinner we walked through the Lungotevere Expo, all the temporary bars, restaurants, and vendors that set up along the river banks in the summer.

Wednesday was their last day with us. Ian’s feet were bothering him, so Emily set off on her own to see the last few sites in Rome’s center that she didn’t want to miss. While she was out, Daniele made Ian and I lunch with gnocchi in seafood for them and pesto for me. Then he had to go to work in the hospital that night, while Ian, Emily, and I had dinner at the local Trattoria dar Bruttone on Via Taranto. A restaurant in the same Roman style as Betto e Mary, but we ordered more mainstream dishes.

Then on Thursday the two of them were off on the train to Almalfi!

Pictures:
https://plus.google.com/photos/+KaitlynHanrahanIsidori/albums/6038635653376643345

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Stella the Cat

Last year on June 15, 2013, Daniele and I got back from our honeymoon and I was officially living in Rome with no return ticket out of Europe. This new stability meant we were ready to make a life decision that I’ve wanted to make countless times in the past, but had to resist because I didn’t know where I was headed. We adopted a cat.

We had talked about it for a while and had planned on looking into getting one after the wedding. Now that we were back, we started by visiting some shelters here in Rome to meet some contenders. Rome has a few really cool cat sanctuaries. A famous one is in Largo Torre Argentina. This is an Ancient Roman ruin, that is fenced off. The volunteers and inside cats are in an office carved from the side walls surrounding the ruins. The healthy cats can roam about the fenced-in ruins outside. They are a very organized and large shelter.

Around this time there was also a cute orange tabby kitten hanging around the parking area of our apartment building. We thought about adopting him, but we couldn’t be sure that he didn’t belong to one of the families in our building. Before we made up our minds, we stopped seeing him. He was very cute, so I hope he found (or already had) a good home.

The next animal shelter we visited was also located in a Roman ruin, similar to the one at Torre Argentina, this one is in Rome’s Egyptian-style Pyramid, “Piramide”. They are not quite as organized, and give the cats away for free, but still needing to visit a vet. Daniele liked that they were free, but we paid the same having her spayed ourselves.

When we arrived there were two groups of kittens. Two tabbies that were already adopted and three solid-colored (two black and one gray). We wanted a kitten to give a cat a forever-home right from the start. Also, Daniele didn’t grow up with pets and a kitten is easier for that situation. There was a man there who was taking the gray and one of the black kittens, leaving just one female back kitten left. I held her and she fell asleep in my arms, leading everyone to insist she was destined to be mine. Daniele saw her sleeping and thought she was going to be calm and well behaved. He didn’t know that the kittens sleeping turn out to be the craziest once they wake. You need to see a cat awake, playing, moving to know its personality. But he didn’t tell me this was why he liked her, just that he did and he wanted to adopt her right away.

We hadn’t been planning on adopting that afternoon, so we had nothing. The shelter lent us a carrier to bring her home and gave us samples of the food she had been eating. Then on the way we quickly stopped (in underground parking) at the mall to get food dishes, a litter box, kitty litter, cat shampoo, and one toy (a bird on a string on a stick).

It probably took an hour to get her home, we then proceeded to traumatize her further. We shampooed her (she was kinda dirty). We clipped her nails. We tossed her in her giant (compared to her then) litter box, and she impressed us by using it right away. Then Daniele, who was working a night shift, had to go and left the two of us alone. She slept in the crook of my arm, and it’s been love ever since.

We named her Stella. A name that sounds American to Americans and Italian to Italians. Perfect for our family and perfect for my little star.

A day or two latter we went back to the shelter to return the borrowed carrier, and the man who took Stella’s two siblings had returned them!?!? His wife had told him to bring them back. The volunteers asked if we were interested in them, but one cat was already a big step for us. They were still cute little kittens, so I’m sure they found homes. Still, what a tool!

We adopted Stella on July 2, 2013. She was still very little when we had Daniele’s 30th birthday dinner at our apartment on July 8th and was the star of the night. It was our guests that night who first called her “Stellina”. In Italian, you add the suffixes -ino / -ina or -etto / -etta to say something is small; the suffix -one to say it is large. She’s been Stellina ever since.

Those first couple days were an adjustment. Especially for Daniele who had only ever had a kitten for a short period and that one lived on their balcony. She was a constant ball of energy. She relentlessly attacked our feet under the sheets (but never if on top of the sheets). This would wind up Daniele, which in turn would wind her up further. She still hadn’t learned to jump high with her giant rabbit feet, but had super-kitten upper body strength that allowed her to climb up things, like the backs of chairs and onto the table. But just like she quickly grew bigger, she quickly became calmer.

We moved over the course of August and September, and Stella was one of the last things to come to the new place. She saw all our stuff and took to it like home right away.

For Thanksgiving and Christmas, I planned on spending the whole month back in the States. Daniele was going to join me a few days after Thanksgiving and come back with me before New Years; though his departure ended up being pushed back to mid-December. Since that was too long to leave her, I brought her with me on the plane. It was pretty easy, I just called United and added her to my reservation. To the airline, she was something between extra luggage (how I paid for her) and an extra passenger (she had her own reservation number). She flew by my feet in her new soft carrier and handled the flight pretty well. It was actually more of a concern getting her home to Italy at the end of our trip than into the US. Europe controls pets more. But I’ll go into this in greater detail another time.

Back in New Jersey, she made friends with Moo and Flake (my cats at my parent’s house). Though it is debatable if they made friends with her back. She seemed to really enjoy it, from socializing with other cats, to running full-speed up and down the stairs, to walking through snow for the first time.

We sometimes let her into the couriyard of our building, but there is an old lady who yells (in Italian) “No cats in the courtyard!” whenever we do. So more often we put on her harness and leash and bring her out for a walk around the neighborhood or in a park. She likes the parks much better than the streets.

She’s met lots of people who come to our house, especially our AirBnb guests (blog.kait.us/2014/05/trying-out-airbnb.html), and she likes them all and they always love her. But when we take her outside, she is afraid of everything and everyone.

Daniele was slower to warm up to her than I was, not having grown up in the more american pets-are-part-of-the-family culture that I did. They bonded a bit when I left the two of them alone to go to a wedding in San Francisco last August. Then more and more over time. He worries about her food and litter box. And now he even asks me to leave her to sleep with him when he gets home from a night shift. A big change from not wanting her in our room at night, like when we first brought her home.

By Easter she looked fully grown. She had gotten pretty long and very muscular. She felt surprisingly heavy when you lifted her up and had really defined haunches. Or at least she did. Right after Easter she visibly lost some weight, and I think has lost some more since then, to get a bit smaller. We had taken her to the park a few times, so I thought it was the exercise. But thinking about the time-line better, I think we changed her wet food to a higher quality brand around that time. She used to actually like her dry food better, but the new stuff is definitely her favorite.

As mentioned earlier, we regularly trim the tip of her front claws. But she is very gentle with them anyway. If she starts playing with you, she’ll gently bat you with her soft paws…until you feel confident and unsuspecting, that’s when she bites! We’re also lucky that she likes to stretch her claws on cardboard, wood, and metal, but not fabric (so far, fingers crossed). Though she will shred papers if I leave them out.

Her most characteristic traits are her big ears, her big glowing eyes, and her constant meowing. She’s the most talkative cat I’ve ever known. And although, in theory, she could hide very well being all black, the profile of those ears or the light catching her eyes always gives her away.

During the days, I work from home and she keeps me company. Even though it’s still pretty lonely working alone at home, she makes all the difference.

Her hobbies include hiding in boxes, being made into the bed covers, and eating my papers. She spends most her day handing out by my computer or sleeping in an almost comatose state.

She’s a bit of a bad cat. She is terrible about going on the table and in the sink. She doesn’t seem to have much aversion to water. We just keep pushing her off and cleaning with a bleach solution

So that’s the story of our first year together with Stella.

The full album of all the pictures I’ve taken of her this year is here:
plus.google.com/photos/+KaitlynHanrahanIsidori/albums/6043706881572815249

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Visiting Emanuele and Silvia in Veneto

Back at the end of October, Daniele’s brother Emanuele moved to Veneto to be with his girlfriend Silvia. She is originally from there and the two of them had been alternating weekend visits for quite some time. They found their own apartment in June and we’ve been meaning to visit them. We came up with the idea a while ago to combine a summer vacation to the Dolomites (post coming soon) with a stop on the way to see them in Veneto for a weekend.

Veneto is another region of Italy, like Tuscany or Lazio, which is most famous for Venice and Prosecco. I’d been to Venice several times but never to any other part of Veneto. I knew Silvia lived a bit out of the way because I knew her parents had an independent house; in the cities and suburbs nearly everyone lives in apartments. Both their new apartment and Silvia’s parent’s house are in the province (“provincia”) of Treviso.

Daniele and I left Rome very early Saturday morning; most would still consider it Friday night. I slept on the way and we arrived at Emanuele and Silvia’s in time for breakfast. They did a great job planning our visit. We started with a quick stop in the small town of Conegliano Veneto. The town is very historical looking, with frescos and arches on the outsides of the buildings. There is a castle here, too. We visited the courtyard, but inside was closed. A wedding was just about to start there.


After Conegliano Veneto, we went to Grotte del Cajeron in Breda di Fregona. This was my first grotto. We took a hiking path in a loop that went into caves, over rope bridges, and over a river.

Our next stop was Lago di Santa Croce in the city of Farra d’Alpago. This is the only place we went to that was outside the province of Treviso. Silvia had made us a caprese rice salad with lactose-free mozzarella (shockingly good) that we ate picnic style by the lake. We were wearing bathing suits, but it was too chilly to sunbath, so we faked it wrapped up in sweaters.

At this point we headed back “home”, stopping on the way to have an “aperitivo” with Silvia’s aunt, uncle, and cousins. We had some cake, chips, and home-made prosecco. Then we regrouped at Emanuele and Silvia’s before dinner. Dinner was “Pasqualina” a special pizza invented by the restaurant owner that he even patented. It is basically a very thin and crispy pizza crust, with toppings, then another thin crispy crust layer on top. Making it almost a sandwich. I had the eggplant parmigiano, and it was delicious!

After dinner we went to Abbazia di Follina, an old and pretty church, then to Castello di Castelbrando. This castle is open to the public and occupied by an hotel, bar, restaurant, spa, gelateria, and a few stores. It had been abandoned before a group of business owners in the area restored it. It is one of my favorite castles I’ve been to thanks to the open access, the views, and how well maintained and accurate to the original structure it all is.



On our second day we had lunch at the “Osteria senza Oste” or the restaurant with no host. This famous places is hidden on a hill mostly occupied by grapes. It is a small shack with meats, cheeses, some pizza, breads, and drinks inside; all made locally. You take what you want and pay what you want, though there are suggested prices on the goods. There are tables outside and some knives and cutting boards to use and wash yourself afterwords. Many supplement with some of their own food. It was full there, with us getting last free table. The person who runs it just brings by the food in the morning. They must be making money because they’ve been doing it for about 10 years.

After lunch we went into the city center of Treviso. The city features a river going through it and lots of covered walkways and cute shops.

For our last night we had dinner with Silvia’s parents. They set up a large spread with lots of vegetables all from their own garden. It was delicious and Silvia’s mom sent us off with a big bag of tomatoes, peaches, cookies, and horse meat to bring to the mountains.

All the photos from this weekend:
https://plus.google.com/photos/+KaitlynHanrahanIsidori/albums/6031461047786159921

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Melissa’s Visit to Rome


Melissa and I at the Colosseum

A few days ago my college friend Melissa said she was thinking about visiting Rome for the weekend. She was in the middle of a business stay in Stockholm and wanted to use a weekend to visit another city. The timing was perfect because Daniele and I had had a trip to his cousin’s in Umbria planned for this weekend, which we had to cancel last minute when Daniele’s work shifts changed. So, with our plans canceled we were exceptionally free. Also, Rome was holding an event Saturday, the “Night of the Museums” (actually it was held all through out Europe this night). Many of the city and national museums would be open until 2AM and only cost 1 Euro. Also, other places, like government buildings and embassies that are normally closed to the public were open this night, though many by appointment only, and we were too late to make any appointments.

Melissa flew in Saturday evening and we met her at Termini. We had a quick dinner of Arancine (fried rice and cheese deliciousness) and then Gelato before heading out to see the sights. We ate near Lepanto, just off Cola di Rienzo, the street that connects Piazza del Popolo to the Vatican. We walked Cola di Rienzo to Piazza Popolo, then Via del Corso (Rome’s “main” street) end-to-end from Piazza Popolo to Piazza Venezia. Piazza Venezia is where the Altare della Patria stands. From here we bore right to Capitoline Hill (in Italian Campidoglio), home of the Capitoline Museum and Rome’s City Hall.

Our goal was to enter the City Hall. The volunteers on top of the hill told us there was one line for everything: City Hall, Capitoline Museum, the ruins underneath, and a concert going as well. In the end it turned out that the City Hall was not actually open, like the website said, but we enjoyed the museum, both its collections and the two late-Renaissance palaces that they reside in: Palazzo dei Conservatori, and Palazzo Nuovo. We also, for the first time, got to see the tunnels underneath, which connect the two palaces and show off the Ancient Roman structures under ground level.


The original bronze statue of Romulus and Remus suckling their wolf mother.

After we finished Capitoline, we reversed our path heading back up Via del Corso. It was getting late at this point, but we still had some time before the last places closed. We swung by the Trevi Fountain, since it is so pretty at night, before turning off past the Pantheon (closed by this hour, but we saw it from outside, at least) to Piazza Navona. Piazza Navona is possibly the most beautiful piazza in Rome. Its ovular shape is dominated by three Bernini fountains and closed in by beautiful Renaissance facades. Back in the day, before the fountains were built, the Romans would flood this piazza and stage naval battles here.

Piazza Navona is also the home of the Brazilian Embassy and near the Italian Senate building, two other places that we were thinking about trying to enter tonight. They are both normally closed to the public. However, we were getting tired at this point and both had long lines out front that threatened to not finish before the last entrance. So we walked past the illuminated windows, peeking inside, before heading back to the car at Lepanto, this time taking a route along the river.

Melissa was flying out at the crack of dawn on Monday– to enjoy a long layover / day-trip in Zurich, which I will admit I’m jealous of. I’ve never seen Zurich outside of the airport. That only gave us Sunday to see all the must-see spots in Rome.

We started our day with the classic “cappuccino e cornetto” breakfast just outside our apartment while making our attack plan for the day. We walked to the Colosseum from our house, which is maybe a 25 minute walk, or the same time by Metro, since you have to change lines. By walking we got to pass under the Aurelian Walls before stopping at San Giovanni basilica (the “duomo” of Rome, as the Vatican is a sovereign nation in its own right). San Giovanni is very pretty and features lots of marble statues both inside and out. From here it is about another 10 minute walk to the Colosseum.


Inside San Giovanni Cathedral

At the Colosseum we were greeted by the normal large crowds mixed in with a “Race for the Cure” crowd, which at least meant the streets were closed so we could all fit. We walked past and went first to the Roman Forum, which uses the same ticket as the Colosseum but almost always has shorter lines to buy them. Here we were presently surprised to get in for free! My last AirBnb guests had left us their Roma Pass, which I figured was used up or expired, but it got us into both the Forum and Colosseum free of charge. We walked around the Forum, which was the center of life and commerce in Ancient Roman times. We also crossed over to the “Palatine Hill”, where I’d never visited before. Like the Capitoline from the night before, this was one of the original Seven Hills of Rome. This one was actually were Romulus and Remus made their home. The Palatine area felt like just an extension of the Roman Forum, only a bit more open and park-like. We took the “Colosseum” exit from the Forum, then grabbed some ice cream (it was really hot) before heading into the Colosseum itself.


The Roman Forum


Palatine Hill


The Colosseum

Once we finished with the Colosseum, we took the Metro from there to Ottaviano, the stop nearest the Vatican. We knew we couldn’t fit in the Vatican Museum on such a short trip, but St. Peter’s is a must see. We purposely came here in the afternoon, when most of the pilgrims who came for the Sunday Blessing in the morning would have moved on to other sites. And, in fact, the line was reasonable and moved fast. We decided to spring the 5 Euros to go to the top (5 to climb all 500+ stairs, 7 to take the elevator part way then take the last 300+ stairs). I had only done this once before, with my mom and Aunt Linda, back when I first visited Rome in 2006, but I remembered that the stairs get pretty narrow. In the beginning, the stairs are wide and we could even walk side-by-side. They become single-file before you arrive at an open area that is above the basilica, but not the dome yet. You then enter the dome, and walk around the inside edge of it, looking down at the HUGE church underneath. When you start climbing from this point you are actually climbing between the inside and outside walls of the dome. So the walls of the stairway are slanted, but only slightly at first, though I could see it giving anyone with vertigo or claustrophobia a bit of trouble. Then it gets a bit more narrow, and you need your hands on the walls, because there is not enough space to walk standing straight. It keeps getting more and more narrow and more and more slanted until you get to the spiral stairway that is the last section. This last part is so narrow I could not have stretched my elbows out (and I’m not particularly long-limbed). There is not even space for a central column for the spiral staircase, there is just a rope than hangs down. But finally, you come out at the very top of the dome, and have the most beautiful view of Rome, out even to the mountains beyond it.


Looking up into the main dome of St. Peter’s Basilica


The view from the very top of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica

At this point it was 6PM, and the Basilica closes at 7PM. So we made our rounds inside, before walking though the piazza, and straight out the opening, in the direction of the river and Castle St. Angelo. We enjoyed the view here, of the river, the fortress, the bridge of angels, and the basilica in the distance for a few minutes before Daniele met us here. He drove us up to Gianicolo Hill where we got another nice view of Rome, now colored by the sunset.


St. Angelo Bridge

We then went to one of my favorite restaurants, MoMo, which seems fancy but has great prices and all of their food is so good. For dessert we decided on a change of venue, and picked up some canonni to-go, which we ate on the Spanish Steps. We took a quick walk up Via Condotti before heading home, tired, but having successfully captured Rome as best as I think possible in just over one day!


Sunset from Gianicolo Hill

All of the pictures from our tourist weekend are here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/+KaitlynHanrahanIsidori/albums/6015594620817086977

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Our Home

I’ve been asked a few times to take pictures of our home in Monterotondo (Rome), Italy. It is a pretty new apartment building with a garage on the ground floor and four apartments on each of the three floors above.

We’re on the “first” floor, that’s a European first one floor up. We have a kitchen that opens to the living room, bathroom, a master bedroom, and a smaller second bedroom that functions as my office and a guest room. We also have a skinny balcony that goes along the whole North-West wall and wraps shortly along the North-East wall. The two bedrooms open onto that balcony. The kitchen opens to a larger balcony where we have a dinning table, clothes drying rack, and stairs to the garden below. All the windows in the apartment are doors to balconies except for the one in the bathroom. The window/doors are really interesting, they are made of double glass doors (window/air protection), a screen that slides to the side (bug protection), a plastic shade that rolls up into the wall above when not in use and could keep a vampire safe from sun when it is in use (for privacy), and an iron gate each with a unique lock (for security, everyone in Italy has these).

The aforementioned garden is the width of the apartment and right outside and below our kitchen. The building is surrounded by a ring of garden space minus the side where everyone enters the parking space under the building. The ring is sectioned into six pieces. We own one and seem to be the only ones who use ours, most the others are just overrun. It’s not a huge space but it’s very nice for a city. We have a patio covered with a kinda tent, a stone barbeque in the corner, some paving stones to navigate watering the plants, and another entrance in the fence from the garage. Normally it is very green with herbs, peppers, flowers, and Daniele’s tomatoes, but I just took these photos now in January so it’s pretty barren.

It’s only 11 photos, so I will just link to the album rather than re-placing them here. Most of them are rough cut panoramas because I couldn’t get much even on my wide angle lens in the space.

https://plus.google.com/photos/111221349198606775660/albums/5836701962471254273?authkey=CLHzp77w4_bBcw

I’ve started to make the place my own, but most of the décor was chosen by Daniele, his mother, or was just handed down when he first bought the place two years before we met. So don’t expect it to really scream “me”.

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New Jersey Pit Stop

As much as I try to deny that I live in New Jersey with my parents, it is my legal address and where most of my stuff is (though I’m getting more and more to Rome). I much prefer more romantic version, where I’m a transient nomad going from city to city. Spending about half of my time in Rome and the other half, when I’m not legally allowed to spend more time in Italy, even though my fiance is Italian, traveling to various places.

It’s pretty exciting sounding when I put it like that!

Anyway, I had to come back a bit early from my summer in Rome for an appointment with the Italian Consulate or Newark. I have been working on my Italian citizenship for years (blood citizenship through my great-grandfather) even before I made plans to marry an Italian. Actually, probably could have saved a lot of time and money if I knew that was going to happen, but at least this way my mom gets dual citizenship, too. I’ll sum up that whole experience when it’s finally over in it’s own post. But the relevant part here is last September, after preparing for ages, holding the appointment for almost a year, reading everything we needed 10 times, they turned us down for something that they did not say they needed. At least Newark didn’t write down that it was needed on their site/forms. New York actually did I saw latter, but I apply through NJ where I’m a resident. When we got turned down last September I immediately made the next available appointment… for the following September. At the time, a year ago, I didn’t realize I was going to chop up my travel time so badly and I would have to fly home early for it.

I flew home Monday the 17th, our appointment was the 18th. We had a great person go through our application and they accepted it! I think if we had gotten her last time, I may already be an Italian citizen. Getting past this step means the consulate accepted the application, but it still has to be sent to Italy and actually accepted. Then in a few months we should be dual citizens and can then get passports just like American citizens get passports. I hear they’re wicked expensive, but at this point, I would probably pay anything.

So exciting!

Then that Saturday I got all my five bridesmaids together to go bridesmaid dress shopping. It was the first time everyone got together– which was the best part! We picked a dress at the end of the day, only to have them call a few days later and tell me its not actually available in the color I want. So, back at square one. Still a fun day.

Sunday, September 23rd, I turned 27. It’s so weird cause I was just 24 (barely, but true!) when I quit Adobe, packed up my apartment, flew to Vegas, and set off on my gypsy adventure. Those older that 27 can scoff all they want at that age, but I still don’t feel 24 anymore and the fact that this time has gone by so quickly but I can still physically feel myself aging is so horrifying that if I had a real job to quit again now, I just might do that. As it is I’m sort of out of radical early mid-life crisis actions.

Since I had just spent the day before with my best girlfriends, I was in the mood for a chill bday. I went into NYC and spent most the day with Danny G, Brian G, his GF, and Matt H. Brian and I have the same birthday and Danny had just moved to NYC, actually really close to Brian all in the East Village. Fun day!

When the night was finally over I found my [mom’s] car had been towed back in Hoboken. I had to walk a bazillion miles on already sore feet and pay a million dollars to get it back. The spot I parked in was apparently an individual’s reserved spot on the street. I didn’t know that was a thing!

During the week I got a bit of wedding stuff done. Then we had a jam packed weekend. My cousin Marc and his new bride Vivian just bought a house. They invited my parent’s and I over Friday for dinner to come check it out. Saturday his sister Michelle had a birthday party for her oldest, Eight-years-old already! Then Sunday we did a little combined birthday dinner for my uncle and I with my mom’s side. Monday my matron of honor went out with me to do some dress research. We found two beautiful dresses and now it’s just a matter of choosing.

Now, after those two crazy weeks back home, I’m off to California! I’m spending the month of October in my old stomping grounds, San Francisco, staying with the lovely Jenna H. I’m super excited to see old friends, drink beers, and not be home in NJ!

Adventure!

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Umbria with Daniele’s Cousins

Daniele’s mother is from Umbria, the region east of Lazio (were Rome is). Her sister never left and still lives in the house where they grew up. She has three sons a bit older than Daniele and his brother that are each married. The oldest two each have a daughter about 15 and a son about 7 years old. I met this whole side of the family last year and adored them! Unfortunately they are about two hours away from us in Rome.

We’ve been trying for a while to organize a day with Daniele’s cousin Massimo, his wife Catia, and their children Sara and Diego. It is hard because everyone involved works shifts (Daniele is a nurse, Massimo a factory manager, and Catia a police officer) so it’s not like we can just pick a weekend, or even the first weekend Daniele has off. This day worked out because they were on vacation. In the summer most Italians take vacation. They were spending theirs between Catia’s family beach house, which coincidentally is right by Daniele’s parent’s beach house, and her family house were she grew up in Volperino. The latter is where we met up with them.


Cousins Daniele, Sara, and Diego

Their house in Volperino is a lovely large independent house on a large lot. Dare I say “villa”? The town is up in the mountains and a beautiful place to escape the heat of Rome. It is a such a nice place. Everyone in town knows each other. In fact the neighbors stopped by randomly throughout our two day stay there.

The town itself was damaged significantly by the 1997 earthquake. Italian houses are built differently than ours, from stone, and are expensive and time consuming to repair. It can take decades to build a house and obviously these people can not stay homeless that time. Most moved away, some have RVs on their property. 15 years later it is still a town under construction and the population is much lower, especially in the winter.


Only one wall is left from this house.

When we first got there, the kids were still sleeping because they had been out dancing till 2am the night before. Everyone in town goes to the bar (coffee shop) every night. We went later that night.

Catia made us lunch. After we lounged under almond trees to pass the afternoon heat. Daniele and I went to Nocera Umbra before dinner and when we came back his aunt and uncle were there, too. As well as some other people I was never introduced to (Italians do not automatically introduce everyone present). After dinner, we all walked to the town bar (coffee shop) where everyone in town was there hanging out all night long. The younger kids played hide and seek, the older ones foosball and ping pong, the elderly played cards, some adults played bocce ball, and everyone else just hung out.


Almond tree at Catia and Massimo’s house

Monday Daniele and I had the best of intentions to take a morning hike with Massimo, but just didn’t wake up early enough. So we took an easier walk with Sara and Diego that was more eating road-side blackberries than it was hiking. We hung out for the morning and early afternoon before setting off to Spoleto and home.


Sara knew all the best blackberries


Blackberry bush

Sunday we saw smoke in the distance that appeared to be a wild fire. It was just behind the rolling hills, so we could not see the flames to be sure. After a while there were helicopters and planes that dropped water, it was out the next morning. Catia said there have been a lot of them. Sure enough, Monday we saw another in the other direction. Daniele and I saw it closer up on the way home, but we also saw lots of other burnt patches of hillside. I hadn’t known wildfires were such a problem. Apparently it is always an issue in dry forest areas in Italy, especially this year with the droughts.


Wild fire near Trevi, Umbria

While we were out in Umbria, Daniele and I made some trips to see some new places. Sunday we went to the little town of Nocera Umbra. Fun thing about Nocera Umbra is it sounds a lot like “No c’era ombra” or more correctly “Non c’era ombra” which means “There was no shade”. The translation has nothing to do with the name of the town, but it did confuse the heck out of me when I was first hearing it.

The town was cute and small. They were also still reconstructing from the damage of the 1997 earthquake. Most of the places we saw in the area were, with large cranes propped up to the mountain top towns. They had a museum of torture, which I was interested in, but not enough to pay the 5 euro (or 10 for Daniele and I) entrance fee. As we were leaving we saw part of a Ballet Recital going on in the square by the door to the city. It was adorable!


View from the top of Nocera Umbra

Monday we stopped at Spoleto on our way back to Rome. Spoleto is a much bigger city and features a castle / former prison on top and a 13th century bridge. Speleto is a perfect example of the medium sized town that I love in Italy. Not the big city like Rome or Florence, which are already big and constantly getting bigger as more people flock there for work. Not the tiny hill town that is almost abandoned as the houses crumble and young people flee to where they can get jobs or worse towns only being supported by tourism. This is a city with a large working class who mostly live just outside the city walls and a small tourism business to boot. Catia works in Spoleto and gave us great advice, to park by the escalators, take them all the way up (like 5 escalators), then walk down the city. The city offered a lot to see.


Rocca di Spoleto


Ponte delle Torri. The Bridge of Spoleto. Built in 13th century.

Photo album from these two days is online here:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111221349198606775660/20120819UmbriaCousins

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Zio Amato in Anzio

This is an older post that never made it online. I’m putting it up now with a back-dated post-time. Since this blog is, primarily, my own travel diary.

Yesterday Daniele and I went to visit his father’s brother Amato and his wife Cinzia for lunch. I had not met them before. They live a bit south of Rome by the beach.

Since I have never been to the area and it was a beautiful day we arrived early to walk around on our own. Anzio is an adorable beach/fishing town and we had a great time walking its seaside paths. There was also some type of celebration going on (or maybe just your typical Sunday in Anzio?). I bought a small bag of pistachios from a farmer’s stand that we munched on while walking around.

The port was busy with boats that seemed to have just come into town and were sorting and selling all of their fish.

Ancient Roman Emperor Nero had a seaside home here. It is located right between the sea and the park-like paths that skirt around the beach.

Daniele’s aunt and uncle were so nice. They welcomed us in their house with some prosecco before taking me on a tour of their large apartment. Amato has a patio in the front and a small garden in the back. He grows a few palms and fruit trees including a cherry, lemon, and pomegranate. The pomegranate tree only made one fruit last year and he used it to make liqueur (following the same process as limoncello). Amato collects antiques and all of his furnishings are beautiful antique pieces.

Amato and Cinzia made special vegetarian dishes just for me. And then after lunch, in true Italian fashion, or at least in Daniele’s family, we enjoyed some rounds of cards.

The pictures from this day are buried about halfway down my catch-all album for the 3-month trip to Rome I took January to April 2012:
https://plus.google.com/photos/+KaitlynHanrahanIsidori/albums/6010435566436983425

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Family in Umbria

On Feburary 25 and 26, 2012, Daniele and I spent the weekend in Umbria. We spent most of the 25th in Assisi and that night and the following day visiting his mother’s family in the country near Sellano.

This write-up and photos are from almost a year ago, February 2012, but they never made it up. I’m trying to upload old pictures and the accompanying stories now with back dates so they are archived in order.

This past weekend Daniele went to the tiny town where his mother is from in Umbria. Umbria is in central Italy sandwiched between Lazio (Rome’s region on the West coast) and Marche (East coast) with Tuscany (and Florence) to the North. It is the only land-locked region in central Italy. These regions are like states and have their own local governments*. It was only 150 years ago that they were all individual kingdoms, except Lazio, Umbria, Marche, and Romagnia (now Emilia-Romagnia, the region West of Tuscany) were part of the State of the Church.

*Interesting, following the “example of the United States”, Italy has been decentralizing its power and giving more control to local governments.


Italy pre unification (150 years ago)


Italy today

I’m getting off topic. Umbria looks very much like the countryside of Lazio or Tuscany, but it’s just that much more rural. Daniele said the house where his mother grew up didn’t even have electricity when she was born. That is actually exactly where we were staying, with his mother’s sister. They live in the town of Sellano, which is already pretty small, but we were actually outside in the sub-area/zone of Calcinaro. Calcinaro has very few residents. The young people move to where there is more work so everyone who is left is old and even they are counting down.

As I mentioned, we stayed the night with Daniele’s Aunt Caterina and Uncle Giuseppe in his mother and aunt’s family home. I had never been in a house like this; even homes 40 minutes outside Rome are still condos/apartments. The largest I’ve been in before this was a barbeque in what I would describe as a multiple-family-home; over an hour from Rome, they had a garden and two stories but still shared walls with their neighbors. This was an independent house, with two floors, and not only were there chicken coops outside, but old turkey ones, all sorts of stuff.

Caterina cooked us a delicious dinner on Saturday and lunch on Sunday. I won’t list all of the courses, there were many, but I’ll give some highlights. She has this big wooden board that goes over a similar sized table in her kitchen. She uses this surface for rolling out pizza and pasta dough (she made stringozzi, a handmade spagetti-like pasta particular to this region for us). To roll out the dough she uses the rolling pin of HER grandmother (without being rude to Rina, I can’t imagine how old Daniele’s mother’s and her older sister’s grandmother’s rolling pin is). The rolling pin was completely unique. If you know much about wood rolling pins, the french style is tapered at the ends and the Italian “pasta style” is a consistent diameter dowel. This monster looked more fit to be a table leg than a rolling pin; it was not tapered, a dowel about as wide as my forearm and long as my leg.

I didn’t partake in this part, but they roasted the meat in the fireplace, which I hear makes it taste extra good (the fact that the meat was probably running around their yard that morning probably helps, too). Their fireplace is neat, it has iron pipes coming down passing through the flames that is used as a secondary hot water heater.

Normally they would slaughter one of their chickens for company, but since I don’t eat meat and Daniele doesn’t really like chicken, some little bird got to live another day. I got to enjoy their eggs though for one of the courses at Sunday lunch, and they were delicious! We had a frittata which is an Italian omelet that is eaten for lunch or dinner and not breakfast. The reason Caterina made this was because it is the traditional way to prepare truffles. Earlier we had a discussion about truffles. Apparently they grow in this area and Giuseppe goes out collecting them every so often. He uses a dog, which does the job better than a pig. Apparently they only used pigs in like the middle ages before dogs were so easily available. I was really blown away to hear him talk about the differences between winter and summer truffles (winter are better, but also harder to find). There is a annual truffle festival not too far from here being held in another week. Their knowledge of a food that I have only ever had sparingly grated over a pasta, or infused in an oil that was then drizzled over my plate blew my mind a bit. Update 4/2013, I now eat a sinful amount of truffles.

Daniele and I explored the area a little bit Saturday morning. We walked to Vio, up on the hill top, which is another zone/area of Sellano. There we saw the oldest church in Sellano and a few more people moving about. Apparently a few German families have bought up houses in the area for summer homes. On our way walking up we passed people Daniele knew. They are the last family in the area to herd sheep, and that’s what they were doing, though it seemed they had almost as many dogs as sheep. We talked to Luigi, his mother, and saw his brother. Luigi was very friendly. His mother, I feel bad, but I really thought she was a man until Daniele told me otherwise that night. He pointed out she was wearing a dress, I pointed out she had a beard and old people dress weird! And when I say she had a beard, I mean you could have braided those white hairs. Daniele’s aunt and uncle have an accent, but I can mostly understand them, this women I couldn’t understand a word– but neither could Daniele!


We also walked to Ottaggi a different hill. From there we could see Sellano, the actual ‘city’ along with temporary housing that was built for people after the earthquake in 1997 but is still in use.

Sunday after lunch we paid a visit to the next door neighbor, a woman named Maria. The area is rural, but the houses are built in clumps, Maria’s door is 20 feet from Caterina’s. When we were going, I asked if I needed a coat, and they laughed at me. There is probably not another house for a mile, but Rina and Maria could have a conversation from open windows in their respective houses if they wanted. Shortly after we arrived her daughter, Elide joined. She is the companion (word Italians use for adult long-term relationship, particularly when you live together) of Luigi, who we met earlier herding sheep. Another woman, Giulianna joined as well. Giulianna works at a cheese factory and gifted us a full wheel of fresh ricotta made that day. I think Daniele’s parents told his aunt I like it. They were all actually really fun. Giulianna particularly talked about seeing the United States the way many Americans talk about going to Italy (or insert favorite European country here). At one point they were joking about their accents and I wasn’t sure if I could laugh. They definitely had accents, but so does Daniele. Theirs was weird. It was clearly county: like Appalachian meets Italian. There was definitely that “small town” everyone knows everyone feel. While, I understand and admire why Daniele’s mother left this town for Rome I really liked it here. I hope economic pressure doesn’t wipe out the whole town.

Caterina and Giuseppe have three sons: Massimo, Mauro, and Giulianno. Giulianno had to work, but I had met him and his wife another time. Massimo, his wife Catia, their children Sara and Diego, Mauro, his wife Stefania, and their children Martina and Marco all came over for the afternoon. The family is lucky in that the cousins, the two older girls and the two younger boys, are about the same ages. This is the most of Daniele’s family I had ever met. This pretty much was his family, it’s just far away. I loved all of them! Especially Catia and the girls: Sara and Martina.

The complete album from this weekend including Assisi:
https://plus.google.com/photos/111221349198606775660/albums/5862010840111467969