I don’t think I shall ever tire of seeing Italy’s breathless panoramas. Last weekend I went with a group from my school on a “Tuscan Getaway” trip. We spent Friday in Siena, visiting the “most beautiful cathedral in Italy.” Apparently, the people of Siena used to have many wars with the Florentines, and so had a fierce sense of competition bred into them. Therefore, when Florence claimed to be building the biggest cathedral in Italy, Siena decided to challenge them. They had built the skeleton of a huge addition that would have doubled the size of the cathedral when the Plague arrived, and all their workers died, and construction was forced to stop. After the Plague, they revised their goal, and decided that if Florence would have the biggest cathedral, then Siena would have the most beautiful. And so it is. Mosaics cover the floor, and while these are usually covered with protective cardboard most of tourist season, they were luckily uncovered when we were there. Siena is also where Saint Catherine was born and spent her years. She is an important saint, as she was the first women saint who claimed to have the power to speak directly to God, and she also convinced the Pope to move from his exile in France to Rome and the Vatican, which was another bold move that women had never been allowed to do. When she died, the Vatican claimed her body, but the people of Siena protested and so it was decided that her body would be exhumed, and divided to please everyone who wanted the honor of housing her body. So Siena has her head and her right pinkie in the church where she was a Domenican. Of course pictures aren’t allowed, so you’ll have to see this oddity yourself someday.

Then from there we drove to our agriturismo in Volterra where we spent both Friday and Saturday nights. We ate dinner at the ristorante at the agriturismo, drinking wine and sharing thoughts. The ristorante wasn’t as cozy as the agriturismo I went to with my Creative Writing class – it didn’t have the immediacy of knowing exactly where the food came from, and the down-to-earth, simplistic style of eating as the other one. However, it was cozy, the food was good, and the compagna (countryside) surrounding this agriturismo was the most beautiful that I have seen. I’m aware that I keep saying that with every new weekend at yet another countryside place, and every new blog that accompanies it, and I’m sure I’m losing credit as a writer here, but honestly, this was the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen yet. At the risk of boring you with yet another waxing description of the countryside, however, I will restrain myself, and let you imagine it with help from the pictures. It was in the Chianti region and I could see San Gimignano’s towers protruding through the haze on a distant hill. The quietness of the country speaks to me more clearly than anything else. So I’ll try to be quiet here, and even though pictures hardly ever give a beautiful place justice, or at least mine, I’ll let them speak for themselves.

The next day we spent in San Gimignano, standing looking up and out, with our mouths gaping, “catching flies,” as my grandpa Lyle used to say. The towers are amazing, the punti di visto, or points of view, even more so. It was very touristy, and there were lots of shops that had the same sort of gifts, but I enjoyed it, because many of those shops had local handpainted ceramics, which I have become obsessed with. The Raffaellesco style is my particular favorite. Perugia has a ceramics “market,” if you could call it that – it’s tiny, with just a handful of people, but they carefully display ceramic plate after plate on the back steps of the cathedral, the colors popping out against the drab stone steps. I’ve already spent money here, and while I can’t buy any more lest I not have a way to get them home in one piece, I still stop by to admire the new creations whenever they’re out.

We left the agriturismo in the morning on Sunday and made our way to Cortona, but first stopped at a tiny little village called Monteriggione. It’s like a magical moment caught in the generations past – the town hasn’t grown past it’s tall, imposing city walls, and it’s so tiny it’s amazing it even has city walls. We stayed for about an hour, and got coffee, gifts, and had just enough time to see a bride draped in a very traditional-looking crisp, white wedding dress, hooking arms with her father to walk into the town church and down the aisle. Fitting goodbye for this fairy-tale town from the past.

Then on to Cortona – this was again, pretty touristy, and had many English-speaking people wandering about the various shops, but it surprisingly didn’t have gaudy, dime-a-dozen tourist trap shops that so many cities have. Instead, it had more artist’s shops and galleries, not only ceramics, but watercolors, leather-bound books, photography, and other artsy trinkets. I loved Cortona, as it was a city around the same size as Perugia, but felt less stuffy, and, even more amazing, had grass! In Perugia, it’s almost all pavement and cobblestones, but here, there were houses with little square patches of grass-lawns! Cortona is nestled in the side of a big hill, yet another Italian city that you have to wind around and around in your car, getting green with carsickness before you reach the beautiful punto di visto at the city center, which of course, is always at the top of the hill. From Cortona, you can see the glimmering reflection of Lake Trasimeno in the distance, and the hazy blue, spongey mountains crowding the horizon. I drank in all the beautiful views and fresh air that I could before climbing back on to the miserable bus for another queasy car ride back to dear ol’ Perugia.

This weekend, I simply stayed put. It was a relaxing weekend, even though it was the weekend before midterms. However, I already had my Italian midterm, and the midterms that were due Monday for me were a large charcoal drawing for my Drawing class, and a six to seven page paper for my Creative Writing: Italy of the Imagination class, both of which I considered to be “fun” assignments. I spent four hours on Friday doing my drawing – I’ve come to love this class. I can go into the art room a wound-up ball of stress, and after three hours of drawing, I come away humming and smiling as I bounce home. I wrote the rest of my paper Saturday and Sunday, taking my time, letting it digest, allowing time for re-writes. I tentatively started a fiction piece after finishing the beautifully written “Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes. I discovered Philip Rothdke’s beautiful poetry while surfing poets.org, and later, listened to the classic Fleetwood Mac, covering all genres, capturing all moods. I worked out, something I’ve started up again since coming to Italy – it’s nothing drastic, just the half-an-hour conditioning routine I did when I was in gymnastics. Just something to make me feel less guilty about the occasional gelato and crepe con nutella!

Saturday I got the craving for my mother’s bubbling, crumbly apple pie, for Grandpa Lyle’s sweet, heavenly, quickly-eaten apple butter, for tongue-warming, chunky applesauce. Unfortunately, I do not know how to make apple butter, and ovens are a rare find in Italy, so pie was also out of the question. So I decided to make applesauce. However, I didn’t have all the ingredients, and of course, by the time I realized this, it was dead-smack in the middle of la pausa, when all the shops close down from 1-4 pm for lunch.

While I waited, I decided to make torta al testo, the simple Umbrian flat bread that I learned to make at an azienda one of my first weekends here. All it takes is a couple handfuls of flour in a pile on the table, and then make a hole in the center of the mound. Pour into this hole a package of yeast. Around the edges, sprinkle a teaspoon or so of salt, and then drizzle a bit of olive oil over the flour. Then start to mix it with a fork, pulling the outer edges in towards the center, adding water as needed. When it gets doughy, knead it for a little while (not long, probably five minutes tops), and then roll it out with a rolling pin, or in my case, an olive oil bottle, as my beloved rolling pin is currently sitting safely at home with all my other kitchen things. Next, sprinkle a little flour on both sides before putting it on a testo, which is the cooking stone that Italians use over an open fire, or, in my poor college student fashion, a huge frying pan over the stove - works just fine! Just let it bake/cook for a little while on one side, then flip it when necessary. The whole process takes all of about 25 minutes, and is considerably cheaper than the torta al testo-style flatbreads I could buy in the grocery store! When it’s done, you can slice it open and melt cheese in the middle with vegetables or anything your watering mouth desires.

Italian pasta was created to cling to my hips. During my first month in Italy, I have eaten mouth-wateringly raw Florentine bistecca, a heavenly meringue dessert called semi-freddo, flavor-oozing grilled lamb, and miles and miles of unforgettable bruschette smothered in fresh tomatoes, just-picked basil, and moist mozzarella. Yet the primo piatti, the first course, usually consisting of pasta, is always what I, during that first chaotic week, and my happily plump hips, remember best.

The first week or so that I was here, I ate at a cozy little restaurant in Perugia called La Lanterna. Their dishes are mismatched, with different sets of silverware at each table setting, and the collection of knick-knacks decorating the restaurant are a distracted group of paintings, local hand-painted ceramics, and old relics you’d see in an antique store – they seem to follow the rule that if things are mismatched enough, they begin to match. Being the cheap college student that I am, I only ordered one course aside from the bruschette that my friends and I shared, and of course it was pasta.

The dish, Tagliatelle della Lanterna, was tagliatelle pasta with a happy medley of vegetables in creamy, white sauce, not too much that it overpowered the vegetables, but just enough to smooth over any rough edges of taste. There were diced zucchini and carrots, fresh tomatoes mixed in with lightness of the barely-there cream sauce, all working together to balance the heaviness of the pasta. Each bite melted my over-stressed body into a gooey mass of bliss. All my anxieties about being in a new city, new school, new country wobbled and disappeared, and instead was replaced with a goofy-relaxed euphoria that one can only get by eating orgasmic pasta.

My love affair with pasta started young. As mischievous little kids, my twin brother Michael and I had a fetish with dried pasta – we would sneak into my mother’s kitchen cupboards when she was in the bathroom, or outside in the garden, and would open the plastic bin that held the dry stalks of spaghetti noodles, and steal a handful each, giggling as we’d crunch away feverishly, frantically depleting my mother’s always-disappearing supply of pasta. While Michael still to this day enjoys the satisfying crunch of dried pasta, my taste for it has heightened dramatically – pasta al pesto, any kind of pesto, with any vegetable under the summer sun – torrid tomatoes, of course, grilled eggplant slices, diced zucchini, sweet red onion, fresh thyme or basil, and supple summer squash. Pasta with meat sauce – I once had a meat sauce made from every part of a rooster’s meat, organs, everything, and it was one of the most delicious meat sauces I’ve had with pasta – it was somewhat salty, with a kick of red pepper to keep things interesting. With my dish at La Lanterna, I found something simple, yet completely delicious, something mouth-watering that was not so pretentious that three-hundred sous-chefs and myself couldn’t create it. Rather, this pasta dish was something approachable, something conquerable, something inspiring. With the first taste of this pasta, I began to create similar dishes in my head, and during the following weeks, enthusiastically tried, tossing away the mistakes with a carefree attitude, and instead, trying new tactics and discovering a new, even better dish. Like the lonely student I was in a new place, my palate didn’t want to meet the famous and gorgeous, but possibly snobby Catherine Zeta Jones right now - no, I wanted the comfort of my boyfriend Todd, my family, or my best friend Megan, who are the most down-to-earth, loveable people I know. My palate wanted comfort, it wanted familiarity, within this first week. And while I have since been able to venture out and appreciate the famous flavor of Florentine bistecca just like I have been able to respect the genius of Michelangelo, I was glad to have my age-old friend, pasta, there to start my journey off! Together, we have and will continue to embark upon many a tasting adventures, conquering the famous, and surrendering to taste-bud bliss.

So I realized that I've mainly been writing about my weekends, which don't have much to do with Perugia, as I'm traveling the majority of my weekends. Therefore, I'm failing to give you an accurate picture of what my day-to-day routines are here. So this post is my first step in righting this imbalance. Following is an essay I wrote for my Creative Writing class about my neighborhood gelateria, which let me tell you, has a lot to do with my day-to-day routines! Enjoy!

There is a little gelateria that veers off of Perugia’s main Corso Vannucci onto the quieter Via Bonazzi, near my apartment. Its name is Gelateria Gambrinus, although this is of little importance; I only just found out today, as I walked home and made a point of remembering it so I could write about it. But it’s not the name that means something to me, or even just the gelato; it’s something much, much more.

Coming to Perugia, I quickly noticed that the native Perugini tend to walk around with determined, slightly annoyed looks plastered to their otherwise Michelangelo-beautiful faces, and have earned a reputation for having, as my Italian professoressa says, una mentalità chiuso, or a closed mentality. But upon entering this gelateria on one of the first sweltering, sticky days of being here, I shivered in delight as its cold, refreshing chill dissolved the sweat from my brow, and my fingers tingled as I was met with a warm smile and a friendly greeting.

The gelateria itself is not pulsing with gaudy colors or flashy signs to catch the eye of passers-by. It doesn’t have tables brimming with welcoming chairs to lull eager tourists in, and if you do decide to sit on the handful of red plastic stools scattered haphazardly about the tiny space, you risk having other jolly customers brush their bottoms on your arm as they squeeze past to buy their cono piccolo with after-eight e nuttellone. Instead, the focal point of the store is what it should be: the creamy faces of the gelato flavors peering up at you through the frosty glass partition, beckoning in all their delicious delight.

The fatty cheeks of gelato lie lazily in metal pans that have mismatched labels, all written on a different day, it seems, with whatever scrap of paper was handy at the moment. The labels indicate the usual suspects: the cheerful mint-flavored After-eight, which is one of my favorites, there is the sinfully dark Ciocolatto, the sensual pleasure of 300, of course the fresh, cleansing flavor of Limone, and the chunky gooeyness of Kinder. In addition to gelato, in the cooling fall months when frozen gelato doesn’t seem to do the trick, I have seen other dolci surfacing in the store window. My favorite of these new dolci is the crepe con nutella, made right there in front of you, or if you’re feeling especially delicious, un crepe con gelato - you choose any flavor, and he wraps it up in a warm, melted heaven that is enough to make your knees buckle and eyes water with pure love.

The usual routine in my gelateria consists of me going in, being greeted with a Ciao, bella! or Buona sera, bellissima! from one the two male store owners. I believe them to be father and son, judging by their similarities in physical appearance (same goofy smiles, same crinkled eyes), and general sweet-natured way of greeting me. After exchanging ciaos, I then proceed to order: Vorrei un cono piccolo con kinder e amarena, per favore! Grazie! It even took me a while to notice the cash register – it is small and has been painted a dark barn-red, and the tired hand-written price signs attached to it are peeling off in corners where the scotch tape has begun to get worn and dirty. Instead, I usually just hand my 1,50 euro over the counter to the owner, and giggle as we both say grazie at the same time – again! If you decide to stay and devour your messy-gooey crepe in the gelateria, they cry out and passionately insist you sit down and enjoy it first, and pay later. This practice is common among bars and caffès in Italy, but never have I had it been insisted to so vehemently!

The father, who looks to be about 70, works the day shift, and the son, who is about 50, takes over, sometimes with another sulky teenage employee, at about 7:00 pm for the dinner rush. The father is more eager to please, and likes to chat, although they both speak solo italiano! The son prefers to tease, and while his face is more shadowed and a bit more stern-looking, he is quick to stretch into a sloppy smile at his own punchline.

While I have since met many more friendly and charming Perugini in the days and weeks I’ve been here, these two were the first open-armed, welcoming natives that I met here, and they’ve treated me like I was an age-old friend since the day I first walked in. A few weeks ago, I was trudging past on my way home with three bulging grocery bags in tow threatening to spew tomatoes, pasta, risotto and onions all over the sidewalk, and I looked up to see the father standing in the doorway, looking out. Upon seeing me, he quickly chattered in Italian, “I’m so glad to see you buy groceries, too! I was worried!” We share a friendly, knowing laugh, and on I walk, back to my apartment, giddily smiling the whole way, because for the first time, I feel like I know my neighborhood, and that it, the tiniest bit of it, knows me.