On the steps of Rome, on the edge of romance

by Gadling Staff on

“How come you don’t write postcards like your friends?”

I sat near the foot of Scalla di Spangna, or Spanish Steps, catching my breath after having climbed up and down the 138 steps to the Trinita dei Monti at the top. Around me a gaggle of college women on a school-sponsored trip dutifully poised cards on their knees and scribbled away, presumably to the parents who paid for this trip to Rome, or perhaps to boyfriends stuck back in the States with jobs as camp counselors or delivery boys in their fathers’ firms.

I had arrived in Rome that morning. Having come from Sweden, I was still stunned by the German, Swiss, and Northern Italian landscapes. At twenty-four, I’d barely been out of the Midwest, where the land is flat and vast. In the past few days, seeing my first mountains — Alps no less — I couldn’t get over the fact that humans had the audacity to cut into those monsters to lay train tracks, and that I could be bulleted through the bellies of those beasts.

I was stunned too by Rome. Fountains and ruins, trattorias and cafes, gods piercing the sky next to merchants hawking wares. Alone, I wasn’t quite a part of it, but I wasn’t apart from it either, not like the young women around me, who didn’t bother to look up from their writing much, who didn’t seem to notice the sunlight baking the medieval-looking buildings, who barely noticed a six-team horse-drawn carriage ambling by us.

“I’m not with them,” I said to the man who’d spoken to me, making sure my horror at his association of me with these tourists was clear in my tone. I wasn’t a tourist but a traveler, I wanted my tone to convey. Not merely a traveler either, but a solitary traveler, gaining worldliness at every turn. Hadn’t I just seen Alps?

“No?” he said, raising his dark eyebrows just enough so I could see he was impressed with me. The feeling was more mutual than I wanted to admit. He and a few other men had parked their motorcycles in the street at the bottom of the steps and leaned on the machines, watching the crowds. With hair dark as coffee, fitted black jeans (despite the heat), and a leather jacket, he was nothing like the Harley bikers I was used to at home although they wore jeans and leather jackets too. He was undeniably European.

“You don’t know them?” he gestured to the girls who had by now finished writing and whose chaperones were shepherding them toward a bus.

I shook my head and may well have rolled my eyes.

“So you let me take you for a ride. Show you the real Rome.” He gestured again at the girls. “Rome they don’t get to see.”

All good sense told me to say no.But of course I said yes because in addition to being European, he seemed genuinely intrigued by me. I did have at least enough sense to hesitate first. Despite my assertion that I wasn’t one of those tour-bus girls, I also wasn’t as free a spirit as I made out. Of course, I had heard all of the warnings about the sexual aggressiveness of Italian men toward foreign women, but I was still wildly flattered. I felt noticed. Also, I believed then, and still do, that the travel of one’s youth defines one, perhaps for years, perhaps for life, and I’d thrust myself into the world to figure out just what this definition of myself might be. This meant taking chances.

“Yeah, okay,” I said.

I can’t rightly say I remember the man’s name today, but I’ve called him Pietro in my mind for years because his friends joked that he was a good man to be with, a rock, like St. Peter. His friends were right too. Pietro did just what he said he would do. He whirled me around Rome, taking me to little cafes, introducing me espresso, to his friends, to shops and streets that years later made me feel I’d been to a completely different city than those who described the Rome of tour books.

At dinner that first night, he took me to a tiny restaurant near the Piazza Navona. To my discomfort, he didn’t order for me, but he patiently explained everything on the menu and insisted I order for myself in Italian. It was strange to hear my voice trying to make those elastic sounds that were far too beautiful for someone with an accent from the South Side of Milwaukee to make.

Yet it was good to hear myself speak, however haltingly. I’d barely said a word for days, grunting and pointing to get what I wanted like Helen Keller before she’d met Anne Sullivan. Over pasta with a tart clam sauce, even my English felt slightly charred, but Pietro listened to my descriptions of my family, my love of Lake Michigan, and my impressions of Italy with such intensity that I was convinced he actually thought I was something more than a mere youthful cliche sitting next to him. I allowed myself to wonder if he might be right.

Pietro advised me to abandon all but the best sights and instead to spend my time looking at the people. This was the way to learn a place.

Pietro laughed easily and often, and by the time the gelato was served, I found myself settling in and feeling less like a stranger. He seemed to know everything there was to know about Rome, contemporary Rome with its nightclubs and shopping. He advised me to abandon all but the best sights and instead to spend my time here looking at the people. This was the way to learn a place.

After dinner he drove me to the cheap pensione I’d rented that morning before heading to the Spanish Steps.

“You are something else,” he said as I climbed off of his bike.

I wasn’t sure what that something else was, but I liked the possibility that his words implied.

The next day, at Pietro’s suggestion, I gave up my bed in the pensione and stayed with him in his sun-slatted flat. More money for the rest of my trip, I reasoned, knowing saving money had very little to do with it. With Pietro I had entered the intimacy of this place. I was deep in.

During the days, Pietro came and went, talking little of where he’d been, what work he did, and I didn’t ask too much. I looked forward to languid dinners and frenzied dancing and all that came after the dancing when we were along in his flat. During the days on my own, I went to a few sights, deeply impressed by all things Bernini, but mostly I walked, doing what Pietro had suggested, looking and looking at so many people that after awhile I no longer compared them to myself or people I knew at home as I’d been doing since I left there. My vision was becoming fluent. I felt it as one sometimes feels muscles take on the memory of movement.

After a week, though, my InterRail pass began burning a hole in my pocket. Athens and Nice and Paris waited for me, and I only had three weeks left before my pass expired.

At dinner that evening, when I told Pietro I was leaving, he looked disappointed but by no means crushed. “You could stay,” he said. “I could find you a job. Learn some Italian to take back with you. Language is better than postcards, better than souvenirs.”

It was tempting. I’d gotten comfortable here, and traveling alone scared me more than I liked to admit. Moving around in places where I didn’t speak the language scared me too, and I was learning a little Italian. If I stayed, I would learn more. I’d made it here, I reasoned. I’d found Pietro. Maybe that was enough venturing for a while.

If the travel of one’s youth defines one, this decision would mean a lot. I twirled my pasta on my fork as he had shown me, but I was too nervous to take a bite. I looked at another fountain in another piazza behind another restaurant and thought that I’d never seen anything like that fountain at home. What else was out there that I’d never seen?

“No,” I said, the taste of basil and salt still on my tongue. Pietro was an adventure at first, but I had to admit that now he was safe. “Thank you. Maybe I’ll be back.”

“Maybe,” he shrugged.

Karen Lee Boren is the author of Girls in Peril, a coming-of-age story about adolescent girls in small-town Wisconsin. Her nonfiction has appeared in the anthology Rite of Passage: Tales of Backpacking ‘Round Europe. Read her blog on Red Room.

[Photos: Flickr | Kellinasf; Mciccone640; MikeScrivener]

Planes, trains, or automobiles: local delicacies make memorable mobile meals

by Laurel Miller on

As a food and travel writer, I log a lot of air and land miles, but I can count on one hand how many airline meals I’ve eaten. Even as a kid-admittedly the most irritatingly picky eater on the planet-I refused to choke down in-flight chicken the texture of sawdust, or boiled-to-death pasta and vegetables. My parents, at their wit’s end, finally gave up. Ordering pizza the night before a plane trip became a ritual, because I’d eat the leftovers once airborne (after scraping off the sauce, but I digress).

In some ways, things have changed. I will now eat anything, often to the detriment of my health, for the purposes of work, or a good story. Dog, insects, horse; I don’t get all the fuss over the Donner Party. I will not, however, eat airline, train, heat-and-serve gas station, or ferry fare, unless I’m being paid to do so. I’m not trying to be a food snob. I just find institutional food repugnant, because it usually takes like ass. Don’t even get me started on the nutritional aspects. And in my defense, I have a serious weakness for Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. No, I skip mass transit meals because one of the greatest joys of travel is trying new foods.

I prefer to use my captive travel time to savor local produce and products purchased from farmer’s markets, food halls, street food vendors, or take-away joints. It’s generally the best, as well as cheapest, way to eat on the go, and it’s a great way to experience the food culture of a country or region, even if you’ve never left the United States.
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When I’m in Honolulu, I pick up the fat, juicy, char siu pork-stuffed manapua (steamed dumplings) from Libby Manapua (conveniently located en route to the airport). I’m not alone; the little shop’s pink cardboard cake boxes are a frequent site on inter-island and Mainland-bound flights.

In Naples, I’ve brought calzone and the makings for an impromptu insalata Caprese on the train, and done the same with majouba from Marseilles. On flights I’ve scarfed down Argentinean empanadas, Singaporean sticky rice stuffed with pork, and this soy custardy thing studded with slippery bits of florescent tapioca from Bangkok. I also load up on interesting snack foods: Peruvian cancha, fried fava beans in Ecuador, Mexican tamales, Vietnamese roasted chestnuts, and mochi from Asian groceries in Australia. And under no circumstances should you depart Miami without cuban pork sandwiches from Palacios de los Jugos, in Little Havana.

My favorite mobile meal, however, was a picnic I assembled for a 15-hour train ride from Provence to Madrid. I was staying in the village of Cassis, which is famed for its bustling farmers market. En route to the train station, I hit the market, picking up a couple of different crottins (small rounds of goat cheese), bread, pâté, sausage, and a handful of plump, crimson cherries. A bottle of Bandol rosè from the nearby village of the same name also helped to pass the time.

If you live somewhere known for its local ingredients or dishes, it’s just as easy to assemble a memorable meal to take en route to your destination. One of the most thoughtful gifts I’ve ever received was when a chef friend dropped off a pre-flight bag lunch for me to take on a flight. In it were some of his favorite things from the Berkeley farmer’s market: a loaf of crusty, country-style levain, a round of chevre, and a fat, juicy peach. I arrived at my destination sated and happy. That’s the experience that made me stop making do with meals of soggy, lukewarm sandwiches from home, or Power Bars (although I always have plenty stashed in my day pack for emergency snacks).

A few tips on portable meals:

If you don’t travel light or are on a road trip, keep a small Tupperware container to hold fruit, to prevent it from bruising, or a single-serving-size insulated or neoprene bag to keep perishables cool.

If you backpack, as I do, you can still get away with carrying a few essentials: pocketknife (unless you’re carry-on only), and a wine opener. Carabiners are good to clip on your daypack, as they aid in holding purchases.

If you’ve purchased meat (even if it’s cured), dairy products, honey, or produce, be prepared to consume it en route- you won’t be able to take if off the plane or over borders. At least, not legally. This can also apply on domestic flights, usually in regard to produce.

Do be considerate of your seatmates. If you’re traveling Stateside, or in places where fragrant/heavily spiced cuisine isn’t the norm, skip it. Because hell on earth is being stuck on a plane next to someone eating a warm tuna sandwich. Also, it’s good form, as well as a cultural imperative in some countries, to offer your neighbors a little snack.

Most cultures have foods, such as a variation on dumplings, that are ideal for transit. In Asia and India, food hawkers often sell food on the train or in stations. These may be some of the best, most authentic eats you’ll find, but be forewarned that few things ruin a long train or bus ride like foodborne illness. Only buy fresh, hot food from busy vendors, bring bottled water, and carry a box of Imodium (seriously). Happy travels!

Chile-Citrus Olives

The whole point of travel picnics is to make do when you can’t cook, but I make these olives to take on road trips. They also make nice cocktail snacks or a casual accompaniment to a cheese plate. They’re typical of the type of prepared food you’ll find in many Mediterranean and Middle Eastern markets.
serves 4

10 oz. dry cured or green olives, or combination of the two, such as Moroccan or Picholine
3 or 4 strips of orange peel (not zest- use a vegetable peeler to cut wide strips, avoiding any pith)
2 cloves garlic, gently crushed
2 pinches red chile flakes
1 to 2 T. extra virgin olive oil

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium low heat, adding more olive oil if too dry. Warm until heated through, then remove from heat, transfer to small bowl, and allow to sit one hour, so flavors develop.

Letter from Rome: The view from the Janus Hill (or, How some Romans think of Rome)

by David Downie on

A few minutes before noon Saint Peter’s begins caroling its bells. This tintinnabulation began at the beginning of time and presumably will continue until the end of it. The Vatican’s bells are followed by 900 other lunch bells ringing from 900 lesser churches scattered among the city’s Seven Hills. As the ringing reaches noontide paroxysms, a cannon springs out of a bunker atop Rome’s highest hill and blasts a single deafening shot. It silences the bells for a second, perhaps two.

The cannon is kept on the Janiculum Hill underneath panoramic Piazzale Garibaldi. In the center of this square, an imposing equestrian monument to General Giuseppe Garibaldi reminds Italians of the glories and sacrifices of nationhood. Hero of the Roman Republic and Risorgimento, Garibaldi is the country’s George Washington. From the 1840s to 1870s he fought bloody battles on the Janiculum-and elsewhere-to unite Italy, drive out foreign occupiers and cast off the proverbial papal yoke.

Mounted atop his charger, Garibaldi’s bronze effigy seems to smile at the stroke of midday. He is not smirking at stunned tourists. Famously anticlerical, Garibaldi’s cannon blast is a daily raspberry aimed at the dome of Saint Peter’s a quarter-mile north. Or at least so it seems to me. The juxtaposition symbolizes the tragicomic struggle of Italian society to reconcile anarchic, secular, hedonistic republicanism with the timeless-some might say anachronistic-strictures of Roman Catholicism.

The view from Piazzale Garibaldi stretches from Saint Peter’s across Rome’s monument-studded center to the Alban Hills and Appenines. Wander up the looping, landscaped staircases from the Vatican, or the low-lying Trastevere quarter along the Tiber. Or do as the natives do and roar up under the towering sycamores to take the air. The Janiculum is cooler and windier than the rest of Rome. Once here, belly up to the balustrade of Garibaldi’s panoramic terrace. Itinerant rose-hawkers, most of them illegal immigrants, will thrust long-stemmed roses into your hands.

Like the hawkers, the roses do not come from Italy, once Europe’s biggest grower and exporter of flowers. They come from Holland, Morocco, Turkey, or Spain. The hawkers and their roses are the modern-day equivalent of the slaves and colonials, and their exotic wares, that the Romans dragged home to the seat of empire. Now they come of their own accord. Unlike the provincials of old, they rarely set down roots.

Sweeping views, sea breezes and globalized commerce are not the Janiculum’s only attractions. This is the least Roman and most Roman of neighborhoods. Atypical, it has few hotels, restaurants and residents-diplomats, clergymen and scholars, and the patients at Bambino Gesù pediatric hospital-and no ancient ruins. Yet it’s the quintessence of the Eternal City.

The Janiculum is named for Janus, the two-faced god of thresholds. It simultaneously looks backwards and forwards, east and west, north and south. Long before Garibaldi, Romans fought Etruscans here, and built the farthest reaches of the Aurelian Walls to enclose the Janiculum’s heights. It’s claimed Saint Peter was crucified where Bramante’s iconic Renaissance Tempietto now stands, flanked by the church of San Pietro in Montorio, on the hill’s southeastern edge. Mussolini used the site for Fascist propaganda. He erected a monument, facing the church, to Garibaldi’s fallen soldiers. Other hallowed nooks, marble plaques and statuary extol Roman patriotism and piety.

Whether Romans today glance at these memorials is questionable. The once fierce tribe is now placid. Its members flock to the Passeggiata del Gianicolo to relax, stroll, gaze, gossip, meditate, make out, jog, sip and snack at Bar Gianicolo, or slurp soda pop from the refreshment stand at Garibaldi’s feet. Surrounded by photographers, they get married where Saint Peter was crucified, because the backdrop is breathtaking.

In leisure and love a country reveals its true colors, making the Janiculum a must for anyone delving beyond stereotypes. Besides, in Italian, “zeitgeist” is l’aria che tira-the way the wind is blowing. No place in Rome is breezier.

The main sources of stress in this otherwise perfect world are the pediatric hospital, and the grim Regina Coeli prison in Trastevere below it. Knots of anxious parents mill around the gravel-filled square facing Gesù Bambino. Like the rose-hawkers, most new parents are not Italian: Italy has negative population growth. They shoot down espressos from the kiosk strategically sited here, or pace back and forth, listening to haunting shouts. The shouts come not from the hospital, but the prison. Inmates cup their hands and call up from the barred windows. Their mates shout back, leaning from the Janiculum’s parapets. It’s a heart-rending slice of Fellini in the age of text messaging.

Naturally not everyone experiences the Janiculum as I do. For one thing, the bells of noon are not lunch bells to Romans, who cannot constitutionally contemplate a meal before 1:30pm. The mad tolling therefore has nothing to do with the crisp-fried Roman-Jewish artichokes, Carbonara or roasted lamb I adore, or the “priest-strangling” strozzapreti all’Amatriciana so many “priest-eating” mangia-preti Romans delight in gobbling, the spicier the better.

For another thing, most Romans are too busy, blasé, and befuddled after decades of prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s cult of mindless materialism to contemplate the country’s origin myths. Many seem to have forgotten who Garibaldi was. Some wish Italy would split back into city states.

Though born Catholic, the Romans I know rarely set foot in Saint Peter’s. They would swoon if their children joined the church. Young Italians simply do not become priests, monks or nuns nowadays. How could they? They live at home until age 38. They marry, get divorced, use contraceptives, have abortions, eat chocolate and cakes during Lent, swear a blue streak, and feel no compunction about their sins even if they’re believers. Faith and the Vatican’s rules occupy watertight compartments encrusted with evil eyes and amulets.

But recent scandals have rekindled interest in the age-old yin and yang of Italy. This has swollen the crowds of gawkers on the Janiculum. It’s not only the best and most scenic spot from which to gaze at Michelangelo’s Vatican dome. It’s also a fine transit point for observing foreign pilgrims and clergymen. They too are rarely Italian these days, often coming from far-flung, impoverished outposts of Roman Catholicism. They bustle by in a kaleidoscope of robes and skin-tones, climbing from Saint Peter’s to Sant’Onofrio’s monastery, next door to the hospital, then on to San Pietro in Montorio. Inside these storied sanctuaries, among the haunting images by Il Domenichino and Pinturicchio, a visitor rarely encounters Italians.

Romans watch the parade with bemused equanimity. Celibacy and abstinence? Rome flaunts its cityscape of temptation. The fountains alone are an incitement to lust. Caravaggio’s homo-erotic masterpieces hang in a half-hundred churches. Philandering and homosexuality among priests, monks and nuns is not only tolerated, it’s expected. In Italian, prete means both priest and bedwarmer.

Boccaccio, writing nearly 700 years ago, told many a bawdy tale in The Decameron. Who could forget lusty prelate Dom Gianni, who turned upon Gemmata “the tool with which he was used to plant men,” while her dopey husband looked on?

G. G. Belli and Trilussa, Rome’s revered anticlerical poets of the last two centuries, both Trastevere residents and Janiculum habitués, skewered sinful, sleazy papal tyrants, dressing up with hilarity the corruption, cynicism and perversion of their day.

No wonder few Romans blinked when in March 2010 a Vatican chorister and the pope’s gentleman-in-waiting were caught in a seamy gay sex-and-corruption scandal.

But rape, molestation and pedophilia are different. In a country where every child still incarnates the Baby Jesus, and in a city where the Gesù Bambino hospital stands only a few hundred yards from the pope’s fortress city, how could alarm about the goings-on not have been raised?

Why travel if you live in Rome? Tens of millions of people spend a fortune each year to come here.

Sit amid the mossy busts of Garibaldi’s soldiers on Passeggiata del Gianicolo and listen to older Romans gossip about er Papa and other piquant topics. Soccer, sex, vacations and tax evasion are the most common themes, since the weather is generally good, and the exchange rate for the euro makes no difference as long as you don’t travel. And why travel if you live in Rome? Tens of millions of people spend a fortune each year to come here.

If average Janiculum denizens disdain the Vatican for its perceived hypocrisy, they distrust and despise their government even more, in a colorful, creative way. With their gravely, nicotine-seasoned voices and utterly un-PC opinions, Rome’s tribal elders sound startlingly like Pulcinella wrangling with Arlecchino. The antics of Punch ‘n’ Judy are blasted at high volume from the Janiculum’s dusty little soap-box Teatrino. Everyone knows but no one seems to mind that the Punch ‘n’ Judy soundtrack is now tape-recorded.

Unlike Italy’s politics, the Janiculum is democratic, starting with its demographics. The studiously ragbag teenagers and 20-somethings might even outnumber the retirees. They socialize separately, as never before in Italy, draping themselves over the balustrade at Piazzale Garibaldi, or near the miniature lighthouse and pocketsize amphitheater, both farther north. Here they blare boomboxes and guzzle beer-a recent fad, imported from Northern Europe, Britain and America. They also make pigs of themselves. To these coddled youths, life understandably revolves around consumer electronics, telefonini, motor vehicles and music, plus soccer and sex, in that order. And dogs.

Italians not only jog nowadays, they have also discovered dogs. You will see phalanxes of retrievers and terriers running amok along Passeggiata del Gianicolo, or in Villa Doria-Pamphili, a much bigger greensward nearby. The dogs lift their legs on Garibaldi, and soil the steps of Sant’Onofrio. No one objects. Professional dog-walkers have made their appearance. Like the rose-hawkers, priests and parents, most are not Italian. Neither are the dogs, judging by their names, nearly always borrowed from American soap operas and sitcoms, or reality TV.

Even more than their elders, the young Romans of the Janiculum appear thoroughly globalized in a deliciously provincial, marvelously myopic way. They gulp at the good life as blissfully as fish swallow the Tiber’s murky waters. What about the imploding economies of Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain-the PIIGS? The environment? Regionalism? The separation of church and state?

No, grazie, you hear them say, when buttonholed by earnest elders upon the parapets. Rev up the Vespa, Roberto! It’s time for un revival of La Dolce Vita, which everyone knows inspired American Graffiti. Because life in Rome is a revival. “Graffiti” is Italian, exported to America, and reimported with gusto. Every square centimeter of the city is adorned by colorful tags and aerosol art, even the trees and Garibaldi’s men. But this is not new either. The ancients scratched their names in stone. That’s where graffiti comes from.

One chummy curmudgeon I chatted up on a bench by the amphitheater gave me a world-weary shrug. I’d asked him about the fate of the PIIGS. The official acronym of Rome since the time of Caesar, he said waving vaguely at the Forum, has been SPQR. Senatus Populusque Romanus. “It means the senate and people of Rome,” he explained. Emblazed on bridges, manhole covers and parapets, it’s as ubiquitous as the graffiti and garbage. Somehow it survived the fall of Rome. Today SPQR is an initialism for Sono Porci Questi Romani-these Romans are pigs, he added. “And pigs know how to survive,” the man concluded philosophically, forming a good luck sign with his index and baby finger. Well, maybe, I reflected. In any case, they have a pretty wonderful sty.

* * * * *

An American author and journalist based in Paris, for the last 25 years David Downie has been writing about European culture, food and travel for magazines and newspapers worldwide. His nonfiction books include Enchanted Liguria, Cooking the Roman Way, The Irreverent Guide to Amsterdam, andthree critically acclaimed volumes of travel, food and wine in the Terroir Guides series: Food Wine the Italian Riviera & Genoa, Food Wine Rome, and Food Wine Burgundy. Downie’s travel memoir Paris, Paris: Journeys into the Heart and Soul of the City of Light is being reiussed in 2011 by Broadway Books. His latest books are Paris City of Night, a classic thriller set in Paris, and Quiet Corners of Rome (spring 2011). Please visit David Downie’s website, DavidDownie.com.

[Photos: Flickr | Kieran Lyman; Leo-seta; Scott Denham; Scott Denham; summitcheese; gnuckx]

UNESCO adds Everglades, Madagascar rain forests to endangered list

by Kraig Becker on

Yesterday we told you how the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, aka UNESCO, had granted several new sites “World Heritage” status at their recent meeting held in Sao Paulo, Brazil. That same group also moved two other sites to their endangered list in a move that typically serves as a warning about the future health of those locations.

Returning to the endangered list this year is the Florida Everglades, which were first cited back in 1993 and remained on the list until 1997 due to damage sustained during Hurricane Andrew. The sub-tropical wilderness is the largest of its kind in the United States, but is degrading rapidly, thanks to the loss of more than 60% of its water inflow. The committee also noted that increased levels of pollution is causing the water in the Everglades to become toxic, killing, or driving off, large numbers of marine life that once lived in the area as well.

Also added to the endangered list this year are the rain forests of Atsinanana, located in Madagascar. In this case, the World Heritage Committee cited the illegal logging operations that continue to go on there, as well as the hunting of an endangered species of lemurs, as causes for concern for the future of that natural environment.

Being put on the endangered list is not necessarily a bad thing for these World Heritage Sites. In the past, such a designation has brought a great deal of attention and focus to the problems at those locations, allowing governments to clean them up and keep them better protected for future generations to enjoy as well. Hopefully that will be the case in both of these cases as well.

[Photo credit: Moni3 via WikiMedia Commons]

Three Days in London

by Gadling Staff on

The cliches of constant rain and gloom are quickly banished when you visit London in the summer. While all the tourist favorites – Big Ben, Tower of London, British Museum – are open and busy, there are other exciting exhibits, West End shows and areas of the city ripe for exploration. If you have three days to spend in the capital this summer, here are some suggestions to keep in mind.

The Photographers’ Gallery is tucked away in a tall, narrow building on Ramilies Street, just a block from the Oxford Circus Underground station (or the Tube as it’s commonly known). Now through Sept. 19, The Family and The Land: Sally Mann, a retrospective of the celebrated American photographer is on exhibition. It’s not for the faint of heart. The show includes the controversial images of her three children in suggestive situations and oversized images of decomposing bodies from the Tennessee Forensic Anthropology Center. Between these two jaw-droppers are the haunting images of Civil War battlefields in the American South that retain scars from the fighting. For many of the photos, Mann used the wet-plate collodion photographic process, which involves coating a large glass negative with chemicals and exposing it while still wet, often in the back of her truck after a shoot.

Pro tip: Make sure to check out the gallery shop, which has one of the most impressive selections of photography books in the world, and stop for a sandwich or cup of tea in the airy cafe, which also hosts free talks and events at lunchtime weekly. Admission is free, but consider putting a donation in the box located in the gallery lobby.

For something completely different, take the Tube to Temple station and walk just a block to The Courtauld Gallery on the Strand. Located inside the circa-1875 Somerset House, the gallery has one of the most stunning collections of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art in the world. In its elegant, high-ceilinged rooms, there is an iconic piece of art just waiting to be discovered: Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear; Manet’s melancholy A Bar at the Folies-Bergere; Gauguin’s Nevermore; and work by masters Rousseau, Degas, Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and more. The upscale cafe offers an excellent lunch menu and a large outdoor dining area in the Somerset House courtyard. Admission to the gallery is £5 (about $8 at current exchange rates).

Hidden Treasures
London is full of parks, squares and streets with interesting shops that many tourists miss. Here are a few worth wandering off the beaten path to see.1.) Soho Square is ringed by some of the most-pricey real estate in the world housing some of the most noted companies, including 20th Century Fox and Bloomsbury Publishing. The shaded square itself, with its fanciful timbered garden hut at the center, is always full of picnickers and those just lounging in the dappled sunlight. Concerts are often held in the square and music lovers can stop by the bench dedicated to late singer Kirsty MacColl, who immortalized the park in her song “Soho Square” from her Titanic Days album.

2.) Victoria Embankment Gardens between Blackfriars and Waterloo Bridge on the Thames is another lush place to people watch, have a picnic or view the various sculptures along its manicured walkways lined with meticulously maintained flower beds. There’s a cafe in the garden serving ice cream and cold drinks and the Embankment Underground station has an exit right into the heart of the gardens.

3.) Charing Cross Road and Cecil Street are book-lovers’ heaven. Helene Hanff immortalized the former in her book, 84 Charing Cross Road, about an American literature lover who had a 20-plus year relationship with the staff of the Marks & Co. Bookshop. That store is long-gone (a plaque marks the spot), but Charing Cross and Cecil Street are lined with dozens of bookstores, selling new, used, antique and specialty books. Start off at Foyles, the London institution that sells the latest titles and often has free concerts happening upstairs in the cafe.

What’s For Tea?
London is an expensive city, but there are plenty of inexpensive – and delicious – options for dining, including one that offers a bit of history.

The Crypt Cafe at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church in Trafalgar Square lets you have breakfast, lunch or dinner with the dead. The 18th century crypt is beautifully preserved and you literally dine on top of the ancient burial vaults of old Londoners. All dishes – try a quiche or a hearty bowl of soup with a fresh roll – are prepared onsite using local ingredients. The Crypt Cafe offers an excellent traditional English tea (£8.50) with sandwiches and scones and if you happen to be there on Friday, try the fish and chips (£7.95). Try dinner on a Wednesday night and enjoy jazz performances by local and international artists. The arched, brick ceiling provides amazing acoustics. The dead – I sat over a vault dated 1825 – have, surely, never been so entertained.

How about having your lunch or dinner with a view? The Tate Modern Restaurant located on the top floor of the Tate Modern museum, has arguably the best view in London, looking across the Thames to the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Even if you don’t want to see the exhibits (but you will, and the Gauguin retrospective opens Sept. 30 with one of the biggest exhibitions of his work ever assembled), the Tate’s home in the massive, disused power station has become a familiar landmark on the South Bank. The menu is not huge, but what counts is the use of fresh ingredients and local foods. Prices range from £12 to £16 for entrees, but there are plenty of smaller dishes, pastries and extensive wine list to choose from. If the char-grilled Cumbrian lamb steak is on the menu, I highly recommend it, and fresh fish is brought in daily. You’ll want to book ahead to make sure you get a table by the windows.

A Night at the Theatre
Two wildly different shows are on in London’s West End this summer, and both have star-power to burn. Joanna Lumley (Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous), David Hyde Pierce (Niles from Frasier) and English theatre maverick Mark Rylance are the leads in La Bête at Comedy Theatre, which continues until Sept. 4 before transferring to Broadway. A flop when it first premiered in New York in the early 1990s, David Hirson’s comedy written in iambic pentameter pits the head of royal theatre troupe (Pierce) against a self-aggrandizing street performer (Rylance) being foisted on the company by its princess patron (Lumley). Rylance chews the scenery in a hilarious monologue outlining his comic gifts, and while the last half sagged a bit, this trio of funny folks is worth the price of admission, which ranges from £25 to £55.

Over at Apollo Theatre, British acting legends David Suchet and Zoe Wanamaker have been wowing the critics in the revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons. It’s Wanamaker who walks off the show as the mother of a post-World War II family unraveling after its revealed her husband (Suchet) cut corners by allowing defective parts to be used in Air Force planes that ultimately crashed. The flashes of anger and devastation lurking just under her forced gaiety as a suburban wife build to a gut-wrenching crescendo as the secret is revealed. Miller’s dialogue and situations are a bit melodramatic, but director Howard Davies strips away the pretense and finds fresh undercurrents of emotion to mine. Tickets are £31 to £60.50 and shows are booking to October.

Collin Kelley just returned from Europe, where he traveled and guest lectured on social media at Worcester College at Oxford University. He is the author of the novel Conquering Venus and three collections of poetry. Read his blog on Red Room. The photos above are all courtesy Collin Kelley.