Assisi’s Quiet Police

by Dave Seminara on

The 13th century Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi, Italy is one of the world’s most spectacular places of worship. From the moment you walk into this magical place, your eyes are drawn to the glorious frescoes, the stunning stained glass windows and the Franciscan Friars in their brown robes. But on a recent visit with my two little boys, ages 2 and 4, I was also captivated by a much less heralded institution: the Silencio Police.

Both the upper and lower basilicas have uniformed men, dressed like snazzy police officers complete with flat, wide brimmed hats who patrol the churches, scolding unruly visitors through wireless microphones. The first Silencio Cop we encountered had a voice that was so deep and gravely that it sounded like a Hollywood voice over for God, delivering an angry message to a non-believer.

When I first saw the Silencio Cop in his uniform, holding the microphone, I immediately conjured an image of the cop from the Village People. Only this guy didn’t sing YMCA, he had just three commands he imparted: “SILENCIO!” “SHHHHH!” Or “No Photo!” And they didn’t smile or dance, they just looked stern and grimaced at people.But most of the time, he just barked, “Silencio!” If the offender didn’t quiet down after that, he’d shush them to drive home his point. We visited the basilica on a busy Saturday afternoon and the place was packed, so there were plenty of people who got silencio’d, including my kids.

One could argue that the Silencio Cops were the loudest people in the place, but I was taken with them and the concept of policing quiet. I spent much of the rest of the day bellowing “SILENCIO!” at my children, who enjoyed returning the command. On the way out, I asked about the Silencio Cops and was told that they were paid security guards.

A place like the Basilica of St. Francis commands quiet but I think the concept should be expanded beyond places of worship. In an era of cellphones and a million other mobile devices, silence is becoming an increasingly rare commodity.

I would love to spend a day riding the Metro in Washington, D.C., the “L” in Chicago, or the subway in New York in an official looking uniform with a battery operated wireless microphone on silencio patrol. I would look for people talking too loudly on their cellphones, and then I’d silencio them, and if they ignored me, I’d follow up with a good old-fashioned shushing. It might not work, but it’d be a hell of a lot of fun.

Once Upon a Time in the Wee Small Hours of Ireland

by Jill Paris on

Agusti Curto Calbet, the Night Manager at The Ritz-Carlton, Powerscourt, in County Wicklow, Ireland, arrived to work for his midnight shift on a cold February evening. Ordinarily, during his scheduled time at the five-star luxury hotel, a guest might phone in for a wake-up reminder, the arrangement of an early morning taxi, or perhaps a bottle of champagne for a romantic interlude. But, as the young Spaniard was about to discover, this fated night was about to become anything but ordinary.

A woman staying in one of the Mountain View Suites with her husband rang the Reception desk after 2:00 a.m. in a most agitated state.

“I hate to bother you at this late hour, but a very valuable item of mine has disappeared from my room!”

“I’m so sorry to hear that Madame,” he replied. “What does it look like?”

Whatever it is, he thought, it surely must be priceless.

“It’s a small, white Teddy Bear,” she explained in between sobs. “One of its button-eyes is slightly broken and…and…it’s irreplaceable! I’ve carried it with me for over 35 years!”

As her voice faded into low sniffles, the 30-year-old Night Manager kept the lady calm and assured her all would be well.

“Where did you see it last?” he asked.

“It was on the bed. Maybe it went astray when the room was cleaned today?”

Agusti told her that the stuffed animal couldn’t have gone far and that every effort would be made to retrieve it.
He first phoned Loss Prevention to see if a toy matching its description had been turned in to the Lost & Found. No such luck. Glancing at the clock, then at the stack of paperwork on his desk, he could have easily passed the call onto the morning staff by writing a note describing the events, but instead, intrigued by the guest’s desperate longing to find her keepsake, he decided, “No. I’m going to do this myself.”

He summoned the Housekeeping night team on duty to meet him in the Laundry Room. Five minutes later, Rafal Mlynarski, Andrzej Koziol, and Cassio Schuler were soon listening to Agusti re-enact the woman’s plea.

The trio was eager to help find the misplaced bear, but suddenly the reality of sorting through mountains of soiled linens made their eyes widen at the sight of the ten or eleven trolleys before them. Each cart overflowed with tightly wrapped bed sheets and soggy, wet towels. This quest took on the classic “finding a needle in a haystack” scenario, only the lost pin in question had paws, and these bales weighed much more than straw. The unpleasant stench prompted Cassio’s much-needed encouragement, “Don’t worry, guys! This is not a ‘dirty’ job. We have to go for it!”

They all agreed, then split into two groups with each duo dumping out the purple bags in unison. Towel by towel, sheet by sheet, they toiled together in the basement. As the heaping 20 kilos of laundry slowly dwindled, it was Agusti who finally discovered the Teddy Bear entwined in the folds of a king sheet.

“Look!” he shouted. “Here it is!”

An eruption of cheers and hoots filled the Laundry Room as though their favorite team had just won the World Cup. Rafal decided to tidy up their fuzzy friend and lightly sprayed its worn fleece with a bit of air freshener.

“Ah, that’s better,” he said, handing it back to his leader.

Even though dawn soon approached, Agusti somehow knew the woman would not mind his early morning delivery. But before returning the precious bundle, he crept down to the culinary department and placed five homemade wrapped cookies inside a green hotel gift sack complete with the wandering bear peering out over the top.

As the woman opened the door in her bathrobe, she found the almost seven-foot-tall Agusti on the other side holding the bag, his dark brown eyes twinkling back at her, with a smile as big as his heart.

“Look who we found in the kitchen looking for cookies!” he regaled, selflessly omitting the painstaking search details.

“Oh! I thought he was gone for good!” she cried out. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

Agusti stood motionless as she tenderly removed the one-eyed treasure and clutched it to her chest, her expression showing reverent gratitude.

“You see, this bear once belonged to my little boy,” she confided softly. She explained how she and her husband, now in their 60s, take it with them wherever they go.

The lady looked up at Agusti and whispered, “He’s now an angel in Heaven.”

Agusti knew his decision to “own” this guest’s problem was meant to be, for his beloved father had passed away before he was even born. His mother had raised him and two older brothers on her own in Barcelona.

As he bid the woman good-night, he asked if he could assist her with anything else.

“I don’t think there’s anything you could do better,” she said sweetly. “It’s as if you’ve given me back my son.”

He was all too familiar with the power of a mother’s love and right there, in the wee small hours of the morning, let go of his tears.

Jill Paris is a writer living in Los Angeles. Her essays have been featured in The Best Travel Writing 2009, The Saturday Evening Post, Travel Africa, Thought Catalog and other publications. She has an M.A. in Humanities and a Master of Professional Writing degree from USC. She travels for the inexplicable human connection.

[Flickr image via neal]

Love Among the Ruins: Once Upon A Spring In Greece

by Don George on

I was sifting through the multiple layers of my travel journals, letters, and photos this past weekend when, like an archaeologist happening upon delicate shards of Hellenic pottery, I discovered these handwritten notes on fraying sheets of lined, curling notebook paper. I don’t remember exactly when I wrote these words, but they vividly brought back the long-ago springtime they describe, the end of a year when I was living on a teaching fellowship in Athens, fresh out of college, trying to chart the course of my life’s path. And especially they conjured the woman whose memory remains a precious shard of Attic magic among the runes and ruins of my life.

It happens at some point every spring: I will be driving innocently along some rural route, and suddenly a certain slant of sunlight will recall the way the light filtered through the pine trees along the road that wound up the coast from Athens to the little taverna no one seemed to know about — no one except Gisela, the beautiful and mysterious woman with whom I had fallen ineluctably in love that spring of 1976.

We would install ourselves in peeling white wooden chairs around a stolid wooden table on the beach, under the pines, and the kindly taverna owner would bring us huge chunks of hard, delicious bread, a salad of feta cheese, tomatoes, cucumbers and black olives, and glasses of retsina.

We would eat and sip, but mostly we would watch the shimmering sea and listen to the sighing pines, censing the air with their tangy perfume.

I re-create this scene, and suddenly that whole mind-opening, life-transforming Grecian year revives in a sun-flooded succession of images:

I recall the breath-stopping, time-skipping beauty of just-blossomed scarlet poppies against white marble ruins at Olympia.

I recall the Peloponnese mountain family who insisted on sharing their meager Easter feast with my parents and me.

I recall the ethereal geometry and bony patina of the Acropolis at dawn, before the tourists arrived; and the soul-stirring rite of reading Plato, Socrates and Aristotle as Apollo’s first rays illumined the site.

I recall unfathomable connections on the island of Crete — the magical frescoes and sere splendors of Knossos, and the painter from Chania who showed me the island’s harbors and meadows, churches and town squares through his eyes.

I recall the craggy monasteries and worldly monks of sacred Mount Athos, and the sensual abandon of the long, embracing beach at Lindos, on Rhodes, where I communed for a week with a ragtag band of European pilgrims who were all seeking some sort of Aegean answer.Aegean answers: Hungrily, hesitantly, I would unfold for Gisela my despairs and my dreams, but mostly I would talk about Greece: about the clarity of the rock and the light and how it was teaching me to attend to the present; about the earthy kindness I had encountered everywhere; about the sheer age of the sites and the accumulation of wisdom and sadness and celebration that seemed to hang, poignant, in the Attic air.

Summer came and I left — for Africa and then graduate school, a long, winding road. I never wrote to her, never heard from her.

Now, half of my life later, I wonder: Do we craft our memories, or do our memories craft us?

Now, half of my life later, I know: I went to Greece seeking the roots of Western civilization, and returned with a rootlessness I have never lost.

And every spring the owner shuffles toward us, bearing a laden tray. The sea shimmers. The pines cense and sigh.

The Attic sunlight gleams again in Gisela’s laughing eyes.

[flickr image via steve.wilde]

7 Great Hotels Where You Can Cook Like a Local

by McLean Robbins on

One of the best parts about a vacation? The food. We love trying local delicacies and adding to our recipe books with tips and techniques learned from our travels. Immerse yourself in native cuisine with these seven great cooking experiences that combine luxury travel with fun, hands-on cooking classes.

Time to Thai in Bangkok
Learn traditional Thai cooking in Bangkok at Lebua. You’ll cook a five-course meal with a Thai chef in this three-hour class taught in both English and Thai for the exceptionally affordable rate of $160 per person. Combine it with an overnight at this all-suite luxury property for a true one-of-a-kind experience.

Game & Guinness in Ireland
Fish for wild trout and learn to make homemade chowder at the Guinness family’s 18th C estate-turned-hotel in Cong, Ireland.

Green Gardening in Jordan
Garden alongside locals at the bio-garden at Radisson Blu Tala Bay Resort in Aqaba Jordan, then learn to cook traditional Jordan dishes like Mansaff (roast lamb in a saffron yogurt sauce) using the fruits of your labor.

Shopping and Tapas in Barcelona
Shop Barcelona’s legendary Boqueria with Spanish Chef Roberto Holz, then prepare a Mediterranean lunch at Hotel Arts Barcelona.

Surf n’ Seafood in Nevis
“Dive and dine” for your own spiny lobster at Four Seasons Nevis, then prepare it at a traditional Caribbean barbecue.

Food Safari in Australia
Discovery the bounty of Australia’s Kangaroo Island at Southern Ocean Lodge. The hotel hosts an annual KI Food Safari. Activities during the six-day journey will include hands-on classes with the island’s purveyors, who operate on a mostly small scale, sustainable and personal basis while tasting the unique products straight from the source.

Say Olé in Mexico
Learn the secrets behind perfect salsa, ceviche and more at one or three-day cooking classes (shown in the photo, above) at the luxurious Capella Pedregal in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. We’d suggest the three-day class – it includes a trip to a local farmers market.

Travelers And Bloggers Get Together With New Web App

by Chris Owen on

Travelers planning a trip often turn to a trusted travel information source, one they may have used before and had good results. That source might be a guide book, web site or travel blog like this one where intrepid travelers scour the planet for experiences and information. A new web application now hopes to connects travelers with travel bloggers in what could be a very viable and relevant source of travel information.

At Uencounter.me, travelers and bloggers create a personalized virtual pin map to mark locations of interest. Travelers might mark places they want to visit. Bloggers mark places they have already visited and produced content about.

“Tens of thousands of travel blogs exist on the web and the Uencounter.me Team is excited to provide a venue that offers the bloggers a resource for additional exposure,” said CEO Leslyn Kantner in a release. “We feel they are a perfect complement to our platform.”

The nature of the application encourages interactions between users about pins on the map. For example, I signed up and began by placing a pin in my hometown. Immediately, other pins pop up on the board from bloggers who had been there and written about it. The information and location of those pins came with a date and other background information to quickly scan before going further.

Bloggers are able to add a link to their blogs on the description of each pin they place on the map and Uencounter.me offers bloggers a badge to place on their webpage so that readers can link directly to the bloggers map.

Another use: Businesses and organizations can drop pins for where their customers or group members are located.



Flickr photo by Adams K.