Buon Natale!

The lights are up on Via del Corso, the market is in Piazza Navona, and I've spotted a lot of Santa cyclists, rollerskaters and buskers all around the city in the last few days. You can't shop anywhere without walking into mountains of panettone, we have a lovely big tree up in our house, and outside the Vatican there is even a life-size representation of the nativity scene. Christmas has come to Rome.

However, despite all of these festive changes, I have to reluctantly admit that Rome just can't do Christmas quite like London. In the UK the run up to Christmas tends to start somewhere around mid-October, which come December is so tiresome that most of us are secretly begging for the whole thing to be over with. Yet in my first run up to Christmas away from home, I am actually finding myself daydreaming of mince pies, mulled wine, frosty pavements, blinding Christmas decorations and of course the relentless sound of Christmas songs on the radio. It is the 22nd of December and I haven't even managed to find a mince pie in this city, I've barely heard a peep of Mariah Carey or The Pogues, let alone glimpsed a bit of Love Actually or Elf on the telly. Yes, despite my love for Italy I miss old-fashioned English Christmas, which is why I'm flying home tomorrow night to have a proper celebration of this wonderful season in gluttonous, OTT, freezing, festive England. 

Buon Natale a Tutti!

Ancora ti amo Roma, even if you haven't quite got the hang of Christmas

My Tuscan Summer

Somehow I was lucky enough to spend a full two months travelling around Tuscany this summer.

The first place I ventured to was Cala Moresca near Porto Santo Stefano, a point of Italy's coast which directly faces the Isola del Giglio where the Costa Concordia famously sank in 2012. We could actually see the Concordia (albeit very faintly) across the sea from us as we sat at the restaurant one night for dinner!

The sea here was honestly the best sea I have ever seen and swum in in my life. There is no beach - you just jump right in from the cliff edges. There was also a swimming pool located atop one of the cliffs - but why anyone would choose that over the shimmering blue sea I have no idea.

Cala Moresca - Yes there are people sitting up there high on the cliffs waiting to jump into the rocky waters below

The sea at Cala Moresca again - I think I could swim here every summer for the rest of my life and not get tired of it

See those two dots of light in the distance? That's the Costa Concordia!

Sunset view from our dinner table

After spending 4 weeks by the sea, we moved around visiting different cities.

Siena was small, extremely pretty, and historically the ancient rival to Florence. Every summer there is a famous horse race here, the Palio di Siena, which packs out the main square in the town. Luckily we weren't visiting on that day.

Siena's Cathedral

From the floor inside the cathedral

...and the ceiling (part of it)

Siena's clock tower in the main piazza

Pienza is a gorgeous little town that we stumbled across in between visiting some of Tuscany's more famous cities. Smaller even than Siena and Pisa and nowhere near as heavily jammed with tourists, I loved it mainly for its romantically named streets:

Street of Kisses

Street of Fortune

Street of Love

And also for these nuns:

Florence was very busy, very hot and very beautiful, I want to go back this autumn to see it again because I only got to spend one day there, along with probably thousands of other tourists. 

Cathedral of Firenze

Across the Arno

I can't seem to resist documenting sweet shops on my travels

There's only one reason people go to Pisa. The town didn't have much to offer other than the leaning tower, but nevertheless I think it is definitely worth making the trip and I'm glad I can tick it off my Italian bucket list.

This next picture is just something I took from our garden one night when the moon was absolutely huge and brilliantly shiny (this photo doesn't quite do it justice, but with the sunflowers and mountains there it's still pretty nice).

There is such a wealth of culture, history and amazingly good food in Tuscany that it was hard to leave at the end of summer, but then I remembered I was going back to my favourite city in the world so I didn't mind too much.

Una Notte a Napoli

Before I went to Naples I was told three things:

-        

       - Don’t wear any jewellery

-         

       - Keep an eye on your bag at all times and definitely don’t take a backpack

-          

       - Do not venture into the Spanish quarter because you won’t come back out again

Well, I managed to break all of these rules and still come out of Naples alive; and I’m so glad I did.

Naples is not a beautiful city on the surface - it’s crowded, noisy, a little bit tacky, and every piece of potentially beautiful architecture is covered in graffiti, but despite all these things the city definitely has its own particular charm. Naples sits by the sea and its main road runs parallel to the coast line which gives you a nice view of the Mediterranean, yet the road itself is full of the usual high street chains and nothing much of particular note. However, if you step off this noisy street, the rest of Naples is made up of a huge complex of wide apartment block buildings built between narrow streets and alleyways. There are religious shrines on every corner, laundry hangs from every balcony, live fish and fresh groceries are sold from corner shops, and lively Neopolitans shout and gesture in their own Italian dialect while playing cards and bartering in the street. 

Bay of Naples and Mount Vesuvius

See what I mean about the graffiti?

Nicola, a native Neapolitan and our wonderful self-appointed guide for the weekend, took us on a trip to the top of Vesuvius, the only active volcano left in mainland Europe. Vesuvius, which famously brought about the ruin of Pompeii in A.D. 79,  towers majestically above the city and is easy to see from miles around. We made our way up to the summit which amazingly was still emitting smoke. The view from the top is wonderful and all around us we could also see rock 'rivers' and debris left over from previous eruptions. We also passed  the remains of the old cable car station which used to bring visitors up to the summit but which is now completely destroyed thanks to the last eruption in 1944.

Napoli & Vesuvius

Summit of Vesuvius

Alex & Nicola at the summit

Vesuvius is the most monitored volcano in the world because of its particularly volatile nature and also due to the vicinity of Naples and many other smaller towns on its borders. Nicola has lived his whole life under Vesuvius and told us how school children in nearby towns regularly have to practise ‘Volcano drills’ and evacuations much like others practise fire drills. The people living next to Vesuvius have at most a 15 day warning before an eruption, and each town and the families within it are issued with a twin town and family elsewhere in Italy to evacuate to in an emergency. The people of Naples are characteristically relaxed about living underneath a fire-breathing volcano. On the drive up to the summit we passed houses, restaurants and guest houses, all just metres from the top!

We were also lucky enough to visit a beach on the Amalfi Coast about an hour’s drive from Napoli which was stunningly beautiful.

We also managed to fit in an evening out in Portici, a small town near Napoli where we sipped cocktails on the pier, and quite bizarrely even got our own little Italian audience purely because we were speaking in English.

This next picture doesn't really have anything to do with this blog entry, but I found this huge piece of graffiti on the pier in Portici and couldn't resist taking a photo:

Roman Roads

I had heard many things about driving in Italy, but one thing I didn't expect was that once you get used to the craziness, chaos, and general lack of regard for the highway code here, driving is probably the best way of getting around Rome, (aside from on foot - public transport here is a no-go unless you don't mind waiting anything up to an hour for your bus).

Whereas at home in quaint little England I'm used to getting around in a tiny Ford Ka (where the gear stick starts to shake if I travel at anything above 60mph), in Italy I have discovered that you get a lot more respect on the road if you're vehicle is somewhat on the larger side. On the cobbled and narrow streets of Rome I am now driving what I can only describe as a small land-rover (I think it's proper name is a Daihatsu Terios 4x4 which might be more helpful to anyone who knows anything about cars), which is a challenge in itself before I even take into account the actions of my fellow motorists, not to mention driving on the right (wrong) hand side of the road. Early on in my trip, while taking the car for a 'test drive' with my Italian host, I looked at the jumbled mess of traffic in front of me and wondered aloud which lane I should be aiming for. He merely gave a mighty chuckle and said 'There are no lanes!' as if only a crazy person would expect to find lanes on a road where four cars (and frequently more) can quite comfortably jostle alongside each other.

I have discovered that there are some benefits to being surrounded by crazy drivers though - it means that if I end up getting completely lost and doing something utterly illogical (I have nightmares about entering one of Rome's many one-way streets from the wrong direction) then no one bats an eyelid. However, one downside to this laissez-faire attitude to driving is that seatbelts are seen as strictly optional here rather than a necessity, and concentrating on the madness of Roman roads can be quite the challenge when you have two seven year olds practising gymnastics in the back, while the nine year old in-between them constantly leans forward to change the radio station blocking out half your view of the road, not to mention the 11 year old sitting next to you who refuses to be parked more than three feet away from the front door. Most days it's a miracle we make it home unscathed.

If I ever move to Italy again, this will be my new car

Welcome to EATaly*

*Not the shop

One of the upsides of living here with an Italian family is the abundance of fresh food and delicious delicacies that are on offer to me 24 hours a day.

The downside is my complete inability to resist any of it.

Every morning I am welcomed into the kitchen by a huge tub of Nutella, biscuit jars full to bursting, little mini toasts and jam, cornettos (croissants) filled with Nutella and dusted with icing sugar, plums, oranges, cherries and apples, (if I'm honest the fruit is usually ignored in favour of sweeter treats), cereal con cioccolata, fresh bread, proscuitto, and anything else that's been picked up from the local bakery.

Before I moved to Rome I dismissed the image of Italians as pizza-and-pasta-eating-only foreigners as a lazy stereotype. Well, I have since discovered that I couldn't have been more wrong. I don't think a day has gone by that I haven't eaten one or the other in the 2 months that I've been here. As an American girl from my language school lamented to me the other day - 'I'm just not used to it!'. I completely agreed with her at the time but if I'm honest this style of living is pure heaven for me, having arrived from a tiny shared kitchen in London where it was a treat if I could manage to cobble together any kind of meal that resembled something nutritionally balanced.

Italians are also much more refined in their eating habits than the English. Where we are inclined to pile something of everything onto our plates, to an Italian the idea of doing so is enough to put them completely off their food, hence the importance of the primo piatta and secondo piatta followed by (the most important in my opinion) la dolce. Italians also rarely snack and stick to strict meal times, which must be how they manage to eat bread, bread and more bread, and still look like they could do with a good fattening up.

Thus, while I am here - despite the consequences that will no doubt come from possessing an extremely English metabolism - I intend to simply do as the Romans do and live la dolce vita (with the operative word being dolce).

Just to give you an idea of the treats I'm struggling to resist at my local panetteria

Ciao Londra, Ciao Roma!

I promise I will try to make this blog have more substance than style and not just be pages of endless pictures, but I feel I ought to have at least one gushy post in which I try and show the never-ending charm and beauty of Rome -  which for me is an undeniable fact and one of the main reasons why I have always wanted to move here. Every street you turn down in this city seems more gorgeous than the last, and although some might say that this feeling won't stay forever, its an impression which I honestly don't think will ever leave me. Everyone knows the famous tourist spots in Rome, but here are few of my favourite parts with which visitors to Rome might not be so familiar (plus a few of the usual suspects):

The dome of San Pietro from Villa Borghese

Bubbles in Piazza del Popolo

The Tiber

Pasta, Gnocchi, Fruit & Vegetables near Piazza Risorgimento

Isola Tiberina - once home to the ancient temple of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing, it is now fittingly home to a hospital

Tiber by night, alongside summer bars and market stalls which spring up every July and August

Mirrored floor of the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna

Restaurant in Trastevere with a strict policy on tourist menus

Graffiti in Trastevere

Henry in Rome

Mouth watering Pizza's in Trastevere

Colosseum

Roman Forum

Largo di Torre Argentina -  once held four temples and Pompey's Theatre, now a home and playground for the stray cats of Rome

Monti

View of San Pietro again, this time from Rome's Botanical Gardens