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May 14, 2010November 8, 2011

Rome by Night

To commemorate the Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves magazine — now on sale online, and at newsstands nationwide — Rick is blogging about the 20 top destinations featured in that issue. One of those destinations is Rome after dark.

Once you’ve been out on the town in Rome after dark, going out for the evening in a big American city is never quite the same. Rome has a few fast-food joints, but they’re held at bay by a stony cityscape that celebrates slow food instead. Waiters have worked so long together that they seem to communicate on their own frequency as they scurry their dishes back and forth. Scruffy boys selling single roses circulate among sidewalk tables, testing a wary truce they’ve worked out with the restaurateur — and finessing sales pitches that almost add charm to the ambience. Cars are lodged sloppily on curbs, and black-and-white notices announcing the newly dead are pasted haphazardly to walls.

Each slice of downtown Rome changes throughout the day and evening. What might be a tiny vegetable market in the day (Monet painting) becomes a destination for dressy couples going out to eat in the evening (how do her high heels work on the cobbles?)…and then, late at night, an edgy gathering place for those who ate at home and are now all about drinking. Squares enlivened by fountains shine after dark. While the architect who designed those Baroque fountains had no inkling of electronic illumination, the fountains seem made-to-order for thoughtful floodlighting.

Back in 1999, I went to Rome ready to make a TV episode entitled “The Best of the Eternal City.” But as the millennium approached, the best of the Eternal City was all still under scaffolding. I was traumatized. I remember sitting down with my producer and cameraman at the hotel’s breakfast table and exploring our options. Half the visual icons of the city were marred by scaffolding. Not only would the show be ugly if we shot it as planned; but by the time it aired, all the scaffolding would be down, and the famous sights would be better-looking than ever — and just perfect for a TV crew like ours.

We considered going home; heading for Sicily to film a program there; or rewriting the script to give Rome a new angle. I had never done this before (and I hope to never do it again), but we decided to salvage something out of Rome and come up with a new script. The show was called “Rome: Baroque, After Dark,” and shooting the city after dark turned out to be a delight. Rather than arenas and temples, we enjoyed convivial piazzas with kids who kick soccer balls until midnight, hand gestures that mean “absolutely delicious,” and men fawning over their neighbors’ Vespas.

The shoot worked out fine. And two years later, in the next millennium, we came back and shot the show we had intended to shoot in 1999. The scaffolding was all down, and the Eternal City was spiffed up fit for a caesar.

May 12, 2010November 8, 2011

Birthday in Tangier

Monday was my birthday, and no one in Morocco knew it. To celebrate, I took a couple of hours alone just floating through the back streets of Tangier…observing.

Looking at a window filled with photos of adorable little boys wearing fezzes and gauzy girls dressed like princesses, I realize why I like the display windows of family photographers throughout the world. They show the cultural ideals to the extreme — the way mothers dream their children might look — and provide insight.

I don’t know if men run the show here, but they outnumber women in the cafés 100 to 1. I want to take a skinny teenage girl’s photo. She giggles with her friends, shows me her wedding ring, and says her husband would have her head if she let me do that. Yesterday my local friend told me, “Moroccan men like their women meaty, not skinny. But that is changing with the young generation and television.”

Old men walk around like sages in robes with pointy hooded jellabas. It makes me wonder whether a teenager might say, “Dad, I know you wear it and Grandpa wore it, but I’m just not going to wear the pointy hood.” Seeing these old men in pointy, rough cloth hooded robes, I keep wanting to ask, “Where’s the gnome conference?”

Wandering through the market, I collect a collage of vivid images. A butcher has made a colorful curtain of entrails, creating mellow stripes of all textures. Camera-shy Berber tribeswomen are in town today selling goat cheese wrapped in palm leaves. A man lumbers through the crowd pushing a ramshackle cart laden with a huge side of beef. He makes a honking sound, and I think he’s just being funny. But it isn’t the comical beep-beep I’d make behind a wheelbarrow. Small-time shipping is his livelihood, the only horn he has is his vocal chords, and he is on a mission.

Wandering deeper into the back lanes, I see henna stencils in plastic wrap — a quick and modern way to stain the designs onto your hands. Another gnome walks by with a pointy hood and a long beard — half white and half hennaed red.

Tiny shops buzz with activity. One small place, no bigger than a small bedroom, has been divided horizontally with a second floor five feet high. It houses a rickety loom on each level, employing four men who wiggle in and out of their workstations each day… all their lives.

Around the corner, the click-click-click of a mosaic maker draws me into another tiny shop, where a man with legs collapsed under himself sits all day chiseling intentionally imperfect mosaic chips (as only Allah is perfect, the imperfection is considered beautiful) to fit a pattern for a commissioned work.

It’s pouring rain, water careens down the stepped brick lane, and, exploring on, I feel like a wet dog. Drenched, I follow a colorfully scarved women into a community bakery. She carries a platter of doughy loaves under a towel ready to be baked into bread. The baker, artfully wielding the broom-handled wooden spatula, receives her loaves. He hardly misses a beat as he pushes and pulls the neighborhood’s baked goods — fish, stews, bread, sunflowers, and cookies — into and out of his oven. After observing the baking action, I’m dry in minutes.

Spending my birthday in Tangier, barely seeing another tourist, I am struck by how the energy here just makes me happy. This Moroccan city is not pro-West or anti-West. It’s simply people making the best of their lives. This society seems to be growing more modern and affluent…and on its own terms. And it’s a joy to experience it.

May 10, 2010November 8, 2011

The Flavors of Europe

If you are what you eat, I am the best of Europe. But my appreciation of good food was slow in coming.

On my first solo trip to Europe — just after my high-school graduation — I packed along a big plastic tube filled with a swirl of peanut butter and strawberry jam. I figured that bringing this along would let me get my nutrition free (or, at least, on my mom’s grocery-shopping dollar). When the tube was finally squeezed empty, I resorted to jam. I remember being thankful that I liked baguettes, because that was the foundation of most of my meals. I became expert at spreading just a film of jam on the bread to give it some flavor, then washing it down with Fanta.

(I’m in Spain as I type now, and just the other day the wonderful, crusty local bread roughed up the roof of my mouth. I experienced a happy déjÃ vu of those early vagabond trips, recalling how the roof of my mouth was perpetually tender from the hard crusts.)

When I returned home from that formative first trip, I was literally sick. I had some kind of physical/nervous breakdown, and the doctor declared me “chronically undernourished.” When I started college that fall, I took a nutrition course. And I’ve never had a jam sandwich or Fanta in Europe since.

Today I provide my office staff free drinks in the cooler, but no pop. When we’re planning our tour itineraries, I always speak up in the interest of good eating — our travelers must experience the local cuisine at its best. And my passion in my research these days is to find great places to eat.

I’m currently in Europe updating guidebooks. My favorite thing about the rhythm of my 12-hour research days is the last three of those hours — blitzing the restaurants on my list to check existing recommendations and consider new ones, and then returning to my favorite place at the very end of the evening. Body aching as if I just ran a marathon, mind spinning with new ideas and additions to the book, I sit down and let the chef/owner cook me up whatever he wants me to experience. At the end of the day, good chefs (not pretentious ones…just good ones) seem to thoroughly enjoy taking off their apron, washing up, and sitting down to share a glass of wine with their last customer of the day — that’s me — eating their favorite dish.

May 7, 2010January 5, 2018

Dinner with Franklin, Part 2: Italy’s Violent Love of Tomatoes

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I like eating in a tiny restaurant because you have contact with the chef. It’s like talking to your masseuse as she works. After a day of sightseeing, I sit down to my favorite enoteca in Verona with Franklin, my guide. Our chef consults with us, and we encourage him to bring us whatever he’s most excited about today. Pleased with the freedom to dazzle us, he goes to work.

Just after the antipasti arrive, Franklin’s wife calls and says, “Don’t eat too much cheese or dessert.” Franklin, who’s not thin, surveys our table and considers enjoying with anything less than abandon the enticing parade of food that has just begun. Then he sighs and tells me, “Many people live their entire lives and they do not have this experience.” I say, “That’s a pity.” He says, “Yes. It’s like a man being born and being surrounded by beautiful women, and never making the love.”

I love the way Italians live life with abandon — and how they enjoy their food. As we eat and drink, Franklin opens up about his passion for good eating. He says, “In Italy, you don’t need to be high class to appreciate high culture, cuisine, opera. It’s the only culture I know like this. Here, a heart surgeon talks with a carpenter about cuisine.”

And, as guides tend to do — especially after a little wine — along with the commentary on cuisine, he mixes in culture, history, and politics. I find myself scribbling notes on the paper tablecloth.

Franklin is frustrated with how Italy’s north subsidizes the south. He complains that the south is “corrupt, inefficient, lazy, no organization.” I remind him, “They say here in Veneto, Lombardi, and the north, you are like the Germans of Italy.” He says, “Even today, the south still has its organized crime. With Fascism, the Camorra went to the USA. Mussolini had zero tolerance. And he got things done. That’s one reason why he was popular. And one reason why Mussolini is still popular. Then, after World War II, rather than tolerate communism, the government allowed the Camorra to re-establish itself in Italy.”

I ask him if he enjoyed The Godfather. Franklin says, “I watched The Godfather with a certain pride because of the importance of food in that movie. Especially the scenes with tomatoes. Marlon Brando watched tomatoes ripen. When he said something like, ‘Become red, you bastards,’ to the yellow tomatoes, that took me back to Sicily and the home of my father.”

Our conversation drifts to how modern societies mirror their ancient predecessors — or don’t. Comparing this historic continuity — ancient and today — of Rome, Greece, and Egypt, we agree the biggest difference is Egypt, a relatively ramshackle society that feels a far cry from the grandiosity of the pharaohs and pyramids. Greece, which wrote the ancient book on aesthetics, developed an unfortunate appetite in modern times for poorly planned concrete sprawl. But Rome has the most continuity. Today’s Romans, like their ancient ancestors, are still passionate about wine, food, and the conviviality offered by the public square.

Our chef, Giuliano, comes by, and I compliment him. He recalls my last visit, saying I sat at the same table. I’m always impressed by how people who care remember their clients. He serves thousands of people. Two years later, I come by, and he still knows just where I sat. It’s the same in hotels. I don’t remember which room I slept in last time, but so often the proprietor greets me saying, “I put you in your room…number 510.”

On my last visit to Milano, three years ago, I got a haircut. I remember really enjoying my barber. I needed a haircut on this visit, too, so I walked vaguely in the direction where I thought his shop was. Not sure whether I’d found the right place, I popped in on a barber. It seemed like the one, but I really didn’t know. Ten minutes into my haircut, the barber — having gotten to know my hair — realized he knew my hair and asked me if I hadn’t been here before. He had a tactile memory not of me…but of a head of hair he cut that happened to be mine.

I have a feeling Giuliano will remember my seat the next time I drop into Verona’s Enoteca Can Grande. And I’ll remember to invite my friend Franklin.

May 4, 2010November 8, 2011

Smithsonian Travels Through the Back Door

As a travel writer, I measure profit by how many people’s trips I impact. By that standard, May 4th is one of the most exciting days in my 30-year-long career. Today, Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves, a special issue of Smithsonian magazine, hits newsstands all over the USA.

The magazine is 104 pages devoted entirely to my favorite places. For me, this is the travel-writing equivalent of giving birth to a child. While I’m a proud papa about my contribution (the writing), the “mother” of this collaboration — if I may call Smithsonian that — is why this baby is so darn beautiful. I’ve never seen my writing mixed with such beautiful art, and then so expertly laid out.

The experience was humbling. I learned years ago that life is too short to work with people who aren’t really talented and committed. And, just as important, life is too short to work with people you don’t enjoy. In other words, collaborating with talented and fun people brings this workaholic great joy. My (talented and fun) staff and I can be pretty self-assured. We cook up some great TV, radio, guidebooks, tours, and newspaper articles. But we’ve never produced a magazine. And in short order, we gained great respect for the talent of the people in Washington, DC, who make Smithsonian magazine.

I had my creative tensions with the Smithsonian staff over the course of the project. Now that it’s done, every little tug-of-war I won, I like, and every little tug-of-war they won…I like, too. I called it “censoring” when they took out the more juvenile of my jokes. They politely explained to me that “it’s not censoring, but editing.” Now that the project is finished, I’m glad some of my goofy phrases didn’t make the cut.

It’s human nature to enjoy photos you took, and to favor them at layout time. But I learned quickly to trust the Smithsonian photo editor’s choices. Only a handful of my shots made the cut. And yet — wow! Seeing my writing without my own photos, I was actually thankful.

Smithsonian Presents Travels with Rick Steves is on the newsstands from now through early August, or you can order it online. You can also see plenty of additional content related to the top 20 destinations featured in this issue at www.smithsonian.com/ricksteves.

This is the first of a three-month series of thrice-a-week blog entries that I’m writing to celebrate our collaboration with Smithsonian. Half of my entries will be my best effort to give a fun and tangy dimension to destinations featured in the magazine, and the other half will give a pithy immediacy to the new corners of Europe I’m currently researching.

Thanks for traveling with me and Smithsonian.