Sanctimonious, Severe and Strange

I told #1 early in the week that this was going be the title of my next post, so I imagine he’s thought “so where the hell is it DJ?” a couple times since. It comes from Mitt Romney’s description of Rick Santorum in his new bio. Mitt is not my favorite pol, but I certainly am a fan of alliteration. Mitt spent a lot of his earlier career sucking the life out of companies to make his dough. Nevertheless, if we could replace the current Republican caucus with Mitt clones, we’d likely be a lot better off.

I did a blazing 12 lengths in lane four this morning. There wasn’t a nice rainbow to look at like there was a week or so ago, but I had my own lane, so no complaints. As we approach the winter, the lightweights will be staying away, so more space for DJ.

I’ll be watching a little football today.  I’m in a five-way tie for 18th in my pool, so I need a breakout week.  I hit my Thursday pick so I’m off to a good start.  I originally had Atlanta over Tennessee, but I switched it at the last minute. Hopefully that one will not come back to bite me in the butt. Here’s this week’s picks.  You still have time to call your bookie for the afternoon games.

Buf Hou Dal Min Ind Mia NYJ Jax Ten Phi Sea Bal KC SF LAC Det

Trump’s attorneys are dropping like flies. I’m not too happy about the sweetheart deals Powell, Chesebro and Ellis got, but as long as they all sing in tune, I’ll take it. I’m sure they are just the first wave. But the fever has not broken.  We got MAGA Mike and his 18th century values for speaker now, which has led me to seeing the term Christo-Fascism bandied about. But I’ll leave the sad state of our politics behind after I comment on Mike Pence. He has just dropped his presidential bid, which came as a surprise to me after seeing this recent picture. You can feel the electricity in the room. A few wags on Twitter said that Pence should have been required to carry his campaign to term.

My wife is back in the bay after a trip to Hawaii with the FC women. Next week she’ll be heading to San Diego and then DC. I don’t want to see the inside of a plane for several months. While she was gone, #1 had the boys over for a fine chow down. Along with a caprese salad and garlic bread, he treated us to bucatini with a creamy mushroom/brandy sauce. The only thing that puzzled me was that I saw a can resembling this one in his recycling bin.

I also went over to micro-brewery Fieldworks in San Mateo while the wife was gone. Here is their description of one of the ones I bought.  This is not your father’s PBR.

“this beer with hop flavors consisting of tangerine juice, white grapefruit, passion fruit curd, lime zest, bergamot peel, white wine grapes, gooseberry preserves, and a distinctive hint of fresh Sour Tangie and NYC Diesel buds.”

I'll close this out with a quote from the end of Esquire’s Charles Pierce’s last post of the week. We often see eye to eye.

"And spare a moment for the people of Israel and Gaza, the people of Ukraine, of Lewiston, Maine, and of the earthquake zones in Iraq, Turkey, and Morocco, and in the flood zone in Libya, and especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they're getting."

Arrivederci

I have been back from Italy for one week, so I figured it is time to document the final leg of the journey.  I think writing as I travel is a good idea, which is amply demonstrated by the trio of gems immediately preceding this post.

We spent four nights in Florence. Our host Stefano was a great guy, and we did well to follow his restaurant recommendations. We obviously ate a lot of pasta, but we went upscale one night. I can’t remember the name of the joint, but it doubled as a flower shop. The service and food were what you’d expect at a top-flight SF place.

A highlight of our time there were the two tours we got from Tatiana. She showed us both Florence and Siena, where she lives with her husband and nine-year old son. Fortunately, I was able to keep up the pace on both tours.  They called me a trooper.  I got to be a pooper in Sicily.  I did get a break one day in Florence when the other three went to the Mercato Centrale.  I didn’t miss anything.  TCG described it as a combo of a mall food court and a swap meet.

Tatiana is originally from Lithuania.  She speaks Lithuanian, Russian, German, English and Italian.  Her son speaks Italian and Russian, so he can talk to the grandparents. Tatiana enlivened both tours by not just showing us the important spots but elaborating on key people and the history of the region. She also got us some great gelato and an excellent lunch spot in Florence right over the Ponte Vecchio.

We had a winery tour one day. The wine and food they served were good, but the heavy sales pitch was not appreciated. “This course is paired with X, which is #3 on your wine list”. Gimme a break!

As we left Florence, Stefano made sure we ordered our taxi to a good pick-up spot and escorted us there.  If you ever need a place in Florence, we have one for you. We flew to Catania and then drove our rental to Taormina. We had to do a couple laps on the ancient, winding narrow roads before we could offload the luggage and have them valet the car. Our quaint hotel was a family business and was centrally located. The restaurant food was good, but we were expecting more fish options in Sicily. The white wine was damn good. I did not see a ton of Taormina because this leg was my rest period. I have no complaints.

One of the nights we wandered over to the Four Seasons Hotel, where they filmed White Lotus.  We thought we’d have a cocktail there. I imagine many other folks have had a similar idea, which is probably the reason they have a 50 euro per person minimum in the bar. We took a hike.

After Taormina, we were on the road to Palermo.  We made a stop in Cefalu because that is where they filmed the beach scenes for White Lotus. If White Lotus had a scene where people jumped off a bridge, we’d likely have done that too. We shared a tasty cheap pizza in Cefalu and then headed to the outskirts of Palermo to turn the car in. We had yet another gas station episode there. We pulled in and got out, but the guy told us to go to the pumps at the other end of the building.  We went there and they sent us back to the first place. I told the original guy, in sterling Italian, “you sent us there, they sent us here”, but once I mentioned diesel, we were cool.  He then said “pieno”, which means “full” in Italian.  I heard “lleno”, which means full in Spanish, so I said “Si, lleno”. He filled it up.

After dumping the car, we got a taxi to Villa Olimpio in Mondello Beach.  The driver gave me a card, so we were all set for transportation for the rest of the trip.  Villa Olimpio was not really a villa, but it was nice enough.  The wife and I had an add-on room by the pool. This last phase of the trip was down time for everyone. We spent two days on the beach and nights in downtown Palermo. On the first one, we had gotten a restaurant recommendation from the guy running our hotel.  It did not disappoint, as it was a place for locals with good food and great service from a wait staff that had an average age of 20. Prior to dinner we went to a joint that had artisanal cocktails, which I believe was mentioned in the NY Times.

On our last night we had a food tour with Marco, with about eight other tourists. We had a lot of good local grub and details about the origins of it, along with some Sicilian history thrown in. At one stop the featured dish was a spleen sandwich, to which I gave a big IXNAY. Later on, Marco explained that it really was a combination of spleen and lung.  If I had known lung was involved, I might have given it a shot.

So that is a wrap on the Italy trip. I’m back in the big FC doing my thing, including ten torrid laps at the posh club this morning. The wife has an early evening appointment today and I need to have dinner ready early, so I better get prepping. 

Gas and Other Problems

The morning we left Ortesei, the wife had a cough and wasn't feeling top of the pops.  She went out to get a COVID test, which fortunately came out negative.  We informed our traveling companions at breakfast and compassionate Katie said she was glad it was negative because otherwise we'd have to strap my wife to the roof rack for the drive to La Spezia.

It was on that drive that we had some interesting interactions with gas station employees.  As I mentioned on the last post, I had a receipt with a QR code for about 20 euro of petrol.  We arrived at Lake Garda and pulled into a station selling the same brand as on the reciept. I showed it to the guy and he told me it was only good for the station in Cortina where I had gotten it.  That was the gist, but the manner in which he explained it to me would have made you think I had just cursed out his children. My brain translated "piss off" into "grazie".

We did some walking around Lake Garda, the largest in Italy.  It was still in seasonal vacation status. We had some good salads by the water and then continued our journey.  Katie had to make a bit of a jaunt to pay the parking fee, but we got out without a problem.  Not the same could be said for one of our encounters at a toll booth. We happened to pull into a lane with their version of an EZ Pass, which we of course did not have. I told TCG to back up but somebody was already behind us.  That somebody was kind enough not to lean on his horn.  We had a chat with the attendant, who raised the gate without us paying, likely because she did not want to deal any further with clueless tourists. This reminds me of another toll issue we had on the way to Ortesei. We had gotten our ticket at the entry as required, but when we got off, it or the credit card would not work. We had a tete a tete with the toll guy. He said "you need a ticket" about five times. We responded "we have a ticket" each time. He then put on someone who spoke English and we got it resolved.

Would you like to hear another gas station story or something about the beauty and history of Italy? Alrighty then. We needed to fuel up before returning the car so we went into a small town. We could have just pulled into a station on the autostrada but that would have been too easy. The guy inside the station ran a cafe and it didn't seem like he had much to do with the petrol.  We tried our credit card again, which did not work. I put in 20 euro in cash, which did not fill it.  So I put another 10 euro in.  Guess what? It only took 4 of the 10. I guess I'll never learn.  I went inside and tried to explain the situation in rudimentary, broken Italian. I'm pretty sure the guy said to his amici sipping coffee that "I gotta go deal with this child".  Needless to say, we were out six more euros. The last thing I'll say about our driving trip is that we learned early on that it is best to have a driver from one couple and a navigator from the other.

On to Cinque Terre. I'd say it's magical, but you know I'm not the type of guy to call anything magical. But it was gorgeous and we had a lot of fun. We got there just before things would start shutting down for the season. Our rooms at La Spiaggia Hotel in Monterosso were dinky but nice enough.  A good breakfast was served daily and the staff was quite accomodating. Our first dinner there was enjoyed by all but me.  I got a pizza that could have come from Round Table. The next day we had the real thing at Kepris Pizzeria in Riomaggiore. It was recommended by TCG's son, who went there four times during his recent stay. That first full day The Big Three took off for a hike, which proved to be pretty strenuous, between Monterosso and Vernazza. I took the train to Vernazza to meet them. Katie said the train sometimes stops in the tunnel at the station, so I should just go toward the light to get to the station.  Go toward the light? What, am I croaking?

The next evening we had a sunset cruise with Edo,short for Edoardo, a 25 year old entrepreneur. He explained the vagaries of getting a tourist license each year for his boat. He was quite outgoing and showed us all five of the small towns from the Ligurian Sea. We were going to take a swim but were wimpy and decided the water might not be bath temperature. Before we returned to the dock, Edo broke out a couple bottles of Prosecco. We shared them with another couple from the UK that had joined us.

Our last day we spent the morning on the beach near our hotel. The 35 euro charge for two chairs and an umbrella was apparently cheap compared to the cost of same at the Christian Dior beach near Portofino. They would not have let our type near it anyway. In the afternoon we took a train to Santa Margherita and a ferry to Portofino. We had a cocktail and snack there but none of us were overly impressed with the town. I wanted to see celebrities, damn it!

Yesterday we took a couple trains from Monterosso to Florence, with a change in Pisa.  We just made it on to our connection in Pisa. We got some seats but the train was full of tourists and their luggage. I'd complain if I wasn't part of the problem. Our taxi driver at the Florence train station was quite pleasant, as opposed to one cranky bastard we had in Milan. We got to our digs at Borgo degli Albizi and were met by Stefano. His family has owned the building since 1929. He was very engaging and spent time showing us the apartment and the documents that detailed the hot spots.  He basically said there were a lot of tourist traps to say away from, like wine windows. Bad wine, high prices. Stefano pumped me up when he told me my Italian was not bad. That afternoon we got to marvel at the statue of David.  My savvy wife had gotten the tickets ahead of time.

The Jaguars/Falcons game from London has kicked off so TCG and I plan to go to The Lion's Fountain, an Irish pub steps from our place, to see if we can catch part of the game.  Ciao