10/20/18: Palermo

This AirBnB spot is fabulous. I've been to one better, but this place has so much character. I'll just link you to the IG pics: https://instagram.com/p/BpJbc-Kjfz5/

The interior courtyard open to the any is a very unusual layout for the US. The interior stairs that are technically still outside remind me of the Bradley building, somehow. 

We strolled over to the start of today's street food tour. The guide took us to various Palermo-specific (and not even just Sicily specific) food traditions and dosed out history and context along the way. 

1. Frittola

Boiled and then fried beef offal. As usual with tripe, the first taste is extremely pungent. But once you get going, the aroma stabilizes and you can enjoy the beefy umami flavors. It was a hit for me much more so than the rest of the group. Apparently, there's few vendors left who sell frittola, and it's mostly family traditional business supporting people who work at the open markets. 

2. Sfincione

A dish similar to pizza, but again very Palermo specific. The street vendors make a version without anchovies, and just a dusting of cheese over the tomato paste, which itself isn't that thick. 

3. Panelle and arancine

The arancini you might be familiar with is adapted from the Sicilian original, which was an Arab risotto-like creation turned into street food via rolling into a ball and frying a crust on. 

The specimen we tried was really good, with a filling of carrots, peas?, and ground beef. The couple from Milan was puzzled by arancine being a feminine noun instead of masculine. 

The panelle were adequate, but the chickpea flour is too dry and bland on its own to work taste miracles. 

The shop in the Capo market has run out of crochette, a potato croquette. We found some later to try, and it was also a bit bland. 

4. Spleen and lung sandwich

This was a huge hit for me. Far less organy than other organ meats I've tried. Unlike the frittola, this food is popular beyond the working class. The grated Parmesan really helps modulate the gaminess that can happen with organs. The texture is quite like roast beef -- not unusual at all. 

Glad these were fried in pork fat (another way to mellow the flavor?) so that I could get Muslimah's portion. 

5. Gelato

Nothing crazily different here. I think it's hard to mess gelato up, and these were easily satisfying. The shop we went to offered many fruit flavors, all of which used actual fruit in season. I had a pear and dark chocolate, and the pear grittiness was definitely there. 

Cannoli

There was no cannoli on the tour. I asked the guide for a rec, and we went to that place. The cannoli that we have in the US are the Sicilian variety, which are labeled Cannoli Siciliano in the other places we've been. The regular cannoli apparently uses some flaky dough and cream. The guide emphasized that getting the ricotta cream right was crucial to a good cannoli. The ones we tried were really good, but still a touch on the sweet side for me. 

After the tour, we went back to the AirBnB, checked on our laundry air drying on the balcony, and took a long unplanned nap. A couple hours later, we woke to early dinner time. We decided to try both a seafood place and a pizza place. 

We walked over to a seafood restaurant that the food tour guide had pointed out. They hadn't quite opened for dinner, so we went over to get some grilled lamb offal. 

This was truly delicious for me. The flavor was very deep and rich. The tough soon gave way to a mealy/grainy inside. The texture made Muslimah a non-fan. I might get some more tomorrow. 

After that snack, we walked back to the restaurant and ordered the 5 course tasting option. Or gustation, as our waiter called it. The restaurant definitely had some modern pretentious trappings about it, like a bar directly across the prep area, relatively haute menu writeup, and lengthy wine consultation. 

1. Yellowtail tartare

Delicate and at just the right temperature. There was just a dot of horseradish sauce, which worked really well with the delicate fish, but I ended up wanting a lot more of it. 

2. Grilled octopus

This came with a few drizzled sauces, but the octopus was grilled too hot, leading to a tough skin - undercooked core gradient. It was good, but I've had much better. 

3. Spaghetti with tuna and lemon sauce

The sauce was good, even if lemon still seems too strong of a note when it's a primary flavor. The pasta was too far on the al dente side, even with my expanded tolerance for that while traveling in the Gallic state. It would have been excellent if it was just ordinary al dente. 

4. Fish soup

A mix of shrimp, squid, clams, and fish. Nothing tricky here, just a generous sprinkling of saffron to bring the sauce home. It's a dish that anyone could make if they were willing to shell out for the spice. In Palermo, it's dirt cheap, according to our food guide. 

5. Brownie and almond parfait

The brownie had some ridiculous name on the menu, so I didn't know what I was getting until I saw it. It was a solid combination of sweet and soft, with a dense, fine flour baked just right. 

Muslimah's almond parfait was extremely almond tasting, but I'd consider that a success. 

When we left, we ran into the friendly Milanese couple from the food tour. I felt like I had to render judgment on the restaurant when they asked us how it was. I guess I would say it was great for the price (50 Euros for 5 decently portioned courses), but it wasn't perfect. The highlights outshined the lowlights, though. 

The pizza place was not good enough to spend time with up. The walking around a very bustling nightlife in the streets was worth it, though. 

10/19/18: Bologna day 3

We had planned to stay in Bologna the longest stretch of our Italy tour, mostly because of its strong food reputation. So this was the last day of the stay. We wanted to capitalize by maxing out the Bologna Welcome cards that we'd bought the first day. We're talking maybe 10s of Euros saved at most, but it was a good exercise the min-max our time. 

Morning: history museum, 10 Euro value

Afternoon: go to San Luca lookout the see the whole city. 5 Euros

Evening: ride hop-on-hop-off bus to the train station and take shuttle bus to airport. 15 Euros

The history museum was a bit eclectic, but armed with the casual knowledge we'd accumulated in the past couple of days, the audio guide was quite simulating. Two exhibits stand out. 

The first was a half room dedicated to i Torri, the towers of Bologna. From any given vantage point on the ground, you usually can't see many towers. Of course, far fewer still stand today. The fact that most of the time you're avoiding traffic by standing/walking under porticos means there's not good sightlines. And even when you are between buildings, they're built quite high, not skimping on ceiling height per story. But in serial shots and in various art from when the towers were in full bloom, the effect is at once astonishing and sobering.

The towers are a product of two eternal human traits: concentrating wealth and seeking glory. In a city packed with multistory houses, the only way to stand out is to go up. There is no better, more obvious gauge on your family wealth than how many stories you can put on a tower. And these things didn't spring up overnight. Workers and architects and engineers spent decades raising them. All for a chance to lord your wealth and power over the rest of the city. Bologna was once one of the most important cities in the world. And by that point, the two towers at the center of the city had already been a well known symbol of Bolognese prominence for centuries. Take these city models in close-ups from various Renaissance paintings:

The Asinelli and Garisenda towers were erected in the early 1100s. By the time Dante wrote about them, they were already over two centuries old, about the same time as between now and when the Founding Fathers declared independence. Imagine that. And the towers still stand today. I'm not sure the Asinellis who commissioned the tower could truly comprehend how well their vanity project has paid off. 

Unlike the pyramids, which were built with slave labor, these towers were paid for. On one side of the coin, you could call this the highest achievement in capitalism. To accumulate unimaginable wealth and to acquit yourself of it for your own desires. On the other side, what else could that money have done? Would we still know and marvel at those alternate universe achievements? I should point out that of course there were contemporary rich families who performed plenty of philanthropy to go along with their more selfish pursuits. So much of Bologna's development, cultural and otherwise, is owed to the Bentivoglio family, who hardly shied away from a family portrait. The title alone should illustrate what they thought of themselves:

Madonna enthroned, and the Bentivoglio family

The other standout exhibit was simply a portrait of Mussolini, used in context in a room about WWII. 

His eyes were jabbed out, with no explanation given in the art card or audio guide. The subtext I got was that everyone should understand why the painting was defaced, but I'd like to research that some more. 

So that was morning. We headed to the last restaurant on our try list -- Oltre. This place was a bit too hipster, but the food certainly delivered. 

I've been getting tagliatelle with ragu (in Bologna you don't have to say Bolognese -- bear with this running joke) at every meal to be able to comparison shop and get a sense for the range. As I understand it, ragu Bolognese shouldn't use much tomato, and that was true of every one I'd tried up till Oltre's, which had detectable tomato, and for the better, I must admit. It adds a heavy does of familiarity and childhood nostalgia to a dish that can be hard to get rich enough without being greasy. Oltre's is really good, but not better than Venissa's (though that was 'maccheroni' and not tagliatelle). Despite the tomato heresy, I give this 2nd place. Note: I didn't get a ragu at Polpette & Crescentine; I knew I'd be too full with the name dishes. It could have been a contender...

Muslimah got a... cod lasagna, and it was a great application of cod. Very aromatic and woke up the other ingredients. 

Finally, I ordered pigeon, cooked like what I'd consider a classic French roast duck breast. The sauce was good; the meat was rare without negatively affecting texture, and the blueberry and raspberry accent worked. The homemade dab of pigeon liver pate really needed some bread, which wasn't provided. A really good dish, but I have no basis for thinking of it as Italian. 

After lunch, we basically ran up a mountain. There is a covered portico path that runs from a city gate alllllll the way up to the Santuario della Beata Vergine di San Luca. 666 arches, about half of them running up at what I'd guess is an average 10% grade, what would be absolutely hellish on a touring bike. We were checked out of our BnB and had our full travel load in our backpacks, which made the climb a bit spicier. 289m of steps and maybe half an hour later, we had huffed and sweated our way to the landing of the basilica. We had to move fast because the afternoon was closing in. So we flashed our cards, ran up the spiral staircase to the top of the church, took a few pics, didn't even look for the icon that Saint Luke painted (the artifact of honor in the annual procession that goes down the path into down), and plopped into the express bus taking us back into town. 

On the way, we consulted the time tables carefully and concluded that we could still intercept the hop-on-hop-off bus and ride it to the train station. Unfortunately, we waited at the around stop for 5min without the bus showing up, so just gave up on those sweet savings and marched up Via dell'Indipendenza north to the station. Some more navigating later, we arrived at our AirBnB in Palermo. 

For more info on the Santuario:

http://www.avrvm.eu/the-sanctuary-of-the-madonna-of-san-luca/

10/18/18: Bologna day 2

Snoozed a few times this morning to try to let Muslimah try to get over her cold, which has been taking a toll on her for the past couple of days. We went to two museums before lunch: the ones for medieval artifacts and musical instruments. 

The atmosphere at the medieval museum was dampened a bit by stuff that seemed a bit attentive and maybe even suspicious. They were the only one to require checking a bag, but nothing in there was stealable. 

The craftsmanship on display was predictably amazing. The giant illuminated hymn book made me realize how some eager for knowledge might pledge a life to the church in exchange for access to knowledge and academic resources. How lucky we are to have increasingly democratized education. 

For lunch, we went to Polpette & Crescentine, a casual spot specializing in those eponymous items. Polpette are meatballs, and crescentine ended up being like savory beignets. 

My fried meatballs and potato wedges were to salty, but everything else was not so salty that it wasn't delicious. The crescentine were great. Muslimah's gnocchi were perfectly soft and the right amount of gummy vs tear apart. The cream sauce was tremendous. The chicken meatballs in carrot puree was very novel and still quite good flavor. 

After lunch, we had a lull for a window visit before the evening bike tour of the city. Unfortunately, a lot of the archeology museum was closed, so we only got to see the Egypt wing. Which to be fair had specimens of exceptional preservation. 

Heteronormativity through the ages, I guess. 

The bike tour was exceedingly mellow, revealing corners of the city that were quite different from the intensely youthful town center. The tour information was somewhat redundant and not a huge highlight. 

Dinner was at potentially the fanciest restaurant on our list to try. The ragu was the best I'd had so far in Bologna. The dish translated as boiled meat was also good, but in an even more rustic way -- get the broth right, get the meat tender, and apply a simple flare in the sauce. 

10/17/18: Bologna

Got up early to get to the train to Bologna. Slipped through the streets with the ease of Ezio in Assassin's Creed 2, hopped onto the water bus, and showed up at the train station. Rode 1.5h to Bologna on a high speed train, the likes of which don't exist in America. Acela has nothing on this bad boy. 

The countryside is mostly flat and reminds me of the helicopter shots of any European bike race. The houses certainly look like people who were once ruled by Romans would live in, with plaster walls and tile roofs.

Upon arriving at the Bologna Centrale station, we dropped our bags off at the accommodating BnB and set off to tour and eat. Well, eat first then last. Lunch was randomly picked and adequate. 

We climbed one of the Two Towers and get some very nice aerial views of Bologna:

This is the medieval radial plan that supplanted the grid imposed by the Romans, with Renaissance architecture filtering in in bits and pieces. 

After the rousing climb up, we come down from 300ft and headed over to the walking tour. This was a fascinating mix of history, art, and engineering. As much as I bag on eurocentrism, what I learned was really fun. Probably the biggest two lessons:

- if there's one person who's really big in Italy, it's Jesus

- Bologna tried very hard to remain its own independent city state and succeeded for most of history

Well worth the 5 Euros it would have cost, if we hadn't plunked down for the blue all access Bologna Welcome card, which was 30 but makes a lot of things free. We'll be updating our savings tally tomorrow. 

Oh, we also ran into some local friends at the top of Asinelli tower. What a charmingly chance encounter. 

Navigating Venice by map

This is the map the hotel gave us:

It captures pretty much every walkable path in the city. And since there are no cars or bikes, that means pretty much everywhere you can go. Like all good design, the map's features emphasize important details like which waterbus lines pick up at which stations, and minimize unimportant ones. 

Sure, you have your choice of being a sucker tourist by consulting your GPS every minute or looking at your paper map, but at least the map works a different part of your brain. 

We were able to walk most of the city north to south at night using the map. The city helpfully cooperates by posting up street and square names on most corners, like so:

Between these signs announcing the area you're stepping into and the extremely regular density of walkable paths, the walking experience quite felt like a video game. Taking the wrong path and stumbling into some steps descending into the canal, with no getaway gondola waiting for you -- you only have your poor map-reading skills to blame. 

10/16/18: Venice day 2

We made a reservation yesterday to eat at Venissa, a Michelin-starred restored restaurant on the nearby island of Burano. Ok, not the restaurant with the actual star, but the adjoining osteria, which is actually open today. Some had said to go to Murano, but our concierge Andrea made it pretty clear in this markup of our map:

He panned Murano as a whole island of tourist trap shops. So we were bent on spending the bulk of our day in Burano to complement the lunch. 

We got up fairly early and ate a pretty good breakfast in the hotel. The charcuterie spread was solid, as were the croissant options. Could have paid for worse outside. 

Took a fast walk through various narrow Venetian neighborhoods. 

And took the ferry to Burano. It was a relaxed 40 min out. Burano's sleepy townhouses and farmland were, in a word, bucolic. There were few tourist knocking around, and with no cars, few boats, and little wind, the streets of Burano were very quiet. It was an extremely relaxed atmosphere. 

That last pic is of a church bell tower from the 14th century looking out over Venissa was private vineyard, the only one growing Dorona golden grapes. And for 25 Euros, you can have a glass. Which we did, at the osteria. 

I thought the dishes were nicely refined and had some new flavors mixed in with classics. We got as much seafood (in honor of Venice) as we could. The amberjack dishes showed a mastery of preparing fish. The pasta and pagu was possibly the best I've ever had.  The Dorana wine, not as much of a hit with Muslimah. 

It was about 2:30, and we wanted to see if we could use our 24h tickets for this special Burano route, even though we paid explicitly for that fare. We could, so we know we could go to Murano and then go back to Venice without paying more. So we went to Murano after all. It was more touristy than Burano as expected, but at least it's claim to fame, glasswork, was quite varied across all the stops we saw, instead of every kiosk having the same trite inventory. 

For dinner, we took a water bus back into the Jewish Ghetto part of Venice's Cannaregio district. This dates back to the 1530s, easily several decades before Shakespeare penned his play. Ghetto of course did not refer to poverty back then, and except for seeing the occasional Orthodox Jew and some Hebrew signage, the Ghetto looked like the rest of Venice. 

We dined in the Ghetto, at Gam Gam, a kosher Italian Jewish restaurant. The entrees were decent, but the appetizers were real stars. Eggplant 4 ways (jazzed up as Ghetto Style on the menu -- groan) was great in each way: grilled, cubed and roasted, sliced and in olive oil, and babaganoush. The hummus with chopped beef was hearty. Using the fat pita as a conveyance, I was reminded of beef stroganoff. 

After dinner, we hoofed it all the way back to the hotel. Muslimah got a "spritz" mixed drink, which was not all that.