Those celebrated Italian shoes...

OK...I'll confess, I am only a closet show hound, and my shoe tastes are more geared towards footwear of the White Mountain or Birkenstock variety (or for a real splurge Mephistos). So I did not expect to be captivated by the third Italian product relished by Americans (after gelato and pizza): Italian shoes...But I do appreciate creativity and one tiny shoe store here in Trastevere has me captivated. I go our of my way for a chance to peer in its windows. Abacus shoes anyone? Or how about a bicycle wheel heel? All available for under $200 a pair!

La Bella Figura

Since arriving in Italy, the phrase "la bella figura" comes up constantly. Before arriving in Rome, I thought I had a fair sense of what it meant--attending to looking one's best, putting one's best foot forward. I had no idea, however, how ingrained "la bella figura" is in everyday life. The first hint of this was in Grado (an island beach resort town on the Adriatic, near Trieste, where we did our intensive language program). At the beach entrance was an enormous and very public mirror, where people coming and going from the beach were stopping to check and adjust their appearance. I flash back to Chicago, where even the beach bathrooms do not have mirrors, or if they do they are made of heavily-graffiti-ed nonbreakable material with all the reflective qualities of a car fender...no, "la bella figura" is decidedly not part of American culture!

As we've gradually come to appreciate, la bella figura pertains not only to bodies, but to presentations in general. The butcher I frequent at the market at Piazza San Cosimato, like other butchers here, is not just content to present you with a pile of sliced salami wrapped in paper, instead he takes the time to carefully arrange all the slices in pleasing little patterns, then folds the paper around it as if it were a little present. Unwrapping lunchmeats and cheeses has never been so much fun!

A Year of Living Calorically

This space is devoted to random recordings of everyday life in Rome...aha moments when an alternate Roman view of life is momentarily silhouetted, memorable meals that would probably be impossible to replicate in the US, and other passing (and not always penetrating) observations about daily life a la Romana.

This first blog addresses one of the two themes most of us in the US associate with Italy: food, glorious food! Images of food (and places to consume it) are as ubiquitous here as SUVs in Chicago suburbs. And on those few residential blocks where you can't see food, you can smell it. Delicious smells of simmering pasta sauces and roasting meats waft out of the windows of ancient apartments, calling to mind images of my grand-mother standing over her stove stirring her polenta. In our Trastevere neighborhood every block seems to have not only its own cafe where you can grab a lungo (espresso) or a quick pasta, but also its own gelateria--each with its own unique twist. Is it fair trade ingredient gelato you want? Then its Gelateria Fior di Luna for you. Is it the brightly-colored chain offering a variety equivalent to that of Baskin Robbins 31 Flavors? Then it is Blue Ice for you, on the Piazza Santa Maria di Trastevere. Artisanal gelato, made on site? That could be any one of dozens of places in our neighborhood. ..some of which proudly boast of their gourmet, artisanal products in signs that practically barricade the narrow sidewalks (see above), and others which are more low-keyed about their home made products. Our favorite spot is of the later variety--a tiny hole in the wall place we walked by on a daily basis but barely noticed--an unpretentious Sicilian gelateria (Giorgiagel, on Via S. Francis a Rip, just off the Viale Trastevere). There, you can watch the owners laboring over the daily flavors through the back room window, while their female assistant serves up enormous and bargain-rate portions of their 15 or so freshly made flavors...flavors that explode in your mouth. The middle-aged Italian secretary who rhapsodized about this place to us gushed about their chocolate flavor...which I have yet to try--I'm addicted to their marron glace and hazelnut flavors, Peter invariably orders coconut and will add a scoop of fig when it is available, and Danielle is loyal to her combination of limone and mint flavors. The shop has no seating and can barely hold four customers at a time--the owner tries to remedy this by carving out a space next to his car which he parks in front of his shop, leaving just enough room between his car and the curb to slip in four metallic chairs. When the parking police come, he rushes out to his car and pretends to be leaving, until they move on to ticket others...then he strolls back into his shop with an enormous, triumphant grin on his face. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that after two weeks of living in Trastevere, this is the first merchant who has come to recognize us as "regulars" (aside from the Pakistani guy who sold Danielle a purse from his streetside stall and "ciaos" her whenever we pass).


The other food substance universally associated with
Italy is pizza, and we've been sampling plenty of that since our arrival, as well. For me, the academy award winning pizza remains the zucchini flower and anchovy pizza we had on one of our first nights in Trastevere...though Danielle still reminisces about the carry-away french fry pizza she sampled on our first night in Monte Mario...it may have been cold and eaten on a street-corner curb, but for her it was the stuff of dreams (At the take away places, which generally offer thicker pizza, they zip out scissors and cut off a piece of pizza from the enormous pizza pan of your choice, weigh it and bill you by weight..all that is left for you to do is fold it in half like a sandwich and eat--no utensils or tables needed). Peter remains loyal to the Da Poeta Pizzaria, reputed by our landlord's children to be the best in all of Rome (a lot of blogs will second this opinion, and their "da poeta bufalo special", is pretty amazing).

With all the food and food images that abound here in Rome, and all of the eating that seems to be happening every which way one looks, you'd think this would be a society of rotund and Rubenesque bodies...but the other American image of slender, gorgeous and sexy Italians of all ages seems to be alive and well in Rome. While it is common to see people eating double-scoop gelato cones topped with fresh whipped cream at 11AM, those same people are invariably slender, and not necessarily young! Is it that they are fanatically exercising? Nope--we discovered that gyms are few and far between here in Italy, as are morning runners--the American culture of exercise has yet to fully blossom here. But everywhere you look, at least in summertime, there are slender, sexily clad bodies of all ages and they don't seem to be as surgically-altered as they
were in Southern California! So where do all those calories go? Inquiring minds want to know...I need to send all my extra calories to the same place that those skinny Italians are sending theirs!