Sitges and science

I took another stroll into the town Sunday morning before the conference started, seeing naked bathers in the surf and all of this:

All the street signs are like this.  There is glazed tile everywhere.

A little steeper and rockier than a typical Jersey shore access path.

Gossos no on beach, gossos si everywhere else.

Rose petals!  Maybe a wedding?

I don't know who these little guys are, but they and their friends were all over.

Beautiful.

I'm assuming that says "anti-fascist".

Typical of the occasional political expression.

I noticed in the landscaping next to one of the innumerable stairways there were open umbrella tops hidden in the bushes, looking like they were protecting someone's belongings.  I have seen a number of homeless people and beggars, so I assumed it was related to that.  

I headed back to the hotel as it got hotter.  I was tired again after winding my way up and down and back and forth and decided that after that evening, no more long walks.  The conference began and took up the afternoon.  There was a snack break, where they gave out tiny cups of water for tea and tiny cups of coffee.  There were several tables with pastries, and they had said there would be gluten-free, so I searched and finally found - a bowl with about a half dozen wrapped cupcakes and a bowl of brown nuggets (brownies?).  Just because I was entitled to it I ate one of the cakes, but it wasn't good despite the chocolate icing inside.

For dinner I went back to the town to look for a store I had seen earlier that was not open in the morning.  When I finally found it again it was not open then either, despite what the internet said.  I was looking for interesting T shirts, but all were in English, except one for the Sitges movie festival that was just over.  I even found a Linkin Park shirt.  I went back to the restaurant of the night before and had a glass of wine, a rack of pork ribs, and some fries, and none of it hurt me.  More sights from the evening:

A little blurry, but there's a Magic the Gathering decal on the door of a shop selling card and board games.

Nice tile work on the roof.

This church seems to be a focal point at night - the night before they sent up fireworks, tonight it was pink light and the breast cancer ribbon.

I began to see cats - I had seen lots of dogs, but only 1 cat so far.  The first one was licking its lips, then I saw another eating from a bowl, and a woman stooped down filling another bowl where I had seen the umbrellas that morning.  I also noticed a small pet house in the bushes.  It's good to know someone was feeding the strays.

Monday brought the same breakfast buffet at the hotel.  There's a gluten free bread station consisting of a gluten-free dedicated toaster, two baguettes in sealed packages (no cutting board or knife), a few packages of pairs of sandwich-style slices which defied my attempts to open and might require a scissors, and butter and jam.  Nothing else is labeled, so I stick to fried eggs and yogurt with seeds and raisins.

Meeting all day, again with the same miserable miserly cups for tea and the wrapped muffins, which I ignore.  I skipped the last speaker before lunch to get in line early, and got there before anybody else.  They said I could start, so I looked at the allergen markers (which they were still putting in place) for the crossed-out wheat symbol.  Things were portioned out into serving sizes, and I ended up with a handful of salad greens with a disk of goat cheese (rind!), a different handful of salad greens with shreds of smoked salmon, a 2 x 2" chunk of cod, a shot glass of mousse, and not at all full.  At least I missed a long line and all the cross-contamination that comes with it.

I decided I had had enough of stressing over food.  After the last speaker I headed out to the Carrefour grocery, only getting lost a few times and walking twice as much as I needed to, but at least seeing a beautiful sunset.  Now I have this:

I also had two mandarin oranges, but apparently I did it wrong (no bag, maybe?) and they wouldn't let me buy them.  Two dinners and two lunches, to get me to my next flight.  Now maybe I'll stop complaining.  The cheese is darn good.  And maybe I will have toast tomorrow.

To Spain

I had rides in two lovely black Mercedes sedans today.  The first one took me to Fiumicino Airport to leave Italy, the second picked me up in Barcelona and took me to Sitges.  Both shiny, with lots of bells and whistles.

When I got to Fiumicino for the flight to Barcelona and was checking in my bigger bag, I noticed the sign said no knitting needles allowed in the cabin.  So I took my "air" project out of my backpack and stuffed it in the bag before handing it over.  Then I realized that I had two projects (call them "bus/conference" and "hotel") in my carryon, but by then the checked bag had been sucked down the conveyor line. 

Every airport's screening is slightly different.  I did have to take off my laptop, didn't have to take out liquids, didn't have to take off shoes, did have to put all bags in bins for the ride through the x-ray.  They said nothing about my two sets of ninja weapons, but I didn't dare take them out just in case.  They have carabinieri with mean-looking weapons everywhere.

I found a pathetic but gluten-free sandwich, which was fuel enough.  I like the way they sell sandwiches here (although not mine, which was sealed in plastic) - they make piles of each kind of sandwich on all kinds of bread and you buy it already made from the deli case.  There are beautiful pastries everywhere - like croissants stuffed with ricotta or sweet fillings.  I envy those who can have them.

The flight took us over the junction between Corsica and Sardinia, and from above you can really see how the mountains and valleys direct the layout of towns.  Spain's mountains seem even more dramatic than the Italian ones around Rome - taller, looking more likely to have big boulders shear off and come crashing down.

The hotel in Sitges is sleek and modern (Melia Sitges) and expensive (I would not be staying here for the conference if I was using my money).  I doubt I'll be able to eat 14 euros worth of breakfast each day, but it's easier than going out to find something.  There's yet another bidet to ignore, shiny modern furniture, and a door that opens onto a little patio.  Here are views from the room (alas, it does not face the sea, but I hate to think of the cost of those):

The town.

The sea.

The inside.

After I got settled and got the map from the front desk, I Googled furiously for a while to find places to eat and map out routes to them, as well as the grocery store the clerk pointed out (which isn't open Sunday, pfft, Catholics).  Then before sundown I headed out, finding that the nice straight lines on the map had a Z direction as well as X and Y.  Many hills.  But as time passed, more and more people came out for shopping, dinner, walking dogs, holding hands (men), peeing in bushes (toddler), running, smoking, playing, and just being outdoors.  I walked to the restaurant I picked to try first, only to find it closed for vacation, but on the way I found a tiny store with yarn and fabric and notions, so that's a plus - I finally got my souvenir yarn.  I backtracked and tried a restaurant with GF icons on its menu, where the waiter seemed to know what it meant.  The first rendition of the salad had a crouton in it, so I sent it back, and the second one did not look like the first one with the crouton picked out, so I ate it (spinach, a disk of something they said was goat cheese, but with a rind, pine nuts, some kind of fruit preserves).  If all goes well I might go back there for some barbecued pork ribs and fried plantains.  This seems to be a place where I must have fish, too.

The large ziggurat toward the left is the hotel.

The restaurant imports their Angus beef from the US.  Go figure.

Regarding Catalan independence: from the limo drivers I heard that there were some demonstrations today after the Spanish government decided to invoke Article 155 and take away Catalan autonomy, but they said that the small towns aren't very political.  An article in the international edition of the New York Times said that Barcelona, because of its mix of natives and immigrants, was less likely to want independence than the small rural towns.  Not sure how it swings here, but there are flags hanging from some windows here and there, just saying "Si!" or "Democracia" or just the Catalan flag.  Not a lot, but enough to let you know they are here.  This is a town where rich people have summer homes and there are lots of tourists, so it may be that they know their bread is buttered on whichever side keeps the peace.  We'll see.

Arrividerci Roma

Last night I accidentally discovered Roman nightlife.  I asked Google Maps to get me from my hotel to a specific location, and it showed me a bus, so I headed out.  I couldn't find the bus stop, so I asked a woman in a newsstand, and between my bits of broken Italian and her sign language, she let me know to go down a flight of stairs to an underpass.  Found it!  Got to my location, which was near the Plaza del Popolo around sundown, and the place was hopping.  Everybody was outside having dinner, watching breakdancers and buskers, shopping, hawking tiny lighted drone toys, and just walking around.  It was indeed much cooler than earlier and a lovely evening.  I still can't get used to everyone treating the outdoors as just another room without a roof, as if rain was never a possibility, and flat roofs because you don't have to worry about snow.

I did not find what I was looking for in the store that was right where it should be, but I did find this:

I had read an article about this earlier, how some clothing brand in Europe decided that the Franklin and Marshall logo was the epitome of college style, and built a whole brand around it.  Unusually, the school embraced it when they found out, instead of suing, and both benefit.  It still seems weird, but it seems to work for folks.

Funny thing was, I was looking for T shirts with recognizable characters but Italian words, and I could not find them.  I found lots of familiar name stores, all carrying shirts in English.

After yet another hour spent walking in my fruitless search, I headed back.  I knew what buses I could take, but again could not find the bus stop, but the Metro was right there and I knew where that went.  You wouldn't think it would be crowded, but over the next 3 stops it was jammed with people, and hot.  I was happy to get out an walk home in the cool air.  Last use of my transport ticket.

I went to the pretentious restaurant across the street from the hotel instead of trying to find the other gluten-free restaurant that might not exist, and ordered from their pretentious menu.  They cater to vegetarian/vegan, raw, gluten-free, and regular palates.  Pretentiously.  I had tasteless hummus with gf crackers and veggies, and steamed fish with escarole, and some sherbet-like thing for dessert.  While I ate my gluten-free food, I could see into the kitchen through a glass pane as a chef took proofed balls of dough, floured them, flopped them around as the flour poofed into the air, and kneaded and shaped them with flour-encrusted hands.  I also watched other chefs handle food with bare hands.  I crossed my fingers and hoped.  I seem to have survived the night.

But I almost didn't: I had bought a package of crackers at a little snooty organic food-type store, where the cashier was as bored and rude as I have seen anyone here, and was just about to eat some last night when it occurred to me that I had not checked the ingredient list for oats.  In fact, I had not checked the ingredient list at all, because I picked them off a shelf with gluten-free items.  OMG, they were not gluten-free and I was so lucky I stopped to check.  Well, the cleaning staff can have them, along with the extra euros in the tip for cleaning up after me.  I tried to leave a euro as a tip the first day but it was left untouched, so I'll leave the whole thing now.  I went back today and bought crackers that are definitely gluten-free.

Time to switch from vacation mode to work mode, and vacation spending on my own card to expense account spending on the company's card.  I'm 95% packed, hanging out until checkout.  A car will come pick me up to take me on another terrifying ride to the airport where hopefully all goes well.  I just checked British Airways flights from FCO to BCN, and the first one of the day departed early (3 minutes) - I have never seen a flight leave early!

It's good to be the Pope

Today's trip was a tour of the Vatican.  What Perillo does is not put you in a tour group, but buy you tickets to things through a company called City Wonders.  For some tours I ended up with a bunch of people I recognized from earlier tours, but on others although we were scheduled for the same tour we would be grouped separately.  But these tickets are a bonus in that they are skip-the-line, because some of the lines I have seen are scary long.  Today at the Vatican we got in through the tour group entrance, with no wait except for crowds from other tours.  I have some pictures, but your best bet is to buy a book or look things up online to get better pictures with explanations.

Meeting point, looking up toward the museum.  Of course I got off the subway and carefully followed the directions wrong and started off the opposite way before I finally figured it out.

This old hippie in the sandals was a hoot.  When the tour guide said to put his tour group sticker in a prominent place, he stuck it in the middle of his forehead and left it there.  You rock, old stoner.

First, the Vatican museum, which contains something like 5000 pieces of sculpture that have been dug up in various Roman possessions.  Because I know you people will expect it, I was on penis lookout.  If a statue had lost his due to age and time, he and his stone scrotum could stay as they are.  But any sign of a willie, even on a putto or child, had been primly covered with a cemented-on fig leaf like some highly decorative sports cup.  Except this child.  What is different?  Is it his African features?  Were he and his equipment considered non-human and therefore not threatening?

And just for balance, here is a goddess of fertility, and some other interesting stuff:

Does this jar make my butt look big?

I love mosaics, and found the ornate ceilings fascinating.  Samples thereof:

These are painted, not sculpted.

I had to wonder, with something this ornate, how many jokes the artisans had sneaked in, assuming nobody would ever see them.

My phone camera finds things like this too confusing to focus.

Then through various papal apartments with beautiful paintings, and finally the Sistine Chapel.  I'm glad I get to see it after the cleaning - the colors are simply beautiful, although I'm pretty sure Michelangelo did not have a lot of up close and personal experience with live female bodies.  I especially love the patches of uncleaned ceiling for contrast - I can feel the pride of the cleaners, who didn't make the paintings and can't sign their work, but are proudly saying "look what I did". 

Onward to the basilica and massive sculptures therein, by which point we had been going for 3 hours and my feet were really hurting.  And there is no air conditioning in most of Rome.  The museum was hot, the rooms were hot, the church was hot, the subway was hot, the sun was hot, but the day started off two-sweaters cold when I left the hotel.  And it's dry.  One tour guide said there had been only 2 days of rain since May 20th.

A few more random things I liked in the Vatican:

Map of Sicily, home of my peeps

Stone skeleton under a stone blanket.

It's good to be the Pope, to paraphrase Mel Brooks.

As I left, I ran into some of the other people from the Perillo trip who I had spent time with on the bus trips.  As expected, we were sorted into different tour groups, but we had tickets to all the same things and are heading out of Italy tomorrow.

What next?  Between the Vatican (which is an independent country, and you can walk around its walls in 45 minutes - try that with any other country!) and my Metro stop was a restaurant that got good reviews for having a gluten-free menu, so I made my way toward it without too much stopping to consult the ever more raggedy map, and found it.  I had a wonderful lunch - let's hope I get to keep it.  Potato gnocchi with buffalo mozzarella chunks and tomato sauce, followed by saltimbocca alla Romana, which came with mashed potatoes and a wonderful sauce.  They assured me all of it was gluten-free, but I came back to the hotel afterwards just in case.  Two hours later, so far so good.  I would have loved gelato but was full - maybe later.  Now I only have one more meal to obtain.  I have a restaurant that comes up when I google Rome gluten-free, but its website has disappeared and I'm not sure it still exists.  I don't want to walk all the way there just to be disappointed.

Other random things:

Really?  Your store is named D-Bags?

For graffiti fans.

Other than that, I'm done here.  Just some souvenir shopping when it gets cooler, dinner, and pack up.  Then on to Barcelona with a wary eye on the news.

Under and on the volcano

Today was the trip to Pompeii and Vesuvius (or "Vessy" as our tour guide called it).  I don't have many pictures because there really isn't any way for me to do justice to it with my skills and phone camera.  In Pompeii, we saw lots of roads and stone walls and a few bits of stucco decoration in the baths, and a little bit of fresco in the brothel, but the most interesting stuff has been moved to the museum.  We saw various carved penises acting as pointers toward the brothels, and the guide described them euphemistically because we had children in the group - in one case as "Mickey Mouse's hand".  I would have loved to see the museum, which was originally on the itinerary for this trip when I signed up, but it was switched to Vesuvius.  I still wasn't feeling good and had eaten little, so after the two hours of walking I was beat.  I was starting to feel that skin-crawling feeling you get with a fever, something left over from yesterday.  The souvenirs for sale were pretty cheesy - I'm seeing more and more figurines decorated with toxically colored glitter.  There were lots of penises - keychains, bottle openers, some with wings, some double-headed apparently as found in the ruins.  Fun for the whole family.

Pompeii from the outside.

Somewhere in this picture is a tiny lizard, about the size of a Florida anole, but green with polka dots.

Next came lunch at a restaurant a few minutes away, where everyone had preordered pizza.  They also offered "rice with tomatoes" as a gluten free option, plus salad.  I didn't think I could handle the salad, and I may never eat another pizza I don't make myself, but I had a little of the rice.  It was almost as if they would have normally put the sauce on spaghetti, but didn't want to bother making gluten-free spaghetti so they put it over rice.  Like most things here, it seemed under-salted (and I usually find things too salty) and could have used some cheese, but one of the tour guides told us that it's rude to request changes to the way the chef has presented the food, so I didn't ask.

Then on to Vesuvius.  I had taken some ibuprofen and the feverish feeling was going away, but still, little energy and I decided not to attempt the climb to the summit.  The bus had been switched for a smaller bus as per new rules for the volcano after arson fires over the summer had caused some problems.  I have to give the Italian drivers mad props for nonchalantly managing the switchbacks on that road.  They seem to have far more patience than American drivers - if not, surely there would be far more dead pedestrians and scraped and mangled cars than I have seen.  It's like magic how they get through city intersections that scare the bejeezus out of me, even on foot.

The day was misty, and the shoreline could barely be seen as we climbed, and the top of the mountain was also hidden:

It's there, you just can't see it.

We finally made it to the top, where of course there were a couple of gift shops and some portapotties (one euro to use).  The tour guide pointed out ahead of time that there might not be water to flush or toilet paper, because it's expensive to truck water to the top of the volcano, but the portapotty was not bad.  It was, however one of those places where they ask you to put your used toilet paper in a bin, not down the toilet.  Old plumbing can be fussy, and temporary ones also.

Just climbing the slope to the second gift shop wore me out, and coming down I kept slipping in the volcanic gravel, so I found a chair and took out my knitting.  Apparently if you made it to the top there was another gift shop.  And coffee, and wine.  And if you made it to the other side of the rim, another gift shop.  Of course.  This is about as clear as it got, fog-wise:

These knick-knack vendors were even cheesier than Pompeii (although fewer penes).  They offered fossils and what appeared to be geodes, but some of them were clearly faked, and some that might have been real and lined with clear quartz had been dyed bright pink or purple or scattered with gold flecks.  Lots of pendants supposedly carved of volcanic rock.  Here, or in China?

Back in the bus for the 3 hour ride home and more knitting, where I turned the heel of the sock I started on Tuesday.  Our guide gave us more tips on where to eat and what to see, and stories of an abbey we couldn't see on the way in due to fog, and could just barely see on the way home due to sunset.  This abbey, Monte Cassino, was bombed to smithereens in WWII due to bad assumptions, but has been subsequently rebuilt to marble glory thanks to donations from the countries that destroyed it, including us.

I was actually starting to feel hungry, thinking about getting some risotto and maybe veal if I could find a place on my way back from the Metro stop.  I took a slightly different route to see if I could find such a place and avoid the things the tour guide said to avoid in an eating establishment, but I don't have a good sense of direction and I was greatly relieved when I recognized my hotel's neighborhood.  I walked past it to a restaurant up the street and studied the menu.  They had 3 kinds of risotto and several veal dishes.  It was nearly 9 pm, they appeared to have no customers, but they were open.  I asked about gluten-free, and they said no, pasta, and I said yes, risotto, and one guy looked willing to oblige, but the other basically told me to go somewhere else, and pointed down the street to the place I got the earlier risotto with "smoke of onion".  So I gave up and went to my room and ate nuts.  Dammit.  It's harder to get around because the streets are so convoluted, and harder to find food than I had hoped.  And now knowing the punishment for eating gluten, I'm really concerned about accidental ingestion.  Sigh.  I was hoping to travel more, but I may not be able to experience local foods anywhere.

That was yesterday. Today I had eggs and cheese and salami, and will soon head out toward the Vatican.  Apparently the gods of digestion are not done with me, but I think I'll make it.

Could have been better

Today was not my day.  After a leisurely breakfast at the hotel I hung around in my room for a while before heading out.  I think I have been too dehydrated for my usual speed of tea through my system, but I never know where I will find a bathroom in my travels so I hope for it not to be an issue.  Mother Nature laughed at me today, boy.

I couldn't get tickets for any museums I was interested in, so I debated taking the train to Ostia Antica or going to see the Pantheon that everybody said was a must-see (I filed it under "eh" myself).  So I set out walking, trying not to consult the map too often.  First I went too far southeast and had to go back north, then I struggled to find street signs - instead of signs on poles at every intersection they are carved into buildings, but maybe only once per intersection, maybe not at all.  The map has tiny print that is slightly blurred (no, it's not my eyes, the rest of the map is fine), and there is no straight line to anything from anywhere except the Metro.  The map of Rome looks like someone dropped a plate of spaghetti on a blank page and said, let's go with that.  This was not what I was looking for, but at least it gave me some orientation:

Nope, that's not it, that's some overdecorated cake.

So nearly 2 hours into my walk (and I debated giving up many times) I am getting close, when I happen to find a gluten-free bakery!  So of course I had a pastry to resupply the calories I had burned off.

I don't remember its name, but it had chocolate in the middle.

In that same alley I pass a shop advertising gluten-free pizza and pasta.  Really?  I ask, and the kid hanging outside says yes.  I move on to see the object of my travels, which I filed under big whoop.  If you want to see pictures, look it up.

I had intended to find a different shop with gluten-free pizza and good reviews, but I was really tired and just wanted to end the day.  I ordered what I thought was a gluten-free pie, "Margharita style", but apparently he thought my choice was the regular Margharita through the language barrier.  I ate half of it, and it was mediocre.  My first clue was when the bill came for 8 euros instead of 12 and I began to have doubts.

I decided to take a bus back and looked for one going to Termini, where the subway branches cross and where you can buy more tickets, since my 3-day pass ends tonight.  I got on a bus, but apparently it was at the end of its route and I had to get off and find another.  Which was okay, because I hadn't figured out how to use my ticket on that first one.  After 4 tries on the second one it accepted it, and I rode around the city seeing things I had not seen.  I got to Termini, bought a 2-day ticket on the third try, and walked home.  I keep walking past this random archaeology:

This kind of thing is everywhere.  Random buildings will have a broken brick arch sticking out of them.

When I got back to my room all hell broke loose inside me.  The last two times this happened I attributed it to food poisoning, but now I think it's my gluten reaction after 12 years without, so if you wondered, now you know.  The toilet is too high for my feet to touch the floor, so I prepared by bringing in my footstool, pulling over a table to rest things on, and bringing in a solid, lined wastebasket from the bed area.  Then I spent an hour or so emptying out and sweating profusely, then spent at least another hour with uncontrollable shivering.  At one point I kicked over the basket of puke and had to clean some of it up with toilet paper.  It was a pretty horrible afternoon, but it could have been worse - I had thought about jumping on the train to Ostia while I was at Termini.  That would have been bad.

Tomorrow is the trip to Vesuvius and Pompeii, meaning I have to get up before sunrise and breakfast again, so I'm packing my backpack and pants pockets to be ready.  We're supposed to have pizza after the volcano and I requested gluten-free, but I don't think I can bring myself to eat it.  I may have to live off of prepackaged things I can find at the little grocery stores to feel safe.  I will survive on cookies and fig bars and nuts.  I can't risk that happening on a bus or public toilets.  Damn you, gluten.