Italy

Umbria, Italy (October 28, 2007)

I still have quite a pile of photos shot in Italy in October, and Venezuela in December. I am still going through them... lots of landscape and some family portraits. This one I took in a road trip from Perugia to Trieste. Autumn in Italy can be very dark and foggy (which I like because of the mystic atmosphere), but also very bright and colorful. This year it was on the sunny colorful side, and I didn’t regret missing the New England. We drove the whole day through the hill country around Perugia, in the ancient land of the Etruscan (one of the founding populations of the Romans), and crossing the Appennines at the height of the region of Marche facing the Adriatic sea. When I am in Italy I just like to drive in these small roads getting lost in villages barely on the maps. You stop anywhere, enter the first unassuming “trattoria” and have the dish of your life. It is difficult to be wrong: just avoid the places too polished with foreign tourists around. One other day, that time in the hills in the wine region of Piemonte, I just stopped in the square of the village and asked to the three retired men sitting in front of the local osteria: “where can I get a good lunch”? They pointed their walking sticks to the smallish place the other side of the street. It turned out to be completely full -of locals- to the point that there wasn’t any table available. No point of waiting... this cousine is not based on volume, once the people already there had been served the trattoria would just close. So we went ahead to the next village where we repeated the scene and found a slightly larger restaurant in the basement of some late medieval stone house, where we had a risotto al barbera with castelmagno cheese.

Contrary to common perception about driving in Italy, driving on these roads is relaxing. The muted colors of the land resting in preparation of the long white winter are soothing... good for your soul.