Once again, we returned to Rome. We arrived on Sunday afternoon. We found our apartment, which is very near Campo di Fiori, one of my favorite places in Rome. This piazza has been a fruit and vegetable market area for centuries. Now there are more booths selling touristy spice packages, pasta and other food souvenirs, but the fresh fruit stands and vegetable stands are still thriving.
As well as the central portion of the piazza housing the fruit and vegetable market, all around the perimeter of the piazza are cafes and restaurants. Street musicians come out in the evening, and some of them are quite talented.
About 4:00 in the afternoon, all these stands come down, the owners of the stands cart away their produce, the shelves, everything. These people have to store their equipment in sheds around the area. After all this merchandise and equipment has been taken away, the street cleaners come in and by 5:00 the piazza is clean and empty. Then Happy Hour begins. (My term, not theirs.).
Cafes have drink specials and light food fare. The street musicians start their serenades, people come from everywhere to enjoy this atmosphere. By 7:00 p.m., the cafes and restaurants start their dinner service. Later, the party crowd comes in, and we can hear the chatter, the noise, the sound of people enjoying theirselves for hours. In the morning the piazza needs cleaning again, so the street cleaners are there again, getting everything clean and ready for the fruit and vegetable vendors to set up their operations one more time.
To me, this cooperation of the vendors, the restaurants, the city street cleaners simply amazing. I enjoy staying I this area because of the bohemian atmosphere. I do wish I were young enough to stay out and enjoy some of the evening entertainment, but alas, that is not to be. By the time we finish our dinner, around 8:30 p.m., I am ready to go back to the apartment and relax.
Many of the fruit vendors are foreigners, not Italians, and are very hard workers. This morning I watched two of the vendors as they brought their canopies and produce to the piazza. I heard a sound as if someone was revving up a motorcycle, I looked out our window and saw one vendor who was driving a very loaded small Ape truck, trying to hitch another vendor’s loaded push cart. These 2 guys had tied a rope to the cart and the back of the truck, but an Ape truck does not have the power to handle that much weight. They finally gave up: the man with the truck took his load into the piazza and the man with the push cart had to continue pushing by hand. For those of you who have not heard me talk about Ape trucks, I will explain. These are tiny little vehicles, built for the tiny alleys, hill roads of Italy. They have a motorcycle engine, a cab big enough for one person and a tiny truck bed. They look like toys.
We went to the Piazza Navona, with its fountains designed by Bernini, my favorite Italian sculptor. This is another area that is perfect for people watching.
We walked from Piazza Navona to Trevi Fountain, going past the Pantheon, St. Ignacio church, down the Via Corso, over to the fountain. This is another Bernini masterpiece. The fountain has just been re-opened, after being cleaned and repaired for the past 2 years.
Tradition says that if you throw a coin into the fountain, you will return to Rome. Both Frank and I did this, and I am sure we will return,
We followed some back streets and found another favorite restaurant, the Abruzzi, and had our dinner there, then walked back to our apartment, joining many other people out enjoying the balmy Rome evening.
I will end this blog post now, although I have only covered our first day back in Rome. I have so much to talk about, way too much for one blog post. I am sure that you have noticed, perhaps counted, how many times I have used the word “favorite” in this post. Rome is magical; therefore, there are many places here that have become favorites.
If you have been to Rome, you will understand. If you have not been here, I strongly encourage you to visit. Who knows? If you ask me, I might come along with you.
Stay tuned. You will hear more from me soon. I am not finished with Rome yet.
Ciao for now,
Dolly
By Dolly Goolsby – Full Story at Dolly Travels
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Sorrento is a lovely coastal town, nestled in the southern shore of the Bay of Naples. The city itself is narrow and long, with many hills, narrow, winding streets, walled pathways leading to Marina Piccola on the eastern side and to Marina Grande, the old Fisherman’s Village, on the western side.
Hotels in the center of town are on fairly level ground, with most of them having lush gardens and some with swimming pools. Other hotels are up on the cliffs, high above the city, but the view of the bay from those cliff side hotels are incredibly breathtaking.
Sorrento is the birthplace of limoncello, that delicious lemon liqueur. Lemon and orange groves are abundant throughout this region of Southern Italy, with lemon groves outnumbering the oranges. The trees bloom and produce fruit year round. Limoncello is made from the peel of a knobby yellow fruit, which has such an intense flavor. The seductive, addictive lemon flavor surfaces in many foods, many specialties of the region.
One of my favorite desserts: lemon sorbet with limoncello poured over, plus ice cold limoncello to sip. In the background you can see Frank’s dessert: light, airy sponge cake with lemon cream filling, topped with whipped cream and wild strawberries. It doesn’t get any better than this. These desserts were the finale for a delicious seafood dinner at our favorite restaurant in Sorrento, Ristorante Delfino in Marina Grande.
Other food specialties are cheeses made from the milk of water buffalo that are raised in the countryside south of Amalfi. These animals were originally imported from India. Now raising them iin Campania is a huge enterprise. We went to our second favorite restaurant in Sorrento, called Inn Bufalita, that specializes in all things buffalo. We had a salad made with cherry tomatoes, small balls of Bufalo mozzarella, fresh basil and arugula. That was fantastic, Frank had a buffalo steak, which did not impress him.
When we went to Paestum, I asked Raffaele, our driver, if he knew where the “buffalo roamed”. Laughing, Raffaele told me that many people have images in their minds about the milk coming from the American Bison.
“I always explain that this milk and the milk products come from the water buffalo, but somehow many people cannot connect water buffalo with this southern region of Italy”, he told me. Then he asked if I would like to see the animals.
“Of course!”, I replied. Raffaele drove us out to one of the farms. There the buffalo are kept in large enclosures, but that ensures that they only eat the food provided by the farm. Raffaele then told us that, just like clockwork, when it is milking time, the animals start heading for the milking shed.
“The buffalo are very organized and time conscious”, he said.
There you have it; my love of the food of this Amalfi-Sorrento region is one of the many reasons that I will keep returning. Most of my readers are well aware that I am an incorrigible “foodie”, so you will probably read more about food while I am on this trip.
Until next time,
Arriverderci, tutti.
Dolly
Early Tuesday morning, under leaden gray skies that seemed to hover over the nearby fields and the tarmac of Roma Fiumincino airport, our plane landed. The pilots had done a fine job, getting us to Rome 45 minutes ahead of schedule. After gathering our luggage, we took a a cab to our hotel. We were too early to check in, so we put our luggage in the hotel storeroom and set off to see the city.
We walked to Piazza Venezia, found a table at an outdoor cafe and sat down to enjoy the never-ending show of traffic, pedestrians dodging the vehicles, a policeman blowing his whistle that no one heeded. We had a good view of the Vittorio Emmanuel Monument as well. Many Italians say that the monument is too ornate for this area, right by the Roman Forum and the Capitoline Hill. I like it, though.
One can go inside, pay to go to the roof (Roma dal Cielo, Translated as Rome from the Sky). This is one of the best places to get a view of the entire city of Rome. There are plaques around the walls of this rooftop, to tell one what you are seeing, and remind you that you are right in the center of Ancient Rome. All those piles of rocks inside the fenced-off areas below are the remains of the buildings of the greatest empire of all time.
When we tired of people watching, we walked back to our hotel. We stopped for lunch along the way, had a pizza and a salad, and a large bottle of water. When we arrived at our hotel and got checked in, it was almost 4:00 p.m. We had been up for about 30 hours by then; therefore, my rule to not take a nap on the first day went right out the window. We showered, got into our jammies and never left the hotel again that day.
The next day, we were up early, had breakfast and kept our touring to the neighborhood. I needed to buy train tickets for the rest of our trip, so we spent a couple hours in the train station. Then we went to the National Museum, walked around neighborhoods that were familiar, and found some new places.
In the evening, in one of the newly discovered (by us), we walked down to the Monti district. This area had some trendy boutiques and many restaurants. Eventually, we decided to have dinner at a restaurant in the Piazza dei Monti. We enjoyed pasta alla Vongole, a delicious salad of beet, strawberries, ricotta cheese on a bed of watercress, plus a glass of red house wine.
Even though the country sometimes gets attention for its conservative character, the gay aspect of the Italy is widely popular and very attractive to LGBTI travelers around the globe. Who hasn’t dreamed of spending the holiday season in one of the sexiest Mediterranean countries, with its endless natural beauty, rich food culture and some of the sexiest people in the world?
As Italy has a wide range of destinations and choices to offer, the gay travel experts of Destsetters have made a selection of the best tips and travel ideas, that are able to satisfy everybody – from gay couples in love to single travelers looking for fun and adventure.
Hey all,
Welcome to our weekly series on the blog and our Facebook travel groups – City Sundays. Each week we’ll select a different LGBT friendly city to talk about, and we’ll invite our innkeeper and travel agent/tour operator friends to come talk with us about it as well.
Florence is truly a world-class city. It’s extremely walkable, and it’s the cultural heart of Italy. There are so many great museums here, and one of the finest pieces of art celebrating the male form – David by Michelangelo – is here as well. Seeing David is almost a religious experience. It’s hard to explain, but seeing this statue that we have all seen in pictures a thousand times is nothing short of stunning. Florence is also a world-class food capital, with some amazing restaurants. And it’s a great base for exploring Tuscany.
Have you ever been? What did you do while you were there?
Do you wanna go?
Let’s chat! Join the conversation here:
Gay (Men) Travelers: 
Irpinia contradicts everything you expect about Southern Italy. The rainy climate and green mountains have more in common with the Pacific Northwest than the Amalfi Coast, just 40 miles away. Instead of Roman ruins like those at Pompeii, stones remain from the Osci, the native Campanian tribe known for their salacious festivals. The spiritual center of the region is the famously hard-to-reach church at Montevergine.
Pilgrims arrive after long bus rides over highways that span seemingly bottomless gorges. Irpinia’s landscape is foreboding, which is why the Montevergine pilgrimage has always required strong and focused devotion. The thin air is hard to breathe. The damp stone from the mountain’s peaks perfume the air with ancient minerals.
In the cleared piazza, old women sell candles and chestnuts, but the attention belongs to the crowds of dancing men and women beating tambourines and clapping out ancient rhythms with castanets. If you took away the down coats and wool hats, the scene would look like it inspired one of the ancient mosaics on display at the archaeological museum in nearby Naples.
Energy builds among the devotees who pray and sing as the faithful have done here since the thirteenth century. But on February 2nd devotees wear lipstick and stubble and feather boas. By the time night descends, over two thousand gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender pilgrims will have passed through this Catholic shrine to worship the icon they call the ‘Madonna of Transformation.’
Periodically we’ll feature one of our properties here to let our readers know about some great gay friendly places to stay.
Hey all,
Welcome to our weekly series on the blog and our Facebook travel groups – City Sundays. Each week we’ll select a different LGBT friendly city to talk about, and we’ll invite our innkeeper and travel agent/tour operator friends to come talk with us about it as well.
Rome is one of our most favorite cities in all the world. The people there are very friendly, and it’s one of the most walkable cities, too – just get out on foot and explore. There’s something new (or something really really old) around every corner. Rome even has its own gay district, though it’s small by most standards – right in front of the Colosseum. There are many adventures within easy distance by train or car, including the ruins of Ostia Antica, where you can actually walk inside the old structures of what used to be Rome’s port city.
Have you ever been? What did you do while you were there?
Do you wanna go?
Let’s chat! Join the conversation here:
Gay (Men) Travelers: