Happy/Sad

What a year it’s been!  We’re happy to be coming home but sad that our adventure is behind us.

It truly has been a grand adventure.

The things we’ve seen.  

The places we’ve been.  

Most of all, the things we’ve learned.

We’ve learned how little we need to make it through a whole year.

We’ve learned to try new things and discover we actually like them.

In Italy, we fell in love again, and completely, with the small town of Pienza.  We made friends we will remember our whole lives, even though we were there barely two months.  It became the town of our hearts.  Now we are a part of it as well.  We plan on returning as often as we can.  

We learned how to downsize.  

We leaned that fewer possessions and richer experiences can go hand-in-hand.

We learned the value of tradition, and how a people can cherish what their ancestors did.  

What may seem simply an odd custom to an outsider defines who these people are, and gives them a sense of place no American can possess because our history is too short. 

In Australia, we traversed the Great Ocean Road.  We saw a small part of a country the size of the USA with fewer people than  California.  We saw the opposite of what we experienced in Italy…what a country can build when unencumbered by thousands of years of tradition.

We came to understand why Abel Tasman, the first European to set eyes on New Zealand, thought he had stumbled upon the Garden of Eden.  

We met a people who are more concerned with preserving the breath-taking beauty of what they have than in producing and acquiring more.  

We had seen photos and even films of New Zealand but were not prepared for the reality of it.  There are portions of the South Island we can only describe as magical.

On the North Island, we saw that some of the most beautiful spots on earth aren’t on earth at all, but are under the sea.  And, we learned to relax.

We returned to Italy in the Spring and explored parts of the country we had never seen before...Rome… and the south.

We found Greek cities as old as anything in Greece.  

We found whole Italian provinces that after three thousand years still thought they were Greek.

We can’t remember all the people who opened their hearts to us.  Yes, they gave us directions and advice on what to see and do, but they also taught us that everywhere in the world it’s easy to find people willing to go out of their way to share a part of their lives with complete strangers.

We returned home a bit poorer in the pocketbook but much, much richer in experience.  

We’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

(…though we might plan a bit differently next time)

Cycling Paradise

Sometimes, even the darkest clouds have a silver lining.  While Carol and Roger were cycling across Puglia, Carol had a mechanical problem with her bike.  It didn’t stop her from riding, just from carrying her panniers (saddlebags).  So, at the last minute, we switched to Plan B.

We took the train to Castagneto Carducci, a small town on the Mediterranean in Southern Tuscany.

There, we found cycling paradise.

Why Castagneto Carducci?

The story dates back to 1988, the year Andy Hamsten became the only American ever to win the Giro d’Italia (For a great story on how he did it, read Bob Roll’s essay, The Day Grown Men Cried).  When Hamsten was a rookie racing in Europe, he was befriended by retired pro Carlo Guarguaglini.  Guarguaglini convinced Hamsten to come to Castagneto Carducci to train.  He did and brought his entire 7-11 team with him.  Hamsten fell in love with the area and now bases his cycle-touring company here.

Olympic Gold Medalist and two-time world champion Paolo Bettini retired to the area.

Connie Carpenter, 1984 Olympic Gold Medalist and 12-time US racing champion, comes here to train.  

The Lampre Pro Racing team hold its training camp here.  By now, you get the picture.

This is Cycling Paradise.

The landscapes are gorgeous.

There are lots of hilltop town to visit….

….with medieval castles dotting the roadsides…

…and a 9th Century fort to explore.

There are as many cyclists on the roads as cars.

There are plenty of hills to climb, but the grades are more gentle than the knee-busters in other parts of Tuscany.

The local tourist office has put together a cycling guide with 22 different rides that take you past vineyards and through forests.

The local wine…Bolgheri…though not well known, is tasty and affordable.

On a warm day, the beach is only a 30 minute bike ride away.

The small towns in the area are charming… 

…and this time of year, the landscape is bursting with color.

Perhaps the best downhill in all of Italy is the road between Sassetta and Suvereto.  

Fifteen kilometers of gentle descent.  

No stoplights.  

Almost no cars.  

And 168 technical curves to negotiate as fast as you dare. (Roger actually counted them!)

At the end of the day's ride there are always pretty podium girls to reward the winners (with a kiss?).

Cameos

This blog post is about cameos, the kind women wear as earrings, rings, on a chain, or as a brooch.  The ancient Romans invented the cameo, carving them out of glass…often images of powerful political figures.

It was during the Renaissance that cameos began to look like this…carved from sea shells.

The best cameo carvers in the world…hands down…were once in Trapani, a small city on the western tip of Sicily.  They’re not there any more, which is what makes this a good story.

When Napoleon’s army conquered Sicily, the emperor was smitten with the cameos he saw in Trapani.  He kidnapped most of the cameo carvers and had them shipped back to France to teach his countrymen the craft.  Those who escaped Napoleon’s dragnet fled to Sorrento and Naples and took their trade with them.

We saw the cameos shown in this blog post at Bimonte, the oldest cameo shop in Sorrento. 

Christain Bimonte, the grandson of the store's founder, explained how a cameo is made.  The term “cameo,” he told us, refers to the technique of scratching away shell to produce an image. The cameo as art jewelry can vary widely in appearance.

This is the classic...an oval piece containing the profile of a woman with a straight nose in a traditional Greek/Roman pose...set in gold or silver.

But cameos are not limited to women’s profiles.  Their subject matter can vary greatly.

Nor is the shape limited to the traditional oval.

The best quality cameos come from Cypraecassis Rufa shells.  They have a thin layer of reddish brown on the outside, a thick layer of white in the middle, and layer of brown on the inside.

A series of skilled artisans, each with a specific task to perform, prepare the shell for the carver.  

The first decides the cameo shape according to the shell's shape, using it to its best advantage. 

The cutter divides the shell into smaller pieces and shaping them.   Most often, the shell pieces are smoothed and rounded by grinding off the outer layer.  

At last, the carver glues the piece of shell to a wooden knob and is ready to begin.

He sketches a rough outline of the image he will carve on the shell.

Nunzio Balzano is the resident carver at Bimonte.  He is one of a small number of hand-carved cameo artisans left today.  His job takes, “highly developed artistic ability…and many years of experience.”

Nunzio uses these tools to scratch away the unwanted portion of the shell and then works on the inside surface, which becomes the background of the design.

Nunzio worked very fast, but the shell is hard, and the process is a slow one.

The quality of a cameo is determined by the fineness of the detail, the depth of the image, and whether individual scratch-marks are visible on the finished product.  Some very pretty images fail that quality test when viewed closely.  We looked at several and could see the blemishes through a magnifying glass but not without it.

Today, water-jet cutters in Asian factories can mass-produce striking cameos made out of artificially-dyed agate for a fraction of the cost of hand carving.  Experts can tell the difference, but the average consumer cannot.

This cameo glows with highlights from the outer shell emphasizing the delicate hand and cheeks of the woman.  It could only have been made by hand.  

Which would you rather have?  A factory-made knock-off, or this cameo hand-carved by Giuseppe Bimonte…Christain’s grandfather...who learned his art from the grandson of a refugee of Napoleon’s sack of Trapani?