James' Europe Travel Blog

Ok, the title of this thing is a bit misleading. We didn't exactly pilot our rental car along the Costiera Amalfitana; we got a professional to drive us.

Yes, we were taken around in a rather stubby bus from citrus-blossom perfumed Sorrento to the open air shopping mall the Italians call Positano, then on to maritime powerhouse Amalfi. The road was wide and curvy. On the straight bits, haphazardly parked cars funneled traffic into a challenging bottleneck. This did not discourage our driver, who plowed straight ahead without incident. Italian roads hold more cars than you can imagine. Who needs space between the mirrors when you have those great views?

Beyond Amalfi, the in-progress clean up of some rock fall made us turn back. Yes, the bus was turned around smartly--only two up and backs and we were once again zipping down the road to Amalfi, where an interesting visit to the Duomo dedicated to St. Andrew awaited us.

I asked our driver if he knew which cars contained tourists. "The ones going real slow," he said.

Bottom line: It's not dangerous to drive the Amalfi coast. Just pay attention and avoid weekends at all costs.

More: See a Map of the Amalfi Coast.

Last night we took one of those walks to piazza Maggiore, Bologna's central square, to have a pre-dinner Prosecco and do some people-watching. The air was pleasantly cool, which does not describe our night at the Starhotel Bologna.

You see, our 7th story room seethed with heat on that cool evening. The front desk folks informed us that the air conditioning wouldn't be turned on until May 15th, three days away. They advised, "You can open the windows."

Sure, you can open the (dual double glazed) windows that look onto the Bologna train station--and to the incessant noise generated all night long around the city's main transportation hub.

Noise or decent temperature? Now there's a dilemma that shouldn't be presented to travelers in a four star hotel. Ever. We didn't actually need environmentally nasty air conditioning, we just needed a way to get that cool evening air into the room without opening the window. Why don't hotel designers think of these things?

But, at least our room had some hooks for your clothes.

The new Tinguely Museum in Basel features a permanent exhibition of Tinguely's animated mechanical sculptures and is supplemented by special exhibitions featuring works of Tinguely's artist friends and contemporaries as well as other modern artists.

Basel is a fascinating city that sits at the corner of three countries: Switzerland, Germany and France. It's one of my favorite cities in Switzerland for its food and cultural diversity. Basel is also one of the hosts of the UEFA EURO 2008 soccer tournament starting June 7th. You don't have to have tickets to join in the fun, you can check out the Fan Boulevard Basel.

A Whole Foods spokeswoman told me the eggplant was grown in Florida, which is too bad because eggplant grows easily in the Northeast. But in the company's defense, very few customers care whether their food is local. Most who do, shop at farmers' markets. Also, there's not even a standard definition of what local means. To Nabhan, who inspired many local activists with Coming Home to Eat, it means eating within a 250-mile radius of his Arizona home. Many who blog at a site called eatlocalchallenge.com aim for a stricter "100-mile diet."

Here in the Lunigiana, my neighbors have a much narrower definition of local. At dinner with them last night, the wild boar we ate was shot pretty near our back yard (wild boar are considered vermin around here as they tear up the landscape something horrible). The polenta under the stewed boar was produced entirely by my next door neighbor, who once dug up one of the Lunigiana's ancient stelle statues in one of his fields. The wine came from two sources, both cellared within 100 feet of my house. The mirto, a myrtleberry liquor popular in Sardinia, was made two houses down. The chocolate "salami" (yes, it's a dessert) was made in the house where we ate. The bees we complained about made our local honey, and the hives are next to our propane tank.

Now that's what I call local.

Want to know how you can get started eating local? About.com has the answer: Local Foods with Molly Watson.

The Lisbon Jazz Summer School debuts this summer at the Belem Cultural Center, July 18 through 26, with classes and concerts as several locations. Classes for youth are open to both Portuguese and international students. Let Mulgrew Miller tell you how to play. You have until the end of May to sign up.

If you'd like to learn a little bit about Portugal's wine, United Regions of Dao Sul has lots of information. According to the Portuguese National Tourism Office:

The Quinta de Cabriz, in the Dao wine country of Portugal's Centro Region, has been inviting visitors to its wine estate since 1993, and now other estates in Portugal are following suit. At the Quinta do Encontro, modern architecture blends with the estate and visitors are offered roast suckling pig, Bairrada style, from the estate's wood ovens. At the the Herdade Monte da Cal in the town of Fronteira, in the Alentejo Region, has added a new restaurant and tasting room, and offers an introduction to the wine culture of southern Portugal.

Need to find out more about Spain and Portugal Wine Regions?

What do lardo and James Bond have in common? Well, they're both to be found amongst the marble quarries above Carrara these days. Yes, filming of the oddly named movie Quantum of Solace is now going on amongst the cubes and tunnels of Michelangelo's favorite source of marble. According to CommanderBond.com:

"Indicating that the film’s chase has now moved from Lago di Garda to the quarries at Carrara, the report states that Bond makes his way through the Canalgrande and Fantiscritti quarries, while still being pursued by the police. After eventually shaking off the police, Bond is expected to emerge out of the Miseglia (a frazione, or subdivision in Carrara) tunnel and eventually arrives in Siena."

Yes, Quantum of Solace, to be released in November, will have bits of the Palio di Siena in it, in addition to scenes at Lake Garda and Carrara's marble quaries.

So we went to check out the scene. The signs were in place to restrict traffic to authorized film people, but they were moved off to the side, so we went up to the Fantiscritti quarry and prepared an illustrated guide: How to Tour the Marble Quarries of Carrara just in case Bond has trouble finding the place. You never know.

To be fair, most of the tourism this weekend is due to the Italian May Day holiday, Italy's Labor Day. A majority of the tourists seemed to be Italian. There was a distinct lack of English heard in the narrow alleyways.

Whatever you do, don't be taken in by the idea of taking "the boat" from Chioggia to Venice as we did, unless it goes directly into Venice. Our trip did indeed start and end on a boat. But in between there was a bus, a ferry, and another bus. The chances you'll have to stand on the buses is 5 to 1. On the pleasure/pain scale this 2 hour trip falls between getting poked in the eye with a sharp stick and getting your arm ripped off by the rusty gears of large industrial machinery. Avoid like the plague.

I'm not much for those "top ten" lists you see, but the one from Switzerland Tourism is interesting. It doesn't make an attempt to goad you into doing the things that everyone else thinks is popular, so you have an unordered list that starts with eating brunch with Switzerland's farmers, meanders through watching the cows migrate to checking out the “last beer stop before Heaven” – otherwise known as the Monsteiner Brewery in Monstein, Canton Graubünden--and then (for me the "pièce de résistance"):

Witness Swiss wrestling at its best at a “Schwingfest.” Wearing traditional (and sturdy!) clothing, hefty men and women tackle their opponents within small circles of sand. Winners of the larger competitions often receive a cow or a bull as a prize. Yodelers provide musical entertainment between matches.

Of course, your pièce de résistance may be the Matterhorn, also quite a sight.

Check out the whole list: Summer in the remote Swiss Alps

I love the cultural diversity of Europe--there's so many odd and amazing things to see and do. And the dollar is gaining ground, too. You gotta like that.

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Fitness Oriented Pampering?

Women are invited to enjoy the camaraderie of a fitness-oriented and pampering vacation with the Wayfarers’ new “girlfriends getaway” Cinque Terre itinerary.

Well, I suppose if you want to get fit on your pampering vacation without your menfolk whining every time they get a few hundred meters away from an outlet mall, this vacation might be just the ticket:

Accommodations are in a former 16th-century Franciscan monastery with a state-of-the-art Wellness Spa and in a hotel with its own sandy beach. Priced at US $3795 per person, based on double occupancy, the seven-day/six-night walk takes place on September 21-27 (women only) and October 5-11 and includes 6-8 miles of walking per day.

See The Wayfarers for more.