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Retired in Rome Journal: San Gimignano a “towering” must see in Tuscany

Aerial view of San Gimignano from one of its 15 towers built by residents during the prosperous medieval times.

Some cities in Italy have reputations as tourist traps and for good reason. They’re fabulous. Take San Gimignano. It’s one of those Tuscan jewels you read about it and HEAR about, ad nauseam, from your friends who once visited. It’s a walled city constructed during medieval times to ward off invasions from everyone taking revenge on the old barbarian Roman Empire.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Florence is an Italian theme park but you can get a good steak

Florence's famed Duomo and one of the massive lines to get in.

I’ve been to Florence numerous times. In my continuing tour of Italian tourist spots before the mobs arrive, I came to Tuscany for three days. To go through Tuscany, one must go through Florence. It’s inevitable. I’d like to avoid it, like a high school reunion you must attend before branching off with old buddies to a dive bar. But here I am back in Florence, along with about 500,000 of my closest fellow tourists.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Easter Sunday is a time for chow, not church

Just part of the Easter Sunday feast at the Castellanis.

The Catholic Church has passed on its prehistoric dogma from one pope to another for nearly 2,000 years, with none — until now — having the foresight to modernize enough to attract a new generation. How were young urban Italians going to react when John Paul II went to Tanzania in 1990, on a continent where, according to AVERT, a United Kingdom-based HIV and AIDS charity, 5.5 million people suffered from AIDS, and told them using condoms was “evil”?

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Retired in Rome Journal: Testaccio gastro tour a bite of Rome’s tasty and disgusting past

Roberto Persiani holding black truffles in E Volpetti. Yes, those are priced at 890 euros a kilo.

Back 2,000 years ago, Rome had 1 million people. Another city in Europe didn’t reach that mark until London — in the 1850s. But the Romans living in Testaccio weren’t wearing togas and drinking wine in gold goblets near the Roman Forum. Since well before Spartacus first laid down his hammer and picked up his sword instead (See: Slave Revolts That End Badly), Testaccio has been the living quarters of the working class.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Thermal baths of Viterbo means floating in the wake of Michelangelo

These thermal pools have been around since the 3rd century and attracted sitting popes.

The Terme dei Papi are thermal baths located in the charming walled city of Viterbo, about 40 miles north of Rome. Actually, the baths were once on the beaten path. The difference is those beating that path were the likes of Michelangelo, Dante Alighieri (who wrote about them in his “Divine Comedy”) and, as the term “Papi” indicates, many sitting popes. They’ve been around since the 3rd century, just after the height of the Roman Empire.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Pickpockets have turned Rome into a city of thieves

Pickpocketing in Rome has a thousand stories. In actuality, you have at least 300 a day. According to Bob Arno, the self-proclaimed “Pickpocket King” who has gone from thief to victims advocate, that’s the number that is allegedly reported to police in Rome. According to the Huffington Post, Rome has the second most pickpocket incidents in the world, just behind Barcelona and just ahead of Prague.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Losing 10 pounds in Italy isn’t as hard as you think

I'm not a great cook, but I'm a good cook in Rome. Fresh pasta and sweet tomatoes can make simple meals delicious.

The lifestyle in Rome, however, has built-in safeguards. Like Romans, I walk everywhere. When I lived in Centro Storico, I didn’t need public transportation for two months. Rome is one of the world’s great walking cities and I would walk four to six miles a day. Even when I wasn’t going anywhere, I’d just wander.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Mussolini’s Bunker a 2.4-mile maze of dark history and mystery

The German command post inside Mussolini's bunker. The Germans took it over after Mussolini ran out of power.

I’ve had a weird fascination with Benito Mussolini ever since I read about him during my first stint here from 2001-03. He was fierce nationalist who tried to make his country a player on the world stage. He had some leadership qualities that any general in the U.S. could admire. The son of a socialist blacksmith in the small Emilia-Romagna town of Dovia di Predappio, Mussolini fought against growing communist factions and did a lot of good in his early years. He helped nationalize a language in a country fractured by dialects and millenium-long regional rivalries. He turned the swamps outside of Rome into commerce centers and charming, livable villages. And, as his legacy still states, he got the trains to run on time. He did nothing with the bus system, which still sucks, but that’s Rome’s problem now. His problem was he had this weird crush on Adolph Hitler, which, obviously, became the ultimate fatal attraction.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Amalfi Coast the great escape for expat problems

The balcony at my AirBnB in Praiano, a little speck on the Amalfi Coast.

I’ve been to the Amalfi twice before. How much do I love it? A framed oil painting of Positano, my favorite town in Italy, hung above my TV in Denver for 11 years. Whenever I got stressed, I would lay on my couch and stare at the multi-layered rows of bed & breakfasts, pensions and villas that cascade down a steep hill toward the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea. I could be devastated by a diagnosis of brain cancer, the ax murder of a sibling or a pending trip to Nebraska and stare at that painting. I’d smell the sweet fragrance of lemon trees from the Amalfi. Suddenly, life is sweet again.

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Retired in Rome Journal: Dinner on a piazza went from a no-no to a yes-yes thanks to Obika’ and its smoked bufala mozzarella

Twenty-year-aged Parma ham and smoked bufala mozzarella at Obika', in the heart of pulsating Campo dei Fiori.

I know Obika’. In 2006 I wrote about it in A Moveable Feast, the traveling food column I wrote for The Denver Post for eight years. Obika’ comes from the Neapolitan word “obica,” meaning, “We are here.” However, the Neapolitan alphabet has no “k.” The Neapolitan owner, Silvio Ursini, is a Bvlgari jewelry exec who started Obika’ in 2004 due to two obsessions: mozzarella and Japanese culture. He switched the “c” to a “k” to give it a Japanese bent and an accent on the end just to be hip.

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