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Lake Como: My favorite lake in the world is Italy’s watery exotic dancer

Lake Como, from a villa in Varenna, is dotted with 18 villages and connected by a convenient ferry system.

The Italian Alps come down around Lake Como like giant, jagged claws clutching a basin of cool, clean water. In September, the mountains don’t have snow but they’re still majestic in their height, their steepness, their proximity to my favorite lake in the world. Also, I can’t help staring at their color. They’re covered in green forest. Above the tree line, the brown rock sticks out high above the lake as if to protect it from unwanted foreign objects — like jet skis, yachts and drunk Texans.

This is my view as I’m sitting at my hotel pool along the lake. I went to India in March to learn the meaning of perfect bliss. I may have found it on Lake Como: reading the Italian sports paper next to a beautiful pool in front of me and a gorgeous lake behind me after spending the day walking through a villa garden. I just had ravioli a few feet from the water. The summer’s suffocating heat has left, replaced by high 70s with the sun peeking through the high clouds.
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Travel guide to Castelli Romani: Hidden gems in the hills southeast of Rome

Lago di Nemi is one of the many picturesque lakes that dot the Castelli Romani region southeast of Rome.

don’t want to turn this blog into a travel guide. This blog is about experiences, not information. But I have to switch gears this once. I have recently been touring an area outside Rome that I just can’t keep to myself any longer. It has been around for 2,000 years, inhabited by emperors and popes, ogled at by Romans and savvy Europeans. But very few Americans ever get out of Rome to marvel at this extraordinary area.

It’s called Castelli Romani. It’s a series of 14 small towns, most sporting castles (thus, the “castelli” in the title) and perched on hillsides or cliffs among the picturesque Alban Hills southeast of Rome. Less than an hour from the city, they were once used as defenses against a Pac-12 lineup of foreign invaders but now offer some of the best views in Italy.
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Saldi: Italy’s twice-annual sales near another sad end

Italy has sales every summer and winter with prices up to 50 percent off.

Saldi is one of the magical Italian words few outside Italy know. But it makes Italians sprint up streets as if racing for a gold medal in the Olympic marathon. In a way, saldi represents a marathon. Saldi is Italian for “sales.” Italy has two every year. The exact dates vary by store but the months do not. The winter saldi begins the first week in January and ends in early February. The summer saldi starts the first week in July and ends …

… about Tuesday.
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Reeling Rio de Janeiro still dancing to a samba beat

Me at Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas, a lake in the middle of Rio featuring some of the most expensive real estate and a 4.5-mile bike path.

I love Rio.

I love its pulse. I love its vibrancy. I love its toughness. I love its softness. I love its skyline, its beaches, its weather. I even love its food. This is my third time in Rio and it’s like no other city. Besides having the most beautiful urban beach in the world, Rio de Janeiro seems to be always in rhythm. Music is everywhere. I don’t like music much, yet I can feel the locals, called, not ironically, Cariocas, constantly swaying to a distant beat. Rio is Havana with a democracy. Samba. Bossa Nova. Cariocas seem too mellowed out from constant sun, gentle waves and music to worry about pollution, corruption and crime. Every lyric of “The Girl from Ipanema” still runs through my brain on a 24-hour loop. No song outside The Beach Boys’ in Southern California better represents an area than “The Girl from Ipanema” represents Rio de Janeiro. A beautiful girl in a string bikini walking to the beach without a care in the world. To me, Rio is still that beautiful girl.
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Night 2 of Rome beer crawl reveals far reach of vastly upgraded beer scene

L'Oasi della Birra features 400 different beers and its 10-euro aperitivo may be the best in Rome.

Night 2 of my Rome beer bar crawl needed a one-day delay. It turns out, Italy’s stronger artisanal beers carry a bigger wallop than I thought. I nursed a rare Rome hangover from Night 1 until I crawled out of bed at 9 a.m. The Excedrin I popped like Baci chocolates had about that much effect against the suffocating humidity and low-90s temperatures of a Rome heat wave that has gone way too long.

But Sunday night my thirst had returned. Rome’s weather does that to you. My second five birrerias were in my south end of Rome — one stumbling distance from my home — and went through the teeming mass of students, trendy Romans and bohemians in the twisty alleys that is Trastevere.
So before I hop a flight to Rio, here is the look of Night 2 on Rome’s burgeoning artisanal beer scene.
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Rome’s beer boom part of fastest growing beer nation in the world: Italy

Baladin

Beer in Rome? Yes, there is some. There’s a lot, actually. Thanks to Agostino Arioli and Teo Musso, two Northern Italians tired of Italy’s backwater beer scene, beer bars in Rome have exploded. Eight years ago, Italy had only 70 craft breweries. Today it has 650. Rome has more than three dozen craft beer bars, known as birrerias, and just as many “bottle shops” selling nothing but bottled beer. “Nowadays, after the U.S., I think the most interesting, exciting craft beer scene is Italy,” said Arioli, who founded Birrificio Italiano, one of the top craft beer breweries in the country, in 1996.
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Arco degli Acetari a slice of Rome preserved from Middle Ages

This little square near Campo dei Fiori has not changed much for more than 500 years.

At the end of Pellegrino is an inconspicuous archway. When I walked through I felt like I walked onto a set of a Shakespearean theater. The square was ringed by two-story orange apartments. The view of each one was nearly blocked by small trees, ferns and planters on the iron-trussed balconies. A two-wheeled cart, the kind you might see in a Renaissance festival, sat next to a front door. The cobblestone pavement led to little windy staircases. The square even has a name: the Arco degli Acetari, named for the dealers of acetato, the mineral water that came from a spring north of Rome during the Middle Ages. These houses have essentially not changed since the Middle Ages, from the 5th to 15th century AD.
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UNO. DUE. TRE STRIKES you’re out — way out — in baseball in Italy

A young fan gets a fist bump from a member of the Italian Baseball League All-Star Team.

I had not seen a baseball game since the 2013 World Series. I’d gone nearly two years without even a popup. For a guy who played the game for 10 years and covered the major leagues as a journalist for seven, I felt in need of a baseball fix. I wanted to smell popcorn in the concession stands, pine tar around the batting cage. Baseball has smells no other sport has. Unlike most sports, these smells are pleasant.

So I go to the Italian Baseball League’s All-Star Game in Bologna. This city smack dab in the middle of Italy is the capital of Emilia-Romagna, the region best known for the greatest cuisine in Italy. It is known for culotello ham cured for 36 months and Parmigianno cheese the locals eat like giant gum drops. It is not known for hulking first basemen or 95 mph fastballs. But Italy does have its pockets of interest. Bologna is one of them. I learn fast after my train from the city center drops me off in the southwest part of town. I was three kilometers from Stadio Gianni Falchi. I wonder if anyone knows what the hell Falchi is, let alone where it is. I walk into a Tabacchi shop and ask to call a taxi. The man behind the counter not only knows where the stadium is, he knows the all-star game is in town.
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In the steambath that is Rome in July, mornings on my terrace are paradise

Me on my terrace, my usual perch every morning with my laptop and perfect cappuccino.

Yes, Rome in July is awful as I wrote last week https://johnhendersontravel.com/2015/07/09/july-is-worst-time-to-be-in-rome-or-anywhere-else/. However, in the mornings it is tolerable. On my terrace, it is spectacular. On my terrace is when Rome becomes the city of my dreams. It’s where I feel like this isn’t 2015. It’s 15 AD and I’m a member of the Roman Senate, sitting above the city in obscene luxury, lounging above the great unwashed. I keep looking around for curvy peasant women in togas to feed me grapes. Alas, I feed myself cereal and eggs.
My terrace has become my sanctuary, my home in my home. It’s where I write in the mornings and entertain in the evenings.
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July is worst time to be in Rome — or anywhere else

Tourists recovering from Wednesday's 93-degree heat and 50 percent humidity in Piazza del Popolo.

But don’t EVER come to Rome in July. Ever. Every day this month has been 90-95 with 45-50 percent humidity. It’s not as bad as Houston where today it will reach 94 with humidity at 64 percent. But add a good chunk of the 10 million tourists Rome receives every year and put them on a subway system too small to serve Des Moines, Iowa, and La Dolce Vita turns into a puddle of melted flesh.
I take pride in handling extreme weather conditions. I grew up in the Pacific Northwest so rain, cold and eight months without seeing the sun don’t faze me. Neither does searing heat. I lived in Las Vegas for 10 years. Ice and snow? I love them. I lived in Denver for 23 years. But I may have met my match with humidity. It affects me more than I’m willing to admit. Sweat stains are the ultimate in tackiness. I don’t care if we can’t help it. I hate them. I don’t naturally sweat much. Still, I only wear black or white shirts during the day in Rome. I once would rather go out naked than wear shorts in Rome like a common tourist. Now I wouldn’t wear long pants in this heat if threatened by armed gladiators.
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Calcio Storico Fiorentino a violent history lesson of Florence’s once gloried past

Calcio Storico Fiorentino started 500 years ago to show Emperor Charles V of Spain they weren't afraid of his invading army.

It’s the opening game of the 2015 Calcio Storico Fiorentino, a Florence tradition that dates back 500 years, back during the Italian Renaissance, when Florence was the biggest economic power in Italy, when art was its monetary unit and artists were its heroes. Yes, Florence. When you think of Florence, you think of the birthplace of the Renaissance, of Michelangelo masterpieces in the Uffizi, of the Ponte Vecchio straddling the Arno River at sunset. But hidden underneath the art, Chianti and romance is a sport that is all about blood, guts and a lot of glory. Calcio Storico Fiorentino combines rugby, soccer and violent assault. For nearly five centuries, Florence’s four major neighborhoods have gathered for one weekend in June and, literally, fight for a city they will risk facial rearrangement to defend.
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Skocjan Caves a must do in Slovenia, the cave capital of Europe

The Slocjan Caves are among 11,000 in Slovenia. About 250 are discovered every year.

This spectacular country on the north end of what was Yugoslavia is known for its great wines, roasted meats and affordable skiing. But underneath it all lie cave networks that are among the most vast in the world. Slovenia has 11,500 caves. About 250 new ones are discovered every year.

“We are very curious people,” one caver said.

I toured the Skocjan Caves on the far west end of Slovenia. It’s about five miles from the border of the Italian tail that slips down the east side of the Adriatic Sea. This area of Slovenia is marked by rolling green hills and cute little villages with not a single reminder of the communist past from 25 years ago. Skocjan Caves stretch 6 kilometers. We were going to walk 2 ½ of them.
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