Ireland, Part 2

Driving south through the narrowest of streets (is it really that expensive to add another 18 inches of pavement?), I’m growing more and more used to this left side of the road thing. I still have no idea where other cars are, or where to look to find them. It’s still disorienting having so little car to my right and so much to my left—I’ve probably run Julie into the sides of many a vine-covered embankment, but she has graciously stayed quiet.

“It’s much easier being a passenger,” she remarks when she decides to drive for a mile or two.

I’m crawling up the back of my seat, not from anything she’s doing behind the wheel but from my own disorientation in the left-hand passenger seat. “I can’t agree,” I mutter through gritted teeth, and am happy to drive again.

Driving in the cities is easy, though, because I just follow the traffic. The Irish know what they’re doing, because for them the left-hand side is right. (Get it? Ha. I hate myself.)

We’re off to the cliffs of Moher. The road takes us past Dunguaire (or is it Dunedain?) Castle, a cold-looking tower above a black bog. Water rushes out of the side of a hill into the deceptive stillness and shallows. We sneak around on the same path where knights and princesses, fairies and ancient sprites have played for millennia. Puck of Pook’s Hill smiles from just behind that branch. No, over here! There! Quick now, here, now, always! Aryn lists this castle as her favorite part of the trip—even more than jumping on the hotel beds.

The countryside changes slightly, subtly, hinting that this small island has a nuanced depth that years couldn’t scratch at. We wonder aloud how different it might look in the summer, with leaves, flowers, heather in bloom, grass and ivy thriving. We’ve said we’ll come back to most places we’ve visited so far, but I’d be surprised if we never see this land in season, with every shop open and the weather ten or so degrees warmer. (Note: February is one of the drier months of the year here, and one of the cheapest, so if cost is a factor don’t wait ‘til the summer to visit.)

The road signs in Irish and English, the conversations in pubs during Sunday afternoon soccer matches that sound like no language I’ve heard, the look among strangers to the strongest English speaker when a question is posed, remind me that even here (oh yes), here English is also the language of the conqueror.


Travel is a funny thing. We search for the unique, the authentic foreign experience, but our search takes us to places that millions before have recommended, to share an experience with those chattering, camera-toting hoards lucky enough to get there too. Do we want to eat pizza at Da Michele’s because Julie Roberts did in Eat, Pray, Love, or because it’s the best pizza ever? (It is.) Do we want to see the cliffs of Moher because we saw them in the Princess Bride as the cliffs of Insanity? And if the answer is yes, does that lessen the authenticity of our experience any more than the cart selling keychains or the wire mesh fence obstructing our view from Giotto’s Tower?

Because, grinning fiercely from atop the Cliffs into the wind whistling in from Nova Scotia with nary a hill nor tree nor blade of grass to slow its mighty course, gulls riding the updrafts 700 feet above the spray from exploding North Atlantic breakers, my birthday memory is worthy of nostalgia without qualification. When I joke in the future about the twelfth anniversary of my 29th birthday, I won’t be thinking about my eyesight, hairline, muscle tone or strong joints. I’ll be carrying a little girl with muddy boots, listening to the wind tear at our raincoat hoods, walking the well-trod paths high above the cold, iron-colored sea.

Ireland, Part 1

The Emerald Isle has a lot of red in it, we notice, as the ferry passes out of the jetties and begins to jostle with the mighty waves of the North Atlantic. There’s a lot of brown, too, to say nothing of the thick, black clay at a construction site and the mossy gray of boulder fields and stone fences. We see the sun sparkle on the red of dead heather and the dark brown of seaweed in low tide, and the cliffs of Moher hulk in the distance. As the Aran Islands come into view ahead of us and the waves from the tip of Greenland rock our boat harder and harder, Aryn learns the dizzy exhaustion of seasickness. Luckily, we pull into the harbor of Inis Mor before she gets the full experience, and by the time we spy the castle on a hill not far distant, she’s as ready for adventure as we are.

We have no plan. That’s not unlike us, but we were going to borrow a guidebook from the library or buy a map or something before coming, and we didn’t. At least we remembered the Garmin, and she got us to the ferry and, last night, pretty close to the hotel and, earlier, somewhere in a not-so-close neighborhood of six one-way streets behind and across the river from Trinity College in Dublin. No tours on Fridays, by the way, but the book of Kells exhibit is fantastic.

So, without a plan, when Aryn steps off the boat onto the Aran Island Inis Mor, we see signs for bike rental gleaming bright purple in the sunlight, and know. The guy handing out maps who promises a free baby seat confirms, and we dig out helmets as they bring our bikes around. Our path takes us up, up through tiny roads and past solitary cows and horses in miniature pastures. Rock is everywhere, as if this land was never meant for farming but no one bothered to tell the Irish, and they cling to their land like a religion (or a gun).

The tower atop what I overhear is “the tallest point on the islands” is closed according to the sign, but not according to the broken gate and empty doorway. At the bottom of the winding staircase is a bizarre collection of ancient furniture, farm implements, tools and dead flowers, and atop the tower—oh my. My breath catches. My words fail. If you’ve ever seen a photo album of this fair land, and stopped to stare at one photo in particular, the one that looks like it was taken from a low-flying aircraft over a dozen cows crammed into a hundred little fields, the sun magnifying colors unused to its direct rays, a lone old man toiling away in one corner, waves breaking on a rocky shores in another, a sea-foam green farmhouse in still another corner and a crumbling, ruined castle just off-center—this is my view, and more. I stand transfixed like Frodo in the Seat of Seeing in Amon Hen, like Mowgli in Ka’s gaze, like a baby on the 4th of July.

Riding helps me feel like I’m working off these enormous meals. The “full Irish” breakfast of tomato, sausage, egg, black and white puddings (I preferred the white), thick bacon, toast, tea/coffee/etc. Julie rediscovered her love of Kiwi from our breakfast spread in Galway. Lunch of hamburgers or chicken Goujons, fish n’ chips always served with a salad and maybe a pint. Dinner of seafood chowder, salmon and soda bread, 100% Irish steak, cottage pie, probably a pint but also a full selection of wines from around the world. This is one of the few places outside Italy where I’ve seen espresso and even a macchiato equivalent as a standard on the café menu.

We buy sweaters from the Aran Sweater Market as souvenirs. I forgo the woolen scarf and tweed cap and Gaelic-swirl pewter pocketwatch. Maybe I’ll get a tweed jacket in Scotland this summer?

Riding downhill back toward the boat, Aryn keeps telling me to slow down. She has no trouble with sea-sickness on the way home, nor does she have trouble entertaining the elderly couple at dinner (the only ones who pronounced the Aran Islands like Aryn’s name, by the way), so everything’s back to normal.


The kind of stories we'll tell our friends about this trip will be the ones about leaving our car in the parking garage in Galway because we don’t notice it closes at six on Sundays. Or driving for nearly an hour on a road our GPS didn’t recognize, imagining her wondering how we were making 120 km/hr over muddy fields and stone fences. Or Aryn asking us, disconcertingly, as the plan is just about to touch down, “Do you have Jesus in your heart?”

We probably won’t mention that Ireland is very much a country, with McDonalds and tattoo parlors (I’ll get that shamrock tattoo next trip), road construction and election posters (advantage: Fine Gael). Subdivisions outside old towns could be Eden Prairie, Fredricksberg, any American suburb. The history and life at Trinity College and the Book of Kells is fascinating, and it’s surrounded by the life and energy of that interchangeable group of college girls in sweatpants, and that same lone professor with a graying ponytail.

We'll gloss over what the English did to them "for eight hundred long years," as the McCourt family often mentions. We love it here.

One man, two years, 365 pizzas

[this story first appeared in the May 21 edition of the Naples "Panorama" and is reprinted here by permission of the author--namely, me]

History was made at the Pizzeria Giardino d’Averno Friday, May 14, as Sale Lilly ate pizza number 365.

The now-famous pizza aficionado has been visiting pizzerias all throughout Naples, the surrounding areas and Europe—even as far away as Scotland—on a quest to eat 365 pizzas in two years and, in the process, find the perfect pizza.

“Of all the places to meet Neapolitans,” said Lilly, “the pizzeria is the best. Pizzas are made out in the open and it’s a very honest experience. The pizzaiolo’s personal reputation is on the line. When you order pasta, it’s made behind a wall in the kitchen, and there’s no interaction with the chef.”

Lilly is actually Lt. Sale Lilly, an active-duty service member stationed here, and his tour in Naples began as many others’ do, with a desire to try to local food and do a little traveling. What began as a simple goal of eating at all the pizzerias on his various guidebooks’ “top ten” lists has turned into a journey through the world of Italian pizza and the discovery of dozens of small, unknown pizzerias with a lot to offer.

“About a month after I arrived, I had done what I set out to do and I had a lot of the ‘best’ pizzas,” said Lilly. “But there are too many good pizzas for any guidebook to be conclusive about the best. My number one pizza [the Tonnato from Pellone Pizzeria in Naples] wasn’t in any guidebook I found. But my number two pizza was.”

His restraints are considerable: he cannot repeat the same pizza at the same pizzeria, he must eat the whole pizza (half if it’s a pizza al metro), and if the pizzeria offers a pizza bearing the name of the restaurant, he must try it. The result has been a sampling of 365 pizzas from more than 200 pizzerias throughout Europe, all carefully cataloged, mapped and reviewed at pizzasforsale.com. He ate 330 of his pizzas inside Italy, and his worst pizza was also his most expensive—30 Euros in Monaco.

“Neapolitans claim to have invented pizza,” he said, “and the Margherita was invented here,” so he focused most of his attention on Naples and the surrounding area. (The pizza Margherita was invented for the visit of Queen Margherita to Naples, the ingredients intended to reflect the colors of the new Italian flag.)

According to Lilly, there are more than 6,000 pizzerias in Naples alone and 12,000 in the Campania region. “I was able to try a larger sample than any of the guidebooks,” he said.

It would take several lifetimes to eat through all the pizzas here, but Lilly’s pizza eating days may be numbered, at least for now. When taking his last bite of his last pizza, to thunderous applause, someone in the crowd shouted, “Order number 366!”

Lilly smiled. “It might be a while,” he said.

Always a Mexican food lover, he “converted” to pizzas because he moved to what he calls “Pizza Heaven.”

“Any above-average pizza I had in was well above average,” he said, “and much better than anything I’ve had in the States.” He will be moving on to Virginia this summer, where another adventure no doubt awaits.

With two years and 365 pizzas under his belt, Lilly has learned a thing or two about eating pizza here. His website lists three rules for ordering the best pizza: order pizza after 7:30 p.m.; only eat pizza where there are plenty of Italians; and order the pizza bearing the restaurant’s name. “Practice your Italian and get to know your pizzaiolo,” he added. “You’ll get better service that way and you’ll have a better experience overall.”

Lilly’s time in Naples is coming to a close, but he has left a legacy and a challenge for the rest of us remaining behind.

“Neapolitans are rightly very proud of their pizza,” said Lilly. “And I found that if you take an intense interest in something they’re so proud of, you become like family and just have a great experience at the pizzeria and throughout your stay here.”

Keats, St. Pete's

Reading over the texts I send while visiting the rooms where John Keats spent his last days, I can't commiserate with Higgins when he laments conversations with women. "You want to talk of Keats or Milton," he whines to the Colonel, "she only wants to talk of love."

Keats was buried on my bday.

More happy love! more happy happy love! 4ever warm and still 2 b enjoyed, 4ever panting, and 4ever young.

I'm alone, but sharing via the miracle of SMS. The above is Keats, by the way, and sent from a man to a woman. Why can't a woman be more like a man?

The rooms, literally on the Spanish steps (first building on the right as you're looking up the steps), now house a research library about Keats, Shelley (both PB and Mary), Byron, and some contemporaries. Lists of British and American expats living in Rome at the time line the stairs as you enter, the host is a frazzled middle-aged British lady unsure how best to manage her two grad school interns, the entrance fee is small, as is Keats' room. The view is worth bragging about.

I picture myself teaching Keats someday, a classroom full of lazy, hungover college kids in pajamas. "Search for the moments," I tell them, "the Im watching night fall over the Spanish steps from keats writing desk moments, reading Ode to a Nightingale to the song of tittering mulititudes of travelling teenagers, amorous lovers locked in a precarious embrace." They yawn and eye each other up, more anxious to be the lovers than the lone reader; when can I awake so I may seek another drink?

U and I have already outlived this guy. I'll drink to that.

St. Peter's Basilica

The crèche outside is huge, lit up in many colors. The manger changes every year, apparently. Half the set was designed and sculpted by a Filipino artist to show the universality of the Church. The crèche inside is smaller, more colorful, and designed in Oberammergau.

Of course it's huge-the whole place is. Standing among the gigantic pillars, the cupola so dizzyingly high, the long arms stretching powerfully on either side, I almost laugh aloud as a song enters my head: A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.

Do I want to ask the question of whether it was worth it to cheat from so many millions of sinners indulgences to build this Duomo? Was the arrogant threat of damnation upon the collective souls of bankrupt kingdoms worth the stadium-sized cathedral, so enormous the intricate artwork from floor to ceiling blurs before my eyes?

Or do I wander on, content in the assertion of the Grecian Urn, that truth is beauty and beauty truth, and allow the age-old art to breathe its own life into me?

But truth be told, I think little about the poor medieval illiterates so abused. And the beauty does speak to me, but the closed prayer room calls more loudly, and I assure the guard I came to St. Peter's to kneel.

The ancient words so lately learned whisper from my lips. From my corner I see I padre with Nicaraguan features. I see a nun, and then another one.

"Oh my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy."

I tiptoe out, leaving truer pilgrims to longer prayers. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spritus Sancti. Amen.

Entrance to the Church, by the way, on like 7 billion levels, is free.

America, the blog

America is HUGE. The streets are so wide it’s like there are whole streets on either side of the street, and the cars are like ten feet tall. When I go into a Sam’s Club, looking to the far wall makes me feel like those submarine guys (and now girls) who can’t focus on anything more than 100 feet away after being underwater for all those weeks. There’s so much unused space—empty freeway turnarounds, wide medians and ditches along the freeways, parking lots stretching for miles.

My first visit back to the US since moving to Italy was Christmas day. It snowed, and took a long time to get to Julie’s parents’ home. I ate Mexican food, BBQ, played in an indoor water park, and spent time with our families. It was a good, if short, trip.

The biggest thing I notice, besides the size of everything, is this ridiculous sense of superiority that kept splashing over me like a wave of muddy water from the gutter. These people in Perkins have never been without this Perkins, and have never seen the inside of Da Michele’s, the voice in my head sneered. These people in Target don’t know what they have. These people at Pizza Hut… please.

Following a friend through an intersection as the light turned yellow, an imagined conversation appears in my head.

“Hey sorry about going through that yellow light,” I imagine him saying. “I hope you were able to follow me alright.”

“Please,” I answer with a sniff, “I’ve been driving in Naples.”

Now I don’t actually think any of these things, and I know how like an ass I sound admitting it. I don’t feel superior to those people in farm garb in the Perkins because, for one, I have no idea whether they’ve lived only here all their life or not, and more importantly, two, it doesn’t give me any edge over them in any forum anywhere no matter what we’ve done with our respective lives. I don’t think I’m superior to them any more than I feel afraid of a black guy on the street, or want to have sex with a random pretty girl I notice, or want to act on any of the violent, suicidal, or destructive thoughts that invade my mind every minute of every day. I am amazed, however, by the frequency of these thoughts and their varied manifestations throughout the entire time I am in the States.

So, family (who are the only ones reading this, I assume), there's my confession and please don't take it the wrong way. I can't wait to hang out again. Also, tickets are bought and hotels booked for Ireland in Feb. and I'll have some thoughts up on Rome from last week's trip in a few days. Sorry for how long it's been but, hey, I've been busy feeling too good to write. Maybe one day I'll write something good.