Road Report Archives

Dagos - The Neighborhood

I had heard that Wops (or Dagos, I still haven’t figured out which they prefer) are all so fashion conscious visitors always feel underdressed, but I have found that to be mostly a myth. I would say that 1 in 5 or so really goes all out, but the rest look just like the slobs everywhere else. I actually think I have blown most of them away in my zip-off leg travel pants and fleece pullover (but I routinely turn a lot of heads in this outfit). The one thing I can say about Italians is that they all wear these really cool windshield-style sunglasses.

Not long after breaking my third pair of cheap plastic sunglasses on this trip I approached a sidewalk dealer in Florence and saw a pair that looked good. At the urging of the immigrant vendor I tried them on and he instantly gasped “Oh my god!” as if in the entire history of sunglasses and sunglass-buyers there had never been a more perfect match. I was less taken with them than he was and after he quoted me €20 I put them down and walked away. They were down to €10 by the time I could no longer hear his pleas.

Milan is an efficient business center and just like every other big city in Europe it has a beautiful cathedral. After two days there I zipped over to Venice for two days. Venice is like a theme park/museum but with way more gift shops. There was a patch of snow on the ground in St. Marks Square, but the city is beautiful anyway. I then stopped in Florence for a couple of days and I am still not sure why. It’s a nice enough place, but it’s all about museums and shopping and I am mostly avoiding those things on this trip. I also began to see huge groups of school kids on field trips.

Rome was my next stop and it was definitely not built in a day. It is a fascinating and exciting city, but quite a bit more chaotic than any other city on my trip so far. If you took New York City and tangled the streets, then took out all but two subway lines, most of the stoplights and crosswalks, then allowed cars to park on the sidewalks it would be a lot more like Rome.

If you are thinking about going to the Vatican Museum, don’t go in the weeks leading up to Easter. It’s an amazing thing to see (it includes the Sistine Chapel), but when I arrived there about 100,000 bored kids on group trips surrounded me. It felt like I was walking through a slaughterhouse only without the guardrails. It’s breathtaking, but I never even got to see where Jesus had his offices, or at least if I did see that I didn’t notice due to the crowds.

Italy is the world’s largest wine producer and they have a reputation for quality throughout the price ranges. I mostly experimented in the €2 to €4 range and was always impressed. Some of the better wines in that category come in a one-liter box and people sometimes make fun of me for appreciating boxed wine, but until my dying day I will contend that wine in a box isn’t necessarily any worse than wine that comes in a pouch or a tube.

Touring so much of Mediterranean Europe in such a short time is great if it’s sandwiched between mind-numbing weeks in a homebound routine, but coming off Central and South America tours it finally got to me. I felt I owed myself a vacation so upon arrival in Athens I went directly to the port and took a ferry to Aegina, which is the nearest small island, and rented an apartment for a week. Greece is the word for now, but I leave for Cairo on Tuesday.