Living In Italy

Some people go on vacation to Italy. They travel from place to place seeing lots of the country’s most visited tourist destinations while staying in nice hotels, eating a continental breakfast at the hotel and lunch and dinner at restaurants. They are in the country for a week to ten days, and so they bring along enough clothing to never have to do laundry. A visit to the grocery store is rare, if only to pick up a snack or a bottle of water. 

What we’re doing is basically living in Italy like retirees. It’s like we live here, renting an apartment just without the responsibility of going to work. That means, groceries need to be bought, meals cooked, laundry done, trash/ recycling taken out on the appropriate days and cans taken back in*, and cleaning done around the apartment. It might not sound like vacation to some, but don’t think I’d enjoy it half as much any other way. It’s as if for a few weeks every other year or so, we get to live our dream of living in Italy. We use our bikes or our feet to get around, just like many people here. Perhaps it’s best not to call it vacation... but I quite enjoy it. 

One thing I’ve learned is that living the Italian way is to grocery shop in small batches. Fridges are small, you can only carry so much, and while large supermarkets have replaced the stereotypical street markets, the idea is the same. Get what is fresh and cheap, even if you get to use a shopping cart and a frequent shopper card to do it. The market is cool, but here in Verbania you don’t see very many Italians there, it’s mostly tourists and it’s priced accordingly. I want to experience the romanticized Italian market, but in reality if I’m keeping with the theme of “living in Italy” the supermarket is the way to go. 

So today, living a retiree lifestyle in Italy, we did a “recovery ride.” Kristen came up with the route more or less. She saw a town on Google Maps and said, “let’s go there!” And we did. It was only a 20 mile ride. We knew there would be climbing because aside from riding along the lake, everything is a climb here. We basically climbed from the moment we stepped out of the door. It was very gradual and beautiful making our way through little towns that surround Verbania, perfect for a recovery spin. 

The real climbing started once we crossed Ponte Nivia. It was gradual enough at first, heading up to Intraga. It was past that town that things got real. The entire climb from the bridge (ponte in Italian) was 4.3mi at an average of 9.9% climbing 2300ft. The final 2.1mi beyond Intragna climbed the final 1300ft at an average of 11%. Most of the time my Garmin read 13-15%. For at least half a mile, it was pinned at 15%. Quite brutal. 

The views however were spectacular. The top was not much to see except for a parking lot for hiking trails in ValGrande, but it served as a good spot to sit down and eat some focaccia. The descent was slow going until we got back to Intragna due to a half dozen drainage grates that spanned the road with slots wide enough to eat a tire. Once we got back to Intragna and stopped to take in the view across all of Verbania and Lago Maggiore, we were able to enjoy the twisting descent while stopping at one point to smell some purple flowers. One the way back to Verbania, we saw two donkeys sitting by the road. They wanted to befriend us, but only because when I stopped to take their picture, they figured we would have some food for them. 

All in all, the ride was only twenty miles, in which we climbed about 3000ft in the first ten. It was a great ride though, and tomorrow we’ll do another long one. 

For dinner we had a nice meal of pasta with cherry tomatoes, arugula, and borlotti beans. I saw the fresh borlotti beans the other day at the grocery store and figured they’d be a good source of protein. Plus, how often do you get them fresh in the US? I shelled them and par cooked them for about 30 minutes while eating lunch after our ride, and they were ready for dinner. I sautéed the tomatoes with garlic in olive oil, added the beans, then added the arugula. Once the pasta was cooked, I tossed that in with a little fresh olive oil and served it with some warmed sesame seeded semolina Sicilian bread dipped in olive oil with dried oregano from Sicily. Why go out to eat when you could eat that?! 

After doing laundry up until the moment the laundromat closed at 11pm and racing some threatening storm clouds, lightening in the distance and big wind gusts, I’m ready for bed. I should have went to be a half hour ago, but I wanted to make sure to fill you all in and stay in the habit of writing these posts. Forgive and typos. I’m too tired to proofread. 

*As a quick side note, this town, and most in Italy, really have their recycling together. In Pallanza, Monday is glass, Tuesday is compost, Wednesday is regular trash (which you shouldn’t have much of), Thursday is paper/cardboard, Friday is compost again, and Saturday is plastic. Even in mountainside towns they do this, except instead of everyone putting out little bins along the road, they have one central location in town that everyone drops things at. It’s very simple. It’ll probably never happen in “America that is supposedly being made great again” because, well, American doesn’t have the potential to be that great; but it would be nice, wouldn’t it? Americans are too lazy. Actually Americans aren’t too lazy, they’re too busy doing too many things and working to much to take care of the thing that are important, like taking care of the planet.