Seized by Assisi

   

Piazza del Comune, Minerva's Temple 

     On my first afternoon in Assisi I was sitting in Piazza del Comune getting my bearings, when my son Franky announced that the bread there is stale and unsalted. Oh no! I had read in a guidebook about the dreaded pane sciocco and hoped to avoid it. The reasoning for the poor seasoning dates to the Middle Ages when there was a flap about salt taxes. In protest, the Umbrian bakers made bread without salt. 

     Otherwise my trip to Assisi was perfect. 

Saint Francis

     Although travel writer Rick Steves says “Assisi is worth a day and a night," Franky spent two and a half weeks there, my son Peter and his fiancé Nila spent 10 days, and I spent a week. The three of them are students of hagiography and particularly interested in the life of Saint Francis. St. Francis has broad appeal to believers and nonbelievers. He renounced his family riches, and was known for his deep compassion, humility, and love of nature and animals. 

Franciscan Friars

    There are several sites in Assisi where one can retrace St. Francis's footsteps.  In a sort of Christianity Carousel, we visited them over and over. Not only were they the most interesting sites in Assisi, they were often the coolest. The heat wave was very much alive in land-locked Assisi, with daily highs of 97 and cloudless skies. 

The Basilica of St. Francis

    

    The Basilica of St. Francis is a gorgeous piece of Gothic architecture commissioned by Pope Innocent in the 13th century four years after Francis died. Much of the artwork is by Giotto, considered Europe's first modern painter.  The Tomb of St. Francis on the lower level of the basilica is a wholly serene spot.

   Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli

    Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli (St. Mary of the Angels). This beautiful church houses the tiny Porziuncola Chapel, where Francis founded the Franciscan order.  

Basilica di Santa Chiara 

    Basilica di Santa Chiara (St. Clare) Francis’ friend Clare also renounced her family wealth and became the mother superior of an order of nuns called the Poor Clares. 

 Santuario San Damiano

    Santuario San Damiano This served for many years as the convent for the Poor Clares and its garden is where Francis wrote the Canticle of the Creatures. 

Peter and Nila  Eremo delle Carceri 

Franky Eremo delle Carceri 

    Eremo delle Carceri (Hermitage) Before I arrived, Peter and Nila and Franky had hiked the steep three-miles to the hermitage at Mount Subasio, but during my visit we took taxis. Eremo delle Carceri felt like a beautiful national park with spirituality in the air. There are shaded walkways and trails and vivid vistas of the valley. 

Piazza di Santa Clara

Umbrian Valley 

    Just outside the Basilica de Santa Chiara is an elevated square with a grand view of the Umbrian valley with its neat farmland, olive groves, and cypress trees. Assisi is a beautifully maintained Medieval city.

Leaving the City Walls

     Hotel il Palazzo may have started as a palace, but it was missing a key regal touch, a coffee maker in the room. This was my penance. I had to wait until 7:30 for the breakfast room to open. Once when I woke up at 4:15 a.m. I found myself wandering the medieval streets in search of coffee to no avail, the espresso machines stood cold and closed. My hotel mercifully was air conditioned, a rare commodity in Assisi. Peter and Franky and Nila stayed in Monastero Santa Colette without air conditioning which was their penance. 

Basilica of St. Francis

    Mangia! My travel mates are vegetarians so I followed suit. Oddly I had no craving for porcetta sandwiches, wild boar, pigeon, or rabbit. This meant a limited choice for our lunchtime torta—mostly mozzarella cheese, tomatoes and argh, arugula. One day I thought I was getting spinach in my torta but it was argh, arugula. 

St. Francis and the wolf

    We had our best lunch at Chiosco Vamos in a shady grove preceded by a steep hill. When I asked for potato chips the owner made me French fries served with ketchup and mayo! This place is a gem, and hard to find on the internet.

Ristorante il Frantoio 

Sauteed zucchini, olive oil bechamel, mint pesto

Ristorante il Frantoio
 Juniper-infused, osmotized watermelon, almond cheese, gazpacho, etc

    Dinner offered more variety. My travelmates had been defaulting to quick dinners in the main piazza where an electric guitarist was nightly slaughtering “Halleluja.” We ate at several spots there including Ristorante Il Tempio di Minerva, Bar Trovellesi, and Keramos where Franky had "cannelloni,"served crunchy, fried, and delicious. I tried to upgrade our restaurant outings but that meant waiting until 7:30 or 8 p.m. to eat dinner which was hard for the jet-lagged, almost as hard as waiting until 7:30 a.m. for coffee…Our best dinner was at Ristorante il Frantoio which was a gourmet delight in an elegant setting with a panoramic terrace. It was at La Lanterna that I admitted I didn't like the pizza in Assisi and think that Cheeseboard in Berekeley does a much better job. But the pasta, oh my, is always perfect. I asked why I can't duplicate it at home and they said "different soil, different grain, different water and different sun."

    

Gelateria Leccapaletta

    On the question of dessert there was no controversy, we always went to Gelateria Leccapaletta. OMG they serve the very concentrate of your flavor selection. Coconut gelato tasted like it had just been scooped out of the coconut; chocolate was the essense of chocolate in its purest form: artificial flavoring was one million miles away. We got to the point where we didn’t ask if we were going, just when we were going. Sometimes we went before dinner. 

    The minute I left the sainted city of Assisi, my luck turned and I fell into the proverbial Devil’s Hole (a site at Eremo).  I had booked a first class train ticket expecting coffee service. There was none. When I arrived at Roma Termini after five hours without caffeine I stumbled into the station like a monster just woken from the dead. Praise god Italy is very accommodating to the caff-fiend.

Rome Marriott "Park" Hotel

     Then on the way to the airport United Airlines sent word that my 2:30 p.m. flight had been cancelled, followed quickly by “good news, your flight has been rebooked.” Rebooked that is for the next day, 18 hours after I arrived at the airport. United agents herded me and the 50 other “cancelled” passengers to a small area to wait two hours for an un-airconditioned bus to take us to Rome Marriott Park Hotel in the middle of nowhere. As we rushed the registration desk, the Marriott staff said they weren’t expecting us, so to sit back down until they found us rooms. I don't know why they call it a park hotel, the only plant I saw nearby was one belonging to Toyota. 

     Back in Washington as I was going through customs, I saw a woman wearing a T-shirt reading “No crying on the yacht.”  How far I had come from the world of asceticism.

Until next time

Beach Week in Rehoboth

Rehoboth beach

Despite the fact that I live about three hours from the Delaware beaches, I don't go there often. I like to go places that are much harder to get to and much less convenient, like Maine and Cape Cod. People tell me it's the same ocean, but I'm not so sure. 

But this summer I was awarded a week's stay in a condo in Rehoboth as part of a silent auction at a fundraiser for The Barker Adoption Foundation. 

Balcony time

The condo was a small studio with a queen-sized Murphy bed, so I invited my tiniest friend, Jane for the week of July 4 to July 11.  The location was primo—5th floor of the Edgewater House, a well-manicured and well-managed condominium building with a mix of knowledgeable full-time residents and a parade of baffled renters like us. Move-in day was challenging since everyone was dependent on one small elevator and we hadn't been tipped off to the location of the carts yet.  At one point during the arduous process Jane said “I can see why people stay in hotels.” 

We looked forward to watching the Rehoboth fireworks on July 5th from our balcony, as did hundreds of people on the beach facing south. But the wind had a different plan and all we could see was a huge plume of dark gray smoke rapidly headed in our direction. People were fleeing the beach as if there had been a shark sighting. Apologia from city officials.

The beach was crowded, and some people set up their territorial encampments at dawn, but I was always able to drag my chair to the “front row” and commune with my beloved ocean which offers certainty, infinity, spirituality, and comfort. 

Jane at the pool

Jane preferred the no-muss, no-fuss, no-sand pool. One day she had the brilliant idea of ordering lunch delivered poolside from Capriotti's Sandwich Shop. We split The Bobbie, a mix of turkey, cranberry sauce, and stuffing that put me right into a triptophan-induced slumber.

At the pool, before the Bobbie sandwich

When it rained we were obligated to go to the Tanger Outlets which started well with a good haul at the J. Crew Factory, but became frustrating as we learned that like a devil’s trident, there are three distant parts to Tanger,  Bayside, Surfside, and Seaside. After a while we realized that even the expensive shops like Vuori and Lululemon were using the outlets as dumping grounds for bad color lots, burnt orange, maroon, and forest green.

Jane was in the enviable position of trying to gain weight so I decided I would help her out. We sat at the bar for our first dinner at Ava’s at the Beach and were asked to move so a party of 6 could sit there. The bartender, Treasure, moved us to another section of the bar that she said was the best seat in the house. We glared at the party of six, judging their drink orders and trying to decide if they were from NJ or PA. We invited Treasure to share our fries and she did. 

Our friend Susan drove in from Wilmington one day and we had ice cream at the Ice Cream Store and then a disappointing dinner at the much touted DiFebo's. We had a very good sausage, mushroom, and onion pizza from Louie's Pizza,  great lobster rolls at Mason's, vinegary fries from Thrasher's, and we bought gift buckets of caramel corn from Fisher’s.  Our favorite coffee shop was Cafe A GoGo.

One night at The Blue Hen we had a crazy all-appetizer meal of biscuits, stracciatella dip, and crispy roman artichokes. Afterwards we stopped at Freddie's Beach Bar to hear some soulful but (mostly) bad karaoke performances. One performer sang Total Eclipse of the Heart, and the singer Bonnie Tyler died that night. I think it was a coincidence.

Salmon BLT

Jane took a barre class at Sea Barre Fitness and we continued on to Lewes, Delaware where we perused the shoppes, and had a great salmon BLT at Lewes Oyster House.

A week at the beach is inherently relaxing, but Jane and I took several days to fully unwind, create a nest, and establish routines in our 600-square-feet of shared space. I knew Jane had hit the sweet spot when she said,  “I don’t have to do anything!”

Sunrise

But a few days after that we had to do something. Pack and go home. As we drove back into muggy Washington, DC and unloaded the car, I immediately missed the gentle sea breezes and the soundtrack of crashing waves, and wanted to go back.

A rainbow on our last day

Blooming Berkeley

Succulents abound in Berkeley

   

    We went to Berkeley in May to attend Franky's graduate school graduation and, as a side note, to celebrate Darr's birthday which was the same weekend.  

   During the flight I realized I was reading the wrong book for book club. I was reading The Master by Colm Toibin (about Henry James) and I was supposed to be reading The Magician by Colm Toibin (about Thomas Mann). All you have to do in Berkeley is swing a cat to find a bookstore, and literally steps from the BART station I walked into Pegasus. and got the The Magician. I also went to the famous Moes Books, and I wanted to go to Sleepy Cat Bookstore, but true to the name, they weren't open when I went. I needed new reading glasses, and oddly I found that none of the bookstores, although catering to readers, sold readers.

    Don’t stay at The Graduate. We did, I made the rookie mistake of believing what I saw on Hotels.com. The lobby smells bad, the rooms are old and small with minimal amenities, the coffee “service” was an electric kettle and two small brown envelopes of instant. The housecleaning was inadequate, the staff ill equipped. Plus it was a mile uphill walk from the BART station. It redeemed itself slightly with the adjoining Henry’s Bar and Grill which had a good breakfast. I stayed there so that you don’t have to. 

The Graduate lobby, lined with National Geographics

     

The Sports Basement in the restored Berkeley Iceland

    Darr and I dashed into The Sports Basement in the morning, and then headed into the city lured by ads for the Monet and Venice exhibit at the DeYoung Museum. We did not realize that the destination was perhaps the farthest point from Berkeley. But we made it there with a combination of BART and buses and the kindness of strangers. 

Franky explaining ferns

 Wild mustard; hemlock behind Franky

With Nila, Tvisi, Peter, Franky and Darr post-nature walk

     Franky leads nature walks featuring edible plants on weekends, and we joined him in a group of twelve to forage the Fire Trails in Strawberry Canyon. Who knew there was so much toxic poison hemlock in the forest, and it's deceptively pretty.  No wonder Shakespeare writes hemlock into three of his tragedies.  You can pretty much grab a handful and go poison somebody. 

Pincushion Protea

        We learned about yarrow, wild mustard, dandelions, miners' grass, and thistles. Despite nibbling on many leaves, we were hungry after the nature walk and had to scarf down tacos and burritos at Cancun Sabor where someone else had done the foraging. 

Angel's Trumpet

    Berkeley is only about 10 square miles but has more than 300 restaurants featuring food from Taiwan to Tibet to Thailand. After we checked into the hotel we were airline-tired-hangry and stumbled into Mezzo, they make super-sized sandwiches on super fresh bread, served with the best minestrone soup I have ever eaten. We had great Thai at Racha Cafe; ramen at Ippudo; a French breakfast at La Note; Cheese Board pizza; coffee and pastries at Mey Cafe and Bakery; deep dish pizza at Zachary's Chicago Pizza, and yummy gnocci at Belotti Bottega.   It seemed sinful to have ice cream after any of these meals, but that didn't stop us, and we sinned at Lexie's Frozen Custard, and again at Miharu. Darr's birthday was that weekend and we celebrated at Gather, joined by our niece Stephanie and her sons, one of whom just graduated from San Diego State. 

    Nila works for the Mayor of Berkeley Adina Ishii whom I got to meet and then toured City Hall. My first job was in Tucson's City Hall, so it was fun to and see Nila in my old stomping grounds, local government. 

Nila and Franky

Graduation with Franky's mentor Brad, Franky, Darr, Peter, Nila

     Franky’s graduation was a joyous event, he was awarded his master's degree in education by Alder Graduate School of Education, at the Pioneer Amphitheater at Cal State East Bay. 

   

    I like Berkeley, the flats, the hills, the history, the hipness, the vegetation, the students, the weather, the bay, the bookstores, the food, and the coffee shops. Most of all I like seeing my loved ones, the great brother and sister teams of Peter and Franky, Nila, and Tvisi all growing and thriving like native succulents. 

Another weird succulent

City Mice go to the Country

Little Ripley Lake

   

     I’m in a writing group of five women, three from the DC area and two from Minneapolis. We met cute on a transatlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2 for a writing workshop. One of the Minnesotans, Sandra, has a lake house in Wisconsin and invited us for a five-day writer’s retreat. The emphasis was on treat. 

     Katy picked us up at the Minneapolis St. Paul airport. We drove through the beautiful state of Wisconsin for more than two hours passing excessive swaths of green, endless trees, sparkling lakes. We saw farms with silos, barns, and tractors, we saw a sign reading “deer corn for sale” and we wondered if it was edible. (It is not, for humans.)

Little Ripley Lake

    I don’t want to say I am a complete idiot when it comes to Midwestern geography, but I think I have to. On the drive I was stunned to see that we crossed the Mississippi River. Really? It starts this far North? What’s up with that? Without naming names, there were other visitors in the car who were equally astounded. 

    

Sandra's house

    Sandra’s lake house in Sarona, Wisconsin is spacious and beautiful, we each had our own bedroom. Her magical black cat, Bader, eyed the city mice with suspicion. The house is filled with light and a has a gorgeous deck overlooking Little Ripley Lake which is so still that it looks like a mirror. 

Pontoon boat happy hour

    The first afternoon we had happy hour on a solar-powered pontoon boat. The first mateys had several onboard tasks, shoving off, putting up the canvas shade, serving the brie and crackers, and directing a smooth landing into the dock. My contribution was witty repartee. 

Loons and loonlet

    The pontoon lead us to the loons. My knowledge of loons is confined to the movie On Golden Pond. There was a baby loonlet on the back of one of its parents. Sandra explained that the loon survival rate is low, because of predators, and the fact that loons can’t really walk. They have to propel themselves onto the land with a sort of scootching motion. Like seals.

    “I’ll go make a fire,” Sandra said confidently on the night of our cookout.

     “I’ll go make a fire,” she said again this time heading to the property's sauna, built by her husband Barry.

Lisa, city mouse, advises Sandra, Brave Pioneer Woman

    I was already impressed by Sandra's fire making skills but my amazement was to grow. After a morning walk Katy reported a tree down across the only road to the lake house. What did Sandra do then, but get a chain saw, and cut the branch into light and moveable pieces so that we could clear the road. It was then I realized I was in the presence of a Brave Pioneer Woman. 

Stairs to the dock

    We found our favorite nooks and settled into our primary purpose of daily writing. I used to be an exhibitor at national medical conferences, and there was a daily promise of “unopposed time,” a period when the attendees weren’t conflicted by panels, seminars and keynotes. 

     The writing at the lake was “unopposed time.” 

Who could be opposed to this?

     On a rainy day we went to Spooner, WI to have dinner at a brew pub called Round Man Brewing Company. But that very day the ownership had changed and it was now Railhouse Junction. It was so new that there was no drink menu and even the question "what kind of beer do you have?" stumped the waiter.  We ordered native cheese curds and beer cheese dip, and entrées of pretzel coated whitefish with rice and sauteed vegetables. The fish was not pretzel coated and  there were no veggies. Until then we had exercised patience and pity for the new waiter, but we demanded our promised sides which were hastily served in soup bowls. 

A pie iron at work

    The next night we made pizzas with pie irons. "What the hell is a pie iron?" I asked. We used the pie irons to make individual "pizzas"—two slices of buttered white bread that fit in the square shaped end of the iron, filled with pizza sauce, cheese, pepperonis and olives. Once assembled, the pie iron is turned over hot coals until it becomes a golden toasted melty foodstuff.

Pie iron picnic

     As if the pie iron and pontoon boat weren't enough new learning for me, I was also stunned to learn that Sandra's husband Barry makes homemade syrup by tapping 40 Maple trees on their property. I saw tapped trees and long tubes. We were given a bottle of maple syrup as a parting gift. 

     The lake had a wonderful effect on all of us. We made our own breakfasts and lunches and had dinner together, we had quiet times and chatty times, we sat together in a wicked hot sauna, we had focused writing times and on the last night we read our work to each other. We got along flawlessly; there wasn’t a ripple of discord on Little Ripley Lake. 

    I think our exemplary behavior was driven by the fact that we secretly hope to be invited back.

Fearless host Sandra with Bader

I’ve been from Tucson to Tumacacori

Hooded oriole on an ocotillo

    You are probably more familiar with “I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari” from the song Willin by Little Feat. But I was on a different journey. There is another line in Willin, "drivin the back roads so we wouldn’t get weighed." I was all for that after the way I ate in Tucson.

Desert bee in cholla flower 

    There's nothing like spring in the desert partly because it comes as such a surprise. The desert, normally dressed in camo, brown, beige, and green comes ablaze. Palo verde trees burst into sunflower yellow, lemon trees overflow with  fruit, the cacti blossom. Even the birds, evolved to disappear in desert landscapes seem to show more color.  

Gila woodpecker

    I started my 12 days in Tucson at my cousin Suellen's house in the Catalina Foothills, a neighborhood now in the national news because of  Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance.  She spent the last several months telling the television crews to move their trucks so that she could get into her driveway. Suellen conducted desert biology lessons for the mystified crews from New Jersey and New York. She taught them why if they decided to take a pee in the desert they might encounter a rattlesnake (after that they scurried to a nearby hotel for bathroom breaks), what a saguaro cactus is and how it retains water, and why there aren’t any fire hydrants in the neighborhood—because there is no water. 

Palo Verde tree 

    I had originally planned to stay with Suellen for a mini writing retreat, but then two family memorial services were scheduled in Arizona a week apart. The first was a memorial service for my sister-in-law Jane's brother Joe at The Arizona Inn, a site filled with heady memories. We got married there, we held my father’s memorial service there, and as a child Darr would sneak into the pool with his buddies on sweltering summer days. The Arizona Inn, painted in a Pepto-Bismol pink, has been considered Tucson's finest hotel since 1930. 

A guest at the Westward Look

    Next we moved to The Westward Look where we used to stay with the kids before we started renting houses. When I walked into the lobby, with its long copper topped registration counter, the smell of the air conditioning, the light coming in from the garden, I was overwhelmed with memories. We walked in the desert, had sunset happy hours, got a Caesar salad and fries delivered poolside. 

Westward Look

    Since most of my blogs about Tucson are a rehash of the Mexican hash I’ve eaten, you’ll be surprised to hear that I tried several new restaurants on this trip: Charro Steak which was okay, but I really don’t know why I bothered when Darr prepares the best steaks in the world at home; Locale; Scordato’s Pizzeria;  and Terraza Garden Patio and Lounge at Hacienda del Sol (disappointing). Of course I also made it to Rosa’s (twice) Micha's, and El Minuto where my dining heart belongs. We also ate at La Bocinita in Rio Rico, the only restaurant in Southern Arizona that was open later than 8 p.m. that could accommodate our big family party of 16. 

Catalina State Park

    Just when I thought I knew everything about Tucson, Darr introduced me to Catalina State Park, 5500 acres of foothills, canyons, and streams, and lush with 5000 saguaros. There are tons of hiking trails, picnic areas, a visitor’s center. We took the Romero Canyon Trail for a three mile round trip, although most people had gone all the way to the waterfall.

Crested saguaro at Catalina State Park

    On the weekend we headed south to Tumacacori, the site of the celebration of life for Darr’s sister Mary Ann and her husband Bill. We stayed at Tubac Golf Resort and Spa for the first time, ia luscious place with big guest rooms and beehive fireplaces, a great restaurant, a nice pool and spa, shops. And oh yeah, the golf course where the movie Tin Cup was filmed. The resort backs up to the historic Juan Baptista de Anza Trail another first time experience for us with a four mile stretch between Tumacacori and Tubac. 

Rancho Santa Cruz

    The memorial service was scheduled from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. But the University of Arizona basketball team was playing in the Final Four at 5:45 p.m., so the die-hards among us went to nearby Abe's Pub to watch the game. The owner screened us to make sure we weren’t Michigan fans but then welcomed us in. We settled at the bar and watched Arizona's tragic loss. But then hey, we took comfort in the fact that we were in a classic dark bar in the desert with a pool table and a juke box and good spirits. The rest of the family joined us later. 

Abe's Pub with Megan Jane, Maley, Margie

    Cousin Maley had lunch for the family the next day on the patio at her beautiful house in Nogales. This was the biggest gathering of Beisers since our family reunion in 2019. I got lucky with my in-laws, I love them all. 

Extended Beiser family