by Jim Bellomo | Mar 7, 2021 | Food Experiences
This episode of Jim & Kathleen’s Food Experiences will conclude the lunch portion of our show ?. I am going all the way back to our very first international trip in 2002 for these two but they must be special if they stand out almost 20 years later.
Lunch in Venice—Eating with locals
It was November and we were ready to head to Italy, the home of half my ancestors. We had stops planned in Venice, Florence, Rome and Sicily. What the Italians call the “Golden Triangle” (plus Sicily where my family is from). Our first stop was Venice and it is there we learned a valuable lesson about eating in a foreign country—find where the locals eat AND then eat there.
We had spent the morning taking the vaporetto (if you haven’t been to Venice, that’s kind of a water bus) to the separate islands of Murano (where they make some really cool glass) and Burano (where they have some amazing and brightly colored houses I wanted to take capture photographically). Between walking around on both islands and the vaporetto ride to each of them, we didn’t get back to the main part of Venice until it was well into the middle of the afternoon and by then we were STARVING! Italians don’t do big breakfasts. Our typical breakfast in Italy was a croissant and coffee, maybe with some cheese or Nutella and some of the best coffee I have ever tasted. No eggs and bacon there. So when I say we were starving and it was 2:30 pm and we were STARVING.
Now the trouble was finding a restaurant that was open and that we would be able to get a decent meal in. Luckily for us, the vaporetto from the islands docks on the far side of Venice so you don’t get off (or at least you didn’t then) right into the touristy spots. If it had, we might never have had this experience.
Wandering around looking for someplace to eat we passed a bunch of places that had already closed. There were also small stand up bars where we could have gotten a small sandwich but we were looking for more than that. Luckily we almost got lost going down a small street (you can easily get lost in Venice) and saw a restaurant that looked open. When we looked inside the place was good sized but it was empty except for…about 20 gondoliers having lunch. We looked at each other and decided if this was where the gondoliers ate their lunch, it must be wonderful. And it was. We had not yet had an Italian specialty—spaghetti carbonara. If you have never had it think really great spaghetti with bacon, eggs and cheese. I have had it since then a few times but nothing can compare with that day. Of course looking back on the experience I often wonder if the carbonara was that good or if we were that hungry or if it was the entire experience of eating it in Venice in a restaurant with twenty very noisy gondoliers.
Lunch in Sicily—meeting Vito
About a week later we were exploring Sicily’s mountain towns looking for the final resting place of my great-grandfather in Corleone. Yes, my grandfather’s family comes from a town with the same name as The Godfather’s family. It was a Monday. If you have not been to Italy, finding almost anything open on a Monday is very difficult. This is especially true of restaurants.
We had risen early in our hotel in Monreale (just above Palermo) and headed into the Sicilian hills—a phenomenal drive as you pass walls and hill towns as old as the Roman Empire or the Moorish invasion. We found Corleone and headed to the cemetery where we not only found my great-grandfather’s grave but a man who claimed he could be my cousin who worked at the cemetery. By this time it was again about 2:00 and we wanted to find a place to eat lunch. Nothing was open in Corleone so we started heading back to the coast.
We passed through two or three small villages with nothing open. We were getting really hungry at that point. Plus, we really wanted to find someplace where someone spoke at least a little English so we could kind of know what we were ordering. All of a sudden we turned the corner into the tiny village of Masseri d’Amari and saw a big sign that said “Trattoria—Open!” By that time we didn’t care if they spoke English or not, we just wanted food.
When we got inside there was a HUGE seafood buffet all along one wall, a fairly empty dining room and two servers. One approached us and we asked if he spoke English. He didn’t and neither did the other. Since the buffet was all seafood we needed to know which dishes had no shellfish as Kathleen is allergic. We were about to abandon the place when in walked a huge man wearing all black with gold chains around his neck hanging down into a shirt that was unbuttoned fairly far down and showing a LOT of chest hair. Think Tony Soprano with a bunch of dark, black hair on his head. He saw us and walked over and said, “Hello, I am Vito. Can I help you out at all? I am visiting from New Jersey.” Seriously? We were in a tiny hill town in Sicily and we meet a Tony Soprano type guy with the name of Vito?
He was incredibly nice, told us what had and didn’t have shellfish in it and we grabbed a couple of plates from the buffet. After we had sat down at our table, Vito came over and asked if he could join us. We were thrilled to be able to talk to someone who spoke English and might know something about the part of Sicily we were in. As it turns out Vito knew a lot about that part of Sicily. He had grown up there. In fact, his family owned the restaurant we were in as well as most of the other businesses in town. We also found out that he spent about half the year in Sicily working on the family business and half the year in New Jersey. We asked him what he did in New Jersey and he REALLY said, “I work in waste management.” Unbelievable and kind of hilarious all the same time.
We had had a lovely lunch with Vito (who didn’t eat but just joined us to talk and order us the largest bottle of coke we had ever seen). When we were done we were both pretty full but Vito said, “You must have a cannoli. They are the best you will ever eat. The milk we made the cheese from was in the goat this morning.” We couldn’t pass that up so we said, “maybe just one.” Vito ordered and in about five minutes the server came out with two of the largest cannolis we still ever seen. They must have been at least six inches long and about an inch around and they were delicious!
That just about concluded our lunch experience except that when it was time to pay, there was no check. Now getting a check in Italy is pretty hard most of the time. The restaurants really don’t want you to leave. Seriously. It can often take 15 to 20 minutes after dessert is over to get the bill. But this time, there was no bill. I finally (after waiting a little while) asked Vito (since his family owned the place) if he could ask for it for us as we had to get on our way. He just reached down below the table and motioned with his hand so I could see it while saying, “Do you have 10 Euro? Just give it to me.” Far be it from me to turn down an amazing price on lunch or to not do exactly what this man told us to do ?. And even after that, Vito insisted on walking us to our car and on the way introducing us to his brother who owned the local car dealership. It was a crazy day and we felt like we had found the true Sicily starting with Corleone and ending with Vito from New Jersey.
There’s no such thing as a free lunch. —Milton Friedman
by Jim Bellomo | Feb 7, 2021 | Uncategorized
This will be an unusual post for me, in that there won’t be as much writing as pictures. Pictures of our travel since the pandemic started…through jigsaw puzzles. Yup, like many of you, jigsaw puzzles became a big part of our lives. For most of the months since last March we have had a great big (500 or 1,000 pieces) under construction on our dining room table. We figured, why not use the table, it’s not like anyone was coming for dinner. We also have a big puzzle tray/box thingy that we could easily pack up the puzzle on the few and far between times the kids came to see us.
When we started we wanted to have a theme and I would say that other than one puzzle, I can at least remotely connect all of them to travel. And since the other one features the people we most like to travel to see, it kind of qualifies. So here, in order of our making them, are our puzzles. Hopefully in looking at them and reading my captions you will get the feeling of travel in your life.
Our first puzzle was this 1000 piece puzzle all about the Galapagos Islands. Santa had brought it to us on Christmas 2019 because our plans were to take a trip to the islands last August. We (of course) got cancelled out of that one and rebooked for this summer, thinking this would be all over. Now we are not so sure. But whenever we really get to go, we are going to do this puzzle again, just before we do.
Our second poster was full of vintage travel posters from around the world. I love it graphically and because it was a set of small blocks, it’s kind of a cheat. One thing we discovered with this puzzle was that different puzzle companies make better puzzles. Not so much the subject matter but how they hold together. Some fall apart if you breath on one piece. This one is from a company called Galison and it holds together so well, when we were done I could almost just pick it up. By far the BEST puzzle maker out there as far as quality of pieces and their cuts.
Another Galison puzzle. This one with scenes from New York City, a place we have visited quite a few times in our traveling years.
So we really have never traveled to get to a car show. But we do plan on attending the United States Grand Prix in Austin, TX one day. And when we do, we should see the greatest driver in the history of Formula One racing, Lewis Hamilton. That’s him in the white suit on the left (I know, it’s a stretch).
Now this is a place we have been—Key West, Florida. Both by land (driving the Overseas Highway to get there is way cool) and by ship (which the local populace is trying to ban) and we loved it both times. A very cool place. This puzzle is by a company called Dowdle. Their puzzles are on sale on Amazon a bunch but because they are paintings, I am not that big a fan. I prefer graphics. Easier to do ?.
Ah beautiful Copenhagen, Denmark. Our only day in this very nice city was during a Baltic cruise we did with our friends Paul, Gail, Mike and Carol. Visited here and a BUNCH of other very interesting ports in Germany, Estonia, Sweden, Finland, Belgium and Russia.
One of the roads we drove on when we went to Albuquerque, New Mexico (had few meals at restaurants on it as well) was the famous Route 66. This road which stretches from Los Angeles to Chicago is widely known as “America’s Road.” This puzzle from Galison is of road signs, motels and more on the Route.
Keeping with that theme, our next puzzle was a diner that could have been on Route 66. It was a fun puzzle to do and this one was from a company called Ravensburger. Their puzzles are pretty good. Not as good as Galison (can you tell I liked those?) but not bad either. I would take them over a Dowdle.
Traveling a little closer to home, our ninth puzzle was another Dowdle, this time it was our home state of Washington. Kind of fun.
For our 10th puzzle we stayed in Washington State and did this Dowdle of Leavenworth, Washington’s Bavarian Village. This one was actually kind of special because when we first met I lived in Leavenworth and it’s where we got married as well.
Alright not really traveling but we have to drive at least 25 minutes to get to what used to be Safeco Field (it’s now T-Mobile Park), the home of the Seattle Mariners. This Dowdle (they have a LOT of puzzles) was fun to put together having been in this stadium so many times.
So this is the one I mentioned that isn’t really a travel puzzle but one with the people we most like to travel to see…our grandkids! My daughter gave me this puzzle for Father’s Day and she had it made by Shutterfly. I won’t even link it here because this was the WORST puzzle we did in terms of quality of pieces. If you sneezed, it fell apart. But we persevered and got it done because we loved the subject matter so much.
Back to Europe for number 13 as we explored one of our favorite cities, Barcelona. This one (a Dowdle) was fun to do because we had been to so many places that were pictured in it.
Another Galison (YEAH!) number 14 celebrates fifties style motel signs. Again, I love the graphics on this one—so retro.
Another place we have visited and loved, Sydney, Australia. I consider Sydney the most photogenic city we have been to. Everyplace you look there is something to shoot. We loved our stay.
Number 16 was awesome New Orleans. And it was very fresh in our minds since we had returned to Mardi Gras just a week before the pandemic really hit. We count ourselves VERY lucky to not have been part of their super-spreader event.
The Bay Area is where Kathleen grew up so this one of the Golden Gate Bridge is kind of like a trip home for her. We have been there together too many times to count and pretty much loved all our visits. It’s been a while since we have gone and we were supposed to meet our Brit friends Paul and Gail there last fall. Maybe someday.
It took us until puzzle 18 to find this puzzle manufacturer—Eurographics. We really like their graphics, especially on their travel puzzles. This one of lighthouses from around the USA featured many we have been to and one that we visited in December of last year when we went to the San Juan Islands for a short quarantine getaway. We really like the quality of these puzzles but especially love the edges which are always black with a red line. We liked these so much we bought a bunch more as you will see.
Number 19, also from Eurographics, is vintage travel posters from around the world. We find these much easier to work for a number of reasons. First, all the type makes them easier and the fact that they are individual posters also means we can separate pieces a lot faster.
Finally, this is number 20 (also from Eurographics) that we finished on Friday. It is very much like number 19 as it is vintage U.S. travel posters. Our next puzzle is much like this one but it is Canadian vintage travel posters. This one is still put together on the dining room table.
I hope you have liked my tour of the world through puzzles. They have been a constant companion during this pandemic and once one is put together and then taken apart, it heads to Olympia for the kids to do it (my daughter and her husband are MUCH faster than we are) and we used to just let her get rid of them on FB Marketplace but now we get them back and pass them on to our friends Elbert and Barry in Bellevue. I guess you could say that these puzzles really do some traveling themselves.
Every day is sort of a jigsaw puzzle. You have to make sure that you’re putting the most important things first. —Julia Hartz
by Jim Bellomo | Jan 4, 2021 | Photography
Consider this my end of the year/start of the year post. This blog (I still hate that word) is two years old now and this will be my 160th post. I truly believe if this had been a normal year for us, I would easily have written more than 200 posts by now. But without being able to travel there just wasn’t that much to write about. I mean how many lists can you make?
What did we get to do? A quick look back at our year does include our February/March trip to Florida, our cruise from there to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and then on to Mexico so I guess I can’t say it was all bad.
What did we lose? We had to cancel our spring cruise from San Diego to Vancouver on HAL’s Konigsdam, our summer trip to the Galapagos and our European Christmas Market river cruise in December. By now we should have added at least another eight countries to the list of those we have visited and I would have had pictures to prove it.
What have we been doing since then? The same as so many of you. Ten months of mask wearing, ten months of social distancing, ten months of being at home. Too many friends gone. The last week of the year I actually had to buy three sympathy cards. I have probably bought at least 8 this year and that doesn’t even count the GoFundMes I have contributed to when friends have become ill or passed away.
But we did have a little fun. We did two short get-aways to AirBnBs in Washington. We did four days at the coast with the grandkids. We FaceTimed with them at least twice a week. We Zoomed, HousePartied and Teamed with friends. We changed travel agencies we represent (one of the smartest things we have ever done). We are working on our 19th jigsaw puzzle, we ate a ton of takeout, we drank some serious wine and cocktails (we are doing a dry January ?) and we watched five years worth of streaming movies and TV (always looking for suggestions).
For me, one bright spot this year has been my photography. The quantity of travel photos may have been lacking but the quality was much improved (at least from my standpoint). I took the best photo I have ever taken, I started posting a daily photo on Instagram (and have done that every day for more than a year–follow me @jimbellomo13) and later started doing that on Facebook (JimBellomo) as well. I started selling my photos (had a little luck but hopefully the more I post, the better it will get) on SmugMug (JimBellomoPhotography). Check me out on those platforms. You can even see my Instagram feed at right.
It is both funny and sad that so many people were glad to see 2020 end thinking that there would be some great change…but let’s be honest folks. Here we are on the fourth of January and it still feels the same to me ?. Maybe once the vaccine is in my arm and I am getting on an airplane to go someplace it will feel a lot better.
What’s coming in 2021? It is so important to us to have something to look forward to, so we are still booked for our Galapagos trip (June 30–fingers crossed), a week with our kids at the beach in August and almost a month in Europe in December including that Christmas Market river cruise we missed (we are hoping for stops pre-cruise in Lisbon and Amsterdam). And that’s just what we have planned as of today. We are sure that as soon as they open the border we will be off to Chilliwack or Point Roberts. Maybe a long weekend in Vancouver, one of our favorite cities. I am sure even more will come up once we have those two shots in our arms. We actually have travel friends who are getting their first shots this week—lucky bums.
Which brings me to…we hope you are safe, healthy, wearing a mask in public, social distancing, dreaming of travel, awaiting your injection and all the other good things that can happen to you this year. The first date we are particularly looking forward to is January 20…for obvious reasons.
And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been. —Rainer Maria Rilke
by Jim Bellomo | Nov 13, 2020 | Uncategorized
One of our ten best dining experiences was when we took our (adult) kids to the world-famous Herb Farm.
While walking today I was listening to my favorite podcast, Armchair Expert. The interview I heard today was with author Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love). During the interview she talked about the fact that she loves to write. She loves writing more than doing just about anything else.
Well, I love to write. Not as much as Ms. Gilbert. Other things come before that for me: family, photography, cooking and travel. But since the pandemic started there has been nothing special to take photos of, only a few visits from the kids and of course no travel. I have been focusing on cooking. While cooking is fun, there are only so many dinners for two that stretch my creativity. And our freezer is BEYOND FULL of leftovers. I could stop cooking for three weeks and we would not go hungry.
So hearing Ms. Gilbert talk about writing with host Dax Shepherd (who is also a television/movie writer as well as an actor and host of one of the top podcasts) made me realize that I need to write more. But what to write about.
Then over on Instagram I met a fellow blogger who loves traveling and cruising as much as I do. He lives in Great Britain and we have been keeping up a correspondence on his blog, this blog and Instagram. He told me that I inspired him with my daily Instagram travel photo to start going back through his travel experiences and posting photos on Instagram. Which in turn has inspired me to think about how I could do the same thing with writing.
Stay with me here…I have a little bit further to go here…I am going to explain what you will see on this page in the weeks to come. Remember that podcast I mentioned? Well I listen to it every day. And two days before Ms. Gilbert was on, I heard an excellent interview with Samin Nosrat. She is a food columnist with The NY Times Magazine and the host of the Netflix show, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. She and Dax got into a discussion about dining experiences. Not just cooking or eating, but eating experiences.
I got that. I understand exactly what eating experiences are. How they are different than just food. They are about the entire experience which might include getting to the restaurant, why that particular restaurant, obviously the food and the service. Over the years so much of our travel has involved food. I spend more time researching restaurants than I do hotels. Maybe because on a city visit, you are in just one hotel, but you get to eat three times a day. In every one of those meals on the road and here in Seattle, we are always looking for great food but more than that we are looking for food experiences.
One of my favorite lunch experiences was marinated octopus in a taverna after we got lost in Rhodes, Greece.
So here is what this is all about. As I finished my walk (where I had listened to Ms. Nostrat) I begin to make a list in my mind of the greatest food/dining/lunch experiences we have had both here and on the road. You know how much I love my lists and this one just kept growing and growing. So my new goal is to write about those experiences in a series of short posts over the next few weeks. I hope to post twice a week with a new one. If you love travel and you love food, I hope you will like the stories.
I always encourage people to get out there, travel the world, see new things, experience new people, experience new food, experience new culture. What happens is that helps you to grow and be your best self.
—Karamo Brown
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 12, 2020 | Uncategorized
Hi there! Not having posted since September, and then only to complain (about software upgrades), I thought I should come back around and say hello. This post may not be all about travel but just some random stuff. I will put a subhead on each subject so feel free to skip the ones you might not be interested in or that are too controversial for you.
Upcoming Travel
We actually have some travel coming up! YEAH! It won’t be far but we are going to Washington’s gorgeous San Juan Islands the last week of October to celebrate Kathleen’s birthday. We have rented a really cool condo right in downtown Friday Harbor on San Juan Island itself. We are staying at The Web Suites. The owners had commented on one of my photos on Instagram and I went to look at what the heck The Web Suites was and discovered they were in Friday Harbor. We haven’t been there in something like 10 years so we are really looking forward to it.
We are also thrilled that my brother and sister-in-law are going to join us. We were telling them about it and, as they have become our travel buddies on many of our cruises and they have as bad a case of cabin fever as we do they said, “Can we come too?” We were thrilled and would have asked them first but we never thought they would join us this far from home as they live in Southern Cal and not sure they wanted to fly. We were right about one thing; they don’t want to fly. They are driving all the way from beautiful San Juan Capistrano to our place here in Redmond. Then after the weekend of hanging out here we will head to the San Juans via a Washington State ferry leaving from Anacortes.
If you have never gone to the San Juans, you first drive (from our place about an hour and a half) to the city of Anacortes and board a ferry (so in a way, we are going on a cruise). The ferries stop at four of the islands. There are more than 400 San Juan Islands but many are just large rocks jutting out of Puget Sound but 128 of them are named and you can actually walk on them. If you want to go to any of them other than those four that have ferry stops you have to do it on a private boat. Lots of people do that to camp and a few of the smaller islands have vacation homes as well. One thing different for us (since the last time we were in the islands) is that it is advised to make reservations for the ferry sailing you want. I made sure to get up and be online on the day we could reserve for our dates. Snagged us exactly the times we wanted both coming and going. Our ferry trip is just about an hour and 15 minutes but it could have been much longer. We did our best to get the one ferry (both going and coming) that doesn’t stop at any of the other islands. So we get a straight shot from Anacortes to Friday Harbor.
Social Media
I have now been off all social media for more than a month other than Instagram where I post travel photos. It has really made me a lot less tense to not have to read all the election vitriol and the sniping. I will probably go back on Facebook after November 3rd and maybe a little more on Twitter but for now I need to stay off.
The Election
I know. I should stay away from politics on this blog but just a couple of quick things. First, everyone needs to vote. I can’t believe how low a percentage of people exercise their right to vote. But in some places it can be just too difficult. Right now I am reading a biography (not something I normally read) of Ulysses S. Grant, our 18th president, and it is really interesting the parallels between then and now. Grant followed an impeached president, there was a lot of voter suppression (much more violently) as the southerners tried to disenfranchise the freed slaves. From my viewpoint many states are still doing that.
The second thing I have not been able to do is to sit down with a true Trump supporter and have a discussion to find out how they can continue to support him after everything he has done and is. I don’t want to talk to someone who just blindly follows him and actually rejects science and believes the fake news stuff. I want to know what issue is so big that it outweighs (I guess I could have said trumps) all the bad. Someone intelligent so I can understand.
And I am scared to death what is going to happen if he loses and it’s close. After the kidnapping plot in Michigan, I can honestly see a huge rise in domestic terrorism. People who would never have considered it before are buying guns and ammo. This is sad.
Television
During this pandemic, so much of our time is spent either watching TV or planning on what to watch. We have been very lucky so far but our luck is starting to run out. Since this started we have been lucky enough to find some multi-year, multi-episode programs that somehow we hadn’t seen. Since March our favorite long term shows have included Younger, Damages and lately Friday Night Lights on Hulu, Parks and Rec on Netflix. There have been other things mixed in but these occupied us for quite a while. We are out of these now but some other shows are coming back. The new season of Fargo is outstanding, we have some favorites that have come back on PBS (Last Tango in Halifax, Endeavor) and some new ones on PBS (COBRA, Van Der Valk) and even a couple of network shows including a really good hospital drama out of Canada—Transplant.
This month promises to be much better in the coming weeks. Must-sees for us are the West Wing “reunion” on HBO Max, The Mandelorian on Disney+ and the only reality show we watch starts soon—Amazing Race…cause it’s all about travel.
By the way, best show of the whole summer? Hands down it was Yellowstone, Kevin Costner’s modern-day western. Those 10 shows were the best thing we saw and we can’t wait for the start of the 4th season next year. Sadly, it is on the Paramount network which our cable company does not carry so that means I have to purchase the season every year from Apple. But that’s OK because we get a bunch of outstanding and often hilarious extra films as background. If you haven’t seen Yellowstone, hopefully it will find its way to a streaming service you subscribe to. If not, you can always buy it from the iTunes Store. If you find a way to get it, watch it from the very beginning. There are three seasons of 10 shows each and they get better and better each year.
Walking
The one thing that has been my constant during our pandemic lockdown is walking. (I detailed one of my walks here.) Except for the 9 days of horrid smoke, I have been able to average just over 30 miles per week while walking six days a week. Now my problem isn’t smoke but rain, although I will usually grab an umbrella or put on my Gore-tex and go out anyway. My routes are getting a little boring and I do have a couple of alternatives but they take me through some fairly dense forested areas where all summer there have been wildcat, cougar and bear sightings—staying away from those. Since I am still working out an hour for six mornings as well, Kathleen’s daughter Michelle said, “You are exercising 18 hours a week? That’s a part-time job!”
One final (HORRIBLE) thought
The most amazing (and very sad) factoid I have heard in months is this: The number of people who have died from Covid-related illness in the USA since the day of the first death from Covid back in February is equivalent of 8 (yes EIGHT) Boeing 737s with 168 people on board each one, crashing every single day since then. Can you even imagine? I can’t. Please stay safe.