When I started writing about “surviving Seattle” it was all about the rain, cold and moldy feeling that hangs over the city’s reputation. So, after living in Saigon for three years, it feels a little cheeky to talk about a heat wave in Seattle. Relatively speaking it should be nothing but a breath of fresh air, but it’s worth thinking about surviving Seattle in a different way this year. Today is the 10th day of 90F+ temperatures in the last two months and the forecast for the next four days is more of the same. We’re out of practice here, and without air conditioning or trade winds to cool things off it takes a little effort to think about cooling strategies. As a warm weather person I love these days but it’s no fun, even for me, to sit indoors and sweat it out.
Archive for Uncategorized – Page 58
Seasoned travelers love a secret place, somewhere in plain view that others pass by or fail to notice. I’ve spent time on Crete, Rhodes, Mykonos, Mallorca, Ibiza, Formentera, and even Elba, the tiny Italian island where Napoleon was once exiled, but Elba’s big brother, Sardinia, had never been high on my must visit list. It may be the best-kept secret in Europe.
It came out of nowhere when two friends invited us to their wedding. We had been planning to spend two months in Rome and a wedding in Sardinia at the end of June might just be a special way to finish our stay in Italy.
#1 Opera at the Baths of Caracalla
The Baths of Caracalla were constructed in the 3rd Century. These public baths were constructed in an effort to curry favor with the Roman population. The site is impressive as an historical remnant, but today it is best known as the venue for summer opera productions performed by the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma. This summer Puccini is the featured composer with performances of Madama Butterfly, Turandot, and La Boheme. This summer’s series isn’t restricted to opera (Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, and Elton John will also perform), but opera delivers its most dramatic experience.
Recently I’ve been evangelizing for “slow travel,” a leisurely way to see more of the world by consciously seeing less of it. It sounds contradictory but there’s a reason why it works. Travel provides an extraordinary opportunity to learn about people and cultures and place them in their historical and contemporary contexts. Slow travelers begin by reminding themselves that they can’t see it all. They are students of world history, geography, art, music, architecture, anthropology, languages – what Zorba called the “full catastrophe” (never mind that he was talking about marriage and family; the phrase covers all situations). Here are four famous attractions that you should avoid unless you have ample time in Rome.
The surface of Rome is crowded with antiquities and monuments dating from before the time of Christ, through the Etruscan and Roman periods, the founding and dominance of the Catholic Church, and reaching perhaps it’s highest expression in the Renaissance painting and sculpture of Rafael and Michelangelo. But there is more to Rome than what appears on the surface.
Life is thriving over our heads and underground in the Eternal City. It is often difficult to think about looking up when there is so much straining for our attention on the ground, but if you do you notice that rooftops across the city are alive with greenery. This picture was taken from our kitchen window, and there are similar views from the living room and bathroom. Our apartment is on the 5th floor of a building just off the Piazza di Spagna, and while the facades of the historic buildings on the street are neat and orderly the interior courtyards and rooftops are alive with new growth.
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