Lee Geiger

Take my hand and grow young with me. Don’t rush. Don’t sleep. Be a beginner. Light the candles. Keep the fire. Dare to love someone. Tell yourself the truth. Stay inside the rapture.

Marlena de Blasi

Alan, a gregarious, Persian bear-of-a-man who served as my man-about-Italy mentor, pointed decisively at the menu. “Whatever you do, man,” he said, his finger nearly poking a hole through the paper, “be sure to order this. It’s the best damn pasta you’ll every have in your life.”

“And I’m not sharing ANY of mine with YOU,” quipped Susan, Alan’s laid-back and unceasingly dignified partner-in-crime. Staring back at me on the Sunday Brunch menu in Italian was the object of their gastronomical desire;

Primi

Fagottini al Formaggio e Pere al Burro ed erbe Cipolline…9 euro

“I’m all in,” I said, having absolutely no idea what I was ordering. When it comes to all things Italian, Susan and Alan are professionals. I’d trust them with my life. I’d drink a glass of Chianti Cyanide if they told me to. As to what exactly this particular tasty dish is, and where exactly you can find it, stay tuned.

When they’re not collecting their mail in the U.S., Susan and Alan call Orvieto home. A delightful medieval Italian hilltop town located between Rome and Florence in Italy’s Umbria region, Orvieto manages to strike the perfect balance between Italian Disneyland and the real world. Famous travel guru Rick Steves says Orvieto is “what an Italian hill town should be.” Perched a thousand feet above a valley floor, and surrounded by a protective moat of rolling hills and lush green fields, Orvieto is close to anything and far from everything. There’s plenty to do for both tourists and locals alike, and when the crowded tour buses leave at the end of the day it rivals the most romantic villages in Europe. If you had the courage and resources and wanted to live in Italy, why wouldn’t you want to live here?

Susan, the worldly-wise retired Wall Streeter most responsible for planning our Italian vacation for the ages, made it easy to fall in love with Orvieto. Take, for example, our first full day of vacation. She and Alan arranged to meet us at the Rome airport at 7:00am after our all-night flight from Newark, saving our Zombie-like reality from having to navigate the Roman train system. Alan then drove the 90 miles back to Orvieto like he had a pizza waiting in the oven, making a point to inform us it’s considered rude, obnoxious, and maybe even a tad unsafe to pass a car on the right (unless, of course, you’re stuck behind a lumbering Fiat Panda who’s imbecilic driver refuses to get out of the fast lane).

After a stop at Café Barrique for a much needed dose of Italian caffeine and pastries, ruled by a stray alley cat who patrols the neighborhood like Simba the Lion King, and a brief tour of Orvieto, including a fly-by past the town’s famed Duomo, it was off to lunch. Because the sun was out and a messy thunderstorm was expected the next day, our hosts decided to take us off-campus. Twenty minutes after a down the hill, through the fields and pass the vineyards sprint, we’re cruising around beautiful Lake Bolsena, without a doubt one of Italy’s best kept secrets. Alan makes a sharp turn onto a dirt road that only an Indian guide could have found. Next thing we know we’re sitting at a quiet lakeside table, the crystal clear water so still your grandmother could have hand-rolled pasta across it. Alan, who speaks fluent Italian and appears to know EVERYONE in Italy, orders up two bottles of wine. I check the time on my iPhone (I purposely did not bring a watch on this trip…I’m on vacation). Didn’t we just land? We proceed to have a three-hour lunch-for-the-ages, featuring the best pasta dish we’ve ever had (until the next day, of course) and a seafood dish where the waiter decided to change my order in midstream because he didn’t like the way the way my fish looked. He made the right call, as it may have been the best piece of fish I’ve ever had. What’s the name of this culinary jewel? I could tell you, but Susan, author of  halfyearitalian.wordpress.com, has threatened me with digital castration if I were to reveal their favorite local restaurants. Rick Steves, who Susan and Alan bumped into in Orvieto just the week prior (they were amazed at how tall he actually is), has ruined their former favorite haunts after touting them to his global fanbase. So there’s that.

After a compulsory nap it was time for what Italians like to call an apertivo, which is the Italian version of a Happy Hour. We venture to Café Clan Destino, a local hotspot located on Orvieto’s Corso Cavour, the town’s main strolling drag, with plenty of street side seating for people-watching. We’re joined by another couple, one of whom is Marlena de Blasi, an American-born author who has written several best-selling memoirs about living in Italy, including A Thousand Days in Venice, A Thousand Days in Tuscany, and The Lady in the Palazzo. Known around town as “Chou Chou,” Marlena shows up dressed like an enchanting 19^th century French courtesan, featuring an intoxicating mixture of fiery red hair, fiery red lipstick and fiery red attitude. She is a beguiling and captivating figure, a magnificent woman who clearly owns whatever room she enters. When I ask her an introductory break-the-ice question she responds immediately by saying, “That’s so silly, dear. That’s something you’d ask at a nine-year old’s birthday party.” Later on, when I ask something more to her liking, about what it’s like to live with Fernando, her long-time silver fox of a husband sitting discretely at the end of our table looking much too handsome and distinguished for words, she leans forward and answers in a wonderfully quiet, whispery voice, made even more inviting by the scent of champagne on her breath, “we dance, we fight, and we drink a lot of wine.” Why am I not surprised?

A tasty dinner at Capitano del Popolo starring more fabulous wine (good wine costs NOTHING compared to the states….and be sure to try the Orvieto Classico) is followed by the perfunctory pit stop for gelato at Di Pasqualetti, arguably the best tasting dessert we’ll have on our entire trip. It’s 11:00pm, and Alan declares the cold and rainy night is still young. He directs us to Il Malandrino, where we are greeted by an ocean of limoncellos and a huge bowl of chocolate chips, and are serenaded by Vince, a rail-thin Jamaican jazz guitarist from Amsterdam whose reggae version of Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” will live with me forever. At one point I felt an incredible surge of contentment. Who would have thought back in 1985 in Hanover, NH, when we were young and broke and naïve to the ways of the world, that The Pretty Blond and I would be celebrating our 30^th wedding anniversary at a jazz club in Orvieto, Italy. We walk out of the place at 1:00am, an hour the two of us haven’t seen together since before our kids were born. What an incredible first day of vacation.

Now, getting back to the beginning of today’s story; that incredible edible pasta. The insanely-inexpensive dish featured adorable little pasta sacks lovingly stuffed with creamy cheese and pears in a deliciously buttery sauce. Trust me when I tell you they were better than advertised. The most impressive thing, however, was how the chefs managed to tie the tiny sacks with a sprig of chive. They were obviously made with a superabundance of passion and patience, something you’ll find in many of Italy’s family-owned businesses. As for the name of the restaurant, a non-descript, isolated, who-would-ever-think-of-stopping-there roadside eatery located shouting distance from Orvieto, I’d be happy to provide it to you, but only under the following conditions;

1. You must take Susan and Alan with you
2. You must take me with you
3. I have to fly first-class

The Road to Italy, Part III…Val d’Orcia, is next. Stay tuned.