
T WAS only a little spoiled by tourists, but perhaps I should rephrase
that. It hadn't been spoiled per se: like many parts of
Italy, the locals have hung on for dear life to their culture, limiting
their use of any foreign tongue and tolerating the tourists that
had ventured down here in their automobiles.
Portovenere still sported its village façade,
facing the sea in tones of orange and yellow, buildings piled precariously
along the hillside like too-tall afterthoughtsand not naturally
tied to the earth like statues of Egyptian gods coming out of the
cliffs. Some of the buildings had been standing since the twelfth
century while others were more novel, dating from the sixteenth.
The recipes had not changed and the village cat, Gagea, still got
fed at the Trattoria da Iseo, loved by every member of its staff.
Tourists were plentiful and paid city prices for car parking in
Portovenere, but overall this was a real Italian seaside town, with
one road in and quintessentially romantic. It had weathered not
only these tourists but the innovations that came before: cars,
for starters. The road leading in was single-lane either way; there
were no immediate ways to get there via autostrada; this
town was well hidden.
Only the minimal concessions had been made: acceptance
of credit cards and euros, for instance, but Portovenere had entered
the 21st century with its soul intact, warm and happy that it enjoyed
the Mediterranean sun all year and not, as was the case for me and
those other visitors with foreign number plates, from hours to weeks.
I knew it was not spoiled because this was not
a parody of a tourist stop. Some places try to be too Italian. Those
working around the Duomo know what I mean: more foreigners than
locals frequented the stores and there are plenty of overpriced
goods with Italian labels that aren't usually found in out-of-the-place
villages. The red and yellow Ms that signified the metropolitana
were as plentiful as red and yellow Ms that signified McDonald's
restaurants, the only non-Italian concession in the centre of Milano.
Italian cuisine was "the business" in my previous
Stockholm home, so here was the chance to sample the real thing
on location. Seafood does not get better than in a seaside town.
Lunch had been less memorable in Milano, though happily buoyed by meeting our local
representative and the outstanding, outgoing service of the waiters, who communicated as much by voice as by pleasant pats on
the back.
Bringing my mind back to Portovenere, where there
were no non-Italian restaurants, I ordered a seafood spaghetti (after
having the varieties explained to me—particularly good advice to
take), remarking to my waiter at the Iseo that it symbolized the
Silk Road that linked our two cultures, hinting that Marco Polo
had taken the recipe for noodles with him on one of his journeys.
The remark went unnoticed.
But it was a memorable meal. Spaghetti does taste
better here, I thought, just as Chinese food tastes better in China.
It is a rarity to experience this: in New Zealand, almost everything
tastes better than their original counterparts because of the fresher
ingredients on hand, particularly fruit and vegetables that did
not taste like chemically fertilized soil. I had grown up with that
experience. Seafood was indeed fresh, as I noted a fishing boat
return for the day as a boatload of tourists headed in the opposite
direction for the last circuit before the sun set. But service in
Milano had been better and very Italian; here they were quite ready
to go home but for the long summer days that kept the tourists coming.
And there was no hiding the fact that I was a tourist. Only Gagea
would get round-the-clock treatment.
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'There is another place from the same owner,'
my waiter told me. 'It is on the island over there.' His English
was better than my Italian. But I lacked the time to go. I could
either return to the autostrada or find another Cinque
Terre town, stopping in an Italian town on my week off, or I could
return to my usual and familiar surroundings in France. Having been
in Switzerland the day before, where I had been hampered by being
outside the European Union and the absence of a laptop-friendly
phone service, I decided that it would be too tough to strain myself
to follow Italian and attempt to speak it. This was my vacation
before London. I came here to relax. And, after all, I had sampled
a taste of Italy by staying in part of Italian Switzerland. I would
forgo the famous Church of San Pietro which I spied earlier or walk
among the monastery and the spot where Byron dived on his swim across
the Gulf of Poets.
Telling the waiter, 'Grazie,' and paying with
my American Express card, I resolved myself to drive to the old
French border and cut some shapes with the Grimaldis—though they
had probably skipped town because of the thought of tourists doing
Grace Kelly homages, 50 years after High Noon. But at least
I would be on familiar soil, speaking my third rather than my sixth
language, and swore I would return here if I had more than a week
off. Take away the buildings and oh-so-real seaside air, it would
still be worth it for the food alone. Jack Yan
Jack Yan is founding publisher of Lucire.
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