Italian Invasion

I’ve just returned from a long weekend in Italy and man that shit was crazy. All the signs were in Italian, everyone was speaking Italian, and shit was just pretty Italian in general everywhere you looked, which I guess shouldn’t have been all that surprising the more that I think about it but even still I never saw it coming for some reason. Newark to Rome- it’ll mess with your mind. Anyway, I am not Italian by blood, but- as the people of Italy will no doubt tell you- I pretty much ruled the fuck out of that place. Here’s how it all went down:

My friend Giancarlo’s family has a crazy ass mini-castle (or castelleto as people like me who totally speak Italian now call it) in the town of Sezze, which is about an hour and a half south of Rome. There was some crazy shit going down with the castelleto itself though, so we ended up staying at the villa right behind the castelleto, which was awesome. The picture above is the view out of the window of one of the rooms I wasn’t supposed to go in because Giancarlo said a ghost in a green bathrobe (one of his dead relatives) lives in there and he gets pissed if people mess with his shit. Still, the view out his window was better so I was all like “Fuck it- the ghost is gonna have to just deal for now, goddammit.” He seemed okay with it in the end though as my shit was not messed with.

After we got settled in the villa, we headed to a restaurant in town called Da Santuccio. I hate to be all like “The food in Italy was so good I can never eat food anywhere else ever again” or anything but it’s pretty much true. That shit was from the fucking future. Antipasto, assorted and awesome meats, pastas, wine, espresso, grappa- I was all over that shit like a Japanse tourist on a Marc Jacobs store. I almost had to take my pants off.

After we stuffed our faces, we headed over to some beach town that I can’t remember the name of and drank some more espresso and grappa and also looked at stuff. The picture above is of some building that I thought looked real purdy-like. Behind/above it was something called “the White City”, where we totally walked around for a bit and looked at more Italian stuff. Later that night, we ate at some excellent restaurant while staring at the Mediterranean Sea. Shit was awesome.

The next day, we got all suited up and went to the beach in Sperlonga. Giancarlo told me we might see some topless women at the beach so I asked him to drive a little faster down the Appian Way (pictured above through the windshield), which is a totally old road in Italy that the ancient Romans used and everything. I remember learning about it in Latin class back in high school, so it was pretty cool to be hitting it myself after all these years. Sometimes life comes full circle.

The beach itself was pretty cool and- generally speaking- very beachlike in general. We laid around and got tanned and sunburned to varying degrees and also went into the Mediterranean Sea, which was blue and just rough enough to make me want it more. Down the beach a little bit there is a big mountain (pictured above) that everyone says looks like a man lying down and they are right. More specifically, to me it kind of looks like a big, green sleeping George Washington but then again I am still jetlagged. As for the topless women, that is not one of them in the foreground. That is just some dude hanging out with his kids. I did see one topless woman that day though and she pretty much looked just like him only with slightly bigger breasts. Be careful what you wish for.

On the way back from the beach that day, we stopped off at an Italian night club, which turned out to be more of an Italian strip club/whorehouse as best I can tell. As for our part of the deal, money changed hands but only for our drinks I swear. Out front I spotted some nice airbrush artwork, pictured above. I am thinking of using that photo somewhere in the album artwork for the new Valley Lodge. It pretty much nails it.

In the interest of me stopping typing and you stopping reading, I will just say that the rest of our trip was spent driving from town to town, eating and drinking some more, looking at more stuff, get sunburned on the beach, wondering what everyone was saying in Italian, not paying for sex, and eventually going to Rome to see what all the fuss was about. Rome delivered on its promise, but I have to say- for this trip anyway- I preferred hanging out in the smaller towns and doing as little as possible other than looking out at views like the one above and saying “Shit, these Italians are some lucky motherfuckers.” I said it in English though so for once everyone around me was just as confused as me. Maybe we’re not so different after all.

Dave Hill