First night in Gaeta, searching for a place to eat. After looking for longer than we should have, especially had we bothered to look at a map, we found our way to the older part of town, around the port. We found an open restaurant, and we could see a large group inside being […]

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  And now for the indolent half of Italy 2013. This country, you may have noticed on a map, has hundreds of miles of coast, and a person might reasonably expect the existence of lots and lots of seaside hotels and retreats … and a person would be right. Three years ago, we did a […]

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And so we packed and left the tiny apartment  in Trastevere and joined up with (what we have found to be) the typically not-quite-honest Rome cabbie, who delivered us to Termini for not quite 18 euros. Seeing as how the meter had read 13-something, when we got out, how it ended near 18 is a […]

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In a way, Italy began from the first announcement of the Alitalia flight crew, while still on the ground in Abu Dhabi. It is rare to hear Italian on the Arabian Peninsula, and to most Americans it is a delightful language. Round and rhythmic, almost like poetry with its cadences and energy. Wonderful to hear […]

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For Lent, I gave up Snickers candy bars. That may not seem like a very significant, nor a serious, Lenten sacrifice … and it is not, cosmically. But it is, for me. I consider Snickers the best candy bar ever invented. Whatever is second is a distant second. Maybe the Baby Ruth. As a candy, […]

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For a period of about 20 years, from 1989 until 2009, I saw nearly every match the U.S. national soccer team played. Many of them in person. Most of the rest via television. I knew those teams, especially those from the World Cup teams of 1990 through 2002, as well as I have ever known […]

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This is a fairly big deal, over here in the Old World. Well, at least in the parts of the Old World that care about rugby, and that would include the British Isles and (go figure) France and Italy. Each winter, they stage a Six Nations competition in which six “national” teams play each other, […]

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David Beckham signed with Paris Saint-Germain today, and in my humble opinion he missed an opportunity to end his career with a dramatic and daring flourish. Signing with PSG is consistent with Beckham’s peregrinations since leaving Manchester United in 2003 — big clubs in world cities. He could have done it in a far more […]

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When a reader finally gets around to his first Alan Furst novel, he or she likely soon will wonder: “Why hadn’t I heard about this guy before?” Furst may be the best writer of “spy” novels who is not a major publishing star nor had one of his books adapted for the screen. He is […]

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In my time in the UAE, the senior national soccer team has been, mostly, wretched. The Emirati footballers completed a hapless campaign in the final round of qualifying for the 2010 World Cup just after I arrived in Abu Dhabi, in late 2009, but I heard about it, and the reverberations could still be felt. […]

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