A Day in the Sabine Hills

I've just returned from three days in Italy, researching The Man from Pomegranate Street. I wanted to see what the Sabine hills would have been like in mid-September, the time of year when Titus died. I also wanted to see Lake Alba, where Titus's brother Domitian built an imperial villa. Domitian's villa was exactly where the papal palace is now at a town called Castel Gandolfo about ten miles southeast of Rome.

Having booked an EasyJet flight on impulse I set out from home early on the morning of Tuesday 16 September. Lisa Tucci is an Italian-American audioguide producer and blogger. I first met her after I sent an email raving about her wonderful audioguide to ancient Ostia. We subsequently met in London and when I told her I hoped to explore the Sabine Hills, she generously gave up a whole day to organize it.

My flight is on time and when I arrive at Ciampino Airport at 10.30am on Tuesday morning, there she is in her red Honda Civic. Sitting patiently in the back seat is Lisa's dog Trevor, named after Trevi, where she found him. He is so quiet that she often smuggles him on planes in her carry-on luggage!

We set straight off along the Via Salaria, the old salt road which led from the salt fields of Ostia up to the centre of Italy. After ten or fifteen minutes, we stop for a coffee at Il Glicine (Hyacinth) Bar & Osteria in Settebagni. This might have been near the spot where Titus got a fever in September of AD 81. Titus died a few days later - on 13 September AD 81 - at his family's rustic villa near Reate (modern Rieti).

It is a perfect autumn day. Sunny and mild with a few friendly clouds in the blue sky. We are following the route Titus took to get from Rome to his Sabine villa. According to Suetonius, Titus died at first stopping place out of Rome. Nobody knows quite where this was, though it may have been Eretum, where the Via Salaria met the Via Nomentana. Unfortunately, nobody knows where Eretum was either. Never mind. This is good enough. The countryside here is still quite flat, with plane trees lining the road and the blue Sabine hills in the distance up ahead.

As we continue along the Via Salaria, the road begins to climb. We see vineyards and hazelnut trees and my ears pop. Soon we reach Monteleone Sabina, which has impressive remains of a Roman amphitheatre. We briefly investigate these ruins, and let Trevor have a little sniff. Then Lisa points out an old Franciscan monastery on the top of a hill. The monastery has been converted to apartments, and a friend of hers occupies one of them. Claire Nelson is a sculptress who works in bronze and bronze-look resin. An expat British woman, she is going to put us in touch with some guides to the Sabine Hills at a lunchtime meeting. The dusty track to her house leads up through silver-grey olive trees. When we arrive, we are welcomed by some of Claire's dogs. LikeLisa, she can't bear to see an abandoned canine.

Claire greets us and gets in the back seat, next to Trevor, and soon we reach the Sabine town of Poggio Moiano, about 50 km northwest of Rome. The Ristorante Maria Fontana specialises in local seasonal produce. As we enter, we see slices of courgette and of aubergine laid out on tables to dry in the sunshine. This is all part of the preparation. Then the vegetables are brushed with olive oil and grilled. Susan Micocci and her husband Bruno arrive a few minutes after we were seated. Susan is a friend of Claire's and guide of the area. This restaurant was her choice. She is an expat New Yorker who married the delightful Bruno and has been in Italy ever since. She offers cooking courses, hiking tours and culture tours of the region, all in English or Italian. (You can find out more here) below: Bruno and Claire the sculptress with the owner of the restaurant.

We order antipasti to start and enjoy big plates of prosciuttio, salami, cheese, olives and a bowl of delicious chopped liver. Our grilled vegetables include aubergine and pumpkin! Yum. For main dish we have freshly made pasta or grilled veal steak. There is fresh crusty bread and either red wine or mineral water.

Over lunch, Susan tells me lots of wonderful facts about the Sabine Hills. She says that she and Bruno will take us up to Rieti and then to the Baths of Vespasian and the Villa of Titus. I go to the ladies room to wash my hands, and am so excited that I come running out to hear more and crash into the owner of the restaurant, who is also moving fast. We embrace for a moment in tears of laughter. It is like a scene from a slapstick comedy. Luckily he isn't carrying any plates of food!

After lunch we set off for Rieti in our two cars. Susan takes me in her car, so she can explain things, while Bruno goes with Lisa and Claire. Suddenly Susan realises her brakes aren't working! We stop by the ruined marble gate of a Sabine villa and Bruno comes to have a look. He takes over driving and we make our way carefully to a service station. Bruno decides the brakes will hold a little longer, so we continued cautiously on to Rieti.

At Rieti, Susan takes us to the Roman Bridge (only a small remnant) and explains how the Romans made brick vaults as foundations for the houses here. This area was prone to flooding in Roman times. Rieti was then known as Reate, after Rea Silva, the mother of Romulus and Remus. It's mainly medieval now, so we hurry on to the Terme di Vespasiano, the Baths of Vespasian. These baths are in beautiful green hills at a place called Cotilia, which used to be Cutiliae. The nearby area is famous for chestnuts, truffles and farro, a type of grain we call 'spelt'. It's also famous for its mineral waters.

On the main road, across from the modern Terme di Cotilia, is a public fountain. We stop so that we can taste the water. It is magnificent: the coldest, fizziest, eggiest water I've ever had! I can tell by the eggy taste that it's sulphur water. right: Susan and I at Lake Paternus

On we drive, into the late afternoon sunlight to Lago Paterno, a deep, beautiful and mysterious lake. Susan tells us that the Greeks who used to live here performed human sacrifices! The Flavian villa is on the hillside overlooking this lake. There are plans to start excavating it soon. This is the villa where both Vespasian and Titus died. Suetonius: 'He died in the same farmhouse as his father, on the Ides of September... aged forty-two.'

It is getting late now, and the sun is sinking, so we say goodbye to the wonderful Susan and Bruno. Susan gives me literature about the region and two DVDs. What generosity! Lisa and I drop Claire back at her monastery in Monteleone, where we watch the sun set and have a cup of PG Tips tea. Then Lisa drives me towards Lake Alba where I have booked two nights at the lakeside Hotel Castelgandolfo. As we leave Rome we see a huge orange moon rising on the eastern horizon and when I check into my room at the Hotel Castelgandolfo (which I highly recommend) I see the same moon, now higher and cooler, floating above its reflection on Lake Alba.

(You can see more & bigger photos on my public Facebook photo page)

December in the Delta

We are off to Egypt: to Lower Egypt. Confusingly, Lower Egypt is actually above Upper Egypt on modern maps. We'll be based in Giza at a hotel with a pyramid view. (Probably one of those terrible blots on the landscape but at least we will be in it looking out). Our last day includes an optional day trip to Alexandria. Sadly there are very few physical remains of what was arguably the most beautiful city in the Roman world. But my next book is set there and that's why we're going. Here's our itinerary:

Tuesday: The Giza Plateau - Pyramids and Sphinx

Wednesday: Sakkara/Dashur - lots more pyramids, including a newly opened complex at Abu Sir

Thursday: Heliopolis/Cairo Museum - morning in Heliopolis, afternoon in the Cairo Museum

Friday: Fayum - The Ptolomaic-Roman City of Karanis and the labyrinth at Heracleopolis (!) and the famous mastaba tombs. (This is where many of those stunning Romano-Egyptian encaustic coffin portraits come from.)

Saturday: The Delta - visit to the ancient cult city of Bubastis (lots of cat mummies!), then to some excavations at Tanis

Sunday: Alexandria - the new museum, Kom el Dikka and some catacombs are on the itinerary

Monday: home... inshallah!

Fes Medina Time Machine

The Hotel Batha (pronounced Bat-ha) in Fes is good in every respect but one: they have terrible breakfast. In a land dripping with oranges the juice is bottled and sickly sweet. The bread is stale. The ubiquitous hard-boiled eggs are so old that when I bite into one my teeth bounce back and I put it down in disgust. Too bad because our dinner here last night was fine and the room is warm. There is a pool and a tiled courtyard and it's all very reasonably priced.

We meet our guide for the day outside the hotel. Ali is dressed in the 'uniform' of Morocco, a djellaba. For some reason this hooded robe makes wearers look like evil monks. What does a peaked hood seem sinister and a rounded hood spiritual? Ali has a car and speaks good English. I tell him I don't want to shop but I do want to see the tanneries. He says fine and drives us past the golden walls of the Medina to a ceramics factory.

The potteries used to be in the Medina but the olive pits they use to fire the kilns cause billowing black smoke and so they have recently moved outside the city walls.

There are very few people around – either tourists or workers – but Ali hands us over to a man who will give us a tour. The first room we see is the tile-cutters' room. This is fantastic. I can't imagine any difference from Roman times. The men and boys sit or squat at low tables in a plaster-walled room and chip away at the ceramic tiles, making stars, hexagons, diamonds and all the other shapes that make up the mosaic walls, columns and fountains you see everywhere.

Next our guide takes us to the back of the factory where there are six big circular pits in the ground. This is where clay from the mountains is soaked and kneaded (by bare foot) to make it soft enough to work. The ground is slippery here from yesterday's heavy rainfall.

We see the kiln being fired, get a demonstration of a foot-powered potter's wheel and see the glazing room. It's like going back in time. Nothing can have changed in two thousand years. Finally we are taken to the factory shop. This is a cooperative and the prices are marked. Not cheap, but we buy a few things to take home: a bowl for olives and a tile.

From here Ali drives us to a parking space outside the Medina walls. No traffic is allowed inside, and all goods are carried on donkey, mule or horseback. Ali was born and raised her in the Fes medina; he often stops to greet friends and we are never pestered.

The tanneries are amazing. You go up through tunnels of leather-goods to a high balcony where you can look down over them. Another guide offers us a mint-tea and as we sip it he explains how things work. The raised pits are for tanning and dyeing the leather. The hay-strewn flat rooftops for drying, the running water for washing. The stench is bad but it must be terrible in the heat of the summer.

After the tour we buy some belts, a leather rucksack, and a pouf for our London apartment. It's not cheap and I realised I could have done a better job haggling. Never mind: the profits are shared out between all who work here, including the poor tanners who are all rheumatic by 50.

Ali leads us through narrow winding streets past stunning mosaic mosques and fountains. Every so often you have to press yourself to a wall to allow a donkey to pass. We see boys hammering copper, someone feeding sawdust to the furnace of a hammam, just like a slave in Roman times would have fuelled a hypocaust.

Ali takes us to a carpet factory despite the fact that I tell him we do not want to buy a carpet. He just wants us to see 'the six-hundred year old house it's built in'. I realise this is definitely the 'shopping tour' not the 'monument tour'. But I don't mind because this is like going back in time and the monuments are mainly mosques and Islamic tombs, which don't really concern me.

We don't buy a carpet at the 600 hundred year old carpet shop and we don't even go into the jeweller's or embroiderer's. But we do let Ali take us to the apothecary. This is a little Alladin's cave of coloured powders in jars and dried lizards and bottles of oil. Here again, Ali sits and lets an on-site guide do his spiel. We smell lots of perfumes and aromatic spices and Richard buys half a pound of cumin and 'Moroccan curry powder' to experiment with at home. I buy a textured glove and a piece of sandstone 'pumice' for my next hammam.

Ali also takes us to the Mellah or Jewish Quarter and up narrow stairs to the synagogue. Until recently it was a museum but since the owner died her son is selling off everything so that he can go back to Paris to live. What a shame...

For lunch, Ali takes us to an ornate restaurant near the carpet shop we saw earlier. The set menu is cheap and surprisingly delicious. Dessert is oranges sprinkled with cinnamon, which is simple but tasty.

As Ali drives us back to the hotel mid-afternoon, I ask if he knows a place where we can hear some Moroccan music. He tells us he'll take us to a restaurant in the Kasbah where we will hear authenic Moroccan and Berber music, see belly-dancers, etc. It sounds very touristy but Ali assures us the whole evening costs 'only' 300 dirhams per person (about £25) and that the restaurant will provide a courtesy car home.

Ali picks us up at the hotel at 8.00 and drives to the Restaurant Palais La Medina, then leaves us. I pay him and give him a nice tip and a signed book for his kids, and later wish I hadn't. This place is a huge disappointment. Although the tiled interior is stunningly beautiful and the performers mostly good, the food is terrible and it's full of tour groups. Also it ends up costing over 1000 dirhams. We do not get a courtesy car home.

But this sour taste at the end of the day will not spoil our memories of an amazing town. I believe Fes was the closest thing to ancient Rome that I have ever experienced. 

Seeking warmth in Fes

Yesterday – Friday – it was cold and pouring with rain at Moulay Bousselham, where we've been staying at a guesthouse. We eagerly pack our cases, knowing we are off to the warmth of a hotel room reserved in Fes... we hope.

Gentiane's Berber butler drives us through pouring rain to Souk el Arba, about an hour away. We find the small unheated train station and wait for the ticket man to arrive. We manage to buy tickets, a good sign. At exactly 12.52, the time of the train to Fes, everyone goes out onto the platform and stands shivering for another half hour. Then someone makes an announcement and everyone drags their cases back across the tracks to wait on the unsheltered platform. It is still raining steadily. We are cold and damp. At last the train arrives. It is an ancient unheated creature that due to be replaced by a modern double-decker in the near future. Cold consolation.

We find a compartment with a nice Moroccan couple who are returning to Fes to spend the festival with their family. At one point another Moroccan breezes into our compartment long enough to establish – in excellent English – who we are and where we are from. He recommends a restaurant in Fes and a guide named Ali who speaks excellent English. I ring Ali straightaway and arrange for him to give us a half day tour of the medina the following day.

The windows are wet and steamy, so we can't see any of the countryside passing by. Richard and I pass our time shivering, reading and sharing food with the Moroccan couple. I offer them salted peanuts, which they accept. We get juicy tangerines in return. Finally we arrive at Fes. It's 4.30pm and will soon be dark. I have been cold and damp since I got up at 7.30 and am yearning for warmth. But it's not easy to get a taxi on a rainy afternoon in Fes. At last we succeed and climb into a red petit taxi. He drives us past medieval walls of golden mud and stone. The rain pours down.

The desk clerk at the Hotel Batha (pronounced Bat-ha) jokes that he doesn't have a reservation for us. Ha ha. When I ask if the room is heated he says no but it has air conditioning. Ha ha. And when is breakfast? Between 4.00 am and 6.00 am. Ha! But he usefully informs us that we can have dinner in the hotel restaurant for only a slight increase to our room rate. A porter takes our luggage and shows us to the lift and at last we find what we have been seeking all day long: WARMTH! There is also a bathtub - oh bliss - and a toilet without the ominous wastebasket beside it (meaning used paper goes there and must not be flushed).

The Rough Guide says there is a hammam near here, close to a cinema. As I haven't done anything research-y that day, I decide to be brave and go. After consulting the guide book I pack a towel (thanks Hotel Batha), shampoo, soap, face cream, a hairbrush and a spare pair of panties. 

Out of the hotel – still raining, and dark now, too – up to the cinema. I can't find the cinema but a peanut seller kindly takes me to the unmarked door of the hammam and beams a toothless smile. I tip him two dirhams. In the entryway I buy a ticket from an old man. Entry to the hamam costs 18 dirhams, about one pound fifty. Through ancient double wooden doors to find a steamy room with a tile floor and small drain in the centre. Around this courtyard on three sides is a low stone balcony with women changing. I go timidly across and up a few stairs, find the lady who takes you ticket. With a bit of questioning in French I rent a locker (wooden box above the bench) and agree to a massage for 50 dirhams, about four pounds. I undress down to my panties, like everyone else, and an old lady (also in just panties) grasps my left arm above the elbow with a calloused hand and pulls me across the slippery floor to a room aroud a corner.

This room looks just like the ruins of Roman baths: tile floor, tile walls, high ceiling and two stone basins, one for very hot water, one for cold water. There are naked women everywhere, sitting on the  floor surrounded by colourful plastic buckets. They are all ages, ranging from little girls to old women. They are washing themselves, their hair, and even their clothes.

My crone guide takes me into a second steam room, almost identical to the first but less crowded. She gets me to sit on the floor and starts tipping buckets of deliciously warm water over me. Then she asks for my shampoo. When I produce the Head and Shoulders she washes my hair, brushes it through rinses it with a bucket. Bliss.

Now another lady, naked apart from a red bandana-type headscarf, takes a scrubbing glove and rubs me hard all over. It is almost painful, probably because I'm not used to it. I am lying on my back. The floor is heated underneath in Roman style and is so hot it almost burns. I close my eyes and try to relax into it. Before Bandana Lady gets me to turn onto my front she shows me the worms of grey skin she has rubbed off me, even though I had that hotel bath to get warm just an hour earlier. Eww.

Bandana Lady does my back they sluice me off. Then a third lady – Blue Headscarf – gives me my massage, rubbing me painfully hard with my bar of soap. Finally I know it's over when they sluice me down with gaspingly cold water.

I go back to my locker and have started to dry myself when I feel a bit nauseous. I have to put my head between my knees for a few minutes. I should have rested after the bath. The hammam must not be rushed. But Richard is waiting back at the hotel room. After a few minutes I feel better. I get dressed and go back to the hotel.

I feel cleaner than I have in my whole life. And very warm.

Dinner in the hotel restaurant is uninspired but good and especially nice because they've seated us by the fire. We have harira - the noodle, vegetable and bean soup - then I have chicken kebab and Richard has a beef tajine. We treat ourselves to a bottle of rosé from Meknes and finish off with oranges sprinkled with cinnamon. That night we sleep in a warm room on clean sheets and a firm mattress. Yay! Hotel Batha and warmth.