I knew South Africa had great wildlife; I didn’t know they had also had a great wine region just outside of Cape Town. I actually could have gone whale-watching and wine-tasting on the same day. (We did both, but on different days).

I don’t know a thing about wines. Let me correct that. I know I like red more than white; I know I like visiting vineyards because they always seem to be lovely, and I know that 1997 was a very good year in Italy.

But back to South Africa. We were there doing some pretty serious stories — about crime, about politics, about unemployment and unrest. But Cape Town cameraman Peter Rudden twisted my arm and on the last day — when all our serious work was done — and dragged me out to the wine country near Stellenbosch.

We spent a great afternoon at Meerlust, where cellarmaster Chris Williams showed us around and told us what makes this part of South Africa such a great place to make good wine.

Take a look at the video below:

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I’ve often said that the Italians are good at food, fashion and football. Football meaning soccer of course. They do manage to win a World Cup from time to time, and normally put on a pretty good show.

But I guess now we have to add Fiat. While a lot of people used to joke that the name stands for “Fix It Again, Tony” the company has actually made quite a turnaround. While it looks like Fiat is coming to the rescue of Chrysler, the Turin-based automaker is not actually putting any money down. Now that’s the way to buy a company.

While I have long been a fan of one of the other lines under the big Fiat tent, Alfa Romeo, Fiat itself has never really done it for me. I guess that’s because I owned a Fiat Uno for a while. It was fine for tooling around the city, but you weren’t going to get anywhere too fast.

But Fiat does make good “fun” cars. We took the Fiat 500 out for a ride as the Chrysler deal was being made. It’s not a bad little car. Take a look at the video.

And if you think that’s fun, the old 500, which looks almost just like a VW Beetle that’s been shrunk, is an absolute blast.

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It’s a little hard to find a bright side to an earthquake, but I was impressed with the smile from a traffic cop just outside of L’Aquila on Tuesday morning.

“I’m wearing everything I have left,” she told me. “It’s a good thing I had my jacket in the car, or I wouldn’t even have this,” she said, tugging on sleeve of her blue police uniform.”

Why the smile? She and her extended family were all safe, and got out of their homes uninjured in the quake, a magnitude of 6.3 on the Richter Scale which was so strong it shook people out of their beds as far away as Rome and Bologna.

A day and a half after the biq quake, some people were still walking around like it was a very bad dream. Many of them were bandaged, having been hit by falling concrete or stones as the force of the tremor reduced so buildings to a dusty mess.

There were still lots of hugs. Some were embraces celebrating the gift of life: people simply glad to see other survivors. Others hugged to mourn their losses together.

Some people were just trying to get back into their homes, although few managed to do that, since there are still aftershocks. Others simply cried as they looked at ruined remains.

Some residents of L’Aquila and the smaller towns surrounding it stood around piles of rubble, praying that relatives might be pulled out alive. Not many had their prayers answered, although was one “miracle” reported Tuesday night, a woman pulled out alive from a building that had collapsed around her. That was 42 hours after the jolt.

Italy is no stranger to earthquakes. One near Naples in 1980, slightly stronger than the one in L’Aquila, killed nearly 3,000 people. And deadly earthquakes rocked Umbria in 1997. The huge one was just over 100 years ago, 1908 in Sicily, in which an estimated 70,000 people lost their lives.

And yet, every time one hits, it’s a shock. Even with smaller tremors people go running out into the street, especially if they’ve ever experienced a serious quake before. They know the damage a quake can do.

L’Aquila, the “big” city in the Abruzzo region with a population of about 70,000, was the epicenter of the jolt, the smaller towns around it were actually harder hit.

I visited Onna, a relatively rural and poor place just a few miles outside of L’Aquila. It had about 400 residents before Monday, April 6. Now most of them are sleeping in cars around or in a temporary tent city that’s been put up near by.

But when Onna eventually rebuilds the two and three-storey homes that came crashing down so quickly, it will be short 40 residents. One-tenth of the population didn’t make it out in time. Onna was literally decimated.

While Onna is not especially beautiful, the panorama is lovely, with snow-capped mountains rising just a few miles away. The largest is called “Gran Sasso” or the Big Rock. In the summer, when there’s no snow, you can see just how rugged it is.

It’s tough terrain that been home for centuries to tough people. One big quake won’t scare them away.

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If you’ve ever been to Rome, you know it’s not hard to find a good meal here, and certainly not if you know where to look. We normally know where to look.”

Art history professor Liz Lev, someone we frequently interview on more intellecutal matters, has also been gaining a reputation as an excellent cook. So Rome producer Mario Biasetti and I, intrepid reporters that we are, went to check out the rumor for ourselves.

Liz was kind enough to invite us into her kitchen to show us how to make pasta all’amatriciana. I’m not a foodie, so I can’t give you an entire history of the dish, but it comes from a town not far from Rome called Amatrice.

It’s simple — pasta, a bit of pork, tomato sauce, onion, garlic, pecorino cheese — and quite filling, the kind of thing shepherds in the area have been eating for centuries. It’s also a classic Roman dish.

Take a look at the video below to see how it’s made!

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Someone once told me that if you hang around long enough in the Middle East, news is bound to break at some point. It never stays dull for very long. That’s certainly been true on just about all my trips to Israel, and several of my trips to Lebanon.

Our timing was pretty good – as journalists – in the summer of 2006. We arrived on the same day that Hezbollah carried out a cross-border raid in the south and captured two Israeli soldiers. The next morning, Israel bombed the airport, so we weren’t going anywhere for a while. We had planned to stay for five days and ended up staying five weeks, as Israel pounded Lebanon from the air and sea. Despite that, Hezbollah kept up its barrage of rockets into Israel.

This time around it’s a lot safer. People keep writing to say “Be careful” and “Keep your head down,” but it’s really quite calm. That doesn’t mean it won’t change. This is the Middle East, but for now it’s life as normal. As normal as it can be Beirut, anyway, which is a pretty chaotic city.

We’re just here to report on the reaction from the Arab street, which is angry, but for the most part, not violent. Producer Marcia Biggs lives here, so she knows her way around, and cameraman Olaf Wiig, who’s been pretty much all over the world, is enjoying his first visit to the city that used to be known as the Paris of the Middle East.

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Rome doesn’t have the same attacks on Christmas that you get in the United States. There’s no ACLU to complain about Nativity scenes in public places. In fact, the scenes are all over the city.

But back in 1994 something happened that simply shocked the residents of Rome. Someone stole the Baby Jesus. The most famous statue of the Child Jesus in the city was taken from a small chapel in the Church of the Ara Coeli, near Piazza Venezia. The Bambino Gesu, or Bambinello, has never been returned, and it appears that police have run out of leads. There’s a copy in its place right now, and children from all over the world still send their letters to the Child Jesus at the church.

The Bambinello was originally carved by a Franciscan friar in the Holy Land. To learn more about the history — and the mystery — of the image, I spoke with art historian Liz Lev. Take a look at the video below:

Liz, by the way, is a kind of walking history book/catechism. When I asked her about the statue’s special powers (it has supposedly been instrumental in a lot of cures of sick Romans) she gave me a warning about idol worship, saying it wasn’t the statue’s powers, but rather God’s, that were responsible for the healing.

Then, I guess to get me ready for the Christmas season, she added: “When you love an object per se, whether your shoes or your jacket, or whatever, it’s called idolatry”. Glad she set me straight before I get all those cool Italian gifts.

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I’ve got three lists of cities that I add to as my travel takes me around the world.

The first is World-Class Cities. Places like New York, Paris, Hong Kong and London.

Each is a huge metropolis that’s just off the map in terms of energy. Then I have Cool Places to Live. Right now I only have Rome on that list, though I’ve been tempted to add Barcelona.

And then there are Fascinating Places. I’ve just added Mumbai to that list, which includes cities like Naples, Venice, Seville and Istanbul.

Mumbai is fascinating for a number of reasons. A population of 18 million is one. Then it’s colorful, diverse, and a little crazy. You can get your haircut for about 70 cents (including tip) and your shoes shined for about a dime. An hour-long taxi ride might cost you $4, but it could easily be less. There aren’t too many places in the world you can find those kind of prices.

But it’s not all beautiful. The poverty is hard to fathom, with people sleeping on the street in a way you don’t even see in the poorest countries of Africa. It’s dirty, and I don’t want to think about what I was breathing in during the week I was there. But it is truly fascinating, and I’d gladly go back. I only wish I had a better camera, as India looks like a photographer’s dream. But these shots will at least give you an idea of the sights and sounds of the big city that used to be known as Bombay.

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Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi just can’t seem to help himself. He says that President-elect Bararck Obama is “young, good-looking and tanned.” It sounds slightly better in Italian (it always does.) “Giovane, bello e abbronzato.” Berlusconi was laughing when he said it, but most people didn’t see the humor. And when some here complained, the Prime Minister said they were fools.

He may be Italy’s richest man, and a very capable entrepreneur, but Berlusconi has grown up in a largely mono-cultural society. Most of the blacks he’s known have been players for his first-division soccer team, AC Milan. And while he may be 72 years old, there’s something about him that’s still quite childish — the eternal prankster. But a prankster who’s not always funny.

Here’s our video from Rome.

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Now that sounds like a breakfast of champions. It’s actually a very popular lunch or dinner in Rome, and it’s called “carbonara,” as in spaghetti alla carbonara or rigatoni alla carbonara.

We got into the kitchen of a great Roman restaurant called Grano, just off of Piazza Navona, for a close-up look at how carbonara is made. We tasted a bit, and it was great, but we were still hungry, so we also tried the “amatriciana.” That’s pasta with bacon and tomatoes, and the way they make it at Grano it’s some of the best in the city.

Check out the video for the carbonara creation. I wish I could say I had made it myself, because it was wonderful.

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If you’ve ever been to Rome, you probably remember Via Veneto, where the American Embassy is. It was once the center of what was known as the Dolce Vita.

The sweet life, the good life, the high life, where actors and actresses cavorted until early until the morning at bars like the Cafe de Paris — often being chased by paparazzi But Via Veneto isn’t all pretty. There’s a ghoulish surprise at the other end of the street. Take a look at the video.

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In recent weeks Christians in India have been feeling the heat. Many of those living in the southern and eastern parts of the country have seen their churches burned and others have been forced out of their homes as clashes with Hindus have intensified.

While Christians make up only about 2 percent of India’s population, over the weekend they got a prayer from the Pope, as well as a new saint, Sister Alphonsa of the Immaculate Conception. Check out our video from Vatican City.

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One of the crime cases that has gripped Italy over the last year has an American woman right in the middle of it, 21-year-old Amanda Knox of Seattle.

She’s in jail in Italy, one of three suspects in the grisly murder of her roommate, British student Meredith Kercher. Knox and the other two suspects, her ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito and Rudy Guede, all claim they’re innocent, although prosecutors say they can place all three at the scene of the crime.

Guede, a native of the Ivory Coast, has admitted to being in Kercher’s house the night of the murder, but says he wasn’t a part of it. While Guede has asked for a separate trial, and is expected to be judged shortly, Knox and Sollecito still have not been officially charged, although that will probably happen within the next few weeks. Amanda has now been in jail for more than 10 months.

Rome producer Mario Biasetti and I traveled up to Perugia for a pre-trial hearing this week and saw the scene of the crime. We also talked to students in Perugia. Here’s some of the video we shot.

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The breaking news out of Rome is that my favorite gelateria closed and became a jewelry store. That just broke my heart. The place was called Pellachia, on Via Cola di Rienzo, and some of you who have visited the Eternal City will remember it.

Not only was the ice cream great there, but so was the coffee. You also could sit outside and have drinks at Pellachia in the good weather, and on cold nights warm up with the hot chocolate, which was fabulous.

Fortunately, there are still a lot of good places to get ice cream in this city, so not all is lost. We went out to try several of them, and have come up with a ranking of the best ice cream in Rome. It’s really highly unscientific, of course, and you have to try it for yourself. But just to get an idea of some places to start, take a look at the video.

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Just about everywhere I’ve traveled over the last couple of years I’ve found Starbucks.

Well, not everywhere. I don’t remember seeing one in Afghanistan. And interestingly enough, there’s no Starbucks here in Italy. I thought about that recently when Starbucks announced they were closing a number of stores. They never even opened any here.

Why not? Well, a lot of reasons, but the main one is that the coffee here is just too good.
I used to think you could find everything in New York, but after living in Italy I no longer believe that. I just don’t think you can get a great espresso — something you find in almost any Italian neighborhood — in the Big Apple.

For more details on why Starbucks can’t make it in Italy, check out the video.

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Since Hamas took power in the Gaza Strip a year ago, it’s been a pressure cooker, with Palestinian militants firing Qassam rockets on Israel, and the Israeli Army responding with deadly airstrikes.

“Welcome to Hell,” is how one young Palestinian greeted me this week, as I arrived in Gaza with cameraman Chris Jackson for the start of the cease-fire.

Life in Gaza should improve if it holds,
and the Israelis ease the blockade on goods arriving.

Just a few days before going to Gaza I was in the town of Sderot, one of the main targets on the Israeli side for the Qassams. Life looked a little hellish there, as well.

Getting warnings a half-dozen times a day to race for a shelter because of incoming rockets is no way to live. Making the cease-fire last won’t be easy, but there are good reasons on both sides at least to try.

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One of the hot-button issues in recent years between Israelis and Palestinians has been the wall separating Israel from the West Bank. In some places it’s quite an imposing structure, so it’s interesting to see a start-up company that can pretty much pretend like the wall’s not there, launching an Israeli-Palestinian joint venture.
The company is called Ghost, or actually G.ho.st, an acronym that stands for Global Hosted Operating System, and has offices in both Ramallah and the Israeli town of Modin.
Along with producer Ibrahim Hazboun and cameraman Chris Jackson, I visited both sides of the barrier to talk with the Ghosts. It’s not so much that they’re scaling the wall in Ramallah; they’re just passing right through it.

Here’s a video and a few photos from Ramallah:

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From time to time my Italian friends will criticize the United States, which I understand. We’re not above criticism. But I always ask those who live in Rome if they’ve ever made a visit to the American cemetery at Nettuno, home to nearly 8,000 graves of young American soldiers who died in World War II.

Left-wing Italians like to propagate the idea that it was the “Partigiani” or Partisans, who liberated the country. That’s the politically correct version of things. I’m sure the Partisans did what they could, but let’s not fool ourselves. The might of the American Armed Forces and a lot of kids from Oklahoma, Illinois and Missouri freed this country.

Here’s a video from when Rome producer Mario Biasetti and I visited Nettuno, about 40 miles south of Rome. Most of the video is silent, which is fitting for a cemetery, although it starts with cemetery superintendent Joe Bevilacqua talking about just how young these heroes were.

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I just returned from Naples, and unfortunately, it seems that every time I go there it’s to report on problems. Mostly organized crime, or more recently, trash.

Granted, Naples is not all pretty. But a lot of it is absolutely stunning, as anybody who’s ever been there can tell you. And the people are lovely. Make that lovely and lively. In fact, there’s so much action there that it feels a bit like a movie set.

The city has had its trash crisis – dumps full, no collection – for years now. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is talking tough about fixing the situation. We’ll see if he can follow through where the others have failed.

Here’s a short video I did with producer Mario Biasetti. We try to show just a bit of the other side of Naples. You’ll recognize me, although we start with an interview with Tricia Reynolds, an American who has lived in the city for more than 30 years.

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The trip went by in a blur, but the photos will help me remember what a great time it was.

Well, not all of it was so great. We had 2:30 wake-up calls and 4 a..m. wake-up calls, but that’s part of the game.

Some valuable advice I was given early on my career was this: eat, sleep and use the bathroom every chance you get, because you’ll never know when another will come. I thought of that when we were reporting from in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and journalists needed a security escort to get to a bathroom in a department store. We were told the escort could only be used for emergency cases!

One of the wonderful things about traveling with the pope is that you always run into friends and colleagues from the past. In Washington I worked with producer Anne Marie Riha, who I had last seen seven years ago in Jerusalem. And while I was reporting at the UN I ran into Sabrina Arena, an old friend from Rome who’s now in New York. Multi-lingual and multi-tasking, Sabrina was doing an interview in Spanish just a few satellite trucks down from me. Sabrina and her husband are doing their best to reverse Italy’s population problems, as they now have five kids. The children were with her parents right down the street from the UN, and I saw the smallest three for the first time.

(From left to right)

• New York’s Finest
• Producers Anne Marie Riha and Stacy Hickman with make-up artist Mary-Ellen Tasillo.
• Nationals Park at the start of the Mass
• Sabrina Arena and Company
• Paul Alvarez, Harriet Taylor and Woody outside St. Patrick’s

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I’m happy to report there were no injuries among the news-nerds boarding the papal flight this time.

When we were going to Turkey, one of them tripped another coming out of the bus that took us to the plane, sending him rolling on the tarmac. But the fallen nerd got right back up, and despite a sprained wrist still made it to the front of the press section, just to prove that he may be a news-nerd, but he’s not a total nerd.

There aren’t a whole lot of scuffles on papal trips, although once the photographer from Time Magazine did deck a guy who was crowding his space. The judges awarded the Time guy a TKO, but I think he eventually lost the lawsuit from the guy who lost his teeth.

Pope Benedict came to the back of the plane to answer a few questions, on the sex abuse crisis, on immigration, on the United Nations and human rights, and on United States as a model of religious freedom and a secular state.

On sex abuse, Benedict said it was time to heal the wound, and the crisis has meant much suffering for the Church in the U.S. “and for me personally,” adding that on reading the cases that arrived in Rome it was difficult for him to understand how priests betrayed their mission. “We will absolutely exclude pedophiles from the sacred ministry,” he said.

Photographing the Pope; Papal headrest

The Pope looked liked he was in good shape, slightly tanned and patient as usual with all the flurry around him. Benedict XVI said he was making the trip in a spirit of joy: “I know this great country, and the liveliness of the Church there, despite the problems.”

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There are two theories about flying with the pope. One is that the plane will never go down. The second is that if it does, everyone goes to heaven.

Apparently Benedict is going to answer five questions for us on the flight. There’s always a huge scrum to get seats at the front. At the front of the back, that is. All the Vatican hotshots are up front, and 50 or so journalists are in economy, although the price is anything but economical. (We normally get first class food, though, if that’s any consolation.)

In the journalist section, the news nerds are in the front, the cool calm people in the middle (that’s where FOX will be) and the photographers in the back, so they can make a quick exit and get a shot of the pope after we land. The photographers all look like guys (although there’s one woman among them) who only put on their ties three times year, when they’re on the papal plane.

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1- Top Photo: News conference on board. To the left of the pope is Cardinal Bertone, the secretary of state, and to his right is papal spokesman Fr. Lombardi.

2— Half of a pope trip is waiting in line.

This is outside the cathedral in Sao Paolo. Everyone seems to be asking, “Are you going to let us in?”

3— No talking in church.

Once inside the cathedral, with Tricia Thomas of APTN, Associated Press Television.

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“You must have a glamorous job,” quipped cameraman Mal James to me on Friday night as we were breaking down after Pope Benedict’s Way of the Cross at the Colosseum.

It was pouring rain, freezing, and there we were, rolling up cables and packing up lights. No, not exactly glamorous. It is an interesting job, I have to admit, but a lot of times the conditions can be pretty miserable.

Today it was more of the same. We did a first live shot just as the Pope was giving his Easter greetings, at 7 a.m. Eastern, or noon Rome time. Mal, producer Mario Biasetti and I were huddled under a tent, but it wasn’t much protection, either for us or the equipment. There was plenty of thunder and lightning, and loads of rain and enough wind to get us all wet and miserable. Glamorous indeed. After the live shot we just high-tailed it into the office.

Despite the weather, there were still tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for the Mass and Blessing today. If you’ve come all the way from the United States or from Latin America — as many of the pilgrims have — a little or even a lot of rain is not going to stop you from going to see the Pope. Not exactly the weather for an Easter Egg hunt, but you don’t make a pilgrimage to Rome for that.

Finally, the Pope gave us a little bit of news overnight. Italy’s best known Muslim, an Egyptian-born journalist named Magdi Allam, was baptized at the Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica.

I have a feeling the powers that be at the Vatican didn’t think too much about what the repercussions of this could be. Allam, an outspoken critic of Muslim extremists, and a vocal supporter of Israel, writes for the Milan daily Corriere della Sera. He was a controversial figure to begin with, and this will only add to his notoriety. As some Muslims here pointed out, Allam could have easily been baptized quietly in a small parish near his home, and not made a big deal of it. But he, and apparently the Vatican, decided otherwise. All this high-profile attention, including two full pages of stories about the conversion in his own newspaper, will only anger Muslims even more. And it’s all happening just when relations between the Vatican and Muslims looked like they were getting better. So much for that. It’s really a kind of in-your-face move, on the part of both Allam and the Vatican, and I’m sure we haven’t heard the end of it.

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I’ve worked out of Rome for FOX since 9/11.

Not because of 9/11; I just happened to have changed jobs that September. I was actually on vacation in Sicily when the Twin Towers got hit. Having come to FOX from Time Magazine, I was new to television — but got a lot of help from Rome producer Mario Biasetti, who’s been working in TV longer than I’ve been alive. I also got sent quite often to our Jerusalem bureau, to give a hand covering the intifada — so that meant a lot of live television experience in a very short period of time.

I survived “Papal April”: the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Benedict 16th in 2005, although it was actually a three-month ordeal, as John Paul first went into the hospital in February. I spent a lot of time in a wet and cold parking lot outside the Gemelli Hospital, and if it had lasted much longer I would have also ended up in the hospital.

I’ve been lucky to cover a few other big stories as well: Madrid train bombings, Paris riots and the war in Lebanon. I actually arrived in Lebanon the same day the war started, which was pretty good timing. I was planning on staying for five days — I think I had a pair of khakis, a pair of shorts and a swimsuit — and we ended up there for five weeks. But no complaints; it was a great story and I’d love to go back.

When I worked for Time it was normally just myself and my notebook as I reported a story. Occasionally, for a very big interview, a photographer would come along. Television is all about teamwork. I thought about that the other day when we did a story at Ferrari headquarters, about test-driving one of their hot new cars on the company’s race track. Mario Biasetti shot the piece with a small camera, and I managed to give him a bit of a scare when I took the Scuderia 430 into a tight turn at about 100 m.p.h. Since I was leaving for Jerusalem the next day, I brought the tapes with me. Editor Ronen Shpizman and producer Yonat Friling did a great job putting it together.

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