soggiorno13

The following is the best kind of lesson: the first-hand, object-lesson sort. Hearken and heed!:

I broke two of my cardinal rules and the lapse cost me a lot in time and money and effort, plus loss of sleep and dented self-esteem. One of the rules is philosophical or emotional or instinctive. The other is purely practical. If I hadn’t broken the first one I wouldn’t have broken the other.

Rule One: Always listen to that voice inside your head. It’s paying closer attention to your surroundings than your conscious mind is, especially when you’re engaged in something new or complicated, like navigating the Paris Metro.

Rule Two: Never carry your wallet in your back pocket. Self-explanatory, nest-ce pas?

So I’m standing on a Metro train and I realize that my wallet is in my back pocket. Eternal vigilance is the price for keeping your stuff, and I let my concentration waver. Worse, I realized it was there because the voice inside was saying something like, “Danger, danger Will Robinson!” (It doesn’t always know my name, and it thinks it’s the robot in “Lost in Space,” but the warnings it dispenses are still valid.) I reach around and feel that my wallet is there, but I don’t move it immediately because it would be inconvenient at that exact moment and because I’m an idiot.

We get to our stop where we’re changing trains and I put my hand back there and the wallet is gone. There’s that moment when you start touching all your pockets at once, and then repeat, and then repeat again, and all the while the sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach is settling in your gut and the sense of loss and confusion surround you like a dark, damp, depressing cloud because you know it’s gone and you know why and you can’t even blame the thief because that’s what thieves do: they steal, and your job is to keep them from doing their job.  I’m much more upset with myself for making myself a target– and worse– for ignoring the warning I sent myself. I got lazy. I got complacent. I got careless. I dropped my guard. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

So I lost a few hundred bucks, all my credit cards, my ATM card (the hardest blow of all, because it represents access to money) and my driver’s license. I still have my passport, my smart phone, my camera, my laptop, my clothes and my plane ticket home.

This has created many complications for me, mostly having to do with money, or more specifically, the lack of it. But I am with family and so I have resources to turn to, which got me to wondering: What would someone do if it happened while traveling alone? I guess you could wire home for money, but doesn’t it even cost money to send the wire? Could you go to the American Embassy? I don’t have the answers, and I feel as though I should. I’m going to find the answers to the questions, just in case.

Eurostar tomorrow to London– tickets paid for by my aunt. Going to an Air-BnB in London, paid for by my cousin. I guess I’ll have to tap them for the train fare to Cambridge where I’ll be staying with my friends Rebecca and Pedro. Then I’ll need train fare to Heathrow on the 15th to catch my flight back to Seattle. Then there will be more family to borrow from to have money to drive home, where I’ll have new credit and debit cards waiting for me (The first thing I did was call and cancel all cards. Everyone else was checking out the Eiffel Tower and I was on the phone. I hear it looks nice).

Old Wild Will Shakespeare has Iago say, “Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands…” Of course, Will didn’t lose his ATM card…

when it’s colder than a well-digger’s ass in the Klondike…”

A day of firsts.

We left the apartments at noon, took a taxi to the Florence airport and then faced bureaucracy in one of its worst incarnations. We stood in a line to check our bags for most of an hour because the airline, Vueling (partners with British Air and Iberia) had only one ticket window open. Check that, there were actually two but one was for “priority” check-in and the woman sat with nothing to do while her colleague in the line beside her was checking in the lengthening queue. (Look at me using a word like “queue” almost like it’s natural!) Finally a supervisor happened by just as the “priority” woman was getting ready to take a break, probably because she was so tired, and almost immediately she was back behind the counter taking anybody who approached, plus they opened a third window. Then we had to go downstairs and through security. No problem, except that they took away my water bottle. My fault, I should have emptied it but hadn’t. We looked at the board and saw that our flight to Paris was leaving from Gate 10, so we went downstairs and found another security/passport check to get into Gate 10. WTF? That line was moving so slowly that after almost half an hour I’d moved about 10 feet.

It was about that time that Dawn came up and said that the board had been changed and we were actually leaving from Gate 7, which was beside the line and didn’t require any further checks. Thanks, Vueling. Turns out the passengers they were checking so closely were going to Tehran. Oh.

[The only worse (or roughly equivalent, come to think of it) airport experience was with Bruce and Jodie Dillman in the Milano airport, Malpensa (which I could swear means “bad thought” in Italian– that would be SO appropriate). Lines were endless there, nobody was moving, our flight was leaving soon and we were only part-way through the lines– finally Jodie went to the front and told them we had to catch our flight in a couple of minutes and we got checked in and then did an O.J. Simpson impression (the running-through-the-airport thing, not the knife thing) while they were literally calling our names out over the loudspeakers. We reached the plane, got on and before we could sit down we felt the bump as the plane started moving.]

Finally on the plane and almost immediately I fell asleep. I can never sleep on a plane,but I did. There was no point in staying awake anyway, because even water costs money on these flights. “Oh, did you want a napkin with that? 4 Euros, please.”

When I woke we were flying over what looked like an endless glacier of clouds, white as far as the eye could see, and relatively flat, like a frozen sea back in the days when seas froze. Far off in the distance there were higher clouds, probably the tops of cumulonimbus from a thunderstorm. Then we were banking and we dipped into and through the clouds and emerged beneath them and there was Paris spread out beneath us– or at least the outskirts and suburbs of Paris. We could see the lights of cars headed away from the city, and everywhere the gloom of the early evening, even though just a few thousand feet above it was still sunny.

Then we were on the ground and I had my first new experience: I left Orly Airport. I’d landed there a couple of times but only to make a connection, so this was the first time I was actually going to stay there.

Then new experience two: We took the train from the airport into town, transferred to the Metro (new experience three) and then got out at the Port Royal stop and emerged into the Paris night (number four).

As referenced in the title of this note, it is COLD in Paris. It was raining and windy in Florence, but it was also about 65 degrees F. In Paris it was just above zero celsius, about 35 F., and I was immediately wishing that I had brought my down vest or at least my polar fleece jacket.

We relied on Google Maps to lead us to the hotel, so naturally we crossed a street we didn’t need to cross and headed off in the wrong direction, but eventually we got it straightened out and found the hotel only about a block from the Metro stop.

It’s 8:30 pm and we aren’t even going out to find something to eat. Part of that is because it’s cold, part because we’re tired, but mostly because ain’t none of us speak French. It would probably be one of those point-at-the-menu- and-hope things. Or maybe we could find a McDonalds and let a character from “Pulp Fiction” help us with the menu…”I’ll have a Royale with cheese. Merci.”

Tomorrow we go to Bayeux by train– another new adventure– and spend the night, then early the next morning take a guided tour of the American Cemetery in Bayeux and get a look at what was called “Omaha Beach” on that fateful morning. This is for my uncle in an attempt to assuage his disappointment in Spain when he didn’t get to go on the Navy base where he was stationed; and his disappointment in Italy when we didn’t get as far south as Naples, where he wanted to see an old hangout from when he was a sailor. Maybe also add the disappointment we all felt in Gibraltar. Have I mentioned that Gibraltar should be avoided unless you’re absolutely committed to checking it off the bucket list?

I don’t know the WiFi situation in Bayeux, so can’t promise anything from there, but we come back to Paris on the 9th, spend the night and then take the Chunnel to London. It would be cheaper to fly, but we figured, “What the hell? Let’s keep up the list of firsts.”

In London the family is going off to an apartment near Piccadilly Circus, but I’m leaving them behind and going to Cambridge to visit my friend Becky and her inamorato Pedro and their little boy and get the “resident’s tour” of Cambridge, Oxford, Stratford-Upon-Avon (The Mother Ship for English majors) and other assorted local specialties.

Ciao! Or I should say, “bonsoir.”

 

My farewell to Italy:

 

I’m having dinner at a small trattoria, Gusto Leo, in the center of Florence, not far from the Duomo and just across the Via Ghibellina from the Bargello.  It’s a long, narrow room, and I’m a quarter of the way back from the front door.  I’m sitting alone at a table for two facing the door. On my right, against the wall, is another table for two and a couple occupies it. I can tell that they are speaking English, but with the din generated by my countrymen I can’t place the accents. In front of me at a table for four are three American teenagers, and behind me, sitting alone at a table for four, is another American. So far none of them have any way of knowing that I’m an American and I leave it at that. Because of them I’m not feeling a lot of national pride at this point.

How do I know they’re Americans?  Because all of them are loud and obnoxious and completely oblivious to others around them.  They seem to think that they’re in a theme park. The teens are laughing and talking at the tops of their voices about how drunk they were last night and where they had found the best deals on liquor and how wild the wildest clubs are… The American behind me is carrying on a loud, long conversation on his cell phone, growing in volume until he is shouting in the phone that he has just lost a million dollars and “do you understand who you’re talking to?”

The average American knows little about the rest of the world, couldn’t find most countries on a map without labels, knows nothing of world history or cultures, and cares even less than he knows. When he travels he forgets, or never knew, that he is a visitor in someone else’s home.  The same person who would never think of accepting a dinner invitation to a new friend’s home, eating  their food, drinking their wine, enjoying their dessert, and then, over coffee, disparaging and criticizing the host for his housekeeping or the cooking or the interior decoration– that same person has no trouble doing just that as a tourist. He goes into another’s country and carries his own prejudices and cultural biases around with him like a snail carries its shell.  He constantly compares what he experiences to home, and he does it loudly and critically and constantly. The man with no taste wants to be the international arbiter of taste.

I eat here a few times a week and know the staff. I order in my basic Italian, make small talk with Marco, the manager, and settle in to watch and listen to the show.

Finally, almost simultaneously, both groups of my compatriots leave. The room quiets immediately, and there is a general sigh of relief, felt but not heard.  I make eye contact with the couple sitting beside me and say, “Ambassadors for my country,” nodding at the door they had just exited. They both laugh and the tension breaks and we sit and talk for another hour about where we have been and what we have seen. In the sudden relative quiet I listen carefully to their accents and I ask if they are Scots and “Aye,” they are, surprised that I made the distinction. “Well, I just pay attention,” I say.  We trade names of clean hotels and suggest places to avoid.

We talk about sports and politics and Scotland and Ireland and England and America and Australia. Stephan, the husband, tells me of the small isles off the coast of Scotland, of how idyllic they look while disguising many social problems, most because there’s nothing to do– no jobs, no hope, nothing but drugs and alcohol. The young leave and never come back.  I tell him I think I know a little about small towns.

“I’ve lived in towns so small that you knew everybody’s dog’s name,” I tell him.  Stephan says, “On those isles, everybody is related to everyone else’s dog.”

When the conversation turns to international politics, I tell them my well-practiced line: “Non e colpa mia. Non ho votato per lui.” It’s not my fault; I didn’t vote for him.  (This was during the administration of a previous President.) As usual, it gets a good laugh and puts others at ease.  And besides, it’s true.

You see, it’s not Americans they dislike, it’s American attitudes, policies and politics, and it’s something more like fear than dislike, anyway.  It’s really hard to argue with them from any sort of moral high ground in light of what had been happening in the  eight years of that previous presidency.

It’s simplistic, I know, but maybe still instructive to reduce international relations to an interpersonal level to make them easier to understand.  Let me give you an example:

We’ve all known this guy– he’s the captain of the football team, the Big Man on Campus, the star of the school. He lifts weights every day and dreams of going pro, and he probably will, because he’s good. Everyone coddles him and tells him how wonderful he is, how handsome, how strong, how rich. And he is rich and pampered. He’s probably using steroids, but he gets good press for the university and helps them recruit new students and better athletes. It also helps with fundraising from the alumni.

He is completely self-absorbed, as perhaps champion athletes tend to be. A certain amount of narcissism seems to be a requisite quality for stardom.  Some people actually like him, and he likes some of them, but they all know that there is a good chance that they’re going to get in trouble or get hurt if they hang around him long enough. Maybe it will be collateral damage– he throws you out of the way to get to someone else he wants to fight, or he punches you in the arms when he gets frustrated, or he decides in a drunken stupor that he doesn’t like the way you hold a beer bottle and that he should kick your ass for the offense.

When he sobers up he never apologizes. He just thinks it’s what he does, it’s who he is. He thinks it’s funny.  He’s the guy who is bigger and stronger and tougher than anybody else, but isn’t content with just knowing that– isn’t even merely content with having you and everybody else know it– he has to prove it constantly. He’d rather act than think. He’d rather fight than talk.

He doesn’t care what anyone else thinks — He assumes that he’s right and that everybody is on his side and if they aren’t woe betide them.  They’re either with him or against him; he’s a law unto himself. He’s big and strong and fast and handsome and famous, and he deserves special treatment. And he gets it, which makes him take it for granted, makes him want more, expect more.

Eventually people start to avoid him. They check Caller ID before they answer the phone, and if it’s him they don’t pick up.  His former friends stay away out of simple self-interest: he’s dangerous to be around. He doesn’t get invited to some parties, and he takes that personally. The truth is that nobody wants him in the house. He’s started too many fights, broken too much furniture and crockery, thrown up on the floor too many times. He is still admired for his abilities and for his potential, but the reasonable and rational people don’t trust him around the fine china and crystal stemware. At best he eats and drinks too much and talks too loudly, and they suspect that he steals the silverware. If he sees something he wants at your house, he just takes it.  Is it any wonder he’s not trusted?

And this, my friends, is how very many people view America today: as a place of great potential– admired, envied, feared and distrusted. We are The Man We Would Avoid. Most of the world doesn’t necessarily hate Americans, but every reasonable person avoids a bully.

It’s essential to keep in mind that when we travel we are ambassadors for our home countries. Often a person’s entire view of a foreign country can be formed from his experience with a single citizen of that nation.  What impression of America and Americans should we be leaving behind when we’ve gone home?

My friend Bruce has suggested that America could save money and make more friends by paying reasonable people to travel, spreading the message that Americans are friendly, tolerant, rational, hopeful people. It wouldn’t take the place of formal diplomacy, of a Department of State, perhaps, but it would certainly be a step in the right direction.

And I’m not suggesting some pie-in-the-sky idealism, either, or an America of weakness. Nobody who knows me would call me a pacifist. You don’t have to be a weak to win friends.

My friend Mike is built like two kegs, one stacked on top of another.  He’s a black belt in karate, a Vietnam War-era veteran, a gifted athlete and a talented artist. He is also kind and gentle and slow to rile, but quick to defend himself and those around him. I’ve known him for over 50 years and I’ve never seen him bully anyone. I’ve never seen him start a fight.  I’ve never seen him push anybody around. I’ve also never seen anybody push him around. Just looking at him you would recognize that it would be a mistake. He’s respected and respectful, honest and honorable. He’s a good man.

I think America should be like Mike.

 

This is the penultimate post from Italy– I’ll try to continue the efforts in France and England, but France is going to be problematic because we’ll be there so briefly and otherwise will be moving around– Paris to Bayeux to Paris to London.

Oh, well, it’s not like France is a real country, right? I mean, France is cute and all. It’s a little anachronism of a place, a museum that likes to think it’s a country. People learn to speak French like they learn Esperanto or Klingon. Or Italian… Tourists go to France like they go to Disneyland, for the rides and the cartoon characters.  French national pride is a lot like those early-round American Idol contestants who are tone deaf but think they sing well enough to be important. We appreciate their undiminished sense of self-importance in the face of all rational evidence to the contrary.  It’s cute, but if I don’t get around to writing about it, no big loss. Right? (Bar? Feel free to chime in!)

So let’s get back to Italy, and put this puppy to bed. Ciao, Italia!

11/6/2016– The weather has shifted dramatically. It rained all day yesterday and last night the sky was full of lightning so bright that it shone through the dark curtains in my bedroom. Today the wind is slanting the rain nearly horizontal to the ground and stripping the trees of the remaining leaves.

The Arno is noticeably swollen, moving swiftly and carrying with it the flotsam it has picked up on its trip through the mountains to the east: branches and brush and trees uprooted and floated down like abandoned rafts. I’m not sure I remember ever seeing the river move swiftly enough to be able to tell which way the water was flowing, but there’s no doubt today.

The weather in Paris looks to be about the same, so if we walk around tomorrow night to get a view of the Eiffel Tower, it will be in weather much like this.

It’s cold and damp outside the apartment and inside I’m packing and repacking, disposing of things I don’t need or want, going through the accumulation of paper travelers inevitably acquire: tickets, receipts, notes, maps, etc. I’m supposed to meet Dawn and Noel later downtown, but if it’s like this I think I’ll pass. I hear the occasional rumble of thunder and while I love extremes of weather, I prefer to experience them when I can afterward dry my clothes. There’s no dryer in this apartment (as I mentioned earlier, Italians don’t seem to “do” dryers) so my clothes would still be damp tomorrow, which would mean either wearing them wet or packing them wet, neither being a good option.

 

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I’m standing in a bookstore looking for “libri in Inglese” (books in English) and chatting with a couple of young women from New York who are here for a study-abroad program. While we’re talking, a guy I’ve seen around town comes toward us through the crowd in the narrow aisle. He’s “pazzo,” crazy, one of those guys who talk to themselves constantly– a fluid, running commentary about what is going on around him and what’s in his head. He looks like one of those people who are on a bluetooth but he’s not wired and doesn’t need a cellphone to communicate with whomever it is he’s talking or listening to.

As he comes by us he slides behind one of the women, never slowing his pace or stopping his monologue, and as he heads for the door the girl turns to me and asks, “Did he just grab my ass?” and I said, “I don’t know, but probably.” She wanted to do something, but what was there to do? Call a cop? I doubt it would be the first time they’d heard a similar story about him. Beat him up? I left my shining armor at home. She was rightfully offended but about the only thing she could do was to follow him, and I suppose that seemed dangerous or futile to her because she did what I did: nothing.

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Even though this is off-season, there are still lines for everything. It begins to look as though standing in a line is the major event of most people’s day. “Hey, there’s a line; let’s go stand in it!”

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In just about every dinner restaurant in the center of town our meal will be interrupted by someone coming by the table selling roses. Some of the restaurants chase them away when they see them, but others seem to tolerate them, maybe thinking that a man who buys a woman a romantic flower will then spend more money on her in the restaurant. I had a savvy waiter once tell me never to buy the roses, though, because (he says) they are frozen before being sold, and as soon as they warm up they (and here he held an index finger straight up, then little by little allowed it to bend until it looked limp) become flaccid and no amount of Viagra will restore them.

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Old Florence is mostly flat, so it’s a perfect town for walking or bicycling. The streets are narrow and cobbled, making anything larger than a motorbike a tight fit, but somehow the bus drivers manage to squeeze their vehicles through spaces that seem impossible. There is almost no parking so people don’t have cars if they live in the center, unless they also have money for a garage, or want to spend a lot of time looking for a space every time they move the car. Bikes are common conveyances, and it’s not unusual to see a woman dressed in a business suit, including a skirt and high heels, riding her bike to work. The little bells we used to have on our handlebars as children serve a real purpose here, and the ringing gives notice that you’re in the way. Walking, though, seems to be the major means of transport. As we’ve discovered, it’s not hard to find that you’ve walked five or six miles at the end of a day.

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Che Guevara is on t-shirts in the schlock shop stalls all over the city. What’s up with that? Che? Really? I guess he’s the symbol of revolution or something, although what these capitalists are revolting against is anybody’s guess.

“What are you protesting?”

“Whattaya got?”

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Pretty much all of Florence is a museum. It’s crammed full of art and history to the point that you’re never going to see and do it all in a single trip. I’ve been coming here fairly regularly for years and still there are things I haven’t had the time to do, places I haven’t seen.

If Rome is about striking awe into the hearts of visitors, then Florence is more about the soul. It’s a balance between the grandiosity of Rome and the  claustrophobia of Venice. Around every corner is a potential surprise. Here’s Dante’s house! Here’s the church where he probably met Beatrice, and in whose floor she and her husband, and Dante’s wife Gemma, are entombed! Here is Galileo’s house! There is the Uffizi Gallery, the best Italian renaissance museum in the world. Here’s the Bargello, perhaps the best statuary museum. Here is the Loggia dei Lanzi, an open-air museum in the Piazza della Signoria, housing art works that most other cities would build museums around, including Benvenuto Cellini’s beautiful “Perseo,” the bronze statue of Perseus holding aloft the severed head of Medusa, that other artists told him it would be impossible to complete in a single pour because it was too complex… so he did it. Here’s the Duomo, with the dome of Brunelleschi, and the nearby Campanile designed by Giotto, and the adjacent Baptistery with the famous “Gates of Paradise” by Ghiberti and named by Michelangelo. And down the street is the Accademia, with Michelangelo’s “David.” And here’s the Ponte Vecchio, and the Palazzo Pitti, and the Palazzo Vecchio…

It just never stops. There’s always something more to discover, sometimes by accident. And after all the famous places– the statues and the art– there are the neighborhoods and the architecture and the parks… Come see Florence!

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A busy street at rush hour. A scooter comes by at high speed. Its rider is steering with one hand, the other holding a cell phone up to his ear and a cigarette between his phone fingers. Multi-tasking in action.

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The smallest paper currency in Europe is the 5 Euro bill, so anything smaller than that comes in the form of change, coins. There are two-Euro coins, one-Euro coins, 50 cents, 20 cents, 10 cents, five cents and even one cent coins. If you’re not careful they’ll accumulate in your pockets or on your tables. I spend them regularly, just to get rid of them.

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As with most long trips, our thoughts are starting to slide toward the home front. “Homeward bound, I wish I was, homeward bound…” Things that have to be done. Tasks to perform. Responsibilities. When you first arrive you work to put them out of mind, but now they become, once again, a focus. Bills to pay. Chores. And soon we’ll be home and this trip will be a series of disjointed memories and jumbled chronologies and we’ll probably even argue about what happened and when.  Maybe that’s why I’m keeping this journal.

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A few miles east of Florence is a place called Vallombrosa, Italian for “shaded valley” or “valley of shadow.” It’s probably the original source of the name of our own Chico street, and the source of one of my pet peeves: people who pronounce it “Vallambrosia.” The word has nothing to do, etymologically or phonetically, with ambrosia, the food of the gods. I correct people but fear I’m fighting a losing battle.

And while we’re on my peeves, let me add a couple more: 1. People who say, “bru-SHETT-a” instead of “bru-SKETT-a,” when they’d never say “she-AN-tee” for Chianti, or “SHWYRE” for “choir.” In Italian, a “CH” has a hard C sound.

Number 2: This is for restauranteurs. An Italian word that ends in O is usually pluralized by replacing the O with an I. Thus “panino” (a sandwich) becomes “panini.” There is no need to add an S to a word that’s already plural! Please stop writing “paninis” on your menus!

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I was just remembering standing with Crystal Palmer on the terrazzo of the apartment I was renting years ago, spitting the seeds of a watermelon we were eating on the people walking below us. Good times.

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There is one more post I’m going to make from Florence, one that I’m actually plagiarizing from myself, but this is the end of this particular missive. Buona sera, Firenze. Buona fortuna.

The Cinque Terre are five towns located on the scalloped coast between La Spezia and Levanto, north of Pisa and south of Genoa. The area is a World Heritage Site, and there is an Italian National Park trail that runs between the towns, most of which are only a couple of miles apart, geographically, but often worlds apart culturally.

The northern-most town is Monterosso al Mare, and it’s the most developed of the towns. It feels like money. The buildings are nicely painted and kept up and the waterfront is a long beach lined with hotels and apartments. You could think you were in southern California if the beach weren’t so stony. It’s the most resort-like of the towns.

The next town to the south is Vernazza, and it’s my favorite. There are no cars in Vernazza. If you want to go there you arrive by train, boat or on foot. It feels like a real Italian town, a fishing village, but it has plenty of visitors because it’s so quaint and so quintessentially working class.

The next town south is Corniglia, which, unlike the other towns, is perched on a high bluff overlooking the sea. It’s quiet and less-touristed. Those visiting by train are in for a shock because the train station is just south of the town and is located just above sea level, so if you’re on foot you’re in for a long stair-climb up a switchback set of steps that lead to the town high above. There are cars in Corniglia, though, so you could opt for a bus or taxi. If you’re a wimp.

The fourth town going south is Manarola. It’s also reachable by road. It’s probably the least-touristed of the Five Lands.

Last to the south is Rio Maggiore. Since it’s the closest to the larger city of La Spezia, it’s the easiest to reach and the most modern, possibly– with Monterosso al Mare– also the least characteristic of the fishing village feel of the other towns. I’ve only stopped there briefly once.

I first visited the Cinque Terre in 2002 with a group of Chico High boys (and one girl– ok, two if you count Janine) on a tour during spring break. Some of that trip has gone down in history as a survival tale– Everyone on the trip could tell you about the hotel in Venice on the Lido di Jesolo where there was unflushed feces in some toilets, toenail clippings and a weird hole through the mattress of Noah’s bed, dangerously loose carpeting on the stairs and the smell of sewer gas throughout. Marco Polo thought HE had it bad…

But things turned around when we went to the Cinque Terre. That was the site of our first mutiny.

Background on tours: The tour directors don’t make a lot of money so they pad their incomes in various ways. One is the expected “tip” at the end of the tour, usually about $3-$4 per person per day. Nice chunk o’ change if they’ve done a good job. But the most lucrative is a little more sly. Every time they take the group to a restaurant or a glass-blowing factory or a jewelers to look at cameos or a leather shop it’s because they’ve worked out a kickback system with the proprietors of the shops. Those restaurants aren’t chosen randomly, and everything you buy in one of the stops they lead you into means money in the guide’s pocket. Actually, I don’t begrudge them the cash because the companies they work for pay them peanuts, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t avoid being shepherded into one of those fleecing factories when the opportunity arises.

So we headed off to the Cinque Terre on that first trip with “the boys and the girl.” We had heard about the trail and decided that we wanted to hike some of it. We hadn’t mentioned this to the guide until that day, and she was “disappointed,” to say the least. She tried to talk us out of it because she had arranged for the group to take a boat trip up the coast from La Spezia to Monterosso al Mare– a trip we would have had to pay extra for, of course ($ cha-ching!$)– and saw our decision to bail on her plan as a hit on her wallet. I should mention that there were 15 of us, which was most of the tour bus. Some of her concern might have been genuine because she was worried that we wouldn’t get back on time and the bus would leave without us, but I told her that we’d be responsible should we fail to connect at La Spezia at the end of the “three hour boat tour.” (It was longer than that, but I couldn’t resist the Gilligan’s Island allusion.) This is where things really fell apart for her, because when the group from Michigan– about 12 counting the teacher– heard of our plan, they wanted in as well, so over half of the bus refused to get on the boat and instead we took the regional train up to Vernazza, wandered around the town, hiked the trail to Corniglia, walked down the stairs (much the preferable direction!) and took the train back to La Spezia in time for Adam to buy some Pumas that were unavailable in the US before the boat landed. I don’t think the guide ever quite forgave us…

Present-Day: We took the train from Florence to Pisa and then on to La Spezia. Richard, April, Dawn, Noel, Chris and Windee had gone on ahead to see Pisa, so it was only Don, Myra and me. We stopped in La Spezia for brunch, then got on the train to Vernazza and when we disembarked in Vernazza we discovered that we were all on the same train! Dawn had arranged for all of us to have rooms in the same hotel so we moved in and then started looking around.

I’m sure there had been changes since I had been there before, but they weren’t obvious to me. I think that Vernazza is the most resistant to change because it’s the most inconvenient to visit as you can’t drive there. In spite of the tourism, it still retains the feel of a working-class village, a fishing town. The buildings are weathered and faded and some of the woodwork needs some attention, but it functions, it works, and people live there, people who have nothing to do with the tourist industry.

Vernazza, early afternoon. Looking toward the town from the jetty.

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Just one of several outdoor cafes.

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Fishing boats in the protected cove.

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A view of the narrow opening between the jetty and the cliffs, leading into the little bay.

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The last day of October and some hardy swimmers are still willing to brave the chill of the autumn sea.

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In Italy there is always a kid with a ball preparing for a future playing professional football (soccer to us unwashed Americans…).

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A signpost on the trail to Monterosso al Mare. We’re taking the trail up to the top of the hill to watch the sunset over the Mediterranean.

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Just to give an idea of the seemingly-endless stairs on the “trail.”

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Looking back down on Vernazza from our aerie far above the town.

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Shrimpers working their nets within the cove.

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Richard examining the mechanism of one of the home-built transports that move the workers up and down the steep terraced hillsides to their vineyards. At Disneyland they’d charge you $15 to ride it and there’d be a line a mile long.

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Dawn and Richard enjoying a daughter-father moment, waiting for the sunset.

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Finally, the money shot.

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Vernazza at night from the jetty.

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We took the train to Monterosso al Mare the next morning while Don and Myra were hiking the trail to Corniglia. This is the only thing I took a photo of because the rest of the town was not very photogenic. Sunbathers, cafes, fancy cars, hotels and a stony beach. This, though, was pretty cool.

I left the others there and took the train south to meet Don and Myra in Corniglia. Dawn later told me that there’s another part of Monterosso, south of the beach, that is more workaday. I missed it.

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This is the view down the staircase to the train station far below. I didn’t have the heart to take a picture from the bottom before I started up. I was saving my energy, determined not to let anyone pass me! (Competitive?? ME?!?) No one did, but my “reward” was having to wait at the top for about 20 minutes while my clothes dried out in the breeze. I found Don and Myra at a little cafe having lunch. They had enjoyed their hike.

The view farther down the coast to the next little town, Manarola.

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We walked back down the stairs I had just climbed, got on the train and headed back to Florence.

Next up: A few small towns around Tuscany. We leave Florence tomorrow and I want to catch up, plus add a few little memories of the trip.

As we move into the final phase of our Italian sojourn, it’s time to catch up on what we’ve been doing while paralyzed by the worst of all modern human experiences: inadequate WiFi (*gasp*).

So in order to cover what we’ve been doing and where we’ve been doing it (clean up your dirty little minds; none of that has been going on– as far as I know…) I’m going to pack this post with photos and captions and call it a day.

Today is November 5 and we move out on the 7th, headed to Paris for a couple of days. The plan is to find our way from Paris to Normandy to tour the American graveyard outside of Bayeux and to see Omaha Beach. Then back to Paris and then on to London on the 10th. The trip that seemed virtually endless when we started it actually has an end after all.

Let’s start with Venice:

This is called a “vaporetto.” It’s the way people move around from island to island in the Venetian Lagoon, and even from point to point in the main set of islands that we call “Venice.” Don, Myra and I took a vaporetto from the train station to the island of Giudecca, where we stayed instead of staying in Venice proper. It was quieter, cheaper and less crowded, but required a vaporetto ride every time we wanted to go across the narrow channel to Venice.

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The many denizens  of Giudecca love fresh seafood.

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Santa Maria della Salute from Giudecca, with the Campanile of Saint Mark on the right.

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Saint Mark’s Campanile shrouded in fog.

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Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs). It connects the prison on the right side to the Doge’s Palace on the left. Prisoners would walk to their trials in the Palace and then, if convicted, would return to the prison. For many that would be a death sentence. The legend is that they would pause on the bridge for one final glimpse of the world, and they would sigh.

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The front of the Basilica di San Marco (St. Mark’s Basilica) on Piazza San Marco. None of the visible artwork on the basilica is done in paint– it’s all mosaic tiles.

A detail of the mosaic panel over the main entrance to the basilica.

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Some of the Piazza San Marco, with the Basilica in the background and the Campanile in the right/middle. A small piece of the Doge’s Palace is visible to the right of the Campanile. The piazza used to be featured in films fairly regularly, usually showing it full of pigeons. Then outdoor restaurants in the piazza became big business, and it became illegal to feed pigeons. They’re still there (they’re everywhere) but they aren’t so bothersome now. Pictures of tourists feeding pigeons while the birds covered their arm and shoulders and heads were the cliche photo op of what has become a bygone era.

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And speaking of cliches… This one, the gondola ride, is probably the classic. It’s about 80 Euros for half an hour. Cheaper if you go in a group because you can share the expense, but probably not as romantic. If this is on your bucket list, go ahead. Otherwise you aren’t missing much.

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Early morning on the Piazza San Marco. Good luck finding a waiter at this hour… All over Italy, the basic “rule” is that if you sit at a table for food or coffee or a drink, you’ll pay as much as 5 (or more) TIMES as much for your order as if you stand at a bar (or go somewhere cheaper than in the Piazza, where a glass of wine at an outside table can cost 15 Euros for what you’d pay 4 for a few blocks away. You’re paying not only for the waiter, but for the privilege of being seen.

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Schlock vendors preparing for the day selling crap to tourists in the Piazza San Marco. Note the emptiness of the Piazza this early in the morning (about 6:45). Soon the cruise ships will pull up and disgorge enough people to populate a few small cities, and the piazza and the narrow lanes and the bridges will clog up with humanity, like a city-wide case of human constipation  that will only ease when the lemmings return to their floating abodes and sail away. Tomorrow it will be repeated with only the characters changing, but never the plot. Resentment is growing among the Venetians because these tourists don’t stay in the hotels and seldom eat more than lunch and only buy what they can find in the main piazzas. Then they leave, but they also leave behind them the detritus that crowds inevitably produce. Venice depends on tourism, but that dependence is a double-edged sword.

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The Grand Canal from the Rialto Bridge. This is the main “thoroughfare” through Venice. Just as a point of interest, other than boats, there are no motorized vehicles in Venice. No cars, no buses, none of the scooters ubiquitous in the rest of Italy. All of the bridges are stair-stepped, so there is no way for motorized vehicles to move about in the city. This would be a good thing if not for the crowding every day. In truth, although I admit that Venice is beautiful, it’s not my favorite city because it’s so claustrophobic. I’ve often used the “Goldilocks Analogy” to describe my feelings about the “Big Three” Italian cities: Rome, Venice and Florence. Rome is too big. Venice is too small. Florence is just right. That said, everyone should see Venice at least once.

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Gondola mooring-poles in a canal.

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A shop window in a narrow lane in Venice. Most of the masks are papier-mache, but some are ceramic and more decorative than practical.

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Gondoliers on an espresso break. The flag of Venice depicts the lion of Saint Mark.

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The Venetian version of crew? I think this is practice for a lifesaving team.

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The Venetian tolerance for flamingos is low. This one has been imprisoned for an unspecified period of time for an unknown misdemeanor.

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Shots of the Piazza San Marco, hand-held, available light (no flash).

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Night scenes of the Venice skyline from Giudecca.

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A view of the Fondamento, the walkway on the eastern side of Giudecca.

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On to the Islands! We got on a vaporetto and visited first Murano (where the famous Murano glass is made) and then Burano, famous for lace and for its multi-colored houses, which would be more photogenic in sunshine than in the rain we had that day. Just sayin’…

An abandoned island in the lagoon on the way to Murano. There were several.

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A glass garden.

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The best things are in the showrooms and they prohibit pictures. These are just some ornaments hanging in a window.

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A “street” scene in Murano. All the buildings and bridges are made of glass. (The foregoing is a complete lie, except the part about it being a street scene…)

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Another view of a canal in Murano.

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Two things… three if we count Myra in the left foreground. One is that Italians don’t “do” driers. They still hang their laundry out in the sun to dry, even if there’s no sun. The other is that you can just imagine the quality of the glass for sale in this shop for a single euro…

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And back on the vaporetto, this time headed for Burano.

The leaning tower is NOT an optical illusion or the effect of a wide-angle lens– it’s what you call a “frickin’ miracle” because it hasn’t yet fallen down. The other shots are self-explanatory except maybe for the last one, which I think of as “even the cook needs a break.”

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Then we bailed from the lowlands and headed up into the Alto-Adige, also referred to as the Sud-Tirol. This is an area that used to be Austria until after WWI, and many of the people feel more allegiance to their germanic genes than to their Italian political connections. Most of the signs are in both Italian and German. When you come in on the train the sign at the station says “Bolzano-Bozen.” I first went up there several years ago when my Aunt Evie suggested that I visit the area because I was in Venice and complaining about the heat and the humidity. I tried it and loved it. They have the style of the Italians with the organization of the Germans. The people are friendly, the prices are good, the air is cleaner and cooler (and drier in the summer) and there is plenty to see and do.

We started in Bolzano.

The Stadt Hotel Citta’ in Bolzano (the pink building in the rear of the photo). It has a great location, good food in the restaurant and cafe, good local wines, clean and quiet rooms and decent prices. Also an excellent breakfast.

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The waiter preparing for a day in the outdoor restaurant of the Stadt Hotel Citta’.

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A villa on a hillside above Bolzano.

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The local Lutheran Church, quite a change from the italianate churches of the lowlands. This one is more gothic, more in the tradition of the western european churches.

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Bolzano street scene.

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She should probably be charged with some sort of crime for this flagrant abuse.

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Another street scene.

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The Piazza Walther, the main square of Bolzano.

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A sidewalk cafe.

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My favorite waiter.

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Flowers on the street.

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Bolzano with the Dolomite Alps rising in the background. The man depicted on the right is Oetzi, the “Iceman,” a well-preserved, naturally-mummified man found in a glacier in 1991 in a pass above Bolzano. He was murdered, found with an arrow lodged in his back, but so well-preserved that his clothes have survived intact as have even the contents of his stomach. He is estimated to have lived circa 3,300 BC and must have been of some importance as he was carrying a copper axe, which would have been the highest technology available at the time. His body is in the museum behind him.

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Winter vegetables. In the summer the fruits are plentiful and delicious.

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Myra walking past the flower stand.

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We Take the Tram up to Oberbozen (or Soprabolzano), a mountain village up on a hill above Bolzano.

We soar above the vineyards and the Isarco River.

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The trams double as ski lifts in the winter– when there’s snow. We heard that for the past 5 or 6 years there’s been no measurable snow, though.

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Alpine meadows, hedgerows, forest and vineyards…

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A church on the hilltop. It looks vaguely Russian because of the onion dome.

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Someone told us these were currants. Anyone verify that?

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Three views of the Dolomiti, the Dolomite Alps that flank Bolzano on three sides.

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A typical house of the region, looking more Swiss Chalet than Italian Villa. It was about here on our walk that I heard Don say to Myra, “I know where I want to retire.”

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There are other villages nearby and this narrow-gauge railroad runs between them. There are a few roads that come up out of the valley, but many people who reside in the mountain communities rely on this little train.

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Don and Myra on the way back into the valley.

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Bolzano is a beautiful town– the air is clean and it’s quaint and safe, but in the fall and winter it’s obvious that, being in a valley, it’s often going to be in shadow. Up on the top of the hill, though, it’s a different story. Don was right: this is a place I could live.

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Tomorrow I’ll finish with the Cinque Terre and some of the smaller towns in Tuscany– San Gimignano, Siena and Montepulciano. But for now, buona notte.

 

 

The Arno River flows 150 miles from the Apennine Mountains and through the center of Florence before emptying into the Ligurian Sea just west of Pisa, about 45 miles west of Florence. While still in the mountains the geography of the region adds many other smaller streams to the flow of the Arno by the time it reaches Florence and flows under the city’s many bridges, including the most famous of them all, the Ponte Vecchio. At its best the Arno is a brown and muddy-looking stream that gives the impression of something slow and sluggish and even stagnant.  While there are fish in the lower reaches of the river, I wouldn’t willingly eat them, tainted as they would be by farm drainage and assorted other pollutants. Perhaps it was once a clean stream, but no longer.

In early November of 1966 there had been a period of steady rain, particularly in the Apennines, and by November 3 the Arno had swollen to a dangerous level. Upstream from Florence there was concern about the possibility of the dams on the river failing because of the growing pressure of the rising water.

On November 4 those concerns became a reality. The dams reached capacity and then exceeded it and the engineers reacted by increasing the flow into the river, opening the flood gates. The Arno rushed toward Florence at nearly 40 miles per hour. When it reached the city the flow was so high that the bridges became like dams, swelling the river to ever-higher levels until it breached the walls meant to keep it in its channel, and freed of that constraint it crashed through the city, turning some streets into churning channels and speeding the flooding of central Florence.

By 9 am the only remaining sources of electricity, hospital emergency generators, failed. Landslides closed roads into and out of Florence and the water seethed through the narrow streets and lanes and alleys, forced by their limited space to grow deeper and higher and faster. By 9:45 the Piazza del Duomo was flooded and water was gushing down the Via Calzaiuoli, the main street between the Piazza della Signoria and the Piazza Duomo, like a torrent.

In the Piazza Santa Croce area the water reached a depth of 22 feet, high enough to flood the interior of the basilica, ruining some of the paintings hanging on its historic walls.

By the time the floodwaters began to recede around 9 pm 101 people had died, a number that probably would have been much higher had not the city been preparing for a holiday, and leading many people to haveleft town for short vacations or celebrations. But their absence also compounded the artistic disaster because so many businesses and museums and libraries were closed and locked, preventing quick actions to save their contents. 5,000 families were left homeless. 6,000 stores were forced out of business. One report says that 60,000 tons of mud, rubble, trash and sewage was left in the streets and in the piazze.

Immediately after the disaster people began to mobilize to clean up. Several groups formed seemingly overnight and more or less spontaneously in response to the emergency. One group was referred to as the “Mud Angels,” a group of people who helped clean the streets and salvage art works and books. Experts from all over the world gave up their time and money and expertise to help clean and restore works of art. Imagine just removing 120 MILLION pounds of mud and debris! How do you move it? Where do you put it? But they did, bucket by bucket, wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow.

Another prominent group were the “Flood Ladies,” a group of female artists who gave artwork to the city.

Many other efforts were joined. The famous Italian film director Franco Zeffirelli made a short movie called “Florence: Days of Destruction,” to raise awareness. The film was released only a month after the flood and was narrated by Richard Burton. Pablo Picasso auctioned off a painting and gave the money to the flood recovery efforts. Cities around the world raised money to support the effort as well.

Around Florence even today you can still see signs indicating the levels of depth the water reached on that fateful day, including on the inside walls of both the Duomo and the Santa Croce.

Artwork damaged is still being repaired even now, the 50th anniversary of that flood. The walls keeping the river in its bed have been raised, but that of course is no guarantee that it can’t happen again. Laws have been passed to prevent books and other particularly vulnerable artifacts from being stored at ground level.

The city lives on and moves on, perhaps in a sort of denial of the future possibilities, or maybe it’s just that famous Italian fatalism that we see still see evidence of in the reactions of the people to other natural disasters which could be seen as entirely predictable, such as the earthquakes in the Apennines. Their attitude seems to say, “If God wills it, what can I do?” Not my personal attitude, but who am I to challenge theirs?

A lot has happened since my last posting; we’ve been to Venice, Bolzano and the Cinque Terre, and I’ll get around to covering those– eventually.

But today I feel that I must acknowledge something far more important: Over 100,000 Italians have been displaced by the earthquakes that have ravaged, and continue to ravage the area of the Apennines northeast and east of Rome. Entire towns have been destroyed– virtually leveled– and with them countless works of art and buildings of historical, cultural and social importance. More important, though, is that thousands of homes have crumbled to dust and piles of rubble, leaving entire families homeless and rootless and with little hope of a quick solution. How do you rebuild an entire town? An entire region?

We watch the news on television here and can scarcely believe the scenes we witness second-hand, much less process the devastation the people confront daily. They can’t go back to their homes because of the continuing danger of further quakes. In some ways, perhaps the displacement of the people has helped because when the most recent tremors struck, many of the towns that were most fragile and closest to the epicenters were already abandoned because of the previous quakes and so the loss of life, which would have otherwise been expected, was nil. The curse turns into a blessing.

The news coverage shows row upon row of cots set up in gymnasia, churches, public buildings, offices… Children sleeping with their shoes on just in case… Lines for food and water… And winter coming fast. The politicians show up for the cameras– and perhaps truly want to help– but there is little that can be done while the wait goes on for the shocks to stop, for the land to settle, for the work of rebuilding to begin with the clearing of debris.

We were in Venice when the next-to-most-recent quake hit. We knew nothing of it, felt nothing. Our first clue was that we all suddenly began receiving text messages from the United States saying, “I heard that there was an earthquake in Italy– are you all ok?” At that point there was nothing in the newspapers in Venice and the incident seemed to be unreal because there was no visible reaction from the Venetians, and certainly not from the tourists. I guess I thought it was just an after-shock, or maybe I didn’t think much about it at all because it didn’t impact me at that moment; instead we continued our travels without any inconvenience. Inconvenience. As though that were the point…

We finished our visit in Venice and went to Bolzano and then came home to Florence. By then the quake was in the papers, but there was a kind of detachment when we spoke to Florentines about the situation. Our landlord said, “I was driving and didn’t feel anything,” and he chuckled, not in a way that demonstrated any particular lack of empathy, but more as though he couldn’t really feel much emotion about an event that he couldn’t feel physically. Mark, another friend, said that he had felt it, but again he didn’t seem to be emotionally attached to the event. And understand, these are good people, caring people with families they love and people who love them. Good people.

And so we went on with our travels and took the trains to the Cinque Terre, where we ate good food and drank wine and walked the cobblestone streets and then we got new text messages from the US. Another quake. And again there was no visible reaction from the people we met in the streets or in the shops or restaurants; it was business as usual, and it wasn’t as though we could occupy any higher moral ground because we were doing the same thing, “acting as though.” As though nothing was wrong in the world, as though what we were doing was good, and right, and as though the fact that we weren’t being inconvenienced was the most important thing to consider.

And then we returned to the apartment in Florence and once again we were confronted with the scenes of destruction in the hillside towns of the Abruzzo and Umbria and Marche… So we turned off the television, because what can we do but ache and feel the emptiness of our essential impotence, our powerlessness and the futility of our concern?  We could rush off the the area and offer help, but no one is allowed into the region without expertise, and our good-will doesn’t qualify as expertise.

And so, as tourists, as travelers, we continue with our daily routines and wonder at our own insipid behavior, the psychological compartmentalization that allows us to keep moving forward according to our scheduled departures and arrivals, while deep inside something feels wrong, empty, missing.

Yesterday, October 19, Don, Myra and I walked into town and bought tickets to climb up the dome of the Duomo. Surprisingly, there were very few people in line, so we got in quickly. It’s a long way up in a narrow stone stairwell on spiral stairs that are too close together for big American feet. I joked on the way up that my claustrophobia was fighting it out with my acrophobia and I didn’t know which would win.  In truth, it would be the claustrophobia as I’m not really afraid of heights.

There are only a couple of places on the route up that don’t involve steps. One is a sort of catwalk around the bottom of the cupola far above the floor of the cathedral. When you look down it’s so far that you’re convinced that you must be near the top; then you look up and realize that you’re about halfway.

When you leave the catwalk you enter an even narrow and steeper set of stairs. It was about halfway up this flight that I broke a sweat and felt that my legs were feelin’ the burn. But there was no choice but to continue.

And then there was a narrow opening above us and we climbed out on the narrow terrace that encircles the dome. After the heat of the climb it was a relief to be in the wind and feel it drying the perspiration. I worked my way around the perimeter taking photos from every vantage point, until I came again to the hatchway down.

The Medici Chapel from the top of the Duomo climb.

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The Great Synagogue of Florence.

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Looking down on a street scene in the heart of Florence.

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An aerial view of the Basilica Santa Croce, the church that houses the remains of many famous Italians.

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The Torre Vecchio, the Old Tower, and the Palazzo Vecchio, the Old Palace, there the Signoria, the ruling elite of Florence, met.

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Another scene looking roughly east from the Duomo. Santa Croce is on the top right. You can almost see our house from here!

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Looking across the roof of the dome toward the Campanile, the Bell Tower, which was designed by Giotto. It’s adjacent to the Duomo but is free-standing. From the ground it appears to be just as tall as the Duomo, but from this vantage point it’s clear that the Duomo is higher. In fact, by law no building in Florence can be taller than the Duomo. None of the color in the Campanile is paint– it’s all different-colored marble.

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Looking down on the Piazza della Republic, one of the larger piazze in Florence.

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Some random tourist photobombing the shot.

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Don Bailey on top of the world.

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And we’ll end this section of photos with Brunelleschi, who was the genius who figured out how to close the dome. The roof had been unfinished for years. The church had been begun in 1296 and it stood without a roof until he solved the puzzle of a roof 150 feet across that started 180 feet up. They didn’t want the supports typical of northern churches– flying buttresses and the like– so they looked for a different approach. They announced a contest for the design of the dome and the best artists and builders of the age submitted plans. Brunelleschi proposed a dome-within-a-dome. He refused to tell anyone how he planned to accomplish this but somehow won the contract and succeeded where nobody before him could have. It was such a huge project that he had to invent some of the equipment– cranes and hoists, etc.– to lift materials that high. It was finally finished in 1436. This statue stands beside the dome, depicting the builder staring up at his solution (which was “borrowed” later by Michelangelo in order to close the dome of Saint Peter’s in Rome).

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We stayed up on top for most of an hour, and then started down. It was then that I began to suspect that, like many Italian systems, this one needed a bit of tweaking. First we had to wait while a long line of climbers exited the passageway before we could start down. I referred to it as “la linea interminabile,” which I didn’t even realize at the time was actually correct Italian for “the interminable line.” Finally we were given permission to start down and for a way our route was unobstructed. Then we met the next group of people coming up. We tried waiting for all of them to pass, but that was futile as the line was, well,  interminable.  A time came when I stopped being polite and just squeezed past them as they were bottlenecked in place, waiting for those above them to move up. At first I apologized: “Scusi, scusi,” but soon gave up even the pretense of politeness and just jammed past them. Understand, we’re talking about two adult human bodies simultaneously occupying the space one alone would ordinarily feel uncomfortable in if limited to such a small area. But I had the advantage of gravity pulling me down, and I guess I was also making room for Don and Myra because they were right behind me.

And then we were down and out and looking back up and saying, “We were just up there!”

I had climbed the Campanile before, Giotto’s bell tower adjacent to the Duomo, but this was the first time I had climbed to the top of the dome. Probably the last. Someone at the bottom needs to be counting people going up and people coming down and limiting the number going up to the number exiting at the bottom to avoid the traffic jam we experienced. I’m going to write a letter to the editor and they’ll probably just jump right on making that correction…

And then we rewarded ourselves with lunch at Trattoria Gusto Leo before the walk back to the apartment.

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Typically, the days start with coffee in our kitchen and then when we’re properly caffeinated we move off in our various directions in various combinations of people to walk and look. It’s a pattern I heartily recommend.

I’m getting more exercise on this trip than I have in years, averaging (as I wrote in my most recent post-let) just over five miles a day walking. As a weight-loss program it’s more expensive than P90X. But the thing about walking here is that you don’t seem to notice how the mileage piles up until you get home foot-weary and sit for a while. Last night after dinner, after a day of walking around downtown, we went back out and walked another mile + in search of gelato, not the easiest task to accomplish on a Sunday evening in Catholic-Land, but we found a gelateria in our own neighborhood and the additional walk helped assuage any guilt about the extra calories. I can’t really tell if there’s weight-loss happening (I could certainly use some) but I’m on a notch in my belt that I haven’t used before. I take that as a good sign.

As noted elsewhere (FB) my friend and former colleague and now-fellow-retiree Bob Kohen was in Florence with his enamorata Pamela. We met at his hotel, which was just up the Lungarno from our own apartment (a mere mile!) and took a quick walking trip around the center of old Florence. As a history major and teacher, Bob was particularly attuned to the stories of this amazing city. He noted something of which I am also aware, which is that these important elements of what we might once have called “Western Civilization” in our Pre-PC days are for the most part virtually unknown in American education– with possible and occasional exceptions such as the French Revolution– and that only because of our own. We learn nothing of the historical import of what happened in just this city, Florence, alone, not to mention what was happening concurrently in Venice and Rome– or for that matter in Berlin and Moscow and Paris and Madrid and London… And yet the flow of events here directly impacted our own development as a nation.

Too often History is taught as a series of names and dates instead of as related stories of events. Of course names and dates are important, but I think it’s more important for people to understand how one event impacted or influenced or even created another, how lives impacted lives. When I was learning history in high school it was the most boring subject I had, and that’s including math! It wasn’t until I took a California History class in college that I had a teacher who was able to show up how what happened then directly impacted the development of our own state, our own western movement, and what was once called, with a mostly-straight face, Manifest Destiny.

It’s almost amusing that we are first taught Toddler History in elementary school; then we’re re-taught the same topics in junior high and told that we hadn’t had the “full story” in elementary school; then we hear the same thing in high school when we delve a tiny bit more deeply into the subject; then if we’re lucky enough we might get a glimpse behind the curtain in a college history class. And all along we hear, “that’s not the real story. Here’s what really happened…”

Of course, there’s also another element that we don’t like to take out and look at, and that’s the old saying that “history is written by the victors.” When we read history, we like to think that we’re reading about facts that we can believe in, but frequently we’re just getting someone’s opinion about what happened, often someone with his own agenda, conscious or unconscious, his own biases and prejudices. Historians pick and choose their factoids just like everyone else. What can we do about that? Keep an open mind, I suppose. Everyone has a story worth hearing, even the vanquished. Maybe especially the vanquished…

That evening Bob and Pamela and I had dinner at a restaurant I like called Il Cantastorie. It’s one of my go-to places here in Florence. We ate a great meal, told lots of stories, drank some very good wine and had a wonderful time together. It’s fun to get to know people you think you already know. Context is so much of our relationships with others.

One of the things I noticed fairly quickly about teaching– because I was a little older than other new teachers and so the colleagues I gravitated toward were my age or older– was that the friendships we have in the job often don’t last when the job is over. I saw people retire and then disappear from the social network. It made me feel that many of the so-called friendships were simply based on seeing one another conveniently every day at work, and when that convenience was gone, when seeing one another required any degree of effort, however minimal, the friendships dissolved like water in water. It’s after retirement, or even merely changing job sites, that we learn who our genuine friends are, and the number is, sadly, a small one.

That’s why it was so gratifying to spend some time with Bob Kohen. We hadn’t been “pals” at CHS, but we were friendly acquaintances and often found ourselves talking at school functions. We team-taught one year. But we never really socialized without the structure of the educational environment. Talking during our walk, and then the deeper conversations during dinner, helped cement a different kind of relationship, one based not on working together but on simple choice. We had fun. We laughed. I hope to do it some more.

The next day Don, Myra and I were going to Rome to meet Julie Battinich Passalacqua, but we learned to our disappointment that there was a national rail and bus strike so those plans were dashed. I had suggested a restaurant in Rome for dinner, a place Tom Welgan and Kathy Lundquist and I had found accidentally when we were here last. Julie made reservations and I heard from her that they had gone and enjoyed it.  It’s called “I Buon Amici,” The Good Friends. It’s a place Tom, Kathy and I happened upon one Sunday night when we were staying at Hotel Luzzatti. We had wandered aimlessly around the neighborhood looking in vain for a meal when far down what looked like an alley we saw a neon sign in the darkness and so found the restaurant. We were the only tourists in a room full of Romans so they put us in an adjoining room, where we were soon joined by other hungry tourists. I had noticed pictures of Giancarlo Giannini on the wall as we entered the room and stopped to comment on them to the person escorting us to our table (who turned out to be one of the owners), telling him that Giannini is one of my favorite actors, and mentioning some of his greatest films, “Seven Beauties” and “Swept Away” (not that p.o.s Madonna made, but the original Lena Wertmuller film) and suddenly his attitude toward us changed and we ended up having a great meal and a great time, and I’ve recommended the place to anyone who will listen and several who didn’t.

We missed seeing Julie, but we’ll get together in Sacramento when we’re all home and go out for some Italian food. Same thing, right? Maybe someplace swanky like Olive Garden.

 

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More to come… Meanwhile, here are some pictures that probably won’t otherwise find their way to publication on this pile of words.

These are details of the Duomo and the Campanile. Remember that all the color is from the marble itself.

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This is the Baptistery, which is just a little across the Piazza from the Campanile. By law, every citizen born in Florence was required to have his birth recorded here within three days. The doors were designed by Ghiberti, who won a competition for the job. When he saw the work, Michelangelo called them “The Doors of Heaven.” They’re often referred to as “The Gates of Paradise.” These hanging outdoors exposed to the elements are copies of the originals, which are in a nearby museum.

17 days in (not counting today). This is from the “Health” app that came with my I-Phone:

220,150 steps = 12,950 per day avg.

87 miles walked  = 5.11764706 miles per day avg.

146 flights of stairs climbed = 8.59 avg. per day.

Longest walk: 10.1 miles in London.

Most flights: 37 (!)

I realize that nobody cares; I’m just recording it here for my own purposes…