Reflections

I need a lot more time to assimilate all we took in for our three weeks in Italy.  I can say it was a perfect amount of time -- not too short, not too long -- for an initial trip.  The itinerary seemed busy, but it really wasn't.  We found we had time to see and experience what we wanted (there is ALWAYS more) and I don't think we could have taken in much more.  Sandy and I took time to relax and enjoy the country and to enjoy each other's company.  That was very special to me.  Our small hotels were all excellent and each had a flavor of its own.  They weren't 5 star, but they were clean, pleasant, and all run by very nice and helpful people.  I would recommend all of them, particularly the Albergo Marin in Venice (82 Euros a night), the Hotel Duomo in Cremona (85 Euros a night), the Hotel Porta Romana in Siena (110 Euros a night), and the Hotel Due Torri in Rome (about 160 Euros a night).  The Cremona hotel was 20 steps from the Duomo piazza and the Rome hotel was in a quiet alley away from the fray.  The final bills at these hotels were a little less when we paid in cash & had a Rick Steves discount.

Food was (as we had always heard) fabulous everywhere, even at the gas stops on the expressway.  We didn't have one bad thing to eat, except we thought the wine at dinner in Sorrento was watered down.  I'm hooked now on good olive oil, balsamic vinegar, prosecco, chianti, and Buffalo mozzarella cheese.  I remember Ginny coming home from Italy with the same pensions!  Can't wait to share with her!  We didn't find it terribly expensive either.  Breakfast was included in the hotel and Sandy and I split almost every lunch and dinner and had plenty to eat.  She stopped at fish though -- one night I had to have my fresh whole fish! We spent about 15-20 euros on lunch and about 30-35 on dinner for both of us.

Gasoline was expensive but our little Smart Car didn't take much and we were very glad to have that, though I had thought differently before we left.  It drove very well, albeit a little bumpy, and you really forgot you didn't have space in back of you until you went to park it.  The automatic transmission overdrive worked differently from my car.  You could push it in overdrive, then you had to push a button to upshift it again.  I used that a lot on the mountainous terrain.  Once we learned to touch the brake before we started the car, we had no trouble starting it.

It was easy and smart to limit ourselves to one carry-on bag each.  I took a tote bag for the plane to carry my purse, my tablet, a sweater, and noise-cancelling headphones (a must).  I also packed a tiny nylon collapsible tote to carry extra items on the way back when I checked my bag and carried the two totes.  We didn't want to check anything on the way to Italy because we were taking the train straight to Venice and wouldn't be in Rome in case the bag got lost.  I actually packed too much!  I didn't need 3 pairs of shoes (tennis shoes were the best on the cobblestone streets) -- tennis shoes & one pair of sandals would have done it.  I could have left home a couple of shirts and one pair of pants.  I was glad to have packed my hairdryer that had a European plug.  Some of the hose dryers are awful.  I should have taken a washcloth, but Sandy had two -- thanks Sandy. It was easy to wash out things as we needed to.

People, people, people......I was actually glad to get away from so MANY people everywhere!  Of course it was tourist season, but when you get back to the USA you appreciate how spread out we are.  I will not complain about traffic here again (ha -- yes, I will!). It's nothing like traffic in Italy with the motor cycles weaving in and out and between very narrow lanes.  You do have to travel with a lot of patience.  Drivers in Italy are much more trusting of each other.  They cut in front of you quickly and very close, they drive pretty fast, and they know exactly how big their cars are.  They are generally good drivers -- no room for whimps here.  If you are at all nervous about driving, don't drive there!  People crowded around Trevi fountain, the Pieta, the Colosseum,  etc.  You just want to tell them all to get out of the way!  It was a relief to get back to the hotel after a day of people.

On Sunday, Sandy and I took a taxi to the Fumicino Airport.  It was very deserted & we both got through security in no time.  I had to wait a while & staked out a seat near the gate.  A man and his wife came over and he plopped in the chair next to me while his wife went shopping.  "We're from Alabama" he said in a MAJOR Southern drawl, after our initial niceties.  "Ma wife an' I decided tuh go tuh Rome fo' a few days - neva been there 'fore.  Had the hardest tahme findin' our way round.  All the streets are called VIA -- via this an via that.  How d'ya tell the diffrence?"

OK, I'm back home in the South, thankfully not rural Alabama!  It's quiet here -- not so many people -- but now I miss Italy!  What a fabulous trip and a fabulous country.  'Bye for now!

Saturday, September 21, 2013

10 hours of sleep!!  We really were tired!  Must have been all the walking, the wine, and the lemoncello yesterday.  We dawdled over breakfast, then decided to tackle the Forum again.  The taxi to the Forum entrance let us out at the Coliseum.  Well, FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM.  We couldn’t find it!  We asked the hotel clerk – it’s here, she pointed on the map.  We asked the taxi – it’s there.  We asked a guide – it’s over there, follow the wall, up the hill.  We did – no entrance (yet another hill in Rome!).  Go up the hill over there and you’ll find an entrance.  Went up Palatine Hill – no entrance.  Go to the 2^nd traffic light and turn left.  No entrance.  OK, good overall views of the Forum (actually, very neat), but we NEVER found an entrance to get in!  We saw people in the Forum and tried to follow the lines, like ants, but couldn't find a beginning or end!  There was a lot of construction for a subway and all the entrances on our maps were closed.  The ONE place – WAY back in the other direction – we didn't try, is probably the only entrance now, but we were completely over it by that time!  We still saw where Caesar was born, were he spoke, where he was burned and where his funeral was – from above.

It’s pretty incredible how the city is built above and all around the ruins.  It is continually being excavated.  Even Caesar’s palace on Palatine Hill is still being unearthed.  I noticed the top of an arch sticking up from the ground, so you know there is more underneath.  To think, ALL of this was covered in marble.  How magnificent it must have been and SO HUGE!  

We went to San Clemente church down the road from the Coliseum.  That’s a crazy, mixed up church and fascinating.  Inside is a mixture of Medieval and Baroque.  You pay to go down underneath the church to find an earlier church, then go down ANOTHER level to find the ruins of a pagan “church”.  Creepy down there and very humid and smelly, but amazing that was all found and protected!  

Back to the hotel for a break with fruit, cheese, crackers, and wine, then out to stroll by the river, only a couple of blocks from the hotel.  We crossed the Tiber River (Fiume Tevere) on the Ponte Umberto directly in front of the Corte de Casserzone (the Palace of Justice -- national supreme court), went past the very Gothic church Sandy was so interested in – not open – and crossed back over the river again on Ponte Cavour. Now we’ve crossed over 3 bridges in Rome.  Too bad we are leaving, now that we are just getting to know the city better! 

We have a bottle of wine to consume tonight and some lemoncello. So after a pizza margarita (a popular one here, and boy, is it good!) and Chianti, I’m going to pack and get ready to leave this fascinating country in the morning. Goodbye Italy – hope to see you again soon!  This has been the most wonderful trip in every way.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Up again and off to the Vatican, but this time we took a little time for a quick breakfast and coffee & shared a taxi with another couple.  Daniella from Livitaly Tours was waiting for us.  There were only two other people, a nice Australian couple, in our group.  Daniella rushed us across the street to the entrance so we would be only the 2^nd group in line to enter at 8:00, a half-hour earlier than anyone else.  While we were waiting to get in she told us about the Sistene Chapel because once we got in we were only allowed to talk for a few minutes, then had to be silent.  She let us stay in there to look for 15 minutes.  There were benches along the walls to sit so you could look up easily and only about 20 people in the room.  We got there before it got crowded.  When we went back through later, the room was PACKED and you could hardly move, let alone see the entire room!  What an amazing place!  Pictures just don’t do it justice.  I’ll have to go back and read The Agony and the Ecstasy now.  Daneilla proved to be an excellent guide, gliding us through the whole Vatican in 3 hours.  You could spend days looking at everything, but this was exhausting enough and my brain would have exploded if it had been longer.  Ginny said to be sure to see Laocoon by Michelangelo, which was beautiful but missing some parts.  Laocoon’s arm was found not many years ago (after a replacement arm had been put on centuries ago).  On investigation they realized that the found arm matched muscularly to this statue and that it was in a different pose from the replacement one.  I could have stood for a long time looking at Rafael’s School of Athens but we couldn't stay long.  Our guide told us this story:  the Pope insisted upon seeing what Michelangelo was doing in the Sistene (M. never let people see his work until it was finished), so begrudgingly M. took all the scaffolding down & the Pope invited Raphael, who was working in another room, the School of Athens room, to come view the chapel with him.  Raphael was so awed by M’s work, he started to change his style of painting to reflect the more muscular attributes of the body.  He paid further homage to M. by putting M.’s face on the old man in the middle of the School of Athens.  He put his own likeness on another figure, the only way he could actually sign the work, since artists were not allowed to sign their work.  The painting on the other side of the Raphael room, opposite the School of Athens, was started by Rafael (left side) and finished by his assistants, with a definite change in style from left to right.  That must have been the point at which Rafael saw the Sistene.  VERY cool.

We were, by then, ushered quickly past CROWDS of people, but we got to walk through the hall of maps, the corridors of papal gifts, incredible tapestries – so much – you could spend DAYS there!  There were marble tables there which were originally sample slabs used by the Romans to display the different kinds of marble that were available.  Gorgeous.  I think we have seen every kind of marble available at some point, and that’s A LOT of marble!

After floating through (literally) the contemporary gallery (Dali, Cezanne, Matisse, etc.), we walked next door to St. Peter’s Basilica.  UNBELIEVABLE.  That place is so big it’s inconceivable, even after seeing all the biggest cathedrals in Italy!  First you see the five bronze doors – one of which, the really old beautiful one, is opened only every 25 years.  I think it’s due to be opened in 2025.  You enter through a door made in the last ¼ century.  To the right directly is Michelangelo’s Pieta.  It was behind plexiglass and very hard to see because of all the crowds – jillions of people by that time.  Apparently some idiot in the 1970’s went up to it and started beating at it saying “get this out of here” and cracked two or three parts of the statue.  The story goes (according to our guide) that Michelangelo created the statue and no one would believe he did it – they were saying someone else did – all kinds of scandal – so he broke in one night with his chisel and wrote across it “made by M…..”.  Remember, artists weren't allowed to sign their names to anything.  In the middle of the Basilica was St. Peter’s tomb with the most beautiful (and contemporary-looking to me) bronze canopy over it made by Bernini with bronze stolen from the Pantheon.  ONLY the Pope and those permitted by the Pope can speak from that spot.  Daniella pointed out the windows of the Pope’s living quarters and the place where the smoke comes from when a new Pope is elected, also where the new Pope is introduced to the people.  The Pope speaks to the people every Sunday (all who gather in St. Peter’s Square – about 450,000 people and MANY chairs were set up too).
      

Tired!  This was a lot to take in for a relatively short period of time!   Back to the hotel to collapse for a while, then off to the Colosseum in the afternoon.  We're NOT walking this time!  The taxi dropped us off in front where there were again jillions of people.  We had reserved tickets (the hotel did it for us) so were got in pretty quickly.  The size was impressive but I have to say I’m glad I saw it, but that’s all I needed.  I don’t need to see or imagine what went on there.  The animals and people on elevators, killing, killing, killing.  The fact they could flood the arena for war games (imagine, WAR games -- better as video games!) and put a canopy over it is pretty incredible, but, now that I have seen it, that's all I need.  Don’t need a tour.  We were pretty tired.  We tried to find the entrance to the forum but to no avail.  We asked one of the “gladiators” (men in costume who wanted $ for a picture) who pointed us up the street but we couldn’t find an entrance and by now were Romaned out.  Maybe tomorrow. Time for dinner and wine.  Very early to bed.  We've decided to take it easy on our last day in Rome tomorrow.  We've seen SO much and need time to assimilate all of it.  Not possible!

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Today is Borghese Gallery day.  The hotel got us reservations for 1:00 so we took our time getting up and strolled to the park via the Spanish Steps (which I DID climb, by the way).  I rather enjoyed standing on the steps and looking over the view that Goethe, Wagner, Keats, and many others would have seen.  Keats died in a building next to the steps. The Sinking Boat fountain at the base of the steps was built by Bernini (or his dad?) and Sandy was particularly taken with that.  We walked through the old Roman wall to the Central Park of Rome -- the Borghese Gardens -- and wandered through the quiet 3-square mile park, enjoying the lake with the Greek statuary, the many fountains, and the Roman race track. What a lovely break from the hectic city.

The Borghese Gallery is astounding!  My all time favorite.  The 17th century villa itself is beautiful and the art -- be still my heart! One after another of works that are beyond fabulous.  We weren't allowed to stay more than 2 hours and we left enough time to go backwards through it again quickly.  I've found that you see so much more than you did the first time if you go back in the other direction.  It also serves as a review of what you've seen which is nice.  Seeing the Bernini David after seeing Michelangelo's David was really interesting.  Michelangelo's David is so perfect, powerful, and graceful and Bernini's is full of action and determination.  Many works by Raphael, Rubens, Carivaggio, Bernini, and many others, but not Michelangelo or DaVinci.  I guess that is explained by the fact that this was a collection of works chosen to adorn the villa (and the tastes) of the Borghese family, not collected to perpetuate art and demonstrate styles as in a museum. The only downside for me were the steps.  Up 4 LONG flights of stairs, then down of course in time!  I found a friend in a man and his wife who were about as excited about that as I was and we encouraged each other.  Sandy can just fly up but she is very patient with me.

We walked and walked and walked again today -- Sandy's pedometer said about 6 miles.  We were pretty exhausted.  Back "home" at the hotel, after collapsing on our beds for a while, we asked where we could get a good dinner and the woman recommended a restaurant at a nearby piazza that "is full of local people and not very touristy -- a nice place to people-watch and eat good food".  She was right.  What a lovely evening sipping wine, eating good food, and enjoying all the people out for an evening on the piazza.  When evening rolls around, the tables, chairs, and umbrellas are set up outside (more added for the dinner hours), people socialize around a meal, kids play in the piazza, stores re-open after a mid-day rest, and neighbors are out for a pre-dinner stroll, greeting each other & window shopping.  The city seems to calm down, and, at the same time, it comes alive in a different way. Time is taken to retire the busy day and savor the end of it. We've found the Italian people to be very warm and friendly and very proud of their country and its heritage.

Thursday, September 19, 2013

I am a “dumb butt” according to Sandy (and me).  We got up at 6:30 and called a taxi that picked us up at 7:00 to go to the Café Vatican to meet our tour guide by 7:20.  Too early for coffee and breakfast, but we got there just as they were opening the cafe and got some coffee.  We waited until about 7:40 and I happened to re-check my receipt.  It said FRIDAY, SEPT. 20!  Damn!!!  I had it in my brain we were taking that tour the 2^nd day we were in Rome.  Of course, we got here a day earlier, so it was the 3^rd day!   Sandy was so nice about it but I was really mad at myself since I was the one in charge of that.  So, we walked back to the hotel.  It was a long way, but we saw things we might not have seen otherwise and got back to the hotel in time for breakfast!  We got a glimpse of St. Peter’s square from the street.  It didn't look as large as I expected somehow.  I was rather surprised.  Then we walked up to Sant’Angelo Castle, Hadrian’s tomb turned castle, but we didn't go in – too early.  We crossed the Sant’Angelo bridge and saw all the Bernini statues that lined it.

After a rest, we took off for the nearby Museo Altemps, associated with the National Museum of Rome which we went to next.  Both specialized in ancient Roman works, many of them restored in the 16^th – 18^th centuries.  Seeing these things really puts perspective on Roman art and how it influenced later artists.  Interesting to see the hairstyles of the day, see fragments of the first Julian calendar, and try to recall some of the myths I've long forgotten.  We got Roman-ed out though fairly quickly and left to find an interesting nearby church we read about – Santa Maria della Vittoria.  Bernini’s St. Teresa in Ecstasy was there.  Bernini staged the altar by sculpting “theater boxes” on either side with statues of men looking down and commenting on the “main event” (Teresa).)   This was very cool and, in some ways, rather shocking.  The interesting thing was that the men sitting in the boxes were supposed to be of the Cornaro family, likely the same family who built Sally & Carl’s Villa Cornaro.

Walk, walk, walk and more walk.  Past a HUGE building, blocks long, with all kinds of flags and dressed up guards and guards with guns.  Hmm?  Turned out to be the President of Italy’s home – the Quirinale.  To get back to the hotel we had to go down the highest of the 7 hills of Rome.  Downstairs, many levels, then downhill.  Time for a dinner stop!  We found a little place in an alley off the main street and had a salad bar (the first we've found here, though we've had some wonderful salads) with all kinds of vegetables and a wonderful spaghetti dish.  On the way back home we stopped in again at the Pantheon and saw the tomb of Raphael.  It’s amazing to think of what the Pantheon must have been like before it was stripped of all its marble and bronze by those damn Christians!  The Pope ordered Bernini (we found out later) to use the bronze in the Pantheon to make the canopy over St. Peter’s tomb in the middle of St. Peter’s Basilica.  The canopy is incredible, but REALLY?