Italy and France 2007

After Firenze (Florence), we stayed in Parma with our friends the Dorigo Family.  This town north of Florence offered another local Italian food cuisine, much of it using the Parmesan cheese that originated in this town.  While I don’t eat Italian food at every meal at home, checking out the local cuisine as we traveled was a big part of our Italian adventure.  The pizzas appeared to always be cooked in wood-fired ovens, and they generally had very thin crusts.  We found many variations in their taste, and they are something that I will always savor about Italy.

Parma is off the beaten track for most tourists, but it has numerous medieval and historical buildings and a friendly populace.  Being home to opera composer Verdi and orchestral conductor Toscanini, the town also has a rich musical heritage.

We took the train from Parma to Venice on Wednesday morning.  The train station is right at the edge of the water, with one of the Venetian islands just across a busy waterway.  Our next mode of transportation was a water taxi that took us down part of the Grand Canal and along some other waterways to within a two-minute walk from our hotel.

We have seen narrow, winding pedestrian-only cobblestone streets in the old sections of many other European towns, but Venice’s streets are nearly all either this way or they consist of water.  This setting, and the total lack of automobiles, is why Venice lives up to its reputation as a unique destination.  We had heard that the most popular areas in town can be shoulder-to-shoulder, particularly if a cruise ship has just docked.  However, we were blessed with low crowds, clear skies and cool breezes.

Whatever crowds we did find were easy to escape amongst the hundreds of paths through the various districts of the city.  Except for following the signs to the famous Rialto Bridge from Piazza San Marco (the large St. Mark’s Square (Piazza San Marco) you always see in photographs), constant reference to a map was a necessity except when you wanted to get lost in this romantic town.  Here are Elizabeth, Natalie and me at the Piazza.

I found one of Venice’s most interesting aspects to be the eastern influences evident in its architecture.  This was a result of its being at the crossroads of the east and west during its heyday as a busy trading port five centuries ago.  I also found it amazing that paintings of the town from that era looked virtually identical to what we saw.

Our stay in Venice was capped by a gondola ride that included a tenor accompanied by an accordionist.  He serenaded us with traditional operatic arias and the like as we cruised the Grand Canal and some tiny waterways.  Call it schmalizy if you like, but I wouldn’t trade a family experience like this for the world.

There is not a Starbucks in site anywhere in Italy.  In fact, there are people in Italy who have never heard of Starbucks.  For some reason I find this information comforting.  Last year while traveling in the UK, Starbucks was nearly as ubiquitous as in the US, at least in the larger cities.  The coffee in the cafes here is delicious, almost always served as a shot of espresso or cappuccino.   You won’t find any 1100 calorie frappucinos.

We spent a couple of days in Florence, home of the Medici family.  The Medici’s were fabulously wealthy and powerful.  The Renaissance was a time when social status and appearances were extremely important (some things don’t change).  One of the ways to display wealth was to build and decorate churches and this had the added advantage of currying favor with the Vatican. It also explains the preponderance of religious themed art during this time.

Not only did the Medici’s commission artwork for the city on a scale well beyond that of any other family, they also acquired an enormous personal collection.  This collection was donated to the city of Florence in the 1700s and is now housed in the Uffizi Gallery. The Uffizi Gallery is full of paintings by Renaissance artists including Raphael, Caravaggio, Rubens, Titian, Michelangelo and a roomful of works by Botticelli, including The Birth of Venus.

Florence is not only home to the largest collection of Renaissance art, but it the art itself includes many of the iconic pieces of the Renaissance.  One such example is Michelangelo’s David.  The original David is housed in a museum called the Accademia. He is 18 feet tall and weighs over 11000 pounds.  We have all studied this statue in school, so I don’t need to offer a description.  What is astonishing about the statue is its realism starting from the musculature to the veins in the hands.  Quite simply, one has the feeling he is alive.  We probably saw close to a hundred statues during our stay and none of the others had this quality.  I got goose bumps.

There are lots of good options if, by chance, you need to eat in Italy. You can order pasta, pizza, paninis… lots of good stuff. Now as wonderful as this all is, none of it compares to the faaaaabulous desserts! If you’re looking for gelato, it’s not hard to find. There is gelato on almost every street, and they don’t exactly have a limited supply. You can order three different flavors in one little cup, and often times they top it off with whipped cream. They have every flavor imaginable, you can order your standard chocolate, mint, strawberry… but they also have the most random flavors! They have rice, peach, and Tartuffo (I have no idea what it is but it’s really good) But you can get gelato anywhere. You have to be in Parma to have rose-shaped ice cream! They use these special scoops that make mini bits of ice cream that they put them into a circle and shape it into a rose. It’s pretty awesome. Basically- food in Italy = good.

Well, we have been seeing and doing so much that, gosh, we’ve been too exhausted to be blogging!  The photo above was taken in the Tuscan town of Montepulciano.

Tour guide and B+B owner Claudio showed us the best of Renaissance Rome on Tuesday and Archeological Rome on Wednesday.  He was truly worth his weight in gold on Thursday when we walked past the huge line waiting in the heat to enter the Vatican Museums.  We simply walked to the head of the line, entered a short queue to buy our tickets and voila, we had arrived.  No need to rent an audio guide as Claudio knew where to go to see the best of the best art, and was able to explain the history and significance of the masterpieces that waited in each room of what was the world’s first museum.

A bit of recent history: the Pope was in a state of limbo from the time Italy was unified into a single country in 1870 until Mussolini signed an agreement with the Pope in 1929.  That agreement created Vatican City as a sovereign country.  At about 120 acres, it is the smallest country in the world.  They even have their own postal system.  I bought a few Vatican stamps and sent some postcards from the post office there.  Besides the million plus Euros taken in daily from the Museum entry fee, and who knows how much more from souvenirs, the Vatican also does OK with people like me who buy stamps for mailing as well as for collecting.

We left Rome on Friday morning and traveled north to Tuscany.  We visited 3 little medieval towns located on hilltops in this hilly country that was very reminiscent of the rolling hills of California: Montepulciano, Pienza and Montalcino.  Tuscany is agricultural country, featuring various wines and cheeses.  The most famous cheese in this area is Pecorino, a pungent sheep’s cheese available fresh (fresco) or aged (secco).  The most famous wine is Brunello, a delicious but unusual red wine.

We visited a winery and got to talk about and drink wines with a German fellow who came by way of Venezuela!  He explained the intricacies of trying to create the very best Brunello using vineyards that dated back millennia.  His Brunello di Montalcino wine made it clear why winemaking is such an art in this part of the world.

Our meals have been consistently wonderful.  We had heard that the best Italian food in the world came from any such restaurant in Italy.  This has been delightfully true for us, and we had the most fun at a true neighborhood restaurant near our B+B in Rome.  Families, young lovers and elderly couples who all clearly lived in the area communed with us.  Our waitress was delightful in her excitement at our menu choices.  A place like this was the true essence of Italy.

We got another perspective on Italy from a conversation I had with a taxi driver as he drove us back to the B+B after dinner in a lively area of downtown Rome.  Speaking excellent English, he said he had gotten his degree in Political Science in 1998 but had been unable to get a job until he became a taxi driver.  He was very thankful for this job, but he longed to come to America since he felt that it was still the land of opportunity.  He described how too many people he knew were unable to get jobs since it took knowing someone on the inside to land a reasonable job, and that this also had the effect of keeping incompetent people employed while others with ambition were stuck in the unemployed line.  Even though it was a difficult conversation, I tried to give him whatever hope I could while visiting his beautiful country.

We  are now in Rome, having just finished our second day of non-stop touring.  The flight was long and tiring as we spent an extra two hours on the tarmac at O’Hare waiting out a typical Chicago thunderstorm.  We arrived in Rome at 10 am on Tuesday and hit the ground running with Claudio, our guide to this amazing, but overwhelming city.

The population of Rome is 2.6 million people.  The streets are filled with a multitude of cars and Vespas and LOTS of tourists.  Yesterday, the air was heavy and muggy to the point where it was difficult to breathe at times. Nonetheless, we managed several hours of site-seeing with stops at the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish steps, and Piazza del Popolo, among others.  All of this was on foot in the oppressive heat.  Still, it was fun, although all four us us fell asleep on the bus back to our B&B as the jetlag kicked in with a vengeance.

Today we took in the Roman section of town with a visit to the Forum, site of all public life during Roman times.  Those of you who enjoy your Shakespeare will remember the Forum as the site of Julius Caesar’s brutal murder and Mark Anthony’s “Friends, Romans, countymen…..” speech.  Unfortunately, I was also plagued with visions of Zero Mostel in a toga as I gazed at the sites.

The Colliseum was also on our list today.  Standing on the upper level one can look down and see the underground passages and cages which housed the animals used in combat with the gladiators.  Just to make the whole thing more challenging for the gladiators, the Romans would starve the lions, etc for a few days prior to the contest and hold them in the dark. Once a gladiator was in the arena, a trap door was opened and the half crazed animal would be released into the blinding light and the deafening roar of the crowd.  Fun!  Those Romans were a blood thirsty bunch, not unlike Americans in some respects.

All and all not a bad start.  The weather has improved. While still very warm, the humidity is markedly lower and we are now enjoying the soothing breezes of the Ponentino.

Ciao!