Arrivederci Italia

This was the fourth Thursday in November, a significant date for the Americans on the tour with us, but it did not seem like Thanksgiving at all.  It was warm and cloudy as we left Florence and drove south toward Rome instead of heading over the river and through the woods to Grandmother's house.  We stopped on the way at the American Cemetery, where 4400 US soldiers who were killed in Italy during World War II are buried.  It was a sobering but beautiful place, as most cemeteries are, filled with cypress trees and row upon row of gravestones.

 
Our next stop was San Gimignano, the second time we had visited this city, and the streets seemed familiar to us. The views looking out over the rolling hills of Tuscany are beautiful, and we had a relaxing time, buying some gifts and enjoying a cappuccino at an outdoor café.

Next we boarded the coach for a wine tasting and lunch out in the countryside, and to our surprise we recognized the familiar gates to Tenuta Torciana, which we had visited on our first tour exactly one month ago (on another American holiday, Halloween).  The wine and the food were delicious – salami, cheese, and bruschetta, instead of turkey and dressing.

After lunch, we returned to Rome for a farewell dinner – we would be leaving the next morning for the airport and our return flight.  There was some kind of “stomach bug” going around, and several of our fellow travelers said they were affected.  So we joined two or three other couples and returned straight to our hotel, the Shangri La, rather than exposing ourselves to something like that at a dinner the day before boarding our flight.  Thankfully we succeeded in staying well, and the next morning we took a coach to the airport, and in what seemed like no time at all, we were in the air, making that long transatlantic flight, first to Philadelphia and then to Charlotte.

Martha had been posting on Facebook nearly every day, and we were often surprised by how many people back home were following us.  She posted one final comment as we were boarding our flight, which perfectly expresses how I felt, as well, as we concluded another wonderful journey!

"Farewell Italy!  We have enjoyed sharing our trip with our Facebook friends.  Thanks to the “armchair travelers” for your special comments along the way.  We hope our adventures have inspired some of you to travel and brought back wonderful memories for others."

Arrivederci Italia!

Florence

The tour we were on took us back to Florence today, one of the few places the two tours overlapped.  We felt as if we were very familiar with the city by then, so while the rest of our fellow travelers left on the coach for the city center for a walking tour to see Michelangelo’s David and the Duomo, we decided to go our own way. 

We made our way across the city from our hotel, which was near the Ponte Veccho, and spent some time in the Duomo area, revisiting the favorite places we had discovered:  Tijuana Grill for lunch, cappuccino in the rooftop café of the Biblioteca della Oblate, a glass of wine at our rooftop bar, and finally dinner at Melotti Risotteria.  We took a taxi from the restaurant back to the hotel, grateful that we had spent this full day in Florence on our own.  It was truly the city which we had enjoyed the most in Italy and would return to again, perhaps on some future special occasion.

The Cinque Terre

We crossed the Apennine Mountains this morning, known for its Carrara marble quarries, and passed through at least 50 tunnels on the way.  The road was an amazing feat of engineering, and this whole region, known as the Cinque Terre, is known for cliffside hiking trails and sea vistas.  It was raining most of the way, a good day for traveling.

 
In Pisa, we stopped for the obligatory view of the leaning tower again, which we had already seen on our first tour.  We went to the same place we had gone on that tour, a little café not far from the tower, for a light lunch, and also a local specialty we had seen on menus everywhere, a spritz.  This is an Italian wine-based drink consisting of Prosecco, digestive bitters, and soda water.  It was very refreshing – the rain had stopped, and it had turned warmer as we traveled south.

Our dinner that evening was in a farmhouse in the Tuscan hills called il Poggio, in a large, open dining room where another tour group was also eating dinner.  They were a little farther along in the consumption of wine than our group, and as they wrapped things up, their very happy tour director sang an impromptu karaoke song.  Not to be undone, our tour director, Lino, delivered a creditable version of the Sinatra classic I Did it My Way.

Wandering among the tables was Bruno, a St. Bernard dog that the owners referred to as an overgrown “Chihuahua.”  Bruno would bump into legs under the tables and occasionally emerge to stare dolefully (or hungrily?) at we diners.

Lake Como and Lugano

I awoke early on Monday morning, and inspired perhaps by the runners I had seen in Milan the day before, ran a mile or so around the parking lot of our hotel in the dark.  I realized this was the first run I had completed since October 30, and I felt surprisingly good after such a long lay-off.  I have heard that elite marathon runners routinely take an entire month off after a big event without losing any fitness (in fact, it seems to help them), so perhaps it will work for an old broken-down marathon runner like me.

From our room we had beautiful views of Lake Varese below us, and the breakfast bar had an extraordinary variety of food, including strange things like cold pizza, and something we had never seen in any hotel, ever, bottles of champagne for making our own mimosas.  Not your usual fare at a Holiday Inn.

Our destination after breakfast was Lake Como, very close to the border to Switzerland.  We went for a cruise on the famous lake with Anna, a local specialist, who pointed out the many very expensive homes around the shore which were owned by Saudi princes, Russian oligarchs, and other wealthy owners, including George Clooney who owns three homes.  An average home costs between eight and ten million euros, but we were told you could rent a villa for (only) €175,000 per week.

We had some time on our own for exploring, and saw the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, yet another magnificent cathedral. 

From Lake Como we boarded the coach again and crossed the border into Switzerland.  Our tour director had told us to bring our passports with us just in case we were asked for them, although tours like ours were rarely stopped.  We spent quite some time in Lugana in the Italian-speaking Ticino region of the country.  Lake Lugano was a beautiful city built on the side of a mountain - you would exit the fourth floor of a department store and find yourself on street level, high above the lake.  In the distance we could see snow-capped mountains.

We had plenty of time to explore, so we had a cappuccino and pastry on a rooftop market, and then made our way back to the coach and returned to the Grand Hotel, where we had dinner.

Milan and Varese

It was Sunday morning when we checked out of our hotel in Venice and took a water taxi back to our coach for Milan, “the middle” of Italy according to our tour director, Lino.  As we entered the city, he told us that there had been a marathon that morning and he hoped the streets had all been opened again.  A search on my phone confirmed that there had been a race, the Milano21 Half Marathon.  There were some stray runners out on the tree-lined streets, but they were not wearing race bibs so I thought they were just out for a run - it was a perfect morning for it, cool and overcast.

Milan is in Italy's northern Lombardy region, and is known as the capital of fashion and design.  Lino dropped us off at a huge, covered mall, and it was indeed lined with every imaginable high-end clothing store I had ever heard of - Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton.  There was also a very good book store, one of the largest that I had seen, and it even had a section of books in English.

The city was crowded, perhaps the usual state of things on a Sunday afternoon or perhaps because of the shopping season.  We enjoyed a very good pizza at a place just around the corner from the big mall, and we saw the gothic Duomo, as well as the most world’s most famous opera house, La Scala, where Maria Callas had performed.

It was a little chilly by now, a big difference from our first days in Italy, and we were all a little glad to see Lino, who took us to the coach waiting around the corner.  We left Milan for Varese, a city in mountainous northern Italy, not from the border to Switzerland  Our hotel was perhaps the most beautiful one we had stayed in, the Palace Grand Hotel, high on a hill overlooking the city.  Our driver, Alberto, somehow made all of the hairpin curves to the top of the hill and earned a round of applause.

Dinner afterward was at a local restaurant in the city, Il Melograno, translated as “The Pomegranate,” because the fruit is grown in this area.

Venice

Early in the morning, our tour director took us by water taxi to the island of Murano, which is renowned for its long tradition of glass-making.  We visited a well-known glass factory where we watched an artisan create a piece of Murano glass, a real work of art.

 
After we returned to Venice, we prepared to take a highlight of any trip to Venice, a ride on a gondola.  Venice has 435 bridges that connect its 121 islands, and thus is known as the "City of Bridges."  Among the most famous are the Rialto Bridge, Accademia Bridge, Scalzi Bridge, Calatrava Bridge (the Constitution Bridge), and the Bridge of Sighs, which brought back a memory from the 1970s – a beautiful song by the Rock artist Robin Trower by the same name.  Our travelers split up in groups of three or four and we all clambered into gondolas; I’m afraid I did not make the most graceful of entrances to the tiny watercraft and its (I thought) irascible gondolier.  This photo was not very good, but it is difficult to take a selfie when you are grasping the side of a gondola and it is rocking from side to side in an alarming way.

Gondoliers are entertaining to watch and all know each other.  On a walking tour that we took with a local specialist after our gondola ride, I watched some from above as they deftly maneuvered the narrow canals, ducking just in time for the low bridge, gracefully stepping to shore.  When they approached a blind corner, they would sing out loudly to their fellow gondoliers that we were coming.

Our walking tour began at St. Marks square, and we crossed several bridges.  It was a tranquil city, with gondolas and other boats poling gracefully down the canals.  The streets were not very crowded and they were beginning to decorate for Christmas in the busy street outside our hotel.  I noticed that in all of the streets there were stacks of temporary walkways, which are used by city workers to build raised walkways linked together like folding tables.  These walkways, and waterproof boots, were commonly used throughout the city, and we were fortunate to be visiting during a dry period of time. 

I don’t think I would have enjoyed living in such a city or become accustomed to its frequent flooding, although it was certainly a very beautiful place to visit.  A bartender in our hotel that evening told us that nobody who worked there actually lived in Venice, they commuted by water taxi every day to the city center.  “It is a nice place for you to visit,” he said, “but not to live.”

 As evening approached, we took another water taxi to the island of Burano for a delicious dinner – wonderful seafood! – and then spent some time walking around perhaps the most picturesque city we have seen, with its buildings painted many different colors.  Every street looked like a watercolor picture.

We all met back at the dock after dinner and time on our own, and were treated at the end of the day with a gorgeous sunset on the way back to our hotel. 

Verona and Venice

We stayed only one night in Assisi before boarding our coach for our next destination, Venice, stopping on the way in Verona, which our tour director said was one of the most beautiful cities in Italy.  Verona is credited as being the place of origin of tortellini, mortadella, and Parmesan cheese, and it is also known as the setting for one of Shakespeare’s best-known tragedies, Romeo and Juliet, which begins with this prologue:

Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

There is some dispute about whether the Bard ever visited Verona, or Italy, at all.  But there is no dispute that one of the tourist attractions in the city, “Juliet’s Balcony,” is not in fact the balcony beneath which Romeo declared his love to the 13-year-old Juliet (yes, her age is revealed in Act I, Scene III), because the play is entirely fictitious.  So we gave the balcony a miss, out of respect for Shakespeare.

It’s a shame, really, that the city fathers of Verona felt they needed to resort to such a gimmick to attract tourists here, because as our tour director said this was indeed one of the most beautiful cities we had visited, with a Colosseum smaller than Rome’s but equally impressive.

There was also a pretty square and a café (Caffe Liston) where we sat for a glass of wine, in this case the rich, dry, flavorful red wine called Amarone.  Of all the wines we had tasted in Italy – and we had tasted a lot of wine by now – I think this was the best I had.

From Verona, we traveled to Venice, the famous city on the water, and left our coach on the shore for a water taxi.  Our hotel was directly on the canal, and after checking in, just as the sun was setting, we went for a memorable tour ride on the Grand Canal and saw Venice at the most beautiful time of day.

Assisi

The hotels where we had been staying provided (by my standard) a huge breakfast, with not only eggs and sausage and the usual, but also fresh tomatoes and fruit and plenty of pastries.  I have usually found granola, or muesli, and also yogurt on the breakfast bar everywhere we went, as well as croissants, which are very good and often filled with fruit or pistachios.  The plain croissants are labeled vuoto, or “empty.”  The usual breakfast for Italians, according to our tour director Lino, is a croissant and a cappuccino.  And one never orders a cappuccino in the afternoon.  When we were on our tour of the fountains and plazas of Rome on Monday, we stopped in a little café and I ordered one, where a friendly Italian scolded me:  “Don’t you know you can be prosecuted for ordering a cappuccino at this time of day?”

Today the coach left early and drove 250 miles through the Appenines to Perugia, the capitol of the Umbria region in Italy, and from there to the city of Assisi, home of St. Francis of Assisi.  St. Francis was the Italian mystic, poet, and friar who founded the order of the Franciscans.  Born into a wealthy family, he renounced his riches for a life of poverty.  He was born and died in Assisi in the 13^th Century, and today we visited the Basilica of St. Francis dating from that period, still a pilgrimage destination for many.

We toured the lower basilica where we viewed some impressive three-dimensional frescos by the artist Giotto.  The upper basilica depicted the life of St. Francis in a series of large paintings.  We were not allowed to take photos, unfortunately.  Like many of the churches we had visited, it was a sacred place where people spoke in whispers, and where worshipers could be seen simply sitting on benches praying or meditating. 

Lino gave each of us a Tau cross, which I learned is a symbol of Franciscan spirituality and the personal signature of St. Francis of Assisi. The Tau is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and is mentioned in the Bible as a symbol of salvation. 

After exploring Assisi, we returned to our interesting hotel, which was a converted monastery.  It was a big, rambling place, and we found a beautiful little chapel down the hall from our room.  Some of us met in the lobby later, where there was a bar, and we enjoyed a glass of red wine while awaiting dinner.  I wondered if the Franciscans who had lived here might have had a glass of wine about this time of day, and learned that they are indeed permitted to drink, but no more than a half-liter each day, which is about three glasses.

Sorrento

The wind picked up during the night, and this morning we were a little concerned about our planned outing for the day.  “We cross the Bay of Naples today by ferry to the glamorous Isle of Capri to visit some of its landmark sights,” our tour itinerary had promised.  “Wander past the chic boutiques and pavement cafés in Capri town in the company of a local specialist before taking your time to soak up the sophistication of this lovely island.”  As it turned out, we could have gone across the Bay, but could not have some back again, so Lino was forced to cancel the trip.

Instead, to his credit, he arranged for a walking tour of Sorrento at the last minute, using the same local specialist he had used in Pompeii.  Sorrento is a beautiful coastal town and our specialist had grown up there and knew it well.  The tour took us down quiet streets and plazas, perhaps preferable to the "chic boutiques" we had been promised on Capri, and included a visit to a shop specializing in exquisite inlaid wood, and finally down to the coast. 

Sorrento had a tropical feel to it, with gardens containing cactus and other tropical plants, and streets lined with oranges and lemons.

That afternoon, we visited a traditional working farm in the countryside of Sorrento not far from out hotel, where a multi-generational family welcomed us.  On the steep mountainside property they were able to grow olives, lemons, mandarin oranges, and other fruit.  We began the tour with an explanation of fresh olive oil pressing using an original mill, and then we sampled some antipasti that all came from the farm:  salami, marinated vegetables, fresh olives, honey, and ricotta cake, all served with good wine.

We learned from Maria how to make fresh Buffalo mozzarella braids and ricotta cheese.  Maria knew only one word of English, which she demonstrated to us with a big grin:  “Cheese!”

Two men on our tour had good-naturedly answered the call for volunteers, and following Maria's demonstrations, made Margherita pizza using the mozzarella cheese, which we all enjoyed after the antipasti.

The dinner was concluded with limoncello made on the farm, the perfect way to end the evening.

Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast

We left Rome today and stopped for a tour of another iconic Italian city, Pompeii, buried in lava in 70 AD from Mt. Vesuvius, which still looms over the city and is still active.  It was an on-going archeological site and discoveries are still being made every day.  We decided to leave the more slowly-paced tour we had been taking with another local specialist and went off on our own, and we were glad we did.  The sun had been shining when we left the coach and I had left my hat, rain jacket, and umbrella there, but it began to rain, for the first time since we had been in Italy except for an overnight shower in Florence.  We were able to take shelter under an ancient portico, wait until it let up, and then return to the place we were to meet up after lunch.  We would have been soaked to the skin (or not seen much of Pompeii) if we had remained on the tour.

The sun was back out, and we found a hotel with a dining room that was still open not far from where we were to meet up with the others on the tour.  We enjoyed some pizza with Buffalo mozzarella.  I had heard of this cheese before but learned only recently that it is made from the milk of the Italian Mediterranean buffalo, and it has a unique flavor and consistency.  We asked for a glass of the local red wine as usual, the vino della casa rosso, but realized from the first sip that, while delicious, it had a bit of a sparkle to it.  Our waiter explained that this was Gragnano wine, a dark red, sparkling wine local to the region. 

Late in the afternoon, our coach took us from Pompeii to one of the most beautiful regions in Italy, the Amalfi Coast, where we had plenty of time to visit the city of Positano.  This was some of the most stunning scenery we had seen thus far on the tour.  We were on a road too narrow and curving for the coach and had transferred to smaller vehicles for this part of the trip.

This was one of those places, among a handful on our admittedly limited travel in the world, where I thought to myself, “Wow!  I could live here!”

Our hotel was on the side of a mountain above Sorrento, one of the nicest places we had stayed since the Borgo di Cortefreda in Tuscany, and we had a splendid view of the Bay of Naples from our room.

Rome

We knew this part of our trip would be paced a little faster, especially after the quiet days we had spent in Florence on our own.  I recalled our tour director on our trip to the UK telling us one morning when there was some grumbling about an early departure, “We have a lot to see and do today!  You’re not on holiday!”  That’s the feeling we had with Lino, but to his credit he was very knowledgeable and he took us straight to the important things we wanted to see and do.

We began the day with a visit to the Vatican City, which is technically another country in the heart of Rome - we had to show our passports to gain admittance.  It was a beautiful place, although there were a lot of people there from all over the world.

Our local specialist, Marco, took us quickly through to the Sistine Chapel, and he also told us to be aware of pickpockets, more a problem in Rome than in other places we had been.  He pointed out two young woman ahead of us on the sidewalk and said, "I know those two by name.  They are pickpockets."  Not the type you would expect.  As with the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, there was just too much to absorb in the Sistine Chapel, the walls and ceilings completely covered with beautiful artwork.

 
In the Chapel itself, we were not allowed to take photos at all (although I saw some visitors surreptitiously snapping shots of the famous ceiling).  I craned my neck to see, over and over again, and I recall being surprised at how small and far away, yet humbling, was the famous work of Michelangelo showing the Creation of Adam (this is from the internet – I feared that my phone might be confiscated were I to take a picture).

If my phone had been confiscated, these guys would have done it – the famous Swiss guards, who despite their decorative garb looked pretty formidable.  I wouldn't have been surprised to see a Glock pistol tucked behind that cloak.

We went to St. Peter’s Basilica after the Sistine Chapel, and again I was impressed by the magnificent opulence of the place.

We walked through St. Peter's Square, too, and saw the balcony where the Pope appears and blesses those in attendance.

After a quick lunch at a cafeteria, we took a tour of another famous site, the Colosseum.  Construction started in 72 AD, and it was massive.  Marco graphically described the slaughter that occurred there for the entertainment of the Roman upper classes.  It was not a pretty picture.

It had already been a packed day, but after that we went on yet another tour with a local specialist to the Trevi Fountain (unfortunately undergoing renovations and blocked by chain-link fencing and plastic) and some of the other plazas in Rome, followed by a visit to the Pantheon, the widest dome in the word and one that was closely studied by Brunelleschi when he designed the dome of the cathedral in Florence.

The structure dated to 27 BC, which was just amazing to think about.  The columns out front were solid pieces of marble, not sections, each of them 39 feet tall and weighing 60 tons.  Our guide told us they were quarried in Egypt, and we can only speculate how they were moved to Rome and raised to a vertical position in a time in history when such feats would have been accomplished, basically, by ox-carts and ropes.

I sent a picture to our daughter, and she replied, “Wow!!  You stood in history.”  And that is the way we had been feeling every day in Italy, but especially in this city, where the Roman Empire thrived and conquered the world.