My good intentions never result in the good actions. Adding pictures is harder and slower than I would like, if only because I have so many, and I take more pictures of details than I do of panoramas to impress others. So many excuses!
Anyway, today we are moving to the Rome airport hotel to be able to get up at 4 am tomorrow to catch an 8am flight. I may be exaggerating!
We fly to Barcelona, and get on the cruise to Miami that same day. From the time we board, internet access will be expensive and erratic and scarce until we get there on 5th November.
In Miami we go to Fort Lauderdale for two days, catch a plane to Las Vegas, stay 5 days, then San Francisco for a week or so.
we have a new plan to get back to Europe, as airfares all come in return packages, and the second half likes to cost over $1000. A one way ticket will cost over $450. So for $700 each, we a likely to cruise back to Southampton on the Queen Mary II, which is a very posh 5 star ship, and we have to solve the problem of needing to dress formally (full suit, tie, long dress) for three of the seven nights. But, per night, cheaper!
The reason for the long way around from Europe to Europe is the Schengen zone problem that we can only spend 90 days in it out of every three months. So we definitely need to be out of it for a few weeks, but then we want to be back in it to officially start our next three month period as soon as possible.
So, here in one long wordy jumble are my notes about lots of Italy! maybe one day I'll overcompensate with photos again!
We caught a train to Bologna. Italian trains are on the whole nicer than English ones, with more room for legs and luggage, and certainly no signs of the over-crowding that’s supposed to be a huge problem. We are travelling on regional slow trains, so that might make the difference to the number of passengers.
Bologna has much wider streets, and has nice wide colonnaded walks (32km of them) that give fabulous shade, and style. Our hotel sent us around the corner to a sister hotel, so we are in a four star rather than a three star hotel, and had a porter to carry my bag to our room. The new hotel is on the main street, and the city market street stalls start right outside, and last for a half hour wander to a big parking lot which is filled with endless stalls.
These are nowhere near as posh as Florence’s markets – there are a lot of .50 cent to 5 dollar clothing piles, mixed with cheap furnishing stalls, junky watch and mobile phone stalls etc., but in between are nice tourist ones, as well as lace and embroidered tablecloths, but ZI am strong, and buy only a cheap t-shirt and swim shorts so I can go snorkelling on our cruise. I had already given way in Florence and bought nearly a dozen shawls and scarves, so my luggage is well and truly stuffed until I can get to a Post Office on a weekday in Verona.
Another train to Verona, which is not so pretty, and not so colonnadey. Overall, it’s nearly 30 degrees with no shade, and the middle of the day is warmer than I would like. I’m just fussy about my weather!
Verona is the city of Romeo and Juliet, with a roman amphitheatre that is still in use for operas for five months of the year. It also has a castle, which was rebuilt into a museum, a basilica and a duomo. It is a nice place, but not stunning, and we found the basilica and duomo to be our favourites. The shrines on each side of the aisles have ancient frescoes painted on the walls around them which make an entire third of a huge wall into a stage for the shrine. The shrines are hollowed out into the walls, and have a huge central figure or scene, painted or carved, and the marble columns around that then lead out to the frescos of rows of people, or other flatter scenes.
Today we go to Ravenna, city of mosaics. I really, really like mosaics!
Ravenna has enough mosaics that I can take pictures of that it does not matter that the town streets are not quite so captivating as those of Florence. We bought two passes and used every bit of both of them, which probably shows that it is quite a small and condensed town.
Finding the excavated remains of the villa with the incredibly complete mosaics for every floor – and pictures were not allowed, so for the first time we bought a book which showed the best ones.
Ravenna is the town know for mosaics, so every shop has them for sale, and they are in every church. The write-ups I read beforehand stressed how religious they were in theme, but Ravenna’s were nicely less religious than most other mosaics I have seen in Italy. I much prefer the Roman style of everyday life and animals, with swirls and knots for decoration, than the anonymous saints with gold plates behind their heads , expressionless faces and stylised clothes.
Milan was a bit big city-ish for us. We had a room in the old city, which is lovely; except that we chose to walk there from the train station rather than take a train or bus, and it took us nearly an hour to walk with our packs. We hated the price of food, and the quality of food, and are now really over pizza and pasta for a while.
The Biblioteca-Pinacoteca Ambrosiana wins major points for the way it lights its paintings. Everywhere we go, we do the art gallery dance, where the picture is not fully visible unless you stand in the one perfect spot where the glare of the lights is minimised and you have a chance to see the whole picture. Sometimes it just can’t be done. The back wall is too close, or there is nowhere free from glare.
This museum had one spotlight per picture, more if needed (and they were not bright, they were just focused correctly) and the colours just glowed with life. They weren’t necessarily the best paintings we had ever seen, but they held our attention so well that they could have been. And the ones which were masterpieces were awe-inspiring beyond words, as they should be. Internally, we were capering with glee at the wonder of them! Unfortunately, not all were lit so well, even in this gallery, and the contrast was extremely sharp and disappointing…
Milan also had the street market which went on forever. A tent lane which took an hour to walk from one end to the other, not becuas eof the size so much as the snailpace crowd movement.
Venice is like all the best atmospheric bits of other cities and canals thrown in for good measure. We have a lovely apartment, with a new full kitchen, heating and cooling, and the first sofa as comfortable as the one we left at home! It is in a tiny windy street, and has no internet access until we get out into the closest square to us, but with comfort and twice the space of Paris, there are no complaints here!
Also, Bob made us a soup and a spice cake, and then a stew, so we are eating madly to have it all gone before we go. It is a very nice change from restaurants for a few days. So many of them just can’t cook well! And Bob has made a successful cake without scales or measures, in a metal pot, in a strange oven!
We waited until our first early morning so we could shop at the Rialto fruit and veg market. We had a short list of minestrone vegetables to buy, and a memory of the quantity of each we wanted. Unfortunately this careful plan fell to pieces when we found that it is market policy to sell in half kilo weights. So with far too much of most ingredients, we staggered home again, knowing we had a lot of eating to do before we left town!
There are more squares here than I expected, with random streets in strange directions which twist and wind, and can be randomly wide or narrow, irrespective of the number of people trying to use them! Bob can reach from one side to the other with his elbows on his hips in some of them...
Tiny streets here are like alleys anywhere else, but since they have just as many homes leading off them as any main street (probably more), they are clean and well used, and seem very friendly. There is a rubbish handcart which comes by in the mornings and collects the tiny bags every one leave outside their front door.
The shops are full of the best of everywhere else, like bright pottery, scarves and shawls, mosaics, fans etc, but the masks mostly get the spotlight. Going into a large mask shop is like a feast for the eyes. Actually, going into a glass showroom, or a lace shop is the same. There is every type of variation on the theme that you can imagine, and the prices range accordingly.
Having read a lot of guidebooks and websites about the dangers of buying what you think is an authentic item and ending up with ‘tourist trash’ I have been trying to detect the differences in levels. I have decided that there is a large range of quality, with obvious mass produced shoddy goods at one end, and absolute artistry at the other. I can’t find a dividing line, except where my taste and budget lead me. If I find a piece I like and am willing to pay the price, then I am happy.
If I was to insist on true artistry, then that is easy to find, but a mask, lace table cloth, or glass item might cost me a minimum of a thousand dollars. Which is what I would expect to pay for one of Australia’s best quilters works of art, too. For every local speciality, it is easy to notice the artists’ workshops. They are creating original art, and it is fantastic, and amazing. But as a tourist wanting a souvenir, I have a need for the ranges below this and I love that, whatever my taste or budget, I can find something to match; which was not at all the case in Germany or the UK, where only the cheap crap option was available. I’ve maligned Germany slightly, because the Christmas shop and the stein shop were exceptions, as was a tiny linen shop in Bacharach.
We had a fabulous day yesterday. We went to the islands, starting with Murano. As the boat arrived, there was an assertive man on the path, directing us straight ahead to see a genuine glass factory in operation. About 20 people went in to watch a glass bowl being blown, coloured and shaped with great skill for about ten minutes. Then we were ushered into their show-room, which was massive and had a hundred varieties of glass styles and objects. There was one back room we could not enter, where I saw sets of bowls and goblets in what is probably thought of as the Venetian style, with red or blue glass and a golden ornate rim. As we were not tempted to buy there, we were one of the first to wander out again. The next vaporetto stop along had another conveniently located glass factory :-)
Every glass shop had a different variety of items, presumably with a different designer driving the theme. If we had been searching for something particular, searching would have found it!
We went to the glass museum, and the history plaques on the wall explained (not quite so blatantly) how the Murano glass makers kept their secrets tightly within their families, but stole every method of glassmaking form everywhere in the world as soon as it became known to them. In the factory we had been told of how difficult it was to keep the craft alive, as only family could be trusted. Not a word about taking techniques from others! As usual, it all depends on your point of view So I suppose that explains why the glass shops had such a huge variety of styles. It’s all Venetian if you look at it properly!
Then we hopped aboard the waterbus for Burano and lace! The first thing we found was Vienezios (spelling?), which are round sugared doughnut holes, yeasty and lemony and chewy and soft and utterly fabulous. Better than any doughnut ever, and we do rather like hot cinnamon doughnuts (understatement). We bought another two before we left the island, and now have to hunt for them in the main part of Venice before we go!
The lace shops have lots of fabulously dyed lacy tops and dresses, which were attracting a lot of attention, but there was nothing local about them! But, well done for the shop owners not missing a trick! (I’ve been pondering as I travel that Australia (the UK, the US?) are not short on handmade art items that the public would love to buy. What we are short of it the conviction that if we opened a shop selling such stuff, tourists would flock in to buy it. In another life, I’d be coming home to open such a shop in the Gold Coast, and would visit every handcraft guild in Australia to find items to stock it. I’m convinced it would work. Australia does not properly take advantage of (cater for) tourists. You put a worker using a sewing machine in the window, making the quickest, simplest thing you sell, to prove to tourists that it’s local. In Italy twice it’s been a man free motion sewing something like ‘Baby’ on a finished bib.
In another life, the other thing I would do, whatever shop I had, I would get together with other community people and create a trail. There is a cat trail in England where a shop sells cat figurines, and has her shop as a starting point and sells maps for people to find ‘hidden’ cat statues and shops and history. She chose cats, but you could do it for any theme you wanted, even handcrafts, with links to museums, art galleries, other shops, sites of historical significance, as long as you could think of a convincing tie-in.
I soon found a lace shop where I could browse totally unmolested, which is often essential if you want me to actually buy stuff. Once I knew what I wanted to buy, I was directed across the street where to a huge shop where I was very carefully watched and helped. Luckily, with my choices already made, I could direct the helpful lady to what I wanted and bought two table cloths, a runner and a doily. Amusingly, one of my choices was only available as a curtain, so I decided against it! The doily was so expensive I decided not to buy it, which was very good, as it made the sales lady go to extreme lengths to get me to buy it. In the end, we got a straight 50% off everything, and after we get our tax back in Barcelona, the doily will have been rather cheap. So I just had to have it, really! …. Really!....
I had been unsure before I went into the lace shop wether I would know if I had ‘real’ lace or not, but in the end, the beauty of the item is what I bought, not the authenticity.
Next we went to the lace museum, where we watched a video of a lace ornament being made, and interviews with lace-makers. Later we saw a ‘real’ lace sewing circle. Watching the women, they did not have the speed of the old ladies in the video. On the whole, it seems like embroidery or any other intricate handcraft, which can be learned but only a relatively rare individual takes it to the highest skill levels. I was more interested in the lace shop and the workers than the history of lace and the historic lace on display.
When we bought the waterbus tickets in Venice, it had only cost a few euros more to get a 12 hour tourist pass so, on the return to Venice we stayed on one boat after another until we had gone all down the Grand Canal, then caught another waterbus home. So we had a sunset cruise for free, lasting another two hours, which was really magical. I now have a lot of photos of the water and the skyline in the sunset light.
Today, (Thursday, 13 October) we had a lazy day. The only place we went was an art gallery, which was very uninteresting to us. However, wandering the streets we found a wooden bridge across the grand canal with fabulous views, hunted down a shop which makes wooden gondola kits (once found, we decided not to like them), found the best winged lion statue ever, and later a metal dragon bird street light support, one of a kind.
Tomorrow is a travel day, a train and a bus to Siena.
29 °C
25 °C
