1) To return to this home page from anywhere, click above on the box containing the words, “Two Weeks In Tuscany”
2) The posts are in Chronological Order, the way a journey runs, from the start to the end, instead of reverse-chronological order, the method common to blogs that put the newest post first.
Tuscany. The the most sensuous region in all of Italy. No, the most sensuous in all of Europe . . . OK, the truth? It’s the most sensuous region in the whole world.
You and I are going there right now, for two weeks. You with your little computer mouse and me with my laptop in my lap and my credit card in my hand. Together we will see wonderful things, eat excellent food and drink superb wine.
OK, I will do those things, and you can read about them. But if you wish, you can do them too. (using your own laptop – and of course, your own credit card.)
These photos were taken during the light rain that preceded our arrival by bus in Siena. They are here just to give you a foretaste. Click on the small photos to enlarge them. Oh, and there’s more text below this batch.
street scene
inside Siena
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On the day that I was walking past the tourist trap DaVinci “museum” in Florence, I did not know that the wooden bike out front was a phony. By phony, I do not mean it is not the original made by Leonardo himself. I mean I did not know then that the whole concept is fake.
click to enlarge
Did DaVinci design a bicycle? Read this and then come back here for a few minutes of soap opera in which an already shaky and fragile relationship takes one big step right off a cliff. Or ignore the link and keep on reading. Names may be changed and events elided, but nothing else.
Our few days en route to Florence had been difficult. Problems began in Amsterdam that were a red flag. I should have broken off the joint trip right there and gone on alone. Whenever I think about that failure, I am amazed at my stupidity in not recognizing those incidents as clear warnings.
Example? The Italian-operated, overnight train from Paris to Florence, as previously reported, was a mess. To aggravate matters, for all the privacy provided, the sleeping compartments may as well been divided by a loosely hanging curtain.
You could clearly hear normal conversations from one compartment to another. The previously reported dispute during which the dining car operator threatened the students took place at the far end of the car. Our compartment was at one end. That compartment was the last one at the other end. Every word of that dispute was heard even though the doors to our compartment and theirs were closed.
Given that lack of privacy, a prudent and private person like me will speak in a soft, quiet voice.
There is no delicate way to say this. Eve was a screamer. When we were in a solid room in an upscale hotel in New York or Amsterdam, she was vocal and loud about what she wanted, when she wanted it, how hard she wanted it and how she felt about things in general. I did my happy priapic best to respond and provide my own part of a good dialog. Good communication was had by all as we had each other.
The trouble in the train began when she said she did not care if anyone might hear us. My problem was, not that anyone might hear us. My problem was I knew that *everyone* would hear us.
I cared about that, both as a matter of privacy and propriety.
The verbal battering I got over that was a hard shock. it went on far too long and became increasingly loud. It became as bad as it might have had we actually gone ahead and done it anyway. I thought she was being outrageous and pathetic. That was one of the most unpleasant nights I’d ever spent with a woman.
But, trains being as relentless as they are, even if they are Italian, they eventually arrive, as did we, into the harsh morning of noisy, touristy Florence. I could not help thinking that this woman had become that most burdensome of all things, an intimate stranger. Similies of being chained to a rabid animal came to mind.
We found our hotel. As soon as we were in the room, we agreed that we would be civil and make the best of what was a bad situation for both of us. We headed out to find breakfast and pick up the usual tourist info.
Along the way, walking on one of the main streets, I saw that full-sized copy of the puported Da Vinci bike parked across the street. In theinterest of the pretence of harmony and pleasantness I said, “Oh look, there’s a copy of the Da Vinci bike.”
She never turned he head, neither towards the bike or to me. She continued walking and facing straight ahead as she snarled, “If I want a fucking tour guide, I’ll hire one. And if he doesn’t want to fuck, I’ll hire a different one.”
We parted company permanently, as quickly after that as I could. The rest of my trip through Italy was only slightly lonesome, but otherwise, genuinely pleasant.
This is not at all as easy as it seems. Conventional wisdom says, go online and do a Google search on phrases such as “discount airfare” or “cheap airfare” or “airfare consolidator.”
That works if you have hours of infinite patience and an attention to detail that only a bookkeeper would love. A search like that usually returns between a gazillion and a mega-gazillion web pages, most of them either totally useless or too complicated or simply over-priced. Then there are the outrageously phony “deals.” Continue reading Finding a “good” air fare
One of the interesting things about travel is how the encounter with a famous scene is so different from the context my mind has built up around it that I am dis-oriented.
The Trevi Fountain is a good example. In 1954, during it’s first run, I saw the movie, “Three Coins in the Fountain.” I was only 20 years old at the time but even then, I knew it was a piece of Hollywood crap. The only thing more insipid than the insipid movie itself was the insipid theme song, sung most insipidly.
But, at the time, I didn’t realize the deception that had been played. If I could watch it without gagging, I’d like to rerun the movie to confirm my belief that there was a deception of perception.
I could swear that the camera in the movie was carefully manipulated to give the impression that the fountain is the centerpiece of a large broad plaza. It’s much more than that.
The fact is, the fountain is the WHOLE DAMN PLAZA.
There is a semi-circle of stone steps squeezed right up around the pool at its base. Trip on them and you are going swimming.
As soon as I took the picture above, I turned to my right and saw this behind.
When I say “behind” I am being quite literal.
The telephoto lens on my camera shows the . . . err . . . behind that was . . . behind me.
Click on it to expand.
I didn’t try to go around front to catch that view. I’m an old man. This was early in the morning. If I am going to go looking for a heart attack, it will be in the evening, after a great dinner, following another hour or so of lounging in a sidewalk cafe. I’m not going to throw away an entire fine day on a pair of mammaries.
After she was finished whatever she was doing, and to whom she was doing it, I did go around to the center of the fountain and had my tourist photo taken.
I doubt that my comments will dissuade anyone from visiting the fountain. It is an amazing blend of art and engineering.
I’m not going to start spouting (pun alert!) the dry (sorry, can’t help myself) statistics but many people do not know that there are no pumps driving the waters. The fountain was built long before electricity. The waters are gravity fed from a reservoir miles away, high up in the hills.
It’s reported that an average of $3,500 per day is tossed into the fountain by tourists in hope of being blessed by the ancient promise that tossing a coin over your shoulder will guarantee that you will visit Rome again. Sure, why not? So I put in my two cents worth. Here are a few more clickable photos.
and here’s a YouTube clip from a much better film. This is from “La Dolce Vida” (The Sweet Life) with forever young Marcelo Mastrianni and forever large and Swedish, Anita Ekberg. (it is possible the lady whose behind I left behind was . . . ?? . . . naaah . . . naaaah.
Morning comes to Siena like the aristocrat she is, quietly, with grace and dignity befitting her age and station. The night of repose is over. Soft but insistent light of a new day pushes away the shadows, slowly but steadily overwhelming the street lamps that have stood silent watch.
It’s a soft September morning. The big windows of the hotel let the room breathe.
As the waxing light of dawn spreads across the old brick walls and mossy roof tiles it suffuses the streets below. People are stirring. Deliveries are being made. Refuse is being carried away but there is no banging of bins or grinding of compactors. Shops are rolling up their shutters. The streets are still quite empty.
The Basilica San Lorenzo (also known as The Dom or the cathedral), at the heart of Florence – no it is not at the heart, I’d say it is the heart – is an astounding piece of art.
It is not only is achingly beautiful and awesomely executed, it is totally organic, growing directly out of its time and place. The moment in time in which it was created, the ideas, the hopes, the fears, the social and religious attitudes – all are right there.
But there still are questions whose answers I haven’t yet found in any books.
In the plaza, at the side of the main building, directly in front of the front door, is the Medici’s private chapel. Why is it separate and not within the Dom itself? What’s inside it? I’ll come back to that further down below a few pix inside the Dom itself.
We took a tour after dinner on one of those double-deck buses. Two hours, I recall. Maybe 8pm when we started. Dark out.
After passing around and through city streets, stopping next to shuttered churches and in empty city squares, the bus cut across the river and up a winding road that climbs a high hill. As we neared the top, the private homes and hotels became luxurious and sprawling.
At the top was a broad, flat parking area and a look-out with a walled promenade overlooking nighttime Florence. A bronze copy of Michelangelo’s David dominated the view.
It was a warm evening. A group of Chilean musicians, probably all cousins to the ones performing at this same time on Lower Broadway, just off Houston, were gathered under a lamp.
Off to the side, a male fortune teller was explaining their future to an eager young couple.
The recorded guide was unintelligible. The sound was not much more than “blurg garble blah schmoob, waz facicrank.” So I took the annoying things out of my ears. My companion, in an attitude I’d become to realize as too controlling, tried to “help” me by forcing her own earplug set on my head. It took some serious and forceful repetition of “no” before she stopped.
Things are getting tense. We leave for Rome (at her persistence insistence) tomorrow.
Siena awakens when the tourists awaken. And they all roll downhill through curving, steep and narrow streets to what may be the most interesting and engaging public space (wiki: Piazza del Campo) you have ever seen. I have no doubt that every City Planning and Architecture or Social Studies university course in the whole world must mention Siena at least once, and probably devote hours or days to it.
Piazza del Campo, Siena, Italy
About three times the size of a baseball infield whose fan-like shape it resembles, one end (think of Home Plate) is tilted downward towards the foot of a smooth slope, paved and patterned with ceramic-like bricks. This is the 12th Century heart of 21st Century Siena. The wide end is lined with sidewalk cafes that offer satisfying people-watching for not unreasonable prices. The other, lower end, is lined with public buildings and emphasized with a gracefully proportioned tower that looks like a punctuation mark.
The rings of narrow, curbless, cobbled and tiled streets outside the plaza follow the curve of the fan. I doubt that the sun ever shines directly into more than a few feet of any street, and even then, briefly. As a result, the open plazas are sudden bowls of sunshine. The Piazzo del Campo, in particular, is especially dramatic.
The innermost of the half-concentric rings is pierced at various points with sharply descending arched tunnels. As you make your way down the steps or ramps and pass through, your slight claustrophobia is suddenly and powerfully relieved by the broad, open expanse of the amphitheater in front of and to either side of you.
Today’s soft, intermitent rain was hardly a discouragement. The photographer enjoys reflective slate surfaces and flat lighting. It’s quite correctly called “portrait lighting.” Alas, a few minutes after arrival, that bit of romance gave way to sunshine. Only here can the arrival of sunshine be considered a loss.
Click on any photo enlarge it. There’s more text below the photos.
In case you wonder why the name “Siena” is familiar, look in your box of Crayola Crayons. The fired bricks of the plaza’s pavement gave the world the color you now call, “Burnt Siena.”
I had planned to spend one night in Lucca but spent three.
I learned that you can ignore the guidebooks.
In chorus they all say you can “see” Lucca in half a day. The truth is, if all you want to do is “see” it, an hour, or maybe two, will do. It’s that small. The justly famous walled town is about two miles in circumference and flatter than a New York style pizza.
But if you want to “experience” Lucca, you must put away your watch and bury your calendar. A timeless place requires time. A timeless place deserves time.
I’d booked a room at Il Seminario B&B. As I walked from the tourist office near the train station, the late afternoon streets were pretty empty, but not in a scary way. It was just quiet. I saw no pedestrians and few cars.
Ominously, I saw no sign of anything that looked like a hotel or a bed-and-breakfast.
One of the ways towns around world protect themselves from modernism is by strict – and strictly enforced – ordinances that limit or even prohibit advertising signs outside business.
I have lived in Lake Forest, Illinois and once owned an antique shop in Evanston. Both have similar ordinances.
No sign is permitted to protrude from a building. The uncluttered streetscape in Evanstion was a powerful attraction to upscale clients. Earlier on this trip (see http://oneweekinamsterdam.info) I saw the same beneficial effect in small Dutch towns.
Here in Lucca, the effect works as well, but I suspect it is not the result of a law, but the strange whim of Il Seminario’s management, that there is no sign at all, of any kind, not even a street number painted on the door.
Armed with the excellent free street map, clearly marked by the pleasant woman at the Tourism Office near the train station, I stood at the exact spot she indicated. Large, high, beautifully paneled anonymous doors stared back at me.
I wandered back and forth along the empty sidewalk, forced by an increasingly impatient bladder to keep moving or start leaking. I did the Dance of the Untipped Kidney. I had not felt such urgency since the last cold day I drank three beers.
Just as I was about to rush behind one of the parked cars for relief, a man and a young woman walked up to the large unmarked door by which I was fidgeting. He had a confident manner and a set of keys that suggested multiple accesses.
I spoke in hope but feared that failure now would be damp and embarrassing.
“Scuzi, parle Inglese? ”
“Why yes. May I help you?”
“Please, where is Il Seminario?”
“Ahh, are you Mister Harkins?”
I nodded affirmation as strongly as I dared without wetting my pants.
“Oh, Mister Harkins. I am Paulino, the manager. I have just called the Tourism Office and they said you were walking over here. Please come in, come in.”
Fortunately, the “necessary” is directly inside the front door.
I’d snagged the last available room in what had once (maybe 100+ years ago) been a seminary for candidates for the priesthood. If this is how they lived, I want to take Holy Orders. But, I doubt they were offered the sinful luxury I found. The only issue I had, the same as I found in other repurposed buildings in Europe, was that top floor rooms should not be assigned to lumbering 6-footers like myself.
I gave myself at least 6 cranial bruises on the romantically exposed rafters before I learned to stoop when leaving the center of the room.
The room was large, with a king-sized bed, excellent reading lamps, a lovely view over surrounding rooftops, clean and fresh-smelling. The bath and shower were spacious. The smallest complete kitchen I have every seen was hidden in a standard-sized closet.
It was now getting near sunset. I was tempted to just crash for nap. But I knew that if I did, I might not wake up until it was too late to find dinner. There are few dumber things than sleeping away dinnertime in an unfamiliar town. I’ve done that and then had to go hungry until breakfast.
A hot shower revived me and I hurried out to see what I could find in the gathering twilight.
I took careful note of my lefts and rights as I wandered the deserted cobblestone streets. A light rain began. It was more like a warm mist. In a sudden open square I came upon the remains of an antique fair. All but a few of the dealers were packed up.
Just as the mist began to assert itself as a genuine shower, I scuttled into Sergio’s, a small restaurant with a tiny circle of outdoor tables under a wide awning. There were no customers. By Italian customs, I was early for dinner.
I realized that all the day-tripping tourists had boarded their guide-tour buses an hour of so before my arrival. They had “seen” Lucca.
How was dinner in Sergios?
I grew up in Jersey City NJ at a time when the Irish, Polish and Italians were the predominant population. I loved my granddmother’s cooking, but like every other Irish person in town, when you went out to eat, you went to one of the many Italian restaurants. I do not recall there was a single Irish restaurant.
Irish and Polish bars? We had one or more in every block. But we all ate Italian.
That fact is preface to saying Sergio’s served me the most amazing lasagna I have ever had in my entire life, including the years in Boston, Chicago, San Fran and New Orleans.
Lucca is the birthplace and early home of Giacamo (Jacob, we would say in English) Puccini, composer of the most sublime romantic operas. That’s his childhood home to the left of his statue.
If you take the sign behind him at its face value and do the math, you will see that he is also justifiably famous for having lived to 150 years old.
I hear there is something in the local red wine that promotes longevity. I certainly hope so. I consumed enough during my brief visit to add another 15 years to my own life. And I enjoyed every drop of it. Who the hell needs diet and exercise, when there’s all that wonderful wine?
Just as it is impossible to separate the singer from the song, Puccini and Lucca are forever joined. Each is the expression of the other.
The streets of the town are as sinuous and evocative as any of his arias. Narrow streets amble along pleasantly but are suddenly opened up into a bustling square that resemble the opening scene of Act II of in La Boheme.
But unlike the wretched excesses of the Zeffereli version, there are no marching soldiers, no swarm of raucous children, no tranqualized donkey. Ah, but there is a toy vendor. Click on the photo and see.
This is not a Disney version of Puccini’s home. If it were, visitors almost certainly would be confronted at every turn by loudspeakers pumping out Netsum Dorma. Locals dressed as Mimi and Rudolfo would be posing for tourist cameras ( ONLY TWO EUROS!!!). They would vie with a costumed ChoCosan in a lacquered wig and a rayon kimono with a dragon on the back (ONLY ONE EURO!!!!).
No, none of that.
Not when there are the nightly concerts of Puccini’s music in the church where he was baptized and began his composing career. Yes, every night, as part of the festival that celebrates his 15o years
