I write from home after spending most of September in Italy.  We enjoyed a splendid sojourn there but are glad to be home.  I may compare the qualities of the two places and point out advantages and disadvantages, but of course familiarity provides comfort, and I am more comfortable here.

Still, the journey was stimulating, even provocative at a time when Italy and Europe are clearly in crisis.  I hesitated to buy euros until the last minute, not sure what currency would be in play.  We prayed there would be no riots or strikes during our visit, and Italy was peaceful, though in Spain and Greece there were strikes and riots.

Much of the appeal of the land of Italia is the fairy taleish structure of its architecture, ancient yet sturdy.  We wandered for a day across Venice and it seemed a fantastical recreation of a Disneyland village.  It was a world of neat stonework making up canals, bridges, narrow streets, and a hodgepodge of homes and businesses.  There was scarcely room for plants, let alone trees.  The paths formed a huge maze that we navigated by using the many churches as beacons.  The mostly no-longer places of worship are not far apart and each is fronted by a small clattery piazza. 

Using map and compass we zigged and zagged block by block until we found a church.  Confirming its identity we would then make another setting to the next dom, chiesa, or capella along our route.  We could find our objectives from the closest church, and frequently the church was the objective.  In the church of the Frari we found sculpture beyond belief and tombs of both Monteverdi, the man who turned opera from an idea into a miracle, and Canova, a sculpture who created perfect luminescent human figures from local stone.  Even Disney world does not have that!

We had arrived first at Florence.  The two flights went well, but we went through hell at the DeGaul Airport in Paris.  Our flight was late and the passport checkpoint was a mess.  We went through this same line a few years ago.  It was a mess then too. 

Getting through, we sought advice on where to go but could find little.  One airport employee looked at our ticket and said to go to Terminal C.  We found signs for a terminal C5 and followed them onto a shuttle, through a half kilometer of winding halls, down steps, the wrong way down an aisle, back to the stairway and out a door.  There we found a bus, boarded, and standing were carried a few kilometers to what we thought but were not sure was our terminal.  We looked at our watch and wondered if our plane was boarding.  Arriving at the terminal we went through security.  The good news was that at least in Europe one is not subject to the humiliation of having to take your shoes off to board a plane.  After putting ourselves back together we rushed upstairs and reached a point where the passage to the gates split, but we did not have a gate number.  We entered a short line and spoke to another employee.  She said the gate would be posted on the board in the hall.  “It has not yet been posted.”

So, the good news was that our flight was later than we were.  We waited.  Thirsty after the transoceanic flight where bladder control is the highest priority, I left Anne and sought out water.  I found a 16 ounce bottle for 4 Euro 50 and decided we were not that thirsty and returned.  Our flight number came up but we sat almost another two hours while an engine part was replaced.  Remarkably I was happy just that the ship had air-conditioning during the wait.

Arriving at Florence we whizzed though customs and entered the bustle of the airport departure area.  I found a little information booth, was given a map of Firenze, and told where to find the bus into town.  We walked the hundred meters and found what looked like a tour bus packed with people and luggage.  I managed to squeeze our bags into the luggage compartment and we tried to board.  At that point the driver said the bus was full and would depart.  I hastily retrieved our bags and we sat on a bench.  The next bus arrived in twenty minutes.  It was a small bus with no baggage compartments.  We boarded with our bags and paid.  The bus was almost empty as we worked our way to the downtown “Centro” train station. 

We had debated how to reach our lodgings, a small (as it would turn out “unregistered” B&B) about a half mile from the station.  Still feeling energetic we decided to walk.  That, of course, was how little we knew of the confusing windings of streets in Italy.  The map showed intersections as they our in this country with streets that meet at one point.    In Florence, they mostly don’t, and one can’t see very far down any street to see where it is going.  Worse, streets change their name every block. 

Then, after we had just become oriented and started along the correct compass heading, Anne spied a “Bar” and reminded me we had not eaten in several hours.  So, we dragged our bags inside and learned how to order and buy consumables in a bar.  Typically one places the order and pays and then goes to the counter to pick up the items.  This is particularly difficult when one does not really know the name or how to say it of the various types of culinary offerings available.  Still, we managed to eat. 

We marched on and reached the point where I thought we should turn for the bridge over the river that should be a block away.  We couldn’t see the river and no streets seemed to go through.  It turns out that many streets that appear as if they could not possibly go through (mostly because they are only about two meters wide) do in fact go through.  So, we overshot, retreated, and then blindly walked north through a crazy construction zone and found the bridge.  We barely got through but somehow cars and even small trucks were crossing the bridge. 

Half way across we stopped to admire the strange place we were at.  The crooked intertwined edifices of Florence surrounded us except over the broad walled in river.  Grass banks on either side gave promise of birdlife, and a block away on one side was the Old Bridge of Florence.  This peculiar arched bridge is a jewelry shopping center.  Many fortunes of gems are peddled there from shops that look like old flour boxes when shuttered up for the night.  The bridge has that old world charm.  It is sound, yet to use a furniture marketing term, highly distressed.  Its rickety-looking arches, steep rises to the center, and the shops on the top give it the look of an ancient sailing vessel.  Yes it is marvelous.  So marvelous that in 1944 some German general didn’t have the heart to blow it up with all the other bridges of Florence.  Instead he blew a huge hole in the road to the bridge (and much of the neighborhood on that side of the bridge) so that we might stand on that day and see it.  Funny, but we can give him only grudging thanks for that.

We walk another long block and find our address but don’t know where to go.  Luckily the door was open because of workmen and someone told us which floor to go to.  We knocked and a lovely young woman answered.  She wondered how we got in.  Turns out the procedure is to arrive and call on the phone.  She briefed us and gave us keys to our bedroom, the apartment (that we would share with others,) and the door to the building. 

I was ready to unpack and rest, but the phone rings and Anne learns that her sister is only a block away.  We meet at the famous, but frankly rather poorly maintained Baboli Gardens.  They lie on the slope between a previous owner’s palace on the river flat and his fortress on the top of the bluff.  We had a report that some birds inhabit the park and brought our binoculars though the birds are best found first thing in the morning before the tourists pour in. 

Still, we found Mark and Mary Helen and enjoyed the comfort of family in a strange and fascinating city.  We dined outdoors with them in a tiny piazza and were entertained watching cars arrive, attempt a turn, then back up to realign, and finally complete the desired maneuver.  I concluded that driving would not be much fun in Italy.

Indeed it is not.  Italians hate driving.  They view it in mission terms and do their best to make trips as short as possible.  This is difficult because the roads are so narrow and winding that one must pull in the sides to get through them.  Drivers go as fast as the accelerator will allow except they must slow down for the automatic speed traps in every town.  Of course they know exactly where each speed monitor is located and honk and tail gate furiously at stupid Americans who, knowing there is a speed trap ahead but not where, slow to the speed limit upon entering the town limits. 

Italians pass anywhere, so it is no surprise when driving to see, typically upon rounding a corner, two cars approaching in a section where there is scarcely room for two cars.  You take to the shoulder and so does the car approaching that is being passed.  The car in the middle zips through, and you cease to wonder why there are so many sanctuaries perched along the the roadway.  Italians need someone to pray to even if they don’t go to church. 

The style of driving in Italy is different.  Here I keep to the centerline.  There I quickly learned that that is for the motorcycles.  They appear and pass in an instant.  You don’t see them coming from behind.  You hear as they roar past you, pausing only if a large truck is approaching.  So you keep right to let them go, moving left only for bicycles and motor scooters which own the right shoulder and the right part of the lane if there is none. 

At home I accelerate and brake slowly to conserve fuel.  One goes to hell for that in Italy.  One guns the motor and screeches to a stop.  One does not slow down to pass a truck but sweeps by it knowing that if someone comes the other way he will take to the shoulder.  Of course if two cars, two motorcycles, and a motor scooter or bicycle all happen to reach the same point of the road at the same time, somebody is going down.  My recommendation is not to ride a scooter or bicycle in Europe.  The pictures in the newspaper everyday are not pretty! 

But, I am sidetracked.  We enjoyed a dreamlike visit to Florence.  We were not jet-lagged having mostly adjusted our sleep/wake cycle before leaving the U.S.A.  There is an advantage to being retired.  I am jet-lagged now.  More on that later.  We were charmed by the great squares and art despite the mobs of tourists and the grubby streets and worn, mostly unpainted buildings. 

We found the Dom (cathedral) on the first evening when looking after dinner for where to buy tickets to see the statue of David.  We had overlooked and passed by the church where the ticket booth was supposed to be - it was closed anyway - and stepped onto another piazza to encounter a monstrous, blocky, white marble church.  It is so big, so ornate, so overworked, and so over the top in so many ways that it is crazy.  One cannot conceive that one would build such a thing, and yet there it is.  I can think of multiple reasons why it should not have been built, the first being cost.  Clearly the Italians today cannot afford to maintain it.  About half the outside is filthy.  But it is an extraordinarily astounding monstrosity.  I am not sure I would want it in my home town, but I am sure that any one of the hundreds of sculpted panels that grace its sides would be a treasure for any one’s home town. 

It was late and time to return to the apartment and go to bed, but instead we took probably an hour to walk around the giant church.  We looked at it and its separate tower from all angles.  We also watched the people around it, those like us who came to see it and local people, vendors, youths, beggars, and simply residents who like us felt its pull. 

We finally left it and crossed the Old Bridge finding the shops all boarded up and looking like an undistinguished merchant pier.  We slept well.

On day two we walked passed the Dom and enjoyed seeing it again, but I commented that I was glad to have first seen it at night when it seemed to glow in the half darkness.  We reached the gallery of the academy early, but not having obtained tickets in advance as planned (instead having spent time with family) we waited perhaps an hour before achieving entry.  The small museum was wonderful even without the David, but that sculpture is another art wonder of the world.  The piece reflects so perfectly on the beauty of the human form that the artist’s failure to cover the genitalia must be overlooked even by the most puritan among us. 

In the afternoon we joined Norbert and Susan to tour the great collection of Italian art at the Uffizi Gallery.  I always feel a bit of sadness at visiting such a great museum that I will probably never return to and must find a path to see the most significant of its treasures before exhaustion ends the endeavor.  One pauses in front of a work that seizes your spirit and takes to a place it has never been;  then you move on to another that also takes possession of your soul.  You know there are more great pieces to see but after a few hours your feet hurt too much, your stomach is making demands, and your spirit is exhausted too.  That is the way it is, but even walking out you know you have seen things that are greater than the reproductions you may witness again later (and have already witnessed before) in books and on film.  You know you are blessed to have seen them.

We enjoyed a lovely dinner with Norbert and Susan on our second and last evening in Florence and then rested well.  We wandered the streets and visited more sights the next morning before going for our rental car.  That turned into a travel adventure.  We walked and found lunch along the way.  Arriving I began the rental process, and while waiting for the computer I told the attendant that we wanted to drive the car to our lodgings to pick up our luggage.  He said we couldn’t.  It was in a “residential area” and we would be ticketed if we drove there.  I said, “no,” and he said, “yes.”

So we walked back and called a taxi.  We returned to the car rental and he gave us a map to go out of town and to come back in on our return.  I began driving in Italy in downtown Florence.  The drive was exciting but uneventful.  I learned to drive fast and keep right.  I thanked God and the GPS Europe chip we had obtained that we found our way to the villa in the vineyards near Panzano in Chianti south of Florence. 

We had to follow written directions for the last few kilometers being told the GPS would not work.  The directions were clear but the roadway was ugly with limestone pinnacles, loose stone, and gullies.  I wondered if the rental had a spare tire and did not want to break the oil pan.  “Was this the right way?”  It was.  We reached the “villa,” an old olive oil squeezing barn that had been converted into accommodations for about a dozen people.  We joined our group of eleven family and friends for nine days of fun in Tuscany.  The awful road was a small price to pay.  There were grapevines on the hill across the gravel road and scrubby woods along the ravine below and the mountaintop across the way.  The temperature was perfect.

We enjoyed nine nights there visiting two wine festivals, one in Greve and the other in our Panzano, numerous other little towns, vineyards, fortresses, vineyards, abbeys, and gardens.  Too much to write of in one blog but all charming.  All of the chianti classico and reserva was great.  My taste is wine and household economy is such that I usually elect not to buy it, but we enjoyed it greatly in the place of its production.  At the festivals they provided glasses with which to sample.  We ended up with three that Anne wanted to bring home.  One almost made it but broke during the flight home.  Anne was a bit heartbroken.  Air travel today is not for the fragile, baggage or passengers.

It was a sad day when the group broke up.  We said our good byes and began a long drive north to the Po River Valley near Venice.  We  lodged at a rural B&B among the farms near the village of Mesola.  There we found some birds including splendid Old World flamingoes, but the birding was tough and the mosquitoes vicious.  I suspect that birds that live in or migrate across Italy and north Africa have good reason, at the appearance of people, to move so as to have something between them and the people and to fly far away if the people persist.  The birds did this consistently and with great skill, frequently frustrating these birders.  Still we found and saw many new birds. 

I mentioned our tour of Venice.  On that day we drove to the smaller but also charming town of Chioggia, parked, and took a passenger ferry to the magic city.  Along the way we passed the famous barrier island and home of the wealthy called Lido.  The weather was perfect on the day we choose, but it was the time of the New Moon and we arrived as high tide approached.  The tide was especially high for September and flooded the famous Duke’s square.  This may give heart to those believing that global warming is raising the sea level, but it was a simple nuisance to those visiting the town.  Still, we avoided the flood and wandered pleasantly about.  We left at low tide and the square was then dry.  We understand that in December the tide floods to a meter deep.  Some day they will have to give up this city.  The Italians already have.  They can’t afford to live there.

Along the way we learned the art of dining in Italy.  Usually we were provided breakfast with our lodging.  This varied, the best being at a hotel at Lake Garda with offerings of cereal, fruit, yogurt, eggs to boil, bread, pie, cheese, ham, coffee and juices.  Most were simpler but adequate.  We most enjoyed the “self service” breakfast in Florence which was there at dawn.  At most stops we had to wait until eight o’clock for the meal which was long after our rising. 

Sometimes we took our large meal at Noon, other times in the evening.  Many restaurants are closed through the afternoon and until 7:30.  That was late for us, so often we bought or prepared sandwiches (panini) for supper.   At other times we took the sandwich for lunch and stayed up for supper. 

The first time out we each ordered a dinner.  That was too much.  Most establishments offered antipasto, first and second courses, and desert.  We found ordering a salad or other appetizer and one first and second course was more than enough for the two of us.  Pasta, polenta, risotto, and, yes, pizza were common foods, but beef and potatoes are also common in northern Italy.  We ate well, but I tired a bit of the ever present too salty and greasy pursutto in sandwiches.  The pasta in all its forms was excellent as were the salads.

From the Po Valley we drove north into the heart of the Dolomite Range of the Alps and stayed at Cadore, the place from where my mother’s family migrated to the United States at the end of the 1910’s.  We found no DeBiasio’s but found Cilliotas common and a few Cortes.  We found almost no one who could speak English and were sorely pressed to learn much of the community.  I did find one lady, the daughter of a Cilliota who figured we are cousins.  Anne and I walked all over the still small town of Valle di Cadore and visited its three ancient churches.  I enjoyed the sense of being in the homeland of my grandfather in this high valley among big mountains.  We also hiked to the top of a moderately high ridge between two towering ones to embrace the lines of great mountains on either side.

From Cadore we drove to Bolzano on the so called Great Dolomite Road.  The weather was poor so we missed the long views, but the road was plenty exciting.  In the middle we found the road closed to allow bicyclists to loop across four high passes on that Sunday.  We parked, drank a beer, and ate a pizza.  The road opened and we continued to our lodging in the small town of Castelroth.  There they speak mostly German. 

My mind became twisted trying to remember my German and I created bizarre sentences mixing Deutche, Italiano, and English.  We managed none the less to make our way.  Yes, of course we visited the “ice man” in his museum in Bolzano.  This Austrian style city is enormously different from Florence.  We relished the fine rye and pumpernickel bread and Austrian style sausage.  We also hiked on a plateau in the Alps.  The bus ride and then our auto drive from Castelroth to Bolzano was somewhat terrifying.  The road was, as usual narrow and windy, but here the wall of the mountain fell away from the road.  From inside the bus it seemed we were flying!  The bus had to back up only once when meeting another at a narrow spot.

From Bolzano we drove south to our last tour stop at Lake Leddro near the large finger Lake Garda.  We lunched at Riva della Garda coming in and enjoyed the enchanting lakescape there dining along the water.

The next day we shunned motor vehicles and walked around the much smaller Lake Leddro and through the various small ancient towns around it.  On our second day there we drove to a high point in the Alps, at Madonna di Campiglio with plans to take a gondola ride to the snow fields.  This plan was spoiled by finding that the lifts there run only on weekends in September.  Instead, we hiked to a refugio at a meadow by a small glacial lake halfway to the top.  We enjoyed the walk and flushed a hazel grouse along the way.  

Our return to Florence was uneventful except for the terror in trying to find a way to the car rental agency among the towns twisted roads.  We were very happy to turn in the smooth little Volkswagen Polo.  We caught a bus back to the high rise hotel near the airport.  There we were disappointed to find no air conditioning because “it was past the season for Florence.”  We left the windows open and slept poorly from the highway noise.  We awoke before dawn and took a taxi to the airport.  We would not be home for twenty-six hours and pulled into our driveway after midnight.  Our flight from Rome was delayed - we never found out why the plane arrived late - and missed our flight from New York to Philadelphia.  Delta found us another, but we were up much too late. 

A few kaydidids were singing at our house and the moon was bright over Pennsylvania.  Our bed had just the right feel.  Still, for some reason we woke up a four a.m.  Go figure.