Listen to the Violins

Sunday, June 9

Yoyi woke up with a cold she had been developing since the previous day.  It made her uncomfortable and wore her out a bit, but she was not really bedridden. So, while we were laid back in Verona yesterday, at least we weren't laid up today.

Gianlucca's friends had visited the previous evening and had brought him several kilos of cherries.  Thus, besides the usual, delicious croissants and capuccino for breakfast, we had a huge bowl of cherries.  After breakfast, as we were preparing to leave, Gianlucca gave us a large bag of cherries to take with us.

After our taxi ride to the train station, when we tried to pay for our tickets, I discovered that I didn't have my credit card.   I concluded that I had failed to pick it up the previous evening at the restaurant.  Luckily, I had my trusty cell phone, which I had barely used to this point, and I called Gianlucca.  I requested that he call the restaurant and ask if I had left the card there, and the restaurant confirmed that I had.  I asked him to request that the restaurant destroy the card.  In the meantime I trusted that they would do so, since I would need the card to buy our train tickets, and did not want to cancel the card.  (Does this start to sound like an email scam?)

Our itinerary for this last day in Italy was to be convoluted.  We took the train to Milan, and we took a taxi to carry our bags to our hotel, where we left them.  Then we walked back to the stazzione and took the train back to Cremona, the town where all the great violin-makers worked in the 16th and 17th Century.

Midway in our trip, the train stopped and couldn't proceed until a disabled train ahead was removed from the tracks.  During the half-hour delay, we chatted with a young fellow in our car who was traveling to promote a book he had written.  He loved practicing English with us; he also could speak French, Portuguese, Polish and some other languages.

When we arrived in Cremona, we exited the train station, and I saw a young fellow carrying a violin.  I hailed him in Italian and he answered me in perfect British English.  He was nice enough to direct us to the Stradivarius Museum and to talk to us a little about why a Brit would live in Cremona.  His name is Nick Robinson; google him and you'll find some very enjoyable concert videos.

Turns out that he had directed us to the concert hall, with a couple of impressive metal sculptures in front.  We walked back towards the town center, where we found the Palazzo Comunale, with the visitors' bureau and the town's exhibit of stringed instruments.

The exhibit, housed in a single, not very large room, contained Amati and Stradivarious violins and Celli.  The staff said that the instruments are taken out every morning, except weekends, and played for the public.  It was Sunday.

Besides violins, Cremona is also known for its turrones, and we bought several to bring home.  Italian turrones are softer than those familiar to us in the States.

Our next stop was the Stradivarius Museum, which displayed not only a large number of Stradivarius, Amati, and Guarneri instruments, but also some contemporaries' work.  In addition, there were displays showing the manufacture of violins and a lot of artwork related to stringed instruments.  There was a special exhibit of multi-media art with a violin theme.  Stay tuned (ha, ha) for our slide show to see more of the artwork.

There are still many violin-makers in Cremona, but one of the few scheduling mistakes I made in planning this trip was to land us in Cremona on a Sunday, when shops are closed.

We took the train back to Milan and had a quick dinner so that we finish early.  Our flight out the next morning required us to get to the train station to catch the airport shuttle bus at 6:30.

Laid back in Verona

Saturday, June 8

We spent a leisurely breakfast chatting with other American guests, served by Gianlucca,  When the Americans left, we continued talking with our host.

Today we walked to the river, which offers protection to the ancient town, as the city lies in a sharp, reverse bend of the river.  The castelvecchio (old castle) abuts the river and has a fortified bridge across the river, as well as a drawbridge and moat -- to protect it from the citizens, no doubt.  The castle stands in the narrow neck of land where the river almost bends back on itself.

The castle contains a museum that displays medieval art and also shows off the interior of the ancient castle.  Yoyi decided to sit comfortably in the courtyard while I visited the museum.  I also climbed up to the ramparts near the top of the castle walls.

From there we walked back to the town center, passing a Roman arch and eventually entering the center through a Roman gateway -- the triumphal arch.  While we were in the past, we visited the 1st Century Roman theater.  They were setting up for a concert for that evening.

While wandering around, we got into conversation with a middle-aged shopkeeper, who was a pharmacist by training.  We learned from him of a shop in Florence that it would have been fun to visit.  The Officina Profuma Farmaceutica di Santa maria Novella has been making medicines, soaps, and fragrances from a wide variety of plants and animals since the height of Florentine culture. We sampled an acacia product that was very nice.  Factory and store are located in the courtyard of the Santa Maria Novella church, right across from the train station and 3 blocks from our hotel in Florence.  And it's free!  Next trip.

We had been on the go and it was nearly 2:00, and now we were in a bind.  We couldn't find any restaurant that was still serving lunch.  Especially in small towns, the eating establishments, as well as other stores adhere to more limited schedules and often even close for a long after-lunch break.  Even the gelato store we planned to visit was closed!  We finally had to settle for snacks for lunch, sitting on the patio overlooking a park.

Yoyi was sniffling and run down, so we went back to the B&B to rest.

We asked Gianlucca for restaurant recommendations for the evening.  Since it was still early we sat on the square across the street and watched the elderly neighbors walk around and wheel around, and the little children playing with each other, supervised by caretakers, mothers, and fathers, while we read and did crosswords.

We ended up at an eating establishment where we sat outside right at the edge of the river.  I looked for a safe local dish, and found one with large smoked sardines (sardone) served with boiled potatoes.  Very tasty.

After our walk back to the neighborhood, we sat outside until it got dark before going back to our room.  Right on the square there was an example of local culinary preferences.  Many (if not most) butchers in the North of Italy offer not only beef, but horse meat and donkey meat, too.

We turned in early, but Yoyi couldn't sleep for her sore throat.

Coming to Verona

Friday, June 7

We walked (comfortably, as there were no stairs; see previous day) to the vaporetto.  (Truth be told, the steps in the B&B from our room down to street level were sufficiently difficult to make up for it.)

We caught the 11:00 train for Verona.  This train had some of the oldest wagons of all the trains we had taken.  We looked for a car that appeared to be comfortable and claimed our seats.

Quiz: what was I supposed to do before boarding the train?  (Keep reading for the answer, if you haven't been paying attention and don't know.)

We settled in to enjoy the scenery and prepare to visit Verona.  After it was too late I discovered that -- yet again -- I had forgotten to validate my ticket on the platform.  Off I went through the train to find the conductor to avoid the fine.  If the air conditioning had not failed on this train trip, it would have been as smooth as our other trips -- if considerably more crowded.

Musing on our visit so far we came to the recognition that after a day or two in each location we had mastered an impressive set of arcane skills -- skills that we would probably never have to apply again in our lives:
 - the streetcar network in Milan
 - the winding streets in Siena
 - the electric mini-bus in Florence
 - the vaporetti in Venice
 - the trains, including reading the schedules and remembering to validate the ticket

Our taxi ride took us to the nicest B&B of our journey.  Gianlucca, the proprietor, has turned his condo into a business, maintaining a VERY clean and well-situated establishment.  Our room was called "Paris."  We learned from Gianlucca that the agency that oversees guest houses requires (why?) that the rooms be thematically named.  This B&B used place names, and the artwork inside the rooms related to the location.  In Venice we had been in the Puccini room, while other rooms were named for other composers.

The B&B was situated on a pretty, landscaped city square where we were puzzled to see a large number of elderly people on the park benches or walking around.  At first we thought that their companions might be their adult children, but we soon concluded that they were, for the most part, caretakers.

After a picnic, we walked into the city center, about 1 km.  The many tree-lined streets outside the city center have large homes, mostly from the 19th century.  It is a good town for strolling.

Street performers and artists are numerous in all the tourist areas.  Aside from the standard mime

acts, such as bicycle riders, Charlie Chaplin, and other famous personalities from film and history, we saw people dressed like famous statues or paintings, especially in Florence.  In Verona we saw people dressed as mummies.  By far the most impressive act was a man seated on the ground apparently -- using only one hand -- holding up his partner. a woman seated above him, with nothing more than a stick held in his hand.  One of us (not me) figured out the physics of this little act.  I have to say: "very clever" to have devised it and to have figured it out.

While we strolled through the city center, we passed the synagogue to make sure that we knew its location, since we planned to attend serviced this evening.

The town is not hectic like the tourist cities.  It is pleasant and relatively small and easy to negotiate.  The primarily renaissance city center has structures from every era from the Roman Empire to the 21st Century.  We visited the Arena di Verona first.  This, and a couple of other structures are vestiges of the Roman period.  The Arena is in active use, with music and theater productions on a regular schedule.  The city gates are also Roman.

The best known attraction in Verona is the house of Juliet -- where Romeo supposedly saw his love on the balcony.  There really was a family in Verona that feuded with another family, and possibly even threatened to marry across familial lines.  In any event, the house we visited was owned by one of the families, and the family name is so similar to the name in the story that just about everyone assumes that it is Juliet's house.  It must be true, since I saw my love on the balcony.

Too bad that the star-crossed lovers were from warring families.  I can see how this lovely little town engenders l'amore.  For our part, we overcame our warring families long ago; the Ashkenazim get along fine with the Sephardim.  What could be better than gefillte fish followed by arroz con pollo?

After walking a lot, and having our daily gelato, we ambled back to the B&B and dressed for shul.  We walked to the synagogue (about a km or so), and we were among the first ones there.  (Is that unusual??)  The building was constructed in the mid-19th Century, but finishing touches were not made until 1929, just about when Mussolini began his harassment of Jews in Italy.

They warmly greeted us, and the first person to engage us in conversation was a conversion candidate.  In a community of about 50 Jewish families, what would inspire a Catholic to become Jewish?  It is unbelievably difficult to be a Jew in places like small-town Italy.  Soon another American couple arrived, as well as the rest of the regulars.

They set up a mechitza down the middle of the room, as the womens' gallery is no longer in use.  Eventually they reached a minyan, and began the service, led entirely by the rabbi.  The granite and marble building with its cavernous interior echoed the davening to the extent that it was nearly impossible to follow without an intimate familiarity with the service.

In addition, the orthodox siddur had only Hebrew -- not a single word of Italian, English, or any other language.  Thus, one had to read the instructions indicating what to include or exclude and what page followed in Hebrew.  Most of the congregation was lost, and simply listened to the rabbi.

The seats were not made for comfort.  There is an old Yiddish expression "es ist schwer zu sei a Yid" (It's hard to be a Jew), but I didn't know that the saying applied to the seats in shul.

I understood fewer than 10 words of the rabbi's dvar, but we all smiled and pretended.  I did understand that kiddush was sponsored by someone celebrating a first anniversary.  We met the young American and his Italian wife as well as her parents at the oneg.  He offered to show us and recommend some restaurants, and we took him up on his offer.  We went to dinner with the Americans, Michael and Peggy from Sonoma, CA.

At dinner I took another chance and ordered stuffed zucchini blossoms.  With melted cheese inside, the blossoms were interesting, but didn't have a particularly interesting flavor.  After a pleasant, several hour dinner, we parted company and walked back to our B&B at about 11:00.

Sightseeing while Half Asleep

Thursday, June 6

Last night sleep was not in the picture.  Sleeping with the windows open in an Italian city, especially in a quiet neighborhood, is a contradiction in terms.  For starters, the apartment directly across the narrow street had a dinner party until 1:30 AM.  Then shortly after they gave up, someone rang the bell on our B&B.  The (off-campus) manager answered, ticked off that someone called him so late at night.  The person and her friend needed a place to stay for the night, being lost, and schlepping their suitcases around.  The owner wouldn't admit them, pleading "no vacancy," and couldn't anyhow since he was physically elsewhere in the city.  The discussion went on and off over an hour until they went away.  We finally decided that closed windows to block the noise would be better than open windows with ventilation.

The next morning we couldn't drag ourselves out of bed until 9:30.  We demanded a controller for the air conditioning, which is normally not turned on until at least July. Tonight we sleep with the windows closed.

Today we are going to the island of Murano, where the famous glass is manufactured.  Glass making was a dangerous industry, with hot furnaces that could cause disastrous fires.  The Venetians moved the threat to a remote island in the bay to protect the densely populated city.

The doors to some of the workshops stand open so that you can see the artisans and the banks of furnaces where they work.  At arts and crafts shows in the US you occasionally get to see glass-

blowers fashioning small trinkets.  On Murano, we saw the artisans heft 20 and 30 lb. globs of molten glass into and out of the ovens and, working in tandem with others, meld pieces together into a meaningful figure.

The glass ends up as a two-foot tall violin or as a half-inch long insect.  Or a piece of fruit or a piece of wrapped candy.  One display was an entire baroque orchestra, dressed in tails, with instruments and sheet music.  Perhaps the cutest set we saw in a shop in the ghetto.  In a chess set made of Murano glass characters the Ashkenazim faced off against the Sefardim.

When we got back to Piazza San Marco in the afternoon, after lunch in a small restaurant on the waterfront, we noticed that there was no line in front of the cathedral, so we went in.  The gilded mosaics are almost too much to comprehend.

The Venetians build churches in gratitude to Gd for ending the plague.  They were very grateful.  You can stand at the portal of just about any of the nearly uncountable churches in Venice and practically spit on the next church.  You cannot turn a full 360° pivot in the city of Venice without casting your eyes on a church.

After our daily gelato, we made our way to the stazzione to purchase our ticket for tomorrows trip out of Venice to Verona.  For dinner we stopped in a little restaurant on the way to our B&B, and I had a dish called "sardine col saon."  It was a delicious cold dish of marinated sardines, onions, white raisins, and pignolia nuts. 

By the way, please note that my dinner companion is drinking a glass of wine.  How often do you see that??!!

While it is seldom the case that the food we eat while traveling is excellent, it is occasionally true that it is memorable.  We eat or drink things on our travels that we can't get at home. 

In this particular restaurant -- similar to many -- there was a drink tap with its 5 drink selections.  Besides Coke, the other four taps were: a bubbly wine, a Venetian Cabernet, a beer, and another soft drink.

After depositing my companion at the B&B, I successfully explored our neighborhood to find a route to the vaporetto that didn't required climbing steps.  I found an alley that led to a walkway that mounted two large pedestrian bridges -- but both bridges had ramps.  That's how we'll walk tomorrow.

Getting Around in Venezia

Wednesday, June 5

After breakfast in the room we were out and about.  Our initial plan was to visit the Basilica de San Marco, the main cathedral of Venice.  We had bought unlimited rides on the Vaporetto, and took the boat to the Piazza San Marco.  Each vaporetto ride is 7€. A 2-day (48-hour) pass is 30€. While our hellovenezia car was not worth it, we got value from our boat pass. The VeneziaCard did not have the advantages of the other cities' tourist card, like priority admission.

The line to visit the Basilica was hundreds of people long.  Early in the morning.  Before the height of the tourist season.  It was now that we discovered our disappointment with having bought the visitor's card.  The cathedral was not high on our priority list, so we proceeded to our next destination.

The Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace) had almost no line, and has considerably greater historical and artistic value.  Tintoretto's Paradiso may be found in the Palazzo.  It is the largest oil painting in the world at 23' x 75'.  We visited the New Prison and crossed the Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs) to get to the prison. 

More impressive to me than the art, either its dimensions or its quality, is that the architects of the time could build palaces with rooms with ceilings that span more than 80 feet without central support.  Remember: there is no availability of steel I-beams.   Even if they cut huge pine trees, how could they support such a ceiling??  I am still dumfounded!

After a picnic lunch, we took the vaporetto to the Jewish Ghetto.  In the Ghetto we ran across a nursery school: Scuola Materna Comunale F. Rafalovich Comparetti.  Rafalovich is the name of my mother's father, before he shortened it upon immigrating to the US from Poland.

In the ghetto, the guided tour took us through the three main renaissance synagogues of the neighborhood.  While not in good condition, they were all beautiful in their own way.  There are few local Jews, and services are held only once a week.  Different synagogues are open for the services at different times of year, primarily for tourists and transients.  Here, again, no photos were permitted.  Of course, there is also a Chabad house open for business in the ghetto.

In one of the synagogues, the walls had a small oil painting at the capital of each column; the non-Jewish artist had also decorated one of the important churches.  The paintings of pivotal biblical events differed considerably from those we saw in museums and in churches.  Whereas, for example, the splitting of the Red Sea in a church would show Moses in flowing robes, the myriad Israelites marching into the sea, and the Egyptian chariots being swept under by the turbulent water,  the painting in the synagogue showed only the turbulent sea with a dry path cut through it and a forearm, presumably of Moses, with a staff stretched out over the background.  "Graven images" are not permitted in Judaism.  A picture of Moses would not be found in such a synagogue.

We took the vaporetto back to San Marco, where we had our obligatory daily gelato.  After some souvenir shopping, we made our way to a restaurant for dinner, and then -- by way of vaporetto -- back to the B&B.

Firenze wrap-up and the Freccia

Tuesday, June 4

There's a lot more to see and do in Florence, but we'll have to leave something for our next trip, since later today we go to Venice.

In the morning, however, we still must see a few very important sites; therefore we had our yummy breakfast as early as our fatigued bodies could manage, and we then packed our luggage.  We made arrangements to check out a little after the standard hour.

We walked to the Cappelle Medici.  The new sacristy was designed by Michelangelo, and he decorated the Medici tombs with remarkable sculptures.  The frequent observation is that the reclining figures of Night and Day appear as though they will slide off, and the figures Dawn and Dusk look like they are in the process of sliding off.

There are a couple of renaissance homes that have been maintained for tourists.  I wanted very much to see a residence of somebody who was not a noble family.  Of course, anyone who could afford to build (or purchase) such a home was relatively wealthy -- perhaps a merchant or a major land owner.  We visited the Palazzo Davanzati, walking there from the Medici Chapel.  The building is a 14th century palace furnished much as it would have been when the family was in residence -- which means pretty austere, given the obvious wealth of the family.

In the kitchen we saw a pasta maker and a rotisserie that used a weight and cables to turn the spit for the duration of the roasting process.  Many of the bedrooms had adjacent bathrooms, complete with tub and toilet (a hole in a bench with a wooden cover).  Pulleys and buckets hauled water from the well on the ground-floor up to the upper floors of this 4-story palace.  Many of the walls were painted with thematic characters, animals, or plants, such as peacocks, parrots, and historical events, and some were fresco.  Many walls had ancient graffiti on them.  One of the residents had either been a government official or had rented a floor to a tax office, and tax-related calculations, drawings of buildings, and other themes were scrawled on some of the walls.

We picked up our luggage at the hotel, rested a half hour, and walked the 3 blocks to the stazzione.  We ate lunch in what was essentially a food court in the train station, where we hung out until our train was ready to board.  Oh, yeah; don't forget to validate the ticket.

We had taken regionales up to this point, in part because they are very inexpensive, and the distances have been so short, and in part because we wanted to enjoy the train ride and the countryside.  But today we were to travel much farther, so we took a fast train.  The Italian "arrow" trains are the Frecciabianco (white arrow), Frecciargento (silver arrow), and Frecciarossa (red arrow), in order of increasing velocity.  We took the Argento to Venice. 

Arriving in Venice at 4:30, we went to the tourist office and bought our Venice Card.  Then we went to the Grand Canal, which passes right in front of the stazzione and began to follow the directions sent to me by the bed and breakfast.  We bought a ticket and stepped out onto the floating pier to wait for the Vaporetto.  We boarded the appropriate boat and enjoyed the ride to our designated stop.  Along the way we saw all sorts of beautiful buildings from every historical period from the middle ages to the middle 20th century.

While there is a dearth of handicap access in Italy in general, there is almost none in Venice.  The only mode of transport is nautical -- no cars or motor scooters, period. 

Doesn't even pay to have a bicycle.  Wherever you walk, you can't progress more than a few hundred feet before reaching a canal, which must be crossed on an arched bridge, with steps up on one side and steps down on the other.

Following the B&B's instructions on how to walk from the Vaporetto, we progressed through one narrow street after another and over one such bridge after another until we had gone not much farther than 500 meters, but what a workout we had, schlepping the luggage over the bridges.

We found the B&B at the end of a quiet alley, and the key was left for us at the front desk, to which we gained access by ringing the bell and identifying ourselves.  The manager was not at the hotel.  Each room had a composer's name; ours was Puccini.

We freshened up and went out for dinner, eating at a restaurant on one of the canals.  Afterwards we strolled around town from piazza to piazza, admiring the setting as well as the beautiful -- sometimes crumbling -- old buildings.  After another full day, we made our way back to the hotel at 9:00.

Firenze -- Dessert

Monday, June 3

After breakfast we waited for the bus at the corner, but it never came; so we walked to the vicinity of the cathedral and visited the Museo dell' Opera del Duomo, stopping at a small outdoor market on the way.

This museum is where the treasures from the Duomo have been kept, especially since the destructive floods of 1966, but the museum has been open for over a century.  Copies of the artwork may be seen in and on the duomo.  In the museum one sees the original panels from the baptistry doors by Ghiberti, the choir loft reliefs as well as a Mary Magdelaine by Donatello, and a pieta (not THE pieta) by Michelangelo.  The pieta was finished by another artist, and even the untrained eye can detect the difference in artistry.

There was a mosaic tablet displayed in which the metal mosaic pieces are so small, there was a magnifying glass mounted in front of the piece so that the workmanship could be detected.  In the same room, the huge silver crucifix from the main altar is on display.  Its restoration, as well as I could understand the Italian, was "generously" underwritten by Atlanta's High Museum of Art.

We walked to the main synagogue, where we were not permitted even to carry our camera into the building.  The synagogue building dates from 1874, and is in a moorish style, with a large dome.  The museum houses artifacts, primarily donated by Jews of Florence.  The sanctuary is beautifully decorated with candelabras, and has an ornate bima and ark.  The floor is of inlaid marble.  Depending on the source, there are between 900 and 1400 Jews in Florence -- not families, but individuals.  The preschool on the premises has about 20 children enrolled.

Our next stop was the Mercato di Sant' Ambrogio.  There was a permanent indoor section as well as an outdoor market, all open daily.  Indoors were the butchers, dairies, bakeries, fish mongers, and delicatessens.  There were also a couple of trattoria.

One of the small gems of this day's adventures was the Casa Buonaroti.  While Michelangelo never lived in the house, his nephew -- who owned the house -- had a son who turned it into a gallery.  Among several works by the master, two that stand out in the collection are the Madonna of the Steps and the Battle of the Centaurs, both sculpted in relief when Michelangelo was 15 years old.  What an experience to see work completed at that age, already demonstrating the artistic talents that would make him one of the greatest artists of all time.

It started to rain as we left the Casa Buonaroti, so we ducked into a cafe and shared a panino for lunch.  By the time we were finished, so was the rain. 

We took the bus to the huge San Lorenzo market, where I dropped Yoyi while I went back to the Duomo, which we had not yet visited.  While there, I climbed the 400+ steps to the top of the campanile (bell tower).  There weren't many people over 40 climbing the tower.  On the way down I ran into yet another couple with whom we are acquainted.  We chatted a few minutes and went our own ways.

When Yoyi and I met up again at the market, we packed up all the souvenirs she had purchased and took the bus back to the hotel to drop off the loot.  On the way, we stopped at a grocery to buy farfalle pasta manufactured in the colors of the Italian flag; what a souvenir.  By this time in the day, we are ready for an hour's rest.

After dinner we stopped to get a chocolate waffle: two waffles with nutella between them, dripping down your arm.  Then we went to the stazione to buy tomorrow's train ticket.  While at the stazione we tried to pick up the wi-fi to communicate with Atlanta, but unsuccessfully.

Firenza, the meat and potatoes

Sunday, June 2

In a city like Florence, there is no way that human being can see all the art in a single visit.  One museum is more important and more impressive than the next.  A visit to a single museum like the Uffizi could be an entire semester's art history course at the university.  Luckily we had a couple of advantages on our tour.

1. It was late May / early June and only a million tourists had shown up so far.  Therefore, the crowds in the cathedrals and museums were merely crushing but not suffocating.
2. We bought the various tourist cards, like the FirenzeCard, which affords priority admission to the venues.  What a pleasure to walk up to the special priority entrance while bunches of people wait in line for their turn.

After breakfast this morning we headed to the Galleria dell' Accademia.  This is a small museum with some of the blockbuster sculptures from Renaissance Florence.  Here stands the origianal David by Michelangelo.  It is absolutely humbling to stand before that statue.  As if that weren't enough, the series of unfinished Priggioni (prisoners but usually called the slaves) line the hall leading up to the David.  Michelangelo was able to depict the raw power of the struggle of the priggioni against the marble rock from which they are escaping. 

Then, besides those great works, there were other sculptures that have their own pages and chapters devoted to them in art history tomes.  Early musical instruments, including an Amati Cello and some wind and string instruments that one would never see today, were exhibited in a section of the Accademia.  Finally, entire rooms were devoted to the art of plaster casting -- how plaster copies and originals are made.  No photos are permitted in the Accademia; so we can't prove that we were ever there.  When we came out, the line was down the street and around the corner -- several hundred people waiting to get in.

We took the bus to a stop near the Ponte Vecchio and walked across the Arno River on the old bridge.  During the Renaissance, the bridge was lined with shopkeepers selling their wares.  Still is, but exclusively jewelers.  In the middle of the bridge we came upon a peculiar phenomenon.  The little fence around a monument in the middle of the bridge was festooned with hundreds of padlocks.  What's going on here?

From there we went to the Pitti Palace which was purchased from the Pitti family by the Medicis in the 16th century.  We visited the museums in the palace as well as the living quarters, which remain much as they were at the time of the Medicis -- tapestries, huge carpets, full-wall paintings and frescoes, paintings by Titian and Raphael -- just the usual stuff.  The Giardino Boboli of the palace were enormous, and Yoyi was just too pooped to walk through them.  I almost got lost, but my trusty map program was accurate down to the paths in the garden, showing which ones were dead ends, for example.

We walked back across the Ponte Vecchio and started to unpack our lunch on the steps of the Loggia dei Lanzi.  The guard chased us away; this is a museum, he told us.  We looked around without any luck and asked a strolling policeman where we might find a park or a bench where we could have a "peekneek.  He told us that there is no place like that in the city.  Finally, we ate our lunch sitting on the wall at the edge of the river.

Sitting at the river, we were  100 meters from the entrance to the Uffizi gallery.  We "put on our running shoes," took advantage of our priority admission, and started through the museum.  Think about this image: You open your big fat art history book, and then you take the pages in one hand and flip through them as if you are shuffling a deck of cards, the pages passing at lightning speed.  That's about how we took in the Uffizi. The collection is beyond belief.

By late afternoon we were beat, and we spent an hour in the museum cafe on the roof enjoying a cappuccino and a beautiful clear afternoon with a view of the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.  Yoyi was done by then, but I had recovered enough to spend a little more time in the museum while she went out into the courtyard and amused herself watching the tourists and the mimes.

After a taxi ride back to the hotel, we rested for an hour and went to a little family-run restaurant on the corner near the hotel.  I had ossobuco, as I attempted to sample those Italian dishes that are exotic, but still allowed.  It was delicious.  Of course, we ordered our 1/4 liter of red wine; maybe Yoyi is learning to appreciate wine....  We were back at the hotel by 9:00, before most Italians had sat down to dinner.

Firenze, from the top

Saturday, June 1

Planning the trip,  I had put us in Siena on Friday night and Saturday so that we could attend services for Shabbat in the old synagogue.  It wasn't until later that I found out that the rabbi's tenure was ending in May, and that there would be no services until a new rabbi is engaged.  So much for careful planning.

Instead we enjoyed walking around the town for another morning after another delicious breakfast on the patio.  We bought bread and cheese at a large grocery store inside the stazione and ate lunch on the train to Florence.

When you board the train in Italy, you must have validated your ticket at a machine that stamps the date and time, found on the platform.  If you fail to validate the ticket you will be subject to a fine up to 200€.  Same requirement when you board a bus or a tram.  It's remarkable how easy it is to forget to validate the ticket.

Having forgotten to stamp the ticket, I went car to car on the train trying to find the conductor to attempt to explain my unfamiliarity with the process.  After a lengthy search I ran him down, and with his 100 words of English and my 50 words of Italian, he assured me that having found him I saved myself any penalty.

When I had gotten up from my seat there was a shady looking character in our carriage.  I wondered if he had a ticket.  Just before the conductor came through to check tickets, he had disappeared; gone to the bathroom??  The conductor greeted me as he passed, and smiled at us about our ticket confusion.  After the conductor passed through the carriage, the fellow showed up again.  Just before we debarked, I mentioned to the conductor that he may have missed checking the guy's ticket.  A few minutes later, we saw the fellow being questioned by the transit officials.

From the stazione in Florence, we searched first for the tourist office, since we had purchased a FirenzeCard (similar to the MilanoCard that we had in Milan).  We picked up the card and took a taxi to the hotel.  After negotiating a bunch of one-way streets we reached the hotel for a 9€ taxi ride; the hotel was three long blocks from the stazione.

The Grand Hotel Adriatico was very nice, but had a fraction of the character of the B&B we had left in Siena.  It was a real hotel, with a desk and a lift.  The room was relatively big, and there was no free wi-fi.

The bus stop was a at the corner by the hotel, and bus passage was included in the FirenzeCard, but the bus schedule was erratic, and on at least one day there were detours that caused the bus to by-pass our stop.  But the first day we got on the bus and successfully got to Il Bargello, supposedly the finest collection of Renaissance sculpture in Italy.  We saw Michelangelo, Donatello, Cellini, and other masters' works until we were stumbling tired.  And this was only our first stop for the day.

Our next stop was probably the most important church in Florence -- not the Duomo.  The Basilica de Santa Croce is a mammoth gothic church facing a beautiful piazza, and in the facade of the church is a six-pointed blue star, above the entrance in stained glass.  Didn't learn this until later: A Jewish architect Niccolo Matas from Ancona, designed the church's 19th century neo-Gothic facade, working a prominent Star of David into the composition. Matas had wanted to be buried with his peers but because he was Jewish, he was buried under the porch and not within the walls.

Inside the church are the tombs of many of Italy's great historical figures: Michelangelo, Galileo, Rossini, Machiavelli, Ghiberti, and Dante (actually buried elsewhere), among others.  Besides the tombs, the church is rich in giotto freschi, and the floors are paved with marble tomb covers and mosaics.  Much of the floor was roped off so that people would not tread on the tombs and artwork, but there was no way that all the art could be protected, or there would have been nowhere to step.

In the piazza, where we had our obligatory gelato of the afternoon, we watched people feed the pigeons, play soccer with their children, hold hands, snap photos, and otherwise enjoy a beautiful day.

Our third and final stop of this very full day was to be the Piazza della Signoria, the political and artistic center of the city.  On the piazza is
the Palazzo Vecchio (the old city hall and fortress to protect the ruling class from the hoi palloi), which is still used as a government building.  The tour of the palazzo took us through the Sala de Cinquecento, where there was a ceremony in progress, decorated by enormous frescoes depicting the magnificent history of Florence and by the sculpture Victory by Michelangelo.

The museum of the Palazzo contained numerous paintings, as well as huge illluminated hymnals and ancient maps.

The other highlight of the Piazza della Signoria is the Loggia dei Lanzi, an open-air sculpture gallery facing the piazza in front of the Palazzo.  Only the statues in this Loggia would be enough for a normal city's art collection, including the Medici Lions, Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and the Rape of the Sabine Women -- along with other originals and some copies of famous works.

After dinner we took a taxi back to the hotel, and I left Yoyi to walk around the city.  I walked down to and across the Arno River, and wandered through the neighborhoods.  School was finally over, and the piazzas were crowded with young people, from mid-teens and older.  Crossing the bridge, I could see the Ponte Vecchio was illuminated in the distance and the domes of the many churches as well as the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio were lit up, giving the city a golden glow.

Siena

Friday, May 31

We woke to a beautiful morning in Siena.  Breakfast was brought to our room, and we took it out the door of the room to the terrace, with its gargoyles, fountains, and plantings, and enjoyed our repast al fresco.

I planned to stay in Siena for a day and a half, so that we could enjoy the little town without rushing.  Siena is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and our plan was to take in the flavor of the middle ages and the Renaissance, and not worry too much about attractions.  The important things to see are the Duomo and -- for us -- the ancient synagogue.

The cathedral is striking, built of alternating white and black marble.  Its stripes are echoed in many other later medieval churches in Toscana, but it is the best known and one of the earliest.  The art on the walls, the marble mosaic floors, the stained glass, and the carvings were beyond expectations.  We explored the building with our mouths "hanging open" and eventually went outside, where we ate leftovers from breakfast on the patio of the Duomo.

The synagogue, like most at the time, is in a building effectively indistinguishable from the outside, but beautifully decorated inside.

At the synagogue we made our second contact with someone with whom we had a connection.  The lady that guided us through the building said that she had moved to Siena from Rome to open a winery.  I mentioned that a member of our synagogue married a girl from Rome, and told her only her first name, but she recognized immediately that they had been childhood friends.

In the library of the synagogue a woman was working on some 18th century texts from the archives of the community, some sacred and some business.  She was transcribing the text for historical preservation.  There are only about 50 Jews left in Siena (not families, but individuals).

We finally got a SIM card for our phone; now we were connected.  After resting at the hotel for an hour or so, we went back to the town square --Piazza del Campo -- where we ate a gelato before we went to change some dollars for euros.  We had asked the girl at the B&B where to change money and she recommended the Banco Monte di Paschi.  This is the oldest surviving bank in the world in business continuously, founded in 1472.  Inside it looked like Wells Fargo, but I guess there's something to be said for modernity.  We should have changed more money, since we got the best rate BY FAR compared to other exchanges we made previously or later.

Since we discovered a coin laundry at the corner of the hotel, we did laundry while we shopped for souvenirs.  After we took it back to the hotel, we went out to dinner at the Trattoria Dino, which we had discovered up the street -- a family restaurant that looked inviting.  I managed to order my first meal entirely in Italian, Pollo alla Senese.  Yoyi thinks I just italicized some Spanish words and phrases.  But it's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  I ordered a 1/4 liter of red house wine for 2€; it was delicious; even Yoyi drank some and enjoyed it.

Cinque Terre

Wednesday, May 29

(Pronounce that "chinque terre")

Today we go down to the Mediterranean coast.  The towns of the Cinque Terre are built on cliffs overlooking the sea, originally fishing villages, but now tourist attractions.  We got up early to catch our first train ride from the Stazione Centrale.  We had bought the tickets the prior evening.

It was raining when we left the hotel after breakfast, taking a taxi to the stazione, but it cleared up a few minutes into the trip.  The train had 6-person cabins, like the trains in the past, and we shared the cabin with three other passengers. We would take the train past the little towns and debark in La Spezia, from which we would take a round-trip train back to the coast. 

We walked through a pedestrian street from the train station to find our hotel.  when we got to the address, there was nobody there.  We had promised ourselves to buy a cellphone chip when we arrived in Milan, but we procrastinated.  And now we needed a phone.  The management of many B&Bs might not be on site at all times, and a phone is needed to alert them that you have arrived.  We walked down the street to a small store and asked the proprietress for the favor of calling the landlord to advise him that we need him.  A few minutes later he showed up and registered us into his establishment.

We ate a picnic of bread, cheese, hard-boiled egg, and tomato waiting for the train.  The train through the Cinque Terre goes through several tunnels, as it skirts the cliffs overlooking he Mediterranean.  Monterossa was our first stop.  As we stood on the terrace overlooking the sea, a couple our age asked if we would like them to take our photo.  Since they were speaking with a Spanish accent, we asked where they were from.  Argentina, they responded, and we mentioned that our son-in-law is Argentinian.  What's his name, they asked.  When we told them, they replied, of course they know his family well; their children went to school together.  After a pleasant conversation, we went our separate ways.

There are paths between and among these 5 villages, all set in a national park.  I had hoped to stroll some of the paths, but excessive rain had closed all of them.  But the town was fun to explore, and it was cool enough so that climbing the hills didn't cause us to break a sweat.  We went to a cafe overlooking the sea while we waited to go to the train station for the next train.

We went next to Riomaggiore, another picturesque village, where we climbed up and down hills and long stairways, appreciating the vistas and the ancient buildings and winding alleys.  Caught the train back to La Spezia, arriving at 5:30, in time to rest for a while at the B&B.  When we finally went our to dinner, we were so tired that we shared a small dish of manicotti at a cafe.

Thursday, May 30

Breakfast was at a little cafe at the corner, after which we collected our baggage and prepared for the trip through Pisa to Siena.  A "regionale" train allows you to ride for up to 6 hours, as long as you are proceeding in the same general direction.  So we bought a ticket to Siena and took off.

We got to Pisa at 11:30 and took a bus to the Piazza di Miracoli, where the Duomo, Battistero, and Campanile are located.  After taking the obligatory photo holding up the tower, we visited the buildings.  (Please read the tour books or history books for details)  The piazza and the town were both impressive and charming.

After a gelato, we bought fixings for lunch and caught the 2:30 train.  We had to change trains in Empoli, but I had miscalculated the 6-hours just enough that we had to buy a new ticket from Empoli to Siena.  We had enough time to eat lunch on the platform, waiting for our connection.

In the meantime, we were taken with the amount of graffiti everywhere.  People have no respect for public property.  Some (apparently German) graffiti writer managed the following: "The train is schitt."  His/her Germanic spelling notwithstanding, the irony was that the on-board restrooms were in fact either out of order or locked.

We got to Siena in the late afternoon, and it took forever to find the bus terminal at the stazione.  The B&B had sent instructions to take the #3 bus to the end of the line and walk a few hundred meters to the hotel.  I thought the ride would be a few minutes; in stead, the bus wound around town, eventually leaving the city and driving through the countryside crossing a few autostrade, and eventually -- 45 minutes later -- reaching the end of the line.  It seemed as if we were at the next village, but a fellow passenger confirmed we were at the Porta Tufi.  We asked her if she would call us a taxi.  The taxi took us up and down a few one-way streets until we arrived at the B&B, practically within sight of the city gate (porta) -- and practically walking distance from the train station (without luggage).  We had made a circle around Siena, since almost no motorized traffic is allowed within the city center.

The hotel, Il Casato, was in a renovated renaissance building as charming as you would hope such an accommodation would be.  The narrow stairway was a challenge, but we settled into our room, with vaulted ceiling, and went out to explore the quaint, historic neighborhood, eventually having dinner at a ristorante surrounded by medieval and renaissance buildings in one of the market squares near the hotel.

Italy: Milano

Sunday, May 26

Our business class connecting flight to NY Kennedy was an hour late, and we got to New York just 45 minutes before the plane to Milan was scheduled to leave. We tried to sleep, but with little success. They feed you dinner shortly after you reach cruising altitude, and they feed you breakfast an hour and a half before landing. It doesn't leave you much time to sleep, even if it were possible to do so.

Monday, May 27

We landed at Milan Malpensa airport at about 7:00 AM local time (Central European Time), and searched around for the office where we could pick up our MilanoCards, which I had bought on line prior to leaving. Once we bought the card, we bought 4 trips on the shuttle, since the card afforded us a "buy 3 get 1 free" offer. It was rush hour in Milan, everyone going into the city to work at the same time we were trying to get there; therefore, the bus took somewhat over an hour, dropping us at the Stazione Centrale (pronounce that "statsion chentraleh).

From the stazione, we took a taxi to Hotel Sanpi, about a km distance. This is an actual hotel, although small, with a lift, and with keys on a heavy weight, that one leaves at the front desk when going out. The room was small but comfortable.

The 3-day MilanoCard (they don't have a 2-day card) includes unlimited public transport for two days. In Milan that is a great advantage, since there is a wonderful streetcar network, as well as trolley buses and regular buses. Many of the streetcars in the central area are the older models. In fact, when New Orleans needed cars for their streetcar line, they bought them from Milan. We would seldom have to wait even 5 minutes for a streetcar.

Without much rest we went out to explore the city, taking the streetcars everywhere, and quickly learning the lines. First we went to the Piazza del Duomo and visited the Cathedral after taking in the magnificent square and the impressive facade of the church. The Duomo is the second largest in the world (after St. Peter's in Rome), with a capacity of 40,000.

We spent a few minutes at the Mercato Via San Marco, one of the many open-air markets we visited during our trip. We had lunch at a cafe on the street, across the piazza from the Duomo. We eventually learned about the several types of eating establishments.

• a bar has drinks (including coffee), snacks, possibly pizza, and simple (usually frozen) meals.
• a cafe has coffee (and soft drinks, beer and possibly wine) and baked goods plus panini and pizza
• a trattoria is a restaurant, less formal than a ristorante
• an osteria is a restaurant less formal than a trattoria
• a ristorante is a relatively formal restaurant.

But all three types of restaurant have begun to morph into restaurants.

From lunch we strolled through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a very upscale shopping gallery in an end-of-the-19th-century arcade. There we saw what appears to be a minyan on the first (that's 2nd) floor. We entered the arcade at the Piazza del Duomo, and exited on the Piazza dela Scala. We bought tickets to visit the Teatro alla Scala Tuesday morning.

On the Piazza San Marco we entered a small old church that was intriguing to us because the rose window has a 6-pointed star in in.

We took the tram to the Navigli district to walk around. This area was the freight center when canals were a major method of transport. Now its just a scenic cityscape, with cafes and restaurants. We bought bread in a bakery, and later bought fruit and cheese in a grocery. When we got back to the hotel, we left our stuff and went to the Giardini Publici to eat our picnic.

It has been a L...O...N...G and tiring day, but we did a lot and began to acclimate ourselves to Italy.

Tuesday, May 28

Our first (included) breakfast was a very pleasant experience: croissants, all sorts of bread, yogurt, cheeses, cereal, fresh fruit, and a fancy self-serve coffee machine that made every kind of delicious Italian coffee you could imagine. And we went back for refills -- available hardly anywhere.

Since we would spend only 2 days in Milano, we figured we should squeeze in as much as we could handle.

We visited the Teatro alla Scala as early as we could get out. The theater is beautiful; a great place to appreciate opera. When we visited the attached museum, we saw historic costumes from productions of Aida, as well as paintings and busts of famous musicians and composers.

At the Mercato Papiniano I left Yoyi to shop. My tablet had stopped working, so I searched for a Lenovo dealer, where I might get service. I had identified one earlier and went there on the tram after making specific plans where and when to meet. When I got to the site, there was no building with the address. A helpful person showed me the building (no address). There was no shop.in the directory, and I worked with the concierge to learn that the store had left 3 years earlier. He mentioned that there was a computer company in one of the suites, so I rang their bell. The fellow that answered went out of his way to try to find a Lenovo-related person that would even talk to us about warranty -- unsuccessfully. A day or so later, I determined that the problem may have been a bad electrical outlet that didn't allow the tablet to charge properly. It worked ever after.

Miraculously we met up back at the mercato, right at the time and location specified. While I had been unsuccessful in my search for computer assistance, Yoyi was very successful in the retail arena. We decided to reward ourselves with gelato; we did that a lot. Whereas we saw gelato stands, stores, and vendors everywhere at all other times, we couldn't find one within a couple of blocks, so we stopped some older passers-by, who asked if we speak French and gave us directions in French to what they said is the best gelato in the neighborhood. It was, in fact, quite satisfying to eat it in the park.

After stashing the loot back at the hotel (thanks to unlimited public transportation) and resting for a few minutes, we went out to the Pinacoteca di Brera. (A pinacoteca is an art gallery; the term is used in Germany and other countries, as well.) Our MilanoCard included admission to several places. Full of Renaissance art, we became tired of figuring out which saint is which, but you have to suffer a little to see the gems. Mantegna's famous Cristo Morto, which everyone probably remembers from Art History 101 in college. It's known for the ground-breaking perspective that it depicts.

After dinner, we collapsed into bed, exhausted.