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.