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.