Italy 2005

Rome August 19th 2005

I arrived in Rome at 10:30 in the bright morning. From the airport i took a 1 Euro bus and a 1 euro metro to the centre of town. I arrived at the central station , Roma Termini. it a big bus ternimal , national rail terminal, and local metro train terminal. I didn't recall exacly when Sam was due to arrive , but I knew for sure that we agreed to meet at the north west side of the station. well it turned out that there wasn't much of a north west side... so I loitered around the north side. Close enough. So while waiting I people watched. Oh was fun, beside the healthy complement of fabulous women, it was just fun to watch people in general go by. It is quite the multicultural city. Us Torontonians think we have multi-cultural wrapped up. It was interesting to see Nigerians, Kenyans, Brazilians, Greeks, Americans and so one filter by in an unending flow of faces and movement. By noon I was ready for find hotel corona. Easy enough. Enough that I missed the right turn the first time I passed it. I followed via Cavour down to the back of Maria Maggiore and turned north to get to via Napoli. I checked in with the concierge there asking if maybe Sam had arrived already. He had not. Dropping my bags I headed out again. I loitered till 1 then picked up a nice panini. Finally at 1:30 I returned to the hotel to check in again. He had arrived! In fact 5 minutes after I had left at around noon, he had arrived. Open the hotel room door to find Sam gave me a great sense of excitement and relief. It was really working out! I was so glad to see Sam and so glad that we were able to do this together. Sam is a great guy, a friend, a man head and shoulders above. So we caught up a bit, dropped our crap, freshened up and hit the town. I was not at all dismayed that I had loitered as long as I did around termini station. I savored the time alone among the crowds.

After chatting with Sam for a bit there was a knock at the door and Sam parents appeared! They had come for the wedding and had come by to say hello.

Before we left we perused the brochures at the hotel and found a concert that looked interesting. It was later in the night; we noted that one for later.

First thing first: Coliseum! It’s a big old coliseum in the centre of Rome. This is where the ancient fights took place. The place was obviously in ruins and had tourist crawling all over it. I have pictures. We got a pile of shots. We continued on through the ruins of ancient Rome; Arco di Constantino, Foro Rome, Arco di Tito, through the piazza of Musei Capitolini, and finally to the Campidoglio. We did not go into the Musie or the Campidoglio, it was getting late and those places would require days of their own. We headed back to the hotel, on the way we found a restaurant by the side of the road and wolfed down some basic pasta. After freshening up at the hotel, we left for the concert. The concert was called "I Musici Veneziani". It was a septet of instrument players, cello, harp, flute, french horn, two violins and a bass violin, with four singers, two sopranos, and two tenors. All dress in period costume. The concert was in an Anglican church! Chiesa San Paulo ( via Nationale 16a ). Tickets were a bit steep at 30 Euros. But the concert was a sheer pleasure. The acoustics were good, and the emotion rich.

www.imusiciveneziani.com

Atto I

J Offenbach from I racconti di Hoffmann Barcarola

W.A. Mozart from Don Giovanni La ci darem la mano

G. Rossini from Barbiere di Siviglia Se il mio nome

W.A. Mozart from Le Nozze di Figaro non piu adrai farfallone amoroso

G. Rossini from L'Italiana in Algeri Cruda sorte

W.A. Mozart from Don Giovanni Deb vieni alla finestra

G. Verdi from La Traviata Preludio del III atto

G Puccini from La Boheme Walter di Musetta "Quando men vo"

G. Verdi from Rigoletto La donna e mobile

Atto II

C. Bizet from Carmen Entr'act III

W.A. Mozart from La Nozze di Figaro Via resti servita

G. Puccini from La Boheme Che penna infame

G. Verdi Il Trovatore Stride la vampa

G. Donizetti from L'elisir d'amore Come Paride Vezzaso

G. Puccini from La Boheme Si, mi chiamano Mimi

G. Puccini from Tosca E lacean le stelle

C.Bizet from L'amour est un oiseau rebelle

At the end of the concert Sam was mostly asleep, he was , of course wiped from the trip. It was, over all, a great first day. We retired to the hotel and passed out.

Rome August 20th 2005

Osama and I woke up at the Corona hotel and had breakfast. It was your basic continental, except there was no fruit. I was feeling pretty pumped abut things. After break fast: Villa Bhorgese ( boar - gay - zee ). Villa Bhorgese is a large estate in the heart of Rome. It has a large garden or park that has a globe teatro ( theatre ), a horse arena, and a Villa packed to the gills with classic Object d’art. We took the subway two stops to Spagna station at the edge of the villa and proceeded to stumble around the garden trying to figure out which way to go. It took us a bit to get our bearings. We enjoyed the walk through the park, noting how little in the way of flowers there were. I guess we both expected there to be way more flowers and colour. The garden was basically just green. It wasn't unkempt, it was just basically trees. Some of the trees were gorgeous. I would liken them to bonsai, except they were full size. At first they seemed natural, but upon closer inspection it was clear they had been coiffed very deliberately. They looked great. There were also several fountains. We passed one that was quite interesting with seahorses. Our goal was the Villa itself. The concierge at the hotel had booked us an appointment for 1:30. We arrived early and were able to pick up audio guides and start a bit early. It was not too busy. All of the admin stuff, like picking up the audio guides and getting tickets was done in the basement. You walked up a half a flight of stairs on the outside to get to the front door of the first floor. The first floor was all sculpture. The Villa Bhorgese is a very old collection of art. Both Osama and I were taken with the beauty of the sculpture. Some were dynamic; some were more "still". Apparently the gothic pieces were characteristically dynamic and violent. The gothic style was a more recent style than the older works more still pieces that were either created by the artist in their early years or my artists in earlier periods. Pieces with more movement in them were more dynamic. They gave you a greater feeling of movement. The result was that the peices seemed more alive. There were several examples of the tests of Hercules. The rape of somebody I don't recall by Zeus was an amazing piece. The artist had created the feeeling of life with the way Zeus' finger dug into the though of his hapless victim. the poses , and postiion of the limbs, the detail in the strained muscles of both. the God larger than humna, and strong, and angular. The female , sublime, supple , femenine, delicate, full, and sot. The best peice however was appollo and Daphne. In this piece we see apollo chasing after daphne. his arms out stretched. Daphne flees and yet.. transforms in to a tree... here delicate toes taking root , her fingers leaves... her pristine skin turns to bark. The piece is a wonder of movement and action... of delicate marble work. It was said that during the restoration of the piece that the workers found that each individual marble leaf sang like crystal when stuck. to think.. out of marble , individual leaves were crafted. individual roots from each toes. Appollo also overflowwed with detail, his cape flowing behind him, a also quite delicate, conveying a sense of rushed urgency.

The museum had audio guides as I mentioned and annoted many peices with a number that you punched into the audio guide. It was interesting to learn that originally the appol and Daphne piece was placed with Appolo's back facing the entrance of the room. the idea was that the story of the piece should unfold as the viewer entered the room and moved to the “front” of the piece. it was a quite a marvel of marble that the artist was able to create the piece so that you could not see Daphne as you enter the room... and that as you moved around the piece you would in turn see Daphne and a moment later discover the magical transformation of Daphne into a tree. There is a more complete story of appolo and daphne and there are pictures of this peice. (links).

Many peices in the gallery were quite strinking. Including david with his sling... he looks like a wound up spring coil... captured energy poised, ready to be released and hurdled agains the giant goliath. Each peice was technically perfect. Each muscle, each fold of clothing perfect. But beyond that the areangements and poise were impecable, brought together in perfect balance. Posed ina thoughful way , each telling a story, every detail supporting the peice, the time period, the emotion of the story, or the player.

The second floor was all about the painting. mostly portraits and classical scenes from Christian religion. The upper floor was refered to as the picctatoria, I think. Both Sam and I preferred the sculptures to the paintings. Don't get me wrong the paintings were magnificent, however we passed through them much faster, and in fact we were told two rooms before then end of the tour that the place was closing and that we needed to leave.

Squinting Out in the blazing sun we had one thing on our mind: Food. I suggested a direction where I thought that there would be food. I was wrong , horribly wrong. In fact all the stores in the dirrection I chose were closed, and to top it off , we had walked off the edge of the wee map that we had picked up. So we walked back toward the heart of the city and found a cafe on the side of the road. I had a napolatana pizza ( cheese, caper, and anchoives), Sam had chicken with potatoes. I tasted a bit of each and it seemed plain. My pizza was nice but small. It was nice sitting, after having been on our feet for so long. It was a late lunch at around 3 I guess.

We took the subway back , two stops to Termini. Before walking back to the hotel we picked up tickets to Florence S.M.N. (Santa Maria Neuveo). The one way second class tickets were 29 Euro each. We zoomed back to the hotel picked up our stuff, popped in to a supermarket for some snacks. A bottle of water at the supermarket was 1.25 Euros. compare that with the 4 Euros that we paid the vendor outside of the Collesium. Note to self: Don’t buy water right at the tourist stop. Find a Super market.

We then went back to the train station to catch our train. We had some time to wait so we chilled out at the café for a bit watching the ladies go by. Presently the time came to get moving. Thing is, it’s tough to figure out which train to take. First off they don’t advertise the platform you train will be on until nearly the last moment. Secondly The trains are referred to by their final destination, which might not be your destination. So we ended up asking someone, found our train and we were on our way to Florence.

The country side was beautiful. Was saw fields of Grape, Olives, Sunflowers, and Corn, Herds of Cows, and sheep. The country side was rolling hills, with villages perched on various hills and peaks. Some hills had terraced fields of grapes. The train sometimes ducked underneath the hills.

Sam and I played rummy and enjoyed the ride. We traveled through rain. At one point the train stopped for apparently no reason for 15 minutes. But we started up again and got to Florence on time. The trip took 2 hours. We pulled into Florence at around 6pm. Sam met some of the wedding party who were looking for help with all their stuff. So Sam dumped me for a bit and helped them out. Sometimes its just interesting to watch the world go by.

While I waited it tried to figure which way to go. The hotel, Residence Panorama, was at Piazza della Repubblica, Figline Valdarno, Firenze IT. We were in Firenze ( Florence ) and I found piazza della Repubblica, but I could find Hotel Panorama. In fact we went into another hotel and asked. They had never even heard of Residence Panorama. Great. So we tried to cancel the reservations via the internet , and went looking for another hotel. On the net we found Hotel Pitti Palace, we booked rooms and set off to check in and drop outself. We figured out that Figline Valdarno was a small village outside of Florence. Just like in Toronto we have GTA ( Greater Toronto Area), it’s common for areas around a big centre to have the name of the big centre. This was true for Florence and for Siena. It’s probably also true for Rome. So as you drive over the country side toward a large centre you will pass a sign saying the name of the Centre long before you enter the city proper. You learn something everyday.

Anywho by 8:30 we had dropped out stuff and went looking for food. While looking for our first hotel we had walked wide circles around Florence, which was great by me. But then again I did not have big packs like Sam. So We went back to one of the plazas and sat down at a restaurant and watched the world go by. We had Bruccetta, goat cheese, ravioli, and 2 pizzas. Sam got the napolenta and I got mascarpone and speck. I had no clue what speck was. It’s a mild smoked ham. The Pizza was good, and creamy. Being muslim Sam won’t eat pork. I was sort of like his beefeater, testing new stuff to figure out if it had pork in it. These days I have a policy of choosing stuff on menus that I have not had before, so it worked out well. By the way, mascarpone is a cream, that I’m usually familiar with for desserts not on pizza, so that was cool. On the hole the food was very simple, not fancy. It had little in way of “depth of flavour”.

During the walk in the evening we saw the Duomo, the River, Ponte della veccio (ponte is bridge ), the Uffizi Museum, and countless plazas with spike statutes and monuments. On the way back to the hotel we lingered on the ponte della veccio. It a bridge with houses on it. Sort of like London bridge. Buskers setup on the bridge and play for tourists, and lovers, who sit on the curb and enjoy a local performance. We stayed for a bit just watching the river and the night lights, and watching the people go by. It was cool mad slightly raining so we did not stay too long. It was nice to loiter. For much of the day we had been stressed and moving. It was to relax under the light rain. I turned my back on the lights nad the throng of tourists on the bridge and just looked out over the river. It was very nice. Presently we returned to the hotel and called it a night.

As the end of the day of traveling it was nice to have a shower and relax with a book. I picked up Dune; Butrlian Jihad at Redding on the way to the airport. Campare to the original Frank Herbert material the Son’s work is fluff. It reads more like Peirs Anthony, than Frank Herbert.

Siena DATE?

We arrived at the scooter place before it open and took the time to argue over which way to go, and where to go. We had this huge map spread out over the window of the scooter place. A lady arrived and opened up the store. We signed for the scooter, got helmets, and a quick lesson. We worried that the they expected us to have ridden bikes before but our Canadian Drivers licenses were enough. The lesson with the lady ened with her saying: I’m not going to watch. Hilarious. So we zoomed off destined for Piomboni. Well sort of. It took us an hour to get to the edge of town. We managed to find the high way out of town. Which in a way was a good thing and in a way was a bad thing. See we’re in a scooter and the high way has lots of fast traffic. We had a whopping 100cc to get both of us moving. It was a bit Hairy. 80 km with shorts on. I expressed my concern to Sam. We decided to switch. Sam tok the wheel and we were off again. Problem was , I was still shitting my pants. Evenually we decided to take a small highway.. We turned from the sunny clear major high way in to the forested smalled roadway. In the sun on the major highway we were getting a bit chilly due to the wind. After turning on to the small roadway the temperature totally droped out of the bottom of the mecrusy. We were in shade and zooming along, and shivering on controllably. Forget speed wobbles we had the shiver wobbles. The samller road way got hilly as well. It was quite a beautiful ride. Lots of Forest, not much traffic. It was amazing winding up and down hills. The road doubled back on themselves zigzagging back and forth. At the peaks we could see wide vistas of hills covered with fields of plump red and white grapes and Groves of olive trees

Someday

Breakfast at the hotel was great, with fresh Fruits. We then jumped on the bike destined for a little village outside of Siena called Colle val d’Estra. According to Sam, there was a Crystal factory there. It was a short ride and we asked for directions once. I think it was the first time we got directions (in Italian, complete with hand motions) that were good, and worked, and got us to where we wanted to go. The Crystal factory itself was closed for summer holidays, but we did end up meeting this bombshell of a woman who turned out to be the designed of much of the hand made stuff. I picked up a small flower vase and Sam picked up a couple hundred dollars of stuff! Whew, he likes crystal. He had most of the stuff shipped back to him in Toronto, but we each took a small piece with us. When we returned to Siena we went by a movie theater that was going to show a documentary on Il Palio, which is a classical Sienese festival. We picked up tickets and then went to get a snack at the near by store. The store has Ice cream, so it was a gelateteria, and pastry so it as a passteeria. We got some ice cream. I got Fragula and Lemone, and Sam got Fragula and Amerenia. Fragula is strawberry, Limone is lemon ( d’uh), and Amerania is like cherry and ameratto I think. Behind the glass the gelati looked like it was melting and soft. The lady used a shallow spoon to scoop the ice cream at speed. But when we got it, it was stif and not melting. It made you realize how hard it would be to scoop the ice cream like she was doing as fas as she was doing it. Now I say scoop the ice cream , but it was more like she was heavily icing a cake than scooping the ice cream. It wasa pure pleasure to watch her work. It was quite busy and she scooped cone after cone, cup after cup. So we took our ice cream to the movie theatre and sat down to watch. Il Palio is a competition that happens twice a year in Siena. Siena is divided into neighborhood. Each neighbor hood has it’s own coat of arms and colours. The neighborhoods compete with each other for Il Palio, a big banner. The competition is a horse race. Each neighborhood provides a jockey and horses are allocated by a random draw. The race is hed in the central square of Siena called Il Campo. It’s not that big as a horse course. It’s like a big City square, but it’s not that big, and it’s cobblestone, and it’s shaped in like a semi circle. It’s NOT the best place for a horse race. During the competation the square and area is packed with people, like shoulder to shoulder. Tension is very high as the play unfolds. The order that the horses are lined up at the start is also determined randomly by draw. Each hosrse is called on in turn to line up at the start line.. until all but the last the horse are lined up as they should be. As the final horse approaches the line , the rope holding the horses is dropped and the race begins withs wit ha roar. The final horse to the line approach the line at full spead and hence has an advantage. Mean while the horse at the line justle each other to get the best positon. It’s quiet racous. And there are many false stats. As the horses careen around the course ( for a total of three laps) they slip and slide around and it get quite rough. When the winner finally speeds across the finsh line the crowds go wild and storm the course, cheering or crying dpending on what neighborhood the spectator is affilicated with. Prior to the race each neibourhood parades in full regalia around the course. I love the bright colour tights and big floppy hats… the livery, the tunics, the medievil weapondry. It’s all quite beautiful. I saw one spear that had braod steel angel wings on each side of the blade that inturn acted as cruel blades of their own. The Cross bows, the halbers and armour. Each neibourhood has talented flag bearers who flip and toss their flags up into the air. It’s a beautiful show of colour and movement.

Dinner Wednesday

Lamb joind in a thin light caraway sauce. It was juicy and tasty and tender , with Frites ( fries ).Also had another napolenta pizza.

Sunday Florence

Uffizi, big line up, bought tickets for Thursday. We went to the academie of art, als a big line up. We returned to Il Duomo and climbed the tower. 414 steps later we looking over Florence. It provided a great view of the city. After climbing back down we went for lunch as a café right beside the Duomo. The sky threatened rain and Sam was egging it one saying: Oh I hope it rains, then there won’t be big line ups. So we finish food and guess what? The heavens open up. We get totally drenched! So it turns out that enterprising merchants hit the street selling umbrella for 5 euros. We both pass on umbrella cause we are already soaked to the bone. And getting colder by the second. There is stil l a line up to get into the duomo. We patiently wiat as the rain removed all the heat from us. Eventually we get inside the place. It ‘was quite amamzing. Quite large and every surface is covered in design. I am struck by the striped marble. Once we get out fill of the Duomo we return to the hotel to warm up , havea hoswer and get clean dry close. We end up napping for 3 hours. Waking up just in time to catch a concert. It’s again in a church but this time it’s a Soprano and organ. It was amazing. The churce was much better accoutically than first church we attended in Rome. The soprano did Ave Maria and it was breath taking. Also there wasa tunr that I regonize that I don’t recll the name for that is typically gothic it was amazing to hear it on a full organ. On the way back to the hotel we chatted with a pair from new york, philiip and Gregory. They saw the show to and loved it. We chatted for a bit and then went our separate eways.

Wednesday leaving Seina

Wake up 5 am ! ack