I e-mailed this in daily installments to my friends, and this is just a compilation of those e-mails. I have corrected some bits of misinformation, and added some other corrections in square brackets [ like this ].
Day 1 Mon/Tue., 16-17, 20109 The day of the suitcase.
According to my laptop, which lives in blissful ignorance of foreign time zones, and my cell phone,which has sometimes discovered them, it is now 3:37 pm on Tuesday, Sep. 17. (Happy birthday, Winifred.) I got up around 9 am on Monday, Sep. 16. That’s what, maybe thirty hours. I have had only two or three hours of sleep on the plane on the way to Iceland. And I’m starting to feel it.
The trip began, as all such things tend to do, with the revealing of a horrid truth, in this case the fact that the cheap Icelandair fare was due to their sharp dealing, not their generous hearts. I had to pay an extra $95 for the privilege of bringing a suitcase with me. It was still a good fare, but not quite so good as it had been. More about this later.
I had an okay burger at P.J. Grunt’s for dinner, which was good, because Icelandair does not do meals. No dinner. No breakfast. Free soda and coffee, but that’s it. Not even nuts.
I watched the old movie The Goonies while waiting for the meal that wasn’t going to appear, and discovered that it was not the cute fun little picture I remembered. It was fairly bad, with some bits that were deliberately planned to be bad. Ugh.
Then I napped, really, for two or three hours, which was a good thing. I usually manage to lose the little pillow the airlines provide sometime during the night. This time I started out without it, but used the one set aside for the missing person in the middle seat. And I still had it when we landed. Amazing!
I got to the baggage claim area in time to see a suitcase going around that looked just like mine, except it didn’t have my luggage tag, or my lock on the two zipper tabs. But American Tourister must sell a lot of that style, and its look-alikes. It remained on the carousel until the nice Swiss man came to retrieve the overlooked luggage. I asked him if there was more to come and he said “no”. So I complained about my suitcase being missing, and how that one looked almost exactly like it. So he checked the luggage tag Icelandair put on it, and asked me what my name was. There was my name on it, and there was my jacket tucked into the outer pocket.
My own address tag was gone. So was the lock on the zipper tabs. And so were the zipper tabs themselves. For $95, I got a suitcase that can no longer be zipped closed. Nothing appears to be missing, though the frame is bent a little. The address tag has survived many a flight without mishap, and it is hard to imagine how the lock and zipper tabs got torn off.
But I was in Zurich, with my luggage, so on to the next thing. Get some Euros. Switzerland is not part of the EU or the Euro. The ATMs promised to provide whichever I wanted, Euros or Swiss Francs, but they only offered Francs. I went to a bank and was told the ATMs might offer Euros, but they only gave Francs. I fooled them, and found a non-bank ATM that gave me Euros.
Next to get a sim card to use in my smart phone. I went to an office of Swiss Phone Company and was told that a Swiss sim card would only work in Switzerland, and not in Italy. I knew this was a lie. Why else do we have inter-operable networks? But I didn’t want to argue.
An adequate sandwich for lunch, washed down with Red Bull to help keep me awake. Chocolate covered espresso beans were my constant snack all afternoon long.
Renting the car was a piece of cake. Did I want a car, here, take this one. American Express would cover the insurance, but not if I rented the car in Italy. I asked, and they said if the car rental company didn’t mind my taking the car into Italy, they would cover it. So I asked, and they said, drive it where you want.
I bumped into a curb without damaging anything a couple of times. I was thinking of passing a car, and suddenly realized I had drifted into the passing lane without conscious effort. Fortunately there was no other car there. Despite my every effort, not a single Swiss offered to let me run into him.
I actually got more awake as the day progressed, mainly from frustration with Tom-Tom. Half way to Milan the GPS said to take this exit, even though the signs said go straight for Milan. But I turned off and found myself getting a misguided tour of Lugano. At one intersection, Tom-Tom told me to turn right and I did. Then it told me to make a u-turn and I did. Then it told me to make another u-turn.
I think the chips may be wearing out or something. The voice is not as loud as it should be, the voice command sometimes disagrees with the map suggestion, and there’s no sure way to tell which is right. The map and the voice both told me to leave the motorway and go into Lugano, so I think the system may be dying. Fine time to find that out.
I probably spent an hour seeing the sights of Lugano, and of Chiassa, just down the road. I did eventually make it to Milan, maybe two hours later than I had planned. My hotel was there, and my room. I can park in a lot across from the hotel until Friday when it becomes a market. And the night clerk is an intelligent, friendly man.
He told me about a restaurant a block and a half away. He called it La Cochina, the kitchen. The sign just says The Kitchen. I had a nice veal cutlet, Milanese style, which seemed to be just a veal cutlet. The clerk said their specialty was fish, and I saw the waitress serve up a fancy fish dish. It was a pie and she cut open the top, dividing the crust onto two plates. The shrimps and mussels inside were cooked with spaghetti and she split them between the two plates also. I wouldn’t have eaten it, but it looked nicely done.
They offered lighter beers and darker beers, so I ordered a dark one. It was a lager, only slightly darker than the other beers they offered.
Anyway, it is way late, and I am extremely tired, so that’s all you get tonight.
Day 2 Wednesday, Sep. 18, 2019 TIM is now my phone company
Let’s see, I should start with the other disasters I forgot to mention yesterday. I broke the ancient Hobbit rule and Bilbo Baggins’ personal injunction, and left home without my handkerchiefs. I have my socks, which are kept in the same drawer, but no hankies. Unless the person who broke my suitcase stole them, and nothing else. Unlikely.
I also managed to lose a contact lens at dinner last night. It slipped in my eye, but when I went into the bathroom, it was still there. I took it out and couldn’t get it back into my eye. It kept sticking to my finger. Then it disappeared. Not in my eye, not on my finger, not in the sink, not on the counter. Gone. I have a backup, but I really didn’t want to have to use it at all, and especially not this soon.
Today was nice. The lady at the hotel desk this morning told me, showed me, where I could get an inexpensive suitcase at a roadside news stand that sold other things. I saw the stand, but didn’t notice any suitcases until I was coming back with one I bought at another roadside stand.
I bought my new one because the salesman saw me looking at his luggage. He had one that is a good match for the size of my broken one. He wanted to sell it to me right then, but I was on my way to a museum and knew they wouldn’t let me bring that in. On my way back I stopped and bought it. The one down the street from my hotel would have been 20 euros cheaper, but I hadn’t seen it. 60 euros may be high, but I thought it would save me a lot of searching for another. [After getting home, I looked at prices at Walmart, and the 60 euros was not a bad price. The 40 euro price would have been better, of course.]
I went to the metro, about three blocks from the hotel, and the ticket machine didn’t work. It wouldn’t take credit cards, though it should. It wouldn’t take bills. It wouldn’t accept half of my coins. I gave up and went to the news stand in the station and bought a 3 day pass. The subway stops near the Duomo and some of the other places I want to see.
I got the Fast Trak ticket to the Duomo. It lets you cut ahead of lines, and includes the elevator to the roof. The roof is the first part of the cathedral you visit, and you wander over a lot of it. Great views of the city and the spires. In one spot there was a carving of a plant growing from a flowerpot. We got the elevator up, but we had to walk down. Granted, it was downhill, which is easier, but there were an awful lot of stairs. I felt sorry for Grandma, who had come with her daughter, and maybe adult granddaughter. She had to stop and rest a few times on the way down.
This is a huge cathedral. The facade is large and impressive, but sometimes a large facade doesn’t mean anything. The inside is also huge. Big open areas, huge chapels, a gigantic sanctuary. Three monstrous stained glass windows behind the sanctuary. And the columns! Most churches have a row of columns defining the separation between nave and aisles. This has a nave, but it’s hard to see because there are so many columns, four separate lines of them. Near the top of each column was a band of statues, too high up to tell who they were. Too high up to get a clear picture, too.
It’s a really beautiful cathedral. I only took a few pictures of the stained glass, because a lot of it wasn’t interesting, but the floor was very nice, with two foot wide tiles. The vaulting is gorgeous, but almost too high up to notice.
I went into the archaeological area where they stumps of walls from earlier buildings on the site. A guide was explaining to a couple of American tourists that there had been two cathedrals in Milan. One for Summer, and one for Winter.
After lunch I went looking for a SIM chip for my phone. I got one, from a network known as TIM. This lets me have a working phone, but only to call Italians. I don’t understand this. The networks handle calls from all over, why shouldn’t they send them all over? Anyway, if you need me, email. If you need me urgently, call +39 [phone number]. The +39 is the country code for Italy. I don’t know if I have voicemail with this, so try again if I don’t. Try again anyway, because I may not know how to get to the voicemail. And remember that Italy is 7 hours later than DeKalb.
Then I went to the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, an art gallery. Lots of standard Italian religious pictures, but all very good art. And some non-religious pictures. A Breughel painting of Daniel in the lions’ den was interesting, but I think my photo is blurred. [Yes, it was. Rats.] The den is a big hole in the ground, filled with six or eight lions and Daniel. Up above are the spectators, come to watch him getting eaten.
But I was getting tired again, so I came back to the hotel for a nap. I had two other museums to see today, but I have room for them in Friday’s schedule.
I looked at another restaurant tonight, one that served donkey cutlets, but they also served fried bread, and that was their specialty. So I went back to the Kitchen and had Robespierre, thinly sliced beef baked with rosemary and mustard. Delicious! I would never have thought to use rosemary with beef, but it’s great! I’m still having trouble getting their dark beer. I pointed to the line in the menu, but the waitress apparently read the wrong line and got me a different beer It was still good. And apple ice cream with Calvados syrup. Not as good as in Normandy, but close.
Tomorrow is Castello Sforzesco, which includes several museums. Should be good.
Day 3 Thursday, Sep. 19, 2019 Lots of museums, lots of walking
This morning was cool so I put on the jacket I almost forgot to bring. Today’s target was the Castello Sforzesco, the huge castle of the Sforza and Visconti families when they ruled Milan. It’s almost all brick, with some stone turrets at the corners. Two big courtyards, with a big wall and another gatehouse between them, and another moat.
The castle has several museums inside, and I wanted to see three of them and the castle. The castle got slighted a bit. I walked all over it in going through the museums, but I missed out on the private rooms and other exhibits for the castle proper. Of course, the private rooms wouldn’t have had any of the real furnishings, the Sforzas and Viscontis having been gone for some five hundred years.
The map I was given seemed to show where everything was, but it was actually not very helpful. The rooms in the museums are numbered, but the numbers don’t show on the map. I never knew just where I was, or if I had seen everything. I did, I think, but only because the exhibits flowed from room to room without any confusion.
There was a sepulchral monument to Bernabo Visconti, which looked like a sarcophagus on five foot tall pillars, topped by a life-sized equestrian statue of Bernabo. Unusual but interesting.
Then there’s the gonfalon of Milan. A gonfalon is a large standard or banner, used to identify troops in the field, or to carry in parades. This one is five meters high and 3.5 meters wide, decorated the same on both sides. It was actually carried in parades, and was in use until the end of the 19th century. It depicts Saint Ambrose, bishop of Milan, brandishing his whip. This explains the scene on the entrrance to the cathedral, of a mitred bishop wielding a whip in battle.
I had to wait in that room for a while because there was a video show going on in the next room. I went in and sat down for it, because I could sit and rest. I thought, too late, that it would be in Italian. It was, but they had an English translation displayed on the floor. It was about da Vinci designing this room for the duke of Milan. It would have trees painted all around the walls, with their branches intertwining overhead in the ceiling. Work was going along pretty well until the duke got beat in battle by the king of France. Money stopped, work stopped and was never continued. The painting was covered over and forgotten for a long time. In the early 20th century it was rediscovered and the restoration ruined it. But it’s been re-restored and if you know what it’s supposed to look like, you can see some of the design.
There’s an interesting funeral monument to some knight, lying on a cot with feet. There’s a “private room,” which is a small two sided square room to be installed in your favorite church. Set up against a wall, you can worship in privacy. The inside is very plain, but the outside is highly decorated. There are some very nice carved or inlaid tables.
There is a piece of armor, two pieces of mail sewn onto a fabric backing to make front and back armor. The front part has a metal plate attached on the inside over the chest. It looks weird.
There were a lot of nice things in the collections, and a lot of ordinary stuff. Most of the paintings were medieval Italian art, that is, standard religious art. Most of it was very standard, too. I had planned six hours in the castle, but only spent about four. Of course I skipped the full tour of the castle as a castle.
I went on then to one of the two museums I missed yesterday, the Poldi Pezzoli Museum. It was not near the castle, and my map showed a long walk from the castle to the museum, or I could take the subway and have a (relatively) shorter walk. I did that, of course, and managed to navigate to the museum. My map showed all the streets, I just had to figure out which was which. The streets are marked, but I had to look at every corner to make sure where I was. The real problem was that the map showed the museum on the north end of one block, while it was actually on the south end. If I had known, I could have picked a different route.
A 19th century rich man put his personal collection of art on display, and it’s nice. Again, too much early Italian painting, but some was interesting. For instance, did you know that Jesus was a redhead? There’s painted proof.
They have a fun sundial. It has a small cannon on the base, and a magnifying glass on a stand over the cannon. Presumably, at noon the glass concentrates the sun’s rays on the touch hole on the cannon, and it fires to signal lunchtime.
There’s a ceramic quartet of figures representing the continents. Africa was a black woman in European dress sitting on a happy lion, two white women in European dress, one resting on a camel for Asia, one by a horse for Europe, and a tan woman dressed in feathers, sitting on an alligator for America.
I was ready to go back to the hotel and took a chance that the map was wrong. I guessed right, and the road I wanted was just south of the museum. I followed it to a big piazza, with several roads coming together and veering off in different directions. I finally found the one I wanted – its name was hidden by a large vehicle parked next to the sign.
I got back, tired again, and took another nap for a couple of hours. I felt better after that and went out for dinner to the same place again. This time I specifically asked for the dark beer. It was, wait for it, Guinness. I had an unbreaded veal cutlet (they called it a veal steak) pounded very thin and grilled.
Tomorrow’s museum, the Brera, should take a half a day, but I will try to get another one in later. I have to move my car tomorrow evening. There’s going to be a market on Saturday, starting early, and all the parking in the area is closed off. There’s a parking garage two blocks away that I can use, I think.
Day 4 Friday, Sep. 20, 2019 A really nice museum
I had to start the day today by moving my car. I had parked in a free empty lot across from the hotel. But Tuesday and Saturday they have a market there, and there’s no parking anywhere around. Not in the empty lot. Not on the street. Nowhere. So I moved it to a garage about two blocks away. I wasn’t sure they’d have space for me, so I dropped it off in the morning. Good thing I did because by afternoon it was full.
Getting my car out of the free lot was a challenge. When I had parked, there were very few cars there. This morning, it was full. I backed out of my space and was about to drive out when I saw a black guy, one of the African immigrants you read about, coming toward me. The lane I was in was no good for exiting the lot. He should have had me pull back into my spot and back out the other way, but he just asked me to go backwards all the way. This was tricky because cars were not parked nice and neat. I managed to avoid even scraping any of them and got into the proper lane. He held his hand out and I gave him two euros.
Then I set off for the Brera Museum, which was not on the subway line I’ve been using. Turns out there are three subway lines in Milan, Red, Yellow, and Green. Yellow and Green come closest to the Brera, but I decided the Yellow left me with a shorter walk. I could walk to the main train station and get the Yellow line, but by going to the parking garage, I was a block farther from it and a block closer to the Red line. So I took the Red line and transferred to the Yellow line.
My foot journey was not quite as difficult as yesterday’s. I followed the map, chose the right roads, and came out onto Brera street right by the museum. Then the big question, should I turn left or right? Milanese streets are well labeled, and the map showed their names, often in vanishingly small print. But the numbers are the kicker. Yesterday I was looking for No. 12. I found No. 16. I found No.16A. I was passing several shops, and finally got to No. 14. No. 12 was just beyond that. Anyway, I turned the wrong way, walked a block and found the street name was changing, so I went back. There, right at the corner I had made the wrong turn was the museum.
The building used to be a Jesuit monastery until they were closed down in Italy. On his 40th birthday, Napoleon created a museum of Italian art in the building, as a sort of Italian Louvre. The art museum is just a small part of the whole, and it takes a lot of walking to see it all. There are also garden and astronomical departments, and an art school.
These were some of the best quality paintings I’ve seen so far, and I took only a handful of photos. The paintings were very good in technique, but still the same run of medieval and renaissance religious subject matter. I don’t mind religious paintings, but there is a limit to how many Madonna and Child’s I want to see. There were too many here, all very well done, but too many is too many. And Saint Catherine of Alexandria was all over with her wheel. Saint Sebastian with his arrows was also popular. I realized after seeing a painting of him holding some arrows in his hand while fully clothed, that most of the paintings of him show him naked, stuck full of arrows. It’s the only way a church can show a naked man not named Adam.
I was tempted by some very nice late renaissance portraits, but they were all of people you’ve never heard of, by people you’ve never heard of. I probably should have taken some photos of them. They were good, but not that good.
I did take a couple of pictures of one painting, some saint preaching in Alexandria (no sign of Saint Catherine). It was a monster painting, probably fifty feet long and at least twenty tall. A huge church was in the background, with a lot of men in turbans and women in veils listening to or ignoring the preacher. And in the background, by the church, was a camel. Okay, a camel in Egypt, no problem. On the other side of the church was a giraffe. And properly drawn. A recognizable giraffe!
I got a slice of pizza and a bottle of milk for lunch and ate them in the patio behind the hotel. Very nice. Then I started on this diary. For dinner I went to another restaurant, one I had mentioned before. I ordered the donkey cutlet (chop actually) and it was good. Not a very distinctive taste, more tender than beef, grilled very nicely. It came with a plate of Parmesan cheese. Not the shredded stuff we scatter over food. This was shaved slices of Parmesan, tissue paper thin, and oh, so tasty.
The beer was Menabrea Bock Birra Doppio Malto Rossa, not quite a bock beer, but very good. Reasonably strong, and .75 liter, a big drink.
Tomorrow I pick up the car from the garage and head off to Cremona (according to the song, “lotsa laughs, bars, dough, quail in Cremona”). And a Duomo and tower.
Day 5 Saturday, Sep. 21, 2019 Hide and seek in Parma
At nine this morning, the market was still being set up. Mostly produce, but some clothing and I don’t know what-all. The market was in the lot where I had parked, but the streets had to be cleared for the merchants’ vehicles.
I got my car and set up Tom-Tom for the trip to Cremona and discovered something awful. When I set up the GPS coordinates for the places I wanted to go, I thought I had identified them thoroughly. When I opened the file in Tom-Tom, I saw two or more places listed only as “underground garage” with no indication of what towns they were in. I chose the nearest, and looked at the map Tom-Tom had for the route. It matched the route to Cremona, so that one was fine. I’ll have to be careful with the rest. I didn’t copy the initial file to my laptop, so I can’t double check it. [The initial file has commas to delimit items, and the conversion to a Tom-Tom list of favorites apparently only reads the first two items. Fewer commas would have solved this problem.]
There were no problems with driving today. It was a nice sunny day, a little cool to begin, but it warmed up. Cremona showed me the other thing I didn’t do right. I found the parking garage without any trouble. No, that’s not entirely true. Tom-Tom led me down this street and told me to turn right, and right again. One minute to my destination meant I was close to the garage. But Saturday is also market day in Cremona, and I couldn’t make the first right turn, so I turned left. Tom-Tom tried to find a new route, or the old one again, but slid past the first street it had led me up. On the second street, I could bypass the market, and find the garage.
But the thing I didn’t do right was to make maps of where I wanted to go in each town, and how to get there. Ideally, I should have written to each town in advance, asking for a tourist map. But I didn’t, and I didn’t print out any Google maps. So I was standing outside the parking garage with no clue where the Duomo of Cremona was.
I saw a tower and a hint of a cupola, and headed in that direction. The market was quite extensive, covering block long stretches of road, and had all sorts of booths. The tower was the bell tower, separate from the cathedral. Coming up a street through the booths, I saw the facade of the duomo. Italian churches are not like French churches. They’ve been building them longer, and have been happy enough with the older styles. Milan is an exception.
The cathedral at Cremona has a big flat facade, but it’s not plain. There is a double row of arcades half way up the front. There’s a big rose window. There are statues all over the place. It’s just a different sort of decoration than the French do.
There are two large lions guarding the main entrance to the church. Another identical pair guards the main door in Parma. Must have been a traveling salesman peddling church lions. Inside there are romanesque arches for the nave, but gothic arches for the ceiling. And everything is painted. Scenes from Christ’s life or other biblical themes, decoration, anything at all as long as it was paint. Very little of the fancy stone carving one sees in gothic churches.
The rose window is just plain glass, and smaller inside than it seemed from outside. The choir sits in balconies on either side of the sanctuary. It’s an interesting church, but gaudy.
So then I drove to Parma and got to my hotel, which has its own parking lot. I parked a hundred feet from the front door, didn’t see it, and walked all the way around the building to get in. The rest of the ground floor was rented out to other shops, which makes it easier to make the hotel prosper, I guess.
The desk clerk gave me a map of Parma, just the central part, so I could find my way to the Duomo and the museum I wanted to see today. I had planned to take the bus into town, but I hadn’t made a map of where to get on, or off, or how to get back (see above). But I remembered there was an underground garage that I was going to use tomorrow when I saw another museum. So I went there, and realized, again, that I had no idea where I was or how to go where I wanted.
I knew the garage was near the river, but I couldn’t remember which bank it was on. The map the clerk had given me only showed the churches of Parma, and stopped short of where the garage was. I finally saw a sign for the information office, and went looking for it. I never saw it* but I did pass the Palazzo Pilotta, which was the home for the National Gallery, tomorrow’s museum. And I knew the other museum and the duomo were somewhere off in the direction I was headed.
* Minor rant: All over Europe, and presumably the rest of the world, Information Offices put out signs with an arrow pointing in some direction with the words “Information Office” , the letter “I” and nothing else. No indication of how far off it is, or how many turns you have to make to get there. Not a single one has ever had the sense to include a small map showing how to get there from here. You would think that someone who works in an Information Office would have thought of that. But no.
I found a street that was on my map, and another, and there was the cathedral! The bell tower was attached, and the double arcade was higher up on the facade, and there were no statues. Just the lions. But it was very similar to the duomo in Cremona.
The same romanesque arches in the nave, the same gothic arches for the ceiling. Everything was painted, even more so than in Cremona. No statues, but paintings that looked like statues. The chapels were all decorated fabulously. Some had dozens of paintings on the walls. This is going to take some getting used to.
It was still early enough in the afternoon, and I wanted to see the Pinacoteca Stuard, an art museum near the cathedral. But my map didn’t show it, and I had only a vague memory that it was west and north of the cathedral, but just a bit. So I went down one street that might have been in the right direction, and turned down another leading either to the museum or the parking garage. And there was the museum, right in front of me!
The museum was free, which was a nice surprise, and like the Brera museum, housed in an old monastery. They let parts of the old structure poke out for effect. The first floor and part of the second was the same old medieval and renaissance religious themes. But some were different. Everyone did Madonna and infant paintings in the old days. I think there must have been a law, or maybe a requirement to join the painters’ guild. And most of them have a Mary with an expressionless face. A few have her smiling politely at all the people dropping in on the stable. But the Stuard has a painting showing Mary actually smiling happily at the baby, obviously proud of her child, the way a new mother should look.
And there’s a post-crucifixion scene in heaven of the Trinity. The Holy Ghost floats between God the Father, fully dressed, and his (literally) right hand man, Jesus. Jesus in naked to the waist so he can show off his wounds from the crucifixion. I’ve seen pictures of a wounded Christ, but never one set in heaven. [The picture is odd in another way, too. God the Father has a scepter in his left hand, and his right hand is stretched out to indicate Jesus. And there’s another hand, resting on his right knee. I can’t figure what that’s supposed to mean.] [Looking at it again, I see that what looks like half an arm and a hand is actually highlighting; the upper parts of the dark garment God the Father is wearing are highlighted (highlit?) in a light shade. And that looks like the arm and hand.]
In secular paintings, there was a painting of a man painting a woman while lots of people poked their heads in to watch. The artist in the painting was doing a worse job than the artist who painted them both.
And the duchess of Parma, in one painting the brass label below it identified her as Margherita of Austria, while the card on the wall called her Maria of Portugal. Another portrait names her as Margaret of Parma. Same woman. Eh, what do artists know?
What do they know? They know when the chaperone for their semi-nude model is asleep. He’s stopped painting, and the model has her finger to her lips to keep him quiet. And there was a nice painting of a woman in white sitting on a wall, with an enormous lotus plant behind her. I’m not sure what the point was. She was a nice figure, and could have been painted without the lotus. The lotus looked like a thousand-year salad.
Anyway, back to the hotel to plan dinner. There’s a rugby club down the road from here, and there’s a restaurant somehow connected to the grounds. I’ve seen reviews of it that said it was great, but you can’t seem to get there. The grounds are fenced in, so you have to be a fan, I guess. Across the street was another restaurant whose owners are always trying something different. Sometimes something good, sometimes not.
I didn’t want to have to go too far for dinner, and there was one other restaurant withing walking distance. It opened at seven, and I was there at seven-ten, to find out that they open at seven-thirty. So I sat down and waited. At seven-thirty the place was just opened and empty. When I left at quarter to nine, it was packed.
I had the Robespierre again. The place in Milan made it with rosemary and mustard, the place here used rosemary and a basalmic something. This one was thicker slices, but just as good. And three big scoops of lemon gelato for dessert.
Tomorrow is a castle south of Parma, then back to Parma for the National Gallery. Then on to Mantua.
Day 6 Sunday, Sep. 22, 2019 Gas? On a Sunday? Are you out of your mind?
It was raining this morning. Well, something between a drizzle and a heavy mist. And cool. But the car was dry on the road to Castello di Torrechiara. I’m glad I visited this castle first thing, because if I had gone later, I’d have been too tired to climb the hill.
I found out when I got to the top that I could have parked up there, but I didn’t know that when I arrived. It was a serious climb, but I managed. The castle is an old-fashioned four square tower sort of castle, with the original old town out back of it. Nice, big thick walls, defensible and picturesque.
There are three wells in the castle, two in the courtyard, and one just out of the courtyard. They must have been very thirsty. The kitchen has special heaters for stew pots, and sleeping quarters for the staff. The stable is in one corner of the castle, with its own outside door and a ramp. One doesn’t normally see the stables in a castle.
But the real prize are the frescoes. Almost every room, even the outside terrace, was plastered and covered in frescoes. They are all different, and very beautiful. Coats of arms, decorations, trees, birds, all sorts of illustrations. And it’s not just the walls, the ceilings are mad with color. There’s a sphinx with a long neck balancing a flower pot on her head. There are landscapes of all sorts.
And then there’s the Golden Chamber. The ceiling and upper walls are frescoed, but the lower parts of the walls are covered with golden tiles with different designs. A very impressive room.
There were some arms and armor, including some nice pole arms. There was a suit of upper armor, blued front and back, with the arms and shoulders tinned, for use at sea, they said.
A very nice castle, with wonderful decorations. On the way out I passed a sign for some art exhibit elsewhere. One of the pictures was a painting by Goya. There’s an artist in one corner, painting something. A woman sits at a table while some guy dresses her hair. Another guy is sitting next to her and seems to be reading Tarot cards, or dealing poker. Several other people are just standing around,, including one man with his head bandaged, and a silly grin on his face, looking right at the viewer.
Back to Parma for the National Gallery of Art. I shouldn’t say “the” National Gallery, because most Italian cities have one, also. It is a nice art gallery, but one of the most infuriating places imaginable. I got there early and had to wait extra long to buy my ticket, because the woman in front of me was planning a visit with her entire town. At least 2 dozen tickets. But that wasn’t the problem.
I went up and headed for the door marked, very clearly, National Gallery of Art. And the guard said, “No, the entrance is over here”, pointing to another door. The map said this was the Farnese Theater, which I did not want to see. But in I went, glanced around, saw no way into the rest of the museum, but I did see a toilet. I had a mild need for such a facility, but the glass door only showed it to me. It wouldn’t open.
I went back out and asked a guide how to get to the rest of the museum, but she didn’t speak English. The original guard told me to go to the back corner of the theater, through the door and behind the stage, and I’d be there. No signs to point this out until you get to the door. But there was a toilet in the passageway, out of order. I could wait.
So I got into the museum and a guard told me to go into these rooms first. So I did, and it was mostly meh, but there were a couple of really nice paintings and a beautiful cabinet. Another big room full of small things, and another guard telling me I had to go upstairs and down a long corridor to see pictures I really didn’t want to see before I could come back and see what I wanted.
That was the problem, the guards kept pushing me into some place I had no interest in, and wouldn’t take no for an answer. At the end, a guard saw me and said I had to go through this door and see this section. I said I hadn’t seen the current room yet, and he still kept trying to push me into the other area. That area didn’t have as many pictures as the room I was in, because they were remodeling. And it led me back to where I started anyway. And that was the room I was looking for, because it had a toilet in a side corridor. In fact it was the same toilet I had seen an hour earlier and couldn’t get to.
The long corridor I was forced down had portraits of the two duchesses of Parma I had seen yesterday, but smaller. And a Farnese genealogy to show they were two different women. I’m not sure, but maybe.
At the end of this corridor was a wing with really boring paintings. I asked the guard about some other rooms that should have been accessible from there. No, he said, that’s all closed off. Then he changed his mind and let me see them. Which was nice because those rooms held a Holbein of Erasmus, a man and woman by a guy I don’t know, but the art is great. And a sketch by da Vinci of a woman’s head with her hair blowing about.
I finally got back to where I had first been detoured and found an interesting statue of Marie Louise, Napoleon’s second wife, representing “Concord.” I also saw the second ugliest statue of a lion I have ever seen. I know it was the second ugliest because the ugliest was right across from it.
As long as I”m griping, I will gripe about the horrible way these museums treat their patrons. I walk all over the museum and get tired. There’s a seat, or a bench, just the place to sit down and take a break. No, not allowed. At the Stuard yesterday they had these nice long benches all over, sometimes two or three to a room. Not for sitting on. Just for teasing the customers. The National Gallery had very nice small stools all over, dozens of them. They weren’t that special, or that ancient. Why put out so many if no one could use them?
I needed some lunch before heading to Mantua, and I found a local beer shop. I bought a bock named Minerva and a rauch beer named Lady Rauch. It’s amber, and not bad, but nothing special either. I got lunch around the corner – bacon pizza.
The rain had settled into a light mist by the afternoon, when it bothered to fall at all. The drive to Mantua wasn’t too bad until the accident. I didn’t see it, but it was up ahead on my route. Every twist and turn from Tom-Tom still left me following the crawling line down the highway. Finally, I got past it and the road opened up.
But I had had time while idling along to notice the gas gauge. It wasn’t that low, but I would have to get gas today or tomorrow. So I stopped at a gas station, self-serve. I had already noticed that full service stations were closed for Sunday. But I saw some people at self-serve stations and decided to try that myself. Everything worked fine, except the dispensing of gas. I finally gave up until I was on the motorway and found a station that was open. I don’t know why the self-serve pumps didn’t work.
But I got to Mantua and found my hotel, and they have a private parking lot in the back, with an entrance down the street. I asked the desk clerk about a place for dinner, and he suggested I just check the internet, and gave me the login information. It doesn’t work. My laptop tells me I’m connected, but I have no internet. My smart phone connected right away without me doing anything, but also no internet.
So I asked the other desk clerk about places to eat and he gave me three choices. The first was good, but the menu was entirely Italian so I had to guess about what to eat. I did recognize the word “cavallo” and ordered that. The waiter said it could be beef or horse, but he may have been trying to avoid offending an American softie. Whichever it was, it was good. With tiny half tomatoes and more shaved parmesan cheese. I just noticed that I have not told you about the shaved parmesan cheese. This not some grated stuff you sprinkle on your food. This is shaved slices of parmesan, thin as tissue paper, and oh, how tasty!
Tomorrow, I see the ducal palace here in Mantua, then on to Verona.
Day 7 Monday, Sep. 23, 2019 I forgot it was Monday
My plan for today was simple. Drive across Mantua and visit the ducal palace and then go to Verona. I mentioned this to the desk clerk at the hotel, and he said I couldn’t do it. The palace wasn’t open on Mondays. I looked at my itinerary and there it was, carefully noted, closed on Mondays. And I had scheduled it for Monday. Ooops.
So I just went to Verona. It was raining today, not a little maybe rain like yesterday, but a serious all day rain. Not a downpour, but steady. In the car, it didn’t bother me. For a quick run outside it didn’t bother me. But later it grew stronger and I was out longer, so I got an umbrella. I had four hours of touring scheduled for today, and four for tomorrow, and I just switched them. Tomorrow’s will be easy to visit from my hotel. Well, that’s what I thought, but I will have checked out before seeing anything. Still, they are all fairly close together.
Today I went to the old Roman arena. I was supposed to park near it, but Tom-Tom insisted that I drive through a closed road. After arguing for a while, I just parked in a street spot. The sign said towing Lunedi – Venredi. So I figured, it’s not Tuesday, so I’m fine. After seeing the arena, I went to the old castle, called, cleverly enough, Castellvecchio. They didn’t open until 1:30 on Lunedi, which is how I learned Lunedi means Monday in Italian.
Several blocks of walking later I got back to the car and found it had not been towed or booted or anything. So I drove over to Saint Zeno’s church, couldn’t find the lot, but did find a place with a machine to buy parking time.
But that’s getting ahead of the story. You want to know all about the arena, fifth biggest arena in ancient Italy, once a full story taller before medieval Veronans discovered stripping down a Roman relic was easier than quarrying. It’s nice, but mainly from the outside. Inside it is too modern, because the town uses it for operas, rock concerts, and anything else that might bring in a Euro. There’s a big stage in the middle, and only the topmost seats are still stone. The rest are plastic stadium seats. The passages from the outside gates to the stairs going up inside are original, of course. I have a photo of a tallish woman standing by one, and she is a head taller than the opening.
I had to buy a map of Verona (remember what I said yesterday about not knowing where I was going) and it helped a lot. It got me to the castle and back to my illegally parked car. It helped later when I finally got to the castle.
The church of Saint Zeno is big, done in stripes of white stone and brown bricks. My parking place was close to the church, but I didn’t know where the entrance was and had to walk all around the block to find it. It has two banks of carved stone plaques on the facade, and a nice cloister next to it. There are lots of frescoes, whole or in part, all over the church. One is of the Last Supper, with scorpions on the table to warn of Judas’ betrayal.
There is a pair of great doors for the central doorway (which most churches don’t use anymore) covered with bronze plaques. Very nice. And a porphyry basin from a Roman bath that must be six or eight feet across.
Everywhere you look are frescoes, some whole, some damaged, some stacked. One has a figure of Christ apparently showing off his cross, but part has broken off, and we see the under-fresco of a different Christ standing next to someone. Then there’s one of St. Christopher carrying Christ, and one of his feet has kicked the plaster off and exposed someone else’s foot. They have a statue of Saint Zeno (“last saint in the prayerbook”) smiling, called the laughing saint.
I came out of the church for lunch and it was raining harder, and hadn’t let up while I ate. So I got wet going back to the car. I headed for the castle again, looking for a lot close by. By luck, the garage was in the basement of a supermarket. I needed mouthwash, and I wanted a hat or umbrella. They didn’t have any hats, but I got a small umbrella that works nicely.
Then I walked to the museum nice and dry, and left the umbrella in the umbrella stand because why would I need it inside. Because I was sometimes outside. The museum is in the castle, it is what the castle was turned into several decades ago. So sometimes the link between two parts of the collection is wet.
An awful lot of the art is medieval and renaissance religious art. Just when you can’t take any more, they throw in a secular portrait, or a mythological scene. But even some of the stock religious paintings could be interesting. One madonna nursing the baby Jesus intrigued me because it looked like Jesus was kissing a hedgehog. I would have thought that Italian painters of the 13th century would have had a better idea of what a breast looked like.
There were some more frescoed rooms, and a very nice portrait of a lady with a huge lace ruff. Another painting showed Cupid in bed asleep, which raised the question, How does Cupid sleep with those wings on his back?
Saint Rocco made three appearances that I noticed. His name in English was given as Saint Rock, and the first appearance looked like Rock, a real tough guy. [I misread the card. It’s actually Roch. I like Rock better.]
There was some armor and weapons, it was a castle, after all. One piece was labeled as a left hand daghetta. There was even a statue of a mounted knight, done as his funerary monument. It shows him wearing a conical helmet with cheek pieces, and a full crested helm resting on his back.
There is a wonderful painting of a Young Man with a Drawing, which sounds so ordinary, except the young man is in his early teens and is grinning over his really inept stickman drawing. And a trumpet without any valves, but shaped like a pretzel, so the music really does go round and round and comes out here.
I had one other problem. I was running out of cash. Credit cards work everywhere, but cash is easier for some things. But where could I find an ATM? There, at that bank. Look, I can see it through the closed door. The door that says the bank closes at 4:55. It’s only 4:53, why is it closed? I kept looking, going back toward the arena, hoping to find an ATM in the busy commercial area around it. And there was the ATM sign, hanging from a pizzeria’s front. OK, it smells of pepperoni, but it’s still money.
Then to find my hotel, Relais a Ponte Pietra, the stone bridge. Tom-Tom got balky again, but not as bad as the other day, and I got there. Mostly there. I stopped and parked while I searched on foot for the place. Two blocks away I found it. I had hoped to park in a lot nearby, but it was full, and had restrictions on overnight parking. The owner of the hotel said I could park in front, on the street and it would be fine. So I went and brought the car up and began having second thoughts. The van trying to find a way past me confirmed the second thoughts. I took the owner’s offer of a €10 spot in his garage.
The owner’s family have lived here for three generations, and the building is a thousand years old, he says. Breakfast tomorrow will be in the original kitchen in the basement. He is very friendly, and not only recommended a good restaurant, he gave me a coupon for 10% off my meal.
But I don’t have a room here. I have a suite. A sitting room with a couch, a chair, an etagere with books, a wide screen TV. Next to that is the bedroom, spacious, king-sized bed, big closet, another chair, a kitchenette with a mini-fridge, sink and toaster and coffee pot. The bathroom is quite large with a big shower. I paid a lot more than I usually pay for this room, but it’s great.
The restaurant my host sent me to is in an old, decomissioned church, one of the earliest romanesque churches in Verona, he says. The food was excellent. For the first time this trip, I’ve seen chicken on the menu. I’ve had beef, pork, veal, donkey, horse, and finally chicken! They also had a duck ragout. I’m sorry to have missed it, but the chicken was fabulous. Grilled and sliced, served with candied fruits and tiny slices of Parmesan. Fantastic!
Tomorrow I see the cathedral, another church, and the old roman theater.
Day 8 Tuesday, Sep. 24, 2019 More forgetting and lots more walking
The rain has stopped and today was bright and sunny, and reasonably warm. My landlord was such a nice man that he let me leave my car in his garage until noon, so I could sight-see without having to worry about finding a place to park. I went to the duomo first, and discovered that yesterday, when I thought I was near the hotel, I was actually right behind the duomo.
It was a short walk to get there at least. It’s another striped brick and stone building with lots of decorations around the main door. For once, there are no lions in front, this church has griffons. I had time to study the front facade because the last mass of the morning was still going on.
The nave is lined with romanesque arches and the ceiling has gothic arches. There is no other decoration for the ceiling than the arches. But the walls are covered in frescoes and statues. Above the sanctuary is a huge painting of Mary’s assumption into heaven while all the apostles stand around on a balcony in amazement, in all sorts of odd postures. I’ve seen at least three versions of this in art museums in the last few days, all regular sized paintings, and with the apostles in different groupings and stances. It looked like a Heaven’s Best Dancer competition.
Something I haven’t seen much of so far, a funerary monument. This one had family members standing around the deathbed. There haven’t been many wall plaques or floor markers, either. Some, but nothing like the English do.
So I walked across town, again a short walk, to St. Anastasia’s church. Next door is the church for St. Peter the Martyr. There were a couple of nice frescoes over the door, and a very nice side door. There was also a sarcophagus with a canopy, resting on top of an archway out back. Looking for something else, I turned to Wikipedia and learned that this is Guglielmo di Castelbarco, podestà of Verona.
St. Anastasia is another all brick church. The Italians build a lot of brick churches, and even their castles are brick. This church had stone arches framing the doorway, painted in bands of red, white, and blue. Inside are two holy water basins, about three feet across, each resting on the back of a man. The first, in plain white stone, is the Hunchback, straining under the weight of the basin. Across from him in Pasquin, named for the Easter he was installed. Pasquin has a smaller, lighter basin, but his clothes are ripped, and he has some paint.
Same style for the arches, round below, pointy above. But the ceiling is covered in medallions, painted bands, all sorts of things to fill the space. The floor is paved with several different patterns of tiles in red, white, and black. These are the colors of the Dominican order which ran it.
Some of the chapels are very impressive, even if you can’t see it. One has a painting of St. George and a Princess high above the arch. It’s a famous painting, I’m told, but it’s almost impossible to see. There’s St. George, there’s the princess, there’s the back end of George’s horse. I guess it means more if you know the legend.
The inside of this chapel is covered with terra cotta panels, with a couple of stained glass windows. Just wonderful. Another funerary monument is to Cortesia Serego, showing him mounted on a horse standing on top of his sarcophagus. The sarcophagus has always been empty, though.
Back of the altar, there’s a stained glass window, with one panel opened inward like a small door. Never seen that before. There was some 14th century glass in one side chapel, but it was just small, two foot square pieces set into blank windows. Hardly worth looking at, and the room was being taken over by the Gardia di Finanza, all in police or military uniforms. I didn’t know what they were until I went out and saw the plaza in front of the church full of their marked cars.
Then I went to the Roman Theater, which was disappointing. There was a lot of Do Not Cross tape closing off large parts, not that that stopped some people. I could see a lot of the theater, but like the arena, it was used for shows, and the seats were being replaced with metal ones. And a new modern stage.
I had promised to be back to the hotel before noon to get my car. I was back by quarter past eleven, but there was no one home. I rang the bell several times without any answer. At one point a woman who apparently has the penthouse on top came out. I went in, but couldn’t find anyone. I went into the garage but couldn’t find the light switch, much less the garage door opener. Not that that would have mattered, a delivery van was blocking the exit.
I went back outside and waited some more, and then the other garage door opened. The owner opened the door in front of my car and we waited for the delivery guy to leave. Then off I went. I hadn’t had a chance to tell Tom-Tom where to take me, so I just drove at random until I could find a spot to pull over. Eventually I was on my way to Padua. The morning schedule was supposed to take four hours, and I did it in two. So instead of heading for my hotel in Padua, I went to the duomo, or rather, the nearest parking garage.
The guy there was nice, only charged five euros an hour, and gave me directions to the duomo. Best of all, when I returned, as soon as I turned into the doorway, he got in my car and brought it around without my having said a word.
So I got to the cathedral back door, but it was locked, with signs saying something about closed for repairs. I kept on going and after a while came to the front of the cathedral, abnormally plain, with no steps or porch. No lions, or griffons, or anything. And it didn’t open until four in the afternoon.
I tried explaining that to a guy who wanted to know how to get into the cathedral. I told him he couldn’t get in until four, he thought it closed at four, no it opens at four. He is not the first person I’ve given directions to this trip. I guess I have my old job back as guide to the locals.
The baptistry is right next to the cathedral, and it was open. Sort of. They’re doing a lot of restoration work, but I could still get some pictures of the frescoes.
So, just after one o’clock and three hours to kill. I went back to the car, stopping for lunch on the way. Unfortunately, I stopped at a snack bar right where I had to make a turn. After lunch I forgot about the turn and went a couple of blocks the wrong way. I did eventually get back to the car and headed for the hotel.
This was the big test for Tom-Tom. The hotel is in a no-car zone, and I had to follow a very detailed route to get to it. Tom-Tom didn’t have a clue. I was prepared for this, and added a “Favorite” for the start of the hotel’s route. Once there, I managed to follow the directions, trying to drive, watch the traffic and the street names, and switch my glasses on and off.
Le Camp Suite and Spa is fancy, as a spa should be. The staff are way beyond eager to help. The bellboy took my bag, put it in the elevator with me and told me to press “1” for the reception area. When I got there, he was waiting for me, having run up the stairs faster than the elevator. He showed me the spa, the sauna, the exercise room, the breakfast room. He showed me everything in my room, and he never held his hand out for a tip. [In fact, he refused a tip when I offered one.]
It’s a nice room, with a balcony. There’s no sofa, but I have two chairs. One normal one, and one chair that looks like someone took a large slab of papier-mache and twisted it into a chair shape. But it’s actually comfortable.
So I’ve already been to the baptistry, and the duomo is next up. I check my schedule for tomorrow and see it’s St. Anthony’s church and a chapel with a lot of frescoes by Giotto. And that was a problem. The Scrovegni Chapel required a ticket. You can’t buy them at the door. You can’t buy them just a little before you show up. You have to buy them at least a full day before you arrive. I put off buying them because I had no idea what time I’d show up. And now I couldn’t buy them.
They are so strict about this, if you are late, you lose your place in line and have to buy another ticket for the next available time slot. All right, I understand. These are frescoes, subject to damage from heat and cold, and humidity, and people breathing. And these are Giotto, who has stopped making frescoes.
So I walked to the duomo, not too far. Padua is a very nice town, more like what I imagined Italian towns to look like. Narrow streets lined with arcades, blank walls with shuttered windows, the occasional balcony with a nicely carved balustrade.
The duomo is different. Not just in the lack of lions. Inside the chapels and altars are as gaudy as any other church in Italy. But everything else is stark white. It’s all romanesque, with huge square columns, and it’s all white. The walls, the ceiling, the columns. All white. Such a surprise after all the frescoes and gold trim in the other churches.
There are some statues and wall markers, but they don’t interfere with the plainness. A couple of really extreme chapels look better for being in such a plain place. The pulpit is large enough for three or four preachers. It was a very nice church.
Then I set out for St. Anthony’s. I had a reasonably good map from the hotel, and managed to make the trip with only one missed turn. It’s a monster church, massive, tall, humongous. And you can’t take pictures in it. Didn’t matter. As I approached the bells were ringing. I thought it was just because it was five o’clock. Nope, they were announcing the evening service. I went in anyway, but there was nothing I really wanted to photograph, except to record that I had been there. The antithesis of the duomo, gaudy and overdone.
My legs were killing me the first couple of days, but they’re getting stronger. I walked a hell of a lot today, without too much strain. I was just beginning to get worn out coming back from St. Anthony’s when I realized I had reached my hotel. Longest straight up walk of the day, and it hardly bothered me.
I rested for a while and walked to dinner, almost as far as the duomo. The staff at the hotel agreed that the Osteria dei Fabbri was a good place to eat. They were right. I looked them up online and someone praised their rabbit, and they still serve it. Oh, it was good! With a thick sauce with carrots and olives and stuff.
Tomorrow is Ferrara with six hours of sight-seeing. Finishing up Padua early will make tomorrow easier.
Getting out of Padua wasn’t difficult, nor was getting into Ferrara. I had picked a centrally located parking garage as my destination, and … it was full. GPS systems aren’t the brightest things in the world. Asking for another parking garage prompts Tom-Tom to keep suggesting the one that’s full. So I asked for parking near the castle, and got a list to choose from. The one I chose was street parking a block and a half from the castle. I looked all over and could see no signs about forbidden or paying or anything. Amazingly, the car was still there, unbooted, and unticketed, five hours later. For free.
The castle is huge, all built of brick, with four strong towers, two drawbridges, and a moat. The tour goes through the various rooms, with information about the ducal family. Most of the time, the dukes and duchesses had separate quarters. Most of the time, a new duke moved into another section of the castle, and not into his father’s old rooms. Add in several decades of redesigning the whole structure, and the castle was always changing.
There are lots of descriptions of life in the castle or in the dukes’ families, fortunately in English as well as Italian. There were too many photographs of things, instead of things. Though I didn’t mind the photo of Duke Borso on his throne. The statue is in front of the duomo on top of a tall pillar, and it would have been hard to photograph.
But there were a couple of ancient books belonging to Borso, beautifully illuminated. And a copy of a menu for the day before Lent – more than four columns of dishes. A plaque shows two lions guarding the family motto, each wearing a crested helmet.
Don Julio’s dungeon is on the main floor, but one has to bend seriously over to get in or out. The rest of the dungeons are in the basement, also with short doorways. After the basement, I went back up to the main floor, and then up a ramp to the next floor. The stable were supposed to be across the street, and I can’t think why they would bring horses up to the family’s living area, but it looks like a ramp for horses.
Anyway, there’s a nice terrace on this level, with potted orange trees, most with fruit. One of the dukes married a woman from Naples who imported the orange trees to remind her of home. In related news, while walking down the street later past a plant store, I saw a couple of potted lemon trees, also in fruit.
The family rooms were well decorated, with marvelous ceiling paintings. They are somewhat marred by what I take to be pasted-on tapes to hold the paint in place. One of the rooms is called the Small Chamber of Games, and one of the games in the display case involved two women hoisting a third up in the air on a stool. They neglected to give the rules.
At the end of the route, they laid out a whole lot of art. There were paintings of the beheading of John the Baptist, two of which struck me as interesting, as they were side by side. One showed John’s head on the ground and a fair amount of blood flowing from every part of the neck, though not as much as should be coming out.
The second painting is more dramatic, as John’s head is still in midair. The neck isn’t spilling nearly as much blood as the first picture, and from only a few places. Both paintings have a young woman standing by with a platter.
When I finished the castle, I went around to the duomo, right behind the castle, someplace. I had to get a map to find it, but there it was. The front was all wrapped up for restoration work, but there it was. So I had lunch and then went up to the front. Closed off, no sign saying go around to the side, nothing. So I went around to the side anyway, and it’s all arcaded shops, built up against the side of the cathedral.
I found out later that the duomo was closed down in February because people were worried about the state of the columns holding everything up. It was to be closed for five, maybe six months. It’s now a full seven and still no word on when it will reopen.
So I took a walk through the medieval streets, which was all right. French and German medieval streets are much more attractive and interesting. But Italian cities in medieval times were built to hide the beauty of the house. The street facade is plain, stucco, shuttered windows, little to show how rich the owner was. Inside, it’s all beauty.
But there were some nice arcades along the streets. And there was the “vaulted street” where the rich merchants lived on one side and had their warehouses on the other. They built bridges over the street so they could go between home and office easily. The street was really just an alley they built on top of. Their houses faced the next street over.
And then I went to the Palazzina Marfisa d’Este, a little one floor house one of the duke’s daughters had built so she could entertain her friends and get away from it all. I got there and it was closed, the gate locked and all. I checked the guidebook, open Tuesday through Sunday. Why is it closed? I looked again. Open till 1 pm, reopen at 3 pm. Twenty minutes to wait. So I went back down the street to snack shop and got some ice cream. At three I went back and the gate was open, the door was open, and I went in and was told, come back in twenty-five minutes.
So I sat on the steps and waited. Another guy showed up and I told him, and he didn’t believe me and went in. Another guy showed up and he just ignored me. I went inside and sat in a more comfortable chair in the lobby. The first guy waved me over and said we could go in. Their computer was down and they couldn’t print the tickets. But they decided they could just take the money now and worry about the tickets later.
The duke’s daughter had the family taste in decorated ceilings, and it is magnificent. Every room is different, in decorative style, in materials, in mood. They have some of the furniture, including two serving tables that are ten or twelve feet long. One, maybe both, is made from a single plank.
So I walked back to the car and headed for my B&B for tonight. It’s down a narrow street with no legal places to park. The landlord showed me how to get to a public lot a couple of blocks away that he said was cheap, 2 euros a day. I’ll find out tomorrow when I pick up the car. I asked about a restaurant, and he suggested the one next door, which was a pizzeria. I didn’t really want pizza, but he had an ulterior motive – he owned it, too.
I found a nice place on Google, half a block from the castle, down a narrow street with an archway beyond it. Perfect setting! The food was good, two chicken thighs in a nice tomato-y sauce with some fried potatoes. I got there right after it opened for the evening at 7, and when I left at 8, I had been the only customer. But Italians eat later, so maybe people just hadn’t arrived yet.
Tomorrow is Bologna, and a lot of stuff to see. Three hours worth is churches, so probably half that much time in reality.
Day 10 Thursday, Sep. 26, 2019 Lots happening, oh, and I did a little sightseeing, too.
My car was parked in a pay lot in Ferrara, and I dragged my new suitcase over there this morning. I had almost reached the entrance when I heard a scraping and saw I had lost one of the four wheels. I went back half a block and couldn’t see it anywhere. I figured I’d just put the suitcase in the car and look again all the way back to the hotel. I got back to where I heard the scraping, and there was the wheel. It popped off somehow, and popped right back on again. And the price for overnight parking in a lot with a security guard (at least in the daytime) was indeed 2 euros. Greatest bargain ever.
Next stop was Bologna, and I was supposed to check in early. That was fine because I planned to take the bus into the city. It’s about 2 kilometers from the hotel to the cathedral, and a bus made a lot of sense. I was tired this morning, and figured out all the bus connections to everything I wanted to see.
I got to the Marbia Guest House, 1 Via Pietro Mascagni, without any trouble. The one thing I had not learned from Google street view was just where the entrance was. The lower level facing a main street had shops, but no sign for the hotel. So I asked at the one shop that had a number on the side street. Number 1A was a sushi place. Number 1B was it’s kitchen. They sent me across the street to number 2. Coming back, I noticed a number 1, with no letters, on the entrance to a private drive. I was supposed to have private parking, so that must be it.
It was, but I couldn’t get in. The gate was locked of course. The only indication this was the right place was a mailbox marked Marbia. None of the buttons to call a tenant were for Marbia. Someone left, and I snuck into the parking area. The door into the building had the same list of tenants, minus Marbia. I had a phone number and called it. A woman answered and spoke reasonably good English (rant about this some other time) but she spoke quickly and I only caught something about her sister and maybe she’d be there, and she hung up.
She arrived after a while and gave me a bunch of keys that the guards at Fort Knox don’t have. One for the pedestrian gate and the front door (if you jiggle it right), one for the car gate, one to get into the guest house (apparently a large apartment subdivided into hotel rooms), one for my room, and one more for good luck, I guess.
I had had problems getting a room in Bologna all along. The first room had a good location, and a good price, but I goofed and made it for the wrong day. Couldn’t be changed or refunded. So I looked some more. Perfect, except no parking. Parking, but outrageously expensive. Perfect, with parking, but too far from the sights I wanted to see. Everything perfect, but not available that day.
So I was willing to pay extra just to get a room. At $160 it wasn’t cheap, and I had to pay 20 euros more for cleaning, and 15 more for sheets and towels. I’ve never had to pay for these things, but I was tired of trying to find a room, so I agreed. I get here, and the landlady wants 117 euros more because of the charges Bookings.com takes from her. I had rented through Hotels.com, but she worked with Bookings.com.
Now I’m trapped. I need the room more than ever because I am in Bologna and want to do sightseeing, not hotel shopping. So I paid. And I contacted Hotels.com about the overcharge. They say they will take care of getting me a refund. [They did, too, because the extra charge never showed up on my credit card bill.]
My room is bizarre, too. The clothes closet has a bar for hanging up your clothes, about seven feet up. The bathroom has a motion sensor to turn on the bathroom light if you come anywhere near it. And the bathroom fan that comes on with the light, doesn’t go out when the light does. And there is no drinking glass in the bathroom.
By now it’s noon and I haven’t seen anything. I need the 906 bus to take me to the cathedral, and there it goes without even slowing down for the bus stop. I had taken screen shots with my cell phone of the routes for the buses, but I didn’t note all of the options. I seemed to recall that the 13 bus also went to the cathedral, so I got on it, and realized I didn’t know where to get off.
So I got off somewhere in town that looked like it might be close to a cathedral, maybe. I wandered around until I found a used book dealer who had city maps. Not terribly detailed, but a map. By this time I had decided to cut out the cathedral, another church, and the archaeological museum next to the cathedral. That left the medieval museum and the Pinacoteca Nazionale. By chance I was only a few blocks from the medieval museum, and walked over.
One of the first things I saw was a narwhal horn sticking vertically out of a holder made of goats heads (fake, not real). They have a pair of medieval high heel shoes, the kind with two foot tall platforms. There were several carvings of scholars listening to someone talk. A couple of them had a student resting his chin on his hand, looking bored. There were some nice boxes made of bone, and a wonderful pair of ivory platters.
There’s a textile collection, all in drawers apparently. But they have some paintings for examples. The two big ones are of an early 18th century couple wearing nice clothes. So much effort went into making the clothes look really good, and so little time spent on the faces of the couple. The blandest, most boring looking people you’d ever want to meet, dressed in the nicest clothes.
And it’s not just me thinking this. They had another half dozen smaller portraits, three men, three women, where the faces were much more interesting. Not necessarily pretty, but interesting. And the clothes looked good, too.
In the toy department, they had a couple of rifles with no locks or triggers that I could see. Just a curved bit of metal that could maybe swing forward somehow and do something, maybe. There was a very nice musket with two flintlocks but only one trigger and one barrel. There was a dagger gun, a sword gun, and a walking stick gun.
One of the guards kept pointing out one piece to me, in Italian, of course, which meant nothing to me. But I took a closer look, and the musket had a cylinder for multiple shots. There were lots of really huge maces, which must have been used only for parades. Lots of pole arms of all sorts. A wrap around kite shield that curved a good 180 degrees.
I wanted to go to the Pinacoteca, but it was too far to walk. I knew the bus number, but no one at the medieval museum knew where to catch it. So I went out and found a main road, and a bus came by, numbered 20. So I crossed the street and waited for one going the other way.
The Pinacoteca is like so many art galleries in Italy, mostly religious art. Some of it is good, and by great painters, but enough is enough. How many Madonna-and-baby-visited-by-guest-saints-some-of-whom-weren’t-even-alive-at-the-time-of-the-nativity does anyone need to see?
They did have one nice surprise. George was killing a dragon, not because he was a saint fighting evil, but because he was a good knight, rescuing a princess. George’s horse did not look happy to be there, probably because he got his feet on the dragon.
An interesting Last Supper, with Judas being the only one without a halo, and also sitting at Jesus’ right hand. A long painting with a couple of dozen saints, including one that looks like Cousin Itt. And some non-religious frescoes, naval battles and a lady greeting a knight who goes on to kill some people. And some very nice portraits.
I got a picture of one of the Bologna towers. I’d hate to be the guy on watch on top of that tower. That was after I came back toward the cathedral. I knew where it was, but I had spent the whole afternoon on the two museums, and trying to find them.
I came back to the cathedral area because I knew I could get a bus back to the hotel from there. And because there were lots of restaurants there. And there are; bars, coffee bars, snack bars, pizza bars, but not a lot of real sit-down restaurants. Then I looked down this narrow street. (Back home we’d call it an alley.) I saw tables and chairs. So I went down to take a look. One was just a bar, the next was an Irish Pub, which was just a bar, too. Then there was a place that hadn’t opened for dinner yet, just short of seven o’clock. But the menu had lots of old friends from a week of eating in Italy.
I was the first diner of the evening for them. Before I left, a full two dozen others had come, eaten, and left. And that’s just the outside tables. I had a Bolognese cutlet, which sounds bland. It’s a boneless pork chop (pork cutlet, I think) topped with ham and cheese. Yummy!
I made it back to my hotel by counting the stops on the bus route, and keeping on eye on the road ahead. Home again, home again, jiggity jig. Tomorrow is Florence. Oh goody, goody.
Day 11 Friday, Sep. 27, 2019 I’m doing my itinerary backwards, or maybe inside out. And Happy Birthday, Cosimo de Medici!
The other problem with the Marbia Guest House in Bologna, is that they did not serve breakfast. In fact, since they did not have a reception desk, I had to call the owner to arrange for her to pick up the keys. This is really no way to run a hotel. I took to the road hungry, hoping to find a quick bite before leaving Bologna, or at least an oasis on the tollway. No such luck.
So I got into Florence and to my hotel hungry. I was already ticked by somebody’s bad idea. Tom-Tom took me to the right street for my hotel, but it changed from one way west bound to one way east bound, just for one block. I couldn’t cheat, either, because another car was coming toward me, and it was a squad. I eventually got the car into a parking garage just down the street from the hotel.
But the cleaning lady at the hotel, who doubled as check-in girl, tried pulling the same double pay game I had in Bologna. We argued, politely, but firmly, about whether I should pay more. She finally called the owner and the owner added her complaints about the commissions she was paying, but said that I owed her nothing more. The cleaning lady and I shook hands and made up and it was all settled.
But in the process, I gained a clue to what happened in both cases. In Bologna, the woman blamed, I think, Bookings.com for the commissions. In Florence, the woman showed me a credit card ticket to sign from Expedia.com. I dealt with Hotels.com in both cases. They must be using the other services as their stand-ins, agents to process the requests for rooms, even from their rivals. Why they are sending a second request to pay is beyond me. The owner is Florence understood she had been paid, and corrected her deputy. The woman in Bologna was the owner, and should have known this was a double payment. I’m going to have to stop booking rooms through any online service, and just email the hotel directly.
Still no breakfast, of course. Only now it was past noon, and I needed lunch. I saw online that bus tickets are available at tobacco shops. The local shop I tried only sold single tickets, even though a longer duration ticket is possible. I went to the main office by the train station to get one of those. I also picked up some stuff to eat picnic style.
I couldn’t find the main bus office, or a place in the train station to sit down. So I sat on a bench at the tram stop outside the station and had brunch. Across the way from the station was a big church. I had two maps (one from the hotel, and one from the garage) and they both agreed that was St. Maria Novella, one of the churches I wanted to see.
On the way over to see it, I passed a marble trough, ten or fifteen feet long with seven spouts pouring out water. Some people were washing their dirty hands, I suppose some drank from it.
The church is very nice, even restrained. There’s a nice stained glass window over the front with lots of figures. Again, the arches are a mix of roman and gothic, but they are all made with alternating slices of gray and white stones.
The entire sanctuary area is covered with frescoes and so are the two side chapels next to it. One seems to show a crowd standing around looking at what appears to be a small dragon. The dragon does not look to be threatening anyone, and no one seems concerned, except for the one who has fainted. I’m not sure if that is a man or a woman. Anyway, I don’t recall any Bible stories like this.
Only a few blocks away were the Medici tombs. They should normally have been closed by the middle of the afternoon, but they were staying open late to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Cosimo de Medici’s birth. The chapel is a double decker. On the ground floor, there are lots of floor markers for tombs of the various members of the family. Nice, restrained, dignified.
Upstairs, all restraint is thrown out. It’s huge, covered in all sorts of colorful stone, with enormous sarcophagi for the main Medicis. Even with some restoration going on, it’s impressive. And then, without any real notice, is the big prize. I was looking for them, and paid attention, and there were Michaelangelo’s monuments. Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino (nephew of Leo X), and Giuliano, Duke of Nemours (Leo’s brother) got the big elaborate tombs. Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, both killed by mobs, have a more restrained tomb. Beautiful.
I wanted to go to the cathedral next. It was close, but the time was wrong. It was ten to four, and the cathedral closed at five, and there was a line. So I walked on for a few more blocks and went to the Academia Gallery to see the David. Which is how I lost my Swiss army knife. The museum had scanners and everything, and they spotted a metal lump in my pocket. They took it and gave me a tag to get it back later, but one doesn’t exit through the entrance. I forgot about the knife until after the museum was closed.
All may not be lost, though. This hotel does not serve breakfast either, and I found a place to get an American breakfast, with bacon and eggs, and it’s almost halfway to the Academia. So after breakfast tomorrow I’ll go over and try to get it back.
There was a longish line waiting to get in to see the David, and a hustler looking to make a buck off of them. He said the line was at least an hour long, but he could get people in immediately if they just paid him 25 euros for a special pass. There are passes that let you skip the line, but they cost more than 25 euros. And even if the price is correct, the line was no where near an hour long.
Just to emphasize how single-minded people are about this museum, the sign in the second room, just outside the long room with the David, says “Exit and toilets are on the left side of Michaelangelo’s David.” There is, of course, more to see, but not anything to top David.
I walked back to the hotel. I have bus tickets, but I don’t know where to get a bus, or where it might go. I looked up some travel options for tomorrow, and the multi-day pass wouldn’t do me any good. Most of the buses stay out of the center of town. I can take one to the Palazzo Vecchio, but that’s it. I will walk to the Uffizi gallery, and walk back to the cathedral, because there’s no bus connection. I have to get my car out of the garage before 1 pm on Sunday, so I’ll drive to the Pitti Palace.
I walked back to the hotel to look for dinner places, too. One restaurant offered duck breast, so I had to go there. I had no reservations, but they put me at a table for one, up against the door to the sidewalk section. The food was just as tasty there. I had a bottle of Sasso Russo, an amber beer made with real amber. It must be, because a 750 ml bottle cost 13 euros. But it was good.
Day 12 Saturday, Sep. 28, 2019 Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.
The little snack shop a block and a half away does a nice breakfast – scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, a nice flaky croissant, juice, and coffee. And I needed a good breakfast to start today. After breakfast I went back to the Academia and actually got my Swiss army knife back. I then spent the rest of the day trying to keep other people from confiscating it.
There’s a bus from the Academia to the Palazzo Vecchio, but not to anywhere else I wanted to go. So I walked to the cathedral. It wasn’t all that far and I was still fresh. I got in line to buy a ticket, way in the back of the church. The duomo didn’t open until 10 and it was just after 9, but the line was long. But the line was moving, so it was okay.
I had gotten about two-thirds of the way to the side door of the cathedral when I noticed that the line I was in was going to that door, and there was another line. The line I was in was for people who already had tickets, which wasn’t me. So I went to the back of the other line, where I had started out from before. I think that when I first came up, the ticket-less line just reached the ticketed line, so it seemed to be one line.
Inside, empty your pockets, go through the metal detector, but they missed the knife. Which is good because I was disappointed with the cathedral. The exterior is beautiful, white stone accented with green, and black, and pink. All over. It’s one of the most beautiful cathedrals I’ve ever seen, from the outside. Inside, it’s all right.
It’s huge on the inside, too, of course, and empty. The walls have some funerary monuments, but small. No big chapels, no paintings, no frescoes, no statues. The tourists are corralled into the center of the nave only. The sanctuary is the only interesting area. The ceiling of the dome is painted very nicely, and there is some ordinary stained glass, but it’s a let-down after seeing the outside.
So I went to the Bargello museum, which was just a few blocks from the duomo. It had no needlework stuff at all. Also very little religious art, well, relative to other Italian museums. Lots of statues, lots of secular subjects, lots of very nice stuff. I can’t itemize the collection for you as I usually do, because the camera is recharging. Until it is recharged I can’t get the pictures off of it. The battery died as I was going to take a picture of Florence Triumphant over Pisa. I put in my backup battery and continued on fine until I got to Jason with the Golden Fleece over his shoulder. Then the backup died. I thought it had more charge than that.
It was a shame because now I was getting to some really nice art and my camera was dead. I was on the upper level when I remembered that I had a phone that was also a camera. Back in business again. I went back and got lots of stuff I had to pass by earlier. There was a very nice chessboard, with an ivory border, carved with scenes of knights jousting and other fun stuff. The other side was, naturally, a backgammon board. The museum has a very nice ivory collection. Several beautiful boxes, a drinking cup. There was lots of other good stuff, but after a day in museums, everything runs together in my mind. There was an armory wing, but it was closed today.
Speaking of closed, I went to the Palazzo Vecchio, which was just a few blocks from the Bargello. It is not a cheap museum, 20 euros to get in. But not today. Today, all weekend, in fact, you can’t get in unless you have a Firenze card, which I don’t. And wouldn’t get anyway. It costs 72 euros, and that’s a lot to pay just to get into one museum. So I missed the Palazzo Vecchio, and went to the Uffizi gallery. Which was, as usual, just a few blocks away.
The Uffizi has the money side of the museum business down to a fine art. The entry fee was only 8 euros, but if you want to bring in a group of more than 14 people, there’s an extra charge, on top of admission fees, of 70 euros. I did the hide the knife game again, and won again.
This is the most screwed up entrance system of any museum I’ve ever seen. One line for groups, who go through their own door. One line for single visitors, who crowd in to wait to see just two ticket sellers. Then you go into a room which adds in all the group visitors, leads to the cloakroom, and handles the audio guide rentals. Such a crowd of people, so hopelessly jammed together. You would think they would rearrange things to make the crowds flow more easily, but where’s the fun in that?
The museum has tons of wonderful art, and I think I saw all of it. I had allowed three hours to see it, and I spent three hours there, skipping a lot of religious stuff. Since I was using the phone as a camera, I was frugal in taking pictures because I didn’t know how much it would drain the battery. This is the first time I’ve used the phone to take serious pictures, and it worked surprisingly well. A few blurred photos, but not many. One problem was going into “burst” mode without warning. I have 11 copies of Cranach’s Adam and Eve.
Even some of the religious statues are good. They have a set of three statues, two saints and Fame. Fame has a bugle (so she can blow her own horn) and an artichoke. I don’t know why either. Lots of very nice renaissance portraits by big name painters, and good art too. They kept saying this way to the Caravaggio, and I kept looking for him, and not finding him. I finally asked a guard, and he said “Oh, there’s that Madonna and Child, and the Medusa in the next room.” That was it. The medusa was very good, though.
So it was now six in the evening and I was worn out. I needed a rest. I needed supper. I needed to find my way back to the hotel. There is a bus that goes from the Academia to the Palazzo Vecchio, the number 23 bus. I took a picture of its route this morning, with the phone. Unfortunately, while looking at it, I accidentally erased it. And no one knew where the bus stopped near the Palazzo. Everyone said, down this narrow street, somewhere.
I managed to get a wi-fi signal and found the bus, C2, and it stopped on the street they said. I almost missed it. Take it for four stops to Stazione Scalette and a short walk to the Academia. I can find my way home from there. I got on the C2 bus, counted four stops, and got off at Stazione Scalette, and was no where near the Academia.
I was by the train station, and I had been here yesterday, but not this location. I started out, and soon saw I was going the wrong way. I then misread the map and went a different wrong direction. I finally stopped at a hotel and the desk clerk was able to show me the proper route. Thank the gods that desk clerks have to know English because no one else in Italy does.
On the way back I found a nice sidewalk restaurant and had my first Italian lamb. Tasty, but a bit skimpy.
It was a long day, sometimes frustrating, sometimes great. I still can’t see the Palazzo Vecchio tomorrow, so it’s just the Ponte Vecchio and the Pitti Palace, then on to Siena.
Day 13 Sunday, Sep. 29, 2019 You can’t drive there, but you can walk, and walk, and walk.
Florence is a nice city. It’s got some beautiful buildings, at least inside. It has some wonderful art. And it has some of the most bone-headed management ever. Though I shouldn’t blame city management for today’s problems. It was just bad luck.
I wanted to see the Pitti Palace, and I knew of a few parking garages near it. But I couldn’t get to them because today was the Run for Life, apparently centered on the Pitti Palace, or its area. Cops all over saying go that way, not this. I asked one if it was possible to go to the palace, and he said yes, if you walk. Tom-Tom fought hard to take me through the racers, but I forced it to give me a third route, up and past a nice belvidere overlooking the city. Once back by the river Arno, I still couldn’t find a place to park. I finally found one just as I was about to give up. Outside the city walls, only a mile or so from the museum.
Let me say, right now, that the Pitti Palace has a great collection of art. No question about that at all. Let me also say that it is one of the worst displayed collections of art I have ever seen. There is no map to the collection, just like the Uffizi (which has the same director). The Pitti Palace does, however, have small maps in every room so you do know where you are.
The paintings are sometimes stacked four or five high, six in one room, which makes it hard to hold the camera still enough to get a good picture. And the lighting is wrong, with so much glare on some paintings you can’t even see the subject properly. One room with a lot of small paintings had some that were dark and so badly lit that you couldn’t tell what they were. Lots of my pictures were wasted because I couldn’t hold the camera steady enough to get anything but a blur. And that’s not because of my age.
In one room I actually saw the guard pull back the curtain to let more light in. In another room, there was a climate control device, a dehumidifier I suppose, next to a window open to the outside. Small paintings ten or twelve feet up, so high you can’t read the labels on them, or see them properly. Even large paintings with so much glare the picture was hard to enjoy, much less photograph.
A decent manager could make this museum worthy of its collection. Of course, he would have to find at least twice as much wall space, and it’s not a small museum.
I had scheduled two hours for the Pitti Palace, and spent at least three inside. More time spent in walking to and from where I parked. I didn’t get to Siena until five o’clock. All day for one museum. And Siena is not what it looks like on a map. On a map, Siena is flat. In person, it’s not. Seriously not.
Tom-Tom took me through the twisting, narrow, pedestrian only streets without a flaw. Mainly because I guessed right when the GPS seemed to freeze up. I parked in a taxi spot in front of the hotel. Like my hotel in Florence, this is a two story walk-up. Ugh. The desk clerk was very friendly, but she had no map of the town. She did send me to a decent parking lot. Walking back from it wasn’t too bad. I used my cell phone to get directions, and they were good. Walking to pick up the car tomorrow with my luggage may not be so much fun. Lots of uphill streets.
I had learned somehow of a really great restaurant in Siena, but I apparently didn’t write down its name. But the hotel is close to the Campo, the huge main square. And the Campo is lined with restaurants. I had a good meal of calf tongue, very tasty, with spinach, and a huge beer.
Tomorrow is the duomo here, and the Siena version of the Pinacoteca Nazionale. Then on to San Gemignano. More climbing hills. Ugh.
Day 14 Monday, Sep. 30, 2019 Can it possibly get any worse? Of course.
Today was another nice sunny, warm day in Italy. Still, it started off with a bad decision on my part. My hotel was near the Campo, the main town square, and the Duomo, and the Pinacoteca museum, all on the same level. My parking lot was farther away, up and down hills, and Siena has lots of hills. So I could haul my luggage to the car and leave it there, or leave it at the hotel and move it later. The desk clerk said the walk between the parking lot and the duomo was “not that hilly” much as a sherpa might talk about the Alps.
Down, and then up, and up, and up. Finally I’m in front of the cathedral, and it’s beautiful, white with dark green bands. Only, it’s not the cathedral, it’s the baptistry. The cathedral is up on top of the hill. So I climb some more steps, and the cathedral is just as beautiful as the baptistry. Two lines, one for people with tickets, one for the others. No, that would be intelligent. Everyone has to have a ticket, and they are not sold inside, they are sold across the piazza in another building. So why have two lines?
The duomo was gorgeous inside, too. There are decorative patterns in the floors, and inlaid pictures of all sorts. There are some big paintings on the walls, and a fantastic pulpit. Look it up online, because I can’t show it to you. I might as well give the worst news right now. I have no photos of what I saw today. I took plenty, but they all disappeared when I tried to transfer them to the laptop. I don’t know why, but they are gone.
I went to the Pinacoteca, and that was a total waste of time and money. More money as it tuned out. The museum was closing for the day at one. I got there just after noon. It cost me eight euros to get in, and I spent maybe ten minutes inside. Almost all early Italian religious art. Boring.
I had lunch and went to San Gimignano. I had used Google maps to find the best parking lot, but I had chosen the wrong one. It was too far down the slope from the town. On the way to it, I saw that a lot on top of the hill had spaces available. By the time I got back, it was full. There’s a traffic loop in front of the town gate, and I kept circling hoping for a spot to park. There was a counter on the sign for the lot, and the number of available spaces, while small, was growing. So on one pass, I pulled in. The ticket machine said “Lot full” but I saw two cars pulling out of their spaces. When one put his paid ticket in the exit machine, I hit the button to get my ticket.
That was the best thing that happened all day.
San Gimignano is nice, but awfully touristy. It’s like Mont St. Michel on steroids. I like Mont St. Michel better. Too many tourist shops, some of which sold nice stuff, but some sold trash. Before I left I decided I should find a toilet. The sign said “Back there” and I went back. The next sign pointed up, and it was a long, steep up. And the toilet was out of order.
Not to worry, there’s another one just beyond the main square. Off I went, and after some considerable looking around, I did see another sign. Go this way, then that way, around this corner, and that corner, and that other corner. Now I knew why the town has three shops devoted to Museums of Torture.
Back on the road again, driving carefully. Pedestrians have the right to step onto a crosswalk and expect the traffic to stop for them. So I’m going down the road and two women are about to step onto the crosswalk, so I stop. Pause. Crash. The car behind me had been following very close, but must have fallen back a little, hence the pause. It also didn’t notice my stopping, hence the crash. Amazingly, there was no damage to either vehicle, except the cover for the driver’s side mirror fell off from the impact. But it wasn’t damaged and popped back on without a problem.
I found the Italian Grand Prix course finally. Not very strong on hills, but the turns were a delight, especially west bound late in the day. If the sun wasn’t in my eyes, it was casting really dark shadows to hide the curves.
I had hoped to be in Pisa by six. Seven wasn’t all that late. But I was expecting to take a bus from the parking lot to the hotel. I had no change, and only a fifty euro bill, which the ticket machine couldn’t take. It could take credit cards, but not mine. I finally started to walk to town, hoping to find a place to break the fifty. A tobacco shop, which is where one buys bus tickets, was happy to break my fifty and sell me a ticket. The bus came by almost at once and I was soon downtown. Eight o’clock.
My room is on the second floor for the third night in a row. No elevators for the third night in a row. And this is a European second floor, third floor to us Americans. At least the desk clerk carried my bag up tonight.
He was a nice guy and recommended a steak house down the street for dinner. It did do a lot of steak and beef, but not exclusively. I had roast veal, which was a chunk of veal an inch thick and two inches across in any direction. Very nice.
Even nicer, I saw my first cat in Italy. Two weeks and not a single cat anywhere. I thought that my extensive menu of animals for dinner might have been the problem. Dogs were growling at me, and I just assumed that cats were staying away out of a spirit of self-preservation. But this was a big ginger cat, friendly, and looking for a handout. I had some nice pictures of him, but they too are gone. Maybe tomorrow I’ll find him again.
And I couldn’t get back to my hotel. I only had to go a hundred meters, and couldn’t. The police had closed off the intersection in front of my hotel because someone was making a movie. I managed to get the attention of a cop and told him my hotel was right there, can I go through? And he let me.
So tons of climbing up and down hills, a car accident, no photos. What a day!
Day 15 Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2019 I’m in Pistoia tonight. Why?
I went to Pisa to see the cathedral, and the baptistery, and the tower. I looked out my hotel room window this morning and checked off the tower. My hotel is literally across the street from the tower. And by relation, from the whole complex. Which made it easy to do my touristing this morning. I took lots of pictures of all three buildings. But I didn’t want to climb the tower, and I didn’t want to go into the baptistery, and they were saying Mass in the cathedral. So that means I have only one photo of the insides, taken through the open door of the cathedral.
In Pisa, you can pay for your bus ticket on the bus, but it costs an extra euro. The first bus driver couldn’t break my bill, but he let me pay only €2.30 instead of €2.50.Then I didn’t recognize my stop until I had passed it. No matter, I thought, I’ll get off at the next one and walk back. No, I wouldn’t. The next stop was miles away. I got off and found a place to buy a ticket to get back to the car park. And that’s how I learned that the bus just makes a loop. If I had stayed on the first bus, he would have come around again.
I had picked a good parking lot in Lucca, but I had forgotten just where it was in relation to anything I wanted to see. So I wandered a little bit. I saw a sign for the tourist information office and went there. Closed. And not even a town map on the wall outside.
My Eyewitness Italy guidebook had a map, but it didn’t show any of the streets near me. Then I realized that the long wall across the street matched up with the bastion of the town walls on my map. I was just outside the walls. Now I could go inside and see sights. Well, the cathedral, anyway.
It’s lovely, with white marble, and carved pillars, and a statue out front of St. Martin, its patron, sharing his cloak. It is totally romanesque, with little windows high up. There are some larger windows, but not as large as in a gothic cathedral. I have a nice picture of one of the little windows casting a colored light on the top of an arch in the nave.
Wonderful inlaid stone floors, mostly with geometric designs, though there is one in front of the sanctuary of Solomon’s judgment. The ceiling is gorgeously painted. And one little bitty rose window over the altar. There is a shrine, dating to 1484, free-standing in the north aisle, domed, open sided with grills, gilt all over. I don’t know who it’s to, but it’s beautiful. [It’s a shrine to the Holy Face of Lucca, supposedly a wood carving of Christ by his contemporary Nicodemus, miraculously brought to Lucca in 782.]
On to Pistoia. The drive was easy enough and I ended up in a free car park, just as I had in Pisa. And just as in Pisa I had to take a bus to my hotel. In Pisa, this was easy. Take the bus going to the tower. In Pistoia, not quite so easy. I asked the first bus driver if he went to my hotel, showing him the map I had printed from Google. He studied it for a while and said, “No, I don’t go there, but the number 1 bus does. He’ll be along in about five minutes.”
And he was. And he studied the map for a while, and finally figured that he did go there. It was not easy to do, because there were no street names on the map. My fault. But he was nice and when we got to where he thought I wanted to go, he signaled me and let me off. And, of course, I was lost.
The map seemed to indicate that I should walk back to a cross street and turn right. At the corner, a set of directional markers confused me. My map had no street names, but it did show some landmarks. And I seemed to be not quite in the right place, maybe. I kept on and found a museum of weird art, and the staff looked at the address and finally sent me off back to the bus stop and the other way.
I checked with a shop keeper and he sent me down the street and around a corner. Still no sign of anything like the street I wanted. I tried getting wi-fi so my phone could help me navigate, but I couldn’t get a good signal. I finally went on far enough, and there was the street name. And Number 2 was right there, next to the corner.
I buzzed the B&B listing, and again, and again. Then another tenant went in and let me come into the lobby. This was a great mansion at one time, I guess, divided into apartments or condos or whatever. The host finally came down the stairs and carried my suitcase up for me. He wasn’t so much younger than me and had to stop and rest halfway up, too. I’m up on the fourth (American) floor, right under the eaves.
The bed has a wooden frame, almost like a boat. The ceiling is painted. I don’t mean someone threw a coat of white ceiling paint on it. I mean it is blue and white and has gold patterns all over it. The exterior shutters are just shutters, but the interior ones are marvelous polished wood. The little desk I’m using to type this is actually a small secretary, with a roll-top.
Just got back from dinner. Duck breast, from an extremely long breasted duck. And a truly great dark beer with rye malt as well as barley malt. It’s called Magia Nera, and it’s organic and wholesome and you probably can’t get it anywhere else. But it is fantastic.
So, the opening question. Why am I in Pistoia tonight? For the same reason I was in Lucca earlier, to see the wonderful medieval and renaissance houses. They must be there, the guidebooks wouldn’t just make this up. But all the buildings look alike; plain, blank walls with maybe a fine door, or an arcade or portico, or a balcony. It takes a lot of hiking to find the obviously grand buildings. Mostly one walks past buildings that are great inside and bland outside.
I didn’t even try here in Pistoia. I got in later than I had planned, took a nap, and went out to dinner. I could look in the morning, but I won’t. I’m off to Genoa tomorrow, and they have nice old houses too. If it’s not too much trouble, I’ll try to see them. But my targets for Genoa are all over the city. I won’t see all of them. In England, France, Germany, anywhere, in fact, north of the Alps, the old part of town is obvious and attractive. Half-timbered buildings, painted facades, overhanging upper floors. This is what I expect from the old part of town. Monotonous rows of stuccoed buildings just doesn’t do anything for me.
I hate to say it, but I’m getting bored with Italy. It is a beautiful country, with friendly people, great historic sights, and fantastic food. I just wish our Italian restaurants at home served food like this. But no one speaks English. OK, a few do. The men who ran the small parking garages I used spoke pretty good English. A few people who work in restaurants and snack bars have a good grasp of English, but only a few.
Most of the people in the hotels spoke good English, but tonight’s couple, running a small B&B don’t. The husband said I should wait for his wife to come home to check in, because she had better English than he did. Yes, marginally. They’re nice people, and we managed to communicate, but it was not always easy. I wanted to go out for dinner, and couldn’t remember where the door going out was. (It is an old mansion.) He couldn’t understand my request, but with a little sign language, and French, he figured it out.
Some of the guards in the museums spoke English well, and I could converse with them. But others, often in the same museums, had no English. English is a major international language. Chinese and Japanese, who are all over Italy right now (hint: if you want to invade Japan, do it now when no one is home), speak English as an alternative to learning every other European language. There are language schools advertising all over, learn English and make more money. Being more receptive to English speakers would bring in more tourists and therefore more money. This is something the Italian government should encourage.
I like Italy, I just don’t like the frustrations of everyday life here. It’s like the old joke where hell is where the Italians organize everything. People live here, and live well. They go to work, and they work hard. But so many things are just not organized or run well. Even small, simple things like a hotel supplying town maps to tourists. They know these people are strangers to the town, but they don’t seem to think about the easy courtesy of offering them a map. The city of Florence closing down a major tourist site to people who did not have the expensive pass. How does this benefit Florence? How much good will are they burning up by doing this.?
I’m ranting at length tonight because I may not have time to do so tomorrow night. I go to Genoa tomorrow and then on to Como for the night. I have to be up early to make my flight out of Zurich, so I may not want to spend too much time on the diary tomorrow night.
Day 16 Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019 Adventures in driving.
The good news this morning was that the bus to take me back to the parking lot actually stopped right in front of my hotel. The bad news was that it didn’t stop on Wednesday because of the street market. A woman told me I could catch the bus a few blocks down. There was a bus stop there for every bus but mine. A guy who worked in a bike shop said I could easily walk it. He’s in his twenties, fit, he bikes for God’s sake. Sure, it’s an easy walk for him. I went to the big traffic junction where his knowledge of the world ended. He said I should ask for further directions there, but there was a bus stop for my bus. And a couple of minutes later, my bus appeared.
This was good because the day had started out cool and damp, then misty, then a little rain, then a downpour. An immigrant African was out hustling umbrellas, and the downpour made quite a few sales for him. There are a lot of beggars in Italy, many of them immigrants from Africa or the Middle East. But there are also a lot of hustlers, trying to make a euro any way they can. Guys selling twisted wire charm bracelets or anything else they can.
In my car, on the road to Genoa. Waste of my time. When I finally got there, I didn’t know how to find the street I wanted. I couldn’t get a good wi-fi connection, and the Michelin map wasn’t detailed enough to guide me. I finally gave it up and left. Almost had to. Genoa is where they dumped all the hills that were too big for Siena.
Now for the road stories. Some took place going from Pistoia to Genoa, some from Genoa to Como. It doesn’t matter, disaster is disaster, no matter where. Fortunately, I was just an observer.
Coming into Genoa, the off ramp came to a stop. In fact, two off ramps had come to a stop. They were trying to merge, but that wasn’t the problem. Something had happened up ahead. While I was waiting, I noticed in my side mirror, a lot of gray smoke rising from the other ramp. Two ambulances squeezed through the cars, and went to the right. The traffic started to move and I went to the right, only to see the tunnel up ahead was blocked off and the police were turning everyone around.
Amazingly, Tom-Tom somehow understood this and did not make me go back and try again. On the new route, going back, I could see where the smoke was coming from. A car was totally engulfed in flame. And that wasn’t what the ambulances were for.
I went through lots of tunnels today, some of them with two way traffic because of work being done. One tunnel went from two lanes to one, and that was its normal configuration. The Italians, knowing my fondness for twisty roads, put together a Grand Prix course entirely on the motorway. No hills, that’s what the tunnels are there to avoid, but lots of fast curves, and I do mean fast.
I was traveling mostly toll way all the way, but Tom-Tom keeps calling them free ways. And sometimes they are. And I got confused at one point. I was coming up to a plaza where I should take the ticket for the next leg. And I thought it was a place to pay for the previous leg, and I didn’t have a ticket. So I went into the Automatic Pay lane, thinking I could slip through. But there’s a gate there too. A little gentle pressure on the gate made it open up and I went on.
But thinking about it, I realized I should have gotten a ticket there, and how was I going to get past the real pay point. I stopped when I got there, and went into the office. They said, no ticket, no problem. This toll plaza charged a flat fee for everyone, so I didn’t need a ticket.
I got into Como and found my hotel, and there’s a public parking garage right across the street. This was the first place in Italy where there was a map dispensing machine in a parking garage. Such a useful thing, and so rare. There must be one here because Switzerland is close by, and Swiss habits must be leaking over the border. So I parked in there and went to check in. No trouble, except they asked, “Do you have a car? Could you give us the key, so we can move it if we have to.”
Now I’ve given the car key to a garage attendant who was going to park the car himself. And to the guy at the spa in Padua, who parked the car in their garage. But I’ve never been asked to turn over the key to someone when I’ve parked the car myself. It’s in a public garage, not their property. Why would they have to move it? They couldn’t answer that question, and I didn’t give them the key.
My room is nice, with an outer sitting room with a settee, a table and chair, and a large clothing wardrobe. The bedroom also has a large clothing wardrobe. I looked into the first one. It’s a sink, a stove, and a microwave.
Dinner was in the hotel because there weren’t many other restaurants close by, and it was convenient. I was the first patron tonight. I had to wait to be served. The bread, one piece, came just before the main course. Another piece of bread, one, was offered later. There was one waiter, and no more than two tables in use at any one time. And he was overworked. Or just absent. I asked for a dessert menu and he brought it and promptly forgot I existed.
Dinner was veal slices, a bit stingy. Dessert was lemon sorbet, which I could have drunk, it was so liquid. The waiters wanted to bill the meal to my room, but I asked for a check tonight. The headwaiter took over this vital task, and he didn’t know how to process a charge card properly. And this is not a cheap hotel.