2005 May Italy

May 7-8: Sorrento: Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria

This is breakfast in the main dining room.

Each hotel provided pretty much the same buffet breakfast, with good American coffee, not the Italian “café” (espresso) or “café American” (watered-down espresso).

May 7-8: Sorrento: Mischel and the hotel

This hotel was built from three villas on a cliff overlooking the harbor at Sorrento.

May 8: Amalfi coast

The gray boat in the middle is iron; the rest are wood. Judging by the hand rail underneath, it was a lifeboat for some ship.

We took the motor coach and a bus to Positano, a 40-minute boat ride from Positano to Amalfi, and then the motor coach back to Sorrento.

May 8: Amalfi coast: blooming tree

May 9: Pompeii

The street was also the storm drain. The rocks sticking up are a pedestrian bridge, spaced so oxcarts could get through.

I won’t trouble you with the long-winded story about how the width of an ox’s rear end determined the spacing of oxcart wheels, which determined road widths, with later determined railroad track gauge, which even later determined the diameter of Space Shuttle booster rockets. That was the short version.

This is “ancient Pompeii”, where excavation started in the 19^th century and continues today. There’s also “new Pompeii”, built up mostly for the tourist trade.

Pompeii was a city of 25,000 people when Vesuvius blew. 79 AD? Pompeii got covered in ash, not lava, and it took many hours, during which about two-thirds of the people escaped by boat. The others died from poisonous gasses. Pompeii was a port; the ash filled in the bay, so now it’s a few miles inland.

After Pompeii we drove up to Rome, to our hotel.

May 9-11: Rome: Westin Excelsior Roma

Of all the hotels, this is the most elegant, with a good location on the Via Veneto.

May 11: Rome: Mischel and the hotel

May 9: Rome: Spanish steps

We walked around some, including the Spanish steps.

May 10: Vatican City: St. Peter’s

St. Peter’s is truly impressive. This is the central nave; the side naves are as big as ordinary cathedrals.

There are no paintings or frescos in St. Peter’s; all the decorations are mosaics, built to last.

May 11: The tour group, in Rome at the Coliseum

There were 30 Americans on this tour, plus Gail, back row, third from the right. The age range was 38 (Kelly, front right) to 80 plus (Lois, next to Kelly), with most being in their 60’s and 70’s. I learned maybe three other names; Mischel got to know almost all of them.

Mischel and I are on the far left, back and front.

The Coliseum was built by a rich family to entertain their political constituency. It held 50,000 relatives and close friends. Free admission. Not sure about drinks and popcorn. The entertainment was gladiator vs. gladiator or animal, but (revisionist history) not Christians. There were elevators for fast set changes.

There were two kinds of gladiators: One was rich kids who went to gladiator school, got a kill, and retired. The other was slaves or criminals who could win their freedom if they won the contest.

The Coliseum didn’t fall apart: it was scavenged for parts (marble and bronze) for later projects, notably St. Peter’s. The dark spots on the columns and arches are where bronze pins used to hold marble facing.

May 12: Orvieto: Mischel & John; statue & countryside

Orvieto is an old walled city, up on a hill in central Italy. Pretty cathedral. More shopping.

May 12: Orvieto: Miro exhibit

We found a museum with a temporary Miro exhibit, including the original for one of our lithographs.

May 12-13: Torgiano: Mischel, Le Tre Vaselle pool and view

Of all the hotels, this is the least elegant. The town of Torgiano has no redeeming features, but it is near Orvieto and Assisi. The hotel has a crazy layout, because it was expanded downhill, and is traversed by two roads and a parking lot. The parts are connected by windowless passageways and conference rooms.

May 12-13: Torgiano: hotel reception

The front desk is a desk. On the bright side, we used the dry cleaner shop down the street.

May 13: Assisi: Gate to the city

From the bus, you take an escalator up the hill, then walk into town.

May 13: Assisi: Cathedral

Assisi is another walled hill town. Actually, the cathedral in Orvieto was prettier, but this one is for THE St. Francis of Assisi, who preached to the animals and all that.

The notable thing is that he was ecumenical: the cathedral includes token Jewish and Muslim sections.

His father was Jewish, and since building the cathedral was a community project, local Jews contributed.

Italy is pretty devoid of WWII memorials, since they lost, but I think it’s in Assisi where there is a small memorial to the Nazi commander who looked the other way while the Franciscan brothers forged ID papers and smuggled hundreds of Jews out of Italy.

May 14: Pisa: Baptistery, cathedral, bell tower and John

Now we can say “Been there, done that.” Actually, the stone work is very pretty.

If you look closely at the tower, you’ll notice that the top part, where the bells are, is at an angle to the rest of the tower. It was already leaning when they added the top section, and leans more now.

May 14: Pisa: Cathedral and bell tower detail

Supposedly, recent work has stabilized it, but the souvenir vendors, among others, don’t want it straightened.

That’s it for Pisa. The cathedral area was spared by the Allied bombers that flattened the rest of the city.

May 14: Viareggio: Principe di Piedmonte

This is a nice place, right on the Mediterranean. That’s our bus… I mean “motor coach”.

May 14: Viareggio: view from our room

May 15: Cinque Terre: Manarola

We took the train to the second village, Manarola, looked around, took the train to the fourth village, had lunch, then took a boat back to La Spezia. Then motor coach to Florence.

The five fishing villages of Cinque Terre (five lands) are connected by train, but the real deal is to walk all five in a day.

May 15: Cinque Terre: Vernazza

This is the fourth of the five fishing villages of Cinque Terre.

May 15-17: Florence: Hotel Brunelleschi

This hotel is on a side street near the Duomo. The round stone part of the front is a restored Roman guard tower or something; other tour groups stopped to look at it. This hotel also had a crazy layout, because it apparently was made out of the insides of 4 or 5 buildings. To get to our room: take one elevator (or stairs) to the first floor, go through another lobby, up some stairs, take another elevator to the fourth floor, down the hall, up about 6 stairs, and down further to the end. But, we had a great view:

May 15-17: Florence: view from our room

May 16: Florence: The Gold Corner (Tracy)

May 16: Florence: Duomo at night

This is the view from a terrace on the roof of our hotel. The bell tower isn’t leaning; it’s camera lens parallax.

The main cathedral of a city is called the “duomo”, whether or not it has a dome. This one’s dome is huge, an engineering marvel of its day.

May 17: Florence: David (left)

This is a copy, but in the original setting. The original is in a museum, but no pictures were allowed.

May 17: Florence: view from the Ponte Vecchio bridge

The Ponte Vecchio bridge spans the Arno river between the Uffizi gallery (once the Medici’s offices) and the Pitti Palace museum and gardens (once the Medici’s home). The Medici’s were WEALTHY.

Now, the Ponte Vecchio is lined with gold jewelry merchants on both sides, except the top of the span.

The curious thing in the photo is the railing around the statue: it has clusters of locks, like mussels.

May 18: Venice: our luggage arrives

May 18: Venice: John in a gondola

The group took a gondola ride: five or six gondolas plus a singer and an accordion player. Too silly.

We’ve also taken the gondola ride at the Venetian Hotel Casino in Las Vegas, which had us think of checking out the casino in Venice. The hotel concierge said it was near the other end of the Grand Canal, that water taxi would be 50 euros ($65) each way, and that it was open 4 pm to midnight or so. We could have gone by vaporetta (water bus), but the fact is that after dinner we were pretty wiped out.

May 18-19: Venice: Westin Europa & Regina

I don’t have a decent picture of the Venice hotel because it fronts on the Grand Canal, and the back is, well, a back door onto a small plaza. So the picture is the all marble entrance to the lobby rest rooms; the men’s room is marble and mosaics, with stand-alone glass basins that look like big champagne glasses.

May 18-19: Venice: hotel concierge

The concierge was unflappable and spoke at least four languages. Sorry, I didn’t use the flash.

Note the Escher-like pattern in the marble floor.

May 19: Venice: View from St. Mark’s bell tower

We went up in this bell tower because it has an elevator, unlike Pisa or Florence.

The big church in the upper right is right across the Grand Canal from our hotel.

May 19: Venice: Peggy Guggenheim and her dogs

Her house on the Grand Canal is now a good modern art museum; she’s in the garden. She had the last privately-owned gondola in Venice, and got permission to paint it pink, instead of the traditional black.

May 20: Venice: People taking a water taxi

Mischel noticed that the couple were fighting. He put her in the cabin, with the guide, while he sat up front with the driver. The building in back with the gold sphere was the customs house.

May 20: Venice: Boat ride to the airport

The airport is on the mainland; the ride took about 45 minutes. Our driver was following the speed limit.

Other notes…

Not in any particular order.

For Italian scenery, rent the movie “Only You”.

Pieta

The famous Pieta is at St. Peter’s, behind glass. But “pieta” is really a standard scene, depicting Christ taken down from the cross, similar to the basic “Madonna and child”. Every artist worth his salt did a pieta, as a sculpture or painting.

May 16: Florence: Mike’s Pieta

In Michelangelo’s Pieta, the old man in the back is a self-portrait. It’s unfinished: a leg should attach to the hole in the very middle.

May 10: Vatican: Mike’s Moses

The best sculptures are lively, not just people standing there. Ok, more Vatican…

Vatican: Museums

We started at a marble, but quite modern ticket area, then through a series of galleries, each about 100 yards long:

May 10: Vatican: Sculpture gallery

May 10: Vatican: Sculpture gallery, entrance

May 10: Vatican: Map gallery, end wall and ceiling

May 10: Vatican: Tapestry gallery, end wall and ceiling

After the galleries, we went into the Sistine chapel, but no photos allowed. Then, into the back of St. Peter’s, out the front, and into St. Peter’s Square, with the colonnade and all.

May 10: Vatican: Dove & olive branch

St. Peter’s must have 100 of these doves.

Venice: Shopping

Rome and Florence have their shopping areas, and every bus stop has its postcards and trinkets, but Venice has got to be the world’s largest pedestrian shopping mall. The main island is about one by two miles and is nothing but hotels, churches, restaurants and stores.

May 18: Venice: Side street

There are no cars, motorcycles, or scooters in Venice, not even a bicycle. The only thing with wheels is a kind of oversize hand truck made to get things over the canal bridges.

However, this is part illusion, since the map shows train and car bridges to the western end of the island. We went from the train station to the hotel by water bus. People commute from the mainland, walking the last stretch from the train station or parking lot to work.

In its heyday, Venice had a population of 400,000, but now it’s 50,000. It’s expensive to live there, so a lot of people commute.

Souvenirs

Mischel got a gold necklace for no smoking for 6 years, May 17, at the The Gold Corner in Florence.

May 16: Florence: Necklace

I got a print in one of the walled towns and coffee mug in Florence. I bought a ceramic fish by accident: I knocked it over, breaking a fin, and the store clerk was there immediately, saying “I can give you a discount!” there being no question that I had just bought it.

For my birthday, Mischel got me a set of glass octopi in Venice:

May 20: Venice: Octopi

I had a 33-hour birthday: the usual 24 plus 9 for time zones.

We also got a Pinocchio puppet for Christopher.

Italy: tipping

For restaurants, the usual tip is 10% or so, but check the check, because sometimes the tip’s included. It’s usually not, because even if you charge the meal, the waiter would like the tip in cash (see Guardia di Finanza, below).

Also, some places have a 1 or 2 Euro cover charge for using a table, instead of walking out with your pizza or gelato. One restaurant, in Venice’s St. Mark’s plaza, had a 10 Euro cover charge for a four-piece band you could hear all over the plaza:

May 18: Venice: St. Mark’s Plaza

For short taxi rides, just leave the change, so the average tip is 50 cents.

We tipped the hotel maids, and Tauck had suggested tips for the guide and driver that worked out to about 100 Euros each from both of us. We usually didn’t tip the local guides.

Italy: gelato

There are gelato shops everywhere. Fortunately, there are two kinds of gelato: a small selection of sherbets (for Mischel) and a large selection of ice creams (for me). Gail directed us to the better shops, but we couldn’t tell the difference.

We tried a couple kinds of rope licorice, one good, one bad. I tried fresh coconut: not as sweet as I remembered, but ripe enough, fortunately.

Italy: economy

The unemployment rate in Italy is about 12%, but it is about 1% for the north (industrial) and 30% for the south (family farms).

I’ve heard of a truck factory in Milan that hires enough foreign workers with ESL (English as a second language), that English is the standard.

Italy: currency

Italy is on the Euro, worth about $1.30. England is not on the Euro, yet.

Euro coins: top left is the 2 Euro coin

The coins come in 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent and 1 and 2 Euro denominations. The front is always the same, and the backs are unique to the issuing countries. You hardly ever see the 1 and 2 cent coins because things are usually priced in even amounts (5 Euros, not $4.99) and there’s no sales tax to mix things up. Taxis charge an odd amount, but the usual tip is to simply leave all the change.

Euro bills and a $20

The bills come in 5, 10, 20, 50 and maybe higher denominations; the ones worth more are larger; they are the same in all Euro countries.

Italy: water

Gail said the water was safe everywhere, but there was one town where it would taste odd. I don’t know what town it was.

The tap water was good, but the restaurant water was usually bottled, and your choice was “natural” (normal) or “gas” (carbonated); once I asked for natural and got mineral water.

After showering, I didn’t need body lotion. I thought it was because the water was softer, and considered a water softener here, but Julene said it seemed softer because ours is chlorinated. And Italy’s isn’t?

There must be plenty of water: none of the toilets were the 1.6 gallon type mandated in California. They all gave a full and proper flush.

Which leads me to…

Italy: public toilets

The rest rooms in some restaurants, museums, and the highway rest stops are unisex: basins and towels on one side, and a bunch of stalls on the other, first come first serve.

May 13: Public toilet on the road

The public toilets have no seats.

Italy: highways

The speed limit on the interstate-grade roads is 130 KPH (80 MPH). Trucks and busses are limited to the speed marked on the vehicle, by numbers in circles on the left and right back. The left one is for regular roads, the right one for superhighways. Our motor coach had 90 and 100 posted, but Antonio usually cruised at 105 (65 MPH). We got passed once by a BMW that must have been doing 200.

There’s no “right turn on red (after stopping and yielding)”, so you’d see a macho guy on a motorcycle stopped cold at a light, no traffic.

Italy: Cars

The cars vary from small to medium, because of the price of gas: $6 or $7 a gallon. There are no American-style pickups or SUVs. In fact, I only saw 3 American-made cars, one with California plates.

May 10: “Smart” cars in Rome

The Mercedes “Smart” car is made in France, according to Philippe, and they’re all over Rome, because of the limited parking. They’re short enough that you can park head-in to the curb.

May 9: Ford “KA” in Rome, Mischel

Ford makes a similar one called “KA”.

May 16: Electric car in Florence

By the time I got my camera out, he’d started to move, so it’s blurred. Only saw one of these.

There are lots of scooters and some motorcycles in all the cities. Florence has a lot of bicycles, but Rome doesn’t, because Florence is flat and Rome is hilly. None in Venice, of course.

Italy: Police

There are four kinds of police.

Police: Polizia municipale (Florence)

The Polizia municipale are a combination of beat cops, traffic cops and meter maids. They mostly stand around looking good in their white hats, often smoking on duty.

Police: Polizia car (Florence)

The Polizia handle civil and criminal cases, and ride cars, vans etc. In Venice, they ride boats.

Police: Polizia boat (Venice)

Police: Carabinieri car (Florence)

The Carabinieri also handle civil and criminal cases, and ride cars, vans or motorcycles.

The Polizia and the Carabinieri don’t get along well.

Police: Guardia di Finanza car (Venice airport)

And then there’s the Guardia di Finanza, or IRS on wheels, which is feared because their charter is to find the people and businesses that underreport their income. They can shut a business down while they do an audit. Estimates of unreported income in Italy varied from 25% to 60% of the total GDP.

Customs and duty

The European Community now uses one passport, I found out from our dry cleaner lady, so you go through customs only when entering or leaving Europe. We entered at Rome and left from London. The London customs people were head and shoulders above in terms of courtesy and efficiency.

Duty-free shops are available when you leave the US or Europe. You pay for the stuff, and they deliver it to you on the plane.

This meant I paid retail for the carton of cigarettes I bought at the Venice airport. Also, going through Chicago and returning through London we had just enough time to change planes, so we missed duty-free both ways.

Italy has a VAT (value added tax) which you can get refunded for big ticket items if you’re not European. Mischel did this for her necklace at the Venice airport.

Italy: Trains and wires

It seems all the trains are electric.

May 15: La Spezia: local train

May 18: Florence: express train

In the countryside there were overhead train wires, and both high-voltage transmission and local electric wires. In the city centers, all the wires were underground.

Rome has a subway, but we didn’t try it.

Rome: SPQR

May 11: Rome: Utility access

This utility access is about 1 ½ by 2 feet; it is in front of our Rome hotel on the Via Veneto.

“SPQR” is the Latin initials of “the Senate and People of Rome”, once on Roman legion banners, now a sign for municipal services. You see it all around Rome.

Another notable thing in this picture is the paving. We were told to be prepared for cobblestone, which I think of as round stones, maybe flattened on the sides to fit closer. The actual paving uses quarried stone, pretty much flat, not exactly cut, laid in different patterns. Sometimes the stones are about 3-inch squares, as in the picture, but they get up to about one by two feet. Sometimes different colors are used, particularly for a mosaic effect in front of cathedrals.

These paving stones are used for plazas, streets and sidewalks, except that the main roads are asphalt. And not just Rome: all the old city-centers on the tourist route have stone paving.

The third thing in this photo is the cigarette butts. Everywhere. Lots of Italians smoke, but apparently not in indoor public places, so they smoke walking, driving their motor scooters, whatever.

Pretty pictures

May 8: Amalfi: coast

May 12: Orvieto: Duomo columns

May 14: Pisa: cathedral floor

The End

American and less-prudish ad:

May 12: Orvieto: Perfume ad