Posting

A couple of you mentioned that you tried to post comments, but couldn't. I changed some settings, so if you are still reading, please try again. If it doesn't work, let me know or drop me an e-mail.

Brunelleschi’s Dome and Such

I spent last Friday in Florence. I had been there before, about 12 years ago, and it hadn't changed much since my last visit. Victoria decided to give me a break from Juliette, and she wanted to have a reastful day herself, so I took the train journey there alone.

I was worried that Florence would be packed; being one of the major tourist centers in Italy, but the crowds weren’t too bad. You knew that there were other people there, but it wasn't a mob scene, except around the Palazzo della Signoria and the Pointe Veccio, the two favorite package tour destinations... I spent most of my day in the Uffizi, looking at the Giottos, Leonardos, and especially Botticellis, the Uffizi having the majority of his authenticated works. Inside the Uffizi, the tour groups washed in and out through the rooms like waves, speaking in Russian, English, Spanish, Italian, and other languages. Fortunately was able to admire their many masterpieces in the relative quiet between the tides.

Afterwards, I walked over to the Duomo (cathedral), Santa Maria del Fiore. There had been a heavy rain while I was in the museum, which somewhat thinned out the crowds. The Doumo had, among other things, Brunelleschi’s famous dome. Filippo Brunelleschi, the renaissance architect, had designed the largest dome built since the Roman Empire for Florence's cathedral. In fact, the plans are still preserved at the Uffizi. Legend has it that once it was completed, the builders refused to take down the scaffolding, certain that the massive dome would collapse. So old Brunelleschi had to pull down the scoffolding himself, confident that it would stand (this is just one of the many conversational gems that I picked up from years of art history classes). At any rate, I can vouch for the fact that it is still standing today, high above the city of Florence.

Earlier in the trip, my mother had told me that I shold look for the statue of Brunelleschi in front of a building next to the Duomo. I hunted around and found it across the piazza from the Duomo. It was in front of a hotel, I believe. There he was in larger-than-life glory, squinting up at his dome as he checked a measurment in a document lying on his lap, eternally re-checking his work on the legendary dome.

Back in the USA

Well, I'm back now... and pretty jetlagged. But I still have some more things I want to post about, so I'm going to keep going for another week or so. So please keep checking in for updates.

Italy in a day

Rimini is also surrounded by a variety of theme parks. Since this particular trip was for Juliette, Victoria and I gave her the choice of going to a theme park or the beach. All during lunch, she was going back and forth about where she wanted to go. In the end she couldn’t make up her mind, but we wound up going to the beach, as it was getting late and the parks all had admission fees.

However, we wound up missing the final train back to Bologna, and had to spend the night in a hotel near the station. Juliette declared it the most beautiful hotel she had ever seen, while we thought of it as “adequate”. However, at least they served a decent breakfast in the morning.

The next day, Victoria and I thought “what the hell”, and decided to go to one of the theme parks, “Italy in Miniature”. The main attraction of this park is a collection, in 1:50^th scale, of about 250 landmarks from all over Italy. Florence, Rome, Assisi, Sienna, Naples, Sicily… all within an easy walk. It sounds cheesy, and it was, but in a fun kind of way. What I took from this display was that I would never get to see all the sights of Italy in this lifetime, but now I can at least claim to have done so.

We also had a gondola tour of the grand canal of Venice … at 1:5 scale. In fact, this was vastly cheaper and less crowded than the actual thing. And, as it turned out, Juliette enjoyed this tour more than the actual thing as well… I’m sure Umberto Eco would have something to say about that.

Rimini

Now I'm back in the north, where the atmosphere is less Roman Empire and more Renaissance. The people look more fashionable and prosperous, and the pace of life is faster, though still notably slower than in the USA. Victoria commented that she had never before seen so many well-dressed people, all riding around on bicycles!

A few days ago, we visited Rimini, a beach town not far fom Bolognia. The description in our Lonely Planet guidebook didn’t encourage a visit, but Juliette really wanted to go to the beach, so we went. It actually turned out to be a rather nice place to spend a day or two, at least during the off-season. I chalk it up to Lonely Planet’s reverse snobbery… for example; they are constantly disparaging the cuisine of Emilia-Romagna because it contains so much meat.

 

Rimini has a pleasant medieval town square, many seaside restaurants and bars, and wide, tree-lined avenues punctuated by traffic circles with large marble fountains in the centers. Tourists (including my family) pose for photos in front of the Hotel Grand, a relic from a bygone era of elegance. Picturesque fishing boats fill the canal leading to the sea. The streets are filled with holidaymakers on the ubiquitous Vespa. The amount of bare flesh on the beach is witness to the fact that Italy doesn't suffer under the same yoke of puritan history as does the US. Amid the crowd, we watch old men in Speedos play Bacci in a court dug out of the sand. If nothing else, this trip gave us a chance to see how the Italians spend their holidays.

Is anyone reading this?

... if so, why not leave a comment?

Centola

Last Saturday, I was still in Campania, and I visited Centola, where my family originated, and about which I've heard so many legends. I went there with Ernesto, a second cousin of my mother (I think, its hard to keep the family tree straight). I was staying with his family in Agropoli, the nearest city to Centola. Ernesto was thin and nervous, but good-natured and intelligent. He spoke in halting English… however, much better than my cave-man Italian, I have to admit. He and his sister showed me around Agropoli on the first day and refused to let me pay for anything.

From Agropoli, we drove down the coast of the Mediterranean, past mountains, steep cliffs descending to the blue Adriatic, and crumbling Norman castles perched high on mountaintops. I commented to Ernesto that I’d read many of the events in the Odyssey took place in this region, and Ernesto told me that Polynoru (sp?), the seaward part of Centola, was named after a member of Ulysses’s crew who was supposed to have died there. Eventually, we turned off the highway and on to the dusty side-road that leads to Centola.

Centola itself is made up of an old town steep on a hill, grey stone buildings from the early Middle-Ages, crowded closely together and piled one on top of the other. They surround a small square with a bell tower and a church. Spreading out from the old town are many more modern (post-war) buildings from the classic Mediterranean mold, with red tile roofs and stucco walls in cream and ochre. My grandfather had left Centola during the depression before WWII, when the old town was all that there was to it, and the south of Italy was in grinding poverty.

Shortly before he died a few years ago, I interviewed my grandfather, and he had told me that, as a child, his biggest excitement was to run down the hill from his house and get a drink from the fountain at the bottom - clearly, there weren't many entertainment options in Centola back then. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to contact anyone from my grandfather's side of the family, Ernesto and his family being from my Grandmother’s. However, I was able to find the house where he grew up - which I recognized from old photos - and the legendary fountain at the bottom of the hill.

Later, I dozed as Ernesto drove me back to Agropoli through the winding foothills of Campania. In my waking moments, I wondered how my daughter, with all her dolls, toys, and videos, would be in a world where the biggest excitement was to run down the hill to have a drink of water.