The Italian Adventure
Created | Updated Mar 1, 2005
Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Jan 20, 2004 by Carlyle Ferris
There is a certain joy about arriving in a new and unique place. We, as human animals need two things to survive: food and shelter. It was only after Cro-magnon had achieved these that he could stop and have a quick scribble on a cave wall or even raise an eyebrow in the direction of cro-mag woman with a view to some procreation. I was not up for any procreation but a bit of shelter would not go amiss. Venezia, Marco Polo, was cold, windy and wet, just like Bristol had been two hours before.
I gathered that there was a fast[blue] bus or a slow[orange] bus to take me to the City of Venezia. To go slowly throught the night costs one Euro, speed, another one and a half E's. Both buses went every half hour, staggered for fifteen minutes and the journey took 15 or twenty minutes depending on which one you took. Now forgive me for being a git but if you took the bus that was there and did'nt wait for fifteen minutes for the right colour you always got there first. I watched some people get on to the orange bus that was just leaving and they were walking across Venice bus station when my blue bus arrived. So why did'nt I get on the first bus? Different company. Now the clever bit.....the one place in Italy that you cannot buy a bus ticket is on a bus. The blue bus tickets were sold at the travel desk inside the airport and the orange outside from a machine. Take a gamble...If the blue bus is there and you have an orange ticket you don't have time to get back in to the desk before the bus goes and then it is another 30 mins for the next one.
Why do I care so much? I am English..well almost..
The Italians have a much better idea. They get on to the orange buses with no ticket at all. Entry is at the front or back and the exit is by the centre doors. If an inspector gets on everyone gets off in the middle and waits for the next bus. In Britain the inspector would get off as well and lurk to try and catch them on the next bus. In Italy they just have a nice chat to the driver and go back to the bus station. Que sera sera.
Across the causeway, 7pm, cold and wet, January the second.. The next step up from my stone age nightmare is shelter. The bus station is joined to Venice by two foot bridges and it is now that you regret the extra pair of shoes, the spare jeans, the "that may come in handy" items you stuffed in at the last minute. There were some things I did'nt regret. The woolly hat. the scarf, the gloves, The rather Dracula style coat, the civil service fully retractable brolly. The essence of the English abroad. Over dressed or under dressed, never just right. Speaking in loud tones to impress the natives with their sophistication.
Most hotels were full. Here is a tip. Get a room in Maestre, the other end of the causeway. Half the price, twice the availability. So why did I not take my own advice. Are you kidding? Fly to Venice and then stay somewhere else? No way!
Found a room. 55 Euros. Italian Hotels specialise in "bleak". The room I was proudly shown barely managed to rise above the prison cells in far off Asia that I have narrowly avoided in the past. Matron would have been proud of the bed making, crisp and board like. Not till later did I realise that it was a board.
Television, en-suite, but no breakfast. "Signore,eet ees winter, we are renewal." O......kay.
The single blanket had obviously been left behind by the retreating Germans and I remember my mother throwing out the bedspread for the dogs basket 20 years ago. They did have the most beautiful plastic crystal chandelier and an honour bar. I needed the loo so took the room. Could'nt resist opening the shutters to see a perfect wall view about three feet away. This is not a cause for concern. It would not be an ancient city if there was anything else. A view is a very Nineteenth century concept. Not much to worry about in 1312.
Another tip. Just because a toilet seat is on top of the toilet in Italy that does not necessarily mean that the two are connected.
Anyway, I picked myself up and by eight o'clock I was ready to join the "passeggiata".
All over Italy, the main interaction takes place in the evenings when whole families take to the main street and wander endlessly up and down. Only at midnight or one a.m does the pace slacken and the City go quiet. This is the opportunity for the twelve year old girls to flutter their eyelids under the watchful gaze of grandma, and for the fourteen year old boys to preen and pose in their designer shoes and ruffle their feathers, practice their song, preferably over the heads of their intended. A good performance tonight will pay dividends in the school tomorrow. The men greet each other aggressively with much arm waving, shouting. slapping and pushing. If you did not know Italy you would think there was scuffling in the streets. The mums look disdainfully at their men and at the potential suitors and protectively at their painted daughters. I moved slowly through this crowd in search of the second of my human needs, food.
It was quite by accident that I came across the Piazza San Marco, through the colonnades directly opposite the Oriental/Byzantine Cathedral which is the 11th Century Basilica di San Marco.
I am not going to attempt to describe it. Many have done that before me and no doubt many more will after me. Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Lord Byron, but do you remember that rush of emotion that starts in your belly and surges upwards, a huge drag of cold air to cool the eyes, your shoulders pulling back, lungs overloading,and your eyes watering, the electric tickle through the hair, the constriction of the throat. It happens when you come across a loved one, asleep, hair tangled over closed eyes, when you hold an hour old baby and he grips your finger. These are treasured seconds, we try to freeze them in our hearts in the fear that it may never come back to us. It is the moment that makes us human. I felt that moment when I accidently stumbled through the portico of the Piazza more so than it could ever have enveloped me had I not come there by default.
You have to love Venice. The sheer folly of a City built on mud flats in a tidal pond in a cold and windy corner of the Adriatic. It is a testament to the Veneto character. A City of Facades and crumbling interiors. Why the hell not. Who cares about the English obsession with the plumbing. Life is about what you see, what you feel, not about the regulations. If it does'nt work, do with out it, but if it does'nt feel good. Get it fixed.
I savoured my introduction to the Piazza San Marco, I went no further than the portico. You must never let reality creep into "the moment".
My next human need was food..........Pizza! I actually quite like pizza. As it was late I went for an Antipasti and a Monzarella cheese and anchovy pizza, the most gut scouring of the house reds, followed by cappucino. I asked for cafe latte, but I was over ruled by the cameriere [waiter] who felt it would not fit my image. Please don't complain if you get the wrong dish in Italy, it will always be better than the one you ordered.
So with the passeggiata nearly over I made my way back to my hotel. Here is another tip. Try and remember what hotel you booked into! Taking their card on your first outing is a plus. La Locanda Di Orsaria is not such a different name as you might have suspected. I said Buenos Noches to the porter and having rephrased that to buono sera, took my key and went upstairs. It was only now that I realised that the retreating Germans had not left any soft mattresses or pillows. Must be to make the Japanese feel at home.
And so to bed.
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Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Jan 21, 2004 by litchick
I am exhausted Carlyle! I loved your mix of the apparent irrelevance of certain analogies that were well worth bearing with until the end, I was very impressed, dare I say moved, by other parts and generally feel priveleged to have experienced a little of this with you! (Are you feeling nauseous?! I am sychophant central!)
I am however, feeling a lust for travel now that has been dormant for a little while! Please post more!!!!!!!
love Litchick xx
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Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Feb 5, 2004 by Carlyle Ferris
Clong....clong......clong.....clong.....When you hear a bell chiming at six in the morning you expect it to stop at six. Not this one. One hundred and twenty one chimes at Six a.m on a Saturday Morning. When you have spent the previous day travelling, a bit of a lie in is always welcome, so roll over and back to sleep. An hour later....clong....clong.....123 times. Hey! Who is doing the counting in that church!
No breakfast in this Hotel. Not in itself a problem but no early tea or coffee in the room. This is general in Italian Hotels under four star. Much better in the UK where you can knock up a quick cup before the shower. Of course you pay an extra 15 or 20 pounds a night in an English Hotel for the privelege.
After the shower it is down into the main street to join the heterogenous throngs trickling and flowing through the market stalls, around the map reading tourists, irritating the local grand signoras. A few "permessos" and "pregos" are needed to smooth your passage. Some Athletic swerves around islands of Japanese and the occasional American Massif, "Hey....Where is this goddam dogs palace!?" Carrying on through the passages, squeezing across bridges, a narrowing of the Arteries of the city. The hit of smells, passing a stagnant canal, the fish stall, a pasticeria with the freshly baked bread, an overly scented ,designer clad shop girl, Last nights peppers and red wine. All the things that make up the cosmopolitan character of a cities population.
The first priority is food and drink. A coffee is about E3.50 in Venice, 60cents in Puglia at the heel of Italy. Be careful what you ask for. Cafe American is what you want...A slug of caffinated sludge is what you will get. The Italian does not sit down to drink coffee. He comes in, leans on the bar and takes it like a cowboy's shot of whisky. Not so much a drink as an early version of performance art. Cappucino is whisked coffee, totally unsatisfying, and cafe latte is with way too much milk. At this point my son who is an English teacher in Italy joined the adventure. He has learned Italian in a very academic way, he knows all of the 30 regular verb endings for example. I, on the other hand, inflect, genuflect, deflect, grunt, gasp, exclaim, disclaim nod and shake without knowing a word of Italian. they find me really easy to understand. A nation of actors, they love the dramatic gesture. The best option seemed to be to grab a slice and a coke and keep moving. A D.I.Y lunch of prosciutto and pani at the local pasticeria was bought for about E4.00. Ham rolls from the Bakers for we English speakers.
We carried on towards the Piazza Di San Marco, following the Yellow signs. It is difficult to orient yourself in Venice. The City follows the curve of the Grand Canal. It is as easy to stay to the east of the canal and circumnavigate the centre as it is to find one of the three bridges to cross in and out of the Central Island. You have to visit the ponta Rialto, a white marble bridge lined with shops, but don't cross it yet. Stay to the East and follow the San Marco signs.
All the travel guides will recommend that you go by ferry along the Grande Canal to the Piazza San Marco, but this would be a mistake. You will see all the Palazzos along the bank but they will be soulless until you have absorbed the street atmosphere. It is better to crawl in and out of the narrow alleys, breathe in the delapidation, get lost on the Canal bank, watch the barges unloading vegetables and tiles, step around the beggers and avoid the pickpockets. Only then will you have a sense of what Venezia is all about. Only then are you qualified to view the magnificent architecture and wonder at a society that put a marble face on a diseased world.
We came to the Piazza for the second time in my life. That the first impression never survives first contact with reality is a given but even the pigeons, more numerous than the tourists cannot dim the magnitude of the Basilica di San Marco. A neo-oriental byzantine conglomerate of styles that should not work but does. Moslem domes and Christian Spires on the same building. And why, oh why, The Campanile? As is the habit in Italy the bell Tower is separate from the Cathedral. In 1902 God passed judgement on it and it collapsed. Unfortunately the people of Venice did not recognise this devine act and put the thing back up. It took them ten years to rebuild it, you would think that would be enough time for a plague or something to put them off.
Still, as it is there and it is a beautiful day, it is 99 metres high and has a lift for a mere 8 Euros. One has to go to the top. I am not sure who said it of the Eiffel Tower but the idea was that if you were on it you could'nt see it and the same is true here.
The top has the usual comforting cage and a swarm of Japanese to occupy it. To the North, the causeway and the town of Maestre. Raise your eyes to the Tyrolean Alps, blending into the cloud until the knowledge of their presence gives you the ability to see them emerge like the design on a holographic picture. Across the Grand Canal , the Church of Santa Maria Della Salute, beyond this the Lido, a slender finger of low buildings protecting the Venetians from the source of their wealth. The cold and currently forbidding Adriatic Sea.
To the west the more modern sea port, but closer in Venice's own leaning tower. There must be an agreement with Pisa. Venice has so much and Pisa so little that the theft of the lure of a leaning tower would be cruel. It lives next to the Accademia, The museo of Venetian Art.
So what to do? I have one day in the most charismatic city in the world and half of it is already gone.
The Doges Palace is the obvious choice with the Bridge of Sighs, an attributed Da Vinci and the the largest known Tintorretto. E15.00 buys you a ticket to all the museums in the Piazza, what it does not do is buy you the time to see them. The ticket expires in a day and if I attempted to extract full value I am sure I would as well.
The piece de resistance of the Palace is the Sala del Maggiore Consiglio. This is the Great Council Hall where the business of government was conducted. To say it is big is like calling Niagara Falls wet, but the secret is in the layout. As you enter through a tiny door on the left of the hall your eyes are assaulted by the exuberant frescos on the walls, then pulled aloft to the ceiling, a mass of cherubs and religeous icons and just when you feel you can absorb no more you turn back towards the door and are faced by Tintorrettos masterpiece, Paradise. There is no alternative but to find a seat and just stare in awe at the result of a culture of art and religion in combination that could inspire and indeed justify the creation of such work as this in a world plagued by war, famine and disease.
This contrast is uniquely portrayed only a few metres away as you cross the Bridge of Sighs into the old prison where the Doge saved his enemys lives so that they should suffer much longer. It was a cold, cold day when we passed through this menacing place. I was chilled in my hat and gloves, well wrapped in my winter coat. No such luxury as that was afforded to the inmates of this balefull prison. The Bridge of Sighs was said to reflect the mood of the prisoners called to walk across it to their judgement. It would be a wonderful thing if we could say, thank god that places like this are a thing of the past. Would that it were so.
There seemed to be no escape from this huge Ducal Palace. There is so much to see, but as always the call of capuccino comes eventually and we went to the cafe for a coffee and doughnut. Here is a tip. Buy your postcards inside the museums but get the coffee on the outside. What you save on one will pay for the other.
It had become dark by the time we left the Palace and it seemed sensible to walk back towards the Piazza Roma where we had started. At this time of night the walkways are crowded with local people. The English are eating, the Americans are sleeping and the Japanese are putting in the ASA 400 low light film ready to continue the photographic conquest of the world.
We stopped in a restaurant at about 8 and ordered a couple of extravagently described dishes from the menu. What could be wrong with Cotichinata? I felt rather like the man in Hospital who confused the word circumcised with castrated and came out without his gondolas. Let me translate....Roulade of pig rind stuffed with garlic, parsley and lard. Cooked with, of course, tomato sauce. Tomato in all its guises is mandatory. Be it pureed, pulped, juiced, flowered, sliced or diced, you will have tomato with everything. The Venice restaurants have been sacrificed to the tourists. It is no longer the case as in rural Italy where you go in and sit down and the Nonna decides what would best suit your palate. I have to say that the house wine was terrific. It sloughed off several layers of throat lining to get to the core of the taste buds and destroy them by the third carafe. There can be few things in life more satisfying than becoming elegantly plastered in an Italian Ristorante al Italia.
On returning to the Hotel I remembered that I had not actually booked a second night there and was indeed clutching a ticket to Florence in my wine stained hand. Oh come on, I never claimed to be infallible.
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Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Mar 5, 2004 by Carlyle Ferris
Italian Trains are very disconcerting. They have this weird thing called a timetable which is a work of non-fiction and gives the actual times that trains arrive and depart. They also have people whom I believe are called 'cleaners' who come onto the trains and clean them. All the stations have ticket machines in about five languages which are very easy to operate. The only thing that you have to be careful of is that they do not do connections on one ticket so you may well find two or three tickets coming out of the machine. It is far too easy to walk away with the first one and only realise it when it is too late. This from experience? Yes, you guessed it.
We arrived in Firenze at an ungodly hour. The first priority was, as always , to find a hotel. We get used to hotels being one big building in the UK but in Italy the buildings are divided into floors and you can get as many as five hotels in one building, all on different levels. The word you do not want to see on the hall doors is "complete" meaning full but if there is no sign then it is worth popping in to ask.
I let my son have the honour of calling on the upper floor Hotels and I did the ground floors. It was not long, nor more than one street from the station, before we found a one star that my son could afford. No 'en-suite' as such but breakfast included. The prices never varied more than a few Euros either way depending on the number of stars. It is possible to find dormitory hotels with five or six in a room if you are desperate to save money and these are about half the price of a one star. Over the years of travel I have come to the conclusion that many of these deals are false economy in purely aesthetic terms. A little comfort from a two or three star goes a long way. The worst Hotel experience remains the early morning slouch down a cold hallway to the communal loo to be greeted by the sound of prayers to the god Huey coming from the other side of the door. These things are best avoided by choosing a suitable en-suite.
To mock my preferences, this particular room did not have a bathroom but did have a sink and a shower cubicle in the corner. No attempt at enclosure had been made. This vertical plastic box gave the impression of being some relic from Doctor Who. One felt that if we could but get the door open it would reveal a vast space within, sufficient for a swimming complex, not just a shower. Alas we were mistaken. There was one way in, which, of course the shower nozzle was aimed at. If you went in and then turned on the shower there was no escape from the extreme heat or icy blast that would blister or skin you. We solved this problem by putting a carrier bag over the nozzle to deflect the stream until entry was acheived. The next problem was the soap. There was no soap dish so the soap inevitably ended up on the floor. As the cubicle was so small it was impossible to bend over and pick it up so one had to put the plastic bag back over the nozzle. partially open the door and by judiciously extruding ones rear end through the doors bend over and grab the soap. The next problem involved the extractor fan which was visible but not audible at the top of this plastic box. As the building had 12 foot high ceilings it took a while for the cloud height to descend to eye level inside the Tardis but once there it took on the nature of a sauna rather than a shower. Eventually I had to ease the door open a crack to replenish the air and simultaneously the water leaked out onto the floor. The Florentines take the same line on central heating that we British use on Snow ploughs. Don't need it very often so why worry. I would'nt have, except for the thin film of ice appearing on the spilt puddle. Oh well, never mind, the ex G.I. war surplus blankets should be enough.
Breakfast was an experience. After the early morning shower in the Tardis we found the breakfast room on the next floor down. The Italian one star usually only employs one person to do reception, cleaning and waiting, so the breakfast can best be described as cost effective. There was a coffee machine with the coin box removed and a box of Fette biscottate, Mulino Bianco, a crisp toast like creation that costs 70 cents a gross in the local market. Beside this was a box of catering marge and another of apricot confiture. I like tea and they had kindly left a box of twinings so I took the cup, the bag, under the hot water, under the milk......buggar. Two into one won't go. It was a full cup of milk from the machine. Once you've started messing something up you might as well go for it. How do you create Caffe Americano? From cappucino, double shot with added hot water and milk? No. How about a double of ordinary coffee with added hot water and milk? No. What about...........by this time there was a pool of milk in the tray and the stares were coming our way so we retreated to the table with our desert island rations with extra jam. In my student days the over riding principal of life was to eat enough breakfast in your digs so that if you never ate again you would live for three years. Try doing that on dried toast and cappucino and very soon you feel that you are eating carpet.
With breakfast done it was time to get the greatcoats, hats and scarves on and venture out into the cold wind whistling through the narrow streets of Florence. Gird up thy loins oh art lover. Madonna and child overload is about to commence.
Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Mar 21, 2004 by Carlyle Ferris
There was a bitter wind blowing up the street from the Arno. Florence is one of those cities that has an aura about it. It defies your attempts to stand back and see it for its true self. There can be no dirty streets where the buildings have such classic elegance, no forest of aerials can obscure the red tiles, no beggar can jar the lilting Italian from your soul. Florence carries that unique ambience that is found in cities such as New York and Paris. When you are there you could be nowhere else.
All the well known treasures of Firenze are contained within an easy walk of the River Arno. The Florentines of the middle ages were either attacking or being attacked by various Italian factions throughout most of the Middle Ages. Where we content ourselves with a little revelry after a football match they were much more likely to murder the entire population of the defeated city. Perhaps in a culture where life itself was transitory and had no value the only substitute was art. The marble statue, the fresco, both have a permanence never given to the frail human. The creation of great buildings often outlived the creator and became living changeable monuments to the times. I cannot imagine the reaction of the council planning department if ones proposal was the millennium dome and the completed building was Shea Stadium.
I walked against the wind to the river, passing the Firenze academy of Art, the source of the current generation of Florentine craftspeople. High banks and walls contain the River now. It has in the past been the source of many disasters in Florence, both of flood and plague. Today it was a serene trickle of muddy water and the real turmoil was caused by the traffic along its banks and crossing the bridges. I felt much as an ancient boatman must have felt, putting out into a fast flowing stream in my attempt to cross the roaring traffic and reach the safety of the other bank. The secret is to be purposeful and unafraid. As a gladiator stepping into the arena. Move quickly and glance neither left nor right until the roar of the lions is behind you. The cream of Italian youth has been denied the Corrida of the Spanish, but they have substituted the Vespa. The ability to swerve and manoeuvre this beast to within an inch of the sorry pedestrian is a skill nurtured and respected in Italy. Woe betide you if you falter.......
I walked along the riverside towards the Uffizi. On my left was the British Consulate with an unspectacular flag tattily waving towards the street. It always seems that the flag is flown in inverse proportion to the significance of its motherland. Obscure middle African pocket dictatorships always exhibit whalebone stiffened battle ensigns that would not disgrace the Home Fleet. The exception is the USA, perhaps they are not yet comfortable with their status in the world, so in consequence must always fly an overly ostentatious flag. The machine gun toting guard glares at me as I pause to admire the flag so I decide that my Britishness must not be as obvious as I thought. Along the pavement between the Ponta Vecchio and the Uffizi is a covered walkway beneath which the street traders lay their wares. A curious mixture of leather bags, reproduction art works and gloves hats and scarves. It was once said that if the world was to die in an atomic holocaust the only survivors would be cockroaches, rats and bomb souvenir sellers. There is a game played between these traders and the Carabinieri. Trading without a license is illegal and the City authorities will not grant a license to non-residents. The Carabinieri do not want the trouble of arresting the traders so they walk just slow enough for the displayed goods to be picked up, partially concealed and replaced as they pass on. The first time you witness this phenomenon it is like a zephyr flowing through the alley magically wafting the wares out of harms way until the satyr passes. The Italian psyche demands that all laws are negotiable and see no reason to discontinue this arrangement.
I turned away from the River between the columns that mark the River entrance to the Uffizi Palace complex. This is now the home of one of the most famous art galleries in the world. Many people already know that and most of them were there forming a queue that the electronic device over the door declared to be three hours long. Now if I had three weeks in Florence three hours would be a small price to pay but for a two-day visit it was not practical. The Uffizis most famous work is Botticellis 'Birth of Venus'. Works by Titian , Raphael, Da Vinci, Giotto, but most of the work of Michaelangelo is elsewhere. More modern offerings by Reuben’s and Rembrandt would all have to wait until I had the time to spend on them.
The Uffizi leads into the Piazza Della Signoria with the Palazzo Vecchio on the left and government buildings, now mostly converted into banks completing the enclosure.
One of the traits of Italians is that everyone wants to hold the best works for display which leads to a plethora of copies in odd places around various cities.
Each of these copies in itself would be considered a masterpiece in our modern world so devoid of genuine artistic talent. But each is the product of a craftsman, not an artist. That they have beauty is undeniable just as the originals have beauty. That they are masterpieces of their craft is undeniable but where they are found wanting is that they have not been touched by the hand of genius.
When you look at the original you feel the antiquity of it. There is no way that you, or sometimes, even the self appointed experts could tell the difference without being told, but when you accept that this was created 500 years before you were born you have to marvel at something that is so accomplished as to make it survive such a time.
I somehow doubt that a pile of elephant dung, an unmade bed, half a sheep, or a concrete cube are going to have the same effect on our descendents.
Posted Jan 20, 2004 by Carlyle Ferris
There is a certain joy about arriving in a new and unique place. We, as human animals need two things to survive: food and shelter. It was only after Cro-magnon had achieved these that he could stop and have a quick scribble on a cave wall or even raise an eyebrow in the direction of cro-mag woman with a view to some procreation. I was not up for any procreation but a bit of shelter would not go amiss. Venezia, Marco Polo, was cold, windy and wet, just like Bristol had been two hours before.
I gathered that there was a fast[blue] bus or a slow[orange] bus to take me to the City of Venezia. To go slowly throught the night costs one Euro, speed, another one and a half E's. Both buses went every half hour, staggered for fifteen minutes and the journey took 15 or twenty minutes depending on which one you took. Now forgive me for being a git but if you took the bus that was there and did'nt wait for fifteen minutes for the right colour you always got there first. I watched some people get on to the orange bus that was just leaving and they were walking across Venice bus station when my blue bus arrived. So why did'nt I get on the first bus? Different company. Now the clever bit.....the one place in Italy that you cannot buy a bus ticket is on a bus. The blue bus tickets were sold at the travel desk inside the airport and the orange outside from a machine. Take a gamble...If the blue bus is there and you have an orange ticket you don't have time to get back in to the desk before the bus goes and then it is another 30 mins for the next one.
Why do I care so much? I am English..well almost..
The Italians have a much better idea. They get on to the orange buses with no ticket at all. Entry is at the front or back and the exit is by the centre doors. If an inspector gets on everyone gets off in the middle and waits for the next bus. In Britain the inspector would get off as well and lurk to try and catch them on the next bus. In Italy they just have a nice chat to the driver and go back to the bus station. Que sera sera.
Across the causeway, 7pm, cold and wet, January the second.. The next step up from my stone age nightmare is shelter. The bus station is joined to Venice by two foot bridges and it is now that you regret the extra pair of shoes, the spare jeans, the "that may come in handy" items you stuffed in at the last minute. There were some things I did'nt regret. The woolly hat. the scarf, the gloves, The rather Dracula style coat, the civil service fully retractable brolly. The essence of the English abroad. Over dressed or under dressed, never just right. Speaking in loud tones to impress the natives with their sophistication.
Most hotels were full. Here is a tip. Get a room in Maestre, the other end of the causeway. Half the price, twice the availability. So why did I not take my own advice. Are you kidding? Fly to Venice and then stay somewhere else? No way!
Found a room. 55 Euros. Italian Hotels specialise in "bleak". The room I was proudly shown barely managed to rise above the prison cells in far off Asia that I have narrowly avoided in the past. Matron would have been proud of the bed making, crisp and board like. Not till later did I realise that it was a board.
Television, en-suite, but no breakfast. "Signore,eet ees winter, we are renewal." O......kay.
The single blanket had obviously been left behind by the retreating Germans and I remember my mother throwing out the bedspread for the dogs basket 20 years ago. They did have the most beautiful plastic crystal chandelier and an honour bar. I needed the loo so took the room. Could'nt resist opening the shutters to see a perfect wall view about three feet away. This is not a cause for concern. It would not be an ancient city if there was anything else. A view is a very Nineteenth century concept. Not much to worry about in 1312.
Another tip. Just because a toilet seat is on top of the toilet in Italy that does not necessarily mean that the two are connected.
Anyway, I picked myself up and by eight o'clock I was ready to join the "passeggiata".
All over Italy, the main interaction takes place in the evenings when whole families take to the main street and wander endlessly up and down. Only at midnight or one a.m does the pace slacken and the City go quiet. This is the opportunity for the twelve year old girls to flutter their eyelids under the watchful gaze of grandma, and for the fourteen year old boys to preen and pose in their designer shoes and ruffle their feathers, practice their song, preferably over the heads of their intended. A good performance tonight will pay dividends in the school tomorrow. The men greet each other aggressively with much arm waving, shouting. slapping and pushing. If you did not know Italy you would think there was scuffling in the streets. The mums look disdainfully at their men and at the potential suitors and protectively at their painted daughters. I moved slowly through this crowd in search of the second of my human needs, food.
It was quite by accident that I came across the Piazza San Marco, through the colonnades directly opposite the Oriental/Byzantine Cathedral which is the 11th Century Basilica di San Marco.
I am not going to attempt to describe it. Many have done that before me and no doubt many more will after me. Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, Lord Byron, but do you remember that rush of emotion that starts in your belly and surges upwards, a huge drag of cold air to cool the eyes, your shoulders pulling back, lungs overloading,and your eyes watering, the electric tickle through the hair, the constriction of the throat. It happens when you come across a loved one, asleep, hair tangled over closed eyes, when you hold an hour old baby and he grips your finger. These are treasured seconds, we try to freeze them in our hearts in the fear that it may never come back to us. It is the moment that makes us human. I felt that moment when I accidently stumbled through the portico of the Piazza more so than it could ever have enveloped me had I not come there by default.
You have to love Venice. The sheer folly of a City built on mud flats in a tidal pond in a cold and windy corner of the Adriatic. It is a testament to the Veneto character. A City of Facades and crumbling interiors. Why the hell not. Who cares about the English obsession with the plumbing. Life is about what you see, what you feel, not about the regulations. If it does'nt work, do with out it, but if it does'nt feel good. Get it fixed.
I savoured my introduction to the Piazza San Marco, I went no further than the portico. You must never let reality creep into "the moment".
My next human need was food..........Pizza! I actually quite like pizza. As it was late I went for an Antipasti and a Monzarella cheese and anchovy pizza, the most gut scouring of the house reds, followed by cappucino. I asked for cafe latte, but I was over ruled by the cameriere [waiter] who felt it would not fit my image. Please don't complain if you get the wrong dish in Italy, it will always be better than the one you ordered.
So with the passeggiata nearly over I made my way back to my hotel. Here is another tip. Try and remember what hotel you booked into! Taking their card on your first outing is a plus. La Locanda Di Orsaria is not such a different name as you might have suspected. I said Buenos Noches to the porter and having rephrased that to buono sera, took my key and went upstairs. It was only now that I realised that the retreating Germans had not left any soft mattresses or pillows. Must be to make the Japanese feel at home.
And so to bed.
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Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Jan 21, 2004 by litchick
I am exhausted Carlyle! I loved your mix of the apparent irrelevance of certain analogies that were well worth bearing with until the end, I was very impressed, dare I say moved, by other parts and generally feel priveleged to have experienced a little of this with you! (Are you feeling nauseous?! I am sychophant central!)
I am however, feeling a lust for travel now that has been dormant for a little while! Please post more!!!!!!!
love Litchick xx
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Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Feb 5, 2004 by Carlyle Ferris
Clong....clong......clong.....clong.....When you hear a bell chiming at six in the morning you expect it to stop at six. Not this one. One hundred and twenty one chimes at Six a.m on a Saturday Morning. When you have spent the previous day travelling, a bit of a lie in is always welcome, so roll over and back to sleep. An hour later....clong....clong.....123 times. Hey! Who is doing the counting in that church!
No breakfast in this Hotel. Not in itself a problem but no early tea or coffee in the room. This is general in Italian Hotels under four star. Much better in the UK where you can knock up a quick cup before the shower. Of course you pay an extra 15 or 20 pounds a night in an English Hotel for the privelege.
After the shower it is down into the main street to join the heterogenous throngs trickling and flowing through the market stalls, around the map reading tourists, irritating the local grand signoras. A few "permessos" and "pregos" are needed to smooth your passage. Some Athletic swerves around islands of Japanese and the occasional American Massif, "Hey....Where is this goddam dogs palace!?" Carrying on through the passages, squeezing across bridges, a narrowing of the Arteries of the city. The hit of smells, passing a stagnant canal, the fish stall, a pasticeria with the freshly baked bread, an overly scented ,designer clad shop girl, Last nights peppers and red wine. All the things that make up the cosmopolitan character of a cities population.
The first priority is food and drink. A coffee is about E3.50 in Venice, 60cents in Puglia at the heel of Italy. Be careful what you ask for. Cafe American is what you want...A slug of caffinated sludge is what you will get. The Italian does not sit down to drink coffee. He comes in, leans on the bar and takes it like a cowboy's shot of whisky. Not so much a drink as an early version of performance art. Cappucino is whisked coffee, totally unsatisfying, and cafe latte is with way too much milk. At this point my son who is an English teacher in Italy joined the adventure. He has learned Italian in a very academic way, he knows all of the 30 regular verb endings for example. I, on the other hand, inflect, genuflect, deflect, grunt, gasp, exclaim, disclaim nod and shake without knowing a word of Italian. they find me really easy to understand. A nation of actors, they love the dramatic gesture. The best option seemed to be to grab a slice and a coke and keep moving. A D.I.Y lunch of prosciutto and pani at the local pasticeria was bought for about E4.00. Ham rolls from the Bakers for we English speakers.
We carried on towards the Piazza Di San Marco, following the Yellow signs. It is difficult to orient yourself in Venice. The City follows the curve of the Grand Canal. It is as easy to stay to the east of the canal and circumnavigate the centre as it is to find one of the three bridges to cross in and out of the Central Island. You have to visit the ponta Rialto, a white marble bridge lined with shops, but don't cross it yet. Stay to the East and follow the San Marco signs.
All the travel guides will recommend that you go by ferry along the Grande Canal to the Piazza San Marco, but this would be a mistake. You will see all the Palazzos along the bank but they will be soulless until you have absorbed the street atmosphere. It is better to crawl in and out of the narrow alleys, breathe in the delapidation, get lost on the Canal bank, watch the barges unloading vegetables and tiles, step around the beggers and avoid the pickpockets. Only then will you have a sense of what Venezia is all about. Only then are you qualified to view the magnificent architecture and wonder at a society that put a marble face on a diseased world.
We came to the Piazza for the second time in my life. That the first impression never survives first contact with reality is a given but even the pigeons, more numerous than the tourists cannot dim the magnitude of the Basilica di San Marco. A neo-oriental byzantine conglomerate of styles that should not work but does. Moslem domes and Christian Spires on the same building. And why, oh why, The Campanile? As is the habit in Italy the bell Tower is separate from the Cathedral. In 1902 God passed judgement on it and it collapsed. Unfortunately the people of Venice did not recognise this devine act and put the thing back up. It took them ten years to rebuild it, you would think that would be enough time for a plague or something to put them off.
Still, as it is there and it is a beautiful day, it is 99 metres high and has a lift for a mere 8 Euros. One has to go to the top. I am not sure who said it of the Eiffel Tower but the idea was that if you were on it you could'nt see it and the same is true here.
The top has the usual comforting cage and a swarm of Japanese to occupy it. To the North, the causeway and the town of Maestre. Raise your eyes to the Tyrolean Alps, blending into the cloud until the knowledge of their presence gives you the ability to see them emerge like the design on a holographic picture. Across the Grand Canal , the Church of Santa Maria Della Salute, beyond this the Lido, a slender finger of low buildings protecting the Venetians from the source of their wealth. The cold and currently forbidding Adriatic Sea.
To the west the more modern sea port, but closer in Venice's own leaning tower. There must be an agreement with Pisa. Venice has so much and Pisa so little that the theft of the lure of a leaning tower would be cruel. It lives next to the Accademia, The museo of Venetian Art.
So what to do? I have one day in the most charismatic city in the world and half of it is already gone.
The Doges Palace is the obvious choice with the Bridge of Sighs, an attributed Da Vinci and the the largest known Tintorretto. E15.00 buys you a ticket to all the museums in the Piazza, what it does not do is buy you the time to see them. The ticket expires in a day and if I attempted to extract full value I am sure I would as well.
The piece de resistance of the Palace is the Sala del Maggiore Consiglio. This is the Great Council Hall where the business of government was conducted. To say it is big is like calling Niagara Falls wet, but the secret is in the layout. As you enter through a tiny door on the left of the hall your eyes are assaulted by the exuberant frescos on the walls, then pulled aloft to the ceiling, a mass of cherubs and religeous icons and just when you feel you can absorb no more you turn back towards the door and are faced by Tintorrettos masterpiece, Paradise. There is no alternative but to find a seat and just stare in awe at the result of a culture of art and religion in combination that could inspire and indeed justify the creation of such work as this in a world plagued by war, famine and disease.
This contrast is uniquely portrayed only a few metres away as you cross the Bridge of Sighs into the old prison where the Doge saved his enemys lives so that they should suffer much longer. It was a cold, cold day when we passed through this menacing place. I was chilled in my hat and gloves, well wrapped in my winter coat. No such luxury as that was afforded to the inmates of this balefull prison. The Bridge of Sighs was said to reflect the mood of the prisoners called to walk across it to their judgement. It would be a wonderful thing if we could say, thank god that places like this are a thing of the past. Would that it were so.
There seemed to be no escape from this huge Ducal Palace. There is so much to see, but as always the call of capuccino comes eventually and we went to the cafe for a coffee and doughnut. Here is a tip. Buy your postcards inside the museums but get the coffee on the outside. What you save on one will pay for the other.
It had become dark by the time we left the Palace and it seemed sensible to walk back towards the Piazza Roma where we had started. At this time of night the walkways are crowded with local people. The English are eating, the Americans are sleeping and the Japanese are putting in the ASA 400 low light film ready to continue the photographic conquest of the world.
We stopped in a restaurant at about 8 and ordered a couple of extravagently described dishes from the menu. What could be wrong with Cotichinata? I felt rather like the man in Hospital who confused the word circumcised with castrated and came out without his gondolas. Let me translate....Roulade of pig rind stuffed with garlic, parsley and lard. Cooked with, of course, tomato sauce. Tomato in all its guises is mandatory. Be it pureed, pulped, juiced, flowered, sliced or diced, you will have tomato with everything. The Venice restaurants have been sacrificed to the tourists. It is no longer the case as in rural Italy where you go in and sit down and the Nonna decides what would best suit your palate. I have to say that the house wine was terrific. It sloughed off several layers of throat lining to get to the core of the taste buds and destroy them by the third carafe. There can be few things in life more satisfying than becoming elegantly plastered in an Italian Ristorante al Italia.
On returning to the Hotel I remembered that I had not actually booked a second night there and was indeed clutching a ticket to Florence in my wine stained hand. Oh come on, I never claimed to be infallible.
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Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Mar 5, 2004 by Carlyle Ferris
Italian Trains are very disconcerting. They have this weird thing called a timetable which is a work of non-fiction and gives the actual times that trains arrive and depart. They also have people whom I believe are called 'cleaners' who come onto the trains and clean them. All the stations have ticket machines in about five languages which are very easy to operate. The only thing that you have to be careful of is that they do not do connections on one ticket so you may well find two or three tickets coming out of the machine. It is far too easy to walk away with the first one and only realise it when it is too late. This from experience? Yes, you guessed it.
We arrived in Firenze at an ungodly hour. The first priority was, as always , to find a hotel. We get used to hotels being one big building in the UK but in Italy the buildings are divided into floors and you can get as many as five hotels in one building, all on different levels. The word you do not want to see on the hall doors is "complete" meaning full but if there is no sign then it is worth popping in to ask.
I let my son have the honour of calling on the upper floor Hotels and I did the ground floors. It was not long, nor more than one street from the station, before we found a one star that my son could afford. No 'en-suite' as such but breakfast included. The prices never varied more than a few Euros either way depending on the number of stars. It is possible to find dormitory hotels with five or six in a room if you are desperate to save money and these are about half the price of a one star. Over the years of travel I have come to the conclusion that many of these deals are false economy in purely aesthetic terms. A little comfort from a two or three star goes a long way. The worst Hotel experience remains the early morning slouch down a cold hallway to the communal loo to be greeted by the sound of prayers to the god Huey coming from the other side of the door. These things are best avoided by choosing a suitable en-suite.
To mock my preferences, this particular room did not have a bathroom but did have a sink and a shower cubicle in the corner. No attempt at enclosure had been made. This vertical plastic box gave the impression of being some relic from Doctor Who. One felt that if we could but get the door open it would reveal a vast space within, sufficient for a swimming complex, not just a shower. Alas we were mistaken. There was one way in, which, of course the shower nozzle was aimed at. If you went in and then turned on the shower there was no escape from the extreme heat or icy blast that would blister or skin you. We solved this problem by putting a carrier bag over the nozzle to deflect the stream until entry was acheived. The next problem was the soap. There was no soap dish so the soap inevitably ended up on the floor. As the cubicle was so small it was impossible to bend over and pick it up so one had to put the plastic bag back over the nozzle. partially open the door and by judiciously extruding ones rear end through the doors bend over and grab the soap. The next problem involved the extractor fan which was visible but not audible at the top of this plastic box. As the building had 12 foot high ceilings it took a while for the cloud height to descend to eye level inside the Tardis but once there it took on the nature of a sauna rather than a shower. Eventually I had to ease the door open a crack to replenish the air and simultaneously the water leaked out onto the floor. The Florentines take the same line on central heating that we British use on Snow ploughs. Don't need it very often so why worry. I would'nt have, except for the thin film of ice appearing on the spilt puddle. Oh well, never mind, the ex G.I. war surplus blankets should be enough.
Breakfast was an experience. After the early morning shower in the Tardis we found the breakfast room on the next floor down. The Italian one star usually only employs one person to do reception, cleaning and waiting, so the breakfast can best be described as cost effective. There was a coffee machine with the coin box removed and a box of Fette biscottate, Mulino Bianco, a crisp toast like creation that costs 70 cents a gross in the local market. Beside this was a box of catering marge and another of apricot confiture. I like tea and they had kindly left a box of twinings so I took the cup, the bag, under the hot water, under the milk......buggar. Two into one won't go. It was a full cup of milk from the machine. Once you've started messing something up you might as well go for it. How do you create Caffe Americano? From cappucino, double shot with added hot water and milk? No. How about a double of ordinary coffee with added hot water and milk? No. What about...........by this time there was a pool of milk in the tray and the stares were coming our way so we retreated to the table with our desert island rations with extra jam. In my student days the over riding principal of life was to eat enough breakfast in your digs so that if you never ate again you would live for three years. Try doing that on dried toast and cappucino and very soon you feel that you are eating carpet.
With breakfast done it was time to get the greatcoats, hats and scarves on and venture out into the cold wind whistling through the narrow streets of Florence. Gird up thy loins oh art lover. Madonna and child overload is about to commence.
Subject: Lord of the Trains. The three Towers. An Italian Adventure.
Posted Mar 21, 2004 by Carlyle Ferris
There was a bitter wind blowing up the street from the Arno. Florence is one of those cities that has an aura about it. It defies your attempts to stand back and see it for its true self. There can be no dirty streets where the buildings have such classic elegance, no forest of aerials can obscure the red tiles, no beggar can jar the lilting Italian from your soul. Florence carries that unique ambience that is found in cities such as New York and Paris. When you are there you could be nowhere else.
All the well known treasures of Firenze are contained within an easy walk of the River Arno. The Florentines of the middle ages were either attacking or being attacked by various Italian factions throughout most of the Middle Ages. Where we content ourselves with a little revelry after a football match they were much more likely to murder the entire population of the defeated city. Perhaps in a culture where life itself was transitory and had no value the only substitute was art. The marble statue, the fresco, both have a permanence never given to the frail human. The creation of great buildings often outlived the creator and became living changeable monuments to the times. I cannot imagine the reaction of the council planning department if ones proposal was the millennium dome and the completed building was Shea Stadium.
I walked against the wind to the river, passing the Firenze academy of Art, the source of the current generation of Florentine craftspeople. High banks and walls contain the River now. It has in the past been the source of many disasters in Florence, both of flood and plague. Today it was a serene trickle of muddy water and the real turmoil was caused by the traffic along its banks and crossing the bridges. I felt much as an ancient boatman must have felt, putting out into a fast flowing stream in my attempt to cross the roaring traffic and reach the safety of the other bank. The secret is to be purposeful and unafraid. As a gladiator stepping into the arena. Move quickly and glance neither left nor right until the roar of the lions is behind you. The cream of Italian youth has been denied the Corrida of the Spanish, but they have substituted the Vespa. The ability to swerve and manoeuvre this beast to within an inch of the sorry pedestrian is a skill nurtured and respected in Italy. Woe betide you if you falter.......
I walked along the riverside towards the Uffizi. On my left was the British Consulate with an unspectacular flag tattily waving towards the street. It always seems that the flag is flown in inverse proportion to the significance of its motherland. Obscure middle African pocket dictatorships always exhibit whalebone stiffened battle ensigns that would not disgrace the Home Fleet. The exception is the USA, perhaps they are not yet comfortable with their status in the world, so in consequence must always fly an overly ostentatious flag. The machine gun toting guard glares at me as I pause to admire the flag so I decide that my Britishness must not be as obvious as I thought. Along the pavement between the Ponta Vecchio and the Uffizi is a covered walkway beneath which the street traders lay their wares. A curious mixture of leather bags, reproduction art works and gloves hats and scarves. It was once said that if the world was to die in an atomic holocaust the only survivors would be cockroaches, rats and bomb souvenir sellers. There is a game played between these traders and the Carabinieri. Trading without a license is illegal and the City authorities will not grant a license to non-residents. The Carabinieri do not want the trouble of arresting the traders so they walk just slow enough for the displayed goods to be picked up, partially concealed and replaced as they pass on. The first time you witness this phenomenon it is like a zephyr flowing through the alley magically wafting the wares out of harms way until the satyr passes. The Italian psyche demands that all laws are negotiable and see no reason to discontinue this arrangement.
I turned away from the River between the columns that mark the River entrance to the Uffizi Palace complex. This is now the home of one of the most famous art galleries in the world. Many people already know that and most of them were there forming a queue that the electronic device over the door declared to be three hours long. Now if I had three weeks in Florence three hours would be a small price to pay but for a two-day visit it was not practical. The Uffizis most famous work is Botticellis 'Birth of Venus'. Works by Titian , Raphael, Da Vinci, Giotto, but most of the work of Michaelangelo is elsewhere. More modern offerings by Reuben’s and Rembrandt would all have to wait until I had the time to spend on them.
The Uffizi leads into the Piazza Della Signoria with the Palazzo Vecchio on the left and government buildings, now mostly converted into banks completing the enclosure.
One of the traits of Italians is that everyone wants to hold the best works for display which leads to a plethora of copies in odd places around various cities.
Each of these copies in itself would be considered a masterpiece in our modern world so devoid of genuine artistic talent. But each is the product of a craftsman, not an artist. That they have beauty is undeniable just as the originals have beauty. That they are masterpieces of their craft is undeniable but where they are found wanting is that they have not been touched by the hand of genius.
When you look at the original you feel the antiquity of it. There is no way that you, or sometimes, even the self appointed experts could tell the difference without being told, but when you accept that this was created 500 years before you were born you have to marvel at something that is so accomplished as to make it survive such a time.
I somehow doubt that a pile of elephant dung, an unmade bed, half a sheep, or a concrete cube are going to have the same effect on our descendents.
