Lake Maggiore

We went to the Lake District for the day. This is a highly recommended area but for those of us who live in BC and regularly visit places like Shuswap, the lake is beautiful but not unusually so. However, it was a nice day filled with comparisons and longings for Shuswap.

Stresa is a little town on the shore of Lake Maggiore where the rich and famous like to stay. We felt a bit sorry for them as it didn’t really have anything on Totem Resort at the Shuswap. Ernest Hemingway stayed here twice: once after being injured in the First World War and once again in 1948, staying in the same room. That room is now called the Hemingway Suite and runs for a couple thousand dollars a night. Winston Churchill also stayed here on his honeymoon. Nice hotel, nice view, crazy price.

There are a few little islands dotted on the lake where a very wealthy family built their palaces. They started with one on “Isola Madre” (Mom’s Island) and built a very dark, forbidding looking place in the 1500’s. Mom must have been a real gem. The whole island was landscaped into gardens and the walk around was beautiful. They have plants from all over the world including a few Cedars. They are tall and majestic, as big as the columns in the churches over here. They also stocked white peacocks and other interesting fowl. Again, a nod to Mom?

Their palace on Isola Bella (named for the wife, Isabella) is much lighter, airier and more livable. I’m pretty sure the new wife took one look at Dracula’s castle on the other island and insisted on a new living space. Either that or her family did. However, the basement is done in “grotto” fashion and looks like some sort of torture chamber. It just goes on and on and on so they must have used it. I think it was meant to be a cool place to hang out in the heat of summer but these guys had a weird sense of “charming” if you ask me. Obviously, whoever built Mom’s place was still alive and kicking and had input on the new digs. Or maybe it was the in-law suite… The whole island is also landscaped with exotic plants and animals.

The family still visits this home every year for a few weeks and since the flag was flying up top, we assumed they were home. This gave us pause. What would it be like to come home to have tourists crawling in and over your downstairs rooms? You couldn’t use your gardens because they’d be all around there as well. Does the family just sit upstairs quietly gazing out at the lake? Granted, the views from both palaces make these amongst the nicest in Italy. Every door and window looks out onto the lake. The soft breeze blowing through is pleasant and comfortable. Surrounded by elegance, you can see how lovely it would be…when alone.

We walked along several waterfront promenades and hobnobbed with the elite and elite-wannabe’s in Stresa for almost the day before heading back to reality.

Julia’s Becomes a Teenager

Well, it has finally happened. I now have two teenagers. Julia turned 13 in Milan yesterday. To celebrate, we gave her some money and she and I went shopping. We did quite well and had a lot of fun but ironically the labels in our clothes are from many international countries but not from Italy.

Rhys and Tom spent the day at the National Science and Technology museum, enjoying Da Vinci models and Marconi radios. Then the two of them decided to go shopping…for digital equipment and wound up spending twice the amount Julia and I spent. They bought a new camera so we took pictures of Julia and I in our new clothes with the new camera for your enjoyment.

Julia and I spent seven hours shopping. That seems like a long time but actually felt quite quick. We shopped on the street rather than at a mall and wandered in to the same chain stores you see everywhere in Europe. There were relatively few boutiques and those that existed were priced out of our range. We went to the Galleria downtown the day before. It is a covered street with very expensive designer clothes. Even the department store was full of sky-high prices on “new lines” in designer wear. This would be the Milan everyone hears about. Prada, Louis Vuitton and names I’d never heard of crowded for space with McDonald’s. We opted not to shop there on her birthday. In the Galleria there was a bull that grants good luck to those that step on his balls and spin. I’m not sure if that was the bull’s idea or not. Seems cruel but we took a turn because you don’t want to turn down luck when it’s offered.

We visited the “Last Supper” by Da Vinci and the Duomo the same day as the Galleria. The painting brought tears to my eyes again. It is always so moving to be in the presence of things you have heard of all your life. The painting was much bigger than I thought. It fills a whole wall! It is also more square than you usually see. I guess usually they just cut the slice with the people out. There is a door that was cut into the wall destroying part of the painting back in the 1500’s. The Friars needed a bigger door to get in and out of their dining room. You know, when you have to cut a bigger door it’s time to stop eating so much. Reminds me of Winnie-the-Pooh. We took the tour in English and it was interesting to hear all the ways Leonardo applied his knowledge of science to the painting. He must have been a really interesting man to chat with.

The Duomo (church) as big as are most Duomo’s we have visited. It is just behind the Vatican’s, London’s and Seville’s. It was fun to realize we had been to them all. This one was big because the Italian boys here wanted to impress the northerners so used the northern style and ran with it. Boy did they run. This place looks like a big sandcastle that somebody dripped wet sand over a very long time. It took over 500 years to build so they had some time. We got to climb the stairs to the roof and it was fun to walk among the spires. There are seats on the roof and they hold symphony concerts at night amongst the lit spires. It must be awesome! It is under renovation now but between that and the Scala, Milan should get on the must-see list for music lovers.

The Lagoon

We paid the big bucks and got a 12 hour pass for unlimited rides on the vaporetti. Then we spent the day cruising the Venetian lagoon, island hopping. We visited Cimitero, Murano, Burano and Torcello and spent almost the full 12 hours in the process.

Cimitero was the city cemetery. We had high expectations for a really macabre walk but it turned out to be a non-event. A lot of people have died in Venice over the past hundred years or so, let me tell you. There are rows and rows of tightly packed in-ground graves, apartment blocks similar to those in the Spanish cemetery, strange condominium, upscale apartment monuments with limited spaces and a more decorative environment. I couldn’t help but think of the “old folks” home of eternity. There were also numerous crypts, little family tombs all packed together in the posh neighbourhood of the island. Even in death, we segregate by wealth. The whole island is devoted to death. I wonder what happens when it floods?

The next island was Murano. This is the famous location of all the glass you may have heard about. We watched a few different people working with glass and went in and out of too many glass stores to count thereby boring the males in our family. Julia and I both found a little something to wear though we agreed we could have bought more. It is interesting to note that these craftspeople still had all of their fingers, unlike the sword crafter in Toledo. There was a store that sold glass mosaic tiles and it seemed like such a great thing to buy but we resisted. Basically, none of us felt we could do the job our heads envisioned. The island was quite charming with canals and bridges just like Venice. We saw a “DHL Express” boat piled with boxes for delivery. They are the “Fed Ex” of Germany. The route for deliveries must be a different canal in Venice because we didn't see any "trucks" there. It was fun to see their business as usual cruising the canals.

Our next stop was Burano. Jean and Vern had visited this island when they were in Venice so it made us feel a bit closer to walk the streets. This had to be the cutest of the islands. The town planner had really done a great job. Everyone’s house was painted a bright colour and the effect was cheerful and fun. We took lots of pictures here because even though the city of Venice was gorgeous with its canals, this little ‘burb was almost more picturesque…almost.

We hopped across the lagoon to the last island, the rarely visited, Torcello. This is where Venice was born. After the fall of Rome, a group of the Romans fled to hide here, on Torcello. They must have been fairly intelligent, well-off individuals to make a go of a city on an island. We didn’t see a water source and can’t quite figure out how they managed to make the place livable but history says they did. The irony is that of all the islands in the Venetian lagoon, this is the least developed.

To get back to Venice, we caught the wrong boat and wound up on a lovely tour of other places before the boat turned around and brought us back to Burano and finally on to Venice. It took about two hours and was a very nice sunset cruise.

Verona

Verona is very close to Venice so while we decided to visit for a couple of reasons. First, it is where Romeo and Juliet was set. Second, they have an old Roman Arena where they still show operas in the summer. It was only an hour’s drive so we left late in the day so we could have a bit of time to sight see before having dinner and catching a show.

We bought tickets to see Aida at the arena. The coolest thing about the show was the fact we would be sitting in seats the Romans had sat in to watch their shows 2000 years ago! We bought tickets in the “riff-raff” section of the theatre. In ancient times, the theatre was divided into sections depending on what social standing you held in society. The very closest seats were on a special platform and were reserved for the elite. From there, it went back in the different guilds, like capmakers or knights. Finally, in the very highest area, with no seat assignments sat the poorest citizens and women. This was where we sat. The Romans designed the arena with many arched entryways to help facilitate the large numbers of people attending. Everyone attended. It was free, supported by the very rich. The guilds and elite of society had their seats assigned so they didn’t need to get their early. Just like in ancient times, we arrived almost two hours before the show to secure a good seat. Unlike ancient times, there were no fist-fights that broke out over where to sit.

Our show was at night while the gladiator fights always took place all day. The arenas used to have canvas lids that could be pulled over to shade people from the sun. It must have been beastly hot. During intermissions, people would go back into the arched gallery areas to chat, eat and drink. Those without assigned seats couldn’t leave, unless they had someone who would hold their seats while they were gone. It would have been nice to have had a canvas awning over the arena as the weather was not stable. It rained off and on up to about 15 minutes before the performance. Everyone had umbrellas and it was beautiful looking down over the colourful crowd. As the rain stopped, the umbrellas disappeared. You didn’t see people taking them down. You just saw them all up and then suddenly noticed they were all down.

The performance was in Italian and as we don’t speak Italian we couldn’t understand what they were saying. Visually, however, it was very entertaining. There were lots of elaborate costumes and people flooded the stage to dance, march and sing. They even had characters up behind the stage posted along the very top of the arena. These were centurions with torches. They didn’t use microphones because the acoustics of the arena is why they still perform there to this day. Even though we were quite a distance from the stage, we could hear the performers clearly. At the beginning of the show, everyone lit candles picked up as you entered. This is an old tradition dating back to a time before electricity when the audience had to bring the candles to light up the space.

During the show, it started to rain again and there was a low hum throughout the audience. It grew in sound until it drowned out the performers as everyone moved to cover themselves from the rain. Then the orchestra leaped up and ran for shelter. The singers stopped suddenly and waved. We all clapped and cheered. Then they ran off the stage as well. The rain lasted for about 10 minutes and then we watched and cheered on the cleaning crew as they mopped the stage, the orchestra pit and so on. There must have been a choir in the audience because we were serenaded with singing while we waited which drew loud appreciation from the audience as well. When it started to rain the second time, we decided to leave and the masses followed. We missed the end of the performance but we had read the story before we went and we knew the lovers died. Who wants to see that, anyway?

Before we went to the show, we strolled around Verona following the Rick Steve’s self-guided walk. We walked beneath the original Roman Arches that led into the city and a fountain that still works 2000 years later. We found Juliet’s balcony and forced Julia to go up onto it so we could take her picture. There were hoards of people in the courtyard and Julia was a bit nervous about standing out in front of them. True to her Fine Arts training, however, out she went to pose. If she called for Romeo we couldn’t hear it above the rabble of the crowds. The balcony is purely fictitious as the families in the story are from Shakespeare’s imagination only. However, there is a carving over the arch leading out of the courtyard. The guilds in medieval times each had a symbol marking them and this symbol is of a hat. If there was a capmaker, it does follow the family name might have been Capulet. However, that is where the historical fact ends and there is no real proof of that either.

Visiting Verona and seeing the balcony was neat as Rhys had just read Romeo and Juliet for his English course. Julia also picked up the play and read it. While Rhys and I discussed the play, she would often volunteer opinions or answer questions before Rhys! We all thought it was pretty funny that there is a volunteer group of people in Verona who answer letters written to Juliet. This is just wrong in so many ways. First, she is a fictitious character, people. She never existed except in the mind of Shakespeare. Okay, assuming you have a fairly weak understanding of the line between fantasy and reality, she lived during the medieval era back in the 13th century or so. I don’t think she’s still around, even if she DID exist. Finally, did you people not READ the play? She DIES at the end. Sorry to be a spoiler but there are only a few people resurrected that I know of and they didn’t wind up in Verona!

The whole visit to Verona was exciting and fun, regardless of the rain towards the end.

Venice

Well, I think we can safely say Venice is the most beautiful city in the world. It’s the water. The colour is the canal is a beautiful blue-green and sets off the rotting old palazzo’s wonderfully. We started our exploration of Venice with a self-guided Rick Steve’s tour on the slow boat. The family cameras clicked endlessly as every second seemed photo worthy. Our heads were on swivels, our eyes and mouths wide open in awe of this man-made dream world.

You’ve heard about the roads of water before but it is difficult to truly appreciate this wonder until you are here. There are no cars. There are no motocycles. There aren’t even any bicycles that we’ve seen. People are either on foot or are on the ater. It is magical. Some of it almost seems Disney-esque – a huge compliment to Disney but not so much to Venice.

We learned that the population of Venice is shrinking by 1000 people each year. Planners are afraid the city will soon become one giant museum. In talking to our hosts, they said the cost of living in the city is prohibitive. A small residence costs almost one million dollars and that is before the costs of renovation. Maintenance is also pricey as flooding is frequent. New construction is out of the question and maintaining the posh old buildings in such a damp climate is a challenge. Then there is the challenge of living in a city with no motorized vehicles on land and over 400 bridges. Getting your daily needs in and out is more effort. Buying in the city is more costly. All of these factors are contributing to drive citizens onto the mainland.

We visited Saint Mark’s Basilica on Saint Mark’s Square. Our favourite story there was about the dedication of the building. First of all, they built the place with “found” materials. They “found” marble and columns throughout the Mediterranean and hauled them on back to construct Saint Marks. The result is a unique looking building combining a quilt-like variety of colours and patterns and styles. The domes and mosaics look Byzantine, the columns look Greek and the arched top of the façade is sort of French-Gothic. Very multi-cultural.

They decorated the interior with more treasures they “found” in Constantinople. One of the Venetian crusades was sacking Constantinople, another Christian city. There must have been some confusion about who one sacks for the glory of God. At any rate, the whole place was built to house the bones of Saint Mark, one of the authors of the Bible. They had “rescued” his bones from being sacked by the un-Christian masses invading Egypt. Unfortunately, by the time the basilica was finished they couldn’t remember where they had put his bones. I would have loved to have seen THAT whole scenario play out. It runs like an Abbott and Costello routine in my head. Cleverly, the priest had everyone pray and sure enough, the priest had a vision of where the bones were. Well, thank goodness, eh? Another embarrassing “memory lapse” moment averted.

Our favourite part of being in Venice was just wandering the lanes. You never knew when you would round a corner onto some little picturesque sight. Gondolas were everywhere and flower boxes decorate the narrower canals in places making beautiful little scenes. We didn’t take a gondola ride because they were out of our price range but we did take lots of pictures of them. There used to be thousands and thousands of gondolas but today there are only around 500. It sure seems like more when you are wandering. They are all black because of a law passed back in the day that tried to prevent families from using identifying colours “gang style” on their gondolas. Inter-family fighting was commonplace in Italy during the Renaissance.

Small Town Italy

Scrofiano was well situated for visiting lots of the small towns in Tuscany. We were about 20 minutes from Siena and no more than an hour from most other places. We spent many of our days driving to little towns to see the sights.

One day we visited a town called, Arezzo on the recommendation of our host. It is where he and his family live and he told us they were having a huge antiques market so off we went. The antiques market was enough to make you drool! I have never wanted to buy furniture so much. The town was a perfect setting, of course but the reams of quality furniture and household stuff was exciting. Some of the furniture was just drop-dead gorgeous. Tom and I just couldn’t figure out how to get it home.

Another day we visited the town of Civita. This town was built on a bute and there is a footbridge you cross to get to it. It is very cool. The town fills the entire bute. The Etruscans were the first to build there and you can still see their caves and tunnels under the town. The Etruscans were the people here BEFORE the ancient Romans. When they built, the town was still connected to the mainland by a stretch of land but over time that wore away and so they built a footbridge. We met Maria, the only resident still living who was born and raised in Civita. Imagine living your whole life in such a small town!

Orvieto was a neat place. It had a well built by a Pope who was trying to protect the city in case of siege. It worked because the city was never attacked. Lucca, the place we cycled the walls was like that too. The citizens spent one third of their income for one hundred years building the wall to protect themselves and they were never attacked. I guess you like to think you weren’t attacked because of your great fortification, not that you completely wasted your time and money because no one wanted anything in your crummy little town anyway. Orvieto also had a huge cathedral with an eye-catching exterior. The cathedral seemed all out of proportion to the size of the town. That whole Pope thing again. It really benefited a town to have a Pope take interest in your town.

We visited an interesting number of small towns beginning with the letter “M” and serving delicious wines. Fortunately, all gave samples. Wine is serious business in Italy. We visited a wholesale wine outlet where the bottles amounted to all of about $2. The wine was fair but not excellent. However, the gasoline tanks used to meter out the wine were fascinating! Montipulciano had the best samples, we thought, so we bought a bottle there from the Contucci family. Members of this family have lived in that palazzo since the 11th century! Imagine having the same family home for over 1000 years! I saw the Count on his way out but he didn’t look scary at all. Apparently, Montipulciano is where “Twilight” was filmed.

If you’ve read or followed the vampire series, the town in the novel is “Volterra” and we visited that place too. This town had a definite dark medieval feel and they hadn’t even done a whole lot to promote the vampire thing. They promote instead their Etruscan wall into the city. The wall is over 2000 years old and survived the war because of the desperation of the town. They pulled up the road to prevent the Nazi’s from blowing it up near the end of the war. We managed to walk through the whole town unmolested and while we saw several very well dressed people, they all seemed to be enjoying the sun. No one had an unhealthy skin tone and no one appeared overly interested in my neck. All in all, a nice town.

Assisi

There are a lot of saints in the Catholic Church. Not many of them have their own town, though. I was interested to visit Assisi to see-see what all the hype was about. I may not know a lot of saints but even I have heard of Saint Francis. I kind of expected a cave but that was not what we saw.

Assisi is the birthplace of Saint Francis. He is best known for starting the order of Franciscan monks. There are numerous monasteries throughout Europe with Franciscan monks still around. Francesco Bernardone was a guy I can admire. A lot of the saints back in the day seemed to gain sainthood by committing suicide in a variety of painful and gruesome ways. Some were granted sainthood because their relatives were so distraught they paid the church to canonize their lost child. While I can sympathize with the pain, I have difficulty with the whole “buy your way into heaven” stuff. Francesco actually lived a pretty worthy life.

Until he was about 16 he was your regular, popular, wealthy boy-about-town. This was back in the early 1200’s and there was a lot of warring between neighbouring cities/villages. Everyone was trying to gain a better foothold and felt the best way to do it was to slaughter thy neighbour. Francesco went dutifully out to fight his neighbour and was captured and imprisoned for the next year. This had a profound impact on him as you can well imagine. He was a changed man on his return, spent some time contemplating on the whole structure of society/church/man relationship and eventually had a vision; what we might call an “epiphany”. He stripped naked in front of the townspeople and denounced his wealth, family and all material goods, proclaiming himself a devotee of God alone.

Now you have to admire a guy who can strip naked in front of a whole group without any background music at all…I think we can assume he had none. This whole naked thing was not something that was very common at the time since the church had denounced the human form as little better than worm-like. Ever since the whole Garden of Eden debacle, people were to have felt shame at their knowledge of the body. At no time was this felt more severely than during the Middle Ages. So, Francesco was a pretty wild guy. After his grand announcement, he grabbed a robe and a rope and left to wander the countryside living off the kindness of others.

He was a genuinely nice guy, though and this newfound idealism caused many young disillusioned men to seek him out. Together, they embraced the lifestyle Christ had lived, using humour and creativity to spread the Word. The Word they spread was not about giving till it hurt, either. Francis believed that men and beasts should live in harmony, supporting each other and working together rather than tearing each other down. Everyone deserved an equal amount of respect in his view. His “troubadours” were credited with inventing the first Crèche scene in order to teach the poor people about the birth of Christ. Rick called the Franciscan Monks “God’s Jugglers” as they used various forms of entertainment to spread God’s word. Francis worked in a humble church near Assisi and refused material wealth all his days. His methods were extremely popular and enduring. Even today, the religious leaders of the world meet in Assisi for their summits.

I am pretty sure if Francis was alive today he would be appalled at the state of his hometown. It is a tourist mecca with Francis crosses, statues, crèches and so-on raising money for the townspeople. The humble church he worked in has been swallowed whole by a huge monstrosity of a cathedral dedicated to his name. In Assisi itself, the Basilica of St. Francis towers over the town. St Francis was buried on the “Hill of the Damned” with outcasts of society. Since then, it has been renamed the “Hill of Paradise”. Amazing what a simple word can do. The church was quick to capitalize on the popularity of Saint Francis and these huge monuments reflect the values of the Christian Church in the Middle Ages more than Saint Francis. However, the town is very beautiful.

We walked through the town when they were having a "most beautiful patio" competition and the flower displays were quite lovely. The town is also cute because it has used the old Roman ruins to its advantage. The arena is now a housing subdivision and the acquaduct still works! How cool is that? I also discovered that I had completely underrated the whole "nun in a convent" business when we came across the "Nun Spa Museum". Who knew?