Pics - Rome

Pics - Fiesole and Pisa

Yay Pictures! - Florence 1

And home

Well, since our return journey to the States involved a train to the airport and flying in to JFK - the sources of our two main travel problems! - we were keeping our fingers crossed for a smooth(er) journey back. All went well. Well, of those things at least. The day, however, got out to a rocky start: when I checked out of the hotel, with the owner who spoke less than a handful of English, she opened her book and pointed to Jeannie's name and to the amount. I handed her my card, and she said, No, no, cash. As a foreign tourist leaving the country, I wasn't about to have 150 Euros on me, but because of the language barrier, this detail wasn't made clear. So Jeannie and I spent the first half hour of my meticulously timed trip to the airport hunting for a bank and ATM, then BACK to the hotel to pay her. She made it difficult for me to stay mad though because when we got back she had little jars of apricot juice for us. And we caught the next train and made it to the airport in plenty of time. Still not the start I was hoping for.

In the Dublin airport, this time, we had more than 20 minutes to race between flights, and were very glad we did! We had lunch at a cafe called Butler's Chocolates, which specializes in drinking chocolate! :) Why don't we have this in America?! ... oooh, there's one in NJ.

Anyway, we made it to NY just fine, watching movies the whole way, where our luggage met us! Then taxi to Grand Central Terminal, train to New Haven, and met Kyle and Ashley there, and drove up to Avon. Good to be home!

Pictures to come!

Rome

So we only had one full day in Rome, having spent the first afternoon there retrieving our luggage, and - except for the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps - everything we wanted to see in Rome we had to see today. And we did!

We began early, leaving around 8 am and walking down toward the Coliseum, looking for a little cafe for breakfast, and stopped at one for coffee and pastries. The coffee here is pretty much straight espresso, which for me as not really a coffee-drinker is a little daunting, but the coffee in Italy is so good that even I can enjoy it without milk/sugar added. After breakfast, we continued to the ancient center of town and toured the Coliseum, the old Roman Forum, and the Palatine Hill. Having studied Latin through high school and a little in college, these were sites I knew a lot about, but had only pictured from above, i.e. looking at a map. Though it's difficult to imagine the present ruins as they would have looked 2,000 years ago, being there among them really helped me picture the layout and look of ancient Rome. Very very cool. Even more than Florence, Rome is an obvious blend of the many time periods it has been a major city, with the old ruins surrounded by the medieval and Renaissance surrounded by the new.

Around lunchtime, we walked up through the city to the Pantheon, stopping along the way at a streetside fruit stand to buy plums. At the Pantheon, Jeannie pointed out a part of the domed ceiling where she thought Brubelleschi had cut into the structure to examine it while designing his dome for the Duomo in Florence. As with the whole city, this church/temple was built for one purpose, then re-established for another, so today it shows the influences of both. We had lunch at a little restaurant across the square from the Pantheon, filled our water bottle at the public fountain there, then hailed a taxi ...

To Vatican City. We pulled up in the taxi right in front of St. Peter's Square and, though there were people everywhere, it was nowhere close to filled as it would be for major events. The Pope gave his weekly address this morning, but we didn't get there until a little before 2 pm, and the lines to get into the museum were relatively short. I was surprised to find that the museum went far beyond Vatican/Christian history, with displays on Egypt and Greece, as well as art and statues. We wandered around for a while, trying to follow signs to the Sistine Chapel, which wasn't as well labeled as it could have been, and it took us a couple tries to finally get in the right direction, which led us through a maze of halls and rooms, many showing Raphael's work. And then the Sistine Chapel. Much bigger than I thought, as I was expecting a painted dome, like the inside of a Brunelleschi, so a long, vaulted ceiling coming down along the walls was much more impressive than I'd imagined! Again, as with almost all of the cathedrals/chapels we've visited, people proved that they don't understand the meanings of the words "silence" and "respect."

From the Chapel we tagged along with a tour group and took the shortcut connecting it with St. Peter's Basilica, the biggest church in the world! Same general layout as the cathedrals in Florence and Pisa, but massive: Florence's Duomo is 500 feet long; St. Peter's is 730. They actually have the floor marked with where other major churches measure up to. Most impressive for me though I think was that all of the paintings in the church are actually mosaics, but I couldn't see that until Jeannie told me and I looked close! Then we took a taxi back across the river to the Piazza Navona, got gelato at a place called Nice Ice, and walked back to the hotel to rest our feet.

After seeing Rome in 9 hours, we wanted to take the evening easy, but went out again for dinner, aiming for a Rick Steves recommendation, but after menu-browsing, went with a nice little place below ground level. One last time for old time's sake, we ordered our favorites: bruschetta, pasta, tiramisu, with wine. And our waiter was great: smiling and making jokes about his English. Then we went back to the hotel to rest ... long travel day tomorrow!

All Roads ...

Headed to Rome today: packed up then went back to the pasticceria for coffee and pastries one more time before checking out and heading to the train station. A smooth trip this time, and an easy time finding our Rome hotel too: 1 block from the Roma Termini station. But it's 5 flights of stairs up, the owners don't speak more than about 3 words of English, and there isn't internet (or at least we can't ask them! or find the signal). So this post is coming a few days late, and may sound a little more like a summary. Which it is. We checked in, then returned to the train station and went up to the airport to inquire about our luggage ...

And they had it! So relieved to have it back and not have to worry about getting it shipped back to the US, or found, or whatever. The woman at the counter was trying to preemptively make excuses for my expected complaints about why they didn't get it to us, but at that point I didn't care and just wanted the bags (apparently they tried calling my US cell number ...). But we have them! I'm wearing contacts, our clothes weren't handwashed in the sink, and we used our usual shampoos and everything. So we got them to the hotel and spent some time reacquainting ourselves with having stuff, then went for a walk up to the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps, where we had dinner. Our meals are becoming slightly habitual, but just because it's so good: bruschetta, pasta (often ravioli), with wine and water, and sometimes a tiramisu.

Walking up the Spanish Steps, I tripped twice! The marble they use for a lot of the monuments and the museum floors is very slippery, even when dry ... but no, I just caught my foot on the edge both times! Fortunately there's no luck thing associated with the Steps. At the base of the Steps there's a fountain modeled to look like a sinking ship, but the Trevi Fountain is just magnificent, and fed by the aqueducts. Throughout the city - in Pisa too, actually - there are public faucets/fountains where people can drink, wash, or fill water bottles. But they aren't drinking fountains the way we know (those are nowhere to be found), they're often made of stone, with a faucet. Rome has always been known for its fresh water supply, building aqueducts to bring clean water in, and this ability to provide clean water for sanitation contributed to Rome becoming the advanced civilization it did. Very cool to see this still in practice!

Florence 6

Ahh Venice … same sentiment, different reason than Dr and Indiana Jones in Last Crusade. We did not make it to Venice, though we tried. Our dilemma yesterday evening and this morning was whether to brave the trains again between yesterday’s stressful day and an upcoming two days in Rome and then getting back to NYC, or to spend our last day in Florence in Florence, which we’d talked through and realized would be nice as well. Both of us were oscillating between the two for a long time, and finally we said we would go to the train station and if we could be sure the train would be direct, we’d go, if not, we’d stay. And as the medieval Catholics would have said, let God decide the victor. Well, the train was direct, and we got through the line to the ticket counter in time … but that train was sold out, as were all the trains until 1:30 pm, which wouldn’t have left us much time to really see Venice. So good try, but a good, solid reason to make the choice to stay, without later regrets.

We started our last day in Florence by crossing the Ponte Vecchio into the Oltrarno to find a pasticceria (pastry shop) where one of Jeannie’s friends from college is doing an internship. Crazy! We think we found it, though the baristas/wait staff there couldn’t seem to understand us; we sat down and had coffee and some pastries, which was one thing I wanted to do while in Italy: have Italian coffee at an Italian caffe. Then we went to two paper/journal shops to get Jeannie a blank book for watercoloring and a set of colored pencils (since her paints are still with our luggage), and ended up getting them from the same store I bought my journal at. We then wandered up to see Dante’s house, before returning toward the Ponte Vecchio for lunch at a pizza shop, and then across to buy an ink and water drawing from a really wonderful street artist who sits at the end of the bridge painting!

We then headed north just past the Duomo up to the Basilica di San Lorenzo, the church of the Medici family. Like the Duomo and Santa Croce, and the Pisa cathedral, it’s a generally cross-shaped cathedral with Brunelleschi-style domes (he actually designed this one). But this one is naturally lit to be brighter inside with an even, diffuse light, and the left-side dome (of three) is painted with the night sky of a particular Florence evening in the 1400s … and no one knows why! And, the entire main altar was decorated with pietre dure!

After out afternoon siesta, we went out again for a few last shopping items before we leave tomorrow. Jeannie bought a pair of rose earrings carved in coral, and I bought a blue-agate cameo, which is an Italian thing, apparently. Both nice items for us since we didn’t come here looking for them. I did realize tonight that the two major colors of backing stones used for cameos (there’s a lot of them at the Ponte Vecchio jewelers shops) are the two colors of Jeannie’s engagement ring ;)  And just a random observation: today the line to get in to the Duomo was twice as long as usual, doubling back on itself across the entire side of the cathedral … and we walked right in the other day!

For dinner tonight, we took another of Rick Steves’ recommendations way out on the west side of town at a place with a fixed menu/price that caters to locals as well as tourists. So a first and second course plus a vegetable with water and wine for 12 E each … and we got tiramisu. Ended the evening with a walk back along the Arno, and another stop for gelato. Another really nice day, and not missing Venice all that much. On to Rome tomorrow!

Florence 5

Today, Jeannie and I decided to take a train “to Siena”, which is about an hour and a half trip south, and a medieval/Renaissance archrival of Florence. Cathedrals, museums, etc like Florence, but different, and we’d heard, in some ways better. So we wanted to “see Siena.”

The first problem was that we realized we needed to validate our train ticket in a yellow box at the station once the train was already moving. So, on a tip from Rick Steves, I went and found the conductor before he found me and he validated it by hand. But the second problem was that I began, after an hour or so, to notice a few town names at the passing stations that I recognized; then we passed the hour and a half point; and finally I noticed that all the mountains were on our left, which often indicates the ocean. That’s right … Siena is central Italy, and should have mountains on both sides. The train we were taking “to Siena” had actually gone west to Pisa, then turned north up the Ligurian coast toward the Cinque Terras (though not even, it stopped in La Spezia, the town before the Terras). Though I knew that La Spezia was, or had been, a naval base, neither a town nor the sea was visible from the station. But we got off and looked at the departures listings, and went to buy return tickets, planning to stop in Pisa on the way back, then catch a direct train back to Firenze from there.

That station didn’t sell tickets. Seriously? Yes! A woman working there told us that we could by them on the train, but we were already leary of Rick Steves’ warning about fines with an unvalidated ticket (let alone none at all!). But we caught the next train heading toward Pisa – not at all confident that it was the right train or actually going to Pisa – and crossed our fingers that the conductor would just sell us the tickets we needed without a fuss.

That’s when our luck changed … with a small travel blessing, he never came! Technically, we stowed away on that hour ride down the coast, but for whatever reason, the ticket collector never got to us before we reached Pisa! Another of Florence’s past rivals, Pisa was actually quite nice, and we spent a few hours seeing the main tourist sites. The Field of Miracles conveniently contains most of them, and I loved the look of the place: open and bright, and many of the buildings – the leaning tower, the cathedral, the baptistery, and one of the museums – built with a nice, white marble. Looked like the Italian Renaissance Minas Tirith (nerds, anyone?). And yes, the tower LEANS! Jeannie asked if I wanted to climb up I and I said Hell no! Obviously it’s stood that way for hundreds of years, but it looks like it’s coming down any minute! We did go inside the cathedral, which is ornately decorated with paintings and statues, even more so than the two churches we’ve visited in Florence.

On our train home, we were second-guessing ourselves the whole way, but we were on the right train and got the ticket validated. I figured out that our mistake in trying to get to Siena was that we were supposed to transfer trains in Empoli … but we had no way of knowing that! Still not sure how to know whether or not a train is direct, without asking someone.

Back in Florence, we took the evening easy, a nice dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Arno and Ponte Vecchio, and some gelato on the way home. Crossing the bridge, we caught it just after sunset, which lit the river and westward bridges very nicely.

We’re still considering how we want to spend our last day in Florence before heading to Rome … you’ll find out tomorrow!

Florence 4

Today’s my birthday!  And quite a good one, even in light of the high expectations of spending it on honeymoon in Italy ;)

We started out this morning by walking over to the train station, which also serves as a major bus terminal, trying to catch a bus #7 up to a hilltop town overlooking Florence called Fiesole. We walked around the bus area of the station several times and … no number 7. Suspecting we were being dumb tourists and missing it, we went up to a window and found that of course we had to catch one of four or five different bus lines to another transit center (quite close to our B&B!), but we were also able to buy our tickets there, which turned out to be a good thing. Finally caught both buses and figured out how to validate the tickets, and made it up to Fiesole.

It’s a small town with just a few parallel streets, and unfortunately, a lot of the view is obstructed by trees. We got some really amazing views (and pictures!) of the north side, but looking south down over Florence and the Arno valley was harder and I only got one shot off from a restaurant’s terrace. The first thing we did was visit the archaeological site and museum, just across the piazza from the buses, and about halfway through I realized they were my first Roman ruins! First European ruins, actually, and maybe the only ones I’ve seen other than the Maya sites in Belize. Very cool: amphitheater, temple, and baths from Etruscan/Roman times, and the museum had some really wonderful artifacts – figures, carvings, engravings, reliefs, ceramics – on display.

We walked around a little after the ruins, exploring and kind of looking for a restaurant Rick Steves mentions, but didn’t find it, so we settled down for lunch instead at a place right by the archaeological site called Etrusca. Quite possibly the best Italian meal I have ever had! Bruschetta with very ripe tomatoes and well-soaked in olive oil, then ravioli with a tomato-cream sauce and ham and peas, and we finished with a very good tiramisu (my first in Italy!): heavy on the coffee soaking and chocolate powder, lighter with the cheese. We went for a walk after lunch and found a little park with a bench and some swings and sat for bit, then headed back to the bus.

Took another short siesta in the mid-afternoon, though the heat feels to be falling off some from the spike we were fortunate enough to catch. But we left again a little after 3, did a little browsing and shopping – wedding scrapbook, shoes for Jeannie and birthday gift for me J – then made it to our reservation at 5 … a wine-tasting! And of course, the Italian meal that comes in closest to lunch as my favorite came now: over almost 2 hours, a waiter discussed Tuscan wines with us, privately, and we tasted 10. Then, after he had said it was the last one, he brought out a dessert wine made from golden raisins (more or less). We stayed for dinner then, moving to the outdoor patio: bruschetta again, and handmade ricotta/mushroom ravioli. When we’d made the reservation yesterday, the waiter had said that if we stayed for dinner, we would be “VIP” … he wasn’t kidding. He asked if we wanted to order one of the wines we’d tried, and we said no, so he brought us a sparkling wine to try. Same thing after dinner: do you want dessert? No no, we’re all set … and there comes dessert, chocolate with bread, and another dessert wine, a sparkling moscato. Really nice evening!

Florence 3

Well, this afternoon I referred to our evening plans as “wandering” … little did I know! This warrants a second post.

We were just going to go spend some time in the 4-story bookstore, and maybe see if we could get in to the baptistery beside the Duomo, so Jeannie had brought her light sweater because all the churches require visitors to be covered. But walking by the Duomo, we thought maybe we could try and see if the line was still long (it’s been wrapping 2 sides of the building all day). There were about 3 people in front of the door, and we got in within a minute! It’s an impressive sight from outside, but the inside is just magnificent. I’ll be posting pictures soon, I hope. We didn’t bother with the Baptistry, which would have paled in comparison.

After the bookstore, we thought we would try our luck and check back again at the Uffizi gallery, which also has had impossibly long lines just for reservations and is known to be booked a month in advance. Less than 5 people in line! We basically walked right in. Vasari, da Vinci, a special display on Caravaggio … we went through relatively quickly, since our visit went right up until they closed, but it’s an amazing gallery. The museum has had paintings there since the time America was colonized!

Taking our time to find a restaurant for dinner that was recommended to us and is off the beaten path was worth it. We had rabbit for the first time! Along with potatoes, spinach risotto, farfalle, and some white wine. Finished the day with gelato J

Feels like our luck may be changing, but … still no luggage. 

Florence 2

Still no luggage, nor word from the airport; we can only leave them a voicemail and they haven’t contacted us …

After our afternoon siesta yesterday, we went to a less likely Florence museum that turned out to be really interesting. It’s called the Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, the Museum of Precious Stones, which sounds like it’s a gallery of gemstones and jewelry, but it’s not! It’s a mosaics gallery. The Medici family in the 16^th century got really into this, and had artisans making portraits, paintings, decorations, etc with carved pieces of precious hard stones (marble, granite, lapis, malachite, chalcedony … you get the idea), which they then inlay together to compose the color palette for the piece. They had some where there was a painting with the mosaic that had been based on the painting below it, and wow! The intricacy and detail of these pieces is incredible. There are still workshops in the city that do these, we stopped in to a few already, the artists being second or third generation artisans in this form.

Because of jetlag, we were both wide awake by 5 am yesterday, so by dinnertime we were exhausted and fading! But we wanted to make sure we got back on track and stayed up late enough, so after dinner (classic Italian: caprese, pasta, wine), we went for a long walk, bought Jeannie a dress, then down across the Santa Trinita bridge and back up across the Ponte Vecchio. Then it was late enough to sleep.

Every day is reaching the mid-90s, but today I believe is supposed to be close to 100, and tomorrow. We were up respectably early at 7, so we were able to get outside before it heated up too much. We walked down to the river again and this time crossed along the Ponte alle Grazie, which took us to the base of a hill that overlooks Florence from the southeast. Walking up a long stretch of hill and stairs, we arrived at the Piazzale Michelangelo, giving us a spectacular view of the Arno and the entire city to the north. From there we could also see a hilltop across the valley where we’ll be going tomorrow: Fiesole.

We ran a few errands to find stores/restaurants and to replace a few more missing items; we’re managing pretty well with minimal stuff. The only thing I’m really missing and that I can’t replace are my contacts. I’m wearing glasses, which is fine, but I can’t wear sunglasses with them, and these glasses are quite old and if they break I’m in trouble! We then had lunch at a place we walked by yesterday called a Tea Room. They don’t serve tea! But the bigger surprise was that the café-style food and wine there were very good (it’s a surprise when you go in expecting tea).  Pasta with pesto and tomatoes, and vegetables with salmon, and we each tried their house wines, red and white. We’ve walked by so many restaurants and little cafes, and it’s impossible to tell what any one will be like without going in and trying it. It makes choosing a place for lunch or dinner a little overwhelming, but also kind of fun.

We’re taking our siesta now and cooling down a little, and will go out later again for dinner and some more wandering. Tomorrow – my birthday! – we’ll be taking a bus up to Fiesole in the morning. We’ve been discussing what day trips to take on Sunday/Monday … the plan had been Venice, simply because it’s Venice, but we learned today that the train fare is high: about $200 roundtrip for both of us. This alone was not the final deterrent, but it got us talking, and as of now we’ve decided to take two smaller train trips to Livorno on the western coast of Tuscany, and to Siena. Both of these trains for both of us would come to about $67, and we’re talking about a cruiseship port and a Renaissance city. I don’t think we’ll end up regretting missing Venice.

Thanks to everyone for the comments and prayers for our luggage. Hoping for tomorrow! 

Florence!

Jeannie and I arrived in Florence, Italy yesterday after a very long and at times stressful journey. We are on our honeymoon: the wedding was this past Saturday in Washington, and we spent that evening and Sunday out on the Pacific coast in a beautiful inn/B&B Ocean Shores. The trip to Europe began Monday evening with a red-eye from Seattle to NYC, and that’s kind of where the troubles started. We actually arrived early, but they kept us out on the runway for close to two hours, waiting for a gate to open. Took a taxi to my brother’s apartment through very heavy traffic, and spent about four hours there before catching a taxi back to the airport, aware that there were strong thunderstorms and that JFK was delayed about an hour; our layover in Dublin was only going to be two. But our flight was listed as on-time, and we boarded, closed the doors … and found out that we were being held there. Two hours.

Our arrival in Dublin was really the highlight of the journey: coming down through the clouds, we broke into a view of the green patchwork fields of Ireland, misty after a morning’s rain and with the sun coming through in a few places.  But we landed twenty-five minutes before our flight to Rome was scheduled to take off. I bet you can’t guess the end to this anecdote! Two years ago I was delayed in Chicago by heavy storms, but my connection was also delayed, so I made it; this one had been caused in NY, not Dublin. We got off the plane and headed towards customs with about ten minutes to spare, certain we couldn’t make it, but decided it was worth trying. So we went through customs, through security, and literally ran through quite a few halls of the airport … and made the flight! They ended up waiting for a few other stragglers from our flight anyway, and told us that they thought the luggage would make it too.

It didn’t. About halfway through our flight, the stewardess told me that the bags from NY hadn’t made it, and that there was no second flight to Rome that day. It’s 3 pm here in Florence now, the next day, and we still haven’t heard anything about the luggage,  nor received it, and are keeping our fingers crossed for this evening or tomorrow. Worst case, we’re heading back to Rome on Tuesday and could get them at the airport then, but that’s an entire six days without most of what we packed: we’ve already re-purchased some essentials, but are holding out on a few others in hope we’ll get them back sooner than later. Prayers welcome! Once we got in to Rome yesterday and filed our missing luggage paperwork, we caught one train in to the main Rome train station Termini, then a surprisingly fast (1 hour 15!) train up to Florence; we had to stay awake to catch our stop and both of us kept drifting off anyway! But we got here, and found our B&B, and managed to stay awake until about 10 pm to beat the jetlag.

Now for the fun part! Since we’re staying literally one block from the Duomo, our first mission was  to walk out to the Piazza San Giovanni, and WOW that cathedral is amazing! Though it’s a centerpiece of Florentine lore and the city’s skyline, up close  in detail you can see the craft and aging and the places they’ve cleaned versus the ones they haven’t yet. Very very cool. We walked all the way around it, stopping in to little shops along the way – bookstores, leather shops, looking through windows at the gelato flavors – and taking pictures. We then headed south through the city and crossed the Ponte Vecchio into the Oltrarno for dinner at Gusto Pizza. We then wandered around a little as we headed back: down along the Arno’s north bank and up past the Uffizi gallery, through the Piazza della Signoria – where we stopped for my first Italian gelato! – and then meandered back to the B&B.

Today at breakfast, I had my first Italian coffee, a cappuccino J Our first destination for the morning was to find Edison Books, a four-floor bookstore in the Piazza della Repubblica, which is mostly in Italian, with an English section upstairs. We walked around a few outdoor markets and some leather shops, looking primarily for Italian-made journals for our writing and painting. Aiming to get advance tickets for the Uffizi, we changed our minds when the line looked several hours long, and instead walked along the river again down to the Basilica Santa Croce, which – along with the Biblioteca Nazionale (library) next door, was one of the major casualties of the 1966 flood in Florence. We went into the church, which is also an art gallery really, as well as the burial place for Galileo and Machiavelli, among others. They also have a museum there, which now features artwork that has been restored from the flood, including Cimabue’s famous Crossifiso, still not fully restored, though I don’t think the damage is repairable. Also, while walking along the river and looking south into the Oltrarno district across the Ponte Vecchio, I could see that the buildings there look newer than all the others: when the Germans retreated north through Florence in World War II, they blew several blocks to obstruct the bridge, rather than destroy the Vecchio (Hitler’s last minute order). Returning back to the B&B for an afternoon siesta – it’s in the mid 90s! – we stopped at an amazing leather book/journal shop and I found just the one I was looking for. We had lunch and found another bookstore, and now here we are, waiting out the heat. Pictures will come as soon as I have my suitcase with my computer cable in it!