Journal of the Trip to Italy - March 2001

Katherine's entries look like this.

Peter's entries look like this.

March 7, 2001
We are on the plane - finally - after a fat-filled dinner, and a harrowing race to the terminal. We are surrounded by people who look cosmopolitan - even the crew look cooler than me (I guess that's not saying much). Anyway. When we got to the gate at 9:15, the boarding attendant - I suppose you could think of her as a hostess - the hostess there chided us for being late - the airline could revoke our tickets she said - they could take our luggage off the plane and send us packing. We were silent but I was thinking: "Oh yeah?" We scuttled onto the plane + here we are. I am tired - I only slept for 4-5 hours - David stayed up until 2:00 AM talking to Diane, so he only slept for 4 ½ hours, and Thomas is sick so he didn't sleep well either. Peter, on the other hand, is bright and cheery.

Peter here. So at noon I cheerfully emailed my friends ("I'm going to Italy!"), grumbled goodbye to my coworkers ("Mmkay. I'm leaving."), and since then it's been short bursts of frantic activity and long lulls of sitting and reading on airplanes. I'm a hundred pages into A Confederacy of Dunces, so now I've got Ignatius Reilly clattering around in the back of my head. I wonder how he'd deal with Italians?.

March 8, 2001 - Waiting for the plane to Rome.
Amazingly, I was able to sleep on the plane! Thomas and Peter, on the other hand, were kept awake by a screaming child - it, apparently, screamed for hours. Air France has this weird bassinet thing that hooks onto the ceiling for babies to sleep in. Maybe this frightened the screaming child - I don't know. Frankly, I didn't hear anything.

_March 9, 2001
Even after being forcibly removed from the comfortably dilapidated environs of Austin, Italy has much to offer the pilgrim in search of meaning and dignity. After the flight, my joints were tired. My nerves were frayed. My pyloric valve, I fear, was stoppered against the passage of some questionable airline sole.

While the Italians do take a properly languid view of life, I have one certain enemy on this pilgrimage: "Rick Steves," the bland, bespectacled dispenser of "travel advice" to the quintessential obstreperous, sartorially-challenged travelers who plague the world with impropriety. I have explained this to my travelling companions. Mr. Carpenter took on a lowering expression, intended no doubt to intimidate, while les fils Rogers merely laughed. Surely they can't be unaware of Mr. Steves' diabolical place in the world of travel.

Still, one fears the worst. They seem enamoured of the Renaissance, when the geometry and theology of the Middle Ages collapsed in a mess of muddled 'enlightenment.' I've taken the liberty of liberating Italy Through the Back Door from Mr. Carpenter. I've also decided I should collect all the return tickets, since who knows what tosspot revelries the others will get up to.

These actions may cause temporary consternation, but in the end they will surely understand and respect me for this.

Your Intrepid Traveler,

Giuseppe_

Peter told me he has a Pyloric Valve. I told him that he could probably have it removed as an outpatient for under $3000. Heck, insurance might even cover it! Today we went to St. Peter's (which was boringly well maintained) - lots of gold + everything decorated. Thomas seems to think Italians don't have the concept "understated" in their language. "Less is more" would probably be taken to mean "please add more" or "you missed a spot." We are about to go see the Spanish steps + have a delicious meal. It would be hard to beat La Carbonarra, where we ate last night. Supposedly pasta carbonara was invented there. It was charming, cozy + full of other tourists. At one point the lights went out, but then they came back on again. My favorite sight, so far today, was a busload of nuns. What could be more fun than that?

_March 9, cont'd
Our first day of legitimate tourism started with twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep. Our hotel room windows have a pair of thick wooden shutters that close like doors and seal out all of the light and nearly all the sound. We staggered out of bed around 11.

Through the day we went through the Pantheon, the Vatican Museum (including the Sistine Chapel), the Spanish Steps (making a mental note to visit the Keats-Shelley house); we swung by the Trevi Fountain for the second time, and we saw St. Peter's.

I'm struck by the way most of the centuries- and millennia-old buildings sit nonchalantly in a thriving, modern big city. Chic teens and angry businessmen with cell phones stroll past Renaissance churches and ancient pillars. The city itself has a distinctive character - like New Orleans, it dilapidates well. Broad, small-windowed buildings in cool yellows and browns line narrow streets with little, uneven cobblestones.

The art and the architecture get a bit overwhelming. Especially after following up St. Peter's with the Vatican Museum, your mind gets reduced to a torpid, "Oh. Another nonpareil masterpiece of Western art." But the Pieta, and School of Athens, and the Sistine Chapel are all filed away in my mind now, to be recollected in moments of tranquility, and to color every time I see reproductions of them. The city itself, with its furious traffic, its dramatic and stylish citizens, and the sense of languid ease that somehow coexists with both, is equally memorable. An old, old city, filled with museums, restaurants, and lots of nuns._

March 10 2001
Some of these nuns wear baseball hats - at least, I saw 2 of them wearing baseball hats at the Coliseum. I feel confident that these hats (though very white) were not standard issue. In fact there isn't nearly enough standardization when it comes to their uniforms - But, getting back to today. Today, we walked through the Forum and the Coliseum and finally through the Palatine hillside - the Palatine was my favorite because it has so much green grass + so many trees - I think Rufus would like running around them. It is dotted w/ruins of the homes of wealthy + powerful Romans - and there are cats + birds living up there wild. There are marble columns just laying around. Later, we went to a (for us) trendy restaurant in the up + coming section of Rome - Trestevare - this is yuppieville + we felt quite at home. We saw numerous dogs - including a quite attractive German Shepherd - too bad for them they are not nearly as nice as Rufus.

_March 11
Arrivaderci Roma. We travel north now, by train, through the countryside with glimpses of the blue Mediterranean Sea through the trees and beat-up neighborhoods. The last day in Rome, we looked at the Forum, the Coliseum, the Palatine Hill, and the Yuppie part of town. Rome, as Rick Steves says, is a grueling city.

So we looked out over the ruins of the center of ancient Rome, and I tried to imagine the buildings whole and bustling. Tour guides told stories of Julius Caesar, and of the Christianization of Rome, pointing to the locations involved. Bits of marble slabs and spare columns lay around - it's as if they grow new ruins by planting broken-off bits of existing ones. Crowds conversing everywhere, a pastiche of English and German and Spanish and Italian.

The Palatine Hill, the classy neighborhood for emperors, noted poets, and plain rich folk, was calming. It was less crowded, with grass and oddly-shaped trees growing between the cracked columns and scant foundations.

Walking through all this took five hours, after which we were hungry, tired, and grouchy. We hit a pizzeria and collapsed in bed for an hour or two. (Rome has not allowed for a regular sleeping schedule.) We spent the evening walking through Trestavare. Less crowded, and with far fewer tourists than the oldest part of Rome, yuppie-land felt more like a normal city where people lived & worked, somehow. I worried about not knowing the language and not being dressed remotely like the locals. Oh, well. I suppose Romans would look horribly gauche & unchic in Milan, so I shouldn't feel bad.

But now we leave the big city for a period of recover in Cinque Terre. The sea, the sun, and large quantities of pesto._

March 11, Continued
Well, we almost didn't make our train - or one train for Cinque Terre pulled away in La Spezia with David pulling at the doorknob trying to get in - 2 different people told us it was the right train but we didn't listen until it was too late. We thought we were trapped at the train station until 3:20 - but, as it turned out we only had to wait about an hour longer ('til 1:20) and in that time we used the fairly primitive toilets - this one was a ceramic indentation in the floor - which - apparently - you squat above. This is actually cleaner - in a way - than toilets in the US, where when you make contact w/the toilet seat you are making contact w/all the butts that have been there before you. Any way enough scatological philosophy - the other good thing about this stop was the self-service cafeteria. La Spezia's train station has a grim little establishment with a church basement feel located at one end of the platform - but - surprisingly - the counter women are very friendly and helpful, the food is really good, and the prices were very reasonable. I had kurtso (sp?) pasta with pesto (this was penne pasta) and beans w/sausage. I accidentally ordered my water con gas but it was OK - and everything was delicious.

_March 12
I'm in Cinque Terre, and I'm sick. I think I caught Thomas's cold - I have a sore throat and a runny nose. The symptoms got more and more pronounced last night. I don't think I slept more than an hour - the rest of the time I just stared into the darkness of my sleeping mask, thought about how inconvenient this mess is, and got steadily sicker.

Cinque Terre is not a good place to get sick in - it's cold and rainy. An old, stocky woman named Rina, who speaks quick nonstop Italian although I suspect she knows some English, picked us out as we entered Vernazza and rented us a couple of rooms in her home. There is no hot water available for showers, so I'm just forgoing showering for now. I've stayed in while K & D & T went hiking through the villages along the cliff edge that make up Cinque Terre. I've tried to sleep. I took some aspirin, making the sore throat more bearable. I managed to sleep for an hour or two. At 2pm the TV started blaring out Rina's favorite soap opera - I'm frankly scared to ask her to turn it down. I don't function well with matronly (grand-matronly?) Italian women.

Last night I got to see Vernazza, at least. It is a town with lots of huge cats. Homes seem to crowd and jostle each other all the way down to the rocky breakwaters at the bottom of the hill. They are crisscrossed by narrow sidewalks that wind upwards, downwards, over, under, and around in a vast maze. Katherine is convinced that this is the sort of place where hobbits would live.

Rina told us to eat at the "Tratorrio del Capitano," run by her friend Paolo. So we did, knowing that if we didn't, the news would get back to her in this town of 500. The guy running the restaurant that night (a "friend of Paolo" who knows Rina) described the menu to us in detail, twice, encouraging us to get multiple courses. That's sort of the tone I detect of the residents of C. T. - polite and friendly, but usually in shrewd & calculating ways designed to obligate you into spending more money. Oh well.

So today I'll probably go with the rest of the group to another of these villages for dinner. Then it's another night, probably another insomniac night, here in Vernazza before hopping the train to Firenze. For now, though, I'm stuck in the room reading Dorothy L. Sayers._

"Let's just go to the top of that hill," David said. "Vernazza is just on the other side and I think we could get some really good views for picture-taking." An hour later we were hiking through lush green terraces and climbing up endless stairs. At first we went from Monterolla to Corniglia. In Monterolla we saw a cemetery at the top of the hill. It was filled mausoleums that looked like chests of square drawers and on each drawer was a person's name + picture - most of the people died in the 60's, 70's, 80's + 90's - I'm not sure if there were older graves there or not. They sure had a nice spot up there + the pictures really made it a sad place to be after a while. So, we left and went on to Corniglia. It was after Corniglia, when we decided to just go over the hill to Vernazza that things got interesting. The path was washed out in places + muddy. The sign at the beginning of this leg said 1.30 hours - we thought "Oh, it will really only be 45 minutes." But after a march (with a few scattered stops) though the terraced cultivated areas + groves of olive trees - a march that would have made Hartwell proud (except for the occasional whining) we ended up taking exactly 1½ hours. We descended down a steep path into Vernazza. After we first saw signs for the town we came to a point on the hillside where we could see the whole peninsula - all the buildings - including Rina's house, the castle towers, the churches + the harbor just stretching out into the ocean. It was a worthwhile walk after all.

All this time, as we walked along, we imagined Peter - sick in his room. We were all convinced that Rina had discovered him and was plying him with cookies and juice (home-made Toll House cookies). She had undoubtedly rolled the TV into his room so they could watch her favorite soap opera together (perhaps shedding a furtive tear or sharing some justified outrage when the heroine's husband left her). We knew that she would castigate us for leaving "that sweet boy" behind, alone. This was not the case. Peter was (forlornly) reading Dorothy Sayers when we returned. There were no cookies, no juice. Rina watched her soap opera loudly in the middle of the afternoon -> waking Peter on the floor below.

March 13, 2001
Arrivaderci Rina - we are waiting for the train to La Spezia. The sun came out briefly -> the rain finally stopped and we were informed by a nice lady (who spoke English) that the tunnel past Corniglia is filled with water. We have to wait until 11:05 for a train to La Spezia. So we went to have cappuccinos and panini (sandwiches), we bought cookies and blood orange juice [which is very good] and we came back to the station to wait. Frankly, I think it's going to take longer than an hour for the water to recede from the tunnel. The Italians at the station are hanging around the platform chatting. Last night we had a fairly mediocre meal by our standards in Monterossa but we had a very good time.

Monterossa is bigger than Vernazza and chicer [sp?] with resort type buildings and more tourists. We had coffee and wine in a little confectionery and played tic tac toe - the only game available. We discussed the drinking habits and loud, obnoxious behavior of people from the British Isles (there was someone English sitting near us - much to Peter's dismay/chagrin). Anyway, after that we went to this restaurant which had a nice atmosphere but so-so food. While we were eating a man in his late forties came in with a woman who was maybe thirty. They each ordered wine, a bottle of red for the woman and a bottle of white for the man. Fifteen minutes passed and the waitress brought them a huge tray with an assortment of foods on it. This was apparently the woman's appetizer and she consumed all of it at a slow and steady pace talking all the while and waving her fork for emphasis. "Hmm, she was really hungry," I thought. Shortly after this, more plates appeared - one with a big grilled fish and a pile of potatoes - this she also consumed at nearly the same steady pace, eventually polishing off the wine and finishing with Tiramisu. It may seem strange to you that I was so interested in this woman's meal. The thing is - she wasn't heavy or unusually tall. She was average-sized - maybe a little solid - she would win in a fight. So she didn't seem anorexic. I wondered why she was eating so much and what looked like the most expensive items on the menu. I thought maybe she was this guy's mistress or his escort for the evening and she was trying to get the most she could out of the guy. She had sort of dyed blond hair and looked a little cheap - but it's hard to dye black/brown hair and make it look sophisticated. Maybe she had some other relationship to this guy. She seemed too old to be his daughter. I wondered if her eating habits would catch up with her eventually. A lot of the older women have a kind of square, matronly shape.

March 14, 2001
Well, Florence is very touristy. Many things here are expensive - and half of the people here are 20 year old American girls. I guess if you were a 20 year old guy this would be a real plus. On the other hand, if you're a 38 year old woman it's kind of annoying to hear "Hi, is Eric there?" on a nearby cell phone and then "Anna Lisa, you know, Anna Lisa." After that I tuned the conversation out. Dinners have been expensive and not that great - so far nothing beats the train station at La Spezia for value and tastiness. The sites have been especially crowded. This morning at the Academy (where David is) there was a line that spanned 2 city blocks. At the Uffizi there was a 3 hour wait (+ I'm not even that interested in paintings). The Museo Archeologico (which I did want to see) was closed today at 2:00. The Arno is beautiful, the Ponte Vecchio is interesting, but the most interesting thing I've seen is when the cops come and the illegal street vendors have to pack up all their stuff within 2-3 minutes. They have it down to a science. Print sellers lay each print slightly overlapping the next one so that they can scoop up all the prints in seconds - kind of like dominoes. Bag salesmen arrange fake Gucchis on big spread out pieces of plastic or cloth so that they can instantly bundle them up. And they have portfolio/valises constructed from big pieces of old, cardboard boxes which double as stands for jewelry or sunglasses. These people are incredibly efficient and resourceful. It makes me want to buy things from them. One of my biggest complaints about Florence is the lack of green spaces. Rome had lush green areas where archeological excavations went on and little parks surrounding monuments. Florence is much more densely built up and everything is paved - so there are blocks and blocks of old buildings - really old buildings - and then there are town squares or piazzas that are paved. Everything is a little bit dirty + in varying states of decay. This could be charming if there were trees and flowering shrubs and grass to offset it. Instead it just seems kind of grimy. Perhaps Florence will grow on me. So far, I have really only liked the area around the Museo Archeologico because it seemed realer and had a larger ratio of Italians to tourists.

Tomorrow, we are going to the Boboli gardens at the Pitti Palace - maybe that will give me a different perspective. I think if I came back to Italy I would stay in the smaller towns - in the countryside - and I would like to bring Rufus. (What a good boy.)

_March 14
I've spent the last few days recovering from my cold. My nose dribbles snot. Every few minutes my body spasms into an unproductive cough. It all gets worse with fatigue, which sets in earlier than it should.

So all I noticed about Cinque Terre our last full day there was that it was cold enough and wet enough to mildew your bones. I coughed and sniffled through one of the other towns (Monterossa), which felt like less of a tourist attraction than Vernazza.

The morning we left Vernazza we hadn't had hot water for three days. We hit the train to Pisa (never saw the tower), & switched to the train to Florence. Attractive Italian women and attractive American tourists would walk by, and I'd remember that I had three days' growth of whiskers, a pallor even sicklier than usual, and hair that was starting to look like a hedgehog had crawled on top of my head and died.

So in such spirits I hacked and groaned and periodically blew my nose like a gooey foghorn as the Italian countryside moved gently past us.

It took longer, all in all, to get from Vernazza to Firenze than it did to get from Roma to Vernazza. A long trip, the first leg of which was delayed by a tunnel's being washed out, the second leg delayed by our stopping at every possible town. We showed up in Firenze happy to be done with the train ride, but beat and smelling a little icky.

Our hotel room in Florence has a bathroom with hot water! (Insert hallelujah chorus here.) We all celebrated with some sort of ablutions. For my part, I took a long, hot shower and shaved, and emerged looking less like a homeless vagrant and more like a goofy American tourist. We did laundry, ate dinner, and explored the town. The weather got colder and colder, and I finally went to bed with (I think) a fever. I shivered violently every time I got out from under the covers, and my mind seethed with depressing thoughts as I spiraled off to sleep.

Today we made a noble effort at seeing Florence. We saw the statue of David. We tried to go to the Uffizi - three-hour wait. We tried to go to the Archaeological Museum - closed at 2pm. Now it's late at night, and everyone rests peacefully except Peter, the insomniac with a pen.

Florence is filled with tourists, stereotypical 'ugly Americans' who put my affronts to the Italian language to shame. "Mary, have ever seen one of these?" asks a middle-aged, heavyset woman with a squawking voice as she holds up a novelty cigarette lighter at a street vendor's stand. A crowd of giggling 20-year-old women squeezes through a pizzeria, pointing and asking for "Um, one of those thingies" before going back to madly gossiping about absent friends. It's a good thing they're cute, I think to myself, because I can't see them surviving by their wits.

And of course, Firenze is designed to service those tourists, with English spoken (with varying degrees of annoyance) nearly everywhere, with shops offering every tourist's bauble imaginable, and no doubt with pickpockets and con artists lurking unseen. At times it feels like "Disney World's Italia-Land," and it seems even more artificial than Newbury Street in Boston (is that physically possible?) - but other parts of town - those few areas without major tourist-pit museums - feel like a real city.

We have a phrase book! There is a big bookstore four floors down from our Pension, and I have gained a vital ally in my battle with the infernal Italian language. I never know whether to keep speaking the native tongue like a Good Traveler is supposed to, or just switch to English and put us both out of our misery. D & T have a TV set they can watch, and course K & I usually end up watching it too. So far my favorite show is a German rip-off of David Letterman. Somehow his goofball, ironic wit doesn't translate well into the Language of Persecution. The Letterman-like host apologized for a bomb of a joke, and he sounded like a fascist dictator ordering a march on some small, hapless country.

Ah well. Getting near 1am. I should pop in the ol' earplugs (D is snoring again - is it possible to blow out your septum?) and try to sleep a bit. Another attempt on the Uffizi tomorrow - then after our almost-certain failure to get in, a relaxed stroll through Piazza Pitti and the Boboli Gardens.

And perhaps I shall write about "Potuki," too._

March 15, 2001
We are in the line at the Uffizi Gallery - we were in the "outside" line for an hour and a half. Now we are in the "inside" line. At this point we are in the bookstore ETW (Estimated Time Waiting) 60 minutes. There are some nice people in line and it's really not so bad. The kicker is we'll probably only take 1-2 hours in the museum.

March 16, 2001
Well the line for the Uffizi was kind of interesting: there was a friendly German guy behind us w/his friend who came from Copenhagen (also an older man). The Danish man spoke decent English but either was uncertain about it or chose not to speak to us very often for some other reason. Anyway, he said some amusing albeit disparaging things about Kentucky whiskey/bourbon. And some more sort of sarcastic things about the possibility of "getting culture" in the touristy chaos of the Uffizi. It was pretty interesting when we finally got in to see the paintings. The gallery is filled w/Renaissance reproductions of ancient Roman + Greek statues, along w/paintings by Botticelli, Michaelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. Museums tend to give me the blues though. My eyes glaze over and I start noticing my own body more - how my back hurts or my feet hurt, how I need to go to the bathroom or I haven't eaten since 9am. I also notice the tourists and guards more. I can last about 2 hours in a museum and after that I have to leave. On this trip, the best or most appealing parts have been where we are outside. The ruins in Rome - especially the Palatine hill - were on lush hillsides w/birds + flowers. The long + strenuous hike from a neighboring town to Vernazza was through green terraced farmland still wet from the rain. Here, in Florence, the best part was (for me) a walk around the exterior or suburban part of the city - there is a road which loops widely around Florence, north of the Arno, past the Pitti Palace and the Forta Belvedere. It climbs up into the hills overlooking the Arno and, from here you can see the villas and gardens which lie outside the city - they lead up to more densely built up areas, ancient city walls, Il Duomo, and finally the Arno. Yesterday, we walked along this road until we reached the Boboli garden. This is the garden formal - sculptured - with box hedges + fountains? this is the garden the Medicis commissioned to go with their new (at the time) Pitti Palace. I liked this garden too but it had some of the road-weary, grimy feel of the city. We stopped on a hillside overlooking Florence and sat in the grass to rest, when a cell phone rang: "Hello, yes we're over on a hill here. If you keep going straight until the top of the path and then take a right you'll see us. Oh, oh I see you now - look here's Todd." Todd started waving his arms and jumping up and down, yelling something unintelligible. At this point we decided to wander back to the hotel. Today, we are sitting in the train station waiting to go to Venice. Purposeful Italians keep going back and forth and there is one Buddhist monk wandering around too. We're sitting on the polished pink marble floor (instead of in the smoke-filled Sala di Attessa) which, I think, is something the Italians don't approve of. It's really kind of wearing to try and be cognizant all the time of what will and won't offend them. I think the next time I go anywhere I will do more research about this ahead of time.

Once we found a spot on the train + had been there a while a youngish (early 30's) woman got on the train in Trieste and kicked Peter out of his spot (she had paid for + reserved it). This woman was dressed in traditional older Italian chic with fake snakeskin pants, a black T-shirt and a black jacket. Actually, in comparison to the more radical styles we saw in Rome she was kind of tastefully dressed. But I was pissed at her - mainly because she made Peter (+ Thomas) move so that she could sit opposite me. I worked on an article summary and avoided any eye contact. However, after a while I cooled off a bit and realized that perhaps she wasn't as big of a bitch as I initially thought. Anyway, the four of us amused ourselves by playing the elephant game (which made her uncomfortable) and by listening to some loud American tourists who were even more crass than we were. When we got to Venice we were pleasantly surprised. It is more attractive than Florence without Vespas & cheerless grime. It's packed with stores and restaurants which cater to tourists. It's really pretty nice in an artificial Newbury Street way. Tomorrow we are going to Vicenza for the day. On the way, I am going to buy some cameo earrings to celebrate getting a teaching assistantship. I found out today when we sent an email to Mom using my account.

Peter has apparently become the headmaster for the prestigious Charlton Preparatory School (whose motto is "Leadership, Character, Dignity"). This is his persona for the rest of the trip. For about a week, I have been Potuki - a Japanese anime character. Potuki is known for her characteristic orange anorak and being attracted to shiny things. She is beloved by Japanese schoolchildren everywhere who sing her theme song and buy her trademark products, including an item called "Shiny!" - a 3-oz. Package of glitter which retails for $5.95.

Patuki's Song
Patuki shiny - shiny Patuki - shiny for Patuki - Happy-Happy-Shiny-Shiny Patuki - La La La - Patuki La La La Patuki!!* Patuki*!!* Patuki*!!

_March 18, 2001
The sun is setting over San Marco. Soon it will be dark, and cold, and quiet, and the crowds of tourists will be gone. I'll be fast asleep; I have to catch a plane tomorrow morning. Back to Austin, to my bland job and my affable acquaintances.

Our last day in Florence was pleasant. We saw the Uffizi, with all its medieval and early-Renaissance art that I didn't understand. That afternoon, we went to the Boboli gardens. We climbed a tall hill in the southern part of town, following a gently-graded street with switchbacks back and forth. It wound through trees, and residential suburbs, and oddly-placed bits of farmland - perhaps they were just oversized gardens. An occasional car would pass us, and we'd squeeze single-file between the street and the guard against the edge of the hill. Sometimes you could see the city through the trees, quick glimpses of crowded red roofs spilled around the Duomo, the city getting farther below us every time. At the top there was a small square with a long ledge that overlooked all of Florence, and a modest (by Italian standards) church. We took in the view and snapped photographs. We walked through the dark, imposing church, made a donation and lit a little votive candle.

Then we wandered down the hill again, this time aimed for the Palazzo Pitti. We wound down through green public parks with small (by Italian standards) fountains and locals walking their dogs. The Boboli Gardens themselves were beautiful, full of 300-year-old cedar trees and neatly carved boxwood hedges. It was good to be in the sun, out under the sky, instead of cooped up, straining to understand why some anonymous painter from 1350 decided to draw the Madonna slightly cross-eyed.

The people there were a mix of Italian kids, and older AmeroEuroJapanese? tourists, and (a large plurality of) American college kids on spring break. Somehow the teeny- and twenty-boppers seemed especially vapid and chattery in the old, peaceful surroundings of the gardens.

We made it to Venice. Venice has been just as touristy as Florence, but somehow it carries it off better. Somehow Venice's decay is far classier than Florence's, which might be better termed "blight." I think the difference is that Florence houses works of art, but Venice is a work of art. Every building is somehow beautiful. So we spent our first evening just leisurely walking through the city, content to waste the night.

The next day we went to Vicenza (Thomas calls this "the pilgrimage") to see where Mom and Dad lived when he was stationed in Italy. The town was untouristed and businesslike - the day's cold, wet weather made it seem even more so. We wandered through the city center, but nearly everything was closed on Saturday afternoon. We passed by buildings designed by Palladio, the eminent architect for which the city is well-known. At the top of (yet another) hill, we found Via Cassanova, a quiet, unassuming street where Mom & Dad spent part of the 60's.

Thomas worked out from an old photograph he'd seen, and from some things Dad had said about the view from their rooms, which building on the street would have been Dad's. We took pictures, had lunch, and got back on the train.

Then we had K & D & T's last night in Italy. They celebrated at an overpriced gelateria on St. Mark's, with turn-of-the-century art on the ceiling and walls, and velvet seats, and a mincing, tuxedoed waiter. They fell asleep early, so they could wake up at 4am for the flight home. Soon, I dropped off, too.

So today I've been alone in the city. I reverted to my personal style of travel, which involves consulting maps, constructing itineraries, and never ever "just wandering" without a specific goal in mind. (I have another 22 minutes allotted to sitting against the tower here in St. Mark's writing, before I am to go to an expensive restaurant for dinner for one.) You could argue I take in less this way, and you make far fewer serendipitous discoveries, but I got a lot done.

First I saw an exhibit about the Etruscans, the rather cryptic Italian race that preceded Rome and its empire. I was the only American tourist in a vast crowd of Italians. Cops and museum officials managed the crowd, directing me into lines and out of passageways in a language I couldn't understand. I jostled my way through the throngs, and craned my neck to get a look at reconstructed chariots, and coins, and small statues with happy, masklike faces. I saw the closest thing they've found to a Rosetta Stone for Etruscan (the "Phrygian [sp?] Laminae"), which is still largely undeciphered. I bought a present for Katherine, and trooped on.

I went to the Palazzo Unfinito (which they stopped building after merely one floor), which houses the Peggy Guggenheim collection. This museum is staffed exclusively by very attractive young women who speak impeccable English, which is nice, if unsettling. Most of its modern art confused me. ("This sculpture is called Horse. Okay, I'm going to stare at it until I see a damn horse.") Some of it, like Magritte's Empire of Light, appealed at first sight. I tried to like Jackson Pollock's works, but I couldn't see them as anything other than piles of slightly artistic vomit. If I looked long and closely at it, I only made out remnants of beans and sandwiches.

I came back, took a little break, ate a Balance bar, and struck out again. It was sunny and warm and I walked around in a T-shirt. A cheerful pair of Italian girls, wearing puffy down coats against the cold, got me to take their picture for them. I felt attractive, and walked through the sunny Piazza San Marco, and through St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's Palace, with a smile on my face.

It's dark now, and I should eat soon. This is it, I guess. A meal, a night's rest, and then a water-cab to the airport.

Ack. I'll try to come up with some apposite closing though on the flight back. For now, I need to eat._

Footnotes