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First trip to Italy since the 1950's, I took a train to Venice, and walked across a bridge to my hotel - charming, but near a prison!
In May of 2006 I flew to Fiumincino Airport outside Rome and took the train to Assisi immediately, spending the night there in a charming b&b. Assisi’s a delightful town, crammed with day-trippers at mid-day, but it reverts to calm and quiet after 4 pm or so. It’s a town of many centuries: there are Roman ruins, a Byzantine church, medieval city walls and castle, and Renaissance buildings. Of course the center is the church of St. Francis, which houses the inimitable Giotto frescos. The church of S. Chiara was of course interesting to me, but most of all, just walking about the town was a delight, with flowers everywhere.
I went on by train to Florence after the night in Assisi, and found the room I’d reserved to be in a pleasant old hotel with a comfortable terrace. I found the city to be annoyingly crowded, narrow streets overrun with Vespas – or their descendents – still reigning, as they had fifty years before, but of course the churches and museums were as satisfying as ever. I enjoyed the relaxed Palazzo Vecchio more than the stiff, crowded Uffizi gallery or the ornate Pitti Palace, but as before the Bargello was full of marvelous statuary. Most of all I enjoyed the Museum of the Duomo, where all the REAL sculptures from the Cathedral and the Baptistry live, while their replicas endure the elements.
On to Venice, where I walked to a pristine blue-and-gold room in a delightful little hotel. And I walked to the waterfront along the Giudecca and to church after church, to La Fenice, to San Marco, to the Scuola Grande I remembered from before, around the canals and shops and over the bridges, I took the vaporetto from one end to the other and I rode a traghetto across the Grand Canal. Finally, exhausted, I took the boat out to Murano and the charming Burano, and rested my feet riding back. I loved Venice, found it not too crowded in these last few days of May, especially in the hours before and after the tours were active! Decaying it may be, but its charm is still intact. You smile there.
After a long train ride from Venice and a mile walk pulling my bag downhill, I arrived at the pension where we Earthwatch participants would spend two weeks. My co-workers were interesting women, the Principal Investigator was an enthusiastic, devoted scholar who delighted in showing us the old 15th C. botanicas to work with, and we all got engrossed in the analysis of the herbals’ language. I, of course, got pushed into computer work.
Our days were spent at the National Library but after hours, Margaret, my English roommate, and I explored Rome, wandering around the Roman forum and just enjoying its ambience near the end of the day, locating the fountains from the Spanish Steps back to our hotel. The group met for dinner, often ending the evening with a scoop of marron glace or tangerine gelati from Gelatone.
The weekend in the middle of our project was a national holiday, so with three days to play, Margaret, Barbara, Jan, and I took the train to Naples, and from there the Transvesuviano to Sorrento, stopping for a long afternoon visit to Pompeii. Away from the must-see places that tours herd people to, I enjoyed wandering very much. Of course a lot of the buildings were “in restauro” – as everywhere in Italy – but the place is so vast now (it seems to have tripled in size since we were there before) that you can get lost in it pretty easily, away from the crowds. I enjoyed meeting a couple of young dogs who obviously felt they were welcoming me to THEIR home.
The next day Barbara and Margaret and I went to Capri, had a wonderful lunch of smoked fishes and fish salads and vegetables, then walked it off climbing high up the hill to Tiberius’ villa, or “Villa Jovis” as it is called. We all loved Capri and enjoyed getting out of the touristy town. Our hotel in Sorrento couldn’t have been more pleasant.
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