Romancing the Cone

Distance Traveled:   43,890 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC-RM-FG-MN-VC)

Time Difference: -8 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Just random.

Currently Inspired by: The beauty of Venice

Stacks: None!
Words written: 89,502.  Still too busy.

Where am I up to?  My head spins when I try to remember everything that has been done over the last week.  As I’ve been so busy treating sightseeing like a career and totally forgetting that I’m actually on holidays, it was nice to have someone here with me to make me do holiday-type stuff, like, oh I don’t know, staying still for thirty seconds together?  

Fiuggi (not my photo)

I can’t imagine a better place to stay still than the Heaven Spa in the tiny little town of Fiuggi, renowned for the therapeutic properties of its mineral water.  It was heaven, indeed.  The drive there was surprisingly relaxing, considering that our bus driver took the high speed (and high altitude) mountain turns on two wheels and with about a finger and a half on the steering wheel.  You can’t be nervous when you are looking at the green and hilly Italian countryside spreading out below you like a model farm village with tiny little perfect animals, and neat rows of crops.  The various terracotta towns in the full force of the summer sun set the tops of their mountains afire with their burnt orange roofs and walls, and the profusion of springtime blooms filled the bus to the brim with the heady scent of greenery, jasmine and wildflowers.  The lack of suspension in the bus actually caused it to act in a similar fashion to a massage chair, so by leaning back and closing your eyes you could almost imagine you were already in the spa, receiving some kind of spinal adjustment and aromatherapy treatment!

The spa itself contains a huge therapy pool with a whole variety of different massage jets, a hot and cold mineral water treatment, a sauna, a Turkish bath, and “emotional showers” which are four showers at varying temperatures and colours.  There are also relaxation rooms with light displays and waterbeds.  It’s ridiculous, really.  And the town of Fiuggi is really small and absolutely gorgeous.  I highly recommend a visit there to anyone who is around the Rome area.

In the Pizzeria

On Tuesday Mum and I caught a seemingly endless series of public transport connections to the Amalfi Coast, stopping in for a couple of hours at Naples on the way.  We had to change trains there anyway, but I really wanted to check out the Pizzeria Da Michele, made “famous” by the book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, which is parodied in the title of my travel blog.  Apparently this place serves the “best pizza in Italy”, and so despite the merciless, baking heat, heavy bags on shoulders, homicidally insane Napolitean drivers and strident air of “get me the hell out of this place” that Nasty Naples somehow manages to give off, we set off in search of this doughy Holy Grail and were rewarded a mere fifteen minutes later by its understated signage leaping out from the carnage of haphazardly parked cars and heavily shuttered shops like a cool green oasis in a shimmering black desert.  

In the Pizzeria Da Michele, you sit, at a table with strangers if necessary, order one of the three drink options (water, beer or Coke – and none of this fancy shmancy sugar free crap either) with one waiter, and then the second waiter comes to take your pizza order.  There are no menus.  You can simply order a Marinara pizza (pizza with red sauce only – not seafood as some people may think) or Margherita (red sauce and mozzarella), and for the sake of variety you can order this one with extra cheese if you wish for one euro more.  You can then sit and watch as the always-burning wood fired oven is filled with pizza after pizza and yours finally comes bubbling along to your table.  Were they delicious?  Yes.  Were they more-ish?  Absolutely.  Was their “secret recipe base” really all it cracked up to be?  You betcha.  But something about them made me go “Best pizza in Italy?  Errrrm”.  I wonder how much of that feeling related to too much hype.  I mean really, how could any item live up to that tag?  Still, I’m glad we made the effort to go.  It was very, very, very good pizza.  Click here to see all the pics from Fiuggi and Naples.

View from the top

Minori is the tiny little town we chose to stay in on the Amalfi Coast.  As neither my mother nor I are party animals (any more) we were happy to simply stay in a cute and quiet little village rather than one of the bigger tourist places, check out the views, maybe go for a bit of a walk and spend a day on the beach.  All of this was achieved, and with much contentment.  Feeling the need for a walk one afternoon, I spied a flight of stairs and decided I would see where they went.  At the top of those there was another set so I decided to see where they led, and so on and so forth for about 35 minutes until I finally popped out surprised, pleased and puce in the face, on the top of the little mountain that belonged to the town.  The view was, of course, spectacular, and I met quite a character while on the climb, an old man who must have been seventy if he was a day, hanging something out over his fence which was about three quarters of the way up this mountain and cheerfully babbling away to me in Italian.  So he would have to be one of the fittest old farts I’ve ever encountered in my life, because there is absolutely no way to access his house apart from on foot.  Click here to see the pics from Minori.

We had decided to visit Pompeii on the way back to Rome, however a full day’s sun and inadequate sunscreen had left us both with livid and shivery sunburn, and the thought of trudging around a large archaeological site for several hours in 35 degree heat with our heavy bags rubbing our raw skin off did not really appeal, and so, much to my dismay and extreme disappointment (with myself and my utter stupidity) we had to skip it.  Fortunately, this then meant that we arrived in Rome at 3pm instead of 7.30pm as originally planned, and I say fortunately because my friend Laura was arriving in Termini and needed to be collected at 6pm.  I had, the entire time, thought she was arriving the day after.  So, that was quite lucky for her really!  

This also meant that Laura was able to spend a full day in Rome on the Friday before we headed to Venice, so this was also good... or it would have been if she was travelling in any country but Italy.  There was a strike, and not only were the metro and some buses down, the Colosseum and some of the major sites were closed.  Talk about luck, huh?  She must have used all of hers up on the arrival times working out.  This place!  I do love it, but sometimes I don’t like it very much.  It makes liking it hard work.  Poor Laura.

Our first view in Venice

Venice.  How beautiful is Venice?  My god.  I want to marry it and have its babies.  Yes it’s expensive, yes it is difficult and confusing to navigate, yes it is full of tourists but it’s just so damn beautiful I just don’t care about the rest!  A very inspiring place to be.  We have taken a couple of long walks here, several water bus rides, tried on millions of masks, seen some incredible old paintings, gaped at ornate buildings, laughed at the Boy With Frog, sighed over watery sunsets, eaten sixteen litres of gelato, seen San Marco square and the outside only of the Basilica (line was hours long) and as a result I have about ten thousand photographs.  Unfortunately I do not have any photographs of us on a gondola, because we were sadly not prepared to pay 100 euros for a half an hour trip.  Outrageous, really.  You can click here to see the photos of lovely Venice.

Tomorrow, the last part of my Italian adventure begins with several trains to Cinque Terre (specifically, Riomaggiore) where we shall be staying until Thursday.

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N

Hoc Est Meum Italia

Distance Traveled:   42,690 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC-RM)

Time Difference: -8 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Barbershop, Faith No More, Kate Bush

Currently Inspired by: "Art is never finished, only abandoned" Leonardo da Vinci.  Fairly relevant right now... lol.

Stacks: I am almost constantly tripping at the moment.  I think it's because I have company and rather than rarely looking where I'm going, I am now never looking where I'm going.  Every time I go out I do the "kick and stumble" at least half a dozen times.  Must. Pick. Feet. Up.
Words written: 89,502.  Way too busy to write, as the below will demonstrate!  Frustrating to be so close!

View from Vittorio Monument

I. Am. Exhausted.  Rome is so big, and has so much to do and see, and is currently (and finally!) so hot, that you basically get home and collapse, limp and happy onto the couch and put your feet up to get some blood back into the rest of your body.  I have had mum here since Monday, which has been terrific.  The whole coming together got off to a bit of a creaky start, once the initial excitement had worn off.  I think that is to be expected when you have one person who isn’t crazy about crowds, heat and walking and one person who has been selfish and solo for a long time and isn’t used to putting up with other people’s wishes and whims.  At the worst point I believe the words “I hate this place” and “feel free to go home then” were uttered (but not really meant), however it was a mere blip and all has since settled into happy compromise and domesticity!

I have seen and done so much this week and taken so many photos that I decided to keep all the albums from each major area separate and just have a couple of Rome generic albums.  I will outline each area below and provide the links – it’s the best way I can think of to organise the sheer volume of stuff!

Exposed underground tunnels

The Colosseum
Of course everyone knows what this structure is, don’t they?  At around 2,000 years old, the main ampitheatre of ancient Rome saw thousands upon thousands of plays, executions, animal hunts and gladiatorial contests in its hundreds of years of use as a public arena.  The wooden floor has of course disintegrated over time, exposing the creepy network of tunnels underneath in which animals, condemned prisoners and gladiators would wait for their time on the floor.  A highly evocative monument, you can almost hear the shouting crowds – modest modern estimates put the numbers it held at 50,000 although older estimates were much higher – baying for blood.  I have heard that the arena could be emptied in 8 minutes, which, if true, is a testament to its extraordinary design.  The Romans built to last!  

All my life I have spelled the word “Coliseum” and began to feel rather apprehensive when I saw the signs in English everywhere with the alternative spelling I have used here.  “Have I been wrong this whole time, and why didn’t I notice that the first time I was here??” I panicked.  Fortunately, I since discovered that both English spellings are acceptable.  Phew!  Click here to see photos from the Coliseum.

Stone huts - the heart of ancient Rome

Palatine Hill and Roman Forum
The Palatine Hill is the one of the most ancient sites of Rome.  The legend has it that the brothers Romulus and Remus were born there in a hut, and decided to build themselves a city along the banks of the Tiber.  Romulus then killed his brother and became the first ruler of the area, naming it after himself and thus setting up a lively tradition of fratricide, matricide and patricide that would haunt the families of all of Rome’s leaders until the fall of that great empire.  There is much to see on the hill: the ruins of a great palace used by many of Rome’s emperors, gardens, a museum and perhaps most excitingly the stone foundations of the original huts from the area and a display of crockery and household items retrieved from them.  Mum insisted that a small structure next to one of the stone huts was the world's first pizza oven.  Hey, it's possible!  These places are more than ten times older than any building you can visit in Australia, and in typical Italian fashion are just kind of haphazardly left open and unguarded for people to wander around and walk on at will.  Huge, priceless chunks of ancient marble sit by the side of the paths, exposed to humans and the elements.  It’s extraordinary what kind of nonchalance is cultivated by having simply too much of something in your possession.  

Part of the Forum

The Forum sits in a large valley situated below the hill and contains the remnants of the structures that once filled the area.  In a time and place where it was critical to “see and be seen” in order to be considered a patriotic citizen, the Forum provided a public area where people could meet and trade, barter at markets, students and average citizens could sit and learn from loquacious philosophers, the senate could meet to discuss various matters of state and all could worship at a variety of monuments to the gods.  Click here to see the photos from Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum.

On the way to Sistene. One of many

The Vatican-ish
Soooo many tourists.  Even getting up and getting to the places super early (which worked a treat at the Colosseum) we still had to wait in a huge queue which still only (thank god) took about half an hour to get us into the building.  In another case of “more is just too much”, the Vatican Museums, including the Sistene Chapel, don’t so much feed your soul as stuff it til it’s nauseous.  I had been to this attraction in 2003 and had no desire to go back but was strong armed into going by my darling mother who didn’t wish to go on her own, and therefore was forced into once more doing the neverending march through room after bewildering room of painting, sculptures, ornate cornices, light fittings, furniture, frescoes and so on and on and on and on. 

I don’t really know what they were thinking when putting this place together, but by the time you actually make it to the Sistene Chapel (and there is no short cut), it’s like... “Meh.  Can we go now?”  I mean the paintings are beautiful and everything but you’ve just seen about a thousand beautiful paintings, you’re sick of the crowds and being pushed around or herded through various areas, completely over the silly and unhelpful signage and well aware that it will be a major trek to get back out again.  It’s not a clever set up, but yes it does contain some of the more incredible and priceless pieces of Italian art in existence.  I don’t know how you could do it so it isn’t annoying and / or overwhelming.  Probably go in winter when there aren’t any tourists, and spend a day there, taking your time and paying attention to everything you want to see.  

St Peter's Basilica

A short stroll away is the gigantic St Peter’s Square and St Peter’s Basilica, a Catholic’s wet dream. After passing through the bag checks, dress code checks and metal detectors (and giggling at the ridiculous uniforms of the Swiss Guards), you pop into the world’s largest cathedral and are immediately assailed with ten thousand things begging for your attention.  We agreed it’s not beautiful in the strictest sense of the word.  It’s overblown (of course) but also just very grand and kind of dark, serious and sedate.  Regardless of the ten thousand tourists talking and buzzing all around, I felt the need to be quiet in there.  It’s impressive.  You can click here to see my photos of the Vatican Museums and St Peter’s Square and Basilica.  You can’t take photos inside the Sistene Chapel itself, and we decided against going into the Vatican proper.

The hot bath house

Villa dei Quintili
A little hidden gem!  A bit of a metro ride followed by a bus ride out of town gets you to this ancient Roman villa which is basically in the middle of nowhere, and has almost NO tourists.  I don’t know how they maintain it, because it’s only 6 euros to get in and there was mum and I and two other tourists in the whole place for the entire couple of hours we were there.  And it’s so huge that we didn’t even need to see the others, so it was like we had it to ourselves.  It had belonged to a rich Roman family and then was taken over by one of the emperors to use as a personal getaway, and contained all the accoutrements of rich Roman houses.  The hot bath house in particular was impressive, with massive three storey high walls still in existence, steps down into what used to be the water, heated by a series of under floor tunnels from huge cauldrons.  The Romans’ use of water is really fascinating.  They were just so clever!  I don’t understand how this technology got either lost of disregarded for so long before coming back into existence, but it was absolutely incredible to see these rooms that were once saunas, bedrooms, entertainment areas, exercise arenas etc.  Some of them still had pieces of marble walling and intact mosaic flooring that had only been uncovered in the last few years and had been sitting there, perfectly preserved, for thousands of years!  I want to be an archaeologist.  You can click here to see the pictures of the Villa dei Quintili.

Exterior of the Castle

Castle Sant’Angelo
This is also known as Hadrian’s Mausoleum, and was used as a tomb for emperor’s ashes starting with Hadrian and on again for the next 150 years or so, when it was then used as a castle, a fortress and finally, a museum.  One of the most complete and intact ancient Roman structures, it can be accessed on all four levels by means of staircases and you can visit old courtyards, dungeons, prison rooms, bedrooms and look at some of the paintings and furniture that had decorated it in the past.  Obviously it has been well cared for and added to over the centuries, so it is not wholly original, but it is still incredibly impressive.  From the top is a terrific view over all the domes of Rome including St Peter’s Basilica and the Tiber River.  The top also contains a ‘death bell’ that was rung when prisoners were executed.  There were some genuinely spine chilling moments inside this one.  To see the pictures from inside and on top of the Castle Sant’Angelo, click here.

Tivoli and Hadrian’s Villa
About an hour outside of Rome is a little village called Tivoli, which supposedly had a “Garden of Water Fountains” which I was quite excited to see, and is also home to Hadrian’s Villa, the huge emperor’s palace and grounds that were his home outside of Rome.  Well the Garden of Water Fountains was really just a tiny little bare sort of playground with a couple of non functioning stone tubs and a statue, but what really made the spot was an incredible view over the lower part of the town and a couple of nearby mountains.  Breathtaking.   

Hadrian's Swimming Pool

Hadrian’s villa was a strange little bus ride and then a walk up a tree lined avenue and through an arched gate into another world.  A world of incalculable wealth and decadence.  Two massive and inevitable swimming pools decorated the extensive grounds, one with statues under arches, a look I intend to create in my mansion when I win the lotto.  Many walls remained standing of the original structures, and enabled visitors to achieve some kind of sense of the glamour and scale of it all.  No wonder modern day Italians are such good builders.  It’s been in their bloodline for millennia!  You can see Hadrian’s Villa by clicking here.

Now, these were the places where we have spent a major amount of time, but there have been many other bits and pieces visited over the last week, and I have taken many more photos.  To see the photos of some bridges over the Tiber, various views of the city, the massive and stunning Vittorio Momument and War Museum (also known as the tomb of the Unknown Soldiers) and the Palace of Justice, click here to visit my first General Rome album.

I felt like a second general Rome album was needed to encompass other famous spots like the Spanish Steps, Pantheon, Piazza del Popoli, the Trevi Fountain and the Leonardo da Vinci Museum where they have actually constructed machines from his drawings (my go that man was  freaking genius!!!) so to see all of those, click here.

There are a million little stories I could tell about things we’ve done and places we’ve seen, annoying tourist encounters (almost all American) the sleazy Italian men and how everything here is either broken or never worked in the first place (we say TII – This Is Italy – every time something is late or broken, or info is wrong or contradictory) but this blog is long enough, so I’ll save them for another time.  For now – Andiamo, arrivederci!

Til Next We Speak

*AMORE*

N

The Adventures of Crazy Pig Stupid and the Fire Giraffes

Distance Traveled:   42,690 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC-RM)

Time Difference: -8 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Clare Bowditch, Regurgitator, Daft Punk, Vanessa Mae

Currently Inspired by: "Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it" Salvador Dali

Stacks: No falls but I missed some branches sticking out of a fence and scratched my legs up
Words written: 89,502. No movement from last week.

Just like this one

As much as I loved Florence I was kind of glad to see the back of it.  Two weeks in any city without a job is a long time, and I got quite bored.  Initially when I booked the trip I had these visions of spending long summer days in the Tuscan hills, getting lifts on motorbikes down winding dirt roads, walking over soft green grass, all tanned in white floaty skirts and sandals, sitting on a red and white chequered sheet drinking red wine and eating antipasto from a wicker basket in the dappled sunshine while fat bumblebees hummed and sang in thick clover nearby.  It was all very Disney.  Every now and again Bradley Cooper or Joe Manganiello would be the ones giving me the lifts on the motorbikes, and then the fantasy would lose its PG rating.  Also I imagined myself coming back from these day trips inspired by the beauty of nature and writing feverishly late into the night in order to finish my first draft, something I have, from the beginning, intended to do by the end of my Italian adventure.  So close.  I'm so close and I just can't finish it!

I rarely entertain expectations about travel experiences, because I learned the hard way, the first time, that they have a tendency to create disappointment.  However the aforementioned images latched onto my brain and clung there tenaciously despite my best efforts to shake them off, so yes it was a little bit disappointing not to experience the idyll I envisaged.  For starters, I barely left the city, only taking one day trip to Pisa which, no matter how cute, is just another city.  I don’t drink alcohol anymore so there was no point visiting Montepulciano (where my old favourite red wine is from) and circumstances got in the way of my going to Siena, so that was missed also.  In addition the most picturesque parts of Tuscany are apparently best accessed via car, and I had no intention of my first right hand drive experience to be on winding roads full of insane Italian drivers!

Is a caption required?

Pisa is really very sweet, and the leaning tower is an odd and arresting piece of architecture to see in person.  Determined not to take one of the overdone “pushing it over” pictures, I strode smugly past the hordes of sweaty tourists getting in each others' shots and shouting in exasperation “NO, Darrell, I said more to YOUR left” and went straight into the nearby church and baptistery.  I couldn’t bear the thought of going to another museum on this particular day, so after some delicious lunch I went back to the tower, looked at the ridiculously long line to climb to the top, shook my head and took off back to Florence and the comfort of my little apartment, to which I became quite attached during the trip.  Click here to see my Pisa pics.

Amazing fountain in the Bargello

As I mentioned earlier, Florence is full of tiny, winding little streets that are packed with hidden gems, and it was during a walk in my last couple of days that I stumbled across one of the best art galleries I encountered while there, called the Bargello museum.  I was actually attempting to shelter from the rain and accidentally ran into its foyer.  When I finally looked around it was like “Hallo there!” and was so glad I decided to go in.  There were loads of famous sculptures, including an earlier and much different David by Michelangelo as well as a selection of Davids by other famous sculptors, all looking a little bit more like the David that I have pictured in my mind (a young boy, rather than a grown man).  There was a colourful and partially uncovered mural on the walls of an ancient chapel, and a vast collection of porcelain, religious objects, household items, personal trinkets and jewellery, some of which dated back to around 300 CE.  It was quite extraordinary to be able to look at a pair of earrings that someone wore 1700 years ago!  I took one last handful of photos in Florence which I included in my second album from last week.  If you have already looked both albums, just click here and go backwards from the last pic.

Foyer of American exhibit

Another enjoyable exhibit I sort of happened across was one relating to American artists who had been inspired by European painters and by Tuscany in particular over the years.  Tuscany has a long tradition of being a European destination of choice for American writers, painters, musicians, dilettantes and gadabouts who would rent hilly villas for a summer and sit around in white suits, drinking, smoking, gambling and being generally more hedonistic and controversial that they were able to be in the United States of their time.  Obviously this whole inspirational aspect of Tuscany has some personal relevance to me, and I found it fascinating to see how Italy became the Muse of so many other artists.

Finally my time in Florence came to an end and I made my way down to Rome, where I have not been for almost exactly nine years.  It is very, very different to how I remember it, probably because back then I had only ever been to New Zealand as a child and London for a day or two, and that was it, and now I have a considerable amount more travel experience under my belt.  It doesn’t seem as big and scary obviously, but also it doesn’t seem as crazy, smelly and dirty as I remember it being.  I’m guessing that after three months in South East Asia and three weeks in Africa, my sensibilities have adjusted to some degree.  I wonder how neat and boring and overly sanitised Australia is going to seem when I get home?  I’m afraid to know.

The men are bold here, and have no problem ogling you in frank and outright appreciation no matter what kind of death stare or dismissive hand gesture you give them, and boy, do I give them!  They have no shame whatsoever, and are really quite chauvinistic which you can imagine I just LOVE, right.  Those of you on facebook might have seen my status update about the man in the park.  For those who did not... I went for a long walk through a beautiful city park and sat for a break and to have a proper look at it before going back, and within a minute I was approached by an older Italian man without a shirt on who asked me for a cigarette, and then a drink.  When I advised that I had neither, he sat next to me and mimed giving a blow job and then pointed at himself, looking at me hopefully.  I jumped up and let out a string of all the Italian invectives I knew and stormed off in a right huff.  Upon later reconstruction what I actually said to him was “fuck off Crazy Pig Stupid”, so not too bad I guess, he got the point I’m sure.  I mean, REALLY?  Ugh.  Sometimes I loathe men, I really do.

Huge war memorial in Rome

I can’t do too much here in Rome right now as my mummy arrives, initially tonight (being Sunday night) but now actually more like tomorrow, as her Qantas flight has been delayed due to avionics problems and she may have to stay overnight in London.  You know, I hear these stories about Qantas, about bad service and delays, yet I must have flown them fifty times and have never had anything but good service both domestically and internationally.  I mean their domestic flights consistently run 15 minutes late, but I’ve experienced that with every airline, and they almost always make up the time.  

So, I’ve been here since Thursday because the plan was to come a couple of days early and hang out with some friends I have here, whose apartment I am staying in while they are on holidays, but they booked a cruise and ended up having to leave before I arrived, so I’ve been sitting around for the last couple of days twiddling my thumbs.  Unfortunately I haven’t been feeling my story which is annoying because I probably had the time to complete my first draft.  However I have been opening the document and just sitting there staring at the cursor.  This is the problem with not being mentally stimulated!

Dali Exhibit Entrance

I did go for a couple of metro rides and walks here just to reacquaint myself with a few different areas and work out some kind of an itinerary for mum and I, and in the process of these I visited a Salvador Dali exhibit no far from the Coliseum, something I knew mum wouldn’t be interested in.  Everyone knows Dali’s melting clocks and giraffes on fire, but I hadn’t before seen his other work, so close up and with explanations, and I found it really fascinating and moving.  I am now inspired to learn more about the man because he was genuinely extraordinary and I think I have become a fan!  It’s highly unusual for me to really love any artist born after the 1600s, so it was quite the revelation and has opened up door to the world of modern art for me, just the tiniest chink.  Click here to see the few photos I have taken already in Rome.

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N

Venus In Firz

Distance Traveled:   42,410 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC)

Time Difference: -8 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Velvet Underground, Muse (before they were crap), barbershop

Currently Inspired by: Every single thing in this entire city

Stacks: Just a few little trips here and there that always happen to people like me who don't pick up their feet on uneven streets - same as last week.  No majors!
Words written: 89,502, weirdly PRECISELY 6,000 words since last week's blog.  I am so close to having a completed first draft I can almost taste it.

 

I must begin with an apology.  In my last blog I said that the interior dome of the Duomo is covered in 3.6² kilometres of painting.  My current travel companion here in Florence, who also happens to be a maths teacher, tells me this is impossible.  I insisted that the thing I read in there said that it definitely had 3,600² metres of painting, at which he sort of giggled, actually, and said that 3,600 square metres is not the same as 3.6 square kilometres.  I believe him, although I still don’t understand why they are not the same thing (this is not an invitation to attempt to explain it to me.  It has been tried, and it has failed.  I’m no good at maths!) however I apologise for misleading anyone.

Cosimo Medici, in the ceiling

Something I simply cannot believe is that another week has passed by so quickly.  As another sunny, sleepy Sunday rolls around, I sit here, full of pasta and fruit, wondering what the hell I have done for the last seven days!  I know there was definitely a trip to the Palazzo Vecchio.  If you don’t know who the Medici family are, you need to check them out here.  They were the ruling family of Florence for centuries and an interesting bunch to the last.  The Palazzo Vecchio retains an extraordinary amount of its original decoration from Cosimo Medici’s (the father of the line) time there, including original statues and art by Michelangelo himself.  Many of the Medicis over the years had themselves painted into mythical or religious pictures in their homes, or had themselves immortalised in marble sculptures.  Woe betide the artist who rendered them in an unflattering manner! 

Another Michelangelo

As narcissistic and self aggrandising as a lot of the art therefore is, it is still incredibly beautiful, in that rich, overwrought Italian sort of way.  The sheer density of decoration in the palaces and cathedrals here is enough to blow your mind.  No surface is spared.  Some of the ceilings alone contain artwork worth a good half an hour’s inspection, and how many rooms do you think there were in the palaces?  In addition, if you are taking a tour, or have an audio guide or a detailed pamphlet, you don’t just look, you have to try and absorb the meaning of everything as well, and as interesting as it all is, again the sheer volume of it is overwhelming.   

“She’s raising her right hand, which indicates she’s banishing the barbarians related to her father from the land.  Her red cloak is representative of the region of Tuscany, and the turtle in the background represents her son, the prince that died in battle whose logo was a turtle.  The sea in the background represents Neptune calling forth the wind to blow away her grief, and the shining beetle next to her foot symbolises her purity.”  (None of that was real by the way, but you get the idea). Absolutely everything is imbued with these kinds of significant details.  It’s impossible, finally, to take all of it in.  You just have to drift around and let things attract you as they may.

Part of Palazzo Pitti

Speaking of which, Florence contains several Palazzos, and none is larger than Palazzo Pitti, a short walk over the Ponte Vecchio, where I recently bought myself a new chain to replace my favourite white gold necklace, lost in Brisbane just before I left on this trip.  This palace is newer than the Palazzo Vecchio (literally the Old Palace) and was the home of the Medicis from the late 1700s, so it is in much better condition.  Again, the profusion of artwork on display is exhausting.  Room after room in the apartments has at least three walls filled with framed paintings, by several of the most famous Italian painters of the day.  Up to 25 were stacked on top of and next to each other in every room, and I’m sure I went through at least 20-30 rooms just in the apartments.  

False front style, to look raised

There are also extensive ceiling decorations in each room, as well as painted or plastered cornices, mosaic frescos, heavy fringed tapestries, detailed skirting, gilded mirrors, masses of hand carved wood furniture, heavy drapery and these gigantic crystal chandeliers the size of small cars, dripping golden light onto every available surface.  The apartments alone would have been enough, but that was only one area of one wing of the palace.  The rest of it contained a modern art museum, a “Japonism” exhibition which relates to the influence of Japanese art on European artists, a modern Japanese art exhibition, a comprehensive costume gallery containing actual suits, shoes, gowns and wedding dresses from the 1700s to modern times, the clothes that Cosimo Medici, his wife and son were buried in, in the 1600s (partially reconstructed), a treasures museum containing everything from golden forks to giant statues, a marble sculpture display, a porcelain museum, and huge rose-filled gardens that rise up to an incredible view.  Exhausted, yet?  I was.  It took HOURS.

Ugly without, beautiful within

Another fairly prominent testament to the hubris and arrogance of the Medici family is the Basilico di Lorenzo, a huge Basilica not far from the Duomo with a frightfully ugly exterior enclosing a precious, if rather spare by usual standards, interior.  Kind of the opposite of the Duomo, which is like someone who spends a lot of time at the gym, getting tanned, manicured, pedicured, bleached and waxed but never tries to improve their mind or say anything interesting.  I think the main reason the Duomo is so dull inside is because they’ve removed most of the interesting pieces from it and put them into a museum in the square which you have to pay to go into.  The Basilico di Lorenzo on the other hand, still contains all of its original works and has behind it a chapel built to house the dead bodies of the Medicis.

I didn’t call it a crypt, because a crypt to me brings to mind a dank, creepy underground place roughly hewn from stone, with holes in the walls.  This was a gigantic round chamber, as tall as the main part of a cathedral, lined in massive pieces of dark grey and red marble, with huge grey marble sarcophagi about the size of a mini van and each easily weighing several tonnes, for the corpses of the Medici men (not their wives or daughters, of course).  One each, with a carved niche above where the coffin rests in which an almost double life sized statue of the said Medici sits, guarding over himself in the coffin.  I mean... come ON!  Were they serious?  It’s a horribly excessive place for a pile of bones to spend eternity in.  Not as excessive as a pyramid, perhaps, but STILL.

Sciency stuff

The Galileo Museum, dedicated to the preservation and display of a crazy number of scientific instruments from the 1500s to early 1900s including the only surviving instruments built by poor Galileo* himself, made for a refreshing, if rather baffling, change from the art and gold and architecture everywhere here. Baffling because what the hell is a mariner’s astrolabe when it’s at home, and refreshing because it’s a curious and interesting thing to see a gigantic globe of the world with a big empty swathe of ocean where Australia and New Zealand are supposed to be (as they were not “discovered” at the time these globes were produced). 

There are lots of little hidden treasures in Florence.  The tiny windy streets make for the perfect setting in which to get lost.  No matter where you go, you are only ever a few minutes away from popping out into a previously undiscovered piazza, no doubt containing some religious, architectural or marble masterpiece.  It’s a place I will hold in the deepest of affection for a long time I think.  It’s definitely going on “The List”.  You can click here to see my second photo album from the delectable Firenze.

A great wet sloppy kiss to anyone who "gets" the title of this blog.

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N

* Why “poor Galileo”?  Click here to read about the persecution he suffered as a result of his incredible scientific discoveries.