Wonderful walk through Ortygia

Siracusa is a rich city. There's lots of money here and the city has a rich, complex history, in part because it was once the most important city in the Mediterranean, and even when it wasn't such a big deal on the deep blue sea, it is still Sicily's 2nd most important city, after Palermo. The area with the most treasures is Ortygia, the island community founded by Greek settlers from Corinth in the 773 B.C. (just checked my guide book!). I took a really intimate look at Ortygia today, walking with Angela, an Italian teacher and tour guide who kept my head buzzing with beautiful insights and solid information about the history of the buildings and piazzas we explored this morning. All in Italian. I felt good. She mostly understood me, and being a teacher, corrected me when I made mistakes and I mostly understood her, occasionally getting lost and having to get her to explain things a little more simply, which she always did.

We met at the Piazza Archimede (yes, that famous Greek scientist lived, worked and died in Siracusa) and took a meandering route through windy streets (at one point we were on Via Labirinto), starting out in Giudeca, the old Jewish quarter. The Jewish population has since moved onto to less expensive quarters and we passed lots of old buildings being renovated, probably future chicy chicy b&bs. Many of the old bottegas and synagogues have been turned into apartment buildings or Baroque churches. So, why so many Baroque churches in Siracusa, and Palermo, for that matter? Turns out a severe earthquake in the 18th century wiped out whole communities across Sicily and, according to Angela, the rich families in the city competed with each other to build more elaborate churches than their neighbors. In Palermo, it's a little disturbing to see huge Baroque churches with elaborate columns and statues galore neglected, dirty, seemingly decaying in public. In Siracusa, the churches are much better maintained and beautiful. At one point, Angela pointed out a small relief sculpture of an angel, high up on the blank wall of an apartment building (or church?), all that remained of a 12th century church that was leveled by the earthquake.

We walked down Via Delle Maestranze, another part of the old Jewish quarter that is now the home of Siracusa's super rich, and ended up in front of the puppet museum. Sicilian cities all have their puppet companies and I had a look at the simple, but fun stage in the local puppet theater. Two shows on Monday night, based on a Medieval story about a woman named Angelica who is pursued by a knight, Orlando, who loves her. She doesn't feel the same way. One of "spectacoli" on Monday is "Angelica si fuga," Angelica Runs Away. Should be fun.

We then walked to the spring of Arethusa, a pool where "aqua dolce," fresh water, emerges from underground and supports bushy papyrus plants and fish, including koi, and then spills into the salty waters of the bay. Angela pointed out that the Greek myth of Arethusa is one of the stories about women that gives Siracusa it's particular character. In Piazza Archimede, for instance, there is a fountain where Artemis, the hunter goddess, protects Arethusa, a water nymph pursued by a river spirit, by transforming her into a spring. The Greeks believed that Arethusa eluded her pursuer (seems like a running them in Siracusa!) by emerging in Ortygia. One of the other female stories centers around Santa Lucia, an early Christian martyr who is one of patron saints of the city. Standing outside of the church dedicated to her (the church includes a painting by Caravaggio, who spent some time in Siracusa before he was hounded into oblivion by the Knights of Malta), Angela said that Siracusa and Venezia had a long rivalry over her real remains and there was a time when the relics went back and forth between the two cities. Now this was in Italian and at first I thought she was saying that Caravaggio's remains where in contention, but no, she made sure I understood we were talking about the saint, not the sinner.

We took a nice stroll around the Duomo, another spectacular Baroque masterpiece built on top of a Greek temple in honor of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war. Looking at the Doric columns that are built into exterior walls of the cathedral, Angela said that one of Siracusa's tyrants (there were a number of tyrants who had extraordinary powers over the citizens during times of war, and the Greeks were constantly at war, either with the Carthaginians and Romans, when they weren't fighting each other), who was not Corinthian, had an entirely new temple to Athena built next door because he didn't think that a Doric temple was the correct style in which to honor a goddess. Talk about political correctness!

From the Duomo, we wandered up Via Roma and suddenly we were back at Piazza Archimede. Angela had cleverly took us on a zigzaggy circle through the heart of Ortygia and brought us back full circle to where we started from. Later on, after she left and I was sitting down over a tiny cup of espresso and a broccoli and cheese pastry, I retraced our steps on the map and she had effortlessly, but with great style, taken me through many of the high points of Ortygia, pointing out a lot of the historical details that I would never have come across on my own.

I was so glad that Luisa, my contact at the language school in Siracusa, had connected me with Angela because she not only gave me lots of information, but she was interested in what I had to say about many of the things I've seen on my long journey through Italy and that was reassuring, both that I could express myself clearly enough in Italian that she understood me and that I had seen things, like the abandoned buildings in Palermo and the ever-present graffitti calling for the release of Gianmarco, a student activist who is being held in prison by the Italian government, that reflected contemporary realities of Italy that are not included in the guide books. I really liked Angela and I wish her good luck with her work as a teacher and guide. She certainly made my day, here in Siracusa.

In Siracusa

This will have to be a two-fer. I ate dinner late yesterday, and today, for that matter, and was too tired from a great day in the Valley of the Temples to describe what all I did and saw. Today I bused it from Agrigento to the Catania Airport and there caught another bus to Siracusa, interesting drive, kind of tiring, but I'm here, last long stay of this trip.

Valley of the Temples. Where can I begin? I took a city bus to the temples, a mini-adventure in its own right. I asked two drivers about where the #1 bus would take me, but their dialects were so strong, I couldn't figure out what they were saying. But all agreed this was the right bus, I had my ticket and so, let's go. "That will be 10 Euro for the advise," one of the drivers said, and slapped me on the shoulder. Sicilians like to joke, they can be fast and sharp. I get on, things are going good until what seems like an entire elementary school gets on the bus. They're cute little kids, but how am I gonna see my stop, where is my stop? The driver pulls over, waves to me and I wade through all of the kids who come up to my shoulders, "Scusa, scusa, scusa," all the way to the exit.

Now I mentioned wanting to know more about the fertility goddesses. So it turns out the bus let me off at Gate 5, right near the remnants of the Dioscuros temple that overlooks the field where the Greek women performed their rites. Gotta hand it to the park organizers, the descriptive texts at each of the sites was really informative, so much so that I took as many pix of the sign boards as I did the sites themselves. So here's the story about the fertility rites. The women march in a procession, singing and dancing and carrying pigs to the sacred grounds, where they throw the pigs into a pit and then for three days, they sing and dance in honor of Demeter, the fertility god, and Persephone, who I think is Demeter's daughter, who is kidnapped by the god of the underworld. The rites of the women ensure that he allows her to return back above ground, bringing crops with her. The site, and the rituals, predate the Greek settlements, so it's interesting that the Greeks adapted an earlier, Neolithic rite (agriculture was the high point of the Neolithic, I think) and gave it their own religious overlay. So, back to the pit with the pigs. The pigs are slaughtered, roasted and a big feast is held at the end of rites. All that remains of this history are a few holes in the ground where small statuettes and ceramic offerings were hidden for the two goddesses.

The day was sunny, actually got warm at some point in the day, and I really enjoyed myself, walking to the sites, chatting with people on the way -- saw the French couple who were staying at the b&b with me, met two Spanish ladies, I took a picture for them, took another picture for a Rick Steves' tour group outside of the mammoth Temple of Concord. The entire valley site is a bit of a mystery. The temples, most of which were just piles of decaying columns and suggestions of floor plans, all have names that may or may not reflect who they were built for; i.e., the Dioscuros, which I believe are the Gemini, Castor and Pollux, probably have nothing to do with the original temple. But the dating is interesting. The temple of Hercules, the earliest, is from the 6th century B.C., from the time of the original Greek settlements. Of course there were other people living on these sites first (perhaps those fertility rites were ones their women practiced), but the Greeks were determined to build colonies and they forced the early folks out (or turned them into slaves). There is a long history of warfare between the Greeks and the Carthaginians, the Phoenicians who settled in North Africa, built Carthage and established colonies on the Eastern side of Sicily. Some of the temples and the urban environment around them were constructed with the labor of defeated Carthagaginians. Then, of course, the Romans came around and that was the end of the Greek story.

I also walked to the archeology museum, a good climb up a steep highway, where there was an amazing collection of vases from the 6th, 5th and 4th centuries, and all kinds of other artefacts, many of which came from the Hellenistic settlement across the highway from the museum (3rd and 2nd centuries, after which the Roman's put an end to the Greek settlements in Sicily). Still having trouble distinguishing the stylistic differences between the different era -- some feature black figures on reddish grounds, others reverse the process, forming the shape of the figure with surrounding black on white or red clay and then drawing in the details in delicate, expressive lines that remind me of Art Nouveau. The graphic style is fascinating. The details on the black vases are produced by incising, literally drawing with a sharp tool on the black paint, and strengthening the design with selectively placed white paint. Very, very clean and expressive. Tales from Homer, the myths, many domestic scenes (aristocratic women "at their toilet" -- gotta love that one!). And some of these vases are quite large, with very different scenes on the front and back. In addition to the vases, there are rows and rows of glass cases housing fragments of statues, figurines, pot shards, pins, on and on. Overwhelming.

So now for the Hellenistic quarter. I read that you can still see floor mosaics in the ruins of the houses. But not on this trip. The gate was locked. And so I walked back to the Valley of the Temples and had to rely on the good graces of the guy who originally told me how to get to the museum. Turns out, once you leave, you can't get back in. A little fact no one tells you. But he was good, he waved me in. So, can I get to the Hellenistic quarter from here? No, he says. When I ask him why, he shrugs his shoulders. They are under restoration and lack of staff. Really too bad, I wanted to see those mosaics. But undaunted, I hiked up yet another steep road to get to the Temple of Concord, one of the few temples that has a documented name. It fared better than the others, in part, because it was turned into a church at some point. The walls of the cella, the big room that is the inner heart of the temples, were cut into arches to form a nave, the main space of a church, with passageways on either side. So like the fertility rites, the traditions of one people are carried on by others as they borrow and adapt what works for them.

Back in Agrigento, I treated myself to a big meal, pasta with seafood, a green salad and grilled vegetables and for desert, some cassata, a Sicilian cake made with flower and ricotta cheese. Had fun with the waiter, who wanted to talk about American politics. The restaurant was fun. I was the only one there for a while and everyone once in a while, I'd see the cook and this little boy, his grandson I guess, playing outside in the street, laughing, grandpa really indulging his grandson. Really sweet. And the waiter and the cook would get into singing fragments of something back and forth at each other. Sicilians seem to like to laugh and sing and harass each other. I saw a lot of horseplay and good-natured teasing.

So this morning, finished packing, shared photographs with the French couple -- they took photos of me and I shot them -- and found out they were going to Siracusa, same shuttling bus route as me, only an hour earlier. Maybe I'll see them over the next couple of days. My new friends from California are here, too, but I haven't heard from them.

Had a good, brief conversation with the young woman who handles breakfast in the morning and preps the rooms. I asked her if she worked any place else and she said she only had this job and she was lucky because there is little work for young Italians. I asked her if she had gone to the university and she explained that after Italian students finish their compulsory education, they have to make a choice that often determines what they will do for the rest of their lives. They can opt for university or for trade education. She choose trade and now there is no work. I've heard this story before. Young Americans are also facing limited prospects in the work world, but there is still some flexibility, if you have good skills across disciplines, you are more likely to find a job than if you are a specialist. Of course, you'll probably get worked to death in the process.

OK, bags packed and hike over to the bus terminal. Turns out our bus is one of those big two deckers and I got one of the front windows for a beautiful view of back country Sicily. The island has been the bread basket for the rest of Italy since the time the Romans overran the Greeks. So there are lots of open, green spaces and rolling hills, lots of farms, few forests or uncultivated spaces, and every once in a while, a hill town. The Greeks built their cities on the hill tops and we passed Gela and Enna, two very important Greek settlements.

Did I mention there was no bathroom on the bus, and that we didn't stop anywhere long enough for rest stops? It got a little stressful, especially after the first two hours. It was a great drive, but really, no rest stops?

I made good time at the Catania Airport. Only stood outside for about 20 minutes before the Siracusa shuttle showed up. A bus full of college students and a couple crusty looking, older tourists like me. Never did find out why some many university types, although Easter is coming and perhaps this was the beginning of spring break.

Got settled in my room, yet another slightly musty, funky b&b that has seen better days. That being said, I really enjoyed myself in Palermo, so we'll see what happens in Siracusa. Did find a great laundry mat, finally got some of those socks and underwear cleaned properly. Guy who runs the place visited Joshua Tree and wanted to talk about his experience in the Mojave desert. That was fun.

Tomorrow I go for an Italian lesson and a walking tour with a young woman from a language school here in Siracusa. At one point, when I didn't exactly know what I was going to do on this trip (was that ever possible?!), I contacted a language school about maybe taking classes. When that wasn't going to work, I suggested maybe one class, combined with a walking tour of the historic district and my contact at the school for someone to work with me. Kind of wish I'd done that at the beginning of the trip, especially when I was really struggling with Italian. Now I'm tired and my Italian is breaking down again because I'm exhausted.

And staying up late to do these blogs doesn't help. What's the matter with me? Why can't I just wrap this up and go to sleep? You know, I think that's just what I'm a gonna do. Ciao!

Spring in Sicily

Wildflowers along the highway. Yellows and reds and purples. Lovely. Our bus took a two-lane highway through low rolling hills, green from all of that recent rain, farms, some industrial works, and every once in a while, the church bell towers of a hill town, the houses with their terra cotta roofs spread out like a miniature village. Would have been an idyllic ride if it weren't for all the stops-and-starts, the highway under construction for miles and the bus wouldn't start, once, the cars around us whizzing past us on the green light as the driver futz around to get the big Pullman bus into gear. Part of the adventure, I guess.

Said goodbye to Andres, the volcano tracker, and Luigi, who gave me a big bear hug, kisses on the check. I got used to my funky, chilly room and those great breakfast conversations. Got one last picture from my balcony (I could finally stand on it and not get drenched!) and then dragged my bag down to the street near the train station where the buses come to visit once in a while.

Agrigento is much more quaint and culturally rich than I expected. Giuseppe, a guy in his early-30s who manages the b&b L'Antica Via, made sure I knew there was a Bernini sculpture in a nearby church, and encouraged me to check out some of the other Baroque churches in the city (see that, Mary, those churches are just waiting for me, honest, I didn't ask for this!). I'm in the historic district, lots of up-up-up-scale shops and cuteness, and neat stairways up alleys that lead to more b&b's than you could ever imagine. But then again, everybody I met in Palermo was either going to be in Agrigento today, or was planning to get here today, like my two new friends Charlotte and Deborah, who are now sitting in Palermo because their car broke down! They're having the Sicily adventure and enjoying themselves as they collect travel stories.

I've been really happy about the way my trip has gone. I spent a lot of time researching b&b's and transportation options and so far, things have been great. I really like my little single room here. A tiny single bed, I've gotten used to sleeping in doubles (miss my partner who hasn't been on her side of the bed with me since I left San Diego!). Nice room, nice chat with Giuseppe.

OK, so my goal tomorrow in the Valley of the Temples is to discover as much as I can about the Chthonian deities, Demeter and Persephone, fertility goddesses who have their own little pit full of sacred offerings that supposedly preceded the Temple of Hercules, the first big temple built here in the 6th B(efore) C(hrist), or B(efore) C(ommon) E(ra) (what a silly way to avoid including Christ's name in a date, especially as BCE starts when Christ was rumored to have been born). Anyway, who cares about that stuff? I'm tried and I'm getting cranky!

Here in Agrigento, having a good time so far. Off to the temples tomorrow! Ciao!

Arrivederci Palermo!

It's hard to believe that my time in Palermo is rapidly coming to an end. Tomorrow, I drag my suitcase down to Stazione Centrale and hop a bus for Agrigento, home of the Valley of the Temples.

This has been a good stay. My b&b, Alle Martorana, has been OK, a little funky, some might say down-in-the-heels, always a little chillier than I'd like, but a good place to call home for a couple days. I've really enjoyed the company of the other visitors over the breakfast table. Maybe I'll see the German couple in Agrigento tomorrow, they left for there earlier today. And I've liked Andre, the volcano chaser who wanted to speak Spanish this morning, so I got in some Espanol on top of Italiano, and, of course, English, because everyone speaks English except Luigi, who runs the b&b. It's been fun calling this place "home" for a few days.

Went to the archeology museum and discovered, much as I expected, that the main exhibition areas are closed for renovation, which is really awful because this museum holds an amazing collection of artifacts from the Phoenician and Carthiginian settlements in Sicily as well as all kinds of good stuff from the Greek occupation. But I follow someone's suggestion and went a block on the other side of Via Roma and found the Palazzo Biancaforte, which houses a collection of 5,000 artifacts, many of which were taken from Grecian grave sites on the island.The Biancaforte is a specialist's museum and I'll never claim to know a lot about the differences in style between red, black and white Greek vases, but I was very engaged by the way the human figure was represented in each of the styles. I'd like to know if there was any relationship between the vase art and the development of Byzantine art, which relied heavily on Grecian artists.

So after an hour or so studying vases, I found a cool street with a puppet theater and a row of artisan shops where craftsmen either made marionettes or built miniature objects or entire, small scale scenes. And then lunch. A great buffet for 10 Euro, a big plate full of friend anchovies, sausage, mussels and steamed veggies. While I was chowing down, I heard my name and there were Charlotte and Deborah, my two new girl friends from the bus trip to Monreale yesterday. They sat down and drank wine and coffee and we continued our chat. They asked me if I had met any other Americans on the trip, and in fact, they are it. I don't count the obnoxious kids from Connecticut I met in the airport in Rome. This has been a mostly Italian trip, forcing me to speak as much in Italian as I can and that's been wonderful. And I discovered that Deborah was born in the same hospital that I was, Hartford General, and in the same year. She speculated we had the same doctor. That would be really amazing. I'll have to check my birth certificate.

Charlotte and Deborah went on their way and I found a cool street where there's an busy outdoor market. I got my digital tape recorder out and kept it running as I walked through the market. Workers were taking down the stands, shouting at each other in that intense, sing-songy dialectic that I just don't understand but think is pretty cool. I haven't listened yet, so not sure what I got, but the way people talk here is fascinating.

By the time I ended up at the Cathedral, I was feeling bushed. I decided the skip this one -- it's a massive building and I'm not sure I can take another warehouse of religious art. I stumbled around, found yet another puppet theater, snacked on cappuccino and a pastry and then headed back here to rest. Big travel day tomorrow. So far I've been getting around by train (except, of course, for the flight here on Saturday). Tomorrow I get the Pullman bus experience. Looking forward to a ride through the countryside, away from Palermo, which is really the biggest city in Sicilia.

I wasn't sure about Palermo when I first got here, but it has grown on me. Lots of hidden treasures on these winding streets. Now on to hilly Agrigento and hiking about from temple to temple. Weather looks good for the big hike on Thursday.

Arrivederci Palermo! A dopo!

Palermo and Montreale

Quite a wonderful day today. I got to a place I've wanted to see for many years, and when the rain clouds drifted away, I got to see the mountains surrounding Palermo, spectacular!

During breakfast, I shared my street art pix from yesterday and Luigi, our host, told me to go to Mercato Vucciria, just a few blocks north of here, if I wanted to see more street art. The students from Firenze were gone this morning and in their place we had another German, a young man who is visiting volcanoes and taking closeup photos -- he's on his way to Mt. Etna, in eastern Sicily. We pointed out that Etna has been erupting lately, that he might not get as close as he wanted after all.

Mercato Vucciria is a pedestrian strip lined with curio and junk shops, used-book sellers and all kinds of food -- produce, meat and seafood. And funny street art. My favorite is a large foot made out of Swiss cheese, standing on a block of cheese and giving the thumbs up. A pair of socks floats randomly over a couple blue water drops and somehow I think the stinky socks are linked aromatically to cheese kid. Weird and funny.

So, explored Via Maqueda, which runs parallel to Via Roma, noticing a strong African and East Asian presence on the street and in the shops. The German couple had mentioned discovering a contemporary art gallery, but couldn't remember where it was. After a very funny conversation with a couple of guys at a museum I thought was the Risa Gallery, they pointed me back up Maqueda to Vittorio Emanuele, the direction I had just came from, to Piazza Bologna, where I discovered that Riso is closed, the next exhibit happening on Friday, when I'll be in Siracusa, if the travel gods are with me. Not disheartened -- I just had a quick conversation, in Italian, about contemporary art. And I noticed a half-dozen used bookstores in Quattro Cantu, the name for the intersection of Maqueda and Emanuele, where the four old districts of Palermo come together. People have a passion for books in Palermo.

But I was on another mission now. Find the stop for the bus to Monreale, home of the famous Duomo with its treasures of Byzantine art, and the ticket office for the Cuffaro bus line, which is going to take me to Agrigento on Wednesday. The area around the central bus station in almost every Italian city is a hot bed of traffic and rivers of people exiting from trains and flooding towards them, and Palermo being Palermo, the streets were pulsating with people and Pullman buses and hellion motor scooters. But the travel gods were with me. Found the AST bus stop for Monreale quick fast, got my round trip ticket and figured I'd have enough time to track down Cuffaro, use the WC in the train station and get an early start for Monreale, knowing that the cathedral wouldn't be open until 3:30pm and it was only a little after 12. Ended up going to the wrong ticket center for Cuffaro, and started getting my travel jitters and then calmed myself down when I realized I had the info in my notebook. So I got to the right address, learned that I could only buy tickets on the bus and learned where to catch it. Great! Rushed over to the WC, discovered that the cover charge is only 80 centissimi -- it's 1 Euro everywhere else (except for Venice, 1 Euro 50 centissimi). The turn style wouldn't take my Euro, but I just happened to have 80 centissimi, what a relief! And then realized I just missed the 12:30 bus to Monreale. No problem. I found a lunch place, ate a funky Sicilian pasta dish (round Cheerio noodles with tomato sauce, a bit of ham and cheese), and headed back for the bus, and it was waiting for me. And while I was sitting there, it started to rain. A clap of thunder and everyone in the bus jumped. Whoa, what's that all about?

Now, I neglected to mention an important fact. I opened my shutters this morning and discovered sunlight. Wow, where have I read about that funny yellow stuff that makes you feel good when it falls across your overcoat? I had to take the lining out of my jacket, I was getting warm this morning wandering through Mercato Vucciria. Weather started to cool down while I was eating lunch and got my umbrella out while I ran through the traffic like everyone else in Palermo, to get that bus.

The drive to Monreale was so interesting. Heavy, heavy traffic and the bus just crawled through the city, got out of town and started a slow climb up the hills that surround the city that I hadn't actually seen before because of the low rain clouds. Turns out, Monreale is a small, packed little city that lives up in those rain clouds.

Now, as I was getting off the bus, I saw these two women talking with a bunch of curious looking men at the bus stop wearing straw hats covered with flowers (I guessed they were German Catholics ... don't ask me why!?!), the women were saying they came from Berkeley, California, so I introduced myself and the three of us were sort of chummy as we followed the winding main street of town towards the elusive Duomo that everyone said was just ahead of us, but of course we couldn't see it until suddenly it was looming over the shops. And sure enough, it wasn't open for another hour. So we had coffee and talked about California and life in general and then they decided to check out the cloister of the Duomo and left while I was finishing my espresso.

Now, I had to use the WC. It's pretty common in Italy for unisex bathrooms -- maybe separate toilets for the sexes (not always!), but oftentimes a shared anteroom, with sinks, hand dryers, etc. Now this WC had been taken over by Italian high school girls, and a couple of their male classmates. When I opened the door and heard all of these chattering, laughing girls, I thought I had gotten into the wrong bathroom, but no, they had taken it over. Feeling a little old and foolish, I headed over for the cloister, bought my ticket and discovered that there was no WC there, so back I went to the restaurant, got back to the WC and it was the girls' turn to feel a little embarrassed and they fled en masse, with their boyfriends, leaving me the men's toilet all to myself. A very funny moment. Later on, in the Duomo, I noticed the kids were pointing to me and giggling.

The cloister was wonderful. I had seen photos in the art history books of the Romanesque carvings on the column capitals, but I had no idea each capital was unique or that the figures were so animated and articulate, retelling biblical stories or enigmatic fables or were, maybe, just fanciful decorative designs, totally abstract or cleverly packed with fat fowls or chubby griffins. I took as many photos as I could with my smartphone and felt enraptured. There was a heavy downpour, but everyone in the cloister was protected by the ceiling overhead and the figures were so charming and delightful, I really felt transformed. I ran into Deborah and Charlotte, my coffee buddies, and they were in the same place as me, just tickled and astounded by the carvings.

The Duomo itself was another one of those Byzantine master works which, like San Apollinaire Nuovo in Ravenna, has that curious flattened, schematic treatment of the human figure which I always thought was rather stiff and unemotional, but is, in fact, a very powerful means of expressing deep religious feeling in a very economical form. I know the Normans built the Duomo but I don't know how it came to be decorated by Byzantine artists. I know that Venice shared a love-hate relationship with the Eastern Empire and the commercial tie with Constantinople lead to an artistic exchange, and once the Byzantine empire fell to the Turks, Venice hosted the fleeing Byzantine artists. How the Normans and the Byzantines mixed in Sicily is a story I need to dig into.

The cathedral was a spectacular showcase tor the retelling of old and new testament tales, and the passion of Christ and all of the liturgical iconography that represents the core mythology of Christianity. Just the shear scale of the works was impressive.

Around 4:15, I said goodbye to my new buddies and trotted off to the bus stop, thinking the bus would leave at 4:30. Nope, it left at 4 and the next one wasn't until 5:30pm and now it was raining again. So I headed for a coffee bar, got a pot of chamomile tea, found a little table outside and decided to kill time by drawing. It was chilly and damp, but I thought, what the hell, I just had a great art experience and I'm dressed for the weather, I'm gonna sit here and draw and know the bus will get here yet. In fact, the driver recognized me from the drive before and said he would be leaving in twenty minutes, which gave me a little more drawing time, and then he tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a little wave of the hand --"Andiamo!" -- and back at the bus, I ran into the two gals from California.

Now this bus driver was a great guy. Charlotte and Deborah had gotten bus tickets, but for the wrong line and at first he wasn't going to accept them. But then he took pity on the gals and said he'd take their tickets. He could've been hard nosed -- as it was, the tickets weren't any good to him, but he let it pass and the women were happy and impressed at what a good guy he'd been. For all of the raw edges and frenetic pace around here, people have generally been really nice, helpful and willing to cut you slack when you need it.

We all walked back from the train station together and had a fun chat. Turns out they'll be in Agrigento the same time as me, on Wednesday. We laughed that we would see each other somewhere in the Greek temples. That would be nice. I liked their company.

Just a great day, all around. Thank you, travel gods!

What to say about Palermo?

What to say? It's raining here, and chilly. Not exactly what I expected in the south. Sitting around the breakfast table at our funky b&b, the couple from Germany and the two students from Firenze, another couple, all expressed their surprise at the weather. Everyone is going to Agrigento, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and we all wished each other a sunny day for hiking the Valley of the Temples, where the largest collection of Greek temples, in Italy and, who knows, maybe everywhere else, is located.

Getting to Palermo was relatively easy, but exhausting, hence no blog yesterday. I got up at 6:30am, packed my bags (thank God, most of my clothes were finally dry), ate breakfast, paid my bill and then trotted down to the train station to catch the 8:33am local to Bologna. Shuttle bus from Bologna Centrale to the airport, checked in about 45 minutes to spare, and flew to Rome. Killed an hour-and-a-half there, people watching, eating a panini, trying to chat with some American teenagers from Connecticut who were taking the same plane as me. "So, what are you going to do in Palermo?" Kid looks at me like I'm a ridiculous old person and says, what do expect? "Gee, I don't know. We're just doing this for school."

Flight to Palermo pretty easy, though air traffic so heavy at Fiumicino that we didn't leave until almost a half-hour past our departure time. And now we're in Sicily. The airport faces an incredible mass of rock, yesterday covered in a rain cloud, moody and dramatic. How do we know we're in Sicily? Everything seems to move at a different pace here. People from my flight started getting frantic when none of our bags showed up at the baggage carousel. Then they started coming, three at a time, long lags in between. Mine was one of the last. But not the last. Found the shuttle bus to get into town and then we sat there for about a half-hour. Time to eat an apple and think about how I finally got to Sicily. I now  have about 12 days left in my trip.

What to say about Palermo? Watching the streets whizzing past the shuttle bus windows, I was thinking of New York. Very cosmopolitan shops, nicely dressed people, streets a little too narrow for all of this traffic, motorcycles flying through pedestrian walks, almost hitting elderly people, young folks everywhere, lots of hip-hop vibe, kids with odd haircuts and punk caps, running through the traffic against the light at intersections, hordes of young people on the streets, raw energy. And the closer we get to the central train station, the more humble, if not humiliated, the streets feel. Old, old buildings, feeling neglected. Strange, strange mix of raw energy and abandonment in the Kalsa area, where I'm staying.

Today took a walk through Kalsa, not so much to visit churches -- they are everywhere in Italy! -- but to get a feel for this world. It was the center of the Arab occupation back in the, let's see, 9th or 10th century? and then the Normans came in, in the, let's see, 12th century? And so the guides I looked at described things to look for -- Romaneque-Gothic churches with Norman and Arabic influences. At first, all I found were narrow, narrow windy streets, and then parks. I found Piazza Marina, a nice old park with gigantic alloro (bay laurel trees) and an open air market. Lots of curiosities: an old book of court records, imitation Byzantine icons and crucifixes, a table full of Nazi war medals. And then the rain clouds drifted in. I found myself under the portico of an official looking building and waited out the rain. Reading the graffitti. Calls for a demonstration to free a student activist imprisoned last October to keep him from leading more student protests. Satirical pictures of Renzi, the current Italian Prime Minister. A hand-written offer for oral sex by someone claiming to be a real princess. Only 10 Euro. Started taking pictures of said street culture and when the rain let up, continued on my way through Kalsa, feeling more and more uncomfortable as I found myself being the only person walking down narrow streets leading to very large abandoned buildings and modern ruins everywhere. It's pretty crazy. I spent some time trying to find the Arab Gate, which marked a certain era in Palermo's history, and instead found this amazing graphic, covering the entire corner of an abandoned and collapsing apartment building. A giant pink man-pig with a dozen dried up teats. Wow! I saw some amazing wall frescoes in the north, but nothing as wild and in your face as this. This area had the feel of a bizarre time warp, as though packed apartment buildings, balconies filled with laundry getting soaked in the rain, shared the same space with ancient Roman ruins, except these were modern, abandoned ruins. And then there's the giant man pig. Couldn't think of a better way to express the disgust, despair and anger that people must feel here. Like I said, I actually started feeling uncomfortable walking by myself in this area and I haven't felt that way anywhere else in Italy. Once in a while, I would see two people, maybe a group of four French people, maps in hand, stumbling out of wet alleyways, and I'd think, what do the locals think when see this bizarre parade of foreigners looking for Romanesque-Gothic churches when their neighborhoods are in such a state of decay?

Started to rain again, so being the seasoned traveler that I am, I found the take-away window of a restaurant and ordered a fried eggplant sandwich which I ate, standing under their canopy to avoid the rain. God, that sandwich was great! I ordered a bottle of water and when I was fumbling to get a Euro out of my pocket, the guy at the counter said, "Hey, don't worry! Mangia, mangia!" I've noted in other places about Italians and bel figura, looking good no matter what. Well, these guys never heard of the concept. They were all short and tubby and grimy looking and talked a mile a minute and every once in a while, they'd break out in song they all thought was pretty goofy and they'd break up laughing and teasing each other and singing as they worked. There are sometimes when I wished I brought my audio recorder and this was one of those moments. Standing under an awning, wolfing down a fried eggplant sandwich and listening to some untranslatable Palermo dialect spoken by people who are engaged in life, no matter how raw and different it seemed compared to other places I've been to, especially in the north. Come to think of it, Palermo reminds me of Mexico and Tijuana, and I think its that 3rd world vibrancy that puts off Italians from the north. But then, what do I know? I'm just passing through.

Anyway, that little bit of raw Palermo got me out of my existential nowhere place and got me laughing. It's a good thing to laugh in the rain. It really doesn't care how you feel, so just go with it and know you can always change into something dry later on. That's what I have to say about Palermo so far. Let's see what tomorrow brings! 

Laundry blues in Ravenna

This will be a short post. I'm off to Palermo tomorrow and I may leave the Astoria sooner than I wanted, just to be sure I can make my airport connections from Bologna's Centrale train station. As I write this, my clothes are spread out all around my bed, on the shelves and flat surfaces, anywhere I could put them. Italy is a great place to visit, but not always so easy for doing laundry.

Now, I could've sent my stuff to the dry cleaners, but that's 5 Euro for pants, 2 Euro for t-shirts, etc. Really adds up. But then so does the coin operated machines that don't work all that well, either. The folks at the front desk told me about a self-serve laundromat near the train station, so I packed my knapsack full of socks and underwear and the usual stuff, and walked about 15 minutes to the train station.

Needless to say, things got complicated right away. The washer didn't work at first. This other guy who had just come in started banging on the buttons and opening and closing the door until it started. Great. Then I couldn't figure out how to get the dryer to work. Meanwhile, someone else came in and he couldn't get his machine to work and I helped him. There are instructions on the wall, in English and Italian, but that doesn't mean that the machines actually work. And I ended up doing two cycles in the dryer and my clothes were still wet. So back to the room, spreading everything everywhere and cranking up the heat.Clothes are drier now, but I probably can't really pack things until the morning, which I'm not happy about because I always like to pack the night before and just leave.

But I guess I'm learning to go with the flow. I leave earlier than I wanted and I pack my bag in the am, like I didn't want to.

And where do I go tomorrow? Sicily, Palermo. 55 and rainy tomorrow, sort of like the weather in Northern Italy. OK. Go with the flow. Got my umbrella, coat and boots. Palermo, here I come.

It's Ravenna, c'e' sole!

I woke up this morning, window dark, just another rainy day in Italy, and then I drew up the accordion blind and my God! Sunlight! Wow, when's the last time I saw the sun? Trying not to let the weather get in the way, but the rain and chill have been hard to take. So, after a great breakfast here at the Astoria Hotel (no b&b this time, got the best deal I could at the Astoria), headed outside for that glorious sun. Turned out to still be chilly, but a good sweater and my overcoat are the best armor I could don for Northern Italy.

Today's meditation is on the inside and the outside. Hit all of the big art historical sites here today, which is easy to do, they're all within a quick walk of each other, and struck by the dissonance between what a mausoleum or church looks like from the outside and what surprises await inside. Thinking that my experience of Ravenna has been a lot like that. The buildings outside of the historic center of town, say along Via Roma, my main corridor, are a bit dog eared, a bit battered. Padova had a vibrant energy, people moved quickly on the street, a bustle of energy and purpose. People in Ravenna seem to float. You see very nicely dressed women in stylish black jackets and black sunglasses, drifting down the street on bicycles, that bel figura, looking good, maybe looking better than the environment you're in, maybe your fine presentation is a protection from . . . well, who knows. But there feels to be a wariness in the air here. But you go into the historic center, all pedestrian walks and no cars, and there is more hustle, more young people, more money. Classy shops and real estate offices. The sweet filling in the chocolate candy that's turned a little chalky with age?

Back to the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. A tiny pile of bricks. If someone said, o yeah, I visited the shed of Galla Placidia, I'd know what they were talking about. I saw this large, classy building, but the gates were locked and when I asked the ticket checker if that was the mausoleum, he shook his head. "No, that's the museum. You need a separate ticket." And the mausoleum? He pointed to the pile of brown bricks. "Ecco."

Inside, honey light drip from the thick alabaster windows and pairs of figures, evangelists or saints, sparkle blue and silver against dark backdrops on green mats where pairs of doves drink from the fountain of ever lasting life. I can't tell you how stunning the interior was. Especially after the busload of Italian school kids left. So you're standing shoulder to shoulder with what look like middle school kids, totally lost, blank eyed and antsy, and their teacher leads them out into the sunlight and they're touching and poking at everything within sight. Teenagers are teenagers everywhere! But back to the hot buzz of eternity. Overhead, the ceiling is sparkling with stars surrounding a golden cross. Here is one version of fifth century Christianity, paid for by Empress Galla Placidia, who ran the Western empire after her brother, Emperor Honorius, died. Her son, Valentinian was a minor and too young to rule -- perhaps in middle school? -- , and so Galla left her husband, Ataulfo, the Visigoth King of Spain, to take charge of the empire. The mausoleum became a place of rest for Honorius, for her other husband, Constantius III (don't ask), and, of course, for herself. All of that, packed into a little pile of bricks.

But Christianity in fifth century Italy was experiencing growing pains. We all know the empire eventually gave in to the barbarians, but did we know that the barbarians, or at least some of them like the Visigoths and the Orthogoths, had converted to Christianity, but the wrong kind of Christianity -- Arianism? Ravenna hosts two very similar baptisteries, the Neonian or Orthodox baptistery and the Arian one. I just don't know enough about Arianism to understand the difference, but the iconography is very much the same, though stylistically different. The Arain baptistery is very spare except for the ceiling, which portrays the baptism of a very young, beardless, nude Christ. It's funny, at about the same time as the Arian heresy, Christianity couldn't decide how to deal with the tricky business of Jesus being both God and Man. He wasn't portrayed hanging from a cross for decades (centuries?) because the representation of the death of his physical body distracted from the knowledge of his divine nature. If you look at this Christ, you won't have any doubts about his gender. Just try that today and see what happens! The baptism includes John the Baptist and the pagan God representing the Jordan River. Yes, pagan and Christian images mixed. And a circle of apostles form an honor guard below. Interesting, they are represented in a flat, stylized manner that recalls the abstracted Byzantine manner of the Basilica of San Vitale. Curious, because the Byzantine Emperor Justinian abhorred the barbarian presence in Italy and lead an invasion to drive them out. It failed, but some very amazing art was left in Ravenna as a result.

The other baptistery, the Neonian or Othodox, represents the very same scenes and figures, but in a fuller, more muscular and naturalistic style that reflects the naturalism of classical Roman art. In fact, people come to Ravenna to mark the stylistic differences because very shortly, that assured naturalism, both feet on the ground kind of naturalism, was going to disappear for about a thousand years.This baptistery, also a small pile of bricks, was impressive, every surface sparkling with golden light and layer on layer of imagery reflecting the inclusiveness of orthodox Christianity. The guide book in my room points out that the newly converted probably saw the reflection of Christ in his baptismal fount, which had to be very poignant and reassuring.

Just too much else to describe right now, especially because I'm tired and I have a full day tomorrow. I also saw the Basilica of San Vitale, another masterpiece you can't describe in a few words, the Basilica of Saint Apollinare Nuovo, another Byzantine master work, and the National Museum, a treasure chest of prehistoric, Roman, Venezian-Byzantine and Ravennan art. One neat happenstance. As I was coming into one of the galleries, I heard a lot of noise like sheet rock being screwed to the wall. Turns out it was the capital, or crown, of a classical column was being packed up in a one-of-a-kind wooden box for shipment to an exhibit. The guard walked me into the room where the museum staff was working and let me watch the assembly for a few minutes. I thanked her and said you usually only see the objects in a museum and this was a treat to see real humans at work, making a museum function.
    

Reflective on the way to Ravenna

The hard thing about traveling is that you are traveling, touching ground for a few days, seeing great things, meeting people and then moving on. I was feeling separation anxiety this morning in Padova and I guess I was surprised at how sad I felt about leaving. Not so much about leaving Padova itself, an interesting city with a complex history. I liked the people I met at my b&b, especially Chiara,of "A Casa di Chiara,"a very feisty, opinionated, strong woman who was constantly questioning me about life in America and how I see the world. For instance, we spent almost an hour checking me in on Monday because she kept interrupting me to go off on tangents about Italian taxes and the American primaries and why Hillary Clinton can be facing some many obstacles when Trump is such a clown and how can anyone take him seriously?I really liked her, but didn't have much of chance to get to know her much better than I did.

So we got into an ongoing joke about paying the tourist tax. I owed her 2 Euro for my 2 nights at her place, but she made me an offer. If I proofread her boyfriends resume, in English, I could skip paying the whole amount. Now I already gave her 1 Euro and I didn't really want to proofread his curriculum vitae, but she kept reminding me, "It's your choice, read his resume or pay me one Euro." So I figured, what the hell. I gave her that Euro (I think I did?!) and then I proofed his work.I guess I did it more because I like both of them and this little engagement was more than just the usual host-tourist thing. I liked both of them and if I could help a little, sure, why not?

Is there any reason to be surprised that I was feeling a little sad about leaving? But I got on the neighborhood bus, got to the train station and milled around for way too long, like everyone else. There's a cool thing about Italian train stations. Sometimes there's a piano and random travelers will sit down and play. Now, I saw this big Yamaha piano outside of a sandwich shop and I thought, I love to play music when I'm feeling down, so I sat down and started doing some gentle, sad chords and riffs. I got out my tape recorder and let it run as I just let my fingers drift. It felt good. And then I noticed this woman standing near me. She said, "I'll play, too." So I got up, surrendered the bench to her and she started pouring out classical numbers and pop songs -- I think I heard "Besame Mucho" in the mix. Pretty soon people were hanging out in the corridor where the piano was parked, listening intently. What a wonderful moment!

Train ride to Ravenna was pretty uneventful. Saw some sun for a half hour and then drizzle into Ravenna. Had a change over in Ferrara and rode for many a mile with a carriage full of teenage kids. Teenagers are teenagers everywhere. They were cute and really annoying and luckily they got off after a few stops. However, the train was suddenly quiet. Nobody was going to Ravenna except me and a few other folks in my carriage. Maybe the tourists take the slightly more expensive FrecciaRossa (Red Arrow) train; I was on the cheap local veloce (fast) train, only cost 12 Euro to go from Padova to Ravenna.

So here I am, at the start of another adventure in another historic Italian town. Already had a nice food experience. Looking for dinner, I found this little hole-in-wall gastronomia, a "take away" place where people buy prepared food for dinner. Or you can sit at the counter facing the wall and eat in, like I did. Paolo, the manager, cook and all around good guy, got me to try the cappellini, sort of a tortellini filled with doughy egg, cheese and something else, cooked with a tomato-ground beef sauce, a local dish, according to Paolo. Really good. And a plate of vegetables. I haven't had good cooked veggies in about two weeks. So they were cold. I wolfed them down and had a couple cookies Paolo makes with his own home made peach jam. We chatted a little bit about pasta, the local tagliatelle is made super skinny. Turns out the word tagliatella come from the way the pasta dough is cut, "tagliato," into strips. I was telling him about Fiorella's great pasta noodles cut out of flour she has made from chestnuts she and Giovanni collect in the fall.

What a nice start to the next couple days in Ravenne. Ate well, had a cool chat about pasta and now I'm getting ready for bed. Cool.

Interesting day in Padova

What makes for an interesting day? Great art, good conversations and food, good, basic, high-protein food. Today's crappy weather, and I mean crappy -- lots of rain, high of 39! -- didn't get in the way, but I'm a Southern Californian now and a chilly day in the rain gets exhausting.

Great art: Dropped into the Palazzo della Regione on the way to the Scrovegni Chapel. Padova is a city of frescoes and the Palace of R was a feast of 'em, all walls covered in Giotto-esque panels including the signs of the zodiac, the seasons, angels and saints, wild beasts and more. The Palace also houses a giant wooden horse constructed by Donatello. Then onto the Scrovegni Chapel, the masterwork by Giotto. So Scrovegni was a usurer, a money lender, and his act of contrition was to build this chapel and commission Giotto to decorate it. In Giotto's vision of hell, there are money lenders aplenty being tortured by devils (and I imagine that there is an anti-semitic thread here because that was the Catholic Church's chief grievance against Jews in the middle ages -- untrustworthy money lenders). Of course the visions of hell are always more interesting than the ones of heaven, and that goes without saying here. Really beautiful chapel, almost too much to describe. I also met some students from Mass Art in Boston and it was fun to chat with some young Americans, in English.

The Museo Civico, where the Scrovegni is located, also hosts a fantastic archeological museum, with really interesting displays including a recreation of a pre-historic burial site with urns for the ashes of an important couple and other relics buried with them, and another burial site where a warrior was interred on the body of his horse. The museum focuses on the remains of all of the various groups of people who settled in the area around Padua, and how their cultures influenced the language and civilization of the region. Very informative.

And if that wasn't enough, the Pinoteca, or picture gallery, featured work from the 13th to the 17th centuries. Padua has always had a love-hate relationship with Venice and much of the collection is an attempt to highlight the work of regional artists, though much of that work is derivative of Venetian art. But don't tell that to a Paduan!

As for food and conversation. I've been getting my chat time with people everywhere, especially around trying to find galleries and interesting places, and, of course, food. Here's an example: My feet were cold and I was getting tired of the drizzle, so I came back to my b&b (A Casa di Chiara), took a little nap and then hit the road again. I found a place that served chicken and potatoes and devouring protein has become something of a mission for me since I've gotten here. But turns out the kitchen isn't open until after 7, which left two hours to kill. What am I gonna do? And pizza is a poor substitute for food. So I found a place with a poster of Galileo and decided to walk up the two long flights of stairs because it turns out Galileo was teaching at the University of Padua when his discovered the moons of Jupiter with his brand new telescope. Surprise! The exhibit was a show of needle-point art based on Galileo and astronomy and children's fantasies about the moon, and so forth. Not exactly what I was looking for, but it was a sweet exhibit and I picked up some information about the rivalry between Padua and Venice. The woman who was overseeing the exhibit told me that the room, which included frescoes and art about local historical events, was used by the city in the past, I think, as a meeting place for making decisions important to the well being of the city. She pointed out a shield with a figure, Padua, kneeling before a lion, Venice, with a dog nearby, bearing its teeth. She said, "That's Padua tell Venice, don't get too close!"

Alright, so that was good for a half-hour, but now I was starving. That's when I found a rotisseria, a shop where they sell baked pastas and fish and roasted chicken and potatoes. Hey, that's exactly what I wanted and now I didn't have to wait until after 7pm. So I chowed down on half a chicken, a pile of roasted potatoes and grilled zucchini. God, I was hungary! And it turns out the guy who waited on me had visited California and wanted to share his experiences with me. Really nice. And the food was inexpensive (about 9 Euro for all of that) and good.

So, on my way home, the last good conversation. I hear someone playing an accordion and I stop, put some loose change in the coin box and start chatting with him. His English is really good and after he tells me about all of the kinds of ethnic music he can play, I ask him for a song from Bulgaria and there he is, thumping away, singing in Bulgarian and then he says, "This is from Turkey" and now there's this amazing dance rhythm and he's going on, until his cell phone rings. "O sorry, I have to take this," he says. I drop some more coins in the box and head home. Finally I'm feeling fat and happy, warm and dry, ready to call it quits for the day. Yep, a very nice day in Padova!

The pink inflated phalluses of Padova

I'm discovering that I'm a nervous traveler. Now Mary knows it, for sure, but I'm coming to realize that I get the gitters just before I board a vaporetto, or find my seat on a train or plane. I settle down once I settle down. One of my goals on this trip is to be a more relaxed traveler.

So I said goodbye to Mario this morning and dragged my bag down to the vaporetto stop in the pouring rain. There's an electronic marque outside of the stop, giving you the arrival time of the waterbuses, where they stop, all that good, useful detail stuff. So I asked a couple folks which vaporetto was quicker, the 4.1 or 5.1. They laughed and said it was all the same, they all go to the train station and you just take whichever one comes first. And there was the 4.1 and they gestured for me to hop on board, which I did, and very quickly Fondemente Nuovo was disappearing behind me and we were heading for the waterway that takes you to the Grand Canal and the train station.

After an antsy half hour, the train arrived. I checked with a conductor, made sure I was at the right train, which, of course, I was. Now, I had a second class ticket -- it only cost 4,10 Euro -- but you don't get an assigned seat. So I asked where I should sit and in English, the conductor said, "Sit anywhere. All of the seats are free." Great! I dragged my bag on board, hoisted my backpack and bag in the overhear luggage rack and sat down, to settle myself down and once the doors locked shut and the engine started running, I settled right in. See, no problems. What's there to worry about, nervous traveler?

It only takes about 30 minutes to get to Padova (or Padua) and about 10 minutes or so into the trip, a short, official looking conductor appeared at the far end of the train and began checking tickets. I noticed he had longer than expected exchanges with each passenger and he looked like he was getting frustrated as he spoke. Finally, he was getting closer to me. It turned out that almost everyone, including me, was sitting in the first class car and he was making everyone either pay an extra two Euro or move. I hear him say, "This happens all of the time. The sign on the window says First Class."

He got to me, explained yet again what was going on and I said, "La prossima carrozza" and he shook his head, "Yes, the next car."

Now, we only had about ten minutes or so to get to Padova. I figured by the time I got a seat in the next car, we'd be stopping anyway. So now I had to struggle past the conductor as he started making his way down the car punching tickets. He now had a packed carriage filled with the folks he'd just evicted from the other car.

I sat down and made small talk with the people sitting in front of me, when I realized they were speaking Spanish. Turns out, they were from Mexico City, on a whirlwind tour of Italy, on their way to Paris. It was kind of fun, switching to Spanish and we had a nice chat.

And, of course, just as the conductor was making his way to our seats, the train pulled into Padova. I waved my ticket in front of him and asked, "Padova?" and he looked disgruntled because of course he never got to validate my ticket. "Si, Padova," he frowned.

Alright. Here's where a little planning ahead paid off. I found the tourist office in the train station and picked up my Padova Card. It'll get me into the Scrovegni Chapel to see the Giotto frescoes tomorrow, and other places while I'm here, plus I get free public transportation for 48 hours, about the length of my stay. I started out feeling a bit nervous and travel weary this morning and now I was feeling pretty good. The nice signore in the office stamped my card, I found my bus, and 15 minutes later, I was chatting with Chiara, of A Casa di Chiara, the b&b where I'm staying.

Turns out Padova is a big university town. Mario and Anna's son graduated from the medical school here, and walking towards the center of the historical part of town, I noticed there were young people everywhere.

Now, I also noticed something very curious going on. There were lots of people hanging out in front of one of the buildings and some of the young men where wearing wreaths around their shoulders. Then I saw a nice looking guy with a funny purple cap and a wreath, being taunted by his friends, including a couple of guys with a big, pink plastic penis. They kept poking him with the penis and everyone was laughing. Then they formed a gauntlet, he ran through and his friends pounded him on the back, laughing. What was going on? Was this some wacky way of celebrating an upcoming marriage? So I approached one of the friends and asked. Turns out he just got his degree in medicine and this was the traditional way to celebrate the occasion. Actually, he was supposed to read a long description of his many accomplishments in school while he friends pelted him with eggs and mayonnaise. But what was going on with the pink prick? "Oh, that's part of the tradition, too. But the mayor of the town is against this, so we are doing it anyway, but we have to be careful."

Walking away, I noticed another crowd gathered around a pretty young woman wearing a funny blue hat and wreath, her face covered in blue paint, who was standing inside a big cardboard box while her friends bopped her on the head with another inflated penis. I never did find out what she had done to win this honor, but everyone was having a wickedly good time. She had such a crazed, happy, embarrassed smile, I felt happy for her, too, I think, So, on the biggest day of your life, you get to be publicly humiliated by your friends. I guess that's Northern Italian humor for you. 

Pasta Arrabbiata and High Water

Interesting day, with a couple firsts.

Was feeling a little down, a couple disappointments on the trip I won't get into, and bad weather. Yesterday was sunny but chilly. I woke up feeling a little groggy. Ate breakfast as usual -- folks at Alle Fondemente Nuove have been great and their breakfasts have been just what I need to get myself going. But not so much today. Mario said the weather was chilly, with a good chance of rain later in the day. I watched that dreary sky, finished my breakfast and crawled back into bed for another hour or two. But I got myself up, showered, decided to get out there and do Venice, no matter how iffy the weather outside or iffy the weather inside of me.

And so, my first first. Wandering around Rialto earlier this week, I found the traghetto stop. You pay 2 euro and you get gondolaed across the Grand Canal. Takes a few minutes and certainly beats walking. So I said to myself, hey, I can stand up like the Venetians do when they cross. So out we go into the Grand Canal, motorboats speeding by, it's a busy waterway, but the gondola has a wide, flat bottom and I'm feeling pretty OK. Well balanced? I wouldn't push that one. But OK, that is, until we end up in the middle of the canal, wedged between two vaporettos (big water buses) and suddenly the gondola is spinning around as the guy in the back is now at the lead and my balance is getting shakey. Like I said, the gondola is really stable and by the time I straightened up from my lurch, the boat was smacking against the dock and I was at the Rialto fish market. Cool!

Today was also a good art day. The walk to the church of San Polo was brisk, no rain but certainly as cold as it has gotten since I came here on Monday. San Polo was wonderful. A moderate-sized church, it features some very grand paintings by some very grand masters. Stand outs were a last supper by Tintoretto and a very powerful "Stations of the Cross" sequence by a young Giandomenico Tiepolo. I don't know anything about the art of the mid-16th century, but the Tintoretto work was full of contorted, straining bodies pulled towards the rising sun, symbolic, symbolic, with a solitary figure standing in the shadows, symbolic, symbolic. "The Stations of the Cross" were equally dramatic, each scene filled with deep pain and grief, as the weariness and anguish on Christ's face is played against the cruelty of Christ's tormentors and the impotent remorse of his followers. Tiepolo sets Christ and his tormentors against dense, compact crowds and very gestural, suggestive backgrounds that frame the drama without detracting from the action. Really impressive painting.

Then back into the chill. The wind started to pick up by the time I found Santa Marie dei Frari (Saint Mary of the Friars), a massive cathedral packed with grandiose sculptural installations, including a monument to Venetian sculptor Canova that I've seen in art books -- a huge pyramid tomb with angels and a parade of mourners marching towards the dark opening where the master has vanished. Next to this was a monument to a long gone Doge, the temporal leader of the Venetian Republic, featuring massive pillars representing Africans carrying cushions on their heads that support the shelf holding a bust of the dead Doge, quite bizarre and creepy. Not all Venetian art is high art or even very good.

But there were gems here. A huge assumption of Mary in the main altar by Titian, definitely a classic textbook work, but just stunning in scale and the balance between the weightiness of human throngs watching a weightless Mary floating into the glories of heaven accompanied by very human, chubby angels -- now that's a feat: fleshy, yet weightless cherubs. (There was also a rather bizarre work in which bearded Franciscans in big floppy hats and heavy brown robes are also weightlessly rising into Paradise, wisely listed in the church's little guide as a "minor work").

I love Giovanni Bellini's work and there was a very nice altar with panel paintings of "Madonna with Child and Saints" dedicated to the deceased mother of the Tron family. Bellini's figures always strike me as highly personalized portraits characterized by a somber formality that ritualizes and universalizes barely constrained feeling.

I also really liked another "Madonna with Child" panel painting by Paolo Veneziano, from the early 14th century.

OK. Back here for a rest and then off to supper. I noticed that the water around the vaporetto stops seemed agitated and high, but it was raining and the wind was blowing and I was hungry. When I got to the pizzeria, the manager was saying something to the couple ahead of me about the water. There was a good six inches of water at his doorstep and I thought he was complaining about customers bringing in wet coats and umbrellas. He certainly discouraged the couple and after they left, he was discouraging me. "Non capisco," I said and he pointed to the water outside and then to an imaginary waterline above his knee and said, "Aqua alta" (high water), as in the sea flooding Venice. "Ho fame," I said. I'm hungry, I'll deal with it later. So he let me in and the waiters took my order and while I'm shoveling down my salad, I notice no one else is coming in. The restaurant is doing a crash business in takeaway pizzas and then I notice that customers are getting up from the tables and putting on knee-high rubber boots and leaving. So I called the waiter over and asked, how high was the water supposed to get? He holds his hand up to his hip. "In Piazza San Marco. Adesso," Like, hip deep in Saint Mark's Square, right now. And at Fondemente Nuove, where I'm staying? "Non troppo." Not too bad, he says, holding his hand to above his knee caps. Wow, I'm thinking, I can just see it. Feeling content from a nice salad and pasta and washed out to sea at the vaporetto stop on my way home. Now, he brings out my plate of steaming pasta arrabbiata ("angry pasta," 'cause its got a spicy bite) and I say in fumbling Italian, "Can I get that to go?" He looks at me with a puzzled expression, asks the woman in charge of the orders if they even do that and she frowns at me but says OK. A couple minutes later, I've got a big plastic pail wrapped in foil and a plastic bag, I pay for my meal and start puddle jumping home. But for all of the panic in the restaurant, the streets aren't flooded. The water level is definitely high at the vaporetto stops which are right in front of the b&b. Then, as I'm eating my cold pasta, Anna and Mario come in and we have a funny conversation about Venice when it floods. Turns out our street is on high ground, the aqua alta is only going to rise a manageable amount and their street never floods. Almost never. Mario says in the 25 years they've lived here, he only saw a couple inches of water seep under their door frame, once or twice. But Saint Mark's Plaza does go deep because it is low to the sea. And the restaurant was going to get messy 'cause it's on low ground, too. I'm leaving on Monday, will this settle down by then? Mario laughs and makes like he's swimming. "No, no, don't worry, you won't have to swim to the train station!" And that's my second first -- aqua alta in Venezia. Even as I write this, I haven't actually seen any high water. I'm hoping that tomorrow when I get up, my boots will be dry, the sea will kindly go back to where it belongs and I can get to a couple more churches before I catch a train on Monday to Padua, or Padova as they say around here. High water and pissed-off pasta. What a great stay in Venice!

Faith and Iconography

Today gave me a chance to revisit two places that have stuck with me ever since our first visit to Italy, twelve years ago. Santa Maria dei Miracoli (Saint Mary of the Miracles/Miraculous) caught out attention one day when things weren't going so good. Mary had just lost her new tripod, we tried backtracking to see if we could find it and there was this church with a green patina dome, reflected in a canal and a bit out of reach, but breathtaking in its simplicity. Mary took a photo that she has since used over the years, one of her better Venice pictures. The other place, the Museo Ellenico, home to a beautiful collection of Greco-Byzantine icons and panel paintings, changed my life. Today I had a wonderful opportunity to reflect back on the way my experience of Venetian art twelve years ago opened me up to the powerful expression of Catholic/Christian iconography and how I've since come to understand the spiritual value of art.

Santa Maria dei Miracoli is often called the "jewel box" church because it is small, compact and sparkling inside. The first Renaissance church in Venice, it has a simple, elegant floor layout -- a rectangle with a high walls and a tall dome, a very high altar in relation to the pews, and a highly detailed ceiling patterned with golden rectangles and arches that frame some fifty portraits of prophets and saints. Other than some sweet statues of angels and saints and childlike figures carved around the runners of the altar, the church is spare and calming, not at all like the busy art warehouse churches that suffocate you with an over abundance of every style of art ever produced here. And on the altar is a simple representation of Mary and the Christ child, bright carmine in a somber black frame, the miraculous icon that gives this church its name and its power.

I did my tourist thing, snapped some pictures of the altar and the sculptures and the relief of one of the evangelists high up in the corner. And then I put my camera away, knelt down at a pew and prayed for a few moments. I don't pray very often. When I came back from that first visit to Italy, I suddenly realized that looking at all of that religious art was bringing back memories of my Catholic school days, and memories of how much I was affected by the rituals of my neighborhood church on the East Side of Buffalo, New York. For many reasons, I came back to the church, attended Mass regularly and took communion. I did this for almost 3 years, but after all of the revelations about pedophilia and the institutional cover up by the Vatican, it became increasingly harder and harder to accept the ongoing criticism of American Catholics. Sermon after sermon, the priests, especially ones from Spain, would say American Catholics think too much, thinking is an act of pride, just surrender to the Church because the Church has already solved all of your problems. I don't think so.

But the calming silence of the empty church, suffused with light around the painting on the altar, put me into a reflective place. I said a "Hail Mary" and then meditated on what the spiritual means to me. I can't separate the body from the spirit, I can't embrace those traditional notions of life after death, the resurrection of the dead, the millennial return of Christ. Our spirits are integral to our bodies and salvation, I am coming to believe, has more to do with the creative realization of human powers than any absorption of a vapory spirit into a transcendent, invisible heavenly kingdom. The rituals and the iconography represent stages of spiritual growth, useful tales that help us understand birth and suffering and death. I prayed that I would find salvation in the resolution of my fears and uncertainties about life, not an escape route from the body. I always wanted to come back to SM dei Miracoli, to discover what was inside of her and I found myself reflecting on what was inside of me. Such is the nature of a personal religious experience.

As for the Museo Ellenico. It is late and I'm tired from walking all over Venice, looking for art. The biggest revelation from today's visit is in the outsider aspect of Greek art in Venice. Art history tells us that things began to cook in the 12th and 13th centuries, when the rigid, formal, schematized iconography of Byzantine art started to melt around the edges as Giotto and his contemporaries added volume to the human figure, set in more naturalistic and dramatic settings. In fact, the art collected in the Museo Ellenico is very much about the highly unorthodox way Byzantine artists, fleeing the collapse of Constantinople and the sudden victory of the Turkish empire over the decaying remains of the Eastern Roman empire, absorbed elements of Western art -- narrative conventions explored by Giotto and the later International Gothic movement -- to produce work in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries that was absolutely out of step with the full bodied, fleshy, materialist art that we come to think of  as Venetian masterworks. At the same time that Titian and Tintoretto were manifesting the spirit in fully realized, bombastic materialist forms, the Greco-Byzantine artists were producing a cartoon-like retelling of old and new testament stories in a dynamically fragmented picture space that reminds me of the kind of crazed psychological representations you would find in Juxtapose magazine in the 1990s and early 2000s. I think I may be the only one of the planet who sees this connection, but i'ts one I wanted to explore ever since my first visit to the museum. The visit today only confirmed my original intuition that there are lessons to be learned from an art that maintained a tradition no one but the Byzantine refugees wanted to perserve. That's a fascinating story.

From the terrace of the San Marco Basilica

Ever since I first saw the Byzantine basilica of San Marco twelve years ago, with its glowing cluster of domes dominating Venice's Piazza San Marco, I've always wanted to return for a visit insde. I just never suspected that a clerk in the baggage check room would have had so much influence on my experience of it.

You can't bring back packs and other large bags into the basilica. OK, fine, makes sense. Finding the bag check was not so easy--it's tucked away on a side street facing the basilica-- but once I got there, the guy hands me a ticket and says, "Be back in a hour." An hour? I've been wanting to see this masterpiece for twelve years and expect to spend hours studying every mosaic and statue, and he shakes his head. "Most people do it in an hour. You can too."

The basilica, modeled on a church in Constantinople/Istanbul that no longer exists (I think), is layered in tiers, with massive mosaics covering every possible surface. I'm particularly interested in Byzantine mosaics because they figure into the strange dance between naturalism and abstraction, becoming the dominant mode of representation as the Greek Byzantine wing of the Roman empire rose while the western portion sunk into the dark ages, losing in the process its love of the human figure presented in its natural shape and mass. And we know from our art history classes that the flattened, schematic formality of Byzantine iconography was supplanted by a return to naturalism in the Renaissance. Turns out, I like the abstract approach and wanted to get up close and personal with Venice's appropriation of Byzantine art, and that would take time, I thought. Until I realized that the ordinary viewer's access to the actual art is extremely limited. There is a corridor formed by chairs set up in the basilica for regular church services, and your access to the art is limited to the path around the chairs. If you crane your neck, you can look up at the mosaics covering the walls and ceiling and interiors of the domes, and if you twist your body around a bit, you can spot some of the work on the lower levels. Takes about 15 minutes to complete this loop and out the door you go. I decided to pay 2 Euro extra and get a closer look at the Pala D'Oro, the gold panelled  screen behind the altar decorated with rows of tiny jewel-like angels and saints. Now that experience, added to the loop around the chairs set off with red cords, took about a half hour.

As I was heading for the exit, I puzzled over just how elusive this experience is. Sort of like the mystical experience of religion -- you can read about it and search for it and when you stand in the house of worship with the external signs in front of you, it is remote and unreachable and unreadable.

So, feeling like I just did not have enough basilica under my belt, I opted to climb that old stone stairs up to the museum and terrace. Each step is about a foot and a half high, and by the time you scale the stairs, your heart is pounding and you're clutching the railings, afraid of falling back down the well of the staircase. And then the fun begins. The museum is wonderful, filled with large scale drawings and models of the basilica, beautiful fragments of mosaics damaged during various reconstruction works over the centuries, and, best yet, access to some of those tiers you can only see if you crane your neck. Wandering through the upper levels -- access to the balconies closest to the ceiling mosaics is limited -- you still get a much closer, more intimate look. And in the rear-most galleries are massive illuminated choral graduals, the two-panel set of painted covers for the Pala D'Oro by Paolo Veneziano and a beautiful, if damaged Byzantine icon, The Madonna del Latte (the Blessed Mother breast feeding the Christ Child), evidently the original model for other lactating madonna icons in pre-Renaissance Venice. What a treat! And there was even a free public bathroom in the museum!

OK, that was good for 20 minutes. So what to do with the extra 10 minutes before you run back to rescue your backpack? You get to stand on the upper balcony terrace with the replica horses (the originals, trophies from the time when the Venetians captured Constantinople instead of going on to the Holy Land like the other good Crusaders, are in the museum) and take pictures of Saint Mark's Square and the Doge's Palace (picture taking inside the basilica is strictly forbidden -- I watched attendants chasing down those foolish enough to try it). So, for another 5 Euro, the basilica is not quite so remote or inscrutable, though like many aspects of Venice's art history, it requires an interest at the specialist level of detail that is removed from most tourist's experience. I am fascinated by the iconography of Byzantine art, but I don't have the background that it takes to really understand the intricacies of these highly formalized modes of representation.

But what the hell. I was back in the baggage check within the hour, just as the clerk said. Now he wasn't there, so, unfortunately, I wasn't able to personally thank him for his insight into my experience of the basilica. But I left a tip for the guy who was. These Venetian baggage clerks really know their stuff.

Venice & its toilet tickets

My first full day in Venezia and an opportunity to use the public bathroom pass that I paid for with my VeneziaUnica City Pass. I've tried to be a smart traveler, purchasing ahead of time transportation and cultural passes here and in Padova (Padua to English speakers like me), but the process wasn't always easy. I can read Italian pretty well, but even using the English language version of the sites was a challenge. I'm still not sure when my pass in Padova takes effect. But planning ahead helped. When I arrived at Venezia's Santa Lucia train station, my vaporetto tickets were waiting and after a few minutes of watching the traffic speeding along the Grand Canal, I was on the water bus, headed for Fondemente Nove landing, the jumping off place for the cemetery island, and, literally, about 50 feet from where I am staying. No problem catching the vaporetto, no problem using the public bathrooms, I thought.

So today, meandering the maze of streets and campos (piazzas or "squares"), map in hand, I headed off for Rialto, where there are markets, old churches and museums. The VeneziaUnica pass got me into two churches and the Ca'Pesaro, Venice's modern art museum, no problem. By the end of this trip, I may never want to step foot in a historic church again, but Venice's churches, like many of those in Rome and Florence, are wonderful settings for experiencing Italian art history in situ (Santa Croce, San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Novella were highlights of my stay in Florence, in some ways a lot more satisfying than the Uffizi, which felt like the Ikea of art history -- folks jammed shoulder-to-shoulder, trying to be good art consumers, kind of sad and tacky, really). Ca'Pesaro was a treat, some recognizable names, like Kurt Schwitters and Emil Nolde, and lots of good Italian artists no one has ever heard of outside of Italy. The temporary exhibit featured four artists producing post-Arte Povera installations, ranging from the mid-1960s to maybe a few years ago, lots of smashed, crushed glass and wood and steel, scrunched together in curious combinations, very physical and elegant, sort of bel figura with a limp. I didn't take notes and I don't have the museum's site in front of me, so you'll have to forgive my sketchiness and just trust that this was a really nice show.

But along the way, I needed to use the bathroom. Italian cities seem pretty user friendly when it comes to providing public bathrooms. You look for the WC sign, you drop your Euro, or, in Venice, your Euro and a half, into the coin slot and push through the turnstile and there you go. Only when I pulled out my Unica pass papers and showed them to the woman attending the turnstiles, she waved her finger at me and said, "You must have your toilet tickets." The print out isn't good enough? "No, you must have your toilet tickets. You can get them at the vaporetto ticket office." So I trudged back across the Rialto bridge, avoiding the students eating ice cream and the tourists hauling their bags up and down the steps, and went to the VeniceUnica desk at the vaporetto ticket office. There were four sportellos, or service windows. The woman at the first one was pretty busy talking to her coworkers and didn't seem to notice me; perhaps she was talking through her lunch break. One of the other windows opened up and a young woman took my papers, keyed in my account number and gave me a puzzled luck. "Do you have another number?" Hm, I'm thinking, there's number one and number two, and of course she has my account number right in front of her. No, that's the only number I was given, I told her. I picked up my vaporetto tickets and got into the churches without a problem. "Yes, but the computer doesn't show that you have toilet tickets." Huh? My print out clearly showed I paid for a weekly toilet pass, good for 7 visits. She called over another coworker who got on her cell phone and I could see from her expression that my toilet tickets weren't going to materialize easily. Luckily, no emergency here, I just knew I was going to need those toilet tickets pretty soon. So the first woman hands over some of my papers off to guy sitting at yet another window and suddenly I realize each page represents access to a unique service and I don't know who has what. For whatever reason, the third ticket agent had the touch and he printed out my toilet pass and now he's photo copying my pages and then handing them back to me. But how many pages did I start with? Did you give me all of my pages back? The three of them look confused and start checking their desks. "Yes, yes, you have them all." Now I'm reading through the pages, to make sure that I haven't lost something. Then I'm feeling really clever and I say something in Italian like, "Well, I know I'm in Italy because it took three people to get me into the bathroom." I don't think that's what they heard. They looked at me with mystified expressions and I'm thinking, good Lord, what do they think I just said? I stuffed the toilet pass into my wallet, laughing to myself. What an adventure!