MICHELE'S MUSINGS

Italy

Venice- a city built 400 years ago as a tourist city, a showcase for the “navy,” remains a tourist city. Its charm to me was revealed after dark in the plaza of San Marcos, in front of the beautiful cathedral. The plaza is as big as 2 football fields, and by day is full of millions of pigeons being fed by what seems like millions of tourists. At night it is transformed as classical musicians playing in quartets around the plaza belt out energetic tunes with humor and passion like I have never seen. Groups of people (in the hundreds, not millions) gather and move between the quartets...lured by whoever is making the prettiest music at the moment. We enjoyed the novelty of getting lost in the narrow pedestrian only streets, crossing bridge after bridge, and watching gondolas pass under us hauling the many paying customers through the maze of canals. I couldn’t help but be impressed by the tenors accompanied by accordion players crooning “o solo mio” while standing on the moving gondola. We attended mass at San Marcos cathedral, a monstrous Byzantine (Turkish influenced) style cathedral covered stem to stern win gilded mosaics. 1 1/2 days in Venice was enough for us. Lodging was both sparse and expensive...we stayed in a church converted to a hostel...glad to not have to sleep at the train station like many other back packers who couldn’t find a room (and this was still low season!). Cinqua Terra- is a region on the northwest coast made up of 5 hilltowns all connected by train. Once fishing villages, now tourists are the “fish” of choice. We enjoyed waking town to town on the trails laden with wildflowers. The trails are quite narrow at times and not for those fearful of heights. It’s fairly crowded, and lodging is found by asking around at pubs and restaurants. It is a very romantic picturesque spot. After a day of walking between villages we’d ride the train back and indulge in pizza and gelato. Our next stop was Sienna. Set in Tuscany, it has a warm red glow. It’s a hilly town with no cars allowed in the center. It has a few green spaces, but mostly it’s red brick streets and red brick buildings. It’s a city to explore on foot, and get pleasantly lost in. We based ourselves here and day tripped to Florence because Sienna is much quieter and less “big city like”. Florence, like everywhere we visited in Italy in May, was saturated with tourists. We visited the Uffitzi gallery, which had to be evacuated to a bomb scare. We also visited the famous Duomo (cathedral), and the Academy- which I love because it has Michael Angelos unfinished sculptures that look like they are trying to free themselves from their marble confinement. I was in Florence 10 years ago, and it was much as I remembered it. Good food, too many people and cars, lots of shoppers and outdoor markets selling overpriced leather goods...I was happy to return to sleepy Sienna for a gorgeous Tuscan sunset. Orvieto is a small Medieval town set on a high plateau and accessible by cable car from the train station (though boring people can drive up the back way)...you can also take a steep trail up to the town. it is visited mainly by Italian tourists, and this alone is a good reason to visit. It reminded me a lot of the Medieval towns of Spain with its narrow cobbled streets, and grand cathedral. Rome- We stayed at a fantastic hostel called Gullivers, which totally made our stay. In the evenings after our visits to the sites (Roman Forum, the Pantheon, coliseum, Plaza Navona, Trevi fountain, Vatican, St. Peters cathedral etc...) Simon, the owner would take out his books and tell us interesting facts and stories about what we had seen that day. He’d answer questions for hour on end. We spent a little time on 2 occasions with Drew’s UCSD engineer friend Giulio. He gave us a nice tour and showed us views of Rome that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. Rome is thick with traffic-most people drive scooters. The old buildings quickly soot up due to pollution. The year 2000 is a special year for the Vatican and because of this every significant building was undergoing a face lift. Drew said Rome had the most impressive scaffolding of the entire trip. Tome averages 6 million tourists a season. Next year they expect 40 million. The city is behind on all the projects is was building to accommodate the influx. I suspect the year 2000 will be a disaster. 2001 would be a good year to visit Rome. For those sensitive individuals who like to be consistently greeted by friendly helpful locals while on holiday...Italy would not be the place to go. We asked our Italian friend why the shop owners and people in the service industry were so rude to tourists...he replied “don’t take it personally, they are rude to everybody”. Italy, in short is a touristy , expensive, crowded travel destination. For me, since it was my second time, it was more hassel than I usually like to deal with when I travel. For Drew is was an opportunity to see ancient and historic sites that had we not visited, his trip to Europe would have felt incomplete.

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