Rockin the Gondola

Entrance to a building from the canal.

Derek found a great little apartment in Venice and we arrived Wednesday afternoon on the train. We got on board a water bus that took us down the Grand Canal out to the open bay and around to the eastern edge of Venice to Fondamenta Nuove. There, the landlord Andrea (he's a guy!) met us and led us down a rabbit warren of narrowing streets to the apartment. It a great place, with a decently outfitted kitchen, newly remodeled and with plenty of space. Andrea speaks English with many pauses to think of the right word and understands more or less at the same speed. I throw in a few Spanish words if I think they might help the communication, so we've gotten along just fine so far.

We headed out into the tightly packed city to eat lunch and wander around to see the things before it got dark, which happens around 5:00! And promptly got lost. That was fine as long as the sun was still shining. Maps can still be read, but after a while it got a little iffy. Eventually we made it to the edge of the water and found the place the water bus let us off, then it was just a matter of trying to remember how we'd gotten from there to the apartment.

In these deep city "canyons", some barely the width of two adults and not laid out on anything resembling a grid, it's very easy to get lost. The big streets are the waterways, the solid streets are just sidewalks. We ate lunch at a little outdoor cafe and had an Italian version of a burrito, they call it rolled pizza. We watched a couple get into a small motor boat with their little boy and his scooter, and "drive" away. I think wheeled traffic must be banned within the narrow walkways.  Children and parents congregate in a large piazza every afternoon and the kids zoom around on their scooters.  I've not seen a bicycle, a Segway, or even anybody on roller skates. Of course every time you have to cross the water, there's a bunch of steps up to a bridge and then many steps down. It would be difficult on roller blades, impossible for anyone in a wheel chair, and painful for those with bad knees.

On Thursday, the sun was out but the air was cold. We slithered through the maze over to San Marco, a huge open piazza surrounded by stores and government buildings, anchored on one side by a Basilica and a former palace museum. The church is decorated inside and out with mosaic paintings made from glass tiles the size of a match head in some cases, the larger ones not much bigger than a finger nail. Millions of them, many covered in gold leaf, form paintings of the events of Jesus' life, starting on the east ,where the sun rises, and ending in the west where the Son of God never sets. Upstairs is a display of the bronze horses, identical to the ones outside on top of the church, and many displays of how the mosaics were supported and restored back in the 1930s when the building was dismantled around them and rebuilt over them. I'm not sure why they did it that way, unless the building was crumbling, it was a tremendous undertaking.

There is a bell tower in San Marco square, the Campanile, with an elevator that takes you to the top. From that high point you can see in every direction, south to Lido, north to the mainland and down into the many piazzas and open patios around the city. I think Venice is the most densely packed city I've ever been in, with the exception of a few in India where the streets are too narrow for cars and they too have become walking-tourist attractions.

View from the Campanile

Since the Christmas season is upon us, the stores are decorated with reds and golds. This is by far the most expensive city I've been to in Europe. "Buses", those boats that travel the canals are 7 Euros per ride, even if you only go from one stop to the next one. A day ticket is 19 Euros, allowing you to ride for 12 hours, or you can buy one for 24 hours. However, the prices are not the same for the locals who carry an ID with them, using it to get the "real" price for goods and services.

Prices are Euros per kilo, which is about 2.2 pounds,
actually a lot of fish for the price!

The landlord Andrea has bent over backwards to accommodate and take care of us. He stocked the kitchen with food for a breakfast or two, though that was not in the online deal. He lent us movies to watch and invited us to go with him Friday to purchase fish at the huge outdoor market. It was pretty early so Derek slept in,  and I went. We walked across our section of the island to a gondola crossing. Venice is exactly like one would expect from the movies and photos we've all seen. The goldoliers dress in striped shirts, wear a straw hat with a ribbon, and slowly row romantic couples around in the black beautifully carved gondolas with red heart shaped cushions. (Now that it's winter they have thick jackets with striped sleeves, wool scarves, and ear muffs under the summery straw hat!) Those are the expensive gondolas. The run of the mill gondola, used for daily transport is plain, and has a flat plywood floor. I didn't know what to expect when Andrea told me we would be riding a Gondola, and that it was cheap. He showed his ID and gave the boatman 50 cents for my passage. The riders stand up in this 'regular' gondola, while it gently rocks back and forth with the movement of the giant oar in the back. It was scary! Andrea told me I could sit, but there was no place to sit, I would have had to crouch down. Everyone else (all ten passengers) were standing so I stood too, though there was nothing to hang onto. The ride lasted less than a minute. All boat traffic came to a halt as we slid from one side of the canal to the other, but the waves created by all that traffic still rocked the boat. Andrea said during Carnival (late March or early April), when the traffic was greater, one of the gondolas did turn over, dumping everyone into the cold water. Of course he told me this as we were rocking across!!

Our Gondolier, no straw hat for this guy!

The market is a huge outdoor affair, under permanent cover. The stalls were full of every edible thing from the Mediterranean. Whole flounders, crabs, lobster claws (I assume the rest is sold to the fancy restaurants!), tentacles and heads of octopi, shrimp in dozens of sizes and shapes, bright red fish and pale mottled ones. Andrea went to all of the stalls looking for the best price, then settled on one and purchased 1.5 kilos of large shrimp, some of whom were still moving. Next door is the same setup of cover but for the fruit and vegetable market. I thought by now I'd seen every kind of produce in the world, but I was wrong.

In the buildings that flank the outdoor stalls there are meat markets and bakeries. In this one small area, you could purchase absolutely everything you would need to produce a meal, or ten. Everything is fresh and boated over from the mainland. It's not cheap, but it is less expensive than in the grocery stores. We actually had a bit of difficulty finding a grocery store the first night. Part of the reason is that the entrance to any store is just a door on the front of the building. Only jewelry and clothing stores have window displays. The very nice grocery we found occupies a large space but the majority of the space is at the back of the building, it's huge compared to what you expect walking into the small storefront. The other reason is that there are very few full scale grocery stores. After seeing these fresh markets, I could see why.

A cabbage-like vegetable called Treviso

Fish monger

Interesting fish for sale.

Little piggy sausages!

Bits and Bills of Florence

The rape of a wood nymph atop
a fountain in the Liberty Plaza.
I wondered if there might be a
philosophical connection....  

Wrapping up five very full days in Florence means a lot of small stories have not yet been told. The place we rented was up in the north eastern part of town where there are no tourists and few locals who speak English. The guy at the tapas bar (not really called that, but that's what they serve - appetizers and wine....) asked us "What are you doing here? How come you're not in the center with the rest of the tourists?"

Across the street from the apartment, a small bar/restaurant is owned by a charming young woman. Irene bought the tiny restaurant over a year ago, but she had to wait till she was 21 for the license because she is her only employee! She's at the restaurant six days a week from 7:00am till 8:00pm and other than sounding a bit hoarse in the evenings, seems to be inexhaustible. She speaks rudimentary English, tutored by a blue-eyed Rastafarian Reggae musician from Portland, Jamaica, named George. His stage name is Yellow Culture. George is in Europe for two months playing at bars and clubs under a music visa.  Irene gives George lessons in Italian, he teaches her new English words, and how NOT to say them with a Jamaican accent.

Figuring out the buses has been a challenge, and not just for us clueless tourists. Streets are torn up all over the neighborhood. The signs for the regular stops have orange bags taped over with a tiny sign that says the bus has been re-routed. That's it. It doesn't tell you where to go or even what street the bus has been re-routed to. Consequently, we have hunted all over for the bus to no avail and more than once walked all the way to the center of town, a distance of at least 2 miles. One morning, around 8:00, the whole apartment filled with a horrible odor. Gagging I went outside for some fresh air and next to the front door was an open sewer pipe in the bottom of a trench. We couldn't find a bus fast enough that day!!

A delicacy: sugared roses. They taste like
eating your Grandmother's perfume! And
they cost $60 Euros per kilo!

It takes $1.30 to purchase one Euro, so an easy conversion for me is to just add $3 for every 10 Euros to get an idea of how much real money something costs. The large museum tickets cost 10 and 15 Euros, some smaller ones are as low as 6. A typical meal in a sit-down restaurant starts at 12 Euros. Many have a service bar, where you can stand and drink a cup of coffee with a pastry. If you sit down at a table the price doubles. Tips are not expected since the waiters are paid a living wage. And taxes are built into the price so the posted price is all you pay. I actually prefer this to the American system as a consumer, but it is a way of hiding from the taxpayer how much the taxes really are!!

Buildings lit up for Christmas shoppers,
and there are many of them!

My traveling companion, Derek, is an economist interested in the state of the world. In Italy he expected to see evidence of terrible unemployment, falling prices, and a collapsing economy based on what he'd read. Instead we've walked around the center of town through piazzas packed with people doing their Christmas shopping at high-end stores like Gucci, Prada, and Este Lauder. The number of tourists right now is low, so most of the people are locals. The restaurants, while not packed, have been reasonably full. He waved his arm over the crowd and said, "Remember what this looks like. This is how it looks before the fall."  I commented that the US looks like this too. "Exactly" he said.

Down a narrowing set of streets in between several churches, we came to a "y". One street was named Inferno, the other Purgatorio. Purgatorio ended at a T-intersection, you could go either way. Inferno was a dead end.

At the train station, a guy wanted to "help" us and punched the buttons on the automated kiosk, zipping through so fast that we ended up buying two tickets for about 32 Euros more than we thought. Then he expected a few coins for his trouble. Turns out he'd punched in the "base" price, which is essentially insurance that allows you to miss the train and reschedule, or reschedule to an entirely different destination. If you don't buy it and you miss the train, you have to purchase new tickets. Derek figured it out the next day by chatting with an actual train company employee. So from now on, we won't be accepting anyone's "help". So many of these kinds of hidden charges happen to us, because we don't know any better. Just this evening we were charged an extra 3 Euros on a restaurant bill. It was for the cloth napkins! Who knew? I'm a little surprised they didn't charge extra for the plate, I left actual germs on that!!

Other Florentine Art

 Not all the art in Florence originated during the Renaissance. There are a couple of modern art museums and the Pitti Palace has an exhibit of "modern" art, that of the late 19th century!

Scattered around here and there are examples of unfettered creativity, and more than a little skill. These photos came from a long pedestrian tube running under the railroad tracks. It's not your usual graffiti, nor was it entirely done with spray paint.

The Art of Renting

An accidental bus trip (the bus went right, not left
at the corner) put us in the town of Fiesole, an old Roman
rival of Florence with an amphitheater still is use. 

Derek and I were discussing how amazingly lucky we are to be able to travel, have enough money though neither of us are rich, and see the world as it is right now, at the pinnacle of human achievement in technology if not in art. 500 years ago the Renaissance flourished here in Florence and vestiges of it are everywhere. We have spent long hours in museums until we almost dread seeing yet another painting of Jesus on the cross, Mary holding Jesus after he's was crucified, or cuddling him as a baby in front of adoring crowds (that surely knew nothing of his birth or potential at the time)....etc. Yet, we keep going because so often there will be something amazing and unexpected, and even those many religious artworks can still amaze in their artistry and by comparison. After seeing the Pieta in St. Peter's Basilica, no other pieta by any other artist stands favorably in comparison, it was such perfection. I find myself almost willing to agree with the person who stated, "Why even bother to look at another piece of sculpture after seeing The David by Michelangelo, the most exquisite work of art has now been seen." Yet, at every turn there is some unknown (to us) artist who has created something worth remembering and thinking about, even if it's only a gnarly looking expression on a gargoyle's face.

Florence has a "museum" to da Vinci as well, with many of his inventions built and some actually work. Drawings and art, albeit most of it is reproduced, it's still an impressive collection. Plus the ticket includes lunch: pizza and beer at the museum's restaurant!

So it dawned on me that without engaging in the art of renting, all this travel would not be possible. I am clearly a novice, I don't know every website that features apartments for rent, nor am I all that comfortable renting a room in someone's home and sharing the bathroom with them. Some rental artists get housing for free using sites like CouchSurfing and HomeExchange. Others get deep discounts with the promise of travel articles and other advertising support.

I doubt seriously if I ever get the very best possible deal on airfare. Not purchasing a train ticket online last week meant we paid almost twice as much in person at the train station, much to my horror. Yet, anywhere, at almost anytime, I can rent a place to sleep, or a seat inside a silver tube capable of hurtling through the skies at 30,000 feet and fully expect to land safely. Included in that pittance of a ticket price is plenty of money for maintenance of the aircraft and training for the crew that flies it. Once in a while an edible meal is included!

I can rent a car, a moped, or a Segway if I chose, rather than spend thousands of dollars to buy one and insure it. When I buy a bus pass for $1.50. I get to ride for many miles, in a large vehicle easily seen by people in other vehicles and therefore not as likely to get into an accident! Plus a professional driver is included in the fare. I can rent an apartment for one night, a week, or a month. I can even negotiate lower rent for longer terms.

And all this has come about because of the advances in technology, the product of the collective human  mind: individual human minds building on the minds that came before them and collaborating with the minds around therm. It is possible because of an unspoken agreement amongst humans all over the world that certain things have value, like gold, and therefore money is transferable and usable everywhere. Should some lose faith in those agreements, in those assumptions, it could fall faster than a lead ball. But meanwhile I get to traipse all over the world where I can obtain the local country's currency out of machines, use a credit card to pay larger hotel and airline bills, and find great deals thanks to the technology of computers, printers, and the Internet.

I'm slowly learning the art of renting what I need, when I need it. I'm learning to discern a good deal from a mediocre one. It's taken a while to learn to read maps in such a way that I don't end up living out in the boonies when I would rather be in the middle of a city. Even a complex city bus map is decipherable, where it was not even readable when I first started out. I'm discovering how to think ahead so I don't end up taking an expensive cab to the airport because the plane leaves so bloody early in the morning; how to end up where I want to be at a decent hour, so I don't have to fight jet lag, confusion, and darkness all at the same time. Like any art form, experience counts for much of one's skill. The rest of it depends on thinking and taking risks. When you don't know where you're going, really, it feels a lot like jumping off a cliff in the darkness. The artful renter takes the leap with confidence, lands in a nice bed in a great place, and is ready to see some sites in the morning.

Maybe I need a mentor.

Long vistas seen from Fiesole.

Florence spread out below Fiesole

To-die-for views and an olive orchard
on the hillside of these two old villas.

Marbleized Paper

A lovely sheet of paper

In Rome, down a narrow little street leading to the Trevi Fountain, Ann, Sheila and I ran across a small store called Il Papiro. They sold paper. And all kinds of items made of and for paper. The seals and sealing wax so popular when I was a teenager in the 60s were on display. Greeting cards, blank books for sketching and writing, boxes and jewelry made with marbleized paper, picture frames, even pens and pencils covered in paper as decoration were for sale. And drawers filled with sheets of paper created with the marbling technique lined the back room. The sales woman gave us a quick demonstration of how marbleizing is done, and a card for the "mother" store in Florence, which somehow got lost in transition.

So I was delighted to be walking down a rainy street in Florence, hood over my head, looking down, when a sideways glance revealed Il Papiro on the other side of the dark street. We popped in, shook off like a couple of dogs, and discovered a treasure of Florentine paper art.

Fine papers have always lined the insides of bound books. In Madrid, in the Royal Palace, I had the fortune of seeing an exhibit, on its last day, of the royal bindings. (Previous blog post: RoyalPalace) Some of those books even had marbleized edges.

The saleswoman in Rome said we should ask to see the same demonstration by the people in Florence as they are so much more skilled. I asked the young lady to show Derek how it was done. She was much better and produced a lovely sheet of paper, uniform, with brighter more consistent colors.

Basically, there is a vat of wallpaper paste a bit larger than the sheet of paper. In olden times, they used a gel made from a type of sphagnum moss grown in Ireland, which now is too expensive. Today that moss is used to create binding gels for food, like ice cream. That's why commercial ice cream remains so smooth even if it melts and is refrozen. Refrozen home-made ice cream forms sharp crystals, ruining its texture (but not the much better flavor!)

The board has pins at regular intervals,
allowing the paint to be "cut" into a lightning
bolt pattern. With a stick, she drew curves
making a flowered pattern in the other half. 

She sprinkled droplets of acrylic paint onto the paste by tapping a loaded paintbrush over the container. Then using various tools she blended the colors creating curvy designs. The paint had a tendency to "melt" into the paste so she had to work fast. It's also possible to use oil paints over water in the same method. Carefully she laid a sheet of absorbent paper over the paste, pressed lightly so all the paint would be picked up, then slid a wooden rod under the paper to squeegee off the paste, and instantly, a sheet of marbleized paper was drooping from her hand.

Like Pietre Dure, mentioned in the previous post, marbleizing paper is an art practiced in Florence and northern Italy by the world's best artists. With the advent of polychrome printing, the art of creating marbled papers by hand was almost lost.  Il Papiro is a company with a workshop employing excellent craftsmen, and it has small stores in several cities in Italy plus more scattered around the world. Their website,  IlPapiro, is worth a visit, and if you live near on of their stores, treat yourself to a demonstration!

Pietre Dure, a Florentine Art Form

Flowers of stone, ready to be fitted into a background.

Florence, Italy, is known as the center of the Renaissance. With French influences, the residence of great artists like Michelangelo and the patronage of the Medici Family, probably the richest family of the time, it was able to build a glorious city and reputation. To this day, long after its time as capital of Italy and the Renaissance, it hosts the world's best artists working in inlaid stone.

Derek and I spent a rainy afternoon at the Palazzo Pitti, the grand home of the Medici family. It is now a museum that should require two full days for the average tourist, more for those who have a true interest in art. Inside are, of course, vast collections of sculptures and paintings. In addition, the Medici family had inlaid stone table tops, floors, furniture and jewelry. Each piece of a stone inlay was carefully selected to provide the impression of whatever it was intended to portray. Azure stone with sweeps of white create wide blue skies, malachite with wavy patterns makes for a perfect hedge, smooth swaths of cream and brown stones create roads, walls of houses or the chestnut hair around a baby's face. The "paintings" created from these inlaid stones were so impressive that we consequently visited a studio where a well known artist, trained by his famous father, is still working in this medium.

Leonardo Scarpelli gave us a demonstration of Pietre Dure (hard stone) -  how he plans a piece, creates small paper patterns, finds the perfect section of stone from many drawers full of thin sheets, all cut to the same thickness, and finally cuts out the section to fit perfectly with the hundreds of others in any given work. His assistant then showed how the finished piece is polished to perfection, mounted on a board and framed. Their shop, Le Pietre nell'Arte, is filled with pietre dure pieces for sale by both father and son, as well as a book filled with projects they've done such as a 15 foot long tabletop for wealthy Americans that took four years to complete. The Medici family started a workshop to develop this art form in 1588, and it exists to this day as the Opificio delle Pietre Dure Museum. 

Leonardo cutting a sheet of stone with a superfine
blade fitted on a bow.

A "painting" in progress

The pieces fit together perfectly,
without any gaps in the seam.

For a wonderful video on this process, click on this link:  

PietreDureDemo

The Vatican & Its Treasures

Hall of Maps, the maps are painted
on the walls, the ceiling is one long
series of beautiful framed paintings. 

Just around the corner from the Pantheon is another Basilica, the Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, easily distinguished by the statue of an elephant with an obelisk emerging from its back. Inside are many works of famous artists including Michelangelo and Bernini. It is almost as impressive as St. Peter's but much smaller. Many of the wealthiest families in Rome's history have "owned" a chapel or two along the edges of the basilica that they decorated, furnished, and dedicated to a particular saint. Many of those chapels are exquisite and filled with treasures, guarded by a locked gate. A large number of priests and other members of the hierarchy are entombed in beautiful sarcophagi, stacked up the high walls with painted ceilings, and surrounded by carved marble angels.

Unusual stained glass Madonna and child,
both gaze directly out from the portrait,
in the Vatican Museum

The Vatican owns vast property in Rome, and contributed to  works of public art such as fountains, and the angel sculptures that line the bridges crossing the Tevere (Tiber) into the Vatican. Some buildings are literally priceless and irreplaceable like St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the Pantheon. Not only do they contain irreplaceable artworks, the building interiors are covered with frescos, sculpted plaster and wood, and in some cases the walls are covered with handwoven tapestries or embroidered scenes on cloth. The Pantheon is a Roman building with a technically innovative roof design that has been in constant use as a temple or a church for over 2000 years.

The ceiling in one of the Vatican hallways

Brilliant painting of an angel showing heavenly
rewards to a virtuous and hard working man.

Ann (with the blue jacket) and I
in front of the Pantheon in Rome

Inside the Pantheon, now a Catholic Basilica,
but with many sculptures and crypts of famous
people like Rafael and the two kings of Italy.

My friend Derek with Egyptian ruler,
in the Vatican Museum

Enormous basin carved from a single block
of stone on a carved base, above mosaic floor
 with Roman mythical characters. Vatican Museum

Idyllic farm, one of many, owned by the church,
sits on top of the amazing catacombs where
thousands of Christians
were buried in miles of passages.
Photos inside the catacombs were not permitted. 

Recent art acquisitions by the church,
looks like it could be a Star Trek Borg Ship:
 Arnaldo Pomodoro's Sphere Within a Sphere.

The exit from the Vatican Museum, a work
of art staircase, built in the 1930s.

Photo of the inlaid floor of the Sistine Chapel, seconds
before a guard told me NO PHOTOS. 

Roman noblewoman's portrait in
a hall of several thousand busts and statues.

In the Uffizi Museum in Florence, there is a copy of this piece, complete with arms and hands. The original is in the Vatican. It's called Laocoön and His Sons  and is one of the most important works of art that was found during excavations of the old Roman city. (For a detailed account of the interesting Greek story behind it, see: Wiki_Laocoon)

It was known to have existed thanks to the writings of Pliny the Elder so it was instantly recognized and brought to the Vatican around 1500AD. Not only did it have historical value, but it also deeply influenced the path of sculptors and artists far into the future with it's perfection of human beauty and idealism. 

Laocoon Group, Vatican Museum