Final Holiday Thoughts

4 random thoughts on Italy to leave you with:

MUSIC

We heard a lot of old American music playing here, like Queen, AC/DC, and Bon Jovi. In fact an old guy on the train had Bohemian Rhapsody as his ringtone and he kept getting called and didn’t know how to answer it, and eventually people started singing along to it. Then on a different train today there was a young guy playing ‘You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman’ on repeat so loud we could all hear it through his headphones. We’d been thinking it would be nice to hear some Italian music for once but then today in the park I heard a guy with an accordion play the same 15 second Italian sounding riff for 15 minutes in a row trying to make tips from tourists and I decided I never need to hear that again.

CARAVAGGIO PAINTINGS

Turns out if you plan well and are willing to walk over 30,000 steps, you can see 11 Caravaggio paintings in one day in Rome.  (Or twelve if the f*&@ing Borghese gallery doesn’t lend one out to a special exhibit in Naples during your visit.) There are only 60-70 of his paintings in the whole world. Sandy really doesn’t care about this at all and is a really good sport.

SANDWICHES

People think pasta and pizza are going to be the big thing in Italy, but I’m telling you guys- there’s these sandwiches. Very specific sandwiches. The restaurant selling them is right below our apartment on a tiny street in Florence - it started out as a single small place but has grown to four restaurants all next to or across from each other selling exactly the same thing, and at ten o’clock at night there are more than sixty people lined up to get these sandwiches to go. I don’t even really know what’s in them, the whole menu is in Italian- but Sandy took a picture of it and spent half an hour googling and translating all the ingredients to English so I just get whatever she orders. Everything is amazing. We’ve had them for times in six days. The city of Florence had to make a special street ordinance against people eating on our street, specifically because of these sandwiches! The sandwich fine is up to five hundred euros. I’m drooling typing this, guys. It’s because I bought one tonight and ate half of it and I’m saving the other half for breakfast. I’m going to dream about it.

DICK PICS

My kid texted me to tell me that the photo I put of Michelangelo’s David statue on Instagram was inappropriate (or in her words ‘So Mum, you’re kinda posting a lot of dick pics huh?’) I thought that since today is my last day, I’d switch things up and leave you with an ass pic instead. This is a beautiful Bernini statue that I snuck a picture of at the Borghese gallery today when the security guard wasn’t looking for a second. Geez, the things people will do for a piece of ass, amirite?!

Thanks for reading along.

Cinque Terre

Had a bit of a day.

Finally some sun so we took a long train ride to the coast for a beach day. Then, in one of the tiny towns of Cinque Terre, Italy, nine thousand miles away from home, we ran into some Tsawwassen people we know. We were too dumbfounded to take pics with them, but I did snap these:

 

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Took six trains and not once did anyone ever ask to see our tickets to check if we paid. Drank beer. Swam in the Mediterranean. Watched some kids playing soccer in a small netted seaside field, trash talking each other like crazy. They were good. One little boy who was maybe 7 or 8 scored twice and both times he did a blatant post goal crotch grab at the opponents bench in celebration. 

A pretty good day.

Gregorian Rants

Today we went to hear Gregorian chants in a church in Florence. At the top of the stairs outside the church before I went in, I took this photo of the city in the rain. You can even see a bride and groom taking their wedding photographs near the middle if you look closely. Isn’t it kind of lovely? I feel like an instagram influencer posting this.  Hashtag blessed and all that.

Here’s the real story behind this photo though: I had to really hoof it all the way up here from our apartment to make it in time for the chanting thing, so I was dripping in sweat when I took this. Also, it had begun to rain during my walk there so my converse shoes were soaked right through and ... was that me I could smell? It was. I smelled like a wet dog.

When I entered the church, a security-guard-looking guy admonished me for bringing my umbrella in with me. Oops. I sat down and the minutes ticked by. Was it ever going to start? I used this time to ponder what a moron I was. Why did I come? I’m not religious. I don’t even know who Greg is or why he sings. Can you google in a church? (No.) And was the service going to be in Italian or Latin? Once it started, I tried to follow but the only words I could make out were focaccia and pesto and I’m not even sure those were right (I was hungry). The singing was lovely but it was just one guy at the front doing it, except every once in awhile the umbrella-hating security-guard-guy would sing back at him.  (I know. He was not a security guard at all. I see that now.)

I wanted to bolt but I didn’t, and ultimately, I’m kinda glad. Everyone seemed very nice during the part where you shake hands and they politely ignored my wet dog aroma. Plus it was built in the eleventh century and the acoustics were amazing in there- even I could’ve sung some stuff and sounded decent.

Hehe .... I’m kidding. You can only expect people to take so much.

Looking Up

Everyone with money in medieval and Renaissance times had elaborately decorated ceilings. Not just the bedrooms, every room. The whole palace.  Why? It hurts your neck to keep looking up there. I bet some of their conversations about these ceilings went something like this:

King: Why’d you set your alarm so early?

Queen: Shh, I’ve snoozed it.  I need nine more minutes.

King: But the thing is you don’t have a job or anything. You don’t have anywhere to go. Starbucks hasn’t been invented yet so it’s not like you need to line up for an iced coffee before you start a long commute or something.

Queen: I don’t even really know what ice is.

King: My point exactly.

Queen: But I feel someone should really get up and yell at the servants to dust all the gold frames on the paintings in the dining room though.

King: Honey, we haven’t been in there in months.

Queen: I was planning on laying down on the floor in there later so I could look at the ceiling.

King:  Really? Why?

Queen:  I don’t have much else to do.

King: True. Ok. While we’re here, perhaps we should enjoy the ceiling in here then? Were looking up at it already anyway, and you’ve still got a few minutes before that alarm goes.

Queen: Sure, why not. Ok. What’s going on here, exactly?

King: Who knows? I like how her boob is hanging out though, that’s fun.

Queen: And he’s wearing a silly helmet.

King: Yes he is. Good stuff.

*alarm sounds*

Market Day

The market stall guys in Florence are shameless.

“Signora! Good morning. You like bags? Please, signora, please.” He gestures to bags.

“No, grazie,” I say, smiling and waving my hand, as I walk on.

“Don’t go, Signora. Where you go? Stay, Signora. I give you best price. For you, special price. First customer of the day price.”  The markets been open for hours already. There’s no way I’m the first customer of the day.

Next guy has the same shtick, except he opens a small coin purse to show me how empty it is. “I have nothing. Please. You buy. Best price.”

There are variations, of course. “Signora, please, your smile, where are you from? USA?”

“Canada,” I say.

“Canada!” he bellows. “For Canada I give 150% discount.  USA 100% more price.” He laughs. So do I actually.  Emboldened, he adds “Please. You buy.”

“You’re going to pay me to take this bag away?” I ask, one eyebrow raised.

“We talk,” he promises, gesturing to his market stall. “Please.”

It starts to rain.  I am near the cashmere scarves stall now, and this man lets me huddle under the awning.  “This rain so shit,” he says. “So, so shit.” I agree with him. “You buy scarf?” he adds. (I did actually. I bought two.)

More strolling. One guy who’d I’d spoken to earlier about bags greets me a bit too warmly with the high-five-half-hug-combo favoured by athletes that it’s like we’ve known each other forever. Friends I’ve played hundreds of soccer games with are less friendly and affectionate than this. I still didn’t buy a bag from him. I’m awful.

The sun comes out again, suddenly. I snap this picture of the cool street sculpture where one of the market stall guys has locked his bike at the edge of the market.  He walks away, smoking and frowning.

“Signora!” A young man calls out to me, again waving me back over to the market. “Please. You like bags?” I look for a second. All the bags look the same as all the other stall’s bags. I start to walk away.  “Just looking,” I say. “Grazie.”

“Ok, ok, looking is free, free looking,” he says. I smile and walk on. “Free boyfriend?” he calls out after me.

They really are so very desperate.

Botticelli and the Bee Gees

There’s a 3D model of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence for visually impaired people and it looks like this:

I’m not sure if you can tell which area of the 3D painting gets touched the most from this photo, but suffice to say it’s Venus’s naughty bits.  Both sighted and visually impaired people were interacting with it while I was there, but no one’s ‘reading’ the ocean, and based on the very clean condition of her figure, the fully clothed angel beside her is getting almost no action either. I guess sighted or not, we all want to feel her luminous skin. It’s not like the two women look very different than each other, see? 

                                           

Truthfully, all of Boticelli’s figures look alike to me. These two look just like each other and like the three Graces in a nearby painting, Spring. 

Here, same deal. For whatever reason these guys made me think of the Bee Gees sitting down for a Mother’s Day pic with their mum. (So yeah, if their mum is Venus AND the Madonna, it’s no wonder they sang like angels).

And they all also look a little like HIM. At least I think so. Except according to texts from the time, he was quite ... rotund. Can you see it? Hard to tell here in this self portrait but maybe he flattered himself with lighting and angles, the way we all do in selfies. But we also know this because Botticelli is not his real name, but a nickname that means ‘little barrel’, and texts mention his ‘unfortunate resemblance’ to the round vessel. (His real name was Alessandro Filipepi.) Can you imagine being a beloved artist for hundreds of years, whose work millions flock to see each year, and everyone still calls you fatso? 

Meat, mmmkay?

Yet another morning of driving through the Tuscan countryside full of beautiful castellas and sloping, green vineyards. Ho hum. (I’m kidding. I would never get tired of this view.) “Would it kill them to plant some vines in a random, squiggly way for once instead of all straight lines, just to mix things up?” I asked, and Sandy said “Well yeah, kinda, remember, they told us the grapes are picked by a machine, and that would make it tough to do.” I nodded stupidly, pretending I remembered this information I’d been told at a tasting after probably four glasses of wine. Sandy likely retains information better because she’s less of a lush. Also, she’s driving.

But then in the afternoon we switched it up: we ditched the car and took the tram into Florence and checked into a little apartment right beside the Uffizi gallery. Vincent, our landlord, is great even though he says “mmmkay?” at the end of all his sentences like the goofy teacher on South Park. After a couple of glasses of wine with us he recommended we eat lamprodotto while we’re here- tripe sandwiches where “they boil up all the guts of the cow in a big pot, and every once in awhile, you get an eyeball or a finger mixed in there too, mmmkay? Then they stick it on bread. It’s so delicious!”, as well as the bistecca fiorentina, a massive T bone steak that weighs four pounds and measures four fingers in thickness. Dear god. There’s no way anyone is feeling mmmkay after either of these meals. But screw it. I might try them anyway.

Vincent also told us to walk up to the Piazzale Michelangelo tonight because there was going to be a big party and fireworks. We did go, walking all the way in heavy rain, and it turns out he was wrong  mmmkay, there was no party. It was pretty empty.  But the view of the city.... whoa.

There’s a Lot of Cocks in Chianti

There’s a lot of cocks in Chianti.

See what I mean? This one’s in the centre of town. But they’re everywhere. Boy do they stand out. Curious, about all the, uh, cock-fuss was, I did a bit of research and learned that there was a medieval era disagreement between Siena and Florence as to who owned the Chianti area- it’s gorgeous and both cities wanted to claim its land. They agreed that each city would choose a knight to ride towards each other and wherever the knights met would be the border between the cities, but on the selected day, the knights couldn’t start their ride until a cock in their city crowed at daybreak. Siena fed its cock well and it slept in, but Florence didn’t feed its cock at all so it woke early, and starving... meaning the Florentine knight got started much earlier and rode much further. So... that’s why Chianti is part of Florence. Anyone else think HGTV should steal this idea and create a show with cocks that settle property disputes? Just throwing that out there.

And yes, I realize I could have used the word rooster here, but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Travels in Tuscany

We knew driving in Italy might be a challenge.

The young woman who rented us our little fiat gave us her personal email address, ostensibly because  she wanted to hear about our trip~ or perhaps she had a perverse sense of humour and could tell how clueless we were at the counter with our paper map and false confidence. When we got in the car I pulled down the sun visor and said “is that blood?!” at the big red stain smeared across it. We howled with laughter. “This is the adventure part of our trip,” we decided as we pulled out into heavy rush hour traffic with the loose instructions of ‘go left’ and ‘follow signs for Castellina.’

I’m not going to tell you how often we got honked at for going too slow or how many times we drove down tiny winding streets barely wide enough for a car. Sandy is a trooper for taking on the driving but I’m afraid she’s used to a much better navigator than me, as evidenced by her habit of cheerily calling out road names and numbers I was meant to find on this paper map that we soon discovered contained only very main highways. I contributed nothing: “Maybe that way?” I ventured, repeatedly getting us even more lost, until the sun started to set and we were two women in the middle of nowhere with no phone service and blood on our sun visor, accosting the few strangers we could find in this tiny dark town, begging for directions.

Everyone tried to help. All the Italian I’d been learning on my duolingo phone app got me nowhere with what they said though. All I could recall in Italian were words like boy, girl, apple, sugar. Well where the appley, sugary hell were we? One man adorably mimed diving into a pool, I think to tell us the road went downhill. Or maybe he was suggesting we plunge off a cliff to our deaths since we were clearly never going to find our villa.

In the end we made it with the help of  two kind restaurant servers who googled it for us. It was the only lit building in the whole town. They offered to make us coffee - maybe they could tell we’d been awake for more than 30 hours and were a little stressed and ready to sleep in the car? Turns out we were only 6 minutes away and had been driving back and forth nearby in the dark for, well, forever.

But in the morning, we got to eat breakfast here: