Not so much a “spoiler alert” as a “length alert.” You may have noticed that The Wall had disappeared for awhile. It wasn’t really a disappearance as it was a vacation. We took off to Italy, Venice and Florence to be precise, for a few weeks. I kept writing, but didn’t post to the whole Wall. Mostly just to the family. But now that we have returned, I have put the whole “travelogue” together here in one long, sometimes disjointed post.
Feel free to ramble along, or just start catching up on all the old holiday movies . . . my faves: George C. Scott’s Christmas Carol and White Christmas!
Notes from Italy [My apologies for strange shifts in text backgrounds. I have no explanation :-) ]
Sunday, October 28
Four. Five. Six. Seven. I had heard them mostly in novels. Church bells chiming out the hour. I had never lived anywhere where you would hear church bells ringing. So maybe Austin and Dickens? But the weather was lovely when we checked into our hotel here in Venice, and the air conditioner controls seemed a touch arcane. So we opened the windows and let the breeze blow in. We had been on the road - actually more in the air and on water for more than 24 hours. Dinner was a lovely sea bass caught in the lagoon and a plate of squid ink pasta - ugly but delicious - accompanied by a nice bottle of Sicilian white wine. But even that could not stave off exhaustion. I fell asleep mid-meditation until the bells began.
Four. Five. Six. Seven. Once I figured out where I was and what they were, I crashed again until the alarm woke me again for breakfast. Christine dozed as I went downstairs. Awesome. Croissants. Cheeses. Salami. Pears. Killer coffee. And when the maitre’d saw me ensconced in my little alcove, “Wouldn’t the gentleman care for a fried egg and perhaps some bacon?” “Well, if you insist.” Good thing we have to walk everywhere!”
Except there is this little thing called “aqua alta.” It isn’t really supposed to happen until winter, but climate change is something we all share. When the tides are high and the winds are off the lagoon and the barometric pressure goes up you are reminded that Venice is really just a bunch of islands in a lagoon and the alta-high aqua-water runs up the streets putting most of the neighborhoods under three or four inches of water. The locals all have boots and the street hustlers sell cheap plastic knock-offs that seem to fall apart. I sloshed about barefoot for awhile in pursuit of either item, but without luck. The kids were loving it - nothing BUT puddles to stomp in. I returned to the hotel admitting defeat - or de wet feet - and took my nap. Christine took off and scored some high test boots that will get us to one of our favorite “catering to the locals” restaurants and a Vivaldi concert.
Alta, Alta,Alta Aqua
The idea is to put on your boots and pretend that nothing strange is happening. 🤠
Food for body and soul.
So we pulled on our high water boots and headed for the restaurant: Trattoria Rivetta We arrived around 7:15, early by Venetian standards. I toyed, as I often do, with trying “something different,” but wisely settled on the soft-shelled crabs and white beans. Both were simply extraordinary. The crabs are small sautéed miracles, sauced by geniuses. You begin by daintily cutting them with your fork and eating them in two incredible bites. I am quickly reduced to unashamedly popping them into my mouth whole. I close my eyes and smile. And, no, you have never had these white beans. At least an inch and a half long, often closer to two, they look like little potatoes. Sprinkled with flakes of some green herb - maybe parsley? - they taste nothing like beans or potatoes. Rather, they carve their own little exquisite niche in the world of flavors. We also share a nice sea bass. The house white, served in little half liter carafes, rounds everything off to perfection.
This is a “family style” place and the waiter soon brings a young couple to share our table. They are from Miami celebrating their first anniversary with their first trip to Italy. They are delightful, and before leaving for the concert, we buy them a plate of the soft-shelled crabs as an anniversary present. They are either suitably awestruck with the little morsels or fake it well.
On to the concert. Italy did its daylight savings “fall back” thing today so we arrived at the “Interpreti Venezia I” concert an hour early. That turned out to be providential. You see we are Davide Amadio groupies. That man plays the cello like Robert Johnson must have played the guitar. So we figured , cool - front row seats in this first-come-first-seated venue. We will be maybe a dozen feet from Davide!
To fully describe the concert I need to wander in to the tall cotton of English usage and Distilled Harmony:
A simile - the kudzu of contemporary English - declares that something is “like” something else. Tragically it is now most often improperly employed in the first person as in the grating construction: “So I was, like, that spelling bee was so totallly lame!” More properly one might say, “That spelling bee was like a scrabble tournament for dyslexics.” You, the observer, are not “like” anything. My example is not at all PC, but you get the idea. A simile compares one thing to another and asserts that they are similar - hence a simile.
Metaphor, on the other hand, is transformational. Something becomes something else. A metamorphosis occurs - hence a metaphor.
“My love is like a red red rose” - simile.
“I say love, it is a flower.” - metaphor
OK, now that we have that straight, let’s cut to the concert. First the bad news - the group rotates performers and Davide is not playing tonight. After wailing and rending our garments, we settle in to listen. While Davide is truly exceptional, there is no denying that the group is uniformly excellent. Do Google them, listen a bit.
Naturally, they play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Everybody in Venice plays Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. Little kids hum Vivaldi’s Four Seasons through their gelato. However, as the work progresses, a young guy we’ve never seen before gets up to play the violin solos in Autum and Winter. Hmmm, we think. We’re not really missing Davide. This kid is incredible.
I notice that, unusually, the concert will end not with Vivaldi, but with a Paganini piece: “I Pulpini.” The kid, Giovanni Agazzi, steps to the front, begins to play, and the world goes away. I learned in a music appreciation class a lifetime ago that some of Paganini’s contemporaries accused him of writing music that was simply impossible to play on the violin. From 12 feet away we could see why they felt that way. Human hands simply cannot do what Agazzi was doing. I snuck a glance behind me to see if crop circles were forming in the audience, maybe mysterious lights hovering overhead? Did the kid have wings tucked under his shirt? Nah, way too skinny.
I must describe the experience in terms of Distilled Harmony. First tenet: Foster Harmony. Second tenet: Enable Beauty. I am rarely without music of some form or another in my ears. I write to music, I clean to music, I meditate to music, and - if you count forest sounds as music - I sleep to music. But in each of those instances music is a conduit, taking me from some point A to another point B or C. A voyage in memory or fantasy perhaps. The music is like something else, it is a simile. However, in Agazzi’s hands, more accurately, with the violin in Agazzi’s hands, Paganini is metaphoric, transformed. Agazzi/Paganini become perfection, become Harmony, and in so doing become ultimate Beauty. The experience was as close to complete enlightenment as it gets. They stopped. We beat our hands together. We hollered. We may never hear it duplicated, and once really was enough. But that will not stop us from going back next week to give it another try. Imagine Agazzi and Davide together! Oh my.
circa - [ Hard to reconstruct these in retrospect]Tuesday, October 30th - Friday, November 2
Time as when we heard a lot about home loans in the US being under water. But, for the most part, the cities seemed to stay afloat. The pictures I sent yesterday afternoon captured a small portion of the high water event currently going on here in Venice. Having just endured Hurricanes Florence and Michael before leaving home, it is a welcome relief to encounter a weather event that seems to bring out the child in many of us.
Before yesterday my only experience with Venetian “Alta Acqua” was a mystery of that name by Donna Leon - an American ex-pat who lives and writes mysteries set here in the Most Serene Republic. (Let me apologize here for using Aqua - English for the color and some scientific applications for water. The correct spelling in Italian is “acqua.”) For you mystery fans Leon is a great addiction, with her adventures of Commissario Guido Brunetti currently numbering 29 books. There is a new one out this year - “Unto us a Son is Born.” I haven’t read it yet. But I digress.
I cannot help but think that there are hundreds of kids in town now who will never forget their first visit to Venice! Splashing through miles of puddles with the parents and siblings. Watching seagulls swim - instead of fly - across St. Marks Square.” Laughing at the pigeons attempting to find crumbs on the few dry spots left in their traditional scrounging spaces. Seeing a rainbow of plastic boots sloshing over bridges and across piazzas and through calles. All played out against some of the most inspirational architecture in the world. It is in many ways a delight.
There is, of course, a serious side to this climatic aberration.
This event is an exceptionally early occurrence of a Venetian phenomenon. And as I said in my update, there have only been three higher “acqua alta” events in all of history, and while a couple of decades ago Venice would experience fewer than 10 alta acqua events a year it now gets 50 or 60. The increase has been closely tied to a number of construction projects on the mainland as well as the effect of climate change and global warming. So if you are planning a trip don’t put it off to long.
But on the upside of the downside, there is a visually striking effect. The high water wicks up the exterior stucco and brickwork of the buildings creating fanciful collages - I’ll paste a couple in.
Monday November 5th
I’m reclining on the bed in our hotel room in Venice. Reading a mystery on my iPad. Listening to a clarinet concerto on my headphones. CNN international is on the TV. It is the day before the elections back home. Trump has just announced the reinstatement of sanctions against Iran. Since I am reading, I have my reading glasses on and the images on the TV are blurred. My headphones turn the commentary into a muted murmur.
The various stories segue between Trump’s campaign rallies and the anti-American protests in Iran. With my perception compromised by headphones and reading glasses it is hard to discern the difference. Both become blurred montages of fire and raised fists. I suddenly recognize the deep themes of violence and distrust shared by these seemingly disparate publics. I am once again struck by the realization that hatred and fear are the chief detriments of the human condition and that compassion and harmony comprise the only legitimate opposition.
Now to give you a quick take on our adventures:
Musically, after the awesome Vivaldi/Paganini concert we took in a couple of Opera themed concerts. The first was a recital - about 8 musicians and 3 singers; tenor, baritone and soprano. They were quite good, but more “entertainers” than grand opera voices. However the “hook” of the event was that they performed in period Renaissance costumes. So all in all a delightful visual and musical experience.
The concert we attended last night needs a bit more explanation. The “program” was a very condensed version of Verdi’s La Traviata. It was condensed both physically and musically. Physically, in that the performance takes place in Renaissance era palazzo and the audience - maybe 75 folks - moves from room to room for the various scenes. It is musically condensed in that only 3 pivotal scenes - each about 30 minutes long - are presented including, naturally, the climactic final death scene.
And here is where I need to stray a bit into the nature of sound and recording. The notion is the difference between analog and digital recording. Think of a musical recording as trip on a train, moving from point A to point B. An analog recording of that trip captures every moment of the trip on a camera pointed out the window. A digital recording of the same trip eliminates all the unimportant bits - literally digital bits - and creates a “cleaner” but still subtlety altered version of the trip. Everything you hear on your earbuds or through your phone or computer is digital. Clean, but somewhat altered. I had a friend who wrote classical music reviews for the newspaper. She refused to listen to CDs because of the distortion introduced by the digital process. The current resurgence of vinyl recording is, in part, fueled by that desire to avoid the digital distortion.
But that distinction leaves out the third option. Get out of the train and experience the trip live, free from any kind of recording. Just you and your senses. And that is what we were treated to in this condensed version of La Traviata: superbly trained operatic voices singing six to ten feet away. It was a transcendent experience. You not only heard the music unimpeded by any recording device, you could actually “feel” the music all around you. As I said, transcendent.
We also did a couple of tours of buildings- the La Fenice Opera house “home court” for Maria Callas. A number of post-fire, renovations and post-Napoleon “corrections” have resulted in a breath-taking venue. Similarly the Doge’s Palace is staggering. But I must confess to having grown a tad tired of tours of famous places. How much gold leaf can one really appreciate before it loses its impact? And then when you do discover something really cool the guide wants to move you along to make room for the next group hot on your heels.
Which is why, IMHO, Venice is best seen on the streets. For the Venice streetwalker - no, not that kind of streetwalker, you know what I mean - there are three very different but equally pleasing views of Venice. First there is the “shopping as art form” view. Think of any high end designer of any product and you can be sure that they have a shop in the “one-percent” area of Venice. But what makes the experience perhaps unique to Venice is that fact that “window designers” here are required to have a degree from an accredited art school. The windows are stunning works of art in their own right. It really doesn’t matter that you can’t afford anything in the windows. I mean you can’t buy the stuff on the walls of the Louvre, can you? Just enjoy the color and the composition.
Second is the “top floor” view of Venice. This is a little more risky to observe. The problem is that much of the iconic architecture of Venice was designed to be viewed from a story or two above street level which was where the aristocracy hung out. This means you have to crane your neck back to look at the top stories of the buildings. Given the rushing streams of foot traffic - tourists like yourself and frustrated locals - stopping mid-stream can put you in real danger. So find a corner, or back up against a wall, or pay for a seat at an outdoor cafe and look up. You will often find yourself confronting a visual delight - statues, balconies, bas reliefs, gargoyles, all manner of neat, hidden delights.
All right, the third view calls for one of my digressions. Early in Ansel Adams’s career as a photographer he belonged to a group of San Francisco based photographers called “f-64”. The name came from the fact that, back in the days before “point and shoot digital photography” using the lens setting of f-64 allowed one to shoot close-up images in very high resolution. The ancient walls around the back streets and calles of Venice just beg for an f-64 eye. Brick and stucco aged in centuries of alta acqua create abstract canvases of arresting beauty. Similarly, doors and windows around unexpected corners reveal lovely touches of uniquely personal construction. These are best observed while unobserved. I am a bit conflicted about photographing these little vistas. My inclination is to ask permission, but do I want to disrupt someone’s day to ask permission to take a picture of a doorknob or window box that has obviously been designed to be visually appealing?
Foodstuff. One night back to our old stand-by for soft-shelled crabs, white beans and sea bass. But the next evening we were going to be pressed for time so we asked at the front desk for a restaurant with a more convenient location. They got a reservation at a place a tad pricier than we might have chosen but the food was crazy good. Truffle pasta that could make you weep, calamari and sea brim fresh from the lagoon. Peaceful ambience, excellent service.
That’s all for now. We did score tickets to see Davide do Vivaldi tonight!
If you go back to Sunday, you will see where I wrote that the young violinist who played Paganini with Interpreti Veneziani made us forget Davide Amadio, the cello player we had hoped to hear. I take it back. It isn’t that the kid wasn’t great. He was quite wonderful. And in a few years he may be as good on the violin as Davide is on the cello - but tonight’s concert reminded us that he is not there yet.
It is hard to describe what we heard tonight. Christine said, “I’ll never have to hear another concert.” I am hard pressed to disagree.
When we got our tickets yesterday we knew we wanted to be close to the stage - down front center. To that end we got in line about an hour before the doors opened. There were four people in front of us. But being “newbies,” when we got to the first row, they went left instead of right, so we scored the seats about five feet in front of Davide’s chair. Suffice it to say it was as if he was sitting in our living room playing a personal concert. But simply describing what happened is difficult. It was different from anything either of us had ever experienced.
Having thought about it for most of the day, a number of explanations occur. They center around the notion that all art communicates - or at least should. I find myself genuinely put off by works that require extensive explanation - “Here Cool Hip uses bread crumbs to represent the potential multiverses of existence. The seagulls who squabble over the crumbs replicate the vagaries of chance that determine which reality defines the one in which we exist.” Stuff like that.
Rather, art should elevate our life experience, and from my admittedly biased perspective, “Foster Harmony and Enable Beauty.” Amadio’s playing achieves those objectives by rising to exceptional levels of artistic expression by employing unique skills rarely seen in one musician.
First there is his almost mystical connection with his instrument. It looks like it has been “rode hard and put up wet,” which, in the world of concert level string instruments, often means a very old and ridiculously expense instrument made by somebody like Stradivari. Davide often plays with his eyes closed, needing neither the sheet music nor any spatial confirmation of the position of instrument or bow to unify those elements in the creation of exactly the right progression of sounds. It was this unity of instrument and music that struck me about the kid’s use of his somewhat newer violin to capture Paganini. Quite exceptional in one so young. But last night Amadio reminded us that there is more to musical genius than technical ability.
Just what that “something more” was continued to evade me until a rather strange encounter this afternoon. I had set off to the Biennale, which this year focused on architecture. There was a brief moment in time, before I realized the extent that math was employed in the field, when architecture was on my list of “careers I might pursue.” At that time this year’s Biennale would have fascinated me. As it was, it struck me more as a giant science fair dedicated to those so inclined. So I wandered out into the gardens and down the fondamenta along a neighboring canal. It was there that I encountered a gondola and a city refuse vehicle disputing the right of way beneath a low bridge.
Our guide for our “Bite of Venice” food tour had explained to us that Venetians had neither an “indoor voice” nor any notion of personal space. This canal side dispute provided ample evidence for that contention. Gestures I had never seen were brought into play. I recognized in the facial expressions the inspiration for the more intense masks on display in local shop windows. The spoken language remained a mystery, but the inflection and tonal quality left nothing to the imagination. It was then that I realized that Davide’s playing was a purely Venetian presentation of Vivaldi. Venetian squared. What could be more perfect? What more complete expression of the notion that making music is a holistic process could one ask for?
The idea is that music assumes a predominant role in normal communicative processes. When Amadio plays the cello, dance and mime blend with unparalleled physical technique, creating for an audience exactly that for which Vivaldi must have hoped. A “Venetian music meld,” if I can steal Star Trek meme. It is not that language, spoken or sung, needs to find it substitute. Rather it becomes superfluous. It would distract from this higher form of communication.
You can find videos of Davide Amadio online. While it will in no way duplicate the experience from five feet away, it may give you some idea of what I am struggling to express.
Wednesday, November 7
Hopefully, the election results from home reflect a return to civility, the infusion of a bit of tranquility and the chance to reflect on the moments of harmony that surround us every day - at least until the inevitable ads for 2020 raise their discordant voices.
We will soon be on the train to Florence where we will trade seafood for red meat and pasta; boots and splashing through alta acqua for low shoes and dry pavement, Tintoretto for Michelangelo. But let's do a Venice wrap up:
However, here in Venice, it is easy to immerse yourself in harmony. We went for a ride up and down the grand canal after dark last night, and it was a visual treat. Huge Murano chandeliers glittered inside the ballrooms of grand hotels and tantalizing peeks behind the partially drawn curtains of mysterious apartments revealed glimpses of paneled rooms and clusters of paintings you think you almost recognize.
But a less obvious tracery of harmony weaves its way throughout the city. More potent in the narrow backstreets and tiny calles, I struggle to define it. You find yourself approaching what seems to be a dead end only to discover a sharp turn leading you to a canal, a bridge, and a two table neighborhood bar. A cluster of locals discuss something with raucous verbal intensity, interspersed with unrestrained laughter. The cacophony fades as you navigate the next corner. It is as if the city continually surprises itself. No one actually knows where every turning leads. Our “taste of Venice” tour guide confirmed that even seasoned old pros with years of experience will take a turn and find themselves in a “Where am I? I didn’t know this was here!” experience.
It all leaves me wondering if there might not be dozens of these Brigadoon-like neighborhoods scattered about the city - emerging when you enter the square only to sink back beneath the lagoon when you disappear around the corner.
Friday, November 9
A bit of culture shock arriving here in Florence. The train ride from Venice was what a train ride should be, quiet, comfortable and fast. Unfortunately, I had taken the train back in the States a year or so ago. It was fine until it derailed a couple of hours into the journey. OK, maybe that is an unfair comparison, but still. . . .
Back to Florence. We had been 10 days without any kind of vehicular traffic that didn’t run on water. That was long enough to reconfigure our sense of “normal.” So the cars, buses, motorcycles, and motor scooters here in Florence were all strange new creatures, and blithely stepping off the curb could have severe consequences.
As Venice has contrived to utilize canals, Florence has brought its ingenuity to finding every possible option to navigating its medieval-sized streets with motorized vehicles. One can dodge a full-scale Mercedes that stretches across an entire street, only to find yourself confronting a tiny car that could easily fit in the Mercedes’s trunk. The variety among four-wheeled vehicles is augmented by the common strategy of wrapping doors and four wheels around what is actually a large motorcycle. Sometimes two seats are shoehorned in side-by-side, but just as often the original “one front seat, one back seat” configuration is retained.
Big motorcycles remain in evidence everywhere - but are most obvious in block-long parking fests, like some giant showroom or biker rendezvous. Occasionally you catch sight of a “stretched-bicycle” tricked out to look like a motorcycle.
The “shared ride” phenomenon is very much in evidence, with both bicycles and tiny cars available to be picked up, used and dropped off at a variety of locations. Electric taxis zip around with continuous computer “beep beeps” seeking to warn other denizens of the roadways of this new, silent, potential predator. As the desk sergeant on the old TV show NYPD Blue used to warn “Be careful! It’s a jungle out there!”
Which makes it all the more disorienting, but delightful to escape the jungle to find the places that have made this city a mecca for artists and intellectuals (and anti-intellectuals, can’t forget old Savonarola and his “bonfire of the vanities!”) for centuries. We funneled past tour groups into Piazzi Della Signoria and claimed a table at Caffè Rivoire which really does have the best hot chocolate in the world and the best people watching in Florence. The replica of Michelangelo’s David oversees more tranquil horse drawn carriages as folks take in the awesome statuary along the Loggia dei lanzi. No matter how many times you wander there you find yourself saying, “OK, it’s marble and they used chisels. How did they do that!?”
Back to the hotel to chill and rest. Off to Giostra for dinner. More later.
All right. I know I kind of went over the top on the whole Paganini thing and the young violinist. And I would be delighted to have to do another retraction, but I doubt it. You may have to channel your inner foodie for this one.
The restaurant’s official name is La Giostra. I think of it as The Prince’s Place, because the first time Christine took me here years ago the owner was a Hapsburg prince. The current owner is his son, and so, I suppose, still technically a prince. But the full forearms and necklaces of silver and turquoise courtesy of a couple of motorcycle trips across the US make it a little difficult to think of him as a Hapsburg prince.
But enough of trivia. Let’s get to the food. Yet, before we go there we need to make a little side trip into the idea of taste - the notion of food on the tongue, in the mouth. Ordinary when something tastes “good” we are anxious to finish that bite and get on to the next one. The food we had tonight turns that idea on its head - or at least on its tongue. The flavors we encountered this evening were much deeper than that. The inclination was to leave each bite, each sip, in your mouth as long as possible until every bit of flavor had disappeared. Only then did you lift your fork or glass to repeat the performance.
The house provided a nice glass of Prosecco and some bruschetta. They were fine, but wasted space, considering what was to come. We started out by duplicating our first dinner here - sharing the pasta with truffles. The pasta was ravioli stuffed with some undefinable blend of cheeses covered with a white sauce and a wonderful covering of truffles. We had ordered a modest Chianti, which, after our server performed a variety of decanting and swirling rituals, ended up tasting anything but modest. It went, oh, so well with the truffled ravioli. Deeply wonderful. I doubt that even the most sophisticated DNA testing could link this dish with the generic “mac and cheese” currently ravaging the world at large.
For our main course we split. I stayed with the goat chops - like lamb or pork chops - and regretted it not for a moment. I don’t know if it was the fact that we don’t get goat chops at home, or if they just do them perfectly here - either way, incredible.
Christine then courageously went outside tradition with the veal Osso Buca. It was apparently equally out of this world - or at least out of country, as she declared the best she had ever eaten. I tasted it. It was equal to her raves, but by then I was hopelessly in love with my chops.
The problem now is how many times do we want to go back!? Possible conflicts may arise on Sunday when we go to the restaurant where I first had Bistecca alla Fiorentina, an absurdly huge and wonderful piece of beef from the Chianina cattle native to the area. Oh, will these trials never end?
Saturday, November 10th.
New vehicle alert! Strange treadmill bicycle! I was walking over to pick up a few things from the pharmacy when I came across another strange new beast in Florence’s menagerie of wheeled vehicles. Naturally I didn’t have a camera with me so we have to go with a description. I’ll take a camera later and see if the beast is sedentary or nomadic. Picture a bicycle that is about 8 or 9 feet long. If you removed the middle 5 feet it would look like a fairly normal bike. However, that middle section contains a treadmill like you would find on an exercise machine. A complex arrangement of belts, chains and gears sit between the back of the treadmill obviously designed to let the walking of the “rider” drive the vehicle forward.
Ah ha. It was still there this afternoon, I got a picture and will send it along. I also forgot to mention that for the truly suicidal, there are shops that will rent you a Segway, which - for those of you who haven’t ridden the beast - can neither stop nor turn fast enough to avoid death in Florence.
At this point I am fascinated by the difference between these two Italian cities. That, in itself, is foolish. Thinking of Italy as a country is rather silly. Italy, as we know it today, didn’t come into existence until around 1860. Since that time it has changed governments about as often as you change your socks - maybe more often depending on the state of your socks. So it is quite natural that individual cites, that can trace their ruling families and traditions back for centuries, find their identities more locally than nationally.
Both Florence and Venice are blessed with a staggering wealth of great art. But somehow, the cities feel very different. As I mentioned before, Venice seems “surprised” by the 21st century and hides by disappearing beneath the lagoon at will. Florence looks around in disbelief - the world is moving much faster than ever before. The vehicles I have already mentioned, but the people too are different. Perhaps it is because they must continually fight mechanical creatures for the right of way, that they move swiftly, aggressively, heads on a swivel, tethered to their phones. Bells and horns beat a constant rhythm. You pause at your own peril. The locals are adept, the tourists adapt, the merchants seek prey in the flow.
Florence seems to have withdrawn behind walls. The art, the trees, gardens and flowers thrive - as in ancient times - behind battlements. It seems a city of contrasts, I do not remember it being so frantic. Christine will pull me across a crowded street and a tiny sidewalk into a doorway almost hidden in a wall. Inside I find myself in a welcoming space where I have been before - a cafe, a restaurant, a gallery. I do not remember the chaos outside the door - much less how we came here. I find it all slightly frightening.
OK. Not so much a retraction, as a clarification. Went out to meet Christine at the hot chocolate place - only got lost once, and that was because I was looking for the wrong address on the map. The foot traffic was still at sort of a “state fair midway” level, but the attitude had changed. It seemed as if everyone who “had” to be somewhere had gotten there, and this crowd was there because they “wanted” to be there. The mood was festive, more carnival than rat race. We sipped a beverage, did some window shopping, and headed back to the hotel. We wondered if the streets in Florence were somehow harder and more uneven than the streets in Venice. I opined that maybe since Venice was a bunch of islands, the streets were all cushioned by the ground water underneath. I mean Venice is sinking after all, alta acqua and all that. Florence, however, rests on bedrock so the streets are actually harder. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Either way our feet hurt, so we bought a bottle of wine and came back to our room.
Dinner was unusual. In a geographical reversal we had stopped into Eataly, the chain of Italian food superstores that Mario Batali and a partner had started back in the States. We have been to the one in Chicago a number of times. This one doesn’t quite measure up - with an important exception. There are several kinds of Italian cheeses that can’t be shipped to the States. Fresh pecorino is one of them. We picked up a small block of that and another of fresh pecorino with truffles. We also got a small bag of bread. Those items, along with our bottle of wine, constituted dinner. We slipped out of our shoes, opened the wine, and had a delightful dinner.
Monday, November 12
What a difference a day makes, or a couple days anyhow. It is not as if our tribe - touristimo alloverists - has declined, but we have been joined by the locals who actually live and work in this fair city. I remember as a child, Dan, my partner in childhood and I acquired - I think from an organization called Things of Science, he’ll correct me if I misspeak - ant farms. We poured sand and prepackaged ants between two clear plastic panels and watched them scurrying madly about doing their ant thing until they escaped or died. My memory is a little foggy there. The streets of Florence were a lot like that today. There might also be a special on tours.
But take buses for example. Florence has, sanely, shrunk some of their buses to match the compromised width of their thoroughfares. However, and I’m not implying any sort of political kickback scheme here, some “normal sized” city and tour buses still roam the medieval pavements. Think about it for a minute. Take an American single-lane street, slice off a 3-foot wide sidewalk on either side and further remove a 4-foot wide slice for diagonally parked motorcycles and other strangely configured vehicles. Point a full-figured tour bus down what is left and holler “Go for it!” while still allowing suicidal bicycles, motorbikes, pedestrians, Segways, etc., free access to the same strip of radically uneven cobblestones and you have Florence on a Monday morning.
With heart in hand we braved the throngs over to the Central market. I’ll send a picture when I get to WiFi capable of doing that. Central market is an awesome, huge building totally surrounded by free standing stalls selling so many leather goods attributed to so many critters you wonder why cameras from Wild Kingdom aren’t set up on the sidewalk. The inside of the building is an upscale version of many of the stalls outside, but with the addition of excellent food stalls, meat, veggies, fruits, and a variety of local fast food options.
These days we go with particular goodies in mind, so the visit drops from an all day slough, to a focused couple of hours. Tops on our list is something called “mutarde [sp?]” - “moo” as in a cow sound, and “tard” as in the last syllable of mustard. I’m not sure what it is in English, nor have we been able to find it back in the States. Which is why we pack it in our suitcases and smuggle it back home. It is a fruit-based sweet, thick, jam-like spread that you serve on cheese, or crackers, bread, or a spoon. We got pear, fig and cherry. We make it last a few years. We also get a couple of illegal soft, unpasteurized cheeses that we will probably eat before we leave. We would have tried to smuggle that back too, but we have seen those videos about dope-sniffing dogs who will drag your luggage out of line for the least little infraction.
We lugged our 100-pound (weight, not cost) purchases back to the hotel for a much needed break from Florence’s foot-unfriendly streets. Afterwards we went to the Museum of Mosaic Art. A couple of unique things about this museum. First, no one seems to know it exists. After finding its entrance down a side street, I went up to a woman behind a half-hidden counter and asked, “Is this where you get tickets for the museum?”
She seemed startled. “This museum?”
“Yes,” I replied. “The mosaic museum.” Almost grudgingly, she took our 4 euros apiece and pointed to the entry across the hall.
We went in and there was no one else there. There were maybe three “guards” who were equally surprised to see us, but absolutely no other patrons. Mind you, this is not Florence’s most significant museum, but it is an interesting display of the high quality art created both with, and on, stone that the Medici family supported for hundreds of years. And there was no one else there!
Back to the hotel for another rest - do you sense a theme here? And off to the Prince’s again for dinner.
We resisted the inclination to “try something new” and stayed with two versions of pasta with white truffles - which are in season - and we each ordered the goat ribs. The pasta could probably be duplicated back home if you could source the truffles, but there is something about the goat chops that is hard to describe.
There is a condition called synesthesia, which is essentially a “swap meet” for the senses. The brain is presented with one type of stimulus - say music - and for some reason turns it into something else, like color. So for a person with this condition, maybe C sharp becomes a certain shade of blue. I bring this up because after wrestling with the issue for a couple of days it strikes me that synesthesia might be the best way to describe the taste of goat chops.
As I write this, California is in the grasp of the worst wildfires in the state’s history. In that context this particular foray into synesthesia might grate a bit. However, the fires will be overcome and the resilient residents of that great state will resurge. And this synesthetic description will stand.
I turn 70 on the 15th and hence, along with others “of a certain age”, have a very specific memory of autumn that is, for the most part, no longer available to our kids and their children. I am talking about the smell of burning leaves. In our modest-sized town in central Ohio the turning of summer into fall was marked by the raking, and the burning, of the leaves of autumn. Of course, first you raked them into big piles and leapt into them, but eventually they were hauled off to piles into alleys and gardens and burned under watchful eyes.
For weeks that delicate aroma permeated the crisp autumnal air, peaking with new additions on weekends, fading with the lull of the work week. It was a sensory environment unlike any other at any other time of year. Goat chops fill that space in the pantheon of meat. More assertive than chicken, but not as confrontational as beef, pork or lamb, they linger on the tongue and fill the mouth with a taste both gentle yet savory. I would guess that a color-dominant synesthete would see them a rich yellow shading into gold.
I do need to point out that we have found and prepared goat chops at home. They tasted nothing like what I have described above. Hence, the Prince’s version works some magic of source and preparation to accomplish the composition that unfailingly appears on our plate.
Tomorrow, the Pitti Palace, the Boboli Gardens, and dinner at Il Latina, home of a very different kind of Florentine cuisine.
Could be our last post until we get home.
Tuesday, November 13
The Pitti Palace was the Medici’s “summer place.” It had belonged to the Pitti’s - who were business “frienemies” of the Medici but went bust in some business reversals just prior to Luca Pitti’s death in 1472. Never one to pass up an opportunity created by the death of a buddy, Cosimo I snapped up the palace, left the name in place, but quickly began redecorating.
The place is truly mind-boggling. In Europe, Paris’s Versailles, a wannabe copy of Pitti, and Vienna’s Belvedere are in the same category - with an interesting difference. Those two palaces have “curb appeal.” You can see them from around the city. From the curb the Pitti Palace is, well, pitti ugly; following, or maybe establishing, the Florentine tradition of presenting blank walls to the street while hiding awesome art behind those walls. I suppose the closest we come for “big houses” in the States are the homes of the robber barons, Morgan, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, etc, scattered around New York and up into the Hamptons. Morgan’s art collection in New York and London and, on the West Coast, William Randolph Hearst’s castle above San Simeon were probably the only American private art collections that even begin to approach the riches of the Pitti.
And it is really no contest at all. When you walk through the Pitti Palace you need to remind yourself that this was the Medici’s home. They lived here. Hung out, had parties, as did Napoleon for a few years. You kicked up your feet under paintings by Raphael, Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, and late comers Rubens and Van Dyck. Equally impressive sculpture clutter the hallways and around corners.
And it is this immersions in literally some of the most beautiful creations in world (and in the Uffizi, which truth be told, we have already walked through. These notes sometimes get written “after the fact” as it is just hard to keep up with everything we are seeing.) that makes me think about how the whole “divine right of kings,” and its contemporary manifestation in “the privilege of the 1%,” could have come about.
People lived in these places in the midst of truly incomprehensible wealth and beauty. The art created the environment that enclosed furniture upholstered in rich fabrics, jewels, carriages, rare foodstuffs, and perfumes drawn from every corner of the globe. And the people who lived here were taught that, despite the misery that may have existed outside the gates, they deserved to live this way because god had chosen them to rule. One wonders just how long, before their heads dropped into the basket below the guillotine, they realized that there was a flaw somewhere in their reasoning.
Wednesday, November 14
The Uffizi, or more art and art history than anyone could absorb in a lifetime. Consider Rick Steves, today’s travel guru. Now it is true that we are using his 2014 guide to Florence and Tuscany, we chose that over the more recent version because it seemed to have more detail. Anyhow, the Uffizi has something like 80 specific rooms and at least four major sculpture hallways. In Steve’s “self guided tour,” Rick simply tells you to skip the sculpture and his “tour” just stops at room 57. I can understand the inclination - sometimes your brain just gets full. But then I’m not selling you a book that I imply, if not outright claim, is definitive.
But back to the Uffizi. As the personal collection of several generations of the Medici and their kin, it really does fill up your brain. The Medici were the power art collectors for a few hundred years, and this place demonstrates that they chose well. Simply listing “what’s there” would fill hundreds of pages. Google something like “What paintings are in the Uffizi?” or “What statues are in the Uffizi?” If your browser doesn’t reply “Are you kidding?” prepare to be amazed. Just about everything you studied in that art history course you took to fill your fine arts requirement is there. Well, at least everything of note put on canvas between 1200 and 1500. I stuck that “on canvas” proviso in there because Michelangelo’s David lives down the street at The Academia.
And it is the inclusive span of the Uffizi collection that sets it apart from the world’s other great art galleries. You really can trace the entire history of Renaissance painting - and sculpture, Rick - by wandering these rooms and hallways. You do have to dodge the earbud wearing tours scurrying after their microphone bearing guides, pausing for 2 or 3 minutes before Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, before rushing off to the next hot item on their hit list. Occasionally you will stumble against a shell-shocked art student gazing slack-jawed at the awesome ceilings, or someone sketching madly before the odd DiVinci or Caravaggio.
There is, however, a danger to this excess of artistic riches, and that is losing sight of the fact that these images are the real deal. They are not copies. At some point in time these artists, whose names we have heard all our lives, stood before this canvas just as we are standing here now. They took a brush, loaded it with paint they most likely had mixed, reached out and made magic on canvas. We must not forget that.
On the other hand we can also discover neglected wonders. Christine rediscovered Lippi’s wonderful faces and scurried about filling her iPad with close-ups to savor in private, away from the madding throng.
And no, I cannot choose a favorite, probably not even a top ten. I fled out into the gardens — refreshing in their normalcy, well, a Medici over-the-top, let-them-eat-gelato kind of normalcy.
Dinner at Il Latini. This bit has to be dedicated to Schrag Shorthorn Farms - an entity in southeastern South Dakota that has for decades centered on, as the name implies, the care and advancement of Shorthorn cattle. The reason for the dedication is the fact that our dinner at Il Latini highlights beef from a unique breed of cattle. We had Bistecca alla Fiorentina, a steak that comes from a Tuscan breed of cattle called the Chianina. The breed is the largest and one of the oldest cattle breeds in the world. There were a couple of attempts to introduce the breed into the US, but nothing much came of them.
The steak itself is similarly unique. When you order a steak in the US, you assume you will then be able to instruct the chef how to cook it; rare, medium rare, medium, or shudder - well done. No, no, no, no. Bistecca alla Fiorentina is - by definition - cooked rare, very rare. (Photo coming.) If you try to order it any other way, at least here at Il Latina, they will politely direct you to other menu items, or if you insist on beef cooked other than rare - or raw as in tartare - they will direct you to other restaurants that can accommodate you. No kidding.
We opted to get the prix fixe - which gets us all the sides leading up to the steak, dessert and an after-dinner drink. In retrospect that wasn’t the best way to go. We should have just ordered the steak and the potatoes. First, a quick word about the potatoes. Briefly, “How do they that!?” They are cut into chunks - sort of home fries, or steak fries size. Then, we assume, they are skillet fried in the drippings from the steak. However, then, somehow, the center is left fluffy. It is not the consistency of mashed potatoes, softer and lighter. Just incredible.
Now to the steak. Here the Schrag carnivore tradition breaks down a bit. Both my father and my sister would find the meat horribly underdone. My older daughter, Andrea, and I would be in hog - well, beef - heaven. Christine sides with us. I’m not sure where my younger daughter Emily, would come down. I’m inclined she would, were she not pregnant, give it a try and would be delighted with that choice.
It is our understanding that the meat is cooked very hot and very fast, so you get this great crust on the outside and a hot, pink and juicy interior. But I need to point out that the flavor is different from all other types of beef. Prime beef, wagu beef, and all the more questionable lesser cuts present a fairly predictable flavor profile. Chianina brings an additional note to that composition. It is somehow simultaneously lighter but intense. I would assume that the taste profile is somehow a function of breed, marbling, etc. My kin in the Dakotas are far more qualified to address that issue. I have no idea why the breed seems resistant to importation. Surely Americans of all political stripes would welcome these immigrants.
Thursday, November 15th
Thank you all for your various birthday greetings. We spent the day just sort of wandering around. Over to The Duomo, trying to figure out just where David was supposed to go. He was originally intended to go up up there. The various online interpretations of just where seem too bizarre to be true. Then we went back to the Princes for dinner. Goat chops and truffle pasta again since it is a toss up as to whether we will ever be back again. Once more, yum, yum, yum. Splurged on an upscale bottle of 70th birthday wine. Yum, yum, yum.
We will do a follow up to these posts to cover the “Oh, did you tell them about . . . .” But we have a 6:30 AM Flight out on the 17th. I doubt I’ll have time to doodle around to you before then. We have a 4 hour layovers in Paris. Maybe something there.
That was a very positive spin on what proved to be a hellish flight back - but nothing can be perfect, right?
No doubt we will encounter things left out, errors in attribution, the intent is to correct them. Right now, my brain is full!
Cheers!
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