Italy part 2: more Tuscany

Easter Sunday we pick up a rental car, a cute black Fiat Punto, and head west, to Lucca.

Lucca is surrounded by Renaissance city walls that are perfectly in tact and even have trees growing on top--you can jog or walk all the way around.

Here is T at the tourist office just outside the city walls.

And K having swooned over the soft grass.

And at the entrance to the city

In Lucca we find a jaw dropping cathedral.

Outside there are gingerbread carved pillars, each different, carved by local artisans. Inside, 12 X 16 foot paintings, including one by Tintoretto and several Civitalis. A vaulted, painted ceiling, around 70 feet up. Some Escher-esque marble floor designs. Rich, deep colored stained glass. Crystal chandeliers.

Around town, a woman in tailored clothes, heels and black stockings on a bicycle. I love Italy!
Here is the large, oval city "square", formerly home to a Roman arena.

On to Bagna di Lucca, where we spend the night in an old hotel. Our room has a framed note letting us know that Toscanini slept there in 1950. (The mattress has no doubt changed, but not much else.)

There is little open at 5 pm on Easter in this village. We see the Pecos Bill Trattoria and we enjoy a beer by the river.

At dinner Tom is amazed that the house wine (cheap!) is Chianti. I order a salad that comes with slabs of Pecorino and some other softer cheese--oooooooooooh. Good thing we will hike tomorrow and walked 100 miles in Florence and Lucca.

The next day, we hike in the Garfagnana reserve, near the Apauane Alps. The area is famous for truffles.

We stop at another walled ancient town, Barga. Here is an Easter display in one of the church's chapels.

In the evening we step into L’Osteria della Piazetta in Bagna di Lucca, for one of the most memorable meals either of us has ever experienced. It is a new place, and the owner tries (and succeeds) to make everything perfect, relying on locally grown and traditional specialties, with style. The lighting is bright, but the food elegant. I have trout ravioli, and thin sliced raw marinated fish with fat green peppercorns. Tom has meat that has been marinated for 15 days.

After, we walk along the river. A sign there commemorates the spot where Elizabeth Barret wrote poetry to her husband Robert Browning in 1849 (Sonietti dal Portoguese XIV: 13 -14, to be precise).

Here is a curious medieval bridge at Borgo a Mazzano, not far from Lucca. It has five arches and an off center midpoint.

We drive under the Tuscan sun of note. Lush, rolling hills. Signs warn of deer, snow and children that would lay ahead. Gentle and not so gentle climbs and falls, the small diesel car with manual transmission perfect for the roads.

It’s one walled medieval city after another, with tall cathedrals stuffed with art.

A pair of pheasant cross the road in front of us.

We stop at another walled city, Volterra. Here is Tom. And the painted ceiling of the church there.

Siena. Rival of Florence, entered by one of eight city gates. A duomo (cathedral) even more astonishing on the inside than the out. Here are photos of the Duomo exterior, interior, a section of floor mosaic, and the ceiling.

These are of the ceiling in a library inside the Duomo. Marvelous 3D effects.

We spend the night at another walled, hilltop town: Certaldo Alto. More fabulous food! T has steak with anchovy sauce. I order gnocchi with radiccio and gorgonzola, and smoked swordfish with pink peppercorns. FOOD AS ART. Italy so knows how to eat. The wine is excellent and cheap--no markup in restaurants like we have in the US and in Lebanon. And T is so impressed with coffee prices--90 cents, unlike the 2 and 3 Euros we saw in Greece at Christmas. T says it shows respect .

Here are views in and around Certaldo Alto.

Umbria next!

To Milano and Firenze

We fly to Milan via Larnaca, Cyprus (it was cheaper). Cyprus Airlines planes have names! We pass Nikolis and Onislos as we taxi in to Larnaca. Ours to Milan is Chalkanor.


It is Good Friday in Italy, and also a national day of mourning for the 290 people earthquake victims of last week. We wonder if we will see damage--we will be passing within 50 km of L’Aquila that suffered the most damage.

Green! It’s the first thing that hits me. In the train station, four colored recycling bins: STYLE and EARTH awareness. Ah, but some have garbage in them--educating the masses remains a challenge even here.



Here is T enjoying his first doppio

Milano Centrale (train station) has changed since we were here in 2001, for the better. Still a ponderous, elaborate Franco edifice on the outside, complete with mammoth winged horses, it is elegant and the art more refined on the inside. That’s one thing that is so remarkable about Italy--public art is valued, and is everywhere.

Heading to Florence, I note we have managed to spend ~$50 in our 4 hour transit in Milan: airport bus, take out coffee and sandwiches. Sigh. We find ourselves on the Eurostar, rapid, comfy train--full on this Good Friday. The Eurostar has push button power doors, internet hookup, reclining seats with adjustable headrests, folding table trays, and even tasteful lighting in the toilets.

The countryside passes by and I drink it in: super highways, straight, with lines and big signs; large fields; neat, walled factories; trees, trees, trees; tree-lined roads. ORDER. These are all items of wonder for my Beirut eyes. A nun is standing on the train, no one offers her their seat. You can see her behind cruel me in the shot above.

The internet café in Florence where we stop sells beer, wine and Red Bull, also water and Pringles. Here is T at the computer--have we heard from Cam yet??

Firenze!

That's Ponte Vecchio

A fellow ACS teacher had told Tom, “you’ve got to get out of the Middle East every now and then.” It was time. Order, predictability, safety (different safety--e.g. road and product--but an element of crime--e.g. theft--that we don’t have in Beirut), art.

A lady in a frilly skirt riding a motor bike and smoking a cigarette. A man in a suit riding a bike and texting. Bikes parked on--but not blocking--sidewalks. Condom vending machines (cheap!). Small wooden balconies. Polished brass apartment buzzer panels (I stifle the urge to press them). Artistic trash cans. PARKS! BENCHES! Lots of parks, small and large. Ambulances!

We go to see Michelangelo’s David. T points out that he isn’t circumcised, and he was Jewish. We go around back to check out the rear view… The David is carved from a huge chunk of marble 5 meters (16 feet) high. He holds a barely visible sling and a rock in his hand. We weren’t allowed to take pictures.

We are struck by four incomplete statues of “souls imprisoned in flesh” = slaves, breaking free, in the hall in front of David. So powerful, they strain against the marble. Some have no faces but it is easy to feel their struggle.

Upstairs in the same building (the Academia), there are lots of 14th Century Russian icon paintings --they sure had ugly babies back then, squarish heads. There are ornate, red velvet-seated, gold legged stools to sit on whilst admiring the paintings, themselves encased in elaborate window-like gold painted frames.



Here are assorted street statues:

Watch out for this guy (Machiavelli):























The Duomo! Began in 1296, it took 150 years to complete. Enormous, the outside reminds Tom of a 3D jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces--it is incredibly ornate. It spans a city block. While very elaborate on the outside, it is relatively simple on the inside. The nave is closed off for Easter preparations.


Boboli Gardens. Actually a large city park, free to Florence residents., 10 € for us. Trees and trees, birds singing--four different kinds that I can hear, at once (unbelievable for us coming from Lebanon, where in the city there are but a few in cages--not enough trees to support them, and hunters seem to have taken all the ones in the country).

Pitti Palace is inside Boboli Gardens, and houses several museums. In one, incredibly elaborate ceilings (covered with paintings or carved wood), fabric covered walls, amazing chandeliers, and furniture such as a corner table supported by a gold leaf winged figure, a green room, a red room, a blue and gold room, a celery and white room, marble and/or parquet floors, marble baseboards--all distract me from the stated object of the museum: clothing.

Another museum, the Argenti (silver), has incredible trompe d’oeil--how to we say that in English--trick of the eye? Celilings, where through masterful use of shading and perspective you can’t tell what is carved and what ispainted. Typical is an area where there are columns you can tell are painted but corners of the ceiling (cornices?) are real. Four rooms are done that way (sorry, no pix allowed), and they get weirder--cherubs perched on painted curlicues, holding up platters. There are up to five layers of false depths.

Later… We went to a really authentic osteria (think trattoria). Tom had the best crème brulee (flan) he’s ever had (and it came flaming to the table), and I had pesto made not with basil but roca (arugla)--fabulous. It was a basic, non-fancy place. They take food so seriously here! The proprieter gives us a licorice aperitivo on the way out.




We walk back to the hotel and I marvel at the rows of motorcylces parked in designated areas on many streets.

Other marvelments: the local grocery store has a machine selling organic espresso (quel horreur!)

And yes, here too is McDonalds:
[Please stay tuned for next installment---it will be a few days!]

Last volunteer day at Bourj Barajneh Camp

A white board on a stand has appeared in the room, I am happy to see. I find a Kleenex to erase the scribbles on it. Ach. Someone has used the wrong markers on it and the scribbles are permanent. I look around this sorry place. Three walls of the classroom are entirely bare. There are no books.

I remembered to bring a battery for the dead clock in the office. There are no clocks in the classrooms.

The volunteers and--oh my gosh--the children were surprised to hear that the program is ending today--April 9. Why couldn't it have gone on until summer vacation? I ask and am told the children have to study for exams.

The kids go to school in two shifts, each only a few hours a day. In April it is the boys in the morning and the girls in the afternoon; in May it will switch.

Today I have prepared a sheet of tongue twisters, a word search with letter O - Z words and a word scramble using words I think they will know. I have brought three decks of cards to possibly play Crazy 8s, and learned the rules of 4-square from Ben. We are four volunteers in the morning, three of whom will stay for the afternoon.

In the end only three boys show up. After one of the vols burns off some energy with a little hallway football (soccer, to most of you), we play Crazy 8s the whole hour. We take photos and say goodbye. I give them some Easter chocolates someone has given me. There is no school today for some reason. The program leader decides to cancel the afternoon session, even though we had 24 girls in the afternoon last week. We are sad that we won't have the chance to say goodbye to the girls. Another group of outsiders has passed in and out of their lives.