Florence, Italy

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita..."

Thus begins "The Divine Comedy", the central work of Italian literature, written by Florence native Dante Alighieri. It's the book to which we owe the phrase "abandon hope all ye who enter here". That first line quoted above translates roughly as "halfway along the path of our life". Perhaps "halfway" is a bit optimistic where I'm concerned. The start of my sixth decade is coming at me like a train. If I wanted to make it to 100 then I'd probably have to give up booze or Greggs, or both.

I was going to describe Dante as 'Florence's most famous resident', but it's a crowded field: Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, etc. This is the birthplace of the Renaissance, and apart from classical Greece and Rome, there really is nothing in the history of Western civilisation that can compare with the glory days of Florence during the middle centuries of the last millenium. It's one of those places where you can only ever scratch the surface as a visitor, even when you spend a full week here, as I did.

Confession time: I don't like ticking boxes, and I don't like standing in queues, and I'm not a connoisseur of painting or sculpture. And I'm a cheapskate. As such, I didn't bother with the Uffizi galleries (containing Botticelli's 'Birth Of Venus' among many other things) or Michelangelo's 'David' statue. I prefer to spend the money on food instead. I forgot to take a picture of it, but I had a delightful plate of posh pappardelle pasta with wild boar. Is there such a thing as tame boar?

I did shell out 30 euros on the full package for visiting the Duomo (cathedral). You get to see the crypt and the Baptistry and the nearby museum, and you can also enjoy the view from the top of the dome. There's no lift: it can only be attained by a rather claustrophobic 91-metre climb. It's 463 steps. I may be past halfway along the path of our life, and my days of doing Great North Runs may be far behind me, but when I'm hiking in Scotland I take on mountains ten times that size and I get through three or four of them in a day. Here in Florence, I ascended the Duomo at a jog. 

First, of course, I had to politely push past several coachloads of wheezing American tourists. For many of them, those 463 steps probably represented the supreme athletic achievement of their adult lives, and frankly I'm not sure if they all made it back down alive. If not, were they destined for il paradiso, il purgatario, or l'inferno? Maybe it depends on how they voted...But let's not go there.

Il Duomo
Originally completed in 1436, but the facade is from the late 19th century.

Uffizi museum courtyard

Looking north-west over Florence from the Piazzale Michelangelo.
Cathedral dome and Giotto tower to the right.

Palazzo Pitti

Looking down on the inside of the Duomo

View of the Giotto tower from the cathedral dome

Reverse view of the picture above

Edd vs Food #140
 I can't remember what they called it in Italian, but basically it's Dauphinoise potatoes with ham.
At the Gianno Bistrot, more or less next door to my Florence apartment.

Verona & Lake Garda, Italy

From my apartment in Vicenza, Padua and Venice were short train trips to the east. To the west, the same train takes me to Lake Garda and Verona. This is quite a line to be on. Trains are, obviously, the best form of transport ever invented: from the Japanese bullet train to the Andean Explorer in Peru, from Amtraks in Arizona to sleeper trains in Serbia, some of my best travel experiences have involved simply sitting back and watching the world rattle by outside my first-class compartment window. Let me take a brief moment to acknowledge and promote The Man In Seat 61, the absolute bible of international train information for me and for many other travel nerds like me. It's always worth a read.

Lake Garda, much loved by the Roman poet Catullus, is Italy's biggest lake. I took a long walk along the south shore from Peschiera to Desenzano. There was also a detour north into the Sirmione peninsula, for sightseeing and chips. In the summer the lakeside resorts are hot and crowded, but right now they're pleasantly warm and fairly quiet.

Verona, meanwhile, boasts a Roman amphitheatre built in the year 30AD that continues to host live concerts to this day. I didn't manage to get to La Scala in Milan, and I would have gone to the opera in Verona if they'd been showing anything I'd at least heard of, but they weren't. (Verdi's 'Stiffelio', anyone?) 

From a tourist point of view the main cultural attraction of Verona is that it's the location for a novel by Luigi da Porto (1485-1529), based on a story called 'Mariotto e Ganozza', in which he moved the location from Siena to Verona and changed the names of the protagonists so that the title became 'Giulietta e Romeo', which as we all know was later made famous in a song by Dire Straits.

Today two of Verona's main tourist attractions are 'Juliet's balcony' and 'Juliet's tomb', two locations that have absolutely sod-all to do with 'Romeo & Juliet' but which have nonetheless been leveraging money from gullible tourists for decades (in the case of the balcony) and even centuries (in the case of the tomb). I am a gullible tourist and I did pay to see the tomb, because it's in a quiet little museum with plenty of other things on offer. But the queue for the balcony was huge - I had inadvertently arrived on All Saints' Day, which is a public holiday in Italy - so I didn't bother with that.

Shakespeare never came here, indeed he never left England, but still he chose Italy as the location for more of his plays than any other country, including the British Isles. (That's if you don't count the history plays, where the locations weren't really a choice.) In part this reflects the deserved dominance of Italian culture at that period of history, although of course Italy didn't become a unified country until 1861. I suppose the Italians are like us Brits, in that their days of dominance are very much behind them now. But there is, as Adam Smith said, a great deal of ruin in a nation. It's still a good place to be.

Nearing sunset on the south shore of Lake Garda

Desenzano del Garda, after sunset

'Juliet's tomb' in Verona

Roman amphitheatre in Verona

Edd vs Food #139
'Dolce Vita' focaccia sandwich from La Figaccia in Verona.
Prosciutto, Gorgonzola blue cheese (you can't see it but it's there), rocket.
I think I need more focaccia in my life. Sourdough and ciabatta are history.

In Verona: the Castel San Pietro, from across the Adige river

Reverse view of the picture above.
This blog is dedicated to the memory of my dear aunt Dianne, who passed away late last year.
She was a faithful follower of my blog and she herself travelled extensively with my uncle David.
Many thanks to David for Italy hints & tips.

Venice & Padua, Italy

I went to Venice on Hallowe'en, and it was hell. OK that's an exaggeration, but it was at least purgatory. (Il Purgatorio is a theme to which - spoiler alert - I'll return in an upcoming blog). On a Thursday afternoon in October, Venice was a teeming throng of annoying cretins; what it's like on a June weekend, I don't even want to imagine. What can you do? How can you avoid overcrowding in small places that everyone in the whole world wants to visit? They've already imposed a daily 'tourist tax' of €5 during peak periods in summer. If I were in charge, it'd be €100 a head year-round, and €200 for kids.

Obviously I'm not being serious here. I'm complaining about a crowd that I'm part of, and I'm a stinking hypocrite. But it's a shame that there's nowhere you can go to escape from the crowd. Even in modern-day New York, there are places and moments in which you feel like you could be in a movie by Scorsese or Woody Allen; even in modern-day London, there are places and moments where you can let yourself be transported into a Dickens novel, or at least an episode of 'The Crown'. In Venice I could never shake the sensation of being in a theme park, or an airport terminal. I didn't stay too long.

Shakespeare set 'Othello' in Venice, as well as (obviously) 'The Merchant of Venice'. 'The Taming Of The Shrew' was set in nearby Padua, which I found more pleasant and peaceful. I hadn't realised that what we call Padua and Mantua, the Italians themselves call Padova and Mantova. (It would be funny if there was a place called Legova, but there isn't.)

Both Venice and Padua are rather pricey places to stay. Which is why I've parked myself down the road in Vicenza. The trains are nice and easy, and Vicenza itself is perfectly nice. I'm continuing along the path of discovering that Italy is really rather tremendous all round, and I know that most of you are already ahead of me on this topic, which is why I'm refraining from going into too much detail, for now at least. 

The Rialto bridge, Venice
"Signor Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my money and my usances..."
'The Merchant of Venice', act 1, scene 3

Another bit of Venice

Vicenza

Chasing rainbows in Padua

This makes me sad.

Prato della Valle, in Padua

Edd vs Food #138
French tacos (apparently they're a thing) containing chicken & spicy Merguez sausage
At a random place in Vicenza