Hurricane John

August 31st

For friends and fans of Anya, notice John's path. Notice also just below the "m" in the second 5 am. That is where wee Anya is. La Paz. She is on the hard so relatively safe. I am in Victoria presently so I am even safer. But this John fellow threatens to be the biggest hurricane experience on the west coast so Saturday morning will be a tense time.

Rome and the denouement

August 20 - exquisite Roman ruinations!


It is the exceptional morning that I leap from bed and say 'get thee to church'. This morning is one such morning. It is off to the Vatican. In the distance Michelangelo's dome rises over 100 meters above the buses and the tourist bustle.

We dive into the fray, first through the museums. Pio Clemente's museum holds the Lacoon, the ancient Greek sculpture which, along with the Apollo Belvedere, is said to have inspired Michelangelo's robust treatment of the male form (and decidedly more robust treatment of the female form).




The occasional portal allows a glimpse of the papal grounds. Very nice! swank!




We march down galleries so laden, no overburdened, with priceless art and religious artifact; our wee profane brains numb out from the grandeur. But then the genius that surrounds us shouts to us to pay attention, even from the gallery ceilings, and so we gape on.



Raphael commands attention with, among others, his iconic The School of Athens. Felicity now has a print of it hanging from her wall at McGill.



In the distance we see Michelangelo's Pieta. Its genius shines distinctly through the dimness and the distance.


We traverse the Sistine Chapel, eyes glued heavenward to those frescos first seen in childhood picture books: the Creation, the Fall, the Last Judgment and all of the other themes and representations commencing long before the time of Abraham.


Then we pass into St Peter's Basilica, shrinking to insignificance, along with all the others, under Michelangelo's supreme dome. Here I profane the holy place by taking a picture of my daughter. Humans! will they never get it right?


Later we explore the ruins of Rome's Republican and Imperial days, starting, where else?, at the Colesseum. From there one can wander to the seven hills of Rome but the one I head for is Capitoline Hill.





Climbing higher I pass under the Arch of Septimius Severius, one of only three arches surviving time's erosion and the frequent looting and destruction by invading tribes.




As I top the hill the neo-classical corners of the Vittorio Emanuele II Monument and Palazzo Venezia abruptly bring me back to ersatz and recent history. Perhaps a fitting enough place to end this walk in antiquity.





Several days later Felicity and I return to Toronto full of stories of our adventures and keen to share them with Verity. While we played in Italy Verity slaved away at her summer job inToronto. Doesn't seem fair. Oh well! We'll make it up another day.

Back to Rome

August 17 - back to Rome






And so it was that on our return to Rome we became pilgrims to Assisi.


Ascending to Assisi, to the walled city of St Francis himself, took us to the early 13th century.



Here in Bascilica della Santa Chiara he received word from God. Photos are frowned upon but I sneak a picture or two in theTempio di Minerva, a Roman edifice with a Christian makeover, and what a makeover.



Then we pass into the Basilica di San Fransico, upper and lower, past cycle upon cycle of frescos by the giants of early western art, Cimabue and Giotto and iconic images of Madonnas, Crucifixions and St Francis feeding the doves and all manner of godly and manly thing. Beneath all this lies the crypt and relics of St Francis and we go down to that holy place.





After departing Assisi we stop in the darkness before Rome for more earthly delights, food and drink. Then late in the evening, back in Rome, it is sleep.

Off to Venice

August 15 - Drats! No cameras allowed in the Uffizi.

So I gaze at works of Cimabue, Giotto, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio, even Rubens, going from gallery to gallery with little to show for it except recollected grand, beautiful, magnificent and immortal works of art. Yes, and a book of collected works from the Uffizi to give my daughter upon my return.




Then it is on the bus again and away. After transferring to a boat we pass to the island city Venice, and, as if from the waves, palaces and cathedrals arise out of the sea, monuments from Venice's glorious past.



Chiesa dei Gesuati introduces us to the theme, quickly followed by the church Santa Maria della Salute.


We disembark along the Bacino di San Marco and follow the leader through the Piazza San Marco, down narrow walks siding the always present canals, past gondolas and more gondolas, to our hotel.





Later we head off to shop and explore. Swarms of tourists and street vendors thrust along the walkways and spill into the Piazza San Marco.


Basilica di San Marco is said to host the remains of St. Mark but it hosts much, much more. Ornate beyond words, whether inside or out, it owes much to Byzantium. What would one expect of perhaps the greatest merchant city-state of Medieval times? Mosaics of great artistic detail, of gold, jewels and heavenly themes. A mosaic detail from one arch makes the argument.








After overly feasting our eyes on these marvels we are off to meet our group under the clock (Torre dell'Orologio) to prepare for another voyage.


This voyage is by boat to the island of Burano, some distance away. Here is our boat.


And here is our destination, a pastel coloured village on the sea



And what is our purpose? Why, food and drink. Of course!


Later in the evening we voyage back to Venice, walk back along the Bacino di San Marco, through Piazza San Marco, to the hotel and sleep.

Florence

August 14th - Florence-mother of the Renaissance!



Our first morning, early, we flit through the deserted streets, past Tuscany's most recognizable landmark, the red-tiled cupola of Il Duomo (Brunelleschi, 13th century), on to the banks of the Arno.




We turn following this ever-so-civilized bank, past one bridge and then another, the outrageously overbuilt medieval Ponte Vecchio (with one lone gondola secure beneath an arch) and on to the Uffizi (office of the de Medici's), home to the world's pre-eminent Renaissance museum, hoping to be first in.


That is not to be. Closed! Today is a holiday. Our introduction to Renaissance Florence will be a little slower than we hoped. That is a good thing.



Florence, the city as it now is, despite its tide of tourism, is a jewel, a jewel from morning to night. Florence, the city that was once, is simply beyond compare. Taken together, Florence overwhelms the unprepared and I was so unprepared.



Slowly now we join with our fellow tour members for a city walk-about, viewing first the spectacular tower of Giotto, (Campanile di Giotto, 1334) and the imposing neo-gothic facade to its associated Cattedrale di Santa Fiore and Il Duomo.



After passing the home of Dante, the Divine Comedy, we wend out way to Piazza Della Signoria, where statues abound. Here is Cellini's Perseus and the head of the Medusa (1545), only one of many in this wonderful, wide open plaza close on the Uffizi. Here too is where Savanarola was burned at the stake in 1498.



On then to the Bascilica di Santa Croce, a Franciscan Gothic Structure (Cambio, 1294) said to have been instructed by St. Francis himself. Fransican austerity characterizes the interior but not its art and sculpture.


Importantly it is here that I fall into a metaphysical tizzy. It comes to me standing in one spot in the great nave: I am within mere metres of the tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Dante and Galileo (among others) - a convergence of genius never before nor after rivalled in our western tradition. Awe descends upon me - awe of these dead, awe for this place.


Later in the adjacent cloistery, Felicity is backgrounded by Bardinelli's God our Father. We decline on the tour to Pisa so that we might see the Pallazzao Pitti and finally, early that evening, to see Florentine food and drink.

Tuscany

August 13 - Off in a time-machine - next stop Siena then Florence




For this rather casual, low pressure traveller, recognition came slowly - these tours are highly marshalled, near military events.


Reveille is at 6:00 am, bags packed by 6:30, fed by 6:45, and on the bus by 7:30. After one of many head counts, we are deployed to Florence (Firenze) with a stop at Siena on this second day of operations. The anarchist within grumbles, nearly rebelling, but then trudges compliantly to the bus. Reflecting now, happily so.





Northbound after Rome, the countryside streams by, each scene better than any postcard or promotional poster of Italy. The realization seeps in - this is the real thing: there is a veracity about Italy that goes deep down and from long ago. None of our cheap highway culture, the strip-malls and billboards of Canada and, more so, the USA - our roadway development that makes travel a protracted shopping trip. No! here are wonderful unfolding scenes of Medieval fortresses, hill-top villages, crowned by ancient cathedrals. Encroaching are bucolic countryside vineyards and wildly-shaped plots of long tilled land, laced by ancient lanes and wandering narrow roadways. Occasionaly we stop for pee and tea crossing the Latium and Tuscan countryside. Noon we pull into Siena for liberty, a few hours of wandering.


Siena remains a medieval hilltop city. Long ago its city walls failed to stop the aggressive Florentines. But thereafter those same walls very successfully resisted the march of architectural progress. Today Siena remains the heartland of Romanesque and Italian Gothic structures. Wandering its labyrinthine narrows one passes brilliant jewels of churches and then a grand piazza cracks it all open.

Here Il Duomo spreads out, with its striped, marble campanile reaching to 13th century heaven. Its dark marble dome is portal to that heaven while its icon laden walls resonate with the priestly chants of eight centuries. The greatest artists of the day - Pisano, Donatello and others - crafted the fonts, sculptures, frescos and friezes that give the dark holiness a sort of particularity as one quietly paces from sacred place to sacred place. One box is claimed to hold the baptizing arm of John the Baptist, the arm that baptized Jesus.



Doting fathers take many pictures of their daughters. One more and then we are on our way to the Piazza del Campo, a gigantic scalloped plaza, once claimed by Montaigne to have been the finest of any in the world. Home to Font Gaia it also is the focus for the Palio delle Contrade, a horse race like no other. In this race the pomp and pageantry of medieval Siena is spiced to red-hot by flag-waving, intense local rivalries that have survived the centuries. The race itself is said to be cutthroat. We are lucky in an unlucky way because today is horse selection day and the square is packed. The race is three days hence but the party has begun.


Unfortunately our demanding schedule does not permit us the joy of the party, only the jostle of crowds. After our walk-about it is back to the bus and down the road. Next stop, Michelangelo's David and Florence, arguably the historical epi-centre of genius on planet Earth. And food and sleep.

Earlier nine time zones and two millenia

August 12 - It is nearly noon by the time luggage is harpooned off the carousel and well past noon by the time we check into the hotel. We catch a glimpse of St Peter's (Bascilica San Pietro) winding our way to the hotel; that titillates. Drop our bags and hit the streets! Ah Sweet antiquity!

The Vatican is near our hotel but most of the Roman, Renaissance and Baroque structures are on the other side of the Tiber river so cross it we do.


Almost immediately we pass into Piazza Novona, perhaps Rome's most famous Baroque site, a huge piazza built upon the ruins of Emperor Domitia's Circus Domitianus dating from early empire days. In the 17th century the piazza was rebuilt in accordance with Baroque design, in great part those of Bernini, most particularly around the central obelisk, an early Roman copy of a yet earlier Egyptian work. That, together with Bernini' famous sculptured fountain the Fontana dei Fiumi (1651) form the pinnacle central piece of this grand yet warmly human piazza.


At distance in the north end is the Fontana di Nettuno with its striking (literally) statue of Neptune and the Neraids. To the south, balancing the piazza, is the Fontana del Moro (the Moor).

Down another short serpentine street from the Piazza we break into openness, the apron approach to the grand, yet deceptively subdued portico to the Pantheon (All Gods), a bare hint of the majesty within. Entry to this strangely sombre yet light drum and dome delivers us a collosal culture jolt. Possibly the best preserved of all ancient Rome's public buildings, the Pantheon pays respects to all the gods. In reply all the Gods, it seems, and father time, have paid their respects to its altars, frescos, statues and otherworldly dome. It has a harmony and eternal majesty about it that strikes us each deeply.

Diving back in the crooked lanes of Rome we move on to another spectacle. This time the Fontana dei Trevi, a place of near archetypal significance to a lad whose earliest movie memory may have been "Three Coins in a Fountain". But, alas, the movie bested reality - only because the swarms of tourists, each one seeking happiness, made the experience somewhat sad. We move on, leaving Trevi, the end point of Agrippa's 19 BC great roman aqaduct, to the vast number of others.




Next stop is Rome's famous gathering place, Piazza di Spagna, the Spanish Steps. Its side streets are populated with upper-end shops which brings out the diva in Felicity. After too many pictures, now jet-lagged, foot-weary and culture shocked, we plunge back in to the close streets for one last stop.

That is the Piazza Del Popolo, the people's plaza, the northern gate to the ancient City of Rome. It is not just the arch but the fountains, the ghost of Nero, the Egyptian obelisk from - get this- the 13th century B.C. all within the piazza design of Napolean's architect, early nineteenth century!















Facing this fascinating and beautiful melange are twin baroque cathedrals, each loaded with precious art, artifact and history. We stumble by, returning to our hotel for food and then sleep.
Beautiful sleep!