Rome, Florence

Some pics from Rome. We  got off the train and took the open-top tour bus, in which you can get a good overview of the city and also hop off when you want, explore a bit, and then get back on. Rome is big, bustling and busy with modernity mixed in seemingly randomly with culturally iconic antiquiy. We'll go back Sunday and I'll hopefully pay a visit to my friend Alessandro.

Parking solution

Florence was amazing. We got going a little late and missed the 9:33am train, so we just said hey, we'll drive. You can't drive into the city or risk a 100 euro fine, so once there we parked on the outskirts and took a bus in. This type of endeavour (using local transportation) is always an adventure, but somehow it always works out. Using our bad Italian and the locals' bad, but usually better, English, we are usually  able to figure out how and where to pay and where to get off. And so we headed into Florence. We walked around heading for various sights, and the city is so pretty, so alive, and so vibrant. The duomo may be even more spectacular than the one in Orvieto, but here it's just another stunning edifice. We were on our way to the Uffizzi museum and passed a young woman in a piazza  playing classical guitar to a crowd of onlookers. She was playing a rather familiar number by a Tuscan composer-- Puccini or someone like that. She played with such feeling, with such mastery that I was compelled to throw a euro into her guitar case. I then went to take a photo of a sign with her picture and name so I would later know who she was. Our eyes met while she was playing and I instinctively smiled at her. She smiled back with a smile as sweet and as serene as the music she was playing. Quite a nice moment as smiles and eye contact with strangers seem to be quite rare on this continent. We also  passed another guitarist a little later also playing wonderful Tuscan music. So nice to have this soundtrack in the background intermingled with the other exciting sights and sounds of this Renaissance city.

The Uffizzi gallery was great, lots of Italian Renaissance paintings and sculpture. The landscapes and buildings and little hill towns we have been seeing so much of these last few days appeared almost verbatim in paintings done over 500 years ago.

Took the bus back to the car and ate a superb dinner at an obscure little restaurant opposite the car park. Waiters in Italy seem to have a lot of personality and flair, and the young man here was no exception-- he cleaned my grilled sea bass with consumate skill and told us of his own fishing adventures in far off places, explained local wines, and in general was quite genial and informative.

Some pics:

Recently we have also visited Civita Bagnoreggio and Siena, and I'll try to post some pictures of these places tomorrow.

The trip is winding down. We leave here Monday and head back to Venice for a couple of days before leaving for home on November 2nd.

Bolsena

Bolsena is a little ancient town going back to Etruscan times on the shore of the lake which bears its name. The lake is in an old caldera the result of a volcano blowing its top eons ago. It's a quiet, pleasant town with huge poplar trees lining the streets. It's not far from where  we're staying and we visited it Monday.

There's a castle at the top of the town which incorporated parts of the old Etruscan city wall.

That evening we picked up Geri at the train station and heard about her adventures in San Giovanni Rotundo.

Tuesday was also a fairly slow day. While Geri recuperated, we went to an old Etruscan amphitheatre about 15-20kms away and did some exploring. It's  out of the way and is not really promoted as a tourist site, but was very interesting to some extent because of this Since there were no tourists or other distractions, one was really able to get a feel for the place and experience its timeless ambience.

We went to the train station again in the evening to pick up Geri's friend, Ann. She had arrived in Venice that morning and taken the train down to Orvieto. Earlier in the day we finally met the owners of our apt.  as they returned from their travels. They live in the downstairs apt. Giulia is an Italian woman who went to England to study English and there met Malcolm. They're very friendly and nice and full of information about the area. They invited us down to a little get together with another British couple and we talked, drank some wine and ate some cake and tarts. Very pleasant. Malcolm, Kevin and I had great conversations involving our mutual interests in music, especially classic British and American rock-- Pink Floyd, Clapton, Allman Bros, etc.

Tomorrow we go to Rome.

Orvieto

Later in the day we drove to Orvieto in search of matches, money and a church to attend Mass. On the way we ran into this slice of heaven:

Orvieto from afar:

Orvieto is a medieval wonderland. The duomo, or cathedral, is absolutely stunning:

Walked around the town and found out that Mass at the cathedral was at 6:00pm, so we decided to come back later. Ate  a lunch of pasta with wild boor  and saw this extremely tall woman

Then we went back to the apartment for a while, driving the rather maddening Italian roads through glorious countryside

Sunsets from our apt. are beautiful

Orvieto at night

The bank machines were not working for a while, but we were finally able to get some money. Also found a lighter for sale. It is surprising how hard it was to find matches.

Mass in the cathedral was beautiful. Went home to build a fire.



Umbrian morning

We're back in Italy today in our new accomodations. They're huge-- and cold!! Tried to light a fire last night, but we only had one match and my fire-starting skills have gotten rusty since the days we camped out in Maine every summer. But it's beautiful here-- and quiet. There are sounds of distant planes but not much else, except for the cheerful song of a bird which must be singing in a dialect of Italian since I don't recognize the melody. Our view is of a field, some trees and the lake ringed by low hills. On the way here through the fields we saw a herd of snow-white lambs with several babies. So
cute!! Must go back and get a picture. But that was the long way in that a kindly local road worker took us on when we were hopelessly lost in the town of Bagnoreggio. We followed him, he sped in his tiny car through  the ancient, narrow streets of the town, avoiding pedestrians and other cars with aplumb, then turned down one country lane, and then another, and, voila, we were there. We are in the country, a 2km ride down a dirt driveway to the road. But there is a shorter way to the main road than
the one he showed us last evening.

Last night we slept on the ferry from Split, Croatia to Ancona, Italy. After arriving, Geri jumped on a train to go to San Giovanni Rotundo to pay respects to Padre Pio, and we continued on to this tiny town near Orvieto where we will stay for a week. She will rejoin us Monday. We will visit some hill towns and take some day trips to Rome over the next few days. And get some matches.

Istria to Zadar

 Some pics from our coastal journey

Croatian coastal journey

Finally got out of Rovinj around 12:30pm and headed to the Autobahn. The books said it would take 7-8 hours to reach Zadar from Rovinj, but it wasn't all that many kms, so I figured we'd get there much sooner than that.

The Istrian countryside is beautiful, unique, nothing quite like it in the states, although New Mexico and California are reminiscent. But the vegetation is different-- are those olive orchards? I'll have to look it up. The mountains are certainly similar to Cal's coastal range. We started climbing and began to get some truly memorable panoramic views of mountains, orchards, fields. The huge chasm in the side of the mountain near Pazin, written about in a Jules Verne sci fi novel, came into view. Had to stop the car to get some shots. Drove over the mountain and wow! again the Adriatic from high up. Drove around Rijeka and got on the coastal road, away from the big towns, stopping to get some more shots. Kept driving, the road was twisty and often high-- a metal guard rail and sometimes only a few concrete stubs sticking out of the side of the road were all there was to keep an errant vehicle from going over the side to certain oblivion. Steep, curvy roads, now high above the sea, then winding down to ancient little seaside towns with their harbors and boats and brick and stucco homes and buildings clinging to the sides of hills for dear life. And everywhere, amazing beauty, the lustrous sea, the wild offshore islands, the glistening sun. We stopped to take a few shots. Again. And again. And the road never let up, twisting and curving and soaring and dipping, and it seemed like every time it permitted, we'd stop to get some shots.

So the journey took the 7-8 hours. And we arrived in Zadar, and then down to Sveta Petar, where our apartment allegedly was, well after dark. Couldn't find it, asked around, "Ne znam, ne znam." But actually there weren't all that many people around to ask. Finally had someone in a restaurant call the number on a cell phone (we still don't have them), and a lady drove over to lead us there. Her English rivaled my Croatian in lack of fluency, so we had a great time. She was very sweet, the mother of the person who ran the apts., and we all sat  around and drank sljivjevits (Croatian brandy) and used Google translate and whatever else to communicate and it was a blast. She left, we went to bed, and the next morning, we woke up, and wow, what a view from the balcony. So we took a few shots (pictures, not brandy).

On to Igrane.

It's late and I need to go to bed, so I'll post some of the shots tomorrow.

Zivjeli!!

Church of St. Euphemia; Motovun

The church sits atop the hill next to the prominent bell tower. We had been told mass was at 11:00am, so we trudged up the hill through narrow medieval streets on uneven cobblestones and reached the top about 10-15 min. after. We learned later there was an easier way to get up and down the hill. Turned out that the mass started at 10:30am, so we pretty much missed it, but after mass ended we explored the church and admired the panoramic view from the hill. I will not again mention how incredibly blue the sea is here, but I will add that its surface from where we were appeared wonderfully still and serene this day. The church is named after St Euphemia, of course, who is the patron saint of Rovinj. She was tortured and thrown to the lions in AD 304 by Emperor  Diocletian for her faith. Her tomb sat in Constantinople until the 9th century when it was removed out of fear that the the iconoclasts would destroy it. Somehow her sarcophagus was lost at sea and washed ashore in Rovinj. The townspeople were unable to move it until a young boy with two calves, answering St. Euphemia's call, managed to haul it up the hill. Considering this to be a miracle, the people of Rovinj made her their patron saint. The sarcophagus now sits in the church. The bell tower was modeled after the one in St. Mark's square in Venice and is topped by a copper statue of the saint.

We motored to Motovun in the afternoon. This is a hill town in the interior of Istria. From afar, it is quite striking. We were able to drive about 3/4 of the way up and then had to walk the rest of the way. Stunning views from the town, and wonderful old buildings. Mario Andretti, Indy race driver, spent his youth here. Considering the winding, serpentine roads of rural Istria and the tight switchbacks and turns of the road leading up to the town, it's not hard to see where he got his driving chops.

An incredible day, and each day seems to top the last. Tomorrow we head out of Istria and down the coastal road to Zadar.