Italy Part 4: The final leg of Italy. When planning this leg of the trip, we decided to homebase in Bologna in order to explore the surrounding region. At the time of planning, we had figured we could take the train each day to the smaller towns we wanted to explore and then return each night. That plan sounded great until a one way taxi ride in Italy was $25.00 no matter how far the ride. So, on the train ride from Rome to Bologna, we decided to look into renting a car. The rental cars were inexpensive in Bologna so we decided the car was the best way to explore. We planned to pick up the car on Wednesday on our way out of town so on Tuesday, we just explored downtown Bologna. We seem to have a way of always hitting places on holidays and true to form, Tuesday was the St. Petronis holiday in Bologna. Luckily, most stores and restaurants were open as were the cathedrals (of course!). We enjoyed our walk around town and voted Bologna the best gelato in the country. On Wednesday, we had a tour of a Parmigiano Reggiano farm in Parma, Italy at 10:30am followed by lunch. We asked our Airbnb hostess to reserve a taxi for us first thing in the morning. She said the taxi company would not allow her to reserve a taxi. So, at 7:45am, we set out to find a taxi to take us to the airport to pick up our rental car. The airport was about a 15 minute drive from our apartment. We easily found a taxi stand and waited. And waited. No taxi. We started walking and found another taxi stand and another….nothing. We stopped by a luxury hotel and the doorman tried to get us a taxi. Nothing. We finally gave up and walked to the train station to get a taxi. We could have taken a train to the airport but….the train was closed for the week for repairs. We waited in a very long taxi line and finally made it to the airport. By this time, it was 10:30. Hmmmm, not going to make the tour that was still an hour’s drive. We went to the rental car area of the airport to be told that our rental car company was not onsite (even though they said they were). So, we had to walk down the street and wait for the shuttle bus that would come “in 10 minutes”. After 15 minutes, I called the company and he said, “It will be there in 10 minutes”. Once we finally arrived at the Sur Price car rental company, the guy would not rent us a car because we did not have an international driver’s license! When Bill told them we had never needed one in ANY country, he said, “Well, I can’t give you a car.” He did not give us a refund either so Bill had to call Visa to get it canceled! After waiting another 15 minutes for the return shuttle, we went into the airport rental center and rented a car without issue. It was now 11:20am. I called the Parma farm and they said we could still make it for lunch. So, with extreme frustration and fully exhausted, we headed out to Parma. We had a lovely lunch with a much needed glass of wine. After lunch, we explored Parma which was a town stuck in the middle for lack of a better explanation. It’s old stuff was not old enough to hold interest and it’s new stuff was not new enough to be cool. Both of us voted that we just wanted to head back to the Airbnb and crash for a quiet night. Sigh….alas, driving in a walled city like Bologna to find a small parking garage was not an easy task. Every turn we took ended up being a one way street and then the streets would get narrower and narrower causing us to stop and turn around. After an hour of playing this game, Bill finally just went the wrong way down a one way street to get us to the garage. Needless to say, this day was our roughest one yet and we hope not to have a repeat! Thursday’s event was the entire reason for our visit to this area….a tour of the Maserati Factory! As we headed out of Bologna to Modena, we took a wrong turn and ended up going the wrong way on the autostrada. Getting off the autostrada was an impossible task so again, we rode 10 minutes in the wrong direction. We are not used to having so many direction issues and we have decided the engineers of Bologna’s highways were on drugs. Our Maserati tour was in the afternoon so on the way, we stopped at a car museum that was literally on a farm. The man had several dozen classic cars, tractors, bicycles and motorcycles on his farm. He did not charge admission and just asked for donations. It was an amazing collection and we enjoyed visiting the cows as well. We made it to the Maserati tour an hour ahead of schedule because we were not taking any chances! The Maserati Factory was so clean we could have eaten off the floor. We got to see the workers assemble each part of the car like a Lego kit which was really cool. We were surprised by the lack of machines in the plant but the tour guide explained that most of the parts were manufactured elsewhere and the cars were just assembled at this plant. The plant only makes 6 cars per day! No wonder they cost so much! Our final day in Italy started with a tour at the Gelato Museum! The company who housed the museum did not actually make gelato but made the machines that make gelato. It was an interesting hour and we laughed when we discovered that the Medicis had once again played a major role in yet another Italian staple. Gotta love those Medicis! After gelato, we headed to the Ducati Factory for a tour. This factory was a bit more involved than the Maserati factory because they did a lot more assembly of the motorcycles onsite. They produced around 150 motorcycles per day so it was a lot more action than Maserati! I did not expect to like the motorcycle tour but it ended up being my favorite! All in all, our trip through Italy has been an amazing journey. Incredible food, nice people and amazing history. Now that we are full of enough carbs to last us a few months, we are now leaving tomorrow for Montenegro and Croatia….the land of meat! Ratings for Bologna: Overall: 7.5 Points of interest: 8 Ease of communication: 8 (most people spoke English thank goodness!) Ease of transportation: 2 Friendly people: 8 Food: 8 Cost of living: 7 Weather: 10 Bill’s favorite thing: Maserati and Ducati tour Sally’s favorite thing: Ducati tour Will do my best with picture upload! Internet at our airport hotel is poor….
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Italy Part 3: Rome. The Eternal City….the city of eternal aching feet! The main thing I remembered about Rome from 30 years ago was aching feet and it did not take long to relive that memory. There was so much to do in Rome and we hated to miss anything so walking was a must. Our first day, we had tickets to the Vatican late in the day so we decided to go visit a huge park near our hotel that had a villa with gardens. We are going to stop trying to do gardens on this trip because we are cursed! The bus dropped us at the entrance of the park which was around 500 acres in size. The villa was at least 499 acres from where we started. We walked and walked and arrived to find the villa closed (it appeared to have been closed for quite a while) and the gardens locked. After some more walking, we managed to escape the park and walked over to Sant Angelo’s Castle which sat right on the river. The castle was built by Hadrian over 2000 years ago and looks like it will stand another 2000 years without issue. It had been added onto throughout the years and had incredible views of St. Peter’s square and the Tiber river. We then headed over to the Vatican for our museum tour. We started in St. Peter’s square and were then routed all the way around to the back of the Vatican for the museum entrance. On my previous visit, I remember being angry at the amount of gold and wealth that was in the Vatican while so many of their parishioners lived in poverty around the world. Evidently I was not the only one because NONE of the gold was displayed anymore in the main museum. The museum was much fancier now but I can’t say it was better. We were herded through each room with a lot of other people (even though the visits were ‘timed’ to decrease crowd size) and we spent most of our time trying to get ahead of large tour groups. Once in the Sistine Chapel, we were jammed in like sardines. We were supposed to be “silent” and not take photos. To us, it seemed like the crowd was following the rules but a worker kept screaming “Silenzia” and “No photos” over the loudspeaker which was quite ironic. After fighting our way out of the mayhem, we waited in a short line to see the Basilica which was a highlight of the tour. Sunday was Don’t Know What That Building Is Tour 2022. We started at the Trevi Fountain along with everyone else in Rome and then made our way over to the Vicus Caprarious for our scheduled tour. The Vicus was an underground archeological site that looked really cool online. Not so much in person. It was an underground cistern and it took us about 5 minutes to complete our tour. We only paid $4.00 each for the tour and we both felt we overpaid. The rest of the day we spent meandering through the streets of Rome looking at very large buildings and cathedrals. I can’t tell you the names of any of them except the Pantheon but they were really cool! Lol! We came across one cathedral that had the most amazing ceiling painting that we have seen (see picture). It looked like you were just heading straight into heaven! We went to a small museum that was free and saw a few nice paintings. It was known for a tunnel that was an optical illusion based on a math equation by Borromini. The tunnel appeared to be very long and a statue at the end appeared to be very large. In reality, it was none of these things (see pics to fully appreciate). While we were at the museum, an elderly employee came to me and said, “I love America! Better than Rome!” Then, he started singing, “Sunday, Monday, Happy Days!” and “Funkytown”. We figured he learned all his English from watching sitcoms from the 70s and listening to 80s music. He just kept repeating these two things until we made our escape. Rome was full of characters! We noticed as we wandered that we have not seen any stray cats or dogs in all of Italy. We found that odd. Given the pandemic shutdowns, we are quite suspicious that there are no cats, no dogs and no pigeons either….hmmmm…… Our final day in Rome was a walk into history as we explored Palatine Hill, the Forum and the Colosseum. We arrived early and had Palatine Hill almost to ourselves but by the time our allotted time slot at the Colosseum arrived, the tour groups had caught up to us. We finished the day with a trip to see the largest building in Rome, the Palazzo Venezia. I cannot begin to describe the size of the structure so I will not try. Just put it on your bucket list! We head out of Rome in the morning to spend a few days in and around Bologna. We have quite a few surprises for you on the next leg so we look forward to sharing them with you in a few days! Ratings for Rome: Overall: 8 Points of interest: 8 Ease of communication: 8 (most people spoke English thank goodness!) Ease of transportation: 6 Friendly people: 6 Food: 7 Cost of living: 6 Weather: 10 Bill’s favorite thing: Sant Angelo Sally’s favorite thing: Sant Angelo Italy Part 2: The second leg of Italy began in Venice. We took the train from Florence to Venice and seeing Venice again for the first time in 30 years was just as thrilling as it was the first time. For those of you who have not been to Venice, it can be hard to describe. For me, Venice is a feeling. It has an electricity in the air that I breathe in as soon as I walk out and see the Grand Canal. Prior to arriving in Venice, I had mapped out the exact route to take to get to our hotel because it can be confusing and in Venice, confusion ultimately ends up with you spending a lot more money than planned. When we arrived and went down the stairs and to the right to the number 1 Vaporetta station (basically a bus on water), there was no number 1 Vaporetta running on Sunday due to elections. So, after a rapid redirection and a few questions, we managed to get on the alternate Vaporetta to go to the hotel. They made us wear masks (which we have not worn since leaving the States in August). They made us take off our backpacks which irritated me and there were nine million people on the Vaporetta. Plus, the tickets cost $9.50 each for a 5 minute ride. The positive thing about the ride was that our hotel was directly off the fourth stop so we did not have to carry our bags through the confusing streets of Venice. I do have to report that cell phones and GPS have made walking around Venice a much easier venture than it was using paper maps back in the day! The first day, we went exploring and spent the afternoon on what we named “the Cathedral Tour” because there was a Basilica on every corner. We went into one large Basilica and the pipe organist was playing a concert which was wonderful. We headed to the Leonardo da Vinci museum and were amazed at how many things he had invented during his lifetime. Many of his inventions did not work but later inventors built upon them to create many of our modern tools. I think it is rare to find someone who is a talented artist and a scientist in the same brain. I am not sure da Vinci ever slept but we were exhausted when we left the exhibition! Our next day started early because we could not get timed tickets to St. Mark’s Basilica as they were all sold out online. We knew we would need to stand in line to get tickets but when we arrived shortly after 9am, the line already curled around the square. We voted to try that line later in the day and took a public gondola ride across the canal ($2 each) to another cathedral. At 11:30, we had tickets to Doge’s Palace. Much like Venice, describing the Doge’s Palace is close to impossible. As we walked into the building, I turned to Bill and said, “Okay, I am done taking pictures of ceilings because I have at least a hundred pictures of ceilings and people have to be getting tired of them.” Then…..we entered the first room. The ceilings were so grandiose that we did not even know where to look. There were paintings everywhere and gold everywhere. I started snapping those ceilings before the words I had just uttered had even left the air! One room was about the size of a football field and had a floor to ceiling painting that measured 75 feet wide by 20 feet tall! Rather than a living palace, the Doge was a government building of sorts complete with a prison! The palace was a highlight for both of us and made the next nightmare a little more tolerable. When we left the palace, we headed back into St. Mark’s square to check the length of the line. The end of the line was much shorter (or so we thought). As we rounded the corner, we saw the flood. We were in Venice during a “super tide” which was an unusually high tide. It had flooded the square and water was everywhere. I was surprised to see no pigeons in the square but later discovered that Venice passed a law in 2018 forbidding people to feed pigeons in the square. At the time, they were killing over 15,000 pigeons a year to control the population so something had to be done. Not feeding the pigeons certainly made a huge difference as there were none in the square which (in my opinion) was a huge improvement. Back to the water….during the flood, workers had quickly assembled a makeshift sidewalk that was elevated above the water. Bill said he would stay in line for tickets and wade through the water since he had on sandals. I had on boots so I walked over to get onto the bridge. The bridge was chaos and I could not figure out why people were not just walking to the top of the square which was not flooded. I skipped the bridge and started walking. I easily crossed the square and soon discovered why no one was going that way. The far side of the square was flooded up to shin level. I ended up taking off my shoes and working my way through the flood back to Bill. When I found Bill in line, he said that a woman with about 20 people had just broken in line in front of us. Since we had previously experienced the “official” looking tour guide break into line routine in Florence, we were not going to fall for that trick! We walked up and stepped back in line in front of the group. Another couple followed us and the woman said they could not break in line. Bill set her straight pretty quickly and nothing more was said about the situation! After a long wait, we finally made it into St. Mark’s Basilica. After all of the cathedrals we have seen, we felt that St. Mark’s was a bit of a let down. The altar piece, Pala d’Oro, was the highlight. It was made of solid gold and had thousands of gems inlaid. While seeing the altar, we had a new level of selfie takers….Narcissistic Nuns! They were snapping their pictures in front of that altar like Kim Kardashian on a Rodeo Drive shopping spree! It was very entertaining to watch! Our last night in Venice, we had grown a bit tired of pasta (even amazing pasta can only be eaten so many times in a week). Bill discovered a restaurant called The Old Wild West which was just too funny not to be investigated. On the menu, every hamburger had the ingredients listed. All the lists started with “bun”. As an American, I found that listing “bun” as an ingredient on a hamburger seemed to state the obvious but perhaps other cultures do not know that a bun is a given. The food was so-so but the experience was worth it. Our next stop on Italy Part 2 was a city called Ferrara. Ferrara boasted a castle and a huge cathedral so we thought it would be a good place to spend the night before continuing our train journey south. The lesson learned on this stop was ‘do not trust the internet’. The castle was cool and had an actual moat but it was closed on Tuesdays. The cathedral had been damaged in an earthquake in 2012 and had been closed since that time. Since 2012….and no one had thought to update the internet information? We spent most of the day on our usual food hunt and were just glad we only had one day in Ferrara. The next morning, we hopped on the train to head to Montepulciano. Montepuliciano was a hill town in Tuscany. I chose it because it was on a train route and it had wine. Lots and lots of wine. I thought since I had found a liking for port, perhaps I would find a wine I liked as well. We arrived at the train station in Chuisi and took a taxi up to Montepulciano. It was a beautiful ride and we picked out my “under the Tuscan sun” homes to buy along the way. Our hotel was an old palace and I had to specifically request a room with wall outlets. Being an old palace, the room stayed very cool and the weather in the hills was cooler than we have had. We asked how to turn on the heat and were informed that we could not have heat yet. We also were informed that if the grapes needed water, we might not have any during the day. Glad to see some things in Italy have not changed over the years! We had a great day of wine tasting and did a tour of some underground streets and Etruscan tombs. I did not like any of the wine and even Bill said this particular wine was too dry for his taste as well. I guess I’ll just stick to port wine! On to Italy Part 3 which will be several days in Rome. We made sure to enjoy the peace of Montepulciano today before we head into the fray. Arriverderci! Ratings for Venice and the countryside: Overall: 8 Venice; 7 countryside Points of interest: 10 Venice; 7 countryside Ease of communication: 7 (most people spoke English thank goodness!) Ease of transportation: 10 (foot power!) Friendly people: 6.5 Venice; 7 countryside Food: 10 Cost of living: 7 Weather: 9 Bill’s favorite thing: Doge’s Palace Sally’s favorite thing: Pipe organ concert in the cathedral From Bill: So, the doge’s palace in Venice was way over the top..doge actually means duke, so this was a seat of govt. The palace started off fairly normally, venice was founded in the 800’s by the current italian rulers, but didnt merge into italy until much later.. ( see attached link to a good quick history of venice) https://www.britannica.com/place/Venice/In-unified-Italy Venice grew from its once sleeping fishing village to a world class power due to the elite families ruling the city, keeping their money and power tied up in the doge’s levers of power.. Most of the amazing paintings and gilt work you will see in the pics was done after a fire in the mid 1500’s by then the spanish were bringing massive quantities of gold back from the new world, and we figured that the ruling families used their trading efficiencies to help the spanish move product, for a small pittance of gold.. Tongue in cheek small.. The venetian empire grew schlerotic in its old age before it peacefully fell in the late 1700’s the ruling elites got lazy and greedy and over extended and the people finally had enough. This is the general fall of an empire throughout history.. Isnt it fun, as we are dealing with our own issues.. Read the piece, not too long and gives good background as to all the goings on.. Italy Part I: Our initial day in Italy was a bit rough due to my mistake. After deciding not to go into Amalfi due to cost, we voted to keep our reservation in Herculaneum to see the ruins. Prior to leaving Monaco, I booked our train tickets from Herculaneum to Florence. Easy peasy. We would see Herculaneum on Wednesday once we landed in Naples, spend the night and head out on the train the next morning. Only one small issue that I overlooked….Herculaneum was closed every Wednesday for cleaning. I wasn’t sure exactly how or why you’d need to clean ruins, but my daughter the archeologist explained it was very important to keep the roots and undergrowth from destroying the foundations. That knowledge still did not help my situation. We went to the train station in Naples to change the train tickets to later in the day. I was informed the ticket I purchased was non changeable. Next came tears (mine, not the train employee’s). Bill said that if this was the worst “oops” we had on a three month trip then that would be good news. We arrived in Herculaneum and found several other groups of people that had not known the park was closed on Wednesdays either so that made me feel a little better. We walked and walked to our hotel. When booking a hotel online, I do my best to read all reviews and try to find something functional for us but I am never quite sure what we will find when we arrive. We were thrilled to find out our Herculaneum hotel was right on the water and had a pool as well! We also discovered that Herculaneum opened at 8:30am instead of 9:30am which meant we would have two hours in the morning to see the ruins! So all’s well that ends well! We woke up bright and early and were the first ones in line to enter the park. The difference between Herculaneum and Pompeii is Herculaneum was buried in ash while Pompeii was hit with ash and lava. Therefore, when Herculaneum was “discovered” again, it was in much better condition than Pompeii. As we walked through the ruins, it was hard to believe that the city had been buried from 79 AD to the 1700’s. Some of the houses could probably have been lived in today. After our morning in the ruins, we headed back to the train station and made our way to Florence. In Florence, we had booked an Airbnb which are even riskier than a hotel with what you are going to find upon arrival. It was perfect! Located only five minutes from the Duomo in a nice area. The best part was it had a washer and dryer! It was great to take a shower without having to wash our dirty clothes at the same time. I must also give Italy kudos for figuring out electricity and water since I was last here thirty years ago. Back then, there was no heat allowed after 6pm until 6am and hot water did not exist. I also had to straddle a hole to use the bathroom in public bathrooms. Now, we had electricity that flowed all day and night, hot showers and real toilets! I will say the dryer situation was not great but I can’t have everything! Our first evening we went to a local restaurant and had an amazing meal. We are going to gain back the weight we have lost thus far with all this delicious food! The next morning, we went to the Uffizi gallery and saw more paintings of the Madonna con Bambino than one should ever need to see. It was interesting to see the paintings pre-Renaissance versus post-Renaissance though. Those pre-Renaissance folks did not have much spunk. After the Uffizi, we wandered over to Piazza Vecchio to see the Fake David and Fountain of Neptune. By this time, the crowds had definitely started to show up so we made our escape over to the Santa Croce cathedral and we could not believe that more people were not there. All of the famous folks were buried there including Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Machievelli, Galileo, Donatello, Marconi and Fermi. Everywhere you looked, someone famous was buried. The cathedral was massive. One of the biggest we have seen and we felt very small inside. After the cathedral, our feet needed a rest so we took a break back at the apartment and then had another amazing dinner of meatballs and wild boar pasta. Our final day in Florence began with a trip to the Boboli Gardens which looked beautiful online. I am not sure when those pictures were taken but it was certainly not in recent days. We found the gardens underwhelming and in need of some TLC. The highlight was the gelato across the street which we had for lunch. This day was our first day of rain but the rain held off until we had finished the gardens which was lucky. We went to wait in line to go into the Santa Maria cathedral. The cathedral was free admission but the price was waiting in line for hours. Just as we got in line, a woman came by and said she was putting together a tour in the next five minutes so we could skip the line. For $15.00 each, we jumped on the chance to skip the line. The tour group consisted of 10 people and the funny part was that she basically walked us over and broke into the line! I guess if you look official enough and have 10 people with you then no one is going to question you! It turned out to be an informative thirty minutes so we felt our time saved in line was well worth the cost. The next adventure was to see the real David. I had tried to book tickets through the official site but they were sold out for all the days we were in Florence. So, I went to another website and purchased tickets. I was convinced that the tickets would be fakes and that I was secretly supporting some terrorist funding operation but much to our surprise, the tickets were genuine! We got to see David, some more Madonna con Bambino paintings and the first piano ever invented which was really cool. Leg one of Italy completed! We head to Venice tomorrow. Fingers crossed our good weather returns so we do not have to swim through the streets of Venice….though the exercise would mean we could eat more food! Ratings for Florence Overall: 9 Points of interest: 9 Ease of communication: 7 (most people spoke English thank goodness!) Ease of transportation: 7 Friendly people: 9 Food: 10 Cost of living: 7 Weather: 9 Bill’s favorite thing: Santa Croce Cathedral Sally’s favorite thing: Santa Croce Cathedral Ok guys, time for more bill stuff, coming soon is a plains trains and automobiles post.. Should be fairly entertaining.. As we traveled from seville spain to barcelona, we noticed a couple of things we did not expect.. The area was very arid, desert like. Almost like the central valley in california.. Also there were cities about every 15 miles or so.. This is common in pre industrial (re : auto) society worldwide, as that about a good days travel. Most of these cities consisted of low (2 story or so) buildings and houses. These were almost always brown/white in color.. There was almost always a larger church with a substantially taller bell tower. Very often there was a fortification near the town, usually always up on a hill overlooking the city.. As i mentioned this is not what i expected. This is the area of spain called andalucia, it is rich in agriculture (approx 20% of olive oil production worldwide comes from this area). Lots of grapes per sallys pics and citrus.. What i didnt know was that this area was predominantly settled by the invading moors from north africa in the 700’s they built all the towns and the fortifications and rebuilt the agriculture that had fallen into misuse.. Hence the similar looks of all the towns and cities.. The moors maintained control of this entire area until the late 1400s, when isabella and ferdinand were in power in northern spain, which remained predominantly roman catholic during this time frame.. Interestingly enough very little has changed in the smaller towns thru this area since this time, the bigger cities like valencia, barcelona, seville, granada, etc have modernized but little has changed elsewhere.. With one exception..Benidorm, this city is basically the miami florida of the med coast. There are a mammoth amount of really cool architectural high rises there, its a resort city for the madrid citizens.. Please take a look online at this city and be amazed.. Its really amazing after seeing all the monochromatic cities and towns and then this pops up over a hill.. And we drove around in amazement for a while.. So thats all i got at the moment.. A little history.. A little info and one cool little resort town in the middle of nowhere.. If you do visit spain, this area is a great place to visit/explore |
AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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