Author: Lee Hausman

Italy was a fine experience but upon my arrival in Paris, I realized that I felt like I was coming home. I flew into Charles Degaulle Airport, jumped onto the RER train, and arrived at my old favorite hotel, the Elyssa Luxembourg, without a hitch. On the train I met a pretty Columbia University grad student (she was also a UVA undergrad from Lynchburg, Virginia) just arriving in Paris for the first time for a month-long French language immersion class. I treated her to my "vast "knowlege of Paris and my snappy mangling of the French language and she laughed enough to temporarily forget her jet lag.

 

Once I got to my hotel, I had plenty of time to check-in, drop my bags in the room, board the old #27 bus right outside, and make it down to the Cafe Corona for the weekly meeting of the Club Metropole (a group of American ex-pats). As it turned out, I was this week’s only tourist attendee and therefore Visitor Of The Week. It will be interesting to see my picture and the meeting notes on the club website next week.

 

I’m using a French keyboard as I write this and the main keys are laid out like this:

 

AZERTYUIOP
QSDFGHJKLM
WXCVBN?./

 

(take a look at your keyboard for comparison) and requires things like 3 keys to be pressed to produce the @ sign, so please bear with me.

 

After saying goodbye to Club Metropole president Ric, I dashed over to the Louvre to snap up a 2-day museum pass (lets you skip the entry lines) and then hopped the bus back to the Left Bank and my hotel. This is the location of the Sorbonne University and the neighborhood pulses with student activity. A light rain was falling and I have to confess I was not much in the mood for the cafe scene so I indulged in… Quick Burger. This is a sort of Five Guys burger place and sooo much tastier than the McDonald’s across the street: it was terrific.

 

My cold has improved markedly and I realized yesterday at breakfast in Rome that all the Americans were coughing and sneezing. I wonder if this was not a cold at all but instead some kind of allergy (though I would be greatly embarrassed to say that I’m allergic to Italy!).

 

Tomorrow: The Louvre, with my favorite large-scale French paintings by Delacroix and Gericault, and the Orsay, with its fabulous Impressionist collection.

 

Today’s beautiful weather was ideal for my day on foot visiting the Colesseum, Roman Forum, the Palantine Hill, and the Pantheon. And what great sites (and sights) they are! Some of you know that I’m an avid reader of Roman history, real and fictionalized (and I know some of you are, too), so it was fascinating today to see some of the places from my readings. For instance, I stood at the spot where it’s said that Julius Caesar was cremated after being assassinated.

 

It’s amazing that such ruins remain at all, though I thought the Forum seemed way too small to have been the civic seat of a culture that ruled 54 million people at one time. The ancient Romans excelled in so many ways, lasted for 1000 years, and commanded a huge empire. They were the greatest economic and military power on the planet yet their leaders’ arrogance and corruption led ultimately to their decline and eventual ruin. I often wonder if the U.S. is not on the same track today…

 

Some Odds ‘n’ Ends: Modern Romans are definitely fans of stylish eyewear and devote many, many high-end stores to them. The rectangular lens shape is very much in vogue here and I’ve gotten quite a few weird looks while out and about, which I ascribe to my utterly retro, "so Out they’re In" Wayfarer sunglasses. Or could it be my L.L. Bean Safari outfit?

 

Sadly, I had no luck finding the fabulous Sfogiatelle pastry that my friend Salam so highly recommended (he did say it might be more popular further south, closer to Naples) and I did not get to eat carciofo romana, a dish which involves flattening and grilling parts of a whole artichoke.

 

However, the best Gelato I found in all my Italian travels was not at one of the recommended gelaterias (most of which I tried) but instead at a family-run, hole-in-the-wall down the street from my current hotel. Go figure.

 

Tonight I wrap up my Italian stay with a performance of Il Turco In Italy by Rossini at the National Opera House (conveniently right across the street from my hotel). This is an Opera Buffo (comic opera) but the plot is so convoluted that, when I read the synopsis, I gave up on keeping track of who was cheating on, in love with, pining for, disguised as, or fleeing from, who. I’m sure the music and singing will be great. (Post-performance comments: it was a great show, with very clever scenery and directed by someone with a great eye for small comic bits that delighted throughout the performance. Terrific music and singing, as was expected. The opera house itself was not quite as fabulous as La Fenice in Venice but wonderful nonetheless).

 

Speaking of music, my hotel only occupies some of the floors in its building and on the floor above me someone in an apartment plays excellent classical piano every night, which lulls me to sleep.

 

Tomorrow: I bid Italy goodbye and head off to Paris for a few days.

 

In the interest of brevity, I will dispense with the following superlatives now: astounding, amazing, fabulous, incredible, and humbling. Today I have experienced them all.

 

The National Museum of Rome is my kind of museum: spacious, quiet, air conditioned, uncrowded, and filled withg great artifacts. Located just a few blocks from my hotel, it contains great sculptures, including the busts of many ancient Roman notables (the Emperors, Senators, Generals, and their wives) and Greek and Roman Gods. Some of these are "death masks" and therefore represent what they really looked like. The basement is a vast walk-in vault (complete with bank vault doors) that presents the chronological progress of coins in the Roman Empire and Italy, from Denaris to Euros. Fascinating. The basement also houses a collection of common ancient Roman household items, including jewelry, hair pins, and cosmetic jars. A terrific 90 minute visit.

 

Rome’s subway system is pretty lightweight by our standards: there are only two lines, A & B, which run North-South and East-West and serve very little of Rome. However, imagine the difficulties in trying to tunnel today through a 2,400-year old city! Every 10 feet they must have had to call in the archaeologists to examine some new find. Nonetheless, the subway at least had working A/C and typical cars, complete with graffiti, and is, apparently, well-used by the citizenry. I used the subway today to visit…

 

The Vatican Museum, houses a great collection of sculpture and painting. There is one long hall that features 100 yards (our modern football field) of sculptures, followed by 50 yards of amazing tapestries, followed by another 100 yards of The Map Room. The latter is a room whose walls are painted with frescoes of maps of different areas of Italy and whose ceiling is the most fabulous assortment of frescoes and decorative detail. The 3-D in the frescoes is so good that it’s frequently hard to figure out what is painted and what is real. This is followed by the Raphael Rooms – Raphael took up residence at the Pope’s request and painted huge frescoes in the Pope’s private rooms, including the famous and gigantic "School of Athens", featuring Aristotle, Socrates, Euclides, and even Michelanglo (who was working down the hall at the time). I am reminded of the observation I made when viewing Louis XIV’s bedroom at Versailles: how could anyone actually sleep underneath all that art, gold, and decoration?

 

Next, the Sistine Chapel, the Pope’s private chapel. Imagine, a chapel the size of a high school gym, reserved for the exclusive use of one man. Described as the greatest single work of art by an individual, the ceiling frescoes simply defy description. Here is the Old Testament history of the world before Jesus. Here is the famous panel showing the extended finger tips of God and Adam. Though Michelanglo at first refused the commission, saying he was a sculptor not a painter, the Pope prevailed on him and, from 1508 to 1512, the sculptor found himself on scaffolds painting 5,900 square feet of ceiling (compare that to the size of your house or apartment). When you enter, the space is dimly lit to preserve the frescoes and you are asked to be silent (Americans, of course, lead the way in babbling). At one end, above the altar and painted by Michelangelo 23 years after the ceiling, is The Last Judgement, a dark and horrific vision of the end of days. This is very different in outlook from the optimistic ceiling frescoes and illustrates the pessimism of the end of The Renaissance.

 

I used the sneaky "Group Tours Only" exit from the Sistine Chapel to save myself a 30-minute walk around to the front of St. Peter’s Basilica. This is the cathedral of all cathedrals. The front porch, the Atrium or covered entrance before you reach the doors, is itself larger than most churches. Inside the scale is huge: 200 yards from front to back, 430 feet to the top of the dome, the inside covers 6 acres and can accomodate 6,000 standing worshippers. The altar is covered by a 7-story tall bronze canopy and every surface is ornately decorated. This clealy carries the splendor that was once ancient Rome forward and is a magnificent seat of worship for the 1.1 Billion Roman Catholics. It’s hard to describe the feeling one gets viewing this – the accomplishments of man are truly heavenly here.

 

Where are the artistic accomplishments of recent centuries that rival those of men like Michelangelo, I wonder? What from our time will be revered 600 years from now as unbelievable accomplishments in art? I wonder…

 

Tomorrow: the Colesseum, Forum, Palantine Hill, and the remains of ancient Rome.

 

 

Rome is a vast, sprawling city on the scale of Paris, London or even New York, with all the attendant bustle, business, dirt, and noise. The traffic is not quite as crazy as reported (although I had a wild taxi ride this morning, barreling through traffic while the driver had a screaming match with someone on his cell phone). In fact, drivers really seem to obey the rule of stopping for pedestrians in crosswalks and there isn’t too much jay-walking. The drivers are used to passing cars and other things with minimum clearances, at a crawl or at speed, and the notion of lanes is non-existent. Yet, the cars are not all banged up along their sides as you might expect.

 

My hotel is across the street from the National Opera House and so the neighborhood is lively with restaurants and bars catering to the opera-going crowd. Very convenient for me, as I have a ticket for Wednesday night’s performance of Il Turco In Italy.

 

Best laid plans do go awry and I found myself attempting to visit two museums today that were closed on Mondays (guess I’ll have to fire someone in my Trip Planning Department). I’ve also been dealing for days with a vicious head cold and cough that is just hanging on and on (no, I haven’t been around any birds). So after my abortive museum trips, I decided to play it low key today in the hopes of shaking my cold.

 

One thing that is unusual here is that businesses close up early. The government has been on a kick to break the "siesta" plan (where businesses close in the afternoon and reopen in the evening) and adopt a more Western timetable. But it’s usual to see everything but restaurants close up after 7:00 PM, so forget it if you want a pack of gum or an aspirin after that time.

 

You have to marvel at the focus on energy conservation here. My hotel room, for example, uses a programmable key card. After you open your door, you have to insert the key card into a hold just inside the door in order to get the lights to come on. When you leave and take the card, the lights will stay on for 30-seconds and then go off. So you cannot leave the lights (or TV, A/C, etc.) on when out. Incidentally, the key card, which is the US is very anonymous to prevent theft in case it’s lost, features the hotel name, address, and room number on it.

 

One drawback of traveling with a guidebook as your guide (in my case, the Rick Steves books) is that you may wind up surrounded by Americans toting the same book wherever you go. While the Italians themselves are ardent tourists and there are certainly plenty of them scrutinizing maps at the tourist sights, my hotels and certain recommended restaurants seem like they’re located in D.C. based on the conversations overheard.

What’s for breakfast? All my hotels have served a complimentary breakfast consisting of a choice of cold cereals (Rice Crispies, Corn Flakes), yogurt, bread and croissants, ham, Swiss cheese, fruit, and beverages. The "orange juice" is the weakest stuff you’ll ever see and there is no cream or half and half for your tea or coffee. On the other hand, it is free, it is just downstairs from your room, you can get a great cappucino, and everyone there is American.

 

So, tomorrow will hopefully be a busy day. I hope to see the National Museum of Rome, the Vatican, and St. Peter’s Basillica. Rick Steves says I can do it all in one day. I’ll put him to the test.
 

Siena, sadly, was not to be. There was some kind of "work action", a slowdown, by the bus drivers and so buses were infrequent and mobbed. As it turned out, by staying in Florence I was able to talk with a Harley rider and see the start of a large running event. Interesting point gleaned from the bus schedule: "weekdays" here means Monday thru Saturday.

 

The rider belonged to a "moto club" from Pettrona and they pulled up in the Piazza del Republica right in front of me. His was the only Harley I’ve seen so far in Italy and the club’s dozen or so bikes were among the first real motorcycles I’d seen. He was riding a 2001 Softail and they were in town to work as volunteers escorting the runners. Unfortunately, he spoke no English so we didn’t have an extensive conversation.

 

The Florence to Pettrona race is 100 KM (60 miles) over the Pyrenees mountains. It started right in town at 3:00 PM (what an odd hour – most US races start in the cool mornings) and the start was chaotic. It was not a closed course per se, just a regular street in the pedestrian zone, and when the gun sounded, tourists were scrambling to get out of the way of the runners. Exciting to watch nonetheless; 60 miles is quite a run and there were all sorts of participants, including wheelchair racers.

 

So that’s it for Florence. This afternoon I’ll be boarding the Eurostart train again, this time for Rome and I look forward to the ancient ruins and the Vatican.

Imagine a solid block of marble, 14+ feet tall. Now imagine someone hacking away all that does not belong there, starting at the front and working to the back so that, like figure in a slowly draining bathtub, an incredible and exquisite one-piece statue emerges. This describes Michelangelo’s creation of the famous sculpture of David, the shepherd boy (ready to slay Goliath). It’s truly an awesome work and it’s just hard to imagine how it could have been created by hand. The artist did not mark up the stone, set reference points, or draw quadrants on it as some of his contemporaries did; instead he just dove into it, marble chips and dust flying, giving in entirely to the (he said) God given inspiration, working for days without end, without sleep, letting the act of creation completely consume him. In the case of David, he even used a block of marble that others had rejected as flawed and too thin. On the statue, the skin tension, the veins in the hands and arms, the sense of impending motion gives the marble a quality that is quite sublime. I spent an hour looking at this work. 

 

So went my visit this morning to the Accademia Gallery. The rest of the museum features more (but naturally disappointing, after the David) sculptures and more Renaissance paintings. I confess my circuits were overloaded by then and they did not get a fair viewing.

 

Next stop was the Duomo, the local medieval cathedral with an incredibly high and long, unsupported interior. What I could see of its famous dome from inside was beautiful but I’m afraid that I passed on the long climb up to the top: the line was very long and the 460+ steps not all that inviting.

 

I did take some time today to do some laundry and to check out the bus station for tomorrow’s day trip to Siena. After lunch (pizza with mushrooms and artichokes), I also visited the Museum of the History of Science, which was midly interesting but a lot like the "Mind of Da Vinci" exhibit yesterday at the Uffizi.

 

Here’s a shock: I think I may have overdosed on Gelato! Recent cups and cones have resulted in some stomach distress so I may have to lay off for a few days. Yes, it’s quite a deprivation, I know. And with a gellateria every twenty feet in this town (literally), it’s hard to avoid.

 

What, you ask, about the Pitti Palace, the Bargello Museum, the Church of Santa Maria Novella, and all those other sights? Well, I tend to look at things in museums really hard, to spend time with them, to look at the details intensely. This is satisfying but also contributes to a phenomenon known as "museum fatigue". After a few hours of this concentrated attention it feels like my eyeballs are about to fall out. So, I don’t go into my tourist role with the notion, as I know some of you do, that I’m only here once and, by golly, I’m going to see it all. Instead, I pick the top sights, see them at my own pace and with due attention, and figure I’ll see the rest on my next few visits. Vive l’difference, eh?

 

So, friends, tomorrow I’m off by bus for a day in Siena, a hilltop town that was once larger than Paris and was once Florence’s main commercial and political rival. The Black Plague wiped out 1/3 of the town and it never recovered and, consequently, its an excellently-preserved medieval town. It was an interest in going to Siena, in fact, that sparked my whole visit to Italy.

 

On every trip, we reach a point where your reporter reaches cultural overload; where I just run out of adjectives. I think we may have reached that point today, so bear with me, dear reader.

 

First, a correction: last night’s restaurant was actually Osteria del Porcellino (writing these blog entries after having enjoyed the excellent red wine leaves some opportunities for errors to creep in).

 

So, today I went to the Uffizi Gallery, the world’s greatest collection of Italian painting, and it was a mind-blower. The collection traces the rise of realism and humanism and the optimistic spirit of The Renaissaince. I found this passage that may explain it all:

 

"My eyes love things that are fair,
And my soul for salvation cries.
But neither will to heaven rise,
Unless the sight of Beauty lifts them there."
    – Michelangelo

 

In other words, religion was not enough to ensure salvation, one had to appreciate art as one of God’s gifts to man in order to reach true nirvana. Finally, a liturgy I can get onboard with – groovey, baby!

 

The nice Uffizi ticket reservation system, which I took advantage of months ago, saved me hours in line this morning. I picked up my reserved ticket, went to the special separate entry door and, before I knew it, I was strolling among the works Bottecelli, Da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, and others. The Medici family, which ruled and influenced all things Florentine for generations, were fabulous art patrons and they commissioned or supported many of the works on display.

 

My favorite painting in this collection was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus. Anyone familiar with Adobe PhotoShop has seen this work (on the software startup screen), also known as "Venus on the Half Shell",  and it was great to see it in person. The colors, the textures, the scale, and subject are all amazing. I spent quite a bit of time getting a real good dose of this one. The Uffizi itself is quite a work of architecture and the ceiling treatments, frescoes, and decorative elements are a wonder all by themselves, even without the hundreds of paintings and dozens of sculptures. I spent about 3 hours there and was captivated every moment. Sometimes you just feel blessed to have been in such a place, basking in the genuis of men from so long ago.

 

If that was not enough, there was almost an entire floor dedicated to a special exhibit entitled "The Mind of Leonardo" which does a superb job of explaining the products of Da Vinci’s genius. Based on his codexes, or work notebooks, concepts such as the essential ratios of the body (the heighth of the body is 7 times the length of the foot), elements of flight, the math of forced perspective, hydrology, and many others. I’m beginning to give credence to the theory that the man was a stranded extraterrestrial.

 

I cleared my brain with a post-Uffizi stroll across the Ponte Vecchio – another one of these bridges lined with shops (in this case mostly jewelry stores) and lunch at a tavola calda (literally, a "hot plate"), a kind of buffet setup where you can direct the creation of your meal (in my case, a great salad).

 

After lunch I went to the Church of San Croce (no relation to Jim Croce) which features the burial site of Galileo. If you read the great book Galileo’s Daughter you know that in old age he got into hot water with The Church for embracing the idea that the Earth circled the Sun. His fame and accomplishments saved him from death but when he died he was not allowed to be buried in a consecrated place. The greatest part of the story is that, after Galielo’s death, his faithful manservant swore to see him properly buried and caused every following generation to take an oath to it. Finally, four generations later, the manservant’s descendant got Galileo’s remains moved into the same crypt as Galileo’s daughter, a nun, in this church, San Croce. It’s a wonderful story and Galileo is in good company now: the church also holds the remains of Michelangelo (it was his "neighborhood church" growing up), Michiavelli, Dante (he was banished, so no actual remains), and Rossini (composer of many great operas and The William Tell Overture).

 

For dinner, I sought out some "comfort food"; less expensive fare than last night’s dining blowout and found myself at The Old Stove, an Irish bar, for a couple of pints and a sandwhich. Though no one there at all was actually Irish, the food and drink were excellent and cheap.

 

Here’s a comment on hotel elevators, with special emphasis for my two beautiful daughters, Sarah and Lindsay: each hotel I’ve stayed in on this trip has featured successively smaller elevators (smaller, girls, than the one in our hotel in Paris). I estimate the size of the one in Hotel Pendini here in Florence to be 5′ x 2.5′. Still beats hauling the suitcase up 5 floors, however.

 

Tomorrow: the Accademia (with Michelangelo’s David) and the Duomo (with its amazing dome).

There’s a certain simplicity to things in Europe. Train stations, for example, are very simple: walk in the front, pass by the tabachi (magazine stand) and walk out on the platforms. No airport-style waiting rooms, no security checks, no shopping mall. So it was easy for me to find my Eurostar train this morning and be on my way to Florence. Oddly enough, there are also no conductors checking your ticket as you board and you could be halfway to somewhere else before discovering you’re on the wrong train. Generally, a lot of things in Europe operate on this kind of semi-honor system – you’re expected to have your ticket but there are no ticket takers checking each person. There are instead occasional rail car sweeps in which tickets are demanded for inspection with very stiff fines if you don’t have one. This is true on trains, buses, boats and probably lots of other places as well. It cuts down on staff requirements and thus costs and speeds up the process of going anywhere. A great system but it would never work in the U.S. because someone would claim that their rights were being violated, of course.

 

The Eurostar train was clean, comfortable (in 1st Class) and fast and the 3-hour trip to Florence was just 38€ or about $42; a bargain by most standards. A quick taxi ride (oy, what a plunge back into the car culture) to my hotel and voila! I was ready to go exploring in Florence. Most of the city’s tourist attractions are grouped around the old town core and a "pedestrian-friendly" zone that keeps private cars out of the area. There are still plenty of taxis, delivery trucks, bicycles, scooters, and other 3- and 4-wheel vehicles to keep you on your toes when crossing streets, however.

 

Large areas in this zone are set aside for outdoor market stalls and leather goods seem to be a big sales item here. This is densely commercial tourism and quite unlike Venice. I prowled around and got my bearings, sized up some of tomorrow’s destinations, and then went back to the hotel for an hour of rest until dinner time.

 

I had dinner tonight at Osteria di Pecorino and it was a very nice meal. I started with a salad of feta cheese and melon pieces with basi, moved on to gnocchi with tomato sauce and mozzarella, and then the main event: shredded chicken with crispy-fried baby artichoke hearts. Finished up up with creme brule and accompanied it all with the fine house red wine. There is a certain rhythm to Italian meals and you are expected to linger. There is none of this "turn over the table" pressure you find in the U.S.; I was at mine for 2.5 hours and during that time no other table in the place had changed diners either. A different dining attitude is required because the staff is very fast at taking orders and getting food and drink out but they slow down quite a bit when it comes to dessert, coffee, and the bill. You will do no one any good by being antsy. I enjoyed every bite and waddled over here to the Internet cafe with a smile on my face and my wallet 52€ lighter (which was quite reasonable).

 

Tomorrow: the Uffizi Gallery and my absolute favorite Botticelli painting.
 

 

Morning was a great time for beating the crowds at the Accademia Gallery, St. Mark’s Basilica, and the Guggenheim Collection yesterday, as I did. The art was very interesting and the architecture amazing. I’m not a huge medieval art fan but it’s fascinating to see the artists working with 3-D perspective and often large-scale works.

 

Venice, as mentioned earlier, has no vehicles. Even bicycles are banned, which I guess makes growing up here tough on a kid. As a matter of fact, the population is shrinking and aging and the government subsidizes rents to encourage people to stay in Venice. The water buses are the equivalent of a subway system and very convenient once you get the hang of it. It’s interesting to watch the pas de deux between the boat captain jockeying the throttle and the conductor with his deck line when docking at a stop; but it’s all very smooth, born no doubt out of long experience.

   

The area around the Rialto Bridge is just the worst, most touristy place in Venice (worse, I think, than St. Mark’s). You may know that one of my pet peeves is people who stop dead in the mouth of an escalator and, sadly, that spirit is alive and well here in Venice. People just stop in the middle of bridges, sidewalks, wherever, alone and in groups, with suitcases, boxes, dogs, and decide to consult their maps, take their pictures, enjoy the view, etc. The resulting pedestrian traffic clog is just amazing.

 

I spent the afternoon wandering and got well away from the tourist areas. Venice is an island, after all, so it’s impossible to really get lost but it was great to just roam without a care. The weather was great, another 75-degree day with clear, clear blue skies. I had lunch in a neighborhood cafe with no name and my flawless Italian fooled the locals for .001 seconds. Luckily, the locals were friendly and welcoming and the sandwich was excellent (there’s nothing like having to choke down lousy food so as not to offend the locals).

 

What do I now have in common with Hemingway, Chaplin, Capote, Byron, and Welles? After a brief late afternoon rest, I dressed for dinner and headed out to Harry’s Bar, which all of the above and many other glitterati have frequented. It’s small and expensive but the bartender uses unorthodox and highly entertaining techniques. I had my requisite one cocktail (a tiny martini served in an oversized shot glass for 14 euros), took in the abience (white dinner jacketed staff vs. good awful attired tourists) and headed off for dinner.

 

My thanks to my friends Joanie and Chuck Tooley of Montana for their recommendation of the restaurant Al Peoceto Risorto, where I had dinner. Located west of the Rialto Bridge, adjacent to the fresh food market, I had a great meal there. One thing about Italian food: restaurants serve meals made with the best ingredients the chef could find that day, not with the leftover stuff from the weekend. The results are that each bite deserves attention and focus and is really wonderful. My test of an Italian kitchen is to order a pasta course of pasta aglia olio (basic pasta with garlic and oil). If you can’t make that correctly, you’re lost. Last night’s dish included a touch of chili and was perfecto. Veal Scallopine with Lemon Sauce, a mixed salad and, of course, bread completed my meal. I finished off with a flan-like confection that was heaven. The vaporetto ride home in the dark with all the lights reflecting off the Grand Canal was lovely.

 

I have concurred that Venice just might dethrone Paris as my choice for the world’s most romantic city. The ambience is just right for romance. For example, everyone holds hands here: husbands and wives, husbands and someone else’s wife, couples, women, mothers and daughters. 

 

I’ll do some more wandering today and hope for another good meal tonight. Tomorrow, I’ll bid a reluctant farewell to Venice and head by high-speed Eurostar train to Florence with it’s promise of great art. It will seem odd getting back to a place where there are cars. Venice has been a marvelous experience and I hope you’ll stay with me as I head south! Ciao for now…