Soggy day

Rain, rain, rain... We were supposed to have a walking tour and gondola ride today, but it was raining so hard that the guide told us if we didn't want to go today, we could use our voucher another day, so we decided to wait until tomorrow.  

See, we had already walked for about 2 hours straight, trying to get to Ponte Di Rialto, the bridge you always see in the movies and travel shows.  Well...we got lost, really lost.  We couldn't even find ourselves on the map we had bought at the travel shop.  That's because we were about a mile from where we thought we were.  When we finally asked a navy guy at the pier where we were, we were astonished at just how far we were from where we thought we should be.  We were even walking  in a direction that would get us loster.  OH WELL.

 We stopped going the wrong way here.  Notice the ocean liner in the background.  We were headed out to sea.

So we had to retrace our steps and try again.  This time we were a bit more observant, and noticed yellow signs posted up on the buildings that pointed to Rialto.  How easy now!

 Here is the Rialto bridge.  The bridge has three sets of steps.  This photo shows one side with the backs of the stores in view.  There is a similar view on the other side.

So we got the bridge and found a shopping mecca.  The bridge is covered with shops...mostly jewelry shops similar to the Ponte Vecchia in Florence.  And on the other side of the bridge, guess what...more jewelry shops and tourist type of shops.  Oh Yippee.

Well, it sprinkled the whole time.  Just enough to be aggravating, but not enough to warrant an umbrella.  But it never stopped and eventually we were pretty wet.

So we had lunch and went for our tour, but by that time it was pouring.  But like troupers, we went shopping some more. 

 About every fifth or sixth store is a mask store.  Why masks?  Venice had a tradition of Carnevale just before lent where masks were worn.  In the old days there was a good reason to wear a mask during the riotous Carnevale.  They helped wives and husbands to be unfaithful to one another and priests break their vows of chastity.  Things got so out of hand that Carnevale was banned in the late 18th century.  It was revived in the 1980's by local tourism powers, and is calmer now, but just barely.

In Venice you can get from place to place by boat or by foot--no wheels aloud in the city at all...no cars, no bikes, no roller skates, no skateboards.  Like other Italian cities, there are no straight roads or walkways, making it hard to find your way without a good map or even with a good map.  We will probably get lost tomorrow too.

 An unusual 24 hour clock using the old style Roman numerals where 4 is IIII, not IV.

View from the bridge.

Check out the windows.

Side view of the Basilica of Saint Mark.  You can see the line to get in for a look.  The line is about one and a half hours at this point.

Saint Mark's from the front.

 Bronze horses adorn the front entrance of St. Mark's.

 Artwork over the front entrance.

.

Waterbus goes under the bridge.
 

La trena

We moved today from our farm house in Tuscany near Siena to Venice.  We drove to the train station in Florence, turned in the car at the rental office, and took the train (trena) to Venice.  What a wonderful experience.

 

The train got up to about 90 mph at times, but you never felt the speed, except when passing another train going the other way...wow!  The ride was smooth as silk and very quiet--you could actually hold a quiet conversation.  The train made 5 stops along the way.  On the way to the first stop, about half way to Balogna, the train rarely traveled above ground.  That means that for most of the 40 miles we were actually in a tunnel.  The rest of the trip was on the surface.

 

When we got to Venice we were greeted by a representative of the travel agency that arranged the trip and the hotel and we took a water taxi most of the way to the hotel.  Unfortunately, we could not take the taxi all the way to the hotel because the America's Cup was using part of the Grand Canal for the yacht race.  So we had to hoof it about a mile through the back streets accompanied by a porter who was pushing our luggage for us.  We just missed seeing the sailing ships as they had just finished their last lap about 10 minutes before we arrived.

We only had a couple of hours to look around and have dinner, and it was raining.  Our hotel is about 3 blocks from Piazza San Marco (Saint Mark's Square) so we walked there to look around.  The square is about the size of 2 football fields and is bordered by a beautiful church and some beautiful stores and restaurants.  String combos were playing a variety of music (mostly classical) at various spots along the perimeter.  What an experience.

 

Tomorrow we have a walking tour of some of the sites, so I should have more to say then.

Earthquake?

Hey, several people have told me there was an earthquake near Balogna early this morning.  We didn't hear about it until we got off the train in Venice this afternoon.  I got two emails about it wondering if we were ok.

Yes, we are ok.  The news story I read said the quake was at about 4 AM.  The funny thing is Pat and I both woke us at about that time this morning for no good reason.  Maybe we felt the quake, but we were 80 miles away...who knows?

Puttering around

Today we drove around the roads close to "home" looking for more wineries, trying to find the best way to get some of this delicious stuff home.  We had a bottle of Chiante bottled by Castello Badia Berardenga that is very tasty.  After following a google map to where google thought it was, we stumbled upon a sign that pointed in the right direction.  The winery is a former Monestary that looks a lot like a castle, complete with drawbridge and tower.  There are no signs to tell you where to go to buy the wine, and we were about to give up when we saw a couple of men tending the grounds...neither spoke a word of English.  I was able to muddle through a conversation where I understood only about every third word, but finally understood that he could not ship wine to the USA.  So we just bought a couple of bottles and were on our way.

Courtyard of the "castle".

A small horse or a big man would muscle these stone wheels around to squeeze the oil out of the olives.

Hey, why not mail the wine ourselves, so we went to the post office in Castelnuovo Berendenga... again no English.  Also she was a postal worker, so she really didn't seem to care...just like home.  But eventually she told me that they would not sent wine to the USA.

Now I know wine gets from Italy to the USA, but how?  So we looked for another winery.  This time we sent to a place called Castell'in Villa.  This place was really cool to explore.  Someone there was a modern artist who welded junk together to create works of art.

Well, she said she could send the wine to the US, but the shipping was more than the cost of the already overpriced wine.  So we went on.

Finally, we found a winery called Villa a Sesta who sells pretty good wine and can ship it reasonably, so he looks like the winner.

By the way,  the car we rented is an Italian car called a Lancia (I think made by Fiat) and it is a diesel getting about 43 miles per gallon.

 

Of course you don't get gallons here, you get liters at about 1.66 euros per liter.  That works out to about $8.00 per gallon.  I don't think O'Bama can be blamed for that.

The Italian roadways are designed for these smaller cars.  The lanes are narrower and the parking spots are smaller.  There aren't many American cars here except for the very smallest compacts.

Goodbye from the Black Rooster in Castelnuovo Berardenga.

Bologny on Balogna

Wednesday we did a lot of driving.  We started with the small city of Arezzo.  There wasn't much to see except the wall around the original city that had a mammoth door.

 

Then on to Ravenna.  It was an overcast day with some light rain now and then, but not bad driving.  I have to tell you I am amazed at the autostrada.  It is a system of 4 to six lane highways throughout the country similar to our interstate system.  Some of the newer and wider sections are toll highways, but worth the price.  The speed limits range from about 55 mph in congested areas to about 81 mph on the open road.  Of course the Italians regard the speed limit as a speed suggestion.  It is nothing to have a line of cars pass you going 100 mph.  I felt like the pace car at Indy.

On the way to Ravenna you have to cross a mountain range similar to the mountains in West Virginia.  We must have gone through a dozen tunnels that ranged from a quarter mile to several miles long.  We took a different route back and found the same thing.  And the bridges were awesome.  Many were several hundred feet high and many miles long.

 Of course, I had to visit the namesake of my home town to find out why the founders wanted to name our city after this Italian seaport.  The tour book told us that at one time Ravenna was successively the capitol of the Western Roman Empire, the Visigoth Empire, and the Bysantine Empire for a span of 350 years starting in 402 AD, and was considered one of the greatest cities on the Mediterranean.

Now the original city remains inside its walls drawing tourists who want to see what is left.  The greater city is a modern seaport but with the typical Italian style of buildings.  The old city has several noteworthy remnants.

The Basilica di Sant'Apollinare in Classe dates from the 6th century and retains the beautiful mosaic tiled walls with depictions of processions from long ago.  The church itself is in rough shape with some of its beauty still intact in some areas.

Dante's Tomb is tucked in among the buildings.  His ashes were actually hidden nearby during WWII just in case the tomb was destroyed.

Maybe the statues that are on the front lawn of the old Ravenna Township school, now Brown Junior High, were inspired by these guys adorning the central park.

No trip to Ravenna would be complete without a visit to the leaning tower of Ravenna!  Well it is not as spectacular as the one in Pisa and not as easy to get to, but it does lean...even more than the one in Pisa.  There is yet another leanier in town, but we couldn't find it (we were tired).  Maybe we could get something like this to replace our flagpole.

A statue to Giuseppe Garibaldi, a famous general and politician of the 1800's, has a prominent spot in the middle of the city.

Yes, Ravenna has a post office.  I immediately recognized it as the Ravenna post office because when I went in there were only two people working the counter, one was playing solitaire on his computer and the other had a closed sign in front of him.

So long Ravenna.

On the way back we decided to stop in Bologna for dinner.  Bad idea.  First of all, Bologna, at least the parts we saw, doesn't even look like an Italian city.  It looks more like Cleveland.  Second, we couldn't find a parking spot anywhere.  People were parked on sidewalks, on the grass, double parked...what a mess.  We drove around for about an hour and gave up.  We ended up having pizza in Florence.

Today we stayed around home...our Tuscany home.  We visited several small towns and tried to find a vineyard that was open.  First we went to Castelnuovo Berandengo, a town maybe the size of Kent, sitting  by itself on a hill surrounded by fields of grapes and forests of olive trees.  The real reason for the visit was to shop at the open air market.  The main street was blocked off and lined with tables of vendors of every variety...farm products, fish, clothing, linens, etc.  

This picture shows only a few of the tables, because like most streets in Italy, it is not straight and you can only see a little bit at a time.  There was actually about a quarter mile of tables.

We went back to our apartment with our loot and decided to go back for lunch.  The market was just closing up at noon.   So were all the stores in the town!  In Italy it is the custom to close the stores at around noon so that the shopkeepers can go home for lunch.   Only the restaurants are open then.   They reopen at about 2:30.  So that's why the post office in Ravenna never has anybody working at noon!

So we just wandered about and took some pictures.  Below is a picture of some artwork on one of the buildings...no doubt by a budding master.  Then a picture of a building Pat thought looked cool, and then a picture of a typical street.

 We found a vineyard where the owner was kind enough to show us around and tell us about his wines.  The tasting room was an old press room where they pressed grapes and olives.  Pat liked the large earthen vats in front of the old presses.

Another little town waaaaay up on a hill was Villa a Sesta.  Not much there but it was nice to look at...especially the arched entryways through the wall that surrounded the town.

Let me finish with some pictures from another small town called San Gusme, perched on yet another hill, surrounded by grapes and olive trees.

 

Through the olive trees, way up on the hill you can see the villa of another grape farmer.

You want grapes, we got grapes!  Thousands of acres of grapes.

A driving day

Today we left the apartment at about 9:30 AM and returned at about 9:30 PM.  Most of that time was spent in the car on the autostrada (the equivalent of our turnpike) and other major streets.  Driving would be a lot easier if they had roadsigns naming the streets, but they don't.  You find your way around by signs pointing in the direction of towns or attractions.  We rarely knew what street or highway we were on.

The first stop was San Gimignana, a city famous for all its towers.  It sits high on a hill and all the streets are steep and walking was a chore.  At one time the town had 72 towers, but many were destroyed by warring factors and now only 13 remain.  The towers were built as refuges for the owners.

 

The beautiful town square (piazza) right in the center of the city made the climb up those steep streets worth the effort.  We sat at the fountain and ate our gelato as a reward.

When you visit this region of Italy, you just have to go see the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  I had always thought the photos you see are somehow doctored to exaggerate the tilt.  But that son-of-a-gun really does lean ....... A LOT.

Here is a picture of Pisa's Duomo (church) and in the foreground you can see part of the tower.  The wall of the Duomo is vertical so you can see how much the tower leans.

Finally, we landed in Lucca which was the capitol city of the Holy Roman Empire for a time.  The city is surrounded by a magnificent wall that is 40 feet high and 115 feet thick.

In the picture above if  you look closely you can see two people walking at the base of the wall, to give you some idea of the scale of the wall.  In the picture below you can see a roadway for jogging, cycling, etc that is all around the city on top of the wall.  The wall is 2 and a half miles in circumference.

We had dinner in Lucca at a nice little restaurant.  They served me some wine and I was feeling pretty good afterwords.