Italy from the sky
Ambitions to write entries in every city have crashed. Entries by region? Failed. As we wind down the first half of the trip and leave Italy for points west, maybe I can succeed in documenting our adventure by country.
If India travelled to France, Italy would result. Just like India, Italy is even jammed onto the southside of a continent. And just like in India, we enjoyed our adventure, though some days we were dirty and tired of it, and just like in France, we ate very well and went to museums.
In Florence I felt like I was in India, often walking in streets (few practical sidewalks), along with cars driven by the unsympathetic, breathing in exhaust fumes, amidst crumbling old buildings and throngs of people. India is of course more crowded, dirtier, and poorer, but sewer smells often linger in those medieval Italian city centers as they do in India's more crowded neighborhoods. Like in India, sometimes I'm amazed that Italy works at all. But it works, and it is a great place: that's why so many people (and more and more and more) come.
The produce of Italy is just embarrassingly good. Every tomato, even the ones at the Sienna kebab shop, were so juicy and red. While I didn't have many glasses of wine, every glass, even the two euro house glasses, was delicious. Cheese. Fish, baked or fried. Eggy pasta in Emilia-Romagna. Pesto in Genoa. Squid ink pasta in Venice (turned out to be one of Bobby's favorites). Cakes for breakfast in Trieste. So much gelato, everywhere, especially chocolate and pistachio (Bobby usually requesting chochlet or green ice cream). I was particularly keen to try the canneloni of Florence upon the recommendation of my late grandmother; understanding canneloni to be a southern Italian dish, I wondered whether I would find it.
[Besides food] What people want in Italy is a connection to the past. An important part of European culture is maintaining objects, forever if possible; buildings outlive people, and those alive can feel connected to those of the preceding generations who used the buildings. Italy is indeed filled with old buildings and often very narrow (in Genoa, VERY narrow) roads between them. But it's not just Italians walking the roads and connecting to the past. In fact, in some places, there are hardly any Italians it seems. It's not just buildings that are old but also art, furniture, and cultural knowledge (e.g., food) too.
In fact, much of it is very old. One reason the blog is delayed is because of very inconsistent internet connections we had across Italy. Italy is famous for having a low birth rate; we surely saw more Italian dogs than Italian children. People are even travelling with their dogs. Perhaps Italians don't have kids anymore: they have dogs.
We stayed in some great small, medium, and large hotels. Many of them are converted palazzos, which Italy has no shortage of, especially when it likes keeping those old buildings around. We have become experts in Italian hotel breakfasts, developing a particular fondness for caffe americano and custard-filled pastries, plus the local option of having tomatoes and mozzarella for breakfast (I actually exercised that option every day). I wish we could be like the locals and down a cup of coffee standing at a bar, but alas that's hard to do with a three-year old who doesn't eat or drink fast -- and who isn't tall enough to stand at a bar anyway.
Recounting the itinerary
Our route was shaped sort of like the Greek letter, psi (ψ):
We liked some stops better than others. We developed a taxonomy of what makes a destination "likeable." Some places you visit because they're so famous you don't want to have been in the neighborhood and not stopped by (hello, Florence). It's less likely you would fall in love with an obligatory stop, especially because it is so full of others obliged to do the same thing.
Then again, sometimes the obligatory is really fun. We visited two Ferrari museums (one in Modena and one just outside in Maranello), a dream come true for both Bobby and me. He fell asleep in my arms walking to the first museum and then woke up, looked around, and exclaimed "So many 'Rarris!" We've been on the lookout for 'Rarris on the streets ever since then, and along the way he added a few toy 'Rarris to his stable of toy vehicles that he keeps attached to his hands. You see, 'Rarris are awesome because they are "shuper fasht!!"
Other places have such an interesting history you just want to stop there to be part of it. Trieste, for instance, is Italian but was the largest port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is historically famous as a coffee importer (today, famous as the import hub for much oil in central Europe); cross-cultural ourselves, we are fascinated by such cross-cultured places.
Genoa was on the list because of its fame as the home of a trading empire that competed with Venice while giving rise to much Renaissance financial innovation (sorry, it is interesting to me and relevant to my job). Genoa seems to be less popular with American tourists than Tuscany and Venice. The place is definitely rough around the edges, which is a contrast to the polish of Milan. Bobby loved Europe's largest aquarium because the "fish swim through bubbles!"
Other places are likeable because you could see yourself living there. Of all the cities I've visited in Italy, Milan is the one most practical as a place to live and work, and even there you get all of the gorgeous buildings and good food of any other Italian city even if there aren't quite so many buildings from the Renaissance or earlier. (Rome is also livable, though more chaotic than Milan; Rome and Milan are of course Italy's two biggest cities.) We found it to be a city of broad avenues cut through 19th century building blocks and Fascist-architecture made to look nineteenth century -- plus, it has a tram, which we rode extensively.
The description of the trip seems incomplete because in it was packed a lot of fun, some frayed nerves amongst the three of us, much good food, and a lot of funny dialogue generated by Bobby as he interacts with all his new environments. I am still not fully recovered from my illness (and got food poisoning in Milan to boot) and have been sleeping as long as Bobby, when the best time to write is when he's asleep. My walk was zig-zagging just a bit, so I really looked drunk, but my balance is noticeably improving over the month. Hopefully, as I get better, my stamina for writing will improve!
If India travelled to France, Italy would result. Just like India, Italy is even jammed onto the southside of a continent. And just like in India, we enjoyed our adventure, though some days we were dirty and tired of it, and just like in France, we ate very well and went to museums.
In Florence I felt like I was in India, often walking in streets (few practical sidewalks), along with cars driven by the unsympathetic, breathing in exhaust fumes, amidst crumbling old buildings and throngs of people. India is of course more crowded, dirtier, and poorer, but sewer smells often linger in those medieval Italian city centers as they do in India's more crowded neighborhoods. Like in India, sometimes I'm amazed that Italy works at all. But it works, and it is a great place: that's why so many people (and more and more and more) come.
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| Could this not pass for India? It is in fact the Two Towers of Bologna, Italy, just down the road from the apartment where we stayed for five nights. |
The produce of Italy is just embarrassingly good. Every tomato, even the ones at the Sienna kebab shop, were so juicy and red. While I didn't have many glasses of wine, every glass, even the two euro house glasses, was delicious. Cheese. Fish, baked or fried. Eggy pasta in Emilia-Romagna. Pesto in Genoa. Squid ink pasta in Venice (turned out to be one of Bobby's favorites). Cakes for breakfast in Trieste. So much gelato, everywhere, especially chocolate and pistachio (Bobby usually requesting chochlet or green ice cream). I was particularly keen to try the canneloni of Florence upon the recommendation of my late grandmother; understanding canneloni to be a southern Italian dish, I wondered whether I would find it.
[Besides food] What people want in Italy is a connection to the past. An important part of European culture is maintaining objects, forever if possible; buildings outlive people, and those alive can feel connected to those of the preceding generations who used the buildings. Italy is indeed filled with old buildings and often very narrow (in Genoa, VERY narrow) roads between them. But it's not just Italians walking the roads and connecting to the past. In fact, in some places, there are hardly any Italians it seems. It's not just buildings that are old but also art, furniture, and cultural knowledge (e.g., food) too.
In fact, much of it is very old. One reason the blog is delayed is because of very inconsistent internet connections we had across Italy. Italy is famous for having a low birth rate; we surely saw more Italian dogs than Italian children. People are even travelling with their dogs. Perhaps Italians don't have kids anymore: they have dogs.
We stayed in some great small, medium, and large hotels. Many of them are converted palazzos, which Italy has no shortage of, especially when it likes keeping those old buildings around. We have become experts in Italian hotel breakfasts, developing a particular fondness for caffe americano and custard-filled pastries, plus the local option of having tomatoes and mozzarella for breakfast (I actually exercised that option every day). I wish we could be like the locals and down a cup of coffee standing at a bar, but alas that's hard to do with a three-year old who doesn't eat or drink fast -- and who isn't tall enough to stand at a bar anyway.
Recounting the itinerary
Our route was shaped sort of like the Greek letter, psi (ψ):
- starting in Trieste, Italy's more modern port, set beside a city that looks Austrian but feels Italian;
- then around the northern cap of the Adriatic to Venice, those funny, bankrupt islands built in a lagoon;
- further down the arm of the psi, for five days in the capital of Emilia-Romagna, Bologna, from where we launched two day trips to other towns of Emilia-Romagna, north up through the Po valley, Modena (Ferrari) and Parma (cheese and ham);
- south again to where the arms of the psi join, by bullet train to Florence (on the Frecciarossa, red arrow, the fastest train we rode); literally through the hills of the Tuscan–Emilian Apennines, which separate the regions of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna (disappointingly, we didn't get many Tuscan vistas as the bullet train travelled nearly the entire way through tunnels);
- down the base of the psi to Siena by train, which broke down along the way (with Bobby repeatedly commenting "the engine has broken down," which is what happens in one of his favorite books, The Little Engine That Could), but once in Siena we finally got some of those famous Tuscan views;
- by train up the other arm of the psi to Pisa, which would be forgettable if not for one famous tower (which Bobby kept saying we need to "fick it" (fix it);
- by the slower bullet train to Genoa (the white arrow, Frecciabianca); and, lastly
- to the other tip of the psi at Milan, from where we exited to Spain.
We liked some stops better than others. We developed a taxonomy of what makes a destination "likeable." Some places you visit because they're so famous you don't want to have been in the neighborhood and not stopped by (hello, Florence). It's less likely you would fall in love with an obligatory stop, especially because it is so full of others obliged to do the same thing.
Then again, sometimes the obligatory is really fun. We visited two Ferrari museums (one in Modena and one just outside in Maranello), a dream come true for both Bobby and me. He fell asleep in my arms walking to the first museum and then woke up, looked around, and exclaimed "So many 'Rarris!" We've been on the lookout for 'Rarris on the streets ever since then, and along the way he added a few toy 'Rarris to his stable of toy vehicles that he keeps attached to his hands. You see, 'Rarris are awesome because they are "shuper fasht!!"
Other places have such an interesting history you just want to stop there to be part of it. Trieste, for instance, is Italian but was the largest port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is historically famous as a coffee importer (today, famous as the import hub for much oil in central Europe); cross-cultural ourselves, we are fascinated by such cross-cultured places.
Genoa was on the list because of its fame as the home of a trading empire that competed with Venice while giving rise to much Renaissance financial innovation (sorry, it is interesting to me and relevant to my job). Genoa seems to be less popular with American tourists than Tuscany and Venice. The place is definitely rough around the edges, which is a contrast to the polish of Milan. Bobby loved Europe's largest aquarium because the "fish swim through bubbles!"
Other places are likeable because you could see yourself living there. Of all the cities I've visited in Italy, Milan is the one most practical as a place to live and work, and even there you get all of the gorgeous buildings and good food of any other Italian city even if there aren't quite so many buildings from the Renaissance or earlier. (Rome is also livable, though more chaotic than Milan; Rome and Milan are of course Italy's two biggest cities.) We found it to be a city of broad avenues cut through 19th century building blocks and Fascist-architecture made to look nineteenth century -- plus, it has a tram, which we rode extensively.
The description of the trip seems incomplete because in it was packed a lot of fun, some frayed nerves amongst the three of us, much good food, and a lot of funny dialogue generated by Bobby as he interacts with all his new environments. I am still not fully recovered from my illness (and got food poisoning in Milan to boot) and have been sleeping as long as Bobby, when the best time to write is when he's asleep. My walk was zig-zagging just a bit, so I really looked drunk, but my balance is noticeably improving over the month. Hopefully, as I get better, my stamina for writing will improve!
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