8 days in northern Italy. 2007

 8 days in northern Italy. 2007

 We arrived in Milan and I enjoyed seeing the Douma which is extremely large and  impressive with stained glass windows each with a different story.  The amount of art in one building is beyond belief.  Around the Duomo is a piazza where the young people gather and one evening there was a display of old Alfa Romeo cars being filmed.

We had a 3 day ticket on the public transport and could travel on trams, buses , trolley buses and the metro. After we had validated the ticket we were never challenged as to wether we had paid and in fact the drivers are not interested if you have paid or not.

 We had booked for the de Vinci , Last Supper and went to see it  -- you are taken into church via double doors and into a fully temperature controlled atmosphere and given 15 minutes to examine the fresco.  In reality you  are just doing this to be able to say I have seen the real thing because to understand it you have to read a book or 2 on the life of de Vinci and the story behind this.  The artists painted themselves into the picture so you can see which is a self portrait of de Vinci.

When we were in Rome and had a special tour of the Sistene Chapel the art was so overwhelming that it certainly had a greater effect than just reading about it in a book.There we saw the works of Michael Angelo and Rafael and it was in a far better condition.

Milan has many art galleries but we never went to see them. When I was alone in Vienna I saw plenty of Italian renaissance art.

Astrid wanted to see the San Seno football stadium and the museum of AC Milano football.

So we managed to figure out what tram to ride there. What was interesting to me was how they built to San Sera stadium and over the years enlarged it to its present size. There is place for about 40 long trams to park outside so that they can bring a take the spectators.  Since they put on a roof the sun doesn't get to the field properly and they have to replace the grass 4 times a year at great cost and they have even brought grass from England.  I can't imagine how the world cup in SA will work with the limited public transport there.

One is certainly aware that Milan is the capital of fashion and the shops as well as the clothes people ware are all very stylish. Not only the brand of clothes people wear but also the type of dog they have struck me as part of the mode; you don't see people walking with any mongrel.

Just north of the Douma is a shopping mall where you walk through a arcade that is basically 4 buildings with a roof  about 5 stories above joining them it is an impressive marble construction. Well all the big fashion houses have stores there, all over the city there are fashion stores. When a women wants to buy a dress, I wonder how she decides which store to go into.
An American women on the bus asked us if we were lost and neaded help, she told us that she is an opera singer in La Scala and her husband is an Italian concert pianist.

 We took a train to Florence and were collected by the shuttle of the hostel where we stayed ; an hour drive out of the city through a toll road into the mountains. Here we had a whole suite for the same cost of a small hotel room in the city. This hostel was an old farm house and the surrounding building that had been refurbished by the owner who is as skilled architect. The furniture , design and added art gave it an atmosphere. I asked the owner Gwedo about the 3 Modigliani.prints in our room and he told me that Modigliani came from Liverno which is a port city at the end of the Arno river and you can see the harbour light at night. (Modigliani was Jewish and was one of the impressionists with van Goch, Gaguin , and Picasso when he was young.  He died in poverty of tubercolosis in Paris, His pictures are mostly of women with long necks. That type of art means more to me than the Renaisance art)

  In Florence we  toured the city saw the Doume which was not as impressive as Milan's -- it was older however. We took a long walk over the Ponte Vechio - it is actually quite amazing to see such an old city so well preserved, there is a lot of sculpture work at every piazza to see. I would have gone into the Uffuzi museum but it had over an hour waiting so we went to see the market instead where you get to see what the local products are.  Unfortunately that day was a heat wave  and we ended up falling asleep on the grass of  the Park de Indepenzia under a tree until our shuttle came to collect us to return us to the mountains. Where ever you went in Florence there were more tourists than locals and you were not quite sure that you still were in Italy, more like Disneyland. There was an America and also an Australian women at the hotel who were both artists. We also heard that in Florence there is a large art university with many foreign students.

Astrid decided to have a quiet day at the pool at the hostel and we met up with an American family that were going to ride on bicycles to Vinci that day.  That was great 12 km down the hill on a bike we toured Vinci and further 3 km. to the farm house where Leanodo was born.

This American had a GPS and has been involved in Geo caches.  ---- wherever you travel people have left a tin can hidden and you have to find it using exact point with you GPS and then you leave your message in the tin and later add your name and comment to the website. A Hungarian family were looking for it at the same time. Afterwards coming uphill for 12 km in that heat was quite a challenge but as I ride a bike every day I was not stiff like this American couple. Got back to the hostel on the top of the hill and cooled off in the pool. .

 We were back in Milano we were meant to go on a train trip to Switzerland but it was cancelled as not sufficient people had booked for it so we spent the day at a town called Bergano whose  upper city is one of 4 walled cities in Italy, and it has a funiculare train (cable train) to get to the top where we had our picnic lunch at the very top of the castle in  a tree covered garden.  The area is a mountain surrounded by the Piedmont plains so you could see around a flatland from this.

Europe is very expenive but the Israeli Shekel having gone up by about 20% against the Euro  in the last 9 months we found that Israel is possible more expensive, except for fresh fruit and vegetables which are far cheaper in Israel.

One of the things that surprised me was how few people in Italy had studied English even people in the tourist industry barely could manage. In Israel today without English as a second language you cannot get a matric. Plus the Anglo community is quite big and there are dozens of retired English speakers who volunteer to help kids with English. The most important thing is that TV in Israel is kept in its original language and subtitles are added in Hebrew. I have even met kids that have been watching an Argintinian soap opera in TV for the last 10 years and can speak Spanish.

For 2 months before we went I studied Italian on the internet both spoken and written Italian. The writing I picked up easily but when I tried speaking my pronunciation was not right. Surprisingly I somehow managed to communicate with the limited vocabulary.

One of the strangest words I heard at the airport where someone was told to put his "marsupio" through the Xray machine. This was his money pouch so now every time I see somebody wearing one I think of a baby kangaroo jumping out.