Good grief, we're back home! Events conspired to keep me away from the keyboard over the last few days of our trip, so I'll have to capture the last three (and meaningful days) as a single entry.
Friday, Sept 24
Forgot to mention that Friday evening, Lyn got us on a tour of the Fra (Filippo) Lippi frescoes at the Prato Duomo church. The frescoes are being restored, and to that end they've boarded off the choir section of the church and erected a 3 storey scaffold. Not to miss an opportunity, they are charging tourists €8 to get a close-up to all three levels of the fresco. Unfortunately, the scaffold was not designed with same awe of sacred circumstances as the frescoes, and it produces a thunderous clattering and banging as twelve of us ascend it, that certainly put an end to any quiet contemplation on the other side of the temporary dividing wall.
Our guide described the work and the Fra…apparently unaware of at least one description of Fra Lippi as "A liar, a drunkard, a lecher and a fraud …his superiors were profoundly relieved when he left the convent, abandoned his orders and was seized by pirates…". This isn't to question his religious or artistic merits but the fuller picture seems more interesting.
Sunday, Sept 25
We'd reserved entry to the Ufizzi Gallery in Florence several days ago for 11am today, so made our way there at our usual leisurely pace, booking our Eurostar tickets for tomorrow on the way, and even got a bit of early shopping in.
Hillside Village
When we arrived at the Ufizzi the line-up for hoi polloi was again at least 2 hours long, and as we whizzed into the gallery via the reservations line in a few minutes, we gained a brief glimpse of the benefits of royal privilege. Without what we'd already learned and read in the last week about the Medicis, the bewildering sequence of paintings that we saw in the next two hours would have been like picking up a large glossy book on the renaissance, riffing the pages, and trying to make sense of what you were looking at. Even with our head start, we were both burned out after a couple of hours and needed a quick gelato at Vivoli's…world famous for its ice cream and about to become equally famous for its surly service.
From here, Lyn needed to get on with the serious business of shopping, and in exchange for numerous concessions on her part, like Lyn being willing to go shopping with me when I…here, wait a minute! Anyway I managed to keep up withher as she plundered one shop after another looking for gifts but my legs finally gave in: I can hike for about 12 hours straight but an hour's shopping does me in. So I headed back to Prato on my own and Lyn stayed on for another couple of hours. Unfortunately, my usual internet store was closed and an attempt to use a second one foundered because I forgot that internet cafes in Italy require you to present identifying documents, which I didn't have on me. So went back to the hotel, managed to get packed, and forced myself to put my feet up with a glass of wine, and settle in to my third book in as many days.
Monday, September 26th
Piazza St. Pietro—1
Piazza St. Pietro again
We left nothing to chance by showing up for an earlier train for the two minute ride from Prato Porta Seraglio to Prato Centrale to catch the Eurostar; thank heavens we did because the train we did catch was 20 minutes late. The Eurostar train really is a breeze—two hours of flying almost silently through the most blissfully peaceful countryside…like astro-travelling with assigned seats.
St Peter's Basilica
Inside the Basilica
Eased into Rome Termini around noon and made it from there to the Hotel Cavour (walking our own bags) in five minutes. Great location but who hasn't secretly wondered whether the hotel that you booked blindly on the internet at the cheapest rate isn't a crack house wedged between two brothels? To our alarm, we arrive at the address to find that the Cavour was one of several hotels in the same seedy looking building. We went in. To our relief, the actual hotel lobby was respectable and if they'd lost our reservation that seemed normal based on my experience of Rome. We did get a room, and while the wallpaper and carpet were distinctly period whorehouse ancienne, the new/modern bed and bathroom fittings contrasted nicely with it. Those Italian designers, I don't know how they think up this stuff!
In spite of the 30C heat, we were not about to end our pell-mell holiday on a whimp-out and set off immediately to see S. Pietros (which I hadn't seen but Lyn was anxious that I should). We navigated the metro like old pros, joined the throng of tourists obviously headed in the same direction along the streets, adjusting as we went to Rome driving. Elsewhere in the world, drivers make at least some attempt to avoid pedestrians, but drivers in Rome may in fact be aiming for them and probably don't come from this planet.
Michelangelo's Pieta
A Pope's Tomb
>
St Peter's really is quite stunning. By this time, we've seen our fair share of churches in Italy (not to mention cathedrals in England) ranging from the astounding to the merely awe-inspiring but St. Peter's is on a plane of its own. It isn't much smaller than an indoor football stadium. Marble alone makes cathedrals constructed of mere stone look shabby by comparison but this is not just marble, but marble of every color. Then there are the windows; then there are the chapels and tombs, each a massive work of art. Michelangelo's Pieta is almost lost in the middle of this, a small shrine off to one side of the entrance doors. However, the fact that it is now behind plexiglass gives the game away.
Coliseum
Coliseum
From here, we zipped over to the Coliseum. Both of us had seen it from the outside but neither of us had been in so we joined the 30 minute line up and went in. Dinner and then bed.
Tuesday,Sept 27
Out of the hotel by 8:30am, haul our bags up the street and into Termini; croissant and cappucino for breakfast; catch the 9:22am to Fuminico (train departures are given to the nearest minute but actual departure times are to the nearest 15 minutes)
It was here, at the Air Canada check-in, that we experienced the longest check-in of my life: 50 minutes. I travelled to Australia 4 days after September 11th and the check-in time then was less. I appreciate Lynda for keeping me from eating one of my bags.
Otherwise largely uneventful trip back. Cab driver who drove us home from the airport filled us in on all the latest sports developments but apologized for being uncertain about who won the election in Japan. Hey, 9 out of 10 isn't bad.
