After entering Italy through the Brenner Pass — in the rain — we didn’t see much in the way of civilization for several miles. Of course, when one is winding around narrow roads in the mountains, a few miles can seem like several. Perhaps you’ve been driving for an hour, but you’ve only gone ten miles (that might be a bit of an exaggeration). Every once in a while, we would see a farmhouse through the cloudy, rainy haze, or a medieval castle, or an old fortress. In ancient times, this had been a rather strategic area and so had been well-fortified. What we mainly saw though were vineyards — lots and lots of vineyards — grapes as far as the eye could see.
The first town we encountered was Balzano. However, our tour director must not have thought it was a terribly exciting place, because we skirted around it and headed for Trento. There we stretched our legs and exchanged some money. This trip was taken before the European Union had been formed. So the princely sum of 480,000 lire made me feel awfully rich until I remembered it was only $300 in U. S. currency.
My mother and I were hungry, so we wandered into a deli to get something to eat. The only problem was that everything was in Italian and neither one of us could speak it. Nobody there spoke English. I do know a little French (sort of), so I reasoned that, if “pain” was “bread” in French, then “panino” might have something to do with bread in Italian. Also, “fromage” was “cheese” in French, therefore, “formaggio” would likely be “cheese” in Italian. I semi-confidently ordered a “panino con formaggio”.
From what sounded like a question accompanied by a sweeping motion of the hand across a case containing about 50 varieties of cheese, I deduced that I had a choice of cheese (Sherlock Holmes has nothing on me). I prayed they only had one kind of bread. While studiously contemplating the contents of the case, I heard the question repeated with some impatience. I held up my hand.
“Una momento”, I said. I was trying to find something that looked remotely familiar. Eureka!
“Provolone, per favore,” I now declared triumphantly, and was quite relieved to receive a provolone cheese sandwich on a thick cut homemade bread (the only kind they had).
My mother, who had been watching all of this with great interest, noted my success and followed my lead. Soon we were enjoying one of the best cheese sandwiches either one of us had ever eaten, along with some Fanta.
From Trento, we continued on to Verona (of Two Gentlemen from Verona and Romeo and Juliet fame). There you can see what is purported to have been Juliet’s balcony. “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the East and Juliet is the sun.” I did play Juliet once, when I was 15, opposite a 17-year-old Romeo who I had to slap offstage.
From Verona, we went to Vicenza, Padua and Maestra (which is the suburban part of Venice). After a light lunch in Maestra, we boarded a small launch and headed for Venice itself.
Venice is built on a series of tiny islands in a gulf in the Adriatic. Although nobody knows for certain how old it is, there seems to be evidence that a city has existed there since at least the 5th century. The architecture of Venice is fascinating since it is a mix of many styles and has as many Turkish influences as it does Italian.
We disembarked at St Mark’s Square — the main square in Venice. Basilica San Marco was originally built in 829 and rebuilt in 1043 to 1071 after a fire. A basilica is designated as such when it contains an important relic (often part of the body) of whoever it is named after. St Mark’s contains at least most of the body of Mark (who wrote the second Gospel of the New Testament of the Bible). The whole interior is covered with gold-leaf mosaics. When the light hits it just right, it sparkles and glitters with a near blinding intensity.
The bronze horses on the roof of the basilica were captured in Constantinople in 1207 and placed on the roof in the mid-14th century. Napoleon took the horses to Paris in 1797, after conquering Venice, and had them placed on the Carousel Arch at the Louvre as a monument to his defeat of the Italians. They were returned to Venice in 1815. Now they sit in a museum high up inside of the basilica. The horses currently on the roof are copies.
The Bell Tower was built in 888 to 912. It collapsed in 1902 and had to be rebuilt. Nearly a thousand years isn’t too bad, I’d say. I doubt that much of what we build now will stand that long before collapsing.
After a short visit to a glass blower (I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if he suddenly had a laughing fit), we had some free time, so my mom and I decided to take a tour of the Doge’s Palace. The Doge was the ruler of Venice and his palace was built to impress. It did. All of the ceilings were enormously high; most of the rooms were large enough for a good game of football; and the the walls were covered with breathtaking works of art mainly by Veronese and Tintoretto. There was, however, one room in the palace which did not impress me at all, and that was the rest room.
Throughout both France and Italy, many of the public rest rooms are co-ed. Although somewhat disconcerting at first, it really isn’t that big of a deal as the stalls are usually quite private. After waiting in a long line for what seemed like hours (I was getting desperate), I entered one of the two stalls and found myself staring at a hole in the floor. “Who stole the toilet?” I wondered. I later discovered that this was what they referred to as a Turkish toilet. I was completely flummoxed. But, as I said, desperate. I later learned how to properly use a Turkish toilet from an female Afghan friend of mine, but I managed as best I could at the time. By the way, “where is the rest room?” in Italian is, “dove si trova una toilette?”
As part of the Doge’s Palace tour, one can cross over the Bridge of Sighs. This is an enclosed bridge in which anyone taller than me (I’m 5’3″) has to double over to squeeze through. The structure got its name because, if a man found himself crossing it, he knew he was going to prison and would sigh over his lost freedom.
If he merely sighed on his way over to the prison (which had cells so small that a person couldn’t lay down decently), I can imagine he did much more than sigh if he crossed back over to the palace. If that happened, he wasn’t being released. He was instead being taken to the two columns at the entrance of the palace where he would be drawn and quartered in front of an audience.
Another legend associated with the Bridge of Sighs is: if two lovers kiss just as their gondola glides beneath it, as the sun sets, they will never part. I heard this in a film I saw at an impressionable age.
We left the palace and boarded a gondola for a canal-level tour of the the city. This was when we received the warning not to touch the water. It contains several hundreds of years worth of sewage.
Our gondola and a couple of others with members of our tour group formed a small parade. One of them carried a singer and an accordion player, so the ride was accompanied throughout by all of those old romantic Italian songs you’ve likely heard all your life. Toward the end of the ride, we passed under the Bridge of Sighs. I was slightly disgruntled that I had to share all of this romance with my mother. I’m sure she felt the same.
As the sun sank slowly in the West and Venice sank slowly in the East, we boarded another launch to return to Maestra, from which we traveled to Gambarare to spend the night.
Venice really is sinking slowly into the mud and the sewage, plus the water level around Venice is rising. Every year it floods to the point where platforms have to be set up in St Mark’s Square for people to be able to walk around. They have come up with a solution that should be in place by 2020 that involves flood gates. I’m glad. I’d hate to have Venice end up completely under water.
Next time: Roman Holiday or “Be It Ever So Crumbled, There’s No Place Like Rome”. Ciao.
