Italian Highlights

Been a while since we've had any amount of decent internet for purposes other than simply checking emails.

So Italy has been interesting overall, sometimes wonderful, awe-inspiring and at times somewhat frustrating. The weather has been mainly a lot better than in other places we have been, with Rome balmy as a Sydney winter in decent sunlight. Not the weak stuff you get everywhere else.

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Venice/Venezia

I think I've written about it already, but in summary: canals, tourists, souvenir shops, more tourist, basilica, gondolas, piazzas and narrow unnamed streets in a highly pedestrian city. Bit of a weird place actually. Spent lots of time looking at shops and the sites. A day between destinations for us.

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Bologna/Bolonia

Home of bolognaise, gastronomic heart and Ducati. Still signs of the motor show that was on in the two weeks leading up to our visit. Streets full of porticoes and places to eat. Most of Italy's most famous eating places are here. Also some really good museums in the university which we only managed to see part of. Re: Italian service - it was an hour before they took our order in one place after we had been seated. Italian time is a bit different to the type that runs elsewhere in the world. Okay for Italians, but not for hungry stomachs.

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Rome/Roma

Stayed in a little apartment really close to the Colosseum, so we saw that everyday. Walked around the city most of the time, as the public transport system isn't fantastic. Italian traffic can be a bit intimidating for the pedestrian at times. Visited and stumbled upon a lot of little basilicas and churches - Italy is a country full of churches.

Walked all the way from the Colosseum to the Vatican. St Peters is really overwhelming. Prefer the still ornate but smaller churches we saw. Unfortunately the Sistine Chapel was not open when we went. Spent a long day visiting the Colosseum, Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum - great for me. They're open archaeological sites. I was awed by the sheer magnitude of the things that the Romans built. Took so many photos that one day I ran out of room on my memory card, the other I ran out of battery mid-day.

There was a pretty good park nearby too where we got some nice views. It's a shame we weren't there long enough to take any day trips out. I would have liked to have seen Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli. And we didn't go south enough to see famous Pompeii or Herculaneum either.

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Florence/Firenze

Everyone finds it amusing for me to be in here. Well, I find it pretty amusing myself. Stayed right near the main train station so pretty close to many places of interest. Another eminently walkable city if you are well enough situated.

Visited the Duomo (Santa Maria del Fiore) the main cathedral in the city - pretty and pretty amazing. We attended mass on Christmas morning here too. That was interesting and not a little odd. The similarities I can find in the rituals of seemingly disparate religions. Lots of singing and not understanding much of the service, which was in Italian. Bells rang often during Christmas Eve too, which we could hear from our room - being close to the Duomo, San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Novella.

Also visited two famous art galleries, the Galleria dell'Accademia, which houses Michelangelo's statue 'David'. I really liked his...hands. Seriously though, the detail in the statue is amazing. We had a conversation on his handedness. From his musculature he's a righty; corroborated by the sling. It's colossal. Makes you wonder at how big Goliath would be. There is a lot more to see in the Accademia than the statue though. There was a really good room full of sculptures - also amazing. Some interesting medieval art, Russian art, and a fascinating exhibition about musical instruments. It houses the last existing tenor viola from the time of the Medici, two of the earliest pianofortes and possibly the first upright. The serpent instrument and hurdy gurdies are worth mentioning too.

We also visited the Uffizi Gallery as well as the Loggia nearby. So much to look at. Corridors of Roman busts and statues, rooms full of stuff that made me absorb stuff through my eyes and every other faculty I could. A lot of things that make me want to find out more about them. Seeing art in real life is really a different experience to looking at things in image. You can see so much more detail, look at it from different angles and appreciate the scale. There were lots of really famous things there - but I found myself liking some of the other works as well. There were heaps of tourists - must be packed as anything in summer. What is really annoying though is that people take photos of things even when there are signs everywhere that clearly say you can't take photos. And they obviously know because they check to make sure the attendents aren't watching. It's really disrespectful. It also means that they don't experience the art as properly as they might.

Many of the rooms were closed off, which was a shame and those roped off were kind of hard to a see, cos many were miniatures from a distance. A bit weird. Seeing all this art is beginning to instigate my desire to pick up my art again. I did some in the past, but have been neglecting it in favour of my writing in recent years.

Being in one place for only a few days is really limiting because there is so much to do and see, but not enough time. There isn't really anywhere that I wouldn't like to visit again that we have been to so far.

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Milan/Milano

Only transitted through here, so we only saw the train station and some rooftops from the train window.

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Bergamo

Our destination. A last minute decision. Wasn't really sure what was here to see, but it's cold here after the warmer south. It actually snowed on one of the evenings after we returned from a day out at Lake Como, with views of some mountains of the Alps. Had a picnic by the lake, which sounds nice, but it was cold enough that my fingers were numb by the end of lunch. It was pretty, but a bit quiet there at this time of year.

On our other full day in town, we took the funicular railway up to the Old Town and had a walk around - nice views of the city, if you could see through the fog, but not much is open in the winter. Did a baked dinner that night which was pretty exciting. We hadn't seen an oven for a while.