Italy 2002

Tuscany and Umbria, 2002

We started getting worried when the short article appeared in the Inquirer about three weeks before we were leaving for Italy. “Italians call general strike for whole country on April 16,” it said. Naturally, April 16 was the day we would be arriving there.

We already had our round-trip tickets to Rome. We already had our round-trip tickets on the train from Rome to Florence. We already had our reservations for the night of the 16^th at Hotel Mario’s in Florence. We already had our car reserved to be picked up in Florence at the end of our stay there and returned after a week and a half.

In fact, we were astonishingly well organized. In contrast to our trip a couple of years earlier, when we had toured southern Italy without any firm plans and with no reservations, winging it all the way, we had everything nailed down.

This was our first trip to Tuscany and Umbria since we had each visited them separately in the 1950s. I didn’t want to miss any of the great art works in the area, so I had read several guidebooks cover to cover and reviewed my old Italian Painting textbook, making notes on where to find Massacio, Giotto, Fra Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, Piero della Francesca, Ghirlandiao, and all the others I was anxious to see. Then I sat with a couple of maps and worked out an itinerary, a circle tour going east and southeast from Florence, doubling back up west of it to return there. After that I pored over the guidebooks again for hotels and faxed reservation requests to the ones we wanted. All but one responded. I wrote up the itinerary on my computer with all the hotels and their addresses and phone numbers, the sites we wanted to see, the towns we wanted to visit in between hotel stays and what we wanted to see there. We were set, planned to the inch.

So the Italians were going on strike. What worried us was not only the airport, but the trains. Don e-mailed our friend Anne in Rome with queries. She and her husband thought that there might be emergency buses going to Florence, but that we shouldn’t count on trains. Don e-mailed Mario’s and they couldn’t offer any suggestions. So in desperation he called the car company and changed our booking to pick the car up at the Rome airport four days sooner than planned.

We luxuriated on the flight: Don had used his frequent flyer miles to upgrade us to Envoy Class for the round trip, so we had champagne as soon as we were seated, nice drinks, a good meal with good wine, and brandy afterwards. We even managed to sleep a little with seats that could really tilt back and all the leg room in the world.

We whizzed through passport control and customs and collected the car, a Fiat Punto. We had fallen in love with the Punto after driving it for the southern Italy trip, and only wished that it were available in the U.S. It has plenty of room for us, lots of pep, and can turn around in the space of a parking place. And so we were off.

How Don stayed awake I’ll never know. The drive took twice as long as we expected—or it certainly felt like it. We stopped for lunch at one of the big roadside rest areas, unfortunately coinciding with three busloads of teenagers, gave up in the face of the mob, and went on to one of the little bar areas that just sell sandwiches to eat in the car. I kept trying to make keep-awake conversation, but I was on the verge of dozing much of the time. Finally we got off the autostrada (our only benefit from the strike was that the toll-takers were not there so it was free) at what looked like the most direct route into Florence.

Big mistake.

Our choice turned out to be a two-lane road leading to the Porta Romana. And it seemed that the Porta Romana was where they had just finished having the huge demonstration in support of the strike. We inched up a hill to a traffic light, turned left, and inched down the hill. Every now and then we’d get to move about thirty feet. We finally figured out that all of the buses picking up the demonstrators must be ahead of us: each bus had to load, wait for stragglers (“Dov’é Luigi? Non possiamo partire senza lui!”), and move on. Then another bus would move up for the same routine. We’re not sure that was what was happening, but that was the right speed. If we’d known where we were we could have turned off somewhere and gone around it, but we were far enough out of town that our map showed only the big roads, not the side ones. It took us more than an hour and a half to get to Porta Romana, though it couldn’t have been more than a mile or two.

“Now we’re home free!” we thought, cruising on into Florence. We had a good map of the city itself and had located exactly where the hotel was (conveniently near the train station—ha!) north of the Arno. We headed confidently for the nearest bridge. It was one-way the wrong way. We circled through a maze of streets to get to the next bridge, doubling back on ourselves several times when we hit dead ends, and then having to figure out a new way, once across the river, to find the hotel. Finally, we found Faenza, the street the hotel was on. No Entry. For 20 minutes we negotiated one-way streets in heavy traffic to find the other end of the street. No Entry. It’s the only street I’ve ever seen that is one-way out in both directions. And it is only one block long.

Don was in an advanced state of hysteria by this time, of course, what with having to cope with aggressive Italian drivers on unfamiliar and recalcitrant roads while he was exhausted. At last we located a tiny side street—an alley, really—that branched off Faenza in the middle and is the source of the two opposing one-ways. And just around the corner was Mario’s. Don pulled up and I ran in and up the stairs, breathless.

“Don’t worry,” said the young lady at the desk. “We have an arrangement with a garage. Just leave the car and a man will come and take it away.”

I didn’t even ask how much. (It turned out not to be bad at all.) The car went away and we collapsed on the bed for a nice long nap.

Refreshed and showered after a couple of hours, we went out to explore. Everything was so nice and close—a marvelous change from Rome, where we walked miles every day. We admired the outsides of San Lorenzo, the Duomo, the Baptistry, the Piazza Signoria with the Palazzo Vecchio and the loggia full of sculpture, and the piazza between the two wings of the Uffizi. The late-evening light was spectacular, and we got good pictures of the Duomo and Giotto’s tower sunlit against a dark sky. By this time hunger pangs were beginning, and though it was still a bit early by Italian standards—only eight o’clock— we wandered back to Faenza to Enzo e Piero’s Trattoria for a good dinner. Then bed.

(4/17) After breakfasting with a nice couple from San José, California, we headed out to San Marco and the Fra Angelicos. I had missed it back in the ‘50s, being laid up with a stomach thing, so I scheduled it first this time. We dodged a number of tour groups, having a particularly hard time seeing the great Annunciation at the top of the stairs without 20 people in front of us, but were almost alone in the beautiful library. Don liked that best—no frescos, just architecture. I was looking particularly for the originals of the angels painted above the altar in my church, supposed to be copied from tiny angels in San Marco. Couldn’t find them. (More about that another trip—they are there, and now I know where to look if they ever finish restoring them.)

We departed after seeing more Crucifixions in the cells than even I wanted to see, and thought briefly about dropping in the Accademia to see the real David and the Slaves, until we saw the lines stretching all the way around the block. Forget David for now.

We were passing Piazza San Lorenzo when we found that the Medici Chapels were open, so we went in to see Michelangelo’s sculptures for the tombs: Night and Day and Dusk and Dawn. Impressive as we remembered.

Then we headed a little further across town to Santa Maria Novella, stopping for a revivifying ciocolatto caldo en route. It’s a church that they very apologetically charge you to get into, but they do need the upkeep. The restored Massacio Trinity is on a wall there, and I was a little disappointed in it. Not quite sure why, although it was smaller than I expected. But the Ghirlandaio frescos in the chapels around the altar are marvelous—much greater than I would have thought. They’re said to be the best record of Florentine life and dress in the high Renaissance. I bought lots of postcards of them. I was so impressed that I completely forgot that one is also supposed to see some Uccellos in the cloister. Oh, well, they got badly damaged in the great flood and aren’t restorable, so I guess we didn’t miss much.

We had outdoor lunch off the Piazza dell’Unita Italia and headed to the hotel for a nap. Then we went out for a longer walk across the Arno to Santa Maria dei Carmine for the Brancacci Chapel with the really good Masolino/Massacio frescos (do you detect a theme here?), which have been restored since I saw them in the ’50s. They were marvelous—what had been muddy and dark was now clear. All Massacio’s realism and solidity of form was revealed without squinting, and you could really see the orangy color St. Peter is wearing.

We wandered a bit in the neighborhood. Found Santo Spirito, which Don remembered visiting way back when, but it was in restauro (seemingly permanently) and we couldn’t go in. (A friend back home says, “There are only two churches in Italy: Santa Maria Sempre in Restauro and Santa Maria Sempre Chiuso.) Spotted a lot of restaurants to be investigated later. Back across the river for some more wandering and, of course, some gelato. Highlights: a magnificent medieval tower, the Palazzo Spini Foroni (?) with a big Ferragamo store on the ground floor; a neat gothic building near Santa Trinita with stairs going up to a loggia and no sign saying what it was. Then we bumped into Orsanmichele, which has great sculpture niches around the outside (many of the statues, by big-shot sculptors, have been moved to the Bargello or light-fingered functionaries’ gardens) and was supposed to be open until 5:30. It was 4:30. The front door said go to the back door, so we went and climbed about 100 stairs only to hear, as we neared the top, the door slam shut. Apparently the staff didn’t want to be bothered with visitors. So much for that museum.

We headed back to the Duomo square and found the Baptistry open. Sat in there a while and admired the marvelous mosaics; of course we had seen the famous doors—the Gates of Paradise and the others—the previous day. Neither of us had come inside on our earlier trips.

After a shower at the hotel we walked all the way back across the Arno (the area is called Oltrarno) to a restaurant recommended by a guidebook. Crammed. Don rejected neighboring ones, so we went back a couple of blocks to one we had passed on the way and had a good dinner. And, of course, a little gelato on the way home.

Next day (4/18) was Don’s pick. Off we went to Santa Croce, to see the Pazzi Chapel, his favorite building. On the way we passed, as usual, through the Piazza San Lorenzo, and he remembered the Michelangelo Laurentian Library that is part of the church—on the opposite side from the Medici Chapels. So we detoured and got inside. The library itself is wonderful architecture; the entrance to it (inside the building) is wild. Don said he couldn’t stand it and loved it at the same time. It is an immense baroque staircase crammed into a room far too small for it and ornamented within an inch of its life. It looks like the entrance to a huge palazzo; all the details would be more appropriate outside.

Onward to Santa Croce, which was quite a hike. The Pazzi Chapel was lovely, if a bit dusty, and deserted, as were the cloisters. We were the only people in the cloister museum. Then we went into the church, and it was mobbed. Hordes of tour groups circling around the enormous nave, hordes more on the steps, and hundreds out in the piazza. Luckily, the majority of them were interested only in Michelangelo’s and Gallileo’s tombs (I can never get excited about where people are buried) and were ignoring the damaged Giotto frescos at the altar area, so we got a good look at the paintings.

Back to the centro for lunch at an outdoor café across from the Bargello. We popped into the courtyard of the Palazzo Dondi next door to see a neat flower shop there and then headed to the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo, which is in some renovated houses behind the Duomo and is much larger than it looks. They had a wonderful Donatello—after never thinking much of Donatello I found myself totally bowled over by him—and a Michelangelo Pieta, much later than the one in St. Peter’s and very moving. They also have the originals of the Ghiberti “Gates of Paradise” from the Baptistry—the ones on the building are replicas.

Don wanted to walk to where we were going to have to return the car when we got back from our hilltown trip. He had the address, but was worried about driving into town and not being able to find it. I thought this was rather unnecessary, but it turned out to be a very good thing, because the address we had been given was not where the car place was. We found it about a block down the street. Having established that and mapped out how to get to it, we went back to Piazza Santa Maria Novella for an enormous beer from an Irish (!) barmaid. Then back to San Lorenzo yet again, when we realized that we hadn’t actually gotten in the church itself. Hotel, nap, dinner down the street, an after-dinner walk, limoncello at a bar nearby, bed.

Next day (4/19) we went to the Bargello, something else I had missed on my trip back in the 1950s. (I had been really sick!) We adored the building, a Gothic palace with a wonderful courtyard. Sculpture all over the place. More Michelangelo (Brutus), more Donatello (St. George), some great brass birds (a turkey and an owl) in a loggia, prints, paintings, etc. We wandered for an hour or so. Then hot chocolate at the place across the street and on to the Uffizi, where we had booked timed tickets through the hotel (that’s a necessity—otherwise you stand in line for hours). Watched all the mimes in the square until they let us in, then spent a couple of mind-boggling hours looking at the greatest collection in the world. My surprising favorite was a Hugo van der Goes Adoration of the Shepherds, where the shepherds looked so lively that I was sure he’d brought them in off the street to paint them.

Exhausted, with an advanced case of museum feet, we went back to the same place as yesterday for lunch. Don still wanted to see the Ospedale degli Innocente, so after a quick detour into the Palazzo Vecchio first floor we walked off to Santa Annunziata. It was closed, but we got to admire the Ospedale and then fled because they were setting up for a rock concert in the piazza. Back to the hotel for a nap and shower. We ate at Enzo and Piero’s again.

For several nights Don had been filled with envy when waiters brought enormous glasses to tables near us while we, drinking the house wine, were using the tiny ones that were part of the table setting. He embarked on a crusade to figure out what price one needed to pay to get the Big Glasses. This experiment lasted for the rest of the trip, and he finally decided that about a ten-Euro bottle would do it. We always got the big glasses after that.

After dinner we went to look for a Bancomat, managing to get ourselves lost. I hadn’t brought my map because we were just going down the street. It was one of those rare times when Don, who usually has a sterling sense of direction, got completely turned around, so we walked for quite a while in circles before we got oriented again. Limoncello soothed us, and then bed.

(4/20) Next morning we had the car delivered, and after figuring out how to get turned around to get out of the one-way-two-ways street, followed our map to go to Arezzo. We didn’t want to go the Val d’Arno way, which is straight industrial, or the autostrada, so we found a beautiful, curvy, mountainous road above it all—and found it with only one wrong turn, too. Unfortunately I didn’t remember to take a Bonine until it got really curvy, so I got queasier and queasier and even had to get Don to stop so I could walk around at one point. I think my green face told him I was serious. I was glad when we got to the town, and even gladder when, after leaving the car at a park above the cathedral, we found that the town hall right in front of us had public toilets and a Coke machine. Felt much better. We took the walking tour in one of our guidebooks—always a help. First was little St. Dominic’s church, a neat little Romanesque building with a sort of off-center bell wall (not a tower, just open arches on a wall that extended above the roof for the bells) and a pretty brick square out front. A sweet little elderly priest was holding forth to a bunch of young men, turning on lights and displaying the beauties of the place with great pride, and a couple of the young men were kind enough to labor through translations for us—though their English was about like my Italian—so between my direct comprehension of the priest’s chat and their help we got the picture.

We walked past Vasari’s house, which is open to the public but didn’t draw us in, to San Francesco, which didn’t open till two. So we found a pasticcheria for lunch and then sat in the shade for a while. The Piero della Francesca frescos are wonderful, but it turned out that we should have gotten tickets a block away to admit us to the walled-off space to view them up close. Strange. By that time we didn’t care enough to start over: we just looked up at them over the six-foot wall and decided that was enough. You could see the whole thing, just at a little distance. Then we visited the main square, which is very steeply sloped with the apse of a church on the low corner, an arcaded building at the top edge, and some nice houses around the other sides. The church, for some reason, faces away from the piazza. It was in restauro, like many, but had an even stranger and neater bell wall. Then we went back to the Duomo, which opened as we got there, and saw another little Piero.

We had thought of going to Sansepolcro to see the big Piero della Francesca there, but it was more driving through hills and my stomach decided that we wouldn’t. We got out of town with only one wrong turn and went on to Cortona. Parked just outside the walls, since you’re not supposed to drive in, and labored up the steep hill to the hotel, which is at the top. Of course the desk lady said we could drive in, and for $11 a night could park in their garage. So Don went back down the hill while she showed me the enormous room, and then she helped him back into the tiny garage from the very narrow street.

We wandered around a little, observed the lowering clouds, and went back for our umbrellas. Then, in the rain, we tried to find a place to eat. “Do you have a reservation?” “No.” “Sorry!” Six different places we went to. How could such a small town with so many restaurants be so full? And in April, not the high season of summer. Finally we went back to the one next to the hotel that Don had decided was too expensive, and they could seat us next to the kitchen door. What a relief! It wasn’t really all that expensive, and the food was wonderful, especially the asparagus purée soup. The place was hopping and the service was slow, and then the check listed all the wrong food, but since it came out to the same amount we’d figured on Don just paid it.

(4/21-Sunday) It alternated between sun and rain all day; something of an irritation since I had scheduled the whole day here so we could relax, sketch, and enjoy it. We visited the little museum off one of the town squares, which had the most remarkably eclectic collection I’ve ever seen: everything from a huge Etruscan chandelier to mummies to an 17^th century royal bedroom, plus assorted paintings and prints. It was kind of fun. Wandered some more and tried the Diocesan museum opposite the duomo. It had some really terrific paintings, including a marvelous Fra Angelico, mixed in with a lot of really bad ones.

After a little more wandering we stopped in a wine shop that served lunch and had a nice meal, but unfortunately it was pouring when we came out. We went back to the hotel and read and napped until four, when the sun came out. Went out for a walk, touring most of the town, and sat on the town hall steps to make a sketch each. Decided just to eat pizza in the same wine shop: the rich dinner the night before made us want simplicity.

Next day (4-22) we headed for Perugia and the only bad day of the whole trip. It’s quite a big town; we were muddled going in (our maps in the atlas screwed us up for bigger places by having a map that showed all the highways around a town, with no street names, and then a map of the town with no highway numbers—we got mislaid in several places because of this scale jump) and parked at the train station, thinking this was the place the guidebook suggested. We set off walking up the hill, and walked, and walked, for about an hour and a half. Buses passed us, but we didn’t have bus tickets and one of the vagaries of Italy is that you can’t buy a bus ticket on a bus. Saw no place to buy them, either: the road led through residential and corporate-office areas, not shopping places. The road kept curving back and forth as we trudged up and up. Finally got to a place where the bus station was, which apparently was where we should have parked. I guess we’ll know next time.

Perugia has a strange underground escalator/corridor system that takes you from the bus station up to the centro.  It runs through an old medieval part of the city that was razed hundreds of years ago and they built on top of it. Quite interesting. We followed it and came out on the upper square, at the head of the wide pedestrian way leading to the duomo and museo. Stopped for hot chocolate and a rest, but no restrooms, which we really needed by that time. Very fortunately, the Museo Nazionale dell’Arte del Umbria, which was supposed to be closed on Mondays, was open, so we enjoyed both art and toilets. They had a wonderful collection, including a Piero della Francesca Madonna and a Fra Angelico Annunciation that was a knockout.

Considerably refreshed, we walked around the cathedral and past the University, then headed for an ancient round church built into the walls. Turned out to be all uphill (again) and much further than it looked, but it was a nice place. Still, had we known we might have skipped it. We walked back to the University and had lunch outdoors at a bar—the only bad meal we had all trip. The pannini had cheese and prosciutto crudo (cured but not roasted) and the ham felt like eating raw pork chop. We’d had it before and it was fine, but we ended up pulling this out of the sandwiches and being glad later that we didn’t get sick from it.

Then we continued our semi-disastrous day by following our usually reliable guidebook’s walking tour, going a long way downhill to see not much. Plodded back up hill and headed for the weird escalators. We had seen on the map a more direct route back to the train station—a road shown as a straight line—and tried to find it. At a street with no sign I asked a nice old man if this were la strada whatever name it was. He said, “Ah! La stazione?” We said si and he became very voluble while I tried hard to understand. The main thing was that we were headed in the right direction but that we had to find some stairs on the left. We thanked him, found some stairs, and confirmed with a newsstand operator that this was the right “street.” Down about 18 flights of stairs on the side of the hill and a winding road through a couple of apartment complexes, while we worried that it might not be the right train station and that we would never see our car again. It was certainly not straight as shown on the map, but it got us there, and when we saw the yellow station with its arches we gasped with relief. Then, of course, we got completely lost trying to leave; ending up driving most of the way up into the town because we couldn’t turn (of course getting involved in heavy traffic) and finally just following the signs that said “Autostrada Firenze-Roma” even though that wasn’t at all the way we wanted to go. At least it got us out of Perugia.

We found Assisi with no trouble, but wandered the streets in the car with difficulty. Our hotel was supposed to be right off the Piazza del Comune, but you couldn’t drive into the piazza. A nice policewoman told us that and then directed us back up to the bus station parking lot that we had already found—way up the hill—so we had to trundle our bags way back down the hill through the narrow streets. We couldn’t find the hotel when we got there, but I realized that the tourist office was at the end of the square and went in. “There” said the lady, pointing to an arch over an alley about 15 feet away. Well, the address was Via degli Archi. The hotel was right inside the arch. It was quite lovely, with a great view over the rooftops and the valley from a tiny balcony.

We dumped the bags and went for a walk to San Ruffino and Santa Chiara, both very romanesque and nice. Of course we had passed San Ruffino when we were coming down with the luggage, and had to hike halfway back up the hill to get to it, but the twisty little streets are very attractive, and it was downhill from then on. We had a good dinner at a place we had passed earlier and called it a day after a limoncello in a bar on the square—inside, because it was chilly by then. Both of us had forgotten that there is a Roman temple right on the Piazza, quite lovely. The fountain, which should have been nice, was behind a construction fence: In restauro.

Next morning we went to the reason for coming to Assisi: the Basilica of Saint Francis. We were fearful that there wouldn’t be much there after the awful earthquake that destroyed so much—and the aftershock that killed some of the monks investigating the damage—but the Italians had outdone themselves. You wouldn’t have known anything had happened. Considering that they are still restoring damage from the 1969 flood in Florence and that the 15-year-old guidebook we used in Sicily was perfectly up to date, this is remarkable. The nave is completely rebuilt and the frescos restored; only the vault is plain plaster, and it wasn’t Giotto. The Giottos look wonderful.

Don went to get the car while I waited in the piazza with the bags. He got lost trying to get back to me, and then we got lost trying to get out of town. Finally got to Spello, where Don sat in the piazza and sketched while I went to two nice old churches with more frescos. We bypassed Bevagna and went to Montefalco, where we found a bar for lunch right off the main piazza. Found the little museum in an old church behind the piazza, but it wasn’t yet open; miraculously, the staff showed up right on time and opened up. They have some terrific Benozzo Gozzoli frescos, which I had wanted to see. That’s pretty much the whole museum.

We got back to the car and studied the two direction signs that were visible. Nothing for Spoleto. I walked across the street to a police car and asked. “Rigarda,” he said, pointing. Just out of our range of vision was a sign that said Spoleto. I blushed.

To our surprise, the walls of Spoleto are at the bottom of the hill—the only town we’ve seen like that. Don stopped just inside the gate in front of a church and sent me off to ask directions, because the address of the hotel was Via Interna della Mura—inside the wall. I accosted an elderly police officer emerging from the station and he said go behind the church and follow the road. We did, for some distance, and there was the very elegant hotel in the midst of a decayed industrial area. It had been converted from a factory building and was very posh; its only trouble was that it was at the bottom of the hill. Right outside was the road up, straight up and very steep. You climbed that to a little piazza, breathed heavily, climbed again to a piazza with a church, panted, and then climbed again to the main part of town. And since the hotel didn’t have a restaurant you had to do this frequently.

We went up for gelati and a tour of the Duomo, then back down for a shower and rest. Then up again for dinner. We tried Pentagramma, right off the Piazza del Mercato, and it was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. The shining light was artichoke ravioli in a cream sauce with nuts served in a shell made of fried Parmesan cheese. We were stuffed and happy; the staff, who seemed very proud of their food, were happy with us.

Next morning (4/24) we feasted on the hotel’s homemade pastries. Yum. Spoleto is not good for the figure, although all the climbing probably helped. Back up the hill to wander and try the walking tour. This led us toward the Rocca, the great fort, and around it (on, mercifully, a level road closed to cars) to the Ponte del Torre, a great medieval bridge/aqueduct over a deep gorge. We explored that, then walked around the Rocca, down a hill, into a Roman house that had been excavated under the Town Hall and was very interesting, got some water at the Mercato, went back to the Duomo, and sat down to sketch. Got up at noon, thinking lunch, and no camera. Frantic retracing of steps: Roman house, Mercato, Rocca, Ponte. No luck. Don was kicking himself all over the place, because he had been carrying it. We finally stopped for lunch at a place on the Rocca walk, and I jostled the extremely flimsy table and spilled my untouched beer all  over my sweater, my pocketbook, and Don’s briefcase. Not our day.

We went back to Mercato for gelati, Don still bemoaning camera, and I saw a camera store on the piazza. Suggested we could get a disposable one for the rest of the trip, then suggested we could look at prices and if they were like home we might as well buy a regular camera. We looked in the window, but of course he was closed for siesta. We walked to a little park near SS Giovanni e Paolo and sketched for a while. He was still closed. Back to the hotel.

The only hotel that hadn’t responded when I faxed reservation requests was the Virgilio in Orvieto, which was where we were going the next day. I asked at our hotel desk, where they had assured us that they would be glad to do anything for us (they’re new and hurting for business, I think) and they kindly called. Virgilio was full. (When we got back, there was an e-mail on Don’s computer saying they’d be happy to reserve a room for us; send credit card number. Too bad they were so late on the uptake—at least three weeks after I asked!) The clerks then checked their lists and called the hotel Piccolomini Palazzo, which had a room. So we were set.

After a nap, we headed back to the camera store and bought an Advantix camera pretty cheaply. It seemed to be actually a video store and the man’s whole stock of cameras was in the window: he had to climb into his display to get it after I muddled around with explanations of “panorama” and he actually understood. Then we had a demonstration half in Italian and half in mime until we were set. Went out to eat near the park where we had sketched that afternoon.

After more yummy pastries the next morning (4/25) we headed out of town—an easy shot this time. We were aiming for Todi, and the guidebook showed exactly where the parking lot was where you could catch the minibus up to the town. Trouble was, the parking lot was suspiciously empty and there was no minibus. Also the walking path up to the town was closed for reconstruction. Confusion. Finally we found a billboard map of the town and discovered that there was now (within the last two years) a new parking lot and a funicular to the town on the other side of the hill. We found it.

Todi is lovely, and is supposed to have one of the most beautiful piazzas in Italy. It was unfortunately full of tents for some sort of fair, although the tents looked pretty nice too, all white. The Duomo was quite lovely. San Sebastiano was also on the list, so we backtracked and zigzagged up the steep path to it—odd entrance. It looked a bit unstable—the columns were all tilted and they had braces across the aisles at the top holding the arches together. We had pizza for lunch and, strolling through the square afterward, saw someone with cannoli. We traced it to a tent from Sicily, where they were dispensing them with great mirth. They were terrific—huge and delicious. Then back to the funicular and the car and on to Orvieto.

We parked, per guidebook instructions, at the Orvieto train station, asked the harassed but efficient tourist office lady to show us on the map where our hotel was (she managed to concentrate on one person at a time despite screaming hordes clamoring for her attention), and went with a big crowd to the funicular and up. Minibuses were supposed to circulate every few minutes, but the one there when we arrived was instantly packed with a Japanese tour group. We waited and waited for another in vain. Finally started walking—the whole length of the town with our luggage. Don was very grumpy, because his bag was very heavy (mercifully mine had wheels). We finally got to the hotel, which had an elegant lobby but our room was so ill-lit that we couldn’t read and I couldn’t even see what color my turtlenecks were without taking them to the window. (They had an evaluation form, so we gave them hell.)

We went out for a stroll, first to see the outside of the Duomo. Discovered that the tour of the manmade caves, for which we had tickets, was about to leave, so we joined it. We passed gorgeous views from the town ramparts on the way. The first cave was part Etruscan and had been enlarged in medieval times, with a wine press and an oil press. We were told that every house in Orvieto has a cave: they dig out the rock to make the house and are left with a wine cellar. We left there and the group headed for another cave, beginning with a low door and a narrow staircase going down forever. I told Don I’d wait for him outside, so I sat and enjoyed the view and made a sketch on the back of my ticket envelope. He said he saw a lot of pigeon coops (they had raised them in there) and that it was 40 steps down and probably not a good place for claustrophobic people.

The hordes of tourists don’t seem to stay overnight. By dinnertime there was just the local passegiatta. We found a recommended restaurant that had astonishingly bad service. I told the waiter that we wanted acqua con gas; he ignored me and asked if we wanted naturale or con gas. I said. “Con gas.” He brought water. “Con gas?” I asked. “No,” he said indignantly, “naturale.” I lost my Italian and told him firmly that I had said twice that we wanted con gas. He took it away and brought what we wanted. The rest of the service was on the same level. Food okay, though.

Next morning we headed to the cathedral early, hoping to beat the crowds—as we did. It is spectacular. Inside and outside we saw signs that one needed tickets to go into the Signorelli chapel, but it was open and there was no one around, so we went in. I was glad to see the frescos again; they have been restored since the ’50s and look wonderful. Then we went to the museo on the square—someone’s private collection given to the city—for which we had tickets. Nice Etruscan stuff, which we liked. Also restrooms, always a bonus. We took a walk to the far end of town to see a little old church, which was very pretty, as was the walk through the oldest part of town.

We checked out of the hotel, got a bus successfully this time, went down the funicular, and hit total confusion. Here was a fountain in the middle of a drive, with the elderly train station on the other side, and no parking lot, no tourist office, none of the modern building and waiting area with vendors we remembered. I sat with the bags while Don explored and puzzled. We were a bit frantic: surely there was only one funicular? Where was our car? Finally he realized what had happened. We had come with a giant crowd, and in the crush had totally forgotten that part of the trek to the funicular was on an escalator, inside the train station—we had just surged ahead out the door with the crowd and never saw the station. We poked our heads inside and there it was; we went down and there was the landscape we remembered—and our car.

We got a little mislaid (as usual!) leaving town and ended up going to Lago del Bolsena, which we hadn’t expected to do. It wasn’t really out of our way, though, and Bolsena provided a good place to have lunch. We headed up the road toward Siena. Three of our guideooks raved about an abbey—Monte Oliveto, near Buonconvento—which was supposed to have marvelous frescos. It was not far off the road, so we detoured. We were misled. It was more of a drive than we thought, the abbey was over a steep hill that you had to walk, and we felt the frescos weren’t worth it—not good at all, even though some of them are by Signorelli. Plus there was a mob of people elbowing each other all around the cloister where the paintings were. Oh, well, on to Siena.

We had tried for reservations at a recommended hotel right in the center of Siena, but they had e-mailed back that they were full and would welcome us to a new hotel they had opened just outside the walls “500 meters from the historic center” in an old mansion, furnished in the Tuscan manner with antiques. It sounded okay, so we agreed instead of going to our backup choice.

In the first place, we couldn’t find it. We weren’t even sure we were on the right road, since they gave us a street address and we had only a highway number, but we went up and down and around that road ten or twelve times, turning back when we reached the ancient walls. Stopped at a gas station. “Si, cinque centi metri a sinistra,” they said cheerfully. Back and forth again. Still no luck: we could see nothing that looked in the least like a hotel. I asked a truck driver parked at midpoint. “Si, cinque centi metri a sinistra,” he said. Obviously 500 meters is a fluid distance. Back and forth again. Then back. As we were turning around on a side street, I saw a wall with a gate and a long driveway. And beside the gate on the wall was a very faded sign in letters an inch high that said it was the hotel.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” said the young woman at the desk. Don almost took her head off. We explained about the lack of signage and she agreed that yes, people had mentioned that. They might look into it. After that Don could find nothing good to say about the place. Never mind the magnificent view from the bathroom window and the view of the town from the bedroom. And the adequate light. It was too far out. (It was.) There was no breakfast buffet, only bread. (True.) Breakfast didn’t start until eight. (True.) The bathroom was huge, but the shower was tiny. (True.)

We took the minibus from the corner into town, wandered around, found a nice restaurant and ate. We walked back to the hotel. Next morning, after grumbling about the breakfast, we took the bus back into town in the rain. We wandered until we found the Pinocoteca Nazionale only to find that it was closed due to an employee strike. Just as well—it’s full of Sienese painting, and Don doesn’t really care for that school. So we went to the Duomo, which really is incredible. I wasn’t so shocked by the striped walls this time. The floor is filled with inlaid designs, many of them covered up to preserve them, but enough bare to give a good idea. One guidebook had a diagram of them. We saw the Bernini chapel and the beautifully carved Pisano pulpit, then Don sat while I paid a pittance to go into the library, which had a huge display of manuscripts much like the two we have framed at home, plus a wonderful Pinturicchio fresco cycle above the shelves.

The Sienese wanted to build a bigger cathedral, though Lord knows this one is big enough. They started on a huge new nave that would use the current duomo as a transept, and got one side built when the Black Plague struck. Not much left of the town or the ambition after that, so the arches of the new nave have been filled in in part to create il Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. It is filled with much good stuff; the greatest is the Duccio Maestá, which is in a room by itself with chairs so you can sit and contemplate both the Madonna and the small panels that tell the story. We read that there was a good view from a balcony, and wondered about it. I was looking around at some engravings on the top floor of the museum and when I turned around Don had vanished. He tends to do that in museums, but we usually find each other shortly. Not this time. I looked at the end of the room, where there was a door, and a very tiny, tight spiral staircase was winding up. I went up several curves, but people were coming down, too, and it was much too tight for passing, so I retreated. I waited and waited. Then I waited some more. Finally he showed up: he had gone up the stairs without saying anything and had been waiting for me to follow him. Oh, well, at least he took a couple of good pictures of the view.

From there we went back to the Campo to the Museo Civico in the Palazzo de Popolo, which had very interesting frescos of “Good and Bad Government” plus a Simone Martini Maestá. While we were getting our tickets the powers that be decided to close the tower for a couple of hours for no apparent reason, and an Italian tour guide had a major tantrum right in my ears at the ticket seller. Those of us in line were holding our ears and rolling our eyes, though we had a certain amount of sympathy for her.

We found a pizza place for lunch and then went to the Baptistry, which is, oddly enough, under the Duomo and serves as the foundation for the apse. Such things happen in hill towns, I guess. It had a marvelous font with panels by Donatello and Ghiberti. We walked back to the hotel and tried to nap amid claps of thunder. Caught the bus back to town and just as we arrived in the Campo there was a terrific hailstorm. Our lunch place was nearby, so we dined there as well.

We had a bread breakfast again (4/28) and were on our way. We stopped for a brief look at Montereggione; Don said “Not another hill town!” and I assured him that this one was cute. It is—pocket-sized, fully encircled by walls, and with one little square. Then on to San Gimigniano, where we circled the outside of the walls being frustrated by the full parking lots. Finally, three-fourths of the way around, we found a space. We got smart this time, and put clothes for the next day in my suitcase (wheels), leaving Don’s in the trunk. So the long walk through the town (uphill, of course) was much easier. Our hotel (La Cisterna) was right on the main square, with a wonderful view out over the ramparts from our room. We avoided the hordes of people in the squares and main streets by wandering off to Sant’ Agostino, which has good frescos by our old friend Benozzo Gozzoli and had a lovely tape of baroque music playing. Back to the main square, and then walked up to the Rocca (fort) for the view, which was way high and terrific. On the way down through the park on the ramparts we encountered a bake/lunch sale and wandered in; that’s how we came to have lunch at a Communist Party fundraiser. Good sandwiches, good beer, great bag of cookies.

After a nap at the hotel we went to the Museo Civico, which was interesting but unmemorable, and then the duomo when it finally opened. We sat on the steps people watching for a while, and then fought our way down the main street through the crowds to the gate, then came back up a parallel totally deserted street. All of the gelati places were packed, with long lines, but 20 feet off on a side street we found one that had nobody in line. The man serving us looked at my hat from Sicily and said “Siracusa! You there?” I told him yes, and he said he lived there. Big smiles. He called to his wife and said the Italian equivalent of “Hey, Honey, dig the lady’s hat!” We left with our big cones, feeling smug about no lines as we watched all the other people waiting. More people watching, then dinner down the street.

Next morning we set off for Florence early. This time I got us off the autostrada at a different exit, but after winding around in an unmarked maze of roads we suddenly found ourselves in another rush hour traffic jam, headed for, of all things, the Porta Romana. Don was swearing as we sat there and I said, “Turn around.” “What?” “Turn around. There’s nobody coming the other way. Go back.” So we made a U-turn and found a different route in, four lanes and much less congested. We stopped to fill the gas tank and I asked if this was the right road for the Amerigo Vespucci Bridge; the man thought a second and said “Vespucci? Avanti!” So we did, and got the car back home again.

Unfortunately, we were three hours early for the train for which we had reserved seats. We got to the station and stood. No chairs. No place to check luggage. (As we were getting on the train later we did discover a place, well hidden behind a bunch of other facilities at the end of all the tracks, but it was too late by that time.) Don went to find a restroom; there was only one and it was chained shut with a mob outside. As he watched, they opened it and everyone surged in. He came back with a pack of Kleenex that he had bought and hadn’t used plus a ticket that no one had taken. I went later and it was deserted; no ticket needed. We finally decided that the ticket was for the Kleenex because they don’t supply toilet paper. Ah, the confusions of a different culture. I went to ask about refunds on our unused tickets for the day of the strike, and was told that we’d have to get our refund back in the U.S. (Don went to see our AAA travel agent and asked; miraculously, a refund showed up on our Visa bill months later!) Then it was lunchtime and we had fairly decent pizza and beer in the station. When I think of the good walk we could have had in three hours if we had known where to check our bags!

We finally got to Rome. The taxi driver at Termini had never heard of the Hotel Smeralda, but he looked up its street location in his huge atlas (while driving, of course) and took us straight there—or crooked there, given the Roman streets. The room was acceptable; its two virtues were that it was cheap and it was near the Campo di Fiori, our favorite neighborhood. The shower was so small you had to get into it sideways, and it had no soap dish so you kept having to lean out and fish shampoo and soap out of the sink, thereby spraying the room, but otherwise we were fine. We unpacked and went out for gelati and a walk, finding the restaurant we planned to eat in later on, and enjoying Rome again.

Next day (4/30) we decided we really ought to see one of Rome’s biggest museums that we’d never gotten to on all our visits: the Palazzo Barbarini. Off we trudged, finding the shortest way up the steep Quirinale—much better than the circuitous route a helpful passerby directed us to and that we had taken before. Of course we had to pop in and pay homage to San Carlo alla Quattra Fontana on the way. The gates and doors to the museum were open, so we went up the driveway and followed the roundabout directions to the ticket office downstairs. There we were told by a very snippy young lady that the museum had just closed. It was 10:00 a.m. It was not a holiday. School children were streaming in the back door. We were annoyed.

We wandered back down the hill to the Trevi Fountain, where Don became entranced with some workmen on a scaffold who were restoring a building overlooking the piazza. They were trying to fit some new pieces of scaffolding through the existing part to set them up, and it wasn’t working. We finally sat down on the steps of the adjacent church and just watched for a while until they figured out that they had to dismantle some of what they had done in order to get the new parts in. We found a sandwich place for lunch (Don later discovered that the waiter had shortchanged him and was miffed.)

Going past Piazza Navona reminded Don that he wanted to locate Santa Maria della Pace, so we tracked it down through some dark alleys covered with scaffolding. It was closed. A couple of Japanese men were also disappointed; we made bets to ourselves that they were architects.

We had picked up a brochure for the Palazzo Doria Pamphilj near the Piazza Venetia at the hotel and decided we might as well see it since it was on the way home. It was fascinating: a palazzo still in private hands, the old part dating from 1435 and the “new” from 1647. You got an audio thing as part of the ticket price, and the narration is done in impeccable English by the current prince, who mentions that he and his siblings got in trouble as kids for roller skating on the polished tile floors. The Pamphilj family was very into collecting art, most of it of dubious value, but there are gems to be found, and the “apartments” are so opulent that they are mind-boggling—tapestries, Murano chandeliers, a gilded crib, an elegant bandstand in the ballroom. You could dial up the number of things on the audio tour, so you weren’t stuck on a set route, and there was almost no one else in the place. Fun.

We also popped into Santa Maria sopra Minerva, which I had only thought of as the church with the cute Bernini elephant out front. Then I read that it is one of Rome’s rare Gothic buildings. It was full of art, including Filippino Lippi frescos.

We went back to the Campo for gelati and sat on the statue base to watch the street cleaners rid the place of its market debris so all the sidewalk cafes could be set up for evening. They do this every day, and it is amazing. The vendors make no attempt to clean up after themselves, leaving discarded crates and vegetables all over the place after they load the good stuff on their trucks. Then in come the cleaners, one or two driving little Bobcat-sized sweeper vacuums and the rest with giant shovels or those witch-like brooms they seem to prefer. The shovelers heave the crates into a couple of piles to be loaded into a trash truck and the sweepers shove the stuff that’s left into the path of the vacuum, which goes around in circles until everything is gone. It all takes less than a half-hour, and then out come the tables and chairs in time for cocktails and dinner. And that’s where we ate that night.

Next day was more of a problem. It was May 1, Labor Day, and everything was closed—except churches. We saw a lot of churches. First we headed over to Trastevere; Don decided that we should climb up the Janiculum hill to San Pietro in Montorio to see Bramante’s little Tempietto. Up and up we went, the long way round because the short way up a flight of stairs was blocked off. We found the church in the throes of getting ready for a wedding and tiptoed around with a bunch of other people. The gate to the courtyard of the Tempietto was locked, but it was just a grillwork so we could look in and have a good view. Mission accomplished.

Down the hill, back to Trastevere. Don sat down on the fountain in front of Santa Maria in Trastevere while I went in. It really has spectacular mosaics, and I realized that I had been so snowed by those last year that I had forgotten that the floor has really beautiful tiles in very intricate patterns. I learned that it’s called Cosmati, all by a special family.

We wandered off and found a place that would serve pizza—most of the ristoranti seemed to have only real multi-course lunches. Then we thought about what else to do. More churches was the obvious answer. So we walked across the river to climb up the Aventine hill to see Santa Sabina, an early Christian basilica that is quite lovely. Furthermore, when we struggled up the path we found ourselves in a really nice park on top of the hill, with marvelous views over Rome. Next to Santa Sabina was Santi Bonifacio e Alessio, which was also preparing for a wedding. We stood and watched the guests arrive, marveling at what seemed to be regarded as appropriate attire. At least the young ladies put gauzy shawls over their revealing dresses, but it didn’t help much. Then Don realized that we were in the place where you can look through a keyhole in a gate and see a perfect view of Saint Peter’s dome, so we did that. I had never heard of it, but he thinks he remembers it from Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday. So he was now reconciled to the whole climb up the hill.

We went back down and rested for a while in the little park across from the Temples of the Forum Boarium; I made a sketch and Don collapsed on the grass and took a nap. Then we headed back home. On the way out to dinner a bit later we discovered that since last year they had cleaned the Palazzo Massimi on Corso Vittorio Emanuel. It is a Renaissance classic, in all the textbooks, but had been so coal black you couldn’t see anything but the curved façade. Now you could see every detail of the stonework. Amazing—we never even saw it covered with scaffolding, which must be a first. (There is one church near the Campo that has been covered with scaffolding since 1998 at least and still is.)

A cab to Termini the next morning, a train to the airport, and off we went.