The Dream

I woke up this morning, rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and looked around at my familiar bedroom and out the window to my familiar street in my familiar home town.  I had a dream last night.  It was an amazing and incredible dream, so vivid that it still seems real.  I dreamt that we had moved to a faraway land and we stayed there for a long time, long enough to experience all four seasons.

I dreamt that this land was an ancient land and that we saw the remains of places where people had lived before Jesus walked the earth.  We saw the ruins of ancient civilizations.  Many towns in this land were built in medieval times, sometimes on hilltops to better defend themselves.  

The streets were so narrow that cars could barely squeeze by each other, and so small cars were an advantage.  I dreamt that we had a cute little car that was fun to drive, and it was called a “Panda”.  We regularly loaded our bikes on the Panda and drove to a nearby town to ride through a long park along a big river.  

I dreamt that the land was covered with vineyards and olive groves.  There were many castles in this land, and lots of big country homes they called villas.  In the dream, we lived in an apartment in a villa made of stone that was built in the sixteenth century.  It was outside a tiny village and way up a hillside on a steep single-lane road.  Despite being so isolated, we made many close friends, and were never lonely because so many friends from the U.S. visited.

I dreamt that all the local people spoke a beautiful and melodious language that we tried to learn, but did not get very far because most of them also spoke English better than we spoke their language.  In trying to speak in the native tongue, we made some hilarious gaffes.  The worst was the time I said, “I would like to shit telephones.”

And the local people loved to talk.  It was common to see someone in the street having a conversation with another in a second-story window.  Groups of women had the talent of all speaking at once while still getting what everyone else was saying.  Old folks sat in piazzas and gossiped.  In the evening, strolling around the piazza and chatting was the social event, with all generations represented.

I dreamt that the villages around us would have a street market on a different day of the week, where a street or piazza would be blocked off with vendors’ trucks, selling vegetables, meat, fish, plants, and clothes.  We would always go to the one on Thursday and get extremely fresh vegetables and fruit.  Then we would top off shopping with an espresso or cappuccino in a caffe bar.

In the land of my dreams, the seasons were more pronounced.  I dreamt that it snowed once in the winter, and that we had to haul wood up to our apartment and heat it with a wood burning stove.   It was hot in summer and we picked berries and cherries along the side of our road.  In the fall, the persimmon tree in our garden dropped all of its leaves but was still covered with ripe persimmons so that it looked like it was decorated with bright orange Christmas ornaments.  It would often get windy in the afternoon, and we had some tremendous rainstorms with thunder and lightning, but more often it was sunny with blue skies and white puffy clouds.

Hoopoe (photo by Rajiv Lather, www.birdforum.net)

In the spring, there were all kinds of birds around our place, and we learned their names:  magpies, redstarts, blue tits (they were so funny the way they would pop a few feet into the air and land again).  There was a hoopoe, a spectacular bird that would be a rare surprise to see.  There was a big flock of noisy starlings that roosted and had babies in the roofs of our buildings.  By the time summer arrived, most of the birds had moved on.

I dreamt that there were flowers everywhere, and they were Carmen’s favorite photography subject.

All of the old buildings had window and balcony planter boxes bursting with color.  She was jealous of the giant hydrangeas that seemed to grow effortlessly there.  Even weeds growing out of old stone walls became beautiful photo subjects.

And I dreamt we lived near a magical city, one famous as the center of the flowering of the arts in the Renaissance.  We would take the train into the city, walk its ancient streets to spectacular churches and palaces, cross the river on a bridge lined with jewelry shops, see some of the most famous paintings and sculptures in the world, stop for coffee or gelato, or have dinner at a small trattoria on a tiny side street where the food was always wonderful.  

It was just a dream.  But it seemed so real!

The Last Road Trip

We had to be out of our apartment by the end of the month and were not flying back to the U.S. until the 3rd, so we turned our last days in Italy into a road trip.  Based on our desire to be close to Milano Malpensa airport, our friend Sandy Swanton recommended the beautiful little town of Orta San Giulio on Lago d'Orta.  She did not steer us wrong.

One kilometer out in the lake from the town is Isola San Giulio.  It is a beautiful sight at night from the restaurants on the waterfront next to the main piazza.

There are many fancy hotels in Orta San Giulio (but ours was not one of them;-).  The architecture reminds that this region of Italy, Piedmont, is close to France.

A small chapel in the piazza has faded frescoes.  Narrow medieval streets lead to little piazzas.

A main attraction in Orta San Giulio is the Sacro Monte di San Francesco, a UNESCO world heritage site.  Within a park on the hilltop over the town are a major church and twenty chapels, each chapel devoted to major events in the life of Saint Francis of Assisi.  

A convenient guide map (as well as hand symbols pointing to the next chapel)  routed us through the park to the chapels in the chronological order of his life.  

The early chapels told their story through frescoes on the walls and ceiling, but for later chapels, sculptors were brought in to create dioramas.

We were especially taken by this chapel that had a cylindrical tower capped by a dome.  Looking up inside, the geometry creates the illusion of infinite depth, and the fresco on the side and dome uncannily translates the illusion into an ascent to heaven.

Next on the agenda was a quick boat trip to the island.  Isola di San Giulio is dominated by a formidible Benedictine monastary and the Basilica di San Giulio.  Here are a few scenes:

An interesting coat of arms.  I am not sure what trade or guild the family was associated with.  Any ideas?

After two nice days in Orta, it was finally time to head for the airport and the trip back to the U.S.  We did not refer to it as the "trip home" because Italy has truly been our home the past year.  But we also had "home" waiting for us in Encinitas and were looking forward to seeing family and friends, especially those that had not been able to visit us.  

Brian Visits

Our son Brian was already in Florence when we returned from Ireland, and we met him in the train station and had a nice dinner in town. After a few low-key days locally, we set out on a wine tasting and dining day trip to two of our favorite spots in Tuscany. The first stop was Radda in Chianti and the Castello di Radda winery.

Our good friend, fellow photographer, and budding travel writer Sandy Swanton accompanied us.

After sampling wines and topping up our supply, we had lunch in Radda at our favorite little osteria, La Bottega di Giovannino, where our friendly waitress Monica always remembers us.

Leaving Radda and these funky twin lion gargoyles, we headed for Cortona. We chronicled our first visit to Cortona in our post of 5 July, and our primary idea was to end up our day trip with dinner from Ristorante Nessun Dorma's eclectic menu. Now well into the warm summer, our dinner was delightful out on the patio. Before dinner, we had visited again the church of Santa Margherita (where I realized this time that Santa Margherita's remains were in a glass sarcophagus in the nave of the alter) and the Fortezza di Girifalco.

Church of Santa Margherita viewed from Fortezza di Girifalco

On Brian's last full day with us, we went into Florence with tickets to see the Medici Chapel. Whole history books are written about the Medicis, whose influence spanned the 14th to 18th centuries.  The chapel is testimony to both their power and their patronage of the arts.  The first room is a museum of small artifacts such as this reliquary:

I for one was unfamiliar with the concept of reliquaries before my first trip to Italy nine years ago, but they are quite common in churches all over the country. They typically encase in glass a "relic" of a saint, pope, or other notable. Santa Margherita's sarcophagus in Cortona is an extreme example. We did not do a good job of noting descriptions to go with photos, so I don't know whose relic is in this one, but given the size, I would guess it is a finger bone.

The chapel itself is dramatic in its use of a wide variety of colors of marble and stone, and usually for the statuary in wall alcoves. Unfortunately for our timing, most of the statuary was under renovation and removed, and there was a lot of scaffolding up.

And of course there was the art that the Medicis so vigorously supported.

Next to the main chapel is the Sagrestia Nuova, which despite its name predates the main chapel. The Nuova was designed by Michelangelo and contains much statuary by his hand.  The centerpiece is Michelangelo's tomb for Lorenzo the Magnificent.

I have always wondered if historically famous persons always had grandiose titles such as "the Magnificent", but one needs to look no further than Lorenzo's firstborn son, Piero, to refute the idea:  he was totally incompetent and became known as "Piero the Unfortunate." But another of Lorenzo's sons, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, fared better and has an equally impressive tomb on an adjacent wall. It was Giuliano that held our fascination and led to our plan to see the Medici Chapel with Brian because, when we visited nine years ago, we were amazed by the resemblance between Giuliano and Brian. We have been planning this moment for nine years!  What do you think?

Brian is our last visitor, and il nostro anno Italiano will be over in two weeks. We still have one adventure planned here, and we are sure we will return again, if only for short visits. Brian will return someday also, as ensured by rubbing the nose of the bronze cinghale.

Our Visit with Ellen - the West Coast

In the middle of our visit with Ellen Bonnell in Ireland, we headed off to the west coast for a couple of days in a rental car. This was a gut-wrenching adventure for all three of us because we had never driven on the left side before. Going in, you think the problem will be moving into the right lane and risking a head-on. When you actually get behind the wheel, that isn't the problem; instead you can't get used to your position at the right side of the lane, and you tend to drift left. But with two vocal passengers helping, we all got the hang of it. In any case, we never hit anything, and rolled into Galway for lunch.

After lunch, we headed for the scenic Cliffs of Moher, and promptly got very lost on a little country lane with rain coming down. After some incredibly good directions from two ladies standing under umbrellas, we finally got to the Cliffs. The rain let up a bit as we walked to the first observation point and we got to see the Cliffs. But before we could get the cameras out, fog rolled in. I found this picture online which pretty much looks like what we saw for a few minutes.

(from http://www.skibbereeneagle.ie)

That night in Galway we did a pub crawl for dinner and music. You can always find live music in Ireland. The next morning we headed for the Connemara district, known as where old Ireland lives on: cottages with thatched roofs, small plots of land divided by stone walls, and everyone is a redhead. It wasn't quite that way, especially on the drive west along the coast, where the road was lined with modern homes with roofs other than thatch. Turning inland, our objective was Kylemore Abbey, but (can you guess?) we got very lost.  We ended up at a small park with little pockets of beaches on a windswept coast.

We made friends with the locals...

...and small plots with stone walls were quite in evidence.

After our journey, we identified this locale as Bothar Gear. A small plaque in the park identified it as the location used for a movie we had never heard of, but whose claim to fame was it was the first film done entirely in the Irish language. Which may be the reason none of us had heard of it. 

We always say that life is a journey, not a destination, and we were glad we made a wrong turn and got to experience this wild, blustery little corner of Ireland. But eventually it was time to move on to Kylemore Abbey.

Originally built as a family estate by a wealthy Englishman in the Victorian Age, it was acquired by the Irish Benedictine Nuns in 1920. The Nuns ran a boarding school for girls until 2010. It is now open to tourists with the proceeds maintaining its historical heritage. After touring the castle itself, we walked along the lake to the chapel.

The other big attraction at Kylemore Abbey is the Victorian walled garden.

Our plans were to return to Dublin that evening, but after our wrong turn to unexpected delights and giving Kylemore Abbey its proper amount of time, it was getting late. We decided to see if we could find lodgings in any of the small towns on the Connemara road. We rolled into Oughterard, which we had never heard of before (and certainly could not pronounce), which was so quaint and cute that we just had to stay. There were rooms available at the Connemara Lake Hotel, and we prepared ourselves for sticker shock on the room prices. When quoted prices, we all kept our poker faces but exchanged quick glances that expressed our amazement at how inexpensive they were. Best of all, it was less than 50 meters to the local pub--one with a thatched roof!

At the risk of repeating ourselves ad nauseam, every night in Ireland we were in a pub with live music. Pub night in Oughterard was particularly unique: the music happened if the locals decided to bring their instruments and play--which they were welcome to do, and which they did the night we were there. Then, other patrons got up and sang. It was open-mike night, but live without the karaoke machine and without the mike. Bert, you would have loved it!