When in Rome

Two weeks ago, our daughter Liz and her husband Jeremy flew in to Rome to start their visit with us.  We trained down to meet them at the airport, then spent a whirlwind two days in the Eternal City.  They landed at 9:30 in the morning and we told them they had to stay up to adjust to the local time zone, so after freshening up at our hotel, we headed for the Colosseum.

I have always been fascinated by how all the levels of the Colosseum are perfect ellipses.  If you remember high school geometry, it is actually easy to lay this out.

After dinner we finally let the kids sleep, as we had to get up early for a 7:30am tour of the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel.  They do not allow pictures taken in the chapel, so we do not have one of God's and Adam's fingers touching to show you, but here are a few from the Museum and St. Peter's square: 

A scene in one of the Raphael Rooms.  Every ceiling is treated as this one.

After the Vatican, we caught the metro over to the Spanish Steps and just sat down for a while before moving on to the Trevi Fountain.  It was a bit of a disappointment as the fountain was drained and had an ugly scaffolding around it.  At least we could walk out on the scaffolding and get closer than otherwise.  After lunch we headed for the excavated ruins of the Forum, the heart of ancient Roman civilization.

The Temple of Saturn

Who were these men?

The ceiling of the arch of Septimius Severus

In the garden of the vestal virgins

We then walked up the Palantine Hill to an overlook of the Forum, discovering a beautiful wooded park and rose garden.  Of course, Carmen could not resist pictures of roses.

That night we rendezvoused with my brother Alan and his wife Sharon, who had just arrived for their visit.  Dinner with them is always a joy because Alan is a wine merchant and can be counted on to select a great wine.

The next day was our last in Rome, limited by the need to catch our train back to Firenze and then to Rignano.  Time for a few last photos, and then, Arrivederci Roma!

"Say 'Fromaggio!'"

May in Bloom

Poppies growing out of our garden wall

Once again it has been too long since we have posted, but rest assured we have been busy.  My cousin Liz and Noel visited us in early May.  Of course, we checked out a few wineries with them.

As you may have surmised, Carmen's favorite photo subjects are plants and flowers.  She has diligently chronicled springtime in Tuscany and we tried to put more pictures up to her Flickr site, but were frustrated by our extremely low bandwidth here.  So this post will be lots of photos, little narrative.  To start, a sequence of scenes around our place:

This next sequence is from the region around Greve in Chianti when we were on our winery tour with Liz and Noel.

Unusual multi-colored irises

As we close this post, our daughter Liz and husband Jeremy have been with us for a week, in which time we have explored Rome, and Venice and Murano.  Look for our report in our next post **soon**

Firenze in Aprile con i Nostri Amici

April has been a month with weather changes: it got hot and sunny, then got cold again, then got rainy again, and is now warm and sunny again.  The days are noticeably longer, every tree and plant is leafed out and in bloom, and all types of birds keep the air filled with song.  We were blessed in April with visits from two sets of friends and spent a lot of time in Florence with them.

First in were Keena and Dave Kaufman, whom we visited and went skiing (chronicled in our post Austrian Ski Weekend).  Living in Italy, they make occasional trips to Florence and showed us some of their favorite haunts.  We started at the Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella.  If you wonder why, with all the art and history in Florence, we started with a pharmacy, the answer is: it is WAY more than a CVS.  For one thing, it may be the world's oldest pharmacy.  It was started in 1221 by Dominican friars who made herbal remedies for their monastery, and was opened to the public in 1612.  The decor is as elaborate as many of the churches we have seen.  Besides getting a prescription filled, you can buy old-time elixirs and their own perfumes and colognes formulated hundreds of years ago.

Two of the early pharmicists from the 17th century; the plant room with orchids in bloom.

Next we went up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, an overlook on the south side of the River Arno.

At Piazzale Michelangelo with Keena and Dave, with the Duomo in the background.

We walked down from the overlook to the Palazzo Pitti, enjoying the beauty of springtime.

Tulips; wisteria

Gary checks out an antique Cinquecento (Fiat 500); Carmen checks out a climbing rose.

Carmen and I had just finished reading Dan Brown's Inferno, which was also a favorite read of Keena's, and we were on a quest to follow the trail of the plot from the Boboli Gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti, across the Ponte Vecchio to the Palazzo Vecchio and finally to the Baptistry of San Giovanni.  After the long walk down, we were all pretty tired but Keena and I lined up to get entrance tickets, which took at least 20 minutes.  When we got back to where we left Carmen and Dave, we found them stretched out in the piazza, both sound asleep!

OK I got the tickets, should we wake them up?

And we did follow the plot.  When we got to the map room in the Palazzo Vecchio, we asked the docent if there really was a secret passage behind the map of Armenia.  He said yes there was, then opened it and showed us.  He also told us that the film crew doing the movie of the book would be in Florence in May and would be filming on location there.

A week later, Debera and Tim Mulcahy visited us.  They are neighbors of ours in Encinitas, and we stayed in their home last September after we moved out of our place and before we flew to Italy.

On the first full day of their visit, we set off to find a few new wineries in the vicinity of the town of Radda in the Chianti Classico region.  Truly, there are so many wineries that we will have checked out only a small percentage before we leave Italy. 

Stocked up with bottles of wine, we made plans for Florence.  We opted to go to the Accademia, a relatively small museum, but with perhaps the most singular work of art in Florence:  Michelangelo's statue of David.  When I first saw it nine years ago, I got a chill down my spine.  Part of the magic is the presentation: one comes around a corner and looks down a long hall to a domed atrium with David centered in natural light.  Seeing it again, I got the same chill down my spine.  I could never explain what elevates something to the level of art, but if you ask me for an example, I will say David is a masterpiece.

The Accademia also has a very nice display of baroque musical instruments.  Carmen got a nicely framed shot of this collection of percussion instruments.












Invariably, our outings to Florence are punctuated by a wonderful dinner in a little trattoria, and this night was no exception.  Our Florence experience is great art, great food, great wine, and great friends.