In the Rosand library today I came across Charles Dickens' reflections on a year spent living in Italy in 1844-5, mostly in Genoa but with travels throughout the peninsula. Nearby was Henry James' Italian Hours, which I idly read in Carla's apartment while I was visiting her in Florence in 2008, so I picked up both.
I only looked briefly through Dickens, once it was apparent that he didn't have too much to offer in the way of interesting or amusing commentary. Besides Venice and Genoa, the only city he spared kind words for was Verona; everywhere else he decried the misery, the filth, and general degradation. Granted this was during the years of the Austrian occupation and things probably were in a pretty bad state, but he doesn't even seem to give most places a chance. And hey, I don't think London was any great prize in 1844. He was also particularly repulsed by Mannerism (singling out Palazzo Te in Mantua and Santo Stefano Rotondo in Rome), but that's no great surprise considering that Mannerism wouldn't be again "in vogue" until the 20th century was well under way.
I admit to holding Dickens to Twain's later standard as someone who could combine intelligent observation with humor; in my opinion he falls short. I'm also always sort of disappointed when someone writing about, or from, Italy at the end of the 19th century doesn't mention Twain. I wouldn't expect high-minded Henry James, whose Italian Hours covers forty years' worth of travel in Italy, from 1869, a year before Unification, through 1907, to mention the "mere humorist" that was Twain at the time of Innocents Abroad in the 1860s, but not even in the introductory essay? C'mon, people! James and Twain are really fascinating complements, one the representative of the cultural and economic elite, the latter representative of middlebrow America in both taste and education.
I am of course definitely partial to Twain, while James, outside of this book, I haven't been able to get into (most recent effort: the Europeans. The density of the prose, ughhhh). In fact if something contemporary is described as "Jamesian" I kind of shudder. But he's perfectly adapted to the travel essays, and managed to make me smile where Dickens couldn't. For example, on the difficulties of trying to see artworks in churches:
The churches of Venice are rich in pictures, and many a masterpiece lurks in the unaccommodating gloom of side-chapels and sacristies. Many a noble work is perched behind the dusty candles and muslin roses of a scantily-visited altar; some of them indeed, hidden behind the altar, suffer in a darkness that can never be explored. The facilities offered you for approaching the picture in such cases are a mockery of your irritated wish. You stand at tip-toe on a three-legged stool, you climb a rickety ladder, you almost mount upon the shoulders of the custode. You do everything but see the picture. You see just enough to be sure it's beautiful. You catch a glimpse of a divine head, of a fig tree against a mellow sky, but the rest is impenetrable mystery.
For all my complaints (why is S. Maria Mater Domini never open? Why aren't there any labels in San Giorgio? Why isn't there better lighting everywhere? The list goes on), we have it so much easier than art-lovers of time past. Dr. Cooper, for example, emailed me last night for pictures of the Barbaro chapel in S. Zaccaria because hers were too low-resolution. I went there this morning, popped 30 cents in the box, turned on the lights, and snapped the pictures. She wrote back to say "the light is amazing, what time were you there?" Edison time, Dr. Cooper...
On the loud voices of the gondoliers in the otherwise quiet atmosphere of Venice: "If you happen to have a traghetto under your window, you are well aware that they are a vocal race." Of course, today the traghetti are all but gone, though I did see one poling a gentleman with a briefcase across to the Rialto market the other day. What is still true is how sound carries in Venice: "Good Venetians exchange confidences at a distance of half a mile." It's been nice enough to have the windows open all day here, and it is LOUD. Our windows face a small courtyard on one side, and the alleyway-like street off Ruga Giuffa, a major thoroughfare, on the other. You can hear the conversations of anyone in the other apartments with their windows open, and when the old woman across the street has a coughing fit it sounds like it's in here. And that's nothing to the sounds of people talking and laughing on the street three floors below; I understand they think they're "outside" and thus are using their outside voices, but here they might as well be INside! How people ever managed to have private domestic disagreements or hatch plots here here in good weather, I'll never know.
Finally, I was amused to read that after an uproar over an 1879 partial restoration of the facade of S. Marco, some in Europe and the States suggested that Venice be removed from Italian control and put under the protection of a "European Commission"! It's hard today to think of a time when a) Venice meant that much to Americans and b) when it was still possible to think about rejiggering the map of Europe without an outright war. Also, early thoughts of the EU, or at least UNESCO?
''One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know.''
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Other Veneto Voyages
In addition to our Dolomites road trip, we've made a few other excursions into the Veneto (and Friuli/Venezia Giulia, today, but in Titian's time all of these were Venetian property). Speaking of regions, I was looking at a regional map of Italy the other day and realized after our time in Bologna/Emilia Romagna next week, I'll I only have a half-dozen or so regions left that I haven't yet visited: Val D'Aosta, Liguria, and Piedmonte in the northwest, Abruzzo and Molise in the southeast (the latter region being the DiMarzo point of origin) and Calabria and Sicily in the far south.
Udine: This was our farthest-flung train trip, over two hours; it wasn't a terribly impressive place and the weather was cold and gloomy, so I was annoyed at having spent 50 euros on the tickets, and more annoyed that even though the train passes through all but Castelfranco of the cities below, we couldn't combine the visits because all museums and churches like to be open for the same 2 or 3-hour scraps of time in the morning and afternoon! The civic museums in Udine are at the top of a tall hill, where the woman selling tickets complimented me first on my Italian and then on my skin when she found out I was almost thirty (I got a discount for being a 'youth' and then for being an art historian!) The collection wasn't terribly impressive, but included some stuccos from Giovanni da Udine's house (he also designed the clocktower in the main piazza after the Venetian one), some paintings by Pomonio Amalteo, brother-in-law to Pordenone, and a "Caravaggio" St. Francis in Ecstasy that is a duplicate of the one in the Wadsworth. The Duomo wasn't open (Sean says the word that grates on me most is chiuso and he is RIGHT).
Castelfranco: Castelfranco is a quaint tiny town whose center still survives with its square walls intact. We walked into the main square just in time to realize a wedding was starting up in the cathedral, which houses Giorgione's altarpiece. We tarried as long as we could in the nearby Casa di Giorgione, not his natal home but rather a house in which he's believed to have painted the incredible frieze depicting books, philosophers, arms, scientific instruments, astrological signs, et. al. Then we hung out in a nearby bar stalking the wedding party until they finally emerged (and it was one of those 100-degree days, I don't know how they weren't all melting!) Finally we were able to get in, and the painting was worth the wait, as were the Veronese fragments from Villa Soranzo kept in the sacristy.
Pordenone: Home to the eponymous painter, Titian's great rival before his untimely death in 1539 (some sources even suggested T poisoned him!) The civic museum, holding a lot of great work, was chiuso for the entire month of August, but it turned out to be for the best, because we could make the most of our limited time in town in the Duomo, which had undergone some 19th or early 20th century remodeling but which proudly displayed its surviving Renaissance and medieval frescos on walls and piers. Pordenone's Madonna della Misericordia adorns the first altar on the left; he also painted the high altarpiece, the baptismal font, and three separate frescos on one of the large piers, including a rather sensual S. Rocco who's considered a self-portrait. There was a jewel of a chapel, the Monreale-Mantica, which had an altarpiece by Amalteo and floor-to-ceiling frescoes by one of his students from the 1550s, depicting the entire life story of Christ and his Mother. I particularly enjoyed how the Risen Christ appears to pop up from the sarcophagus on the wall. Below, covered in centuries of etched graffiti, were roundels containing phrases in support of Mary's purity (the dead woman for whom the chapel was created was evidently a supporter).
Conegliano: We stopped here largely on a whim, having seen the tall hilltop tower from the train, but it was worth it! The Duomo holds Cima da Conegliano's altarpiece painted for his hometown as a bargain, and after a steep uphill climb to the hill, and then seven or eight stories of tower, we had an incredible view over the countryside looking north to the mountains. Photos can never capture the effects of the setting sun on a verdant landscape, with the hazy blue in the distance (or least not a camera like mine). Sean was particularly enraptured!
Treviso: I went there yesterday. The Duomo, once I found it, hosts the Malchiostro chapel, where Pordenone's frescos outshine Titian's later Annunciation altarpiece. I also visited the church of S. Nicolo, with an interesting altarpiece perhaps by Lotto, with the Doubting Thomas on top and some portraits, including the recognizable face of Bishop De Rossi, on the bottom. The civic museum had Titian's painting of Sperone Speroni and a very bloody Bassano crucifixion, but I was forced to actually go through every room (including the archaeological sections on the Neolithic period...) because I was the only person there and the very friendly girl literally walked me through each gallery (partially so she could turn on the lights). When I arrived it was managing to be cold and muggy, by the time I left it was warm and muggy. Treviso is sometimes called the 'little Venice' because it has some canals, but at this point all of these cute, well-to-do northern towns are starting to blend together!
I do enjoy the train rides, though, especially when they're air-conditioned. Coming back over the lagoon, sweeping low over the water on the railroad bridge Henry James called the "back door of Venice" (not in a good way, but probably not in the totally obscene way either) is lovely. However I did note, when we drove in, that one thing you can never see on the train is the campanile of S. Marco, since the body of the train sort of blocks it out. From any other form of approach, though, it's the most dominant part of the skyline.
Udine: This was our farthest-flung train trip, over two hours; it wasn't a terribly impressive place and the weather was cold and gloomy, so I was annoyed at having spent 50 euros on the tickets, and more annoyed that even though the train passes through all but Castelfranco of the cities below, we couldn't combine the visits because all museums and churches like to be open for the same 2 or 3-hour scraps of time in the morning and afternoon! The civic museums in Udine are at the top of a tall hill, where the woman selling tickets complimented me first on my Italian and then on my skin when she found out I was almost thirty (I got a discount for being a 'youth' and then for being an art historian!) The collection wasn't terribly impressive, but included some stuccos from Giovanni da Udine's house (he also designed the clocktower in the main piazza after the Venetian one), some paintings by Pomonio Amalteo, brother-in-law to Pordenone, and a "Caravaggio" St. Francis in Ecstasy that is a duplicate of the one in the Wadsworth. The Duomo wasn't open (Sean says the word that grates on me most is chiuso and he is RIGHT).
Castelfranco: Castelfranco is a quaint tiny town whose center still survives with its square walls intact. We walked into the main square just in time to realize a wedding was starting up in the cathedral, which houses Giorgione's altarpiece. We tarried as long as we could in the nearby Casa di Giorgione, not his natal home but rather a house in which he's believed to have painted the incredible frieze depicting books, philosophers, arms, scientific instruments, astrological signs, et. al. Then we hung out in a nearby bar stalking the wedding party until they finally emerged (and it was one of those 100-degree days, I don't know how they weren't all melting!) Finally we were able to get in, and the painting was worth the wait, as were the Veronese fragments from Villa Soranzo kept in the sacristy.
Pordenone: Home to the eponymous painter, Titian's great rival before his untimely death in 1539 (some sources even suggested T poisoned him!) The civic museum, holding a lot of great work, was chiuso for the entire month of August, but it turned out to be for the best, because we could make the most of our limited time in town in the Duomo, which had undergone some 19th or early 20th century remodeling but which proudly displayed its surviving Renaissance and medieval frescos on walls and piers. Pordenone's Madonna della Misericordia adorns the first altar on the left; he also painted the high altarpiece, the baptismal font, and three separate frescos on one of the large piers, including a rather sensual S. Rocco who's considered a self-portrait. There was a jewel of a chapel, the Monreale-Mantica, which had an altarpiece by Amalteo and floor-to-ceiling frescoes by one of his students from the 1550s, depicting the entire life story of Christ and his Mother. I particularly enjoyed how the Risen Christ appears to pop up from the sarcophagus on the wall. Below, covered in centuries of etched graffiti, were roundels containing phrases in support of Mary's purity (the dead woman for whom the chapel was created was evidently a supporter).
Conegliano: We stopped here largely on a whim, having seen the tall hilltop tower from the train, but it was worth it! The Duomo holds Cima da Conegliano's altarpiece painted for his hometown as a bargain, and after a steep uphill climb to the hill, and then seven or eight stories of tower, we had an incredible view over the countryside looking north to the mountains. Photos can never capture the effects of the setting sun on a verdant landscape, with the hazy blue in the distance (or least not a camera like mine). Sean was particularly enraptured!
Treviso: I went there yesterday. The Duomo, once I found it, hosts the Malchiostro chapel, where Pordenone's frescos outshine Titian's later Annunciation altarpiece. I also visited the church of S. Nicolo, with an interesting altarpiece perhaps by Lotto, with the Doubting Thomas on top and some portraits, including the recognizable face of Bishop De Rossi, on the bottom. The civic museum had Titian's painting of Sperone Speroni and a very bloody Bassano crucifixion, but I was forced to actually go through every room (including the archaeological sections on the Neolithic period...) because I was the only person there and the very friendly girl literally walked me through each gallery (partially so she could turn on the lights). When I arrived it was managing to be cold and muggy, by the time I left it was warm and muggy. Treviso is sometimes called the 'little Venice' because it has some canals, but at this point all of these cute, well-to-do northern towns are starting to blend together!
I do enjoy the train rides, though, especially when they're air-conditioned. Coming back over the lagoon, sweeping low over the water on the railroad bridge Henry James called the "back door of Venice" (not in a good way, but probably not in the totally obscene way either) is lovely. However I did note, when we drove in, that one thing you can never see on the train is the campanile of S. Marco, since the body of the train sort of blocks it out. From any other form of approach, though, it's the most dominant part of the skyline.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Alpine Road Trip
Our rental car on this voyage was not, alas, the nice Audi we had for our jaunt through Lazio, but a humble Lancia that struggled gamely through the uphill passages. We quickly realized that not only are the mountains the natural preserve of the manual transmission, there's also a reason why so many of the cars you see up there are German performance cars like Audi and BMW: it ain't just for show, folks! The Dolomites are steep.
From Venice, our first destination was a little north of Treviso, Castel Roganzuolo, a promontory which no longer has a castle but rather a church, where an altarpiece by Titian's workshop once hung. The promontory looks toward Col di Manzo, where the artist had purchased land and started building a house in 1545. Nearby was the abbey of S. Pietro in Colle, a benefice which he was hoping to obtain from the Farnese in order to unite the abbey's lands with his own. It's pretty territory, with the foothills rising in the distance, and plenty of rolling farmland down below.
It was only another 30 minutes or so to Serravalle, now part of Vittorio Veneto, a picturesque intersection of 15th and 16th century streets, a few municipal buildings, and the Duomo, which holds a Titian altarpiece. His daughter Lavinia married a man from Serravalle, and their house is on one of the main streets; supposedly the ruins of a fresco of a nude woman survives in a niche inside somewhere. Lots of the houses had frescoes still surviving from the late 15th and early 16th century, including some by the school of Pordenone; away from the salt air of the lagoon it's clearly easier for them to last. Unfortunately, I got screwed out of my chance to see the painting, since the Duomo was closed when we arrived around 3. After an unprepossessing sandwich at one of the few open bars, I asked the owner when it would reopen, and he just shrugged and suggested maybe early evening. We didn't have the time to stick around for that, and there was nothing to do there, so we headed out. Grr!
From Serravalle we headed west along the 'prosecco road' leading through Valbiaddene toward Bassano del Grappa. It was a beautiful country road, passing by, among other sights, the Canova museum in Possagno, housed in an all-white imitation of the Pantheon. When we reached Bassano, we went right to our hotel, where it would have been nice to just enjoy some air conditioning after the warmth of the day, but nay, this was never to be. We changed rooms three times, and the air conditioning was shitty in all of them! The third and final room got as cool as 78 degrees and could go no farther. The hotel staff were very apologetic (which is a damn sight better than just being typically Italian and not understanding why we'd even WANT air conditioning, which is the usual approach) but that still didn't make for a terrible comfortable stay.
Our dinner that night definitely helped, though. We took a recommendation from Tripadvisor and drove about 20 minutes into the hills outside Bassano, up a road with hairpin turns and hardly enough room for one car, let alone the two that it was clearly intended for. Luckily we didn't encounter anyone coming the other way before we arrived at Mirasole, a little restaurant basically occupying the ground floor of a house in a tiny mountainside hamlet. We sat outside and watched the light fade over the mountaintop, and it was so quiet. It was lovely, and the food matched--simple dishes, most of them local, beautifully made with fresh ingredients. The hostess (this was definitely a family affair, so the nonna) was very friendly; when she found out that I was interested in art and architecture, she had to tout Palladio, who I assured her I knew; then she went inside and returned with a gorgeous calendar, several years old, in which the months alternated with images of Palladio's own constructions in various provinces, and other image sets of his influence on architecture in other countries. She particularly wanted to make sure we were aware of the Palladian influence in the 'Casa Bianca'! At another point, showing the fierce pride that is quite typical of Italians, particularly outside the cities, she told us that she had visited Brazil once, with an eye to buying property and moving there; however, although it was beautiful, she couldn't do it. "Where's the history, I asked myself?" Lol. I'm sure the peoples of Brazil would object to being considered 'sans history', but I'm also not sure they can quite boast at least 2500 years on the same scrap of land (honestly who knows, I know jack about ancient South American civilizations!)
The next day we went into Bassano, which I had visited once before during my time in Venice--but by visit, I mean 'arrive, get rained on, turn around and leave'. This time we went to the Museo Civico, where I particularly admired a small Veronese depicting Christ among the doctors, where one of the learned man is leaning his head on his hand and staring at Jesus with the look of "he's soooo dreamy!" We climbed the Torre Civico, Sean's duly demanded recompense for time spent looking at Madonnas in a museum, walked across the famous wooden Alpine bridge, which was designed by Palladio and has been rebuilt on the same plan ever since, and then hit the road.
From Bassano we neaded north and west, through Trent, where we stopped for lunch (and where I once again got screwed out of an artistic site, since the guided tours at the Castel del Buonconsiglio for the medieval cycle of months was full up until the last tour of the evening!), to the little town of Cles, halfway between Trent and Bolzano. The hotel was awesome; we had a little suite, with a separate room with a daybed, desk, and wardrobe connected to the bedroom by a bathroom, all recently renovated. The shower, in particular, was pretty great, with a lovely pebbled floor. And, best of all, perfect air conditioning! This was our first experience of the "half pension" way of traveling, meaning you not only take breakfast in the hotel, you eat one meal there too, usually dinner. It was a bit of a surprise to be handed a menu at check-in and asked for our choices, but we had read online that the food was great, and we were not disappointed! We had dinner there both nights of our stay, first in the little garden, and the second night, when it had rained, in the dining room.
The next day was our Austrian adventure! Which turned out to be much more time in the car, and much less time IN Austria, that we had anticipated. The joys of a holiday weekend: we actually got stuck in traffic, including near the Brenner Pass through the Alps! Which, I discovered to my disappointment, is a) really boring and flat and b) not even the pass Hannibal used. Boo! It basically looks like every other toll plaza on the Mass Pike, except for the "Osterreich" side on the other side, of course. By this point we'd already been far enough north that not only the landscape, but the architecture was markedly different and "northern", but it took crossing the border to really see alpine meadows of the kind you think of with "The Sound of Music". They exist, they are very lovely, and they are very, very green! Innsbruck was also quite adorable, with the mountains rising majestically against its back. The world's most alpine zoo is apparently here, and I definitely regret not having the chance to ride the funicular.
Alas, by the time we got to Innsbruck, we calculated we only had a few hours if we were to be back at our hotel for the latest possible dinner hour at 8pm (another sign of moving north, the dinnertime moves forward--at 8pm you'd be alone or with tourists in Rome, but you're a latecomer in the Sudtirol!). We grabbed a quick and delightfully Germanic lunch (beef goulash, washed down with Riesling for me and beer for Sean) before we split up; I went to the Volkskunstmuseum, on Vince's recommendation, and Sean went for the imperial gardens nearby. I liked the museum, particularly the installation rooms feature 16th-century enameled stoves, of a type I immediately recognized from the Durer print "The Dream of the Doctor." Most of them were glazed in a gorgeous emerald green, too! Alas for Sean, by the time were scheduled to meet there was a huge downpour, and I had our own (flimsy) umbrella! He made it, jogging through the park, one hand on his hat, completely drenched!
After one more night at Hotel Cles (Sean insisted he never wanted to leave his 'secret lover', aka the air conditioning unit, plus the most comfortable bed we've yet encountered in Italy...nay, all of Europe), we headed out the next morning toward Belluno. Taking the low southern road would have had us there in two hours, but that would have meant retracing our steps past Bassano. We opted instead for the high road through the mountains, and I'm so glad we did! We climbed slowly, and kept seeing signs for various lookout points. Finally I told Sean to turn at a random one, Mt. Penegal, which turned out to require another fifteen or twenty minutes of the Lancia struggling up steeply-inclined hairpin roads, until we finally reached a completely incongrous hotel, after the completely blankness of the woods, besides the lookout. The clouds were, quite literally, beneath our feet up there, over 1700 meters above sea level (that's an entire mile!!); we had a whole valley spread out before us. To our right, we could watch a cloud breaking apart against the mountainside, sending waves of fog up into the pine trees clinging to the slope. It was beautiful. Here, and many other times on our drive, I was reminded of Lizzy's line from Pride and Prejudice: "what are men to rocks and mountains?"
We also fed a goat, who I nicknamed Satan for his diabolical appearance (and he also kept preventing us from feeding the younger male goat in the paddock with him, bc he was as asshole). By the time we were done making friends, the fog I had seen lazily climbing the side of the mountain was all around us, making it a little bit eerie! We hopped in the car and sped off down the mountain (and by sped I mean "rode the brakes like fuck"). Turns out getting down off Mt. Penegal was nothing compared to getting down off whatever big-ass formation we were on on the road below...at one point there was a sign "dangerous balcony ahead" and before I knew it we were on an honest-to-god JAMES BOND ROAD, with cliff face to the left, a low rock wall to the right, and beyond that, the pure white of the fog-covered valley, the road twisting and turning and seeming barely big enough for two cars. It was wild! I saved pics of this to show Linda only after we had safely arrived back in Venice, haha.
We ended up basically driving all day through the mountains in what became a steady rain, passing through Cortina and finally Pieve di Cadore, Titian's hometown. By the time we reached Belluno I was interested in hot shower, hot beverages, anything, and our AirBnb did not disappoint. It came equipped with a double spa shower and not one, but TWO saunas--one classic, "Finnish" style, and one Turkish. Our meal that night, recommended by our host Mirko, was the best of the trip, hands down; Ristorante Borgo, a 15-min drive out of town, in a 17th-century villa (whose lovely grounds we could only admire in a slideshow, since it was dark when we arrived). We wound up seated next to an older man who we were surprised to recognize from the photos on the wall as the owner; we subsequently realized that our waiter was one of the sons, and the chef was the other. The food was exquisite. Our appetizer: burata, not too runny, with the sweetest cherry tomatoes I can remember tasting, and thinly-sliced beef served ice cold over lettuce. I had homemade tortelli with mushrooms and truffle oil, delicate and divine (I wish there had been more!) and Sean had a veal-and-tuna dish dressed with balsamic dinner, which he loved. The house wine was great; they even had a house amaro, of which Sean bought a bottle after we ended our meal. We were already strategizing on how to make a return while we were eating--they have three rooms available for B&B, but the issue would be not having a car to get around...future ideas, anyway.
The contrast between mountains and lagoon was never so marked as the next morning. We woke to 54-degree rain in Belluno, and enjoyed a stint in the saunas (pre-arranged to be ready for 9am by Mirko, who can turn them on and off with his phone) and some hot tea. By the time we were in Venice a few hours later, it was to brilliant sun and 75 degrees--downright cool by normal Italian August weather, but a wonderful feeling to us, not too hot and not too cold.
Our next driving adventure will be based out of Bologna: we're hoping to hit Parma, Piacenza, Mantua, and Urbino the first week of September! I'm glad I invested in that TomTom...
Monday, August 10, 2015
Disneyland Venice
The last few days of the Academy were a grind: not only was the weather awful and sticky with no chance of respite, even at night, there was the stress of moving all of our stuff into our new spaces, and the sadness of saying goodbye to all of our friends. A lot of people will be back through for one reason or another; Stefania has a couple of conferences, Danny and Kim will be in town all of September, Sarah is hoping to come back in the spring, Lakshmi said she'll try to visit. It was especially sad to say goodbye to her, of course, as my closest friend at the Academy. Le sigh.
Anyway, we got to Venice and discovered they were enjoying a rare cool snap, so we were able to savor a few days of cool temperatures before the heat and humidity picked up again, especially since we were celebrating Sean's 30th birthday! We had a lovely meal at Refolo (they have a fantastic Refosco there which I'm sure I'll never be able to find again) and strolled under the "blue moon." Our hotel for the night, before we could move into the apartment, was best described as 'bordello chic', haha.
So Venice is Disneyland: I never really realized before exactly to what extent that's true. It's not a 'real' living city anymore, and Sean noted it's as though people can sense that and accordingly abandon all pretense of the norms of city life, like keeping to the right in crowded, tiny alleyways, or *not* stopping in a massed group on a tiny bridge, or *not* zig-zagging carelessly all over the place like a line of drunken ducklings. It's amazingly frustrating, and I don't know how anyone who actually lives here long-term manages! Granted, we're living near Santa Maria Formosa, a fairly high-traffic zone near San Marco, so if we were living somewhere quiet out in Dorsoduro I'm sure it'd be a little less noticeable, but...it's a lot.
Still, Venice is really awesome, and it's great to finally be able to be here for a decent period. The Rosand library is awesome, too, except for the fact that my m%&#%ing Chromebook can't connect to the wifi there! It already sucked not having Zotero access, and now I'm reduced to just poking at my tablet if I need to look something up online. Not ideal. It's also a little intimidating that there are pictures of Rosand *everywhere*, a never-ending slideshow on the catalog computer screensaver, his signature in the ex-libris in all the books, and even his annotations in a lot of places! Talk about the anxiety of influence!
In terms of travel outside Venice, so far we've been to Castelfranco Veneto and up to Urbino. This week we're renting a car for four days, and the plan is to hit Asolo (Queen Caterina Cornaro!) and Bassano del Grappa on the way to Trent where we're staying one night. From there we'll go a little further north to another hotel, which will be our base for the exploring Italian alps and Innsbruck, just 2 hours north; then we'll be driving to Belluno and staying the night there, with a stop in Titian's hometown; and finally we might be able to stop in Treviso and see his Annunciation in the Duomo before we return the car to Venice.
Anyway, we got to Venice and discovered they were enjoying a rare cool snap, so we were able to savor a few days of cool temperatures before the heat and humidity picked up again, especially since we were celebrating Sean's 30th birthday! We had a lovely meal at Refolo (they have a fantastic Refosco there which I'm sure I'll never be able to find again) and strolled under the "blue moon." Our hotel for the night, before we could move into the apartment, was best described as 'bordello chic', haha.
So Venice is Disneyland: I never really realized before exactly to what extent that's true. It's not a 'real' living city anymore, and Sean noted it's as though people can sense that and accordingly abandon all pretense of the norms of city life, like keeping to the right in crowded, tiny alleyways, or *not* stopping in a massed group on a tiny bridge, or *not* zig-zagging carelessly all over the place like a line of drunken ducklings. It's amazingly frustrating, and I don't know how anyone who actually lives here long-term manages! Granted, we're living near Santa Maria Formosa, a fairly high-traffic zone near San Marco, so if we were living somewhere quiet out in Dorsoduro I'm sure it'd be a little less noticeable, but...it's a lot.
Still, Venice is really awesome, and it's great to finally be able to be here for a decent period. The Rosand library is awesome, too, except for the fact that my m%&#%ing Chromebook can't connect to the wifi there! It already sucked not having Zotero access, and now I'm reduced to just poking at my tablet if I need to look something up online. Not ideal. It's also a little intimidating that there are pictures of Rosand *everywhere*, a never-ending slideshow on the catalog computer screensaver, his signature in the ex-libris in all the books, and even his annotations in a lot of places! Talk about the anxiety of influence!
In terms of travel outside Venice, so far we've been to Castelfranco Veneto and up to Urbino. This week we're renting a car for four days, and the plan is to hit Asolo (Queen Caterina Cornaro!) and Bassano del Grappa on the way to Trent where we're staying one night. From there we'll go a little further north to another hotel, which will be our base for the exploring Italian alps and Innsbruck, just 2 hours north; then we'll be driving to Belluno and staying the night there, with a stop in Titian's hometown; and finally we might be able to stop in Treviso and see his Annunciation in the Duomo before we return the car to Venice.