Italy in our future

Having family in Italy is wonderful. It also makes things complicated.

I was planning a trip with my sisters where we would go to Vicenza, but would see other places too. The initial complication was that we wanted to take our mother with us, but she did not want to do all the sightseeing, so we were trying to sort out where she would go, and where she would miss staying in Vicenza, and how to get everyone back and forth between all the locations.

As that was starting to come together, my brother and his wife announced their own trip, and which day they would be in Vicenza, and would need someone there to translate and introduce. He had not been there since he was two, and she had never been there, so it was good for them to go. Seeing my aunts and uncles marvel over this change from the toddler constantly going in and out of every door to the tall muscular man was very touching.

It did completely sink the other trip. Certainly money was an issue, but having enough time and being able to get the right time off from everyone's jobs was just impossible.

Still trying to plan and strategize, it became clear that trying to bring our mother along for our multiple destination trip was not going to work well either.

That shouldn't have mattered, because before we thought that her next trip would be her last one. The flight is hard on her, and not getting any easier, and she has lost many of her family members. We will always want to maintain the relationship with our cousins, so it can make sense that we would go without her. The trip we made for my brother should have been able to be her last trip, but somehow that didn't feel right. It feels like she needs to go again.

So, it feels like what is needed is one more trip with my mother, and one more trip with my sisters.

The one with my mother would be staying around Vicenza, but I could happily spend some time exploring Parco Querini and Giardini Salvi on my own. I would love to make it inside La Rotonda, and prove it can be done. I have still never been to Montecchio.




Also, I really want to go to Soave. That is a community known for their wine, which I am not generally into, but you can see the castle when we go between the airport in Verona and Vicenza, and the castle walls come down the hill like arms embracing the hillside - at least that's how it looks to me. It might look different once there, but I'd like to check it out.

With my sisters we want to see Florence, and more of Venice - especially the islands in the lagoon - and Vicenza of course, but we also want to go to Rome, and when there you can easily go see Pompeii and Capri. I want to go there. And then you find little things, like from Florence it is pretty easy to get to Pisa, and between Florence and Venice one potential stop is the Ducati factory. That would be pretty cool.

Those are the things we hope to see, and it only takes time and money. Only.

Here are some random pictures I liked but haven't used yet.

Italy - Downtown Vicenza

I have already mentioned that traveling via car I had not understood the proximity of various locations.

Part of that is that in the downtown area driving is heavily restricted. If you live in certain apartment complexes that are right there, you can have a permit, but otherwise you need to park outside of the main area. This makes the area more pleasant for walking, but also distance wise it is very walkable.

It is still cobblestones. We had one person with arthritis in our party and one with fibromyalgia, so they sat and had some drinks and snacks while some of us explored as we were waiting for the rest of the party. Still, it's an area where you can do that.

There are little bars and coffee shops. There is other shopping, including a very nice chocolate shop where they spoke excellent English. I believe we also passed a jewelry shop. I was looking at architecture, because they have beautiful buildings. There are a lot of offices in the area too.

And there are restaurants, so once everyone was there we went and had pizza together.

After that, it was an easy walk to the train station - past park where they have the annual festival - where we saw off my brother and sister in law, and then we headed back to the parking. My mother and I would leave the next day.

So it was a beautiful night, in a beautiful place, with lots of love and laughter and food.

As we were passing the park, one cousin was telling me about the festival. My mother had always spoken fondly of it, and suddenly I was seeing where it happens every September. I told her about our Rose Festival in June, and then my brother mentioned that Pride happened right after it. She told us that they had Pride too, and at about the same time. My brother then mentioned the naked bike ride. They don't have that, but they got a good laugh out of it. Honestly, biking is so supported there that I'm not sure there would be a reason.

Here are some pictures from that night.

Italy - Things seen on the road

These are random things I saw at various times while on the road, so I could not really get a picture of them. They did all make me think, and generally I would talk to my cousins about them and learn something. I will now string them together here for your pleasure.

One was a staircase store. I saw the sign from a little up the road, and I thought that couldn't be right, but as we passed I looked in and saw multiple models of staircases. I had always thought of staircases as something that you built on site, rather than buying.

It made more sense as I remembered that at least that area (all of my time has been spent in the Veneto) is full of older buildings. The oldest building in Portland is from 1857, but even a 100-year old building here seems really old.

Well, telling my cousins that, they said 100 years old is nothing there. The building we were in was older than that. However, those buildings change too. We usually stayed with an aunt whose building belonged to her husband's parents (I don't know if they were the original owners). They had three children, so now there is one home on the first floor, and two apartments on the second story, all with their own entrances and functioning separately.

There are two children in the next generation, and they will inherit, so the upper floor could be joined into a single dwelling again, but then between those two there are three children, so maybe it should stay in three. One of my cousins lives in my grandparent's old house, and it has been remodeled a lot. So it makes sense that you might go browsing for staircases, and other things beyond the types of remodels we normally do here.

Another thing that really surprised me was the Autogrill. I think this is a picture of the same one I saw:

http://www.panoramio.com/m/photo/70391368

I just could not get over building what was apparently a restaurant across a highway. It seemed so impractical and dangerous. I guess ultimately it could be built with the same structural integrity as a bridge, but why? I was talking about that with my cousins, and they saw my point, but they pointed out that it's great advertising. Everyone notices it.

My brother and his wife went to a few when they were on their group tour, and they are not all built over streets - some are just at roadside - but they are all over the place, especially along highways, making them the place for travelers to stop and get coffee or water or food. I think they are sometimes connected to service stations. Understanding the kind of ubiquity they are going for, it was not a surprise later to find out that they have an alliance with Starbucks.

http://www.autogrill.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogrill

Finally, I saw a wrecking yard.

Let me give some background though. It always felt like people drove really fast. It was not uncommon for them to drive after drinking (not drunk, understand, but still having drunk). It was common for people to drive with great enthusiasm, shouting and shaking fists. I can't imagine actual road rage, but sometimes on those narrow roads they did seem to cut it close. However, I never saw anything happen. The cars certainly seemed safer than the bikes, which were also everywhere.

So I was amazed that no one was getting in an accident, but then I saw the yard and lots of people get into accidents.

It stretched on too far for me to see the end, and I didn't see any actual wrecking equipment. I just saw lots and lots of cars, stretched out as far as my eyes could see. I suppose this could have been some central depository for all the wrecked cars in the country, but that seems unlikely. It appears that there are in fact lots and lots of wrecks.

I'm a nervous driver anyway, but if at some point I get over that, I still would be very reluctant to drive in Italy (or France). It is a beautiful country, hey - you can see it even better if you leave the driving to a native.

Italy - La Rotonda and Il Teatro Olimpico

There were two attractions in Vicenza that seemed to be the most associated with Palladio, even though both were completed after he died, with Vincenzo Scamozzi working on both.

The first is La Rotonda:

http://www.villalarotonda.it/en/

The proper name is Villa Almerico Capra, from the priest who ordered its initial construction and the Capra brothers who completed it later, but everyone simply calls it La Rotonda. I said last week that Palladio was an influence on many, including Jefferson, but it may be easiest to see that influence here, especially if you compare La Rotonda to Monticello.

I find it sad that everyone there believes you can't go inside. Access to the public is limited to very specific times, but it is available. (The internet makes finding information like that a lot easier.) Otherwise it is used for private events. Of course, you can admire the architecture very well from the outside.

Il Teatro Olimpico

http://www.teatrolimpicovicenza.it/

It was actually Scamozzi that designed the onstage scenery, which is what most grabbed my attention, but the building itself showed his attention to the old Roman theaters, but also how to face the challenge of adapting an existing space.

The theater can only be used to a limited extent for its protection, but at least when I was there the schedule showed plays with classical themes. Sometimes these are actually ancient plays - the first play ever produced was Sophocles' Oedipus in 1585, and then that same play was performed for a reopening in 1997. When I was there the schedule showed French plays based on mythology, like Racine's Phèdra.

I suspect in the end that having a permanent scenery, and a fairly crowded one at that, is not really practical for producing plays, but looking at it is still kind of amazing.

If you are in Vicenza these are places you should see, whether you are an architecture fan or not.

Italy - Palladio and Vicenza

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/712

Going back to my early villa in Italy plan, the one thing that I thought might help it work was that maybe architecture students would want to spend time in Vicenza because of Palladio. Because of him, Vicenza is, like Verona, a Unesco World Heritage site.

Technically it extends beyond the city limits, because he also built some villas in the surrounding country, but they are all still within the Veneto region, including his buildings in Venice.

Andrea Palladio was a 16th century Italian architect. The name "Palladio" was given to him by a playwright, invoking Pallas Athena the Roman goddess of women. Palladio studied Roman architecture and incorporated it into his own designs.

He was a huge influence on architecture, not just through those who saw his designs, but also through his treatise, The Four Books of Architecture (I Quattro Libri dell/Architetturra).

These pictures were just taken walking around downtown Vicenza, so do not do the best job of showing off his work, but it does illustrate that just randomly going around Vicenza you will see his influence. In this case, the Palazzo Chiericati, Palazzo Thiene, and Basilica Palladiana are all close together, and in fact you travel along the Corso Andrea Palladio to get there, so it makes sense that there would also be a statue of him there.

When you go into Salvi Garden and see the bridge, that is by Palladio, and that is the part that people make sure you see. When you go driving in the country, you will see his designs, and then you will see his influence in other places. Monticello and the United States Capitol were influenced by Palladio.

Two of his most famous works were not finished during his lifetime, and have other interesting fun facts, so we will write about those next week.