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.

Italy - Salvi Garden

I have been thinking about how the people that you are with can change your experience in different ways.

For example, on our last trip we went out to dinner with various cousins, and over the course of the evening we walked around downtown, to the train station, and then back. I had been to many of the places before, but I had never realized how close they were together. This is because previously I had been with people driving, and there are areas where they could not drive. As they went around the areas they couldn't drive through and searched for parking, it seemed like we were traveling further than we were.

Writing things up now, which includes searches for local web sites, I am finding that a lot of the places we went had prominent attractions and options that I had no idea were there. Sometimes they may not have been interested, or not thought that entry was worth the price of admission, but I was relying on their knowledge.

I don't want that to sound ungrateful. They took me to a lot of cool places that I never would have made it to on my own. I was really lucky that they had the time to take me around. While I was willing (and wanting) to pay, they would not let me. I was really lucky to have them. It just also means that my experience is bound up in them in ways that I had not realized.

For example, Parco Querini was much bigger than I realized. They stopped at one location, and you couldn't really tell from there, but they didn't have an interest in going around more and I didn't want to press the issue. They had only even gone there because I had asked about it. It was pretty similar with Giardino Salvi. We entered at one spot, and I had no idea that there was more.

Looking back, it makes perfect sense that we entered where we did. There is a bridge designed by Palladio, and it is probably the most famous part of the garden, and they took me right to that. I didn't necessarily expect it to be huge. My prior knowledge of it was that my mother would walk through the gardens on her way to and from school, so I was thinking of it more as a place of family sentiment than anything else.

However, one thing Mom had mentioned is that boys would go through and point at the nude statues and make rude gestures while singing a corrupted version of "La Donna E Mobile", and I didn't see any statues. Once again, this is a much bigger area than I saw.

There are some pretty good pictures on Trip Advisor: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187872-d242672-Reviews-Giardino_Salvi-Vicenza_Province_of_Vicenza_Veneto.html

There is also one review in English, who wasn't that impressed. (The statues are placed haphazardly? Well maybe they were just trying to not be overly formal so you don't get so lost in the overall form that you can't appreciate the individual statues.) The Italian and Portuguese reviews seem more favorable. I have no idea on the Russian ones.

I'm not saying that my guides were wrong. My brother and his wife hired a tour guide before meeting up with us, and she took them to all the places you would expect, and she omitted Parco Querini and Giardino Salvi too. I would still like a chance to explore them at leisure.

Mainly I think it's a reminder that with any sightseeing there are judgment calls being made, and they are probably perfectly reasonable calls, but they are not inevitable. My sisters and I try and remember to appreciate home too, as much as the places we travel too, but there is always more that can be seen, and different ways of seeing it. That can possibly be frustrating sometimes, but is also pretty cool.

Italy - Parco Querini

Parco Querini was a place that kept changing my mind.

At first I saw a picture of it, focusing on the temple. Built in a classical style, I thought this was something historical and really wanted to go, specifically requesting it. They were surprised I was interested, but took me.

Once there, it became clear that it wasn't particularly historical. This was something new. Then I felt kind of let down.

However, then you are free to notice that the place is charming. There is a walking path and bridge, and it is green. It is a local park, not a tourist attraction. There is nothing wrong with that.

Here is a nice piece on it: http://www.rossiwrites.com/2015/01/exploring-vicenza-parco-querini.html

Italy - Monte Berico

http://www.monteberico.it/

I was a pretty literal-minded child, and there is reason to believe that my parents did not understand how much that was true. Sometimes the answers they gave me were puzzling, but I accepted them instead of asking follow-up questions, and so I would not understand various things until much later.

One of these stories is about a plate.

We had a few plates from Italy, representing my mother's homeland. There were plates showing scenes from Pisa, Venice, and Rome, but this one was actually from my mother's hometown, Vicenza. I was curious about the lady up in the air.

I probably didn't ask the question right. When I was asking, "What is that?", I didn't specify that I was asking about the levitating woman with the flock of children around her. She told me that was Vicenza (she may have even told me that it was Monte Berico), and if I went there I would see it. I was curious to go and see how she stayed up there. That's not how it works.

The Basilica di Santa Maria di Monte Berico is a shrine to Mary, on top of a hill overlooking Vicenza, built as a response to two apparitions by Mary to a peasant worker, Vincenzo Pasini, in 1426 and 1428. She promised that if they would build her the church she would heal them of the plague. The church was built in three months (I assume after the second vision) and became a sanctuary.

There is a part of me that is skeptical about this, especially because his name, Vincenzo Pasini, sounds a lot like the town name - Vicenza - combined with the word for peasant - paesano, plural paesani. However, there was an inquiry in 1430 and the proceedings have been preserved.

That being said, I remember driving around in Italy, and wherever you looked there were steeples and domes and a lot of these structures have similar stories. It had occurred to me that you could navigate Italy just by looking around, spotting something that seems interesting, and heading to it. Then I realized that would be a terrible idea, because there would be too much and you would grow tired while still missing a lot.

You have to pick and choose. Some places are widely known for their appeal, so lots of people go. Some places get seen because they are near where you are. Este probably gets seen more for by virtue of its proximity to Padova.

I don't know that Vicenza is much of a tourist attraction, though we will be going over some of what it offers in the next few posts. It may be very similar to a lot of other towns that are not at all famous and that I will never visit. It is still always home. That's where my cousins are, and where the stories from half of my heritage take place. It will always be more to me.

Nonetheless, if you go to Vicenza and visit Monte Berica, you will see many representations of Mary, with smaller figures flocking around her. You will see her in paintings and statuary and on cards. I did see her when I went there and she looked just like the plate. There just wasn't any levitation involved.

Italy - Venice

Venice is beautiful. Venice is exhausting. Both statements are equally true.

It is exhausting because while the city is actually fairly compact, with the canals winding throughout you will frequently going up and down bridges to cross them. Even on flat ground, the uneven surface is tiring.

There are two points to make regarding that. One is that even though I am always in favor of wearing good shoes, there are times and places where it is even more important, and Venice is one of those places. Wear supportive shoes without tiny little heels that will catch between the stones and trip you.

The other is that Venice can be especially challenging for some physical disabilities. There is some helpful information on line: http://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187870-c3011/Venice:Italy:Venice.For.The.Disabled.html

The good shoes and the planning ahead are worth it, because Venice is beautiful. It can be magical. It's worth going.

I was lucky to be there with someone who loves Venice and is very familiar with it. I wish I had written down the name of the "best pastry shop in Venice"; it was wonderful!

Still, there is a lot more there. There is the Caffe Florian, the oldest cafe in the world. This is a place that has been frequented by Casanova, Goethe, Proust, Dickens, and Lord Byron.

http://www.caffeflorian.com/en/

There is the Rialto Bridge and the Bridge of Sighs. There are palaces, cathedrals, and museums. And there are lions everywhere, symbol of St. Mark who is the patron saint of the city, and for whom the square is named.

There are gondolas. (Which only tourists take, because they are generally considered overpriced and touristy, but you know, if I were not there with a native I might go for it.)

There are islands you can visit. Murano is known for its glass, Burano for its lace, and Torcello is the oldest continuously populated region of Venice.

There is beauty and history all around you. You can simply wander around, and just see what you see, and it may very well be magic. I was watching a movie, Pane e tulipani, set in Venice, and one of the biggest thrill is when the heroine rounds a corner and there is a cistern I remembered passing. The simple things can be powerful.

However, it would also be completely possible to later regret missing something. One advantage of the link on Venice for the disabled is it focuses on planning what you want to see most, and then plotting your route efficiently, so it can be a useful resource for anyone.

I saw some things, there's a lot I didn't see. It is worth repeat visits.

"Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", and "undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man."

http://www.comune.venezia.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/EN/IDPagina/1