Milano

After our romantic evening last night, we had to get up early this morning and catch a train to Milan. He had another so-so breakfast with a lot of attitude at the Avogaria hotel, and John paid the bill after we ate. He did not hate it as much as I did, but I do not think he would choose to stay there again. Our vaporetti passes had expired, and I wondered if we would meet up again with the fare inspector on our short boat ride to the train station. Thankfully, we did not.

The train station on the island of Venice is a lot nicer than the one on the mainland. We found our train with no particular problem, and thankfully we were once again in first class. This time, however, the train was a full. John and I had seats opposite each other, and after we stopped in Padua we both had somebody sitting next to us. After a while, the young lady sitting next to John asked if we could double check her English spelling on an email, and pretty soon we were having a great conversation. Her name was Sylvia and she lives in Milan. 

One of the many endearing traits about John is how much he loves to talk to strangers and how comfortable he makes them feel. Sylvia not only told us a lot about Milan, but also walked us a few short blocks from the train station to our hotel. 

This time we are staying at a more normal - though perhaps less interesting - accommodation. The Best Western Hotel Galles is a business hotel just off the Corso Buenos Aires in one of the cities many shopping districts. After we checked in we decided to take a nap as we had a big evening ahead of us. We then went off to use the hotel’s lovely spa. We had it all to ourselves! Feeling refreshed, we decided to head to the historic center of town. 

We took the subway four short stops and when we arrived at the central square, the Piazza del Duomo. There was  a man there doing some strange routine with a puppet and a CD player. 

We walked a few feet further and we we were facing Milan’s magnificent cathedral. The Duomo is architecturally unique on many levels. It is basically a gothic design, but done in beautiful white marble instead of the usual limestone or granite. And many neoclassical elements have been incorporated into the design as well. 

Right next to it on the piazza is the cathedral of commerce, Milan’s famous Galleria. 

One of our guide books suggested eating dinner on the roof of a department store. The food was not that interesting, but it had amazing views of the Duomo. 

On our way out, we went through the store’s food court. We loved these shoes. Made of chocolate and other sweets, they are completely edible. The Milanese are famous for their love of shoes in any form. 

Our big adventure for the evening was going to La Scala, possibly the most celebrated opera house in the world. John and I had stayed up until two o’clock in the morning a couple months ago to get tickets to tonight’s performance the moment they went on sale in Milan. 

Now the tickets were selling for up to 240€ - that’s about 300 dollars - for this performance. We managed to get some cheap seats, only 28€ each. We knew that they were up in the gallery. We did not know just how cramped it would be there. Even sitting down, I think John’s head hit the ceiling. But we had unobstructed views of the stage and the sound as absolutely perfect. 

We watched a production of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. All of Mozart’s operas are a little weird, and this one is may be the strangest of them all. It is all about two young soldiers who believe that their fiancees are utterly virtuous. The older Don Antonio tells them that all women are unfaithful and suggests a scheme where they will pretend to leave for war but then return in the disguise of Albanian soldiers and woo the women. The girls finally surrender their virtue, but instead of being angry about it men simply accepts that this is just the way women are. 

The production we saw was originally done in Salzburg. It tries - maybe not altogether successfully - to use a contemporary setting. 

These are, by the way, publicity stills. I was not gauche enough to try to take pictures during the opera, and even in the gallery I would probably have been hanged if I had tried. The Milanese take opera seriously, and the people sitting up in the cheap seats are the real music lovers. 

There is a real class system still at work at La Scala. We poor people had to enter through a separate staircase, and we were not allowed to enter the main lobby at intermission. Of course, it being Italy, most of the people went outside to smoke anyhow. So we could look at the fashions on display. 

And even if we did not spent time with the most stylish people in northern Italy, at least we could say that we were there!

Tomorrow we have a tour of the city and then we take off for London. 

Venice Wanderings

We arose early this morning to try to see Venice without tens of thousands of tourists. We had an audio tour of Saint Mark’s Square, and we figured that six in the morning was the only time we would be able to do it. And indeed the square was quite deserted at that hour.

There were only a few locals around like this delivery man. 

The only other tourists we saw were this Chinese couple determined to have their Venice honeymoon on a budget. Instead of the retinue of photographers the other couple had, they were taking advantage of the timer feature on their camera. We liked them.

The Doge’s Palace opened at 8:30, and I was the first person in line for tickets and we were the first tourists of the day to enter. I do not think I would have enjoyed it so much if there had been a lot of people. 

I liked the ostentation of the Doge’s chambers a whole lot more than the pointless decor of our own accommodations. 

Surprisingly, I found the prison quite fascinating. Here is the view of the city from the famous “Bridge of Sighs.” 

Here is a typical cell. I looks like the walls were painted at some point. I rather wonder if artists were commissioned to do this, too.

John was rushing through to get back to the hotel by ten thirty for breakfast. The prison really was quite a labyrinth, and he hit his head a couple times on his way out. Being short, I could concentrate on the interesting details instead of the ceiling. I found the toilet interesting. I guess on booking.com they would describe this as a “shared bathroom.” 

After a pretty uninteresting breakfast, John was content to rest his injured head for a bit. So I went off to explore on my own. I intended to go back to the piazza to one of the museums there, but I accidentally took the wrong boat and ended up on the island of Giudecca. It proved to be serendipitous. Giudecca is like Brooklyn, the part of the city on the other side of the water. 

During the nineteenth century this was a largely industrial area. Now, the former factories have been converted into apartments, and it is a place where ordinary Venetians live. It is not as rich in art and architecture as Venezia itself, but there are nevertheless a couple churches by the great architect Andrea Palladio. And it has stunning views of Venice. I found a storefront with a marvelously reflective window and took this picture of myself. 

As I wandered around, I found myself close to a rather drab church. There were a cluster of people in front. Glancing at the canal, I understood why they were there. 

I suppose the body was being taken to the mainland for burial, but somehow I liked the idea of burial in the ocean for this seafaring city.

Adject to Giudecca is the island of San Giorgio. The island is small, and most of it part of a large Benedictine monastery. The abbey church, also by Palladio, is remarkably uncluttered with the usual side altars and monuments. Although the choir is large, I think the community is not. As I was leaving about eight or nine monks, most quite elderly, were chanting the noonday office of Sext. I wondered if they were all that was left of what had once been a large foundation. 

Like the Duomo, San Giorgio has a bell tower. It has stunning views with no fencing to block the view. 

From the bell tower, I called John and asked if he was up for more adventures. He suggested I come back and we could find the Frari church. We had an audio tour of that church. I met him, and guided by Google Maps, we went off to find this large and somewhat less visited Franciscan building. Along the way we saw the Venetian version of a farmers’ market. 

The Frari church is the only example of northern Gothic in Venice. Make of simple red brick, this large building is really not that interesting. What makes it important is the art inside. The apse is dominated by a fantastic picture of the assumption of the Virgin by Titian.  

The bright colors and lifelike features were considered avant-garde. The depiction of the Virgin as young and beautiful seemed erotic to people at the time. And even today there seems something a little disconcerting about seeing the Virgin in bright red.

This picture really marks the beginning of the Baroque style in Venice. One of the more recent additions to the church is the funeral monument to the sculptor Antonio Canova. This is done in the high neoclassical style of the mid-nineteenth century. 

See how the lion, the symbol of Venice, is crying at the death of her favorite artist. John immediately thought of The Wizard of Oz.

Canova we learned from our audio tour, is actually buried somewhere else, but his heart is interred in this monument. You are supposed to be able to see in through the open door, but it seemed a bit gruesome for us.

We jumped back on the boat to do our final audio tour, one of the Grand Canal itself. We did not particularly learn a whole lot new from this, but it did make us aware of just how much the city is imperiled by rising seas. This house, for example, would originally have had three or four steps leading down to the water. Many of these houses are empty, and none use the ground floor rooms any more.

After our trip down the canal, I suggested that we jump on another ship and go over to the Lido. We had recently watched parts of Death in Venice, which takes place on the Lido, and we wondered how much of the palatial homes and grand hotels of that era were left. As it turned out, not much of it is still there. But were rented bikes and rode up and down most of the length of the island. This is the only place in Venice where people have cars. 

I suggested that we return to Giudecca for dinner. I showed John some of the places I had found earlier in the day. 

We stopped outside of Il Redentore to watch the boat traffic and to enjoy the afternoon sun. This is still Capuchin church, and one of the friars came out from time to time to walk around. He twirled his cincture endlessly and I could not figure out if he was just bored or waiting for somebody. 

As the sun went down, we had dinner right on the water at a small ristorante. 

For once, we absolutely savored the glacially slow service. It gave us an opportunity to enjoy our view. 

Back at hotel, I edited photographs while John took some more. 

We leave Venice tomorrow for Milan. 

Padua

In the morning we packed and said goodbye to Orlando and all the wonderful people at the Castello di Monterado. His grandmother is a painter and one of the rooms in the castle his her studio. 

Orlando also showed us the family chapel. The bishop will not allow Mass or even weddings to be celebrated there, so they keep it as a historic place.

Our first stop of the day was about two hours away in Padua — or Padova as the Italians say it. I had always wanted to see the Scrovegni chapel there. This simple little family chapel is generally seen as the beginning of Renaissance art. It also has a great story. Reginaldo Scrovegni was a money lender at a time when the church prohibited charging interest. Dante consigned the poor man to one of the lower circles of hell. When he died, the church refused to bury him. So his son Enrico build this chapel to both bury his father and to make up for the dubious family fortune by creating a beautiful space. He commissioned Giotto to decorate it with frescos. The paintings generally are done in that rather flat medieval style. 

But when you look closely, particularly at the faces, you can see something new is happening. There is more attention to real human emotion. The figures in the art seem to be interacting with each other. Look at this scene from the Garden of Gethsemane where Judas is about to betray Jesus with a kiss. Jesus and Judas are looking at each other in a way that would never happen in older Christian art. They are recognizably human. 

Giotto also pays close attention to fabrics and to light and shadow, all hallmarks of Renaissance art. 

Of course, he also preserves some of the best medieval elements. We loved the devils from the last judgement scene. 

Just because it was nearby, we also stopped at the Saint Anthony Basilica. This was and is one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in Italy. On the outside, the building is a jumble of different styles. 

It does not get much better inside, but there are some amazing parts to it. This is the tomb of Saint Anthony, and people were lined up to touch his sarcophagus and to kneel and pray there. Pictures were strictly forbidden, so we had to pretend to be checking our audio guides on our phones to snap anything. 

We drove about another 30 minutes into Venice. It was not altogether easy finding the drop off for the car. We knew that it was at the Mestre train station on the mainland. I finally went into the station to ask somebody. I hope none of you reading this ever has to spend time in that station. I have been in much nice second-class bus terminals in Mexico. I did finally learn where the car drop off point was, and with the help of the GPS we made it there. Neither of us were particularly sad to let the car go. A pleasant man at the Maggiore office there agreed to take us into Venice for 30€, about what the guide books had told us was the going rate. Driving from the mainland across the causeway into the cargo dock area is not the most romantic way to come into the city, but it work. We were met at the there by somebody from the hotel who walked us about 200 meters to our accommodations. 

John found the Locanda Avogaria hotel online. And, I will admit, it looked interesting on a computer screen. Once we were there, he still rather liked it. I have never so detested a place we have stayed in my life. (Well, yes, there was a place in Montreal where I spent a night when I young. Let’s just say that the plumbing didn’t work in the bathroom. That was even worse that this, but at least it was cheap.) John loved the bedroom decor with heavy dark brocade on the walls and matching drapes. I found it pretentious and oppressive. 

He adored the faux Renaissance ceiling. I thought that LED lights on a wire was a particularly stupid touch. 

There was a small attached sitting room. The wainscoting on the wall had this bizarre pattern, and the window treatment - at least to me - looked like it was supposed to be over the throne in some cheesy Hollywood movie. John like it a lot. The string you see on the ceiling connects a chandelier on the right to an electric plug on the ceiling. I guess exposed wires on the ceiling is just tres façonable. As you can guess, I thought it was stupid. 

I didn’t take much to get me to leave the apartment and start walking around Venice. The city is extraordinarily beautiful, at least from a distance. Up close you notice the dirt and the centuries of deterioration a little more. We managed, somehow, to arrive at the campanile when there was almost no line at all. The views from the top are stunning. 

And so are most of the view you seeing just walking around.

What is harder to capture in photographs is the oppressiveness of the throngs of tourists. Walking through Saint Mark’s Square in the late afternoon is like being on a New York subway at rush hour. There were many Americans, of course, but also quite a few Brazilians, who manage to be even louder and more obnoxious than the Americans. The Japanese were there in large travel groups. We did find this Chinese couple, accompanied by a herd of photographers, obviously here for a spare-no-expense honeymoon. Such is life under communism these days, I guess. 

We went back to the hotel and napped for a bit. We went out later in the evening for a pizza and a salad at a nearby square. Everybody was watching the World Cup, and this time they were cheering for the Americans over the Belgians.