We just got back from our coach trip to Italy. The immersion in history, the visual spectacle and the cultural richness were stunning and moving and stimulating, and they left a lasting and important mark on my heart and mind.

First I want to say that whilst Ann came to be known as the Jackie Collins of the trip – inventing brilliantly entertaining and mischievous backstories, especially for the most enigmatic members of the coach party – I won’t touch on that side of things myself. What I will say is that the whole experience did demonstrate the truth of the maxim don’t judge a book by its cover: it was a great collection of people.

This was never really meant to be a public blog – just a handy alternative to my notebooks – but I reckon it might get a few visits from other members of the trip. So hello to you and thanks for helping to make the holiday so enjoyable. Leave a comment or send an email.

And special thanks to Suzanne and Marion, who were fantastic.

And of course to Ann, without whom (this is beginning to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech) I would probably have been my old unsociable cantankerous self. A few weeks ago I spoke to a woman about the forthcoming holiday and she said:

Oooh, I love coach trips. Last one we were laughing constantly with everybody all through the holiday.

I smiled and nodded politely while these thoughts went through my head:

I can’t think of anything worse! Why the hell would I want to do that? Do you really think that’s why I would go to Italy, to be caught up with other people who want to do different things?

But I was wrong: the fact that on this holiday we had both independent exploration and amazing experiences and time to ourselves in wonderful places; and great company: those things together actually made the trip better than we could have expected.

And also an apology to Ann: I don’t know how to break this to you in person, but the thing is…I didn’t take any photographs of gas-holders like you asked me to, although there were plenty around. Maybe you should just restrict your collection to the UK? So please accept the following photo of a particularly fine Italian gas-holder as a token of my sincere regret:

Courtesy of the Ishii Ironworks Company

Anyway, we endured a long exhausting journey through England, France, Belgium and Luxembourg, stopping at various anonymous service stations. The ferry crossing gave us a bit of variety.

Dawn over the English Channel. (Click on any photo to see it full size)

Fluelen, Switzerland

The first hotel stop was at Fluelen at the Southernmost tip of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. Check out the satellite image.

The scenery was stunning. I’m into mountains, and when it comes to mountains, the bigger the better, and these ones were big. But I would only have time for photos if I went for a walk at five in the morning, and this would also have the advantage of the excellent quality of light. So I did. The photo above is evocative of the place even though it’s just a couple of posts in the water.

A layer of mist still hung over the water and the orange sunlight was hitting only the hilltops.

Various birds were hanging around, including this handsome but grumpy (I guess he’d just woken up) great crested grebe.

The grandeur of the high mountains is particularly difficult to capture in photographs, unless you’ve got professional equipment, but here’s one anyway, with the train station in the foreground. It’s one of the highest peaks around the lake, up the valley to the south.

Pietresanta

From Fluelen we made our way down to the coast in northern Tuscany, to a place called Pietresanta (map)

This is our hotel balcony (the site of some fateful activity that very night, as some readers of this blog – you know who you are – will attest) and the view from the balcony.

Before dinner we wandered into town and found a lovely spot to enjoy some local wine and practise our Italian.

Un botiglio di vino rosso, per favore
Chianti?
No, locale

Top quality people-watching, which prompted a discussion of the relative ease with which people of various nationailities achieve style. The local policeman, in his forties I’d say, strolled around, right-hand fingers on hip, left-hand fingers on chin, a pose that would be taken as a mark of sexuality in Britain. Plus, he had a little handbag hanging from his shoulder and a very elegant gun holster. But he was confident and cool and just stylish pure and simple – the question about whether or not he was gay was irrelevant. Was the difference in the context, or did his mannerisms and carriage really have a different quality, of effortlessness and supreme serenity and cool? I suspect the latter, to be honest: it wasn’t remotely camp, which might just be an exaggerated reaction against an unstylish culture.

e=”font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;” >Pisa

So after our veal and peas we went on a nighttime trip to Pisa.

Perversely, my aim here was to get a photo of the tower of Pisa that made it look like it might be straight. In fact it has always been suggested that it might be a good idea to straighten the tower completely, thus correcting the original bad engineering. But of course that plan was dealt a mighty blow in 1983 with the release of Superman III, the repercussions of which have been felt in the halls of Italian structural engineering ever since. In the film, you may remember, Superman’s evil alter-ego straightens the tower and thereby destroys the livelihoods of hundreds of leaning-tower-souvenir peddlers. The negative connotations surrounding the straightening project have never faded.

The Field of Miracles , including the baptistry, duomo and campanile. See the satellite image.

Florence

The next day we all went to Florence, city of the Renaissance, the period when, in the 15th century, art and science suddenly flowered again after the darkness of the middle ages, during which the achievements of ancient Greece and Rome had been forgotten. In general, I appreciated what I saw on the holiday by mentally relating things to this historical framework:

1. Early ancient (Roman Republic then Empire, pagan) – 0BC plus or minus a couple of centuries
2. Late ancient (Roman Empire, Christian) – 300 to 500AD
3. Middle ages, city states (Pisa & Venice) – 1100AD to 1500AD
4. Renaissance – 1400AD to 1600AD
5. Modern stuff, unification of Italy, 20th century

Forget about the Etruscans!

Florentine rooftops there.

This sculpture, in the Piazza della Signoria is the Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna. It’s very stirring and captures movement and struggle and dynamic strength, while a few feet away the old Roman statues stand lifeless in ceremonial dress.

Above is another view of the same sculpture.

This is of course a detail of Michelangelo’s David. The fact that it’s an ostensibly religious sculpture doesn’t alter the fact that it’s a masterpiece that transcends its time and its religion, created by a humanist artist at the birth of modern humanism. Having said that, I always thought his hands were a bit too big.

This is Hercules and Cacus by Baccio Bandinelli. We shouldn’t revere these sculptures blindly: what’s interesting about this one is that it was ridiculed at the time, and felt by the populace to be mediocre in comparison with David, which stands nearby. In fact, it was meant to outdo Michelangelo’s masterpice: for political reasons the Medici family wanted to outclass the works sponsored by the republican government, whom they had just defeated. In this they failed. I guess you could say it’s unsubtle, though it’s still pretty impressive to a naive lad like me. How anyone can create (reveal?) the human form in three dimensions from a block of rock is impossible for me to grasp.

Through a maze of medieval streets you get to the Duomo, Florence’s most famous and celebrated building, and one of its oldest.

On the left is the tower of the building, the Campanile. This, and much of the rest of the building, was designed by the artist Giotto, whose statue lies down at the Uffizi, along with other stars of the Renaissance like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

This is a detail of the doors to the Baptistry (which is actually a separate building because at the time you couldn’t enter a church unless you’d been baptized). The doors are famous because they are considered to be the first works of the Renaissance: the panels are nothing like the other art of the time, in that they make use of perspective (aside from the obvious fact that they are reliefs). Below is a more common kind of representation from the time, with no perspective:

And just for handy comparison it happens to be directly opposite those golden doors.

The huge and beautiful dome (the subject of a r
ecent book, Brunelleschi’s Dome) is visible all around the surrounding hills, like from this wildflower meadow in the Boboli Gardens, out back of the Palazzo Pitti.

This is the back of the palace.

And this is the stonework, which reminds me of some cereal I used to eat when I was younger.

The thing with all these buildings is they’re so much older than those in the UK that have similar designs. The Italian cities have the originals that inspired all architects until the 20th century.

Saw lots of sexy women, but I was only allowed to take photos of one of them, shown above.

It was pretty lively in town. There was some parade going on, but I don’t know what it was.

Here’s a woman waving a flag, with the iconic Ferrari flag in the background.

Chianciano

After Florence we advanced on to the next hotel -

I forgot to mention that I got very drunk the night before and that neither of us knew if we’d put our luggage on the bus that morning and that we probably got the company banned from the hotel and that we kept everyone awake until four and that come breakfast time we were still drunk enough to withstand the hard stares of the manager without any discomfort at all

- which was further south and inland, in a place called Chianciano (map)

That’s the evening sky from the hotel. The first night was early to bed: most of us were pretty tired and we had Rome the next day. The town was very built-up with hotels, which I found frustrating: I’d been watching the surrounding countryside on the way there and I wanted to get out there and frolic amongst the cypress trees. That kind of countryside – of gently rolling hills and rich grasslands and small friendly woods – really comes alive in the evening, when the animals snap out of their dozing after the long hot day, the shadows are long and every single little feature of the landscape – every tree, every hillock and hollow, even every individual blade of grass – is sharply defined. I was yearning for it but it wasn’t to be.

That’s one thing about the trip that was less than ideal, although it was obviously inevitable: the crucial sightseeing and exploration had to be done at the deadest time of day, when the sun is high and the air is thick and the views are flat and stark and stare back at you with blinding light.

Courtesy of http://www.italytraveller.com

So I took solace by leaning out of the window, watching the swifts and listening to them scream like crazed little banshees. The swifts arrived for their summer holiday in Britain a while ago, but I’ve never seen or heard them in these numbers. Everywhere in Italy they supplied a permanent soundtrack. Anyway, when the swifts swapped shifts with the bats it was time for bed.

Courtesy of http://www.wildbirdgallery.com

Incidentally, it’s one of the fastest birds in the world, and not only that but they mate in mid-air, which is a neat trick.

Rome

Here’s an evocative photo to begin this section. It’s the arch of Septimus Severus, in the Roman Forum, seen through the foliage and blossom of an olive tree. But wait a minute! What about the railway station, where those of us not on the excursion were dropped off?

Courtesy of js@jeannot.org

One of the most open, airy, comfortable and generous public buildings I’ve ever been in, with wide walkways and benches of clean polished stone. Modernist, functional and elegant, and using reinforced concrete to do what only reinforced concrete can do (as in the Pantheon, which I’ll come to later). It’s not on the sightseers’ ticklist but hey, it beats the Trevi Fountain for me any day. Maybe I’m just weird.

Our first stop was the Colloseum, monument to the Roman thirst for blood and to the ruling class’s clever manipulation of the mob. The Marxists used to say that even in modern Britain, spectator sports were tolerated and fostered by the powers-that-be because they had the function of diffusing the angry passions of the working class, thus diverting them from revolution. It’s a different ball-game now though.

Imagine yourself as a gladiator being marched along this tunnel, wondering what awaits you in the arena.

The Roman Forum, where the it all started way back before they had an empire, is right next to the Colloseum. What is there today is ancient, but those buildings had replaced even older ones. Originally there were markets and brothels, but later on they wanted some fancy stuff, which is when they started with the law courts and temples and so on. The photo above shows the Septimus arch again, this time with a pile of rubble in the foreground. But look at the rubble! It’s fragments of marble columns from ancient monuments and temples, in a heap on the ground, demonstrating just how rich the city is in ancient treasures. And also, if you like, symbolizing the rise and fall of civilizations.

The forum contains the remains of various temples and commemorative buildings, but also more interesting ones, like the meeting place where speakers would speak to the crowds, and a kind of stock exchange, and also the famous Senate.

This is the ruin of the Temple of Castor and Pollux (those guys
!) We didn’t see half of what was there to see in the Forum, but it was nonetheless amazing.

And this is the Palatine Hill, which overlooks the Forum. It’s where the emperors and bigwigs lived in luxury. We didn’t make it up there, but apparently it’s extremely pleasant.

http://www.artchive.com

Next we made our way to the Pantheon. It’s utterly stunning to suddenly see it as you emerge from one of the narrow side-streets. But what can I say about it that hasn’t been said before or that isn’t available online (eg. here) ? It’s a serious contender for best building in the world, it’s the best preserved ancient building in Rome, a masterclass in proportion and a technological marvel.

The dome is made of concrete, which the Romans invented, but for a dome of those dimensions to support itself today it would need to be reinforced concrete, with steel rods. So I’m not sure if we know what the special mixture was, but it was pretty strong – it’s been around 1,900 years. For those who are interested in delving into the technicalities of Roman concrete, have a look at – and I’m not having you on here – www.romanconcrete.com. [Update May 6th 2007: unfortunately that website's now offline, so try http://www.djc.com/news/co/11133038.html] The oculus, the open hole in the dome, is the only source of light.

This photo shows the circle of light on the floor below.

Ann had commented on the profusion of well-dressed handsome men. I was taking a photo of the narrow street when this guy strode into shot. Not sure if he’s all that handsome, but let’s just say he is, because that gives me the excuse to include some photographs of well-dressed beautiful Italian women.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any myself, so in lieu of those I got these off the web. That’s Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren and Claudia Cardinale.

Though we hadn’t been intending to, we had time to see the Trevi Fountain. You wander along, wondering if you’ve been reading the map right, and then you hear the water and you know you’re almost upon it, then you round the corner to be confronted with a huge bright wall of stone sprouting sculptures and spouting water into a shimmering cool green pool (if you’re lucky that is: apparently the water had been turned off for a while earlier that day). Very impressive.

We found a nice spot just inside the Vatican city where I found some shade and took this photo. She looked so comfortable and relaxed on her own (until she saw my camera pointing at her).

St Peter’s of course, taken when we were on our way to the rendezvous in the square.

These are the columns surrounding the Piazza San Pietre, where I sought respite from the sun.

We returned to the hotel in Chianciano soon after that. After dinner we had some drinks and went down to a bar in town for a couple more, while the Italians went wild in celebration of their team’s victory in that night’s World Cup match. That was followed by a few drinks back at the hotel, largely thanks to a vodka supply courtesy of Martin and Fiona, and Val. But it wasn’t a late one that night.

Venice

Gary, the driver, told us to get a certain boat to St Mark’s Square, but it seemed obvious to go by the Grand Canal. And Ann discovered that the best boat to get was a number 1, because it was relatively slow and allowed for some good sightseeing. So we hopped on a boat and hopped off at the first stop so we could hop on the number 1, and it was well worth it. What other way to enter Venice than the Grand Canal, which snakes through the middle of the city – have a look at the amazing satellite image. We were dropped off at the left off the picture, and had to make our way to Piazza San Marco. When you zoom in you can even see the people. When you zoom out a bit you can see the whole lagoon and it strikes you just how heroic and crazy the original Venetians must have been, to build a city there. If only our society today had that kind of progressive spirit. The major work that has to be done to protect Venice has been slowed down for years by the quite powerful environmentalists of the city. Who will save Venice from sinking?

The sights along the Grand Canal are first-class. It’s otherworldly, a fantasy world or a parallel universe where the familiar things are all a wee bit different. That’s a baroque church in the photo, with some handy steps at the water’s edge for hopping on and off.

This is one of the many houses by the canal decorated with mosaics or murals.

This house has the flag of Venice flying. The design on the flag is the winged lion of St
Mark, who crops up elsewhere in the city in various forms.

At some point you notice the water opening up ahead, and you know you must be approaching the piazza. First you have this view of the Santa Maria Della Salute church on your right. Then as you leave the canal:

It’s the island San Giorgio Maggiore, with the magnificent church designed in 15something by Palladio, apparently the most influential person in the history of Western architecture. You see the style copied in every European city, every British city. The original style itself borrows heavily from, and refines, the classical style of the Romans. It’s probably my favourite view of the trip (see also the photo at the very top of this blog entry).

Disembarking at St Marks you are confronted, once you get to the piazza itself, with the Doge’s Palace, where the boss lived in the old days. It’s a magnificent Eastern-influenced gothic building, equally magnificent inside as well, though we didn’t have time for that, as we opted to go in the Basilica di San Marco instead.

This is a view from the Basilica, through one of the little arches in the balustrade on the outdoor gallery.

Here are some of the mosaics shining in the sun. Inside it was one of the most awe-inspiring places I’ve seen, its domed roof completely covered with golden mosaics and with illustrated biblical stories in Latin. The building is around a thousand years old – and feels like it – and it’s a good example of Byzantine architecture. Venice became rich by trading with the east, hence the influences. Ann was quite moved. She’s not strongly religious but her Catholic upbringing has instilled a reverence for places like this, and although I’m an atheist I like and respect churches too, because they’re open to all and they don’t expect anything from you.

Afterwards we walked around the city. It was a relief after Rome not to have to contend with the traffic. Having said that it’s easy when you know how. In general, before anyone goes to Italy there are a few things they should know:

1. Italians don’t queue, so there’s no such thing as queue-jumping
2. Pushing and shoving is not considered rude and therefore shouldn’t be taken badly – it’s expected
3. Within reason, cross a road without too much thought. Don’t wait for traffic to stop, just be confident and don’t hesitate – that way the drivers can see what you’re doing and drive around you or stop to let you past

But in Venice, part of the charm is that without all the traffic it has a very relaxed feeling, even in the middle of the day when the city’s bursting with tourists.

One of the reasons I wanted to walk around was to experience that moment when you’re walking along a wee alley and suddenly you’re on a bridge over a little canal, like this one. Later on people seemed surprised that we hadn’t been on a gondola, but it hadn’t occurred to us, because we were having such a great time anyway. But thinking about it the only time I’d want to take a gondola ride is the evening. Apart from anything else it would be more romantic.

We had a wee caraf of white wine in a very cool 30s style restaurant/cafe, from where Ann shamelessly and openly ogled a man who worked over the street, and she got rather too excited. But I wasn’t jealous for some reason. Maybe it’s because it was as if she were just admiring a statue.

Venice as seen from our departing boat. We’ll be back, no doubt about it.

Lido di Jesolo

I had thought that our hotel that night was on the Lido, but it was actually on the mainland. Very much a beach resort. Not wild and hedonistic, more easy-going, but not very memorable. The food was pretty bad (we went for a kebab later on) but the room was nice and the manager was extremely pleasant. We went for a paddle in the sea after dark and joined a few others for a drink later on.

Lake Garda

Most of the driving that day was through some very attractive mountainous landscape, first in Italy and then in Austria. The plan for the day was to drive to Lake Garda and after a couple of hours head on up to the Austrian Tyrol and our final hotel.

At Lake Garda we took the excursion, because it was supposed to include a cruise of the lake. As it happens it was just a short ride down the lake from Riva to Limone. The boat ride was against a strong and refreshing wind, and offered hazy views of the steep lakeside cliffs and mountains. The north of the lake is a deep cleft in the mountains, whereas the south, which none of us saw, is much more open.

Limone was a quaint little village overrun with tourists, but after a short walk we found what we assumed must be a private beach.

That’s an orange tree there.

The place was deserted but it wasn’t private: it’s just that everyone else was shopping. So we found a seat at the end of one of the jetties, where we could eat our lunch and dangle our feet in the water.

This is the last photograph taken before the incident. We were sitting together on the jetty, watching a big ferry which had just come in. Before I could do anything a wave from the ferry’s wake crashed over us and all of our stuff. Ironically I’d been staring at it for several seconds beforehand, when it just seemed like a gentle ripple. I guess when it hit the shallow water it suddenly multiplied in size. It soaked us up to the neck, which didn’t bother me, but broke my camera, which kind of did.

Courtesy of http://www.kenyabirds.org.uk

After that happened a fantastically coloured butterfly landed on Ann’s handbag and two black kites started fishing in the bay, picking them out of the water with their talons. Two great photo-opportunities missed, but imprinted on the memory all the more for that.

The rest of the journey was very jovial. Marion and Suzanne had bought a bottle of good brandy and after that I was on beers. Great fun and very good-natured. The mountains in Austria were perhaps even more impressive than in Switzerland, and we took a road up a very steep gorge, going over the second highest bridge in Europe. I remember stopping at a little service station at the top of the valley with an amazing view of a couple of classic Alpine peaks.

I did get very drunk that night, possibly embarassingly so – there comes a point when I lose all perspective and become determined to stay up as long as is physically possible, even though I’m way past my peak. I don’t really know why. But hey, life’s too short to worry. I eat a lot, drink a lot, smoke a lot, think a lot, do many things a lot. That’s just me: greedy for life. At least, that’s my excuse.

But before that point it was really nice, because the gathering at the tables outside was larger than usual, joined as we were by a few of the hitherto more retiring members of the trip.

Italian culture is very attractive. Their list of achievements in most fields of art and science is long; their relaxed, generous, classless attitude to food suits me perfectly (not that sampling good local food was much a part of this holiday, eating in the hotels as we were); there’s a good community spirit and loutishness seems relatively rare; their sense of style is civilized, natural, proud and unaffected. Couldn’t cope with the TV mind you.

When, days before, we passed from Switzerland to Italy, Gary pointed out the difference in the tunnels. On the Italian side they were a bit ramshackle. In Switzerland, as with many things, they were clean and well-kept.

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

That’s Orson Welles’ improvised speech in The Third Man. I wouldn’t claim that “warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed” are prerequisites for creativity, or that they’re desirable at all, but he’s definitely hit on something. And it’s interesting to note the common prejudice against Italians: that they may be artistic, stylish, passionate, philosophical and inspired, but they are disorganized and inefficient. Like most prejudices it’s probably totally inaccurate. Anyway, the land that produced Leonardo, Galileo, Giotto, Michelangelo, Eustachio, Machiavelli,Fibonacci, Fallopio, Marco Polo, Vivaldi and in more recent times Garibaldi, Casanova, Marconi, Volta, Galvani, Fermi, Gramsci and Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose – read it if you dare!); and which produced inventions including – amongst many others – the condom, the barometer, the battery, electroplating, eye glasses, the nuclear reactor, the parachute, the piano, the typewriter, and of course the best coffee in the world thanks to the espresso machine; such a land needn’t worry about a bit of prejudice. And that’s without even mentioning the Romans. Interestingly, the current image of Italians is in complete opposition to the character of the Romans, who were practical, ruthlessly efficient, mostly unphilosophical and unartistic.

Philip Cunningham

That’s an egret there. Saw lots of them across Europe. They’ve recently become resident in the UK, in the far south.

Well, we reach the end of the story. It was just a short coach trip, but there’s so much we experienced, and so much that happened, that I’ve missed. I’ll have to leave that to others…

Finally, please leave a comment (see the Comments link below), or send an email to me or Ann:

alistair.robinson@gmail.com
ann.confrey@gmail.com