How much is 3 hours in Venice worth?!

Our flight to Frankfurt left Venice airport at 8 pm so I had the brilliant idea of dropping off our rental car early in the day, checking in our luggage, storing our hand luggage and taking the vaporetto into Venice for lunch and a little wandering around.  We had spent 5 days in Venice on our last trip so didn't really feel the need to do much sightseeing.

The first indication of trouble was when Lufthansa refused to check us in earlier than 3 hours before our flight.  So we schlepped all our bags down to the luggage storage facility and left them there (after much security screening and id-checking).  Then we headed off to buy vaporetto tickets - well it turns out that the vaporetto to San Marco takes an hour and ten minutes.  Which would have given us maybe an hour in Venice before we had to head back for our flight.

So we took a water taxi for €100 direct to San Marco - which the girls just loved.  We cruised by the Danieli, where we had waterfront rooms last time, and glided into San Marco in about 30 minutes.  By this time it was past 2:30 pm and we went in search of lunch, only to be turned away by a few restaurants.  We finally ended up at the cafe of the Bauer Palazzo hotel, overlooking the Grand Canal.  We had a long and pleasant lunch watching the gondolas and boats go by.

After lunch, we wandered through San Marco, which seemed to be less beautiful than in the past.  Perhaps I just like it better in the mornings and evenings.  Or perhaps the huge section of walled off construction had something to do with it.

A little more shopping, some gelato and a stroll over the Rialto Bridge.  Then we boarded a water taxi many hundreds of euros poorer, and headed back to the airport in good time for our flight to Frankfurt, then on to Bangkok.

Visiting Verona

On our last full day in the Veneto, we headed off to see Verona in the daylight.  It's really a lovely city and although parts were very crowded (by Juliet's house, mostly), most of the city was not very heavily touristed.

The ruling family in Verona were the Scaligieri (similar to the Medicis in Florence) and the Scaligieri Bridge leading up to the old castle was really lovely.  Looking down at the Adige river (the same one that runs by our Villa) from the bridge very much reminded me of Florence as well.


We then went to see Juliet's house and balcony - a tourist attraction that was set up in the 1930s.  The house had been an inn belonging to the Capuleti family who were famously feuding with the Montecchia family (and were the inspiration for Shakespeare and many other authors).  So the balcony was added in the 1930s to add to the mystique and the whole thing was renamed Juliet's House and added to the standard tourist destination list.  The odd little tradition is to rub the right breast of the statue of Juliet in the courtyard!  We stood in line after a passel of Asian tourists, all happily snapping away with their cameras.

We had lunch in Piazza dei Signori at Antico Caffe Dante, some lovely seafood risotto and fettuccini - and watched an Italian commercial being filmed by Dante's rather creepy statue.  We also had a lovely dessert of chocolate gnocchi - very yummy.

Bravissima Aida!

Dave Morris, in his infinite wisdom, bought us Aida tickets many, many months ago.  Which is why we packed the adults up into two cars and headed into Verona, sans children, one evening.

We did not recognize any of the famous Italians in the photo :(

We started off with a nice dinner at Trattoria al Pompiere, a Chowhound recommendation that managed to fit the 10 of us into it's smallish space with only a day's notice.  We had yet another excellent Italian meal, with yet another fabulous salumi platter, and the local specialty, risotto alla amarone (the local robust red wine).

Prosciutto, Lardo, Mortadella, Sopressatta...

Then we strolled over to the 2,000 year old Roman amphitheater known as the Arena, armed with little padded cushioned seats, English libretto and a fan.  The capacity was 25,000 for the audience, but we were a lot less than that - probably only about 75-80% full.  There was a lot of choice - La Traviata had been playing the prior evening, Barber of Seville was the next night.

Seeing Aida there was simply magnificent, under the almost full moon.  The cast of hundreds displayed phenomenal pomp and circumstance in the triumphal march in Act II, with dancing girls, solders and 4 very well-behaved live horses on stage.  Radames was suitably noble, Aida suitably wistful and Amneris suitably dramatic and scorned.

Since the opera started at 9:15 pm, it ran quite late.  I fortified myself with a cornetto ice cream for the roving vendors who appeared magically during the breaks between acts.

A night to remember!

 

Busy in Bologna

Bologna is an old university town.  I read that of the major medieval universities, Oxford was renowned for science, Paris was known for theology, and Bologna was known for law.  Nowadays, it's also known for food as the biggest town in Emilia-Romana.

Cheese display at Eataly

We headed into Bologna on a 90 degree day and ended up at Eataly, the food emporium, for lunch.  Not the most atmospheric, but their air-conditioning was excellent!  We had the local specialities - tagliatelle alla bolognese for Narisa (it's her favorite pasta and I told her she really needed to have it when it was invented, in Bologna!), tortellini in Brodo (small tortellini served in soup), some local fish and a meat patty that was prepared to Slow Food standards.

This part of Italy is the cradle of the Slow Food movement - the precursor to the locavore movement in California.  More on that at a later restaurant...

The Trabosh, Morris and McAdams kids

Bologna was surprisingly untouristy.  We wandered around the mercato di mezzo in Bologna and into the old San Petronio cathedral, which was enormous.  The interesting thing about Bologna is that almost everything was built in red brick but not faced in marble like other Italian cities.  So the Bolognese are reputed to be very straight forward without a lot of pretense - plus a hotbed of leftist politics.

Gelato bars - the blood orange was yummy

After a nice wander, a little shopping and the requisite gelato, we called it a day.

Lake Garda and Sirmione

Last Sunday, we drove up to Lake Garda, the easternmost of the northern Italian lakes (Lake Como is the westernmost and probably the most famous of the lakes - where George Clooney has a house ;).

It was a beautiful, albeit very hot day.  We had lunch at a small restaurant lakeside with a dock and boat mooring - where Narisa stuck her feet into the water (it was not as cold as we thought it would be).

Then we walked and walked to the small town of Sirmione that was lovely but extremely crowded.  It was a small medieval town, so cars had to park outside the walls of the old town.  Inside, there were narrow cobblestone streets with charming shops.  Check out the most magnificent bougainvillea in the photo below.

And we ended up at the ruins at the tip of the little peninsula with lovely views.

Villa Bartolomea!

My apologies for being so behind in my posts, but it's been awfully busy and blogging does have a lower priority than sightseeing, shopping, eating, gelato and doing work emails!

We arrived on Saturday evening to Villa Mira, our 13 bedroom villa in the small town of Villa Bartolomea, located about 30 miles southeast of Verona.  It's a huge and rambling villa from the late 1800s belonging to a prominent Roman family who rent out part of the property - there are some parts that are just sealed off (although we did break in to explore the old chapel ;) and parts that just seem unused (the old stables).  There is an onsite caretaker, which is really useful when things break down - she gave us an hour's worth of instructions about the house.  130 year old houses have a lot of idiosyncrasies...

We have five families staying here this week - 10 adults + 11 teens and kids ranging from 5 to 18.  Every room in the house is fully occupied!  The ground floor has a large living room, music room, billiard room, conservatory room, dining room and enormous kitchen with a large marble topped table where we spend a lot of time.

Our bedroom are beautiful, look at our ceilings in the photo below.

The downside to the house is that not all the rooms have screens, and when unscreened windows are left open, we are often swarmed by mosquitos and wasps.

We are located right next to the Adige river which runs from Lake Garda in the north, down to meet the Po, running through Verona before it gets down by us.  There is a great bike path that runs along the river for miles - I went for a bike ride while our teenagers went for a run the other morning.

Galleria Borghese

The Galleria Borghese is located in the middle of a large park called the Villa Borghese in northern Rome. It's a small museum, so pre-booking tickets is mandatory to visit it.  I had made our reservations a couple of weeks before, in a last burst of trip planning activity.

We took a little electric bus up to the museum, thanks to Ron in Rome, who has a beautiful blog with a focus on the transportation system.  And a great list of gelato places to visit, but that's for another post...

The museum itself was in a beautiful building in a corner of the park.  We had tickets for a timed entry from 3-5 pm.  That's it.  You entered at 3 pm and they herded the stragglers out right at 4:55 pm, so the next group of people (with the 5-7 pm tickets) could enter.  Oh and you had to store all your bags, including cameras, water, cell phones etc.

We were one of the last groups to leave, we spent every single minute in the museum and could easily have stayed longer.  It's especially known for a few key Bernini sculptures and some lovely Caravaggio paintings.  The girls really enjoyed it - with the Bernini's Apollo and Daphne sculpture being their favorite.  The audio guides made the art come alive with backstories and the calling out of particular details.  It turns out that Cardinal Scipione Borghese was not a very nice man - when he saw a painting that he especially liked, he would threaten the owner or artist with prison, unless the painting was turned over to him.  He did this a number of times!

I loved the trompe l'oeil ceilings in every room with paintings and backdrops linked to the themes of each room.  Alas, I couldn't capture this on film since I was camera-less, while the gift shop items did not focus on the ceilings.

After we were herded out of the museum, we rented a four person bike and spent a pleasant hour exploring the park grounds.

Il Passetto de Borgo

So those Dan Brown fans out there will be familiar with Il Passetto de Borgo - the 800 meter long secret passage that links the Vatican to the old Papal fort of Castel Sant' Angelo.  I really wanted to go down this passage, so arranged our visit to correspond with the special opening times for this tour, as listed on the Rome tourist bureau web site.  It's only open 2+ months a year, during the peak summer tourist season.

Alas, when we arrived, I learned that particular website was not to be trusted - for opening times at least.  We went in anyway, and enjoyed wandering around the old fort that began life at Hadrian's Mausoleum in 130AD.  It was an especially interesting building since it combined some traditional castle elements, but also had some papal apartments on the luxurious side situated in the middle.

The views of St. Peter's were really lovely and their little bar/cafe was a great place to rest for a while.

Now, do we pay handsomely again and come back another evening for Il Passetto only?  Still thinking about it...

Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel

We awoke to a very cloudy day that soon turned into a heavy thunderstorm.  So we used that excuse for a late start and lounged around for a few hours in the morning!

After a short stroll to St. Peter's Square, we looked around for a while, marveling at the long lines to get into the basilica.  Then we went around the corner to the Vatican Museums, where we had a reserved ticket for a guided tour.  Again, we marveled at the huge long lines to get into the Museum - why do people not plan better?!  There are now about a billion resources that will tell you to prebook your tickets or come right at opening time - they will give you step-by-step instructions on how to avoid the long lines.  And yet, all these people were prepared to wait well over an hour - I just don't get it...

On the other hand, our guide seemed to be a thwarted Italian actress and the 3 hour tour of the Vatican Museums was hurried in spots where we would linger, and lingered excessively in spots that seemed to be rather mundane.  Suffice to say that the Raphael Rooms and the Sistine Chapel were lovely and well worth it.  I was a little worried that we would be herded through the latter at a brisk pace (which would not have been surprising, considering how crowded the whole museum was).  But we weren't at all - we found some seating on the side and gazed up at the ceiling for a long time.

The payoff for the tour was the ability to take the right side exit from the Sistine Chapel (supposedly just reserved for group tours although no one seemed to be checking due to the sheer volume of people going through) directly into St. Peter's, bypassing the other security line and avoiding the circuitous walk around the Museums to get back to St. Peter's.  We took full advantage of this (once again, this is all laid out in vast detail on any number of websites).

Once in St. Peter's, we immediately got in a short line to head up to the dome - €5 per person if you walk all the way up, €7 per person if you take the elevator up half way.  We opted for the latter and found ourselves on the walkway inside the Basilica, and then climbed more stairs to get to the exterior terrace on top.  Lovely views and a very cool experience.

The cathedral itself was magnificent and immense.  Unfortunately, the nave was blocked off for mass, so we didn't quite get to wander everywhere we wanted to.

We ended our visit with a photo of Narisa standing on the border of two countries:

Dinner in Trastevere

Sunset view of St. Peter's from the Ponte Sisto crossing the Tiber

We wandered out for dinner around 8:30 pm and headed over the Ponte Sisto to the Trastevere area of town.  Younger, hipper and waay livelier, it was a fun area for dinner.

We headed to a craft beer house known for their pizza - thereby ensuring Sean's happiness as well as the kids.  Bir & Fud, besides having a silly name, was a nice space on a small windy street.  We consumed multiple pizzas and many small little fried appetizers.  Sean says it's the first decent beer he's had in Italy!

Ancient Rome in a Day

We had a late morning breakfast procured at Forno Campo Dei Fiori, which one guide termed "the best bakery in Rome", amidst all the market stalls in that square.  I especially liked the squash blossoms that everyone was selling.

Squash Blossoms at Campo dei Fiori market

 Then we set out for a long day of touring.

We walked across town to the Capitoline Hill and through the Piazza del Campidoglio, a pretty square designed by Michelangelo in the 16th century.  Then we headed over to the Colosseum.  Now, the regular ticket line there is really rather long.  But I had made reservations for the special basement or subterranean tour, and so we were able to head right up to the front of the line.

The subterranean tour was pretty cool - I like tours that take me behind locked gates and cordoned off areas!  We descended into the basement where the gladiators entered and the slaves would keep track of all the wild animals to send up to the main stage level.  Then we wandered up two flights of stairs to the third level which was also not open to the general public.  Some really nice views from up there.

Then we headed towards San Clemente church, looking for a well-recommended Sicilian gelato place - alas, they were closed on Mondays.  We enjoyed San Clemente though - it's a medieval church with beautiful mosaics, but the really cool thing is that you can descend under the church, and see the 5th century church that it was built on top of.  Then if that's not enough, you can go down another level and see the 1st century pagan church that was the first religious building in that location.  So it's been a house of worship for over 2,000 years.

After a quick stop at a sub-standard gelato place, we headed over to the Roman Forum, the heart of the Roman Empire back in the day.  It reminded us of the main ancient road surrounded by ruins at Petra.  The House of the Vestal Virgins was a favorite.

Narisa with her favorite Vestal Virgin

Exhausted, we headed back to the apartment for a rest.  Of course, we happened to stop for gelato on the way...

Our last meal in the Dordogne

On our last evening, we decided to walk down to the village for dinner.  The walk down is quite steep but yields some very pretty views of the valley, not to mention all the lovely limestone houses along the way.

We had dinner at La Petite Tonnelle, which was named as the best restaurant in the village in our handy-dandy house book.  We sat outside and enjoyed the evening air as the sky darkened.

I started with a plate of roasted asparagus with slices of smoked duck breast.  It was a lovely starter.

My main course was a couple of carved slices of leg of lamb, served with some excellent couscous (it's in the pastry tower) and a terrine of some sort that was just ok.

For dessert, I had the canaille de citron, some lemon mousse in a light filo shell, served with raspberry sauce and some raspberry ice cream.  Alas, it looked better than it tasted.  Although I still finished it ;)

 All in all, a very nice meal. Next time I'm in Beynac, I'm gladly stopping by here again!

A nice ending to a busy day.  Now, I must go pack...

The castle tour

On the last day of our Dordogne stay, we finally made it to the two major castles in the area.  The first was Castelnaud, which I really wanted to visit because I'm reading a book about an American couple who bought a little house in the shadow of the castle back in 1985.  "A Castle in the Backyard" has been great so far.  And I was determined to find their house from the descriptions in the book!

The town of Castelnaud is pretty tiny but the castle is impressive.  It's on the other side of the Dordogne River from Beynac and the two castles have been rivals throughout history.  They can see each other very clearly and were on opposite sides of the One Hundred Years War.  Here's the view of Beynac from Castelnaud.

To add to an already excellent day, I found the artisanal ice cream I liked so much and had a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of salted caramel.  Yum.

Finally, we visited our castle next door, Chateau Beynac.  It took us quite a few days to get here, considering we are staying in its shadow!  It's a bigger castle than Castelnaud, and is apparently still occupied (a few rooms) by its owner, who bought it in 1961.  There was a magnificent view from the top of the ramparts, and we stood there surveying our little town with a touch of sadness in anticipation of our departure.

Now it's time for a real cave...

Since our taste had been whetted by the reproduction caves of Lascaux II, we headed to the only cave in France with polychromatic cro-magnon cave drawings that was still open to the public.  La Grotte de Font de Gaume allows only 180 visitors each day, in small groups of no more than 15 people.

It was nice to visit this after the Lascaux visit, since it really made me appreciate how difficult it was to preserve these drawings.  It was also good because I heard the English tour at Lascaux, which made it easier for me to understand the French tour at Font de Gaume today!

Font de Gaume was discovered in 1901 and not particularly protected for a few years, so there is early 20th century graffitti that defaces quite a few of the drawings.  It was a sacred site for our prehistoric ancestors, same as Lascaux, and they painted many of the same animals - primarily bison and horses.  It was much harder to discern the drawings and they use the same principle of leveraging the natural contours of the rock.

Here's a photo of the postcard they had of their best preserved bison.

I predict that Font de Gaume will also be closed to the general public in my lifetime.