We eat on these trips. A lot. Happily, that is either countered by or caused by the miles of walking we do each day. Today we logged 13.5 miles. So far on the trip, we have walked 67.6 miles, and we still have one more day of touring to go. The accumulated miles made us all a little weary, and so tonight was an early night for us – back at the hotel by 9:00 pm.

It was an impressive art day. We started by taking the metro and (what else?) walking to the Borghese Gardens and the villa found therein. The gardens are huge, and simple but pretty. The villa is pleasant and tasteful on the outside, and is two stories tall. It happens to contain one of the best small art collections in the world, with multiple Bernini sculptures and three or four Caravaggio paintings, as well as other paintings by other masters and many ancient sculptures.

I happen to like both Caravaggio and Bernini, and I was very excited to see their works. The Borghese Museum limits the number of people allowed in the museum since the space is so small, and you can only stay for two hours. We grabbed an audio guide for a small fee, and that walked us through the major works in the museum in just about two hours (we could have used another ten minutes or so).

The museum did not disappoint. I had seen video shots of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, where Daphne is running from Apollo. who has more than dinner on his mind. She asks her father, a river god, to save her, and he turns her into a tree. Bernini sculpts that moment, and it is spectacular. I was familiar with it, but in person it is wonderful to be able to look closely at various details, like the feet taking root, or like Apollo’s fixed gaze on Daphne’s face. It is also nice to be able to walk around the work, so you can see it from different angles.

I expected to love that piece, but Bernini’s David was a complete surprise to me. He creates David in mid-throw of his sling stone – the body is tense and twisted, the sling is taught, and David’s face is screwed up in concentration and effort. I really loved it.

There were several other Bernini sculptures, and they were all excellent. I also enjoyed seeing the Caravaggio paintings, which included his version of David and Goliath, with Caravaggio’s own head serving as the model for Goliath’s severed head. The paintings were all created with realistic settings and people, which was new for religious paintings – even his secular paintings had touches of real life in them, such as blemishes on fruit.

The house itself is worth seeing too. The rooms were decorated with the art in mind, and so many of the rooms are lavish. Borghese was a cardinal and nephew to the Pope, and so he had a ton of power and very deep pockets. On the plus side, he loved art and wanted to showcase classical art alongside the new art in Rome, and he wanted the public to be able to see it. On the down side, he was ruthless in getting art that he wanted, including threatening prison for those who had paintings that he wanted. The way to get a papal pardon was to “donate” the art to the gallery. Yikes. What goes around comes around, as when Napoleon’s sister married into the family, and so Napoleon was able to “buy” many of the ancient works, at a deep family discount. The works are still in France at the Louvre to this day.

We left the museum around 1:00, and grabbed some lunch over at the square where the Spanish Steps are located, while Jacob ran to do some quick shopping. The square was a very pleasant place to eat lunch, and then we jumped back on the nearby metro to head over to the Vatican, to go to the Vatican Museums.

Props and praise to my well-planning wife, who had reserved tickets online for us. The line for normal tickets looked to be an hour long. As it was, even with reserved tickets, it took about ten minutes to get into the museum.

Meredith and I had been to the museum a little over twenty years ago. It has changed. A lot. The new museum had a dedication date of 1998, and so many of our memories of our last visit can no longer be confirmed. I’m not sure if it is a fault of the renovations moving people less efficiently or if there was an enormously larger number of people who were there today, but from the start of the museum all the way though eight or ten galleries, up to the contemporary art rooms, which are right before the Sistine Chapel, we were sardined into a most dense crowd. It was difficult to move in any direction without bumping into someone, and to stop in front of any work would have been hard. I was mostly interested in the rooms themselves, which are ornate, and I wanted to get to the modern art area.

I happen to love modern religious art. I think modern art, when focused on something grounded in a text like the Bible, excels at communicating emotion. It also can challenge the viewer to see a well-known story in a new light. The Vatican’s collection was very good in this way. I did not like everything I saw, but I did like much of it, and there were two or three very moving pieces.

We did make it to the Sistine Chapel, which was crowded, but there was room down one side and to the back. I like the chapel ceiling – it is a tremendous accomplishment. I also find it hard to look at since it is straight up, and also involves many stories, from the creation of the world though just before the birth of Jesus . So I actually prefer Michelangelo’s Last Judgment painting on the wall of the room. It is huge, but still easier to look at since it is not on the ceiling; plus, it is only telling one story, and that focus helps bring the epic nature of the work into my ability to comprehend it.

One funny thing happened in the chapel – a woman walked up next to me, took my arm, and asked me if the wall was not even more impressive from way back here at the back of the room. Startled, but polite, I agreed it was. She then asked me another question (I forget what it was), to which I agreed as well. At that point, she realized I was not her husband, and with a slight laugh and apology, she found him. Meredith saw the whole thing and said he did look a bit like me. I thought the whole thing was amusing.

That ended the art portion of the day, but not the walking. We left the museum, and walked a third of the way around to the front of St. Peter’s church. The others who had not seen it before were amazed at the size of it. We hung out there, exploring the portico and taking pictures, for fifteen or twenty minutes, before we walked over and then down alongside the Tiber River. We headed down to the Trastevere neighborhood, an area of tight streets, varied shops, and good restaurants. I picked out a restaurant based on the fact that they had a display of their house-made pasta, and it was a good pick. The waiter was very Italian, taking away my olive oil plate from me before I was done, claiming that if I had too much bread, I would never eat the pasta course. He also was reluctant to bring cheese over for Tim since it would spoil the pasta. He encouraged Tim to try the dish without the cheese, and never did bring any over. He was fun-loving and joking, but very serious about his food.

Regina and Meredith N. did some quick shopping in that area on our way out, and so we used the time to eat gelato (the streak continues). Our walk took us across the small island in the middle of the Tiber, and then over to the Circus Maximus, which I thought would be amazing, but turned out to be, for the most part, a really huge field. There were some ruins at the far end of the field, so that made me feel better. A couple of streets over we grabbed a metro and headed home. Tons of art and tons of walking. We were all tired.

Regina and Meredith N. managed to get up early, breakfast, and still get out for a little shopping in Venice before we were scheduled to meet at 9:15 am. I did not think they would find much open, and they said most shops were closed, but they did find a few open and came back with a few things. They squeezed more time out of Venice. Sadly, we had to leave today.

On to Rome. It is a smooth train ride from Venice to Rome, taking three hours and forty-five minutes. Our hotel in Rome is only three blocks from the train station, so by 3:00 or so we were in our hotel room, topping off water bottles and dropping luggage before heading out to do a quick exploration of the city.

We stopped for a quick light lunch at a nearby pizza place, and then went back into the train station to buy three-day passes to the Metro system. Rome’s Metro is not extensive – only two main lines and a third under construction. It seems that when you dig in Rome, you tend to hit ruins, and then construction stops. Still, the two lines do an okay job of getting you to or near popular sites, so we wanted to get passes.

Enter the slight downside to Italy – sometimes frustrating inefficiency. The first pair of ticket machines we came to had two “helpers” standing at the machines – people who purported to help you figure out the ticket system (which is not hard and has an English option), in exchange for a tip. No problem – I found more machines down the stairs, and we tried using both bills and credit cards, but neither would work. So we tromped back upstairs to the main office, where we finally were able to buy tickets from a real person. We set off on the metro.

The Colosseum metro stop must be the most impressive in the world. You step out of the stop, and your vision is almost entirely filled with seeing the Colosseum. Tim wanted to see three things while in Rome – the Vatican, the Colosseum, and Trajan’s Column. We managed to check off the latter two within the first hour of being in Rome. We wandered around the Colosseum, checking out about half of the outside before turning aside to look at Constantine’s Arch, which commemorates Constantine becoming the sole emperor of the whole Roman Empire (and the battle which led him to adopt Christianity as the preferred religion in Rome). We walked up to the Forum’s gate so Jacob could see Titus’ Arch, which refers to the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Then, we tried to walk up toward the top of the hill to get to the main square around the Victor Emmanuel Monument, but we were hemmed in by Forum gates and construction walls where Rome was building part of the new third subway line. We backtracked to the main road, which did lead us up away from the Colosseum

The Victor Emmanuel monument is enormous – it is hard to grasp how big it is without seeing it. Our Rick Steves guidebook suggested it would be how Rome looked back in Roman times – a huge, sparkling, fairly new monument, and it was even designed in classical style when it was built in the 1860s. That was a helpful suggestion since it is sometimes hard to imagine some of these two-thousand-year-old ruins as new and shiny.

After the VE monument, we ate supper, where we got to eat outside for the third evening in a row. We had a mellow time, even after the entire restaurant was filled inside and partly outside with a huge group of French middle school students. I was amused to see the teachers sit together, light up cigarettes, and order beers and wine.

Refreshed from supper, we followed a walking tour from Rick Steves – we saw several emperor victory columns, some pretty squares, and a bunch of former palaces. We saw the Piazza Navona, which is huge and has a massive Bernini-sculpted fountain in the middle of it, which includes a fake Egyptian obelisk. We saw the outside of the Pantheon, which Jacob claimed to be the most impressive building he has ever seen, and we got to throw coins in the Trevi Fountain (which is supposed to ensure you come back to Rome). We finished the tour at the Spanish Steps, which are a wide and long set of steps that lead up to a pretty church where you have commanding views of Rome, including the dome of the Vatican in the distance.

That ended the tour, and we used the metro to get back to the train station and then walk home. I’ve summarized everything so it may seem short, but it all took over seven hours and resulted in our walking over ten miles for the day. That is a pretty good tour, considering we spent about four hours getting here and only had part of the day for sightseeing.

Italy, as a country, is already difficult to understand with regard to how it works and works pretty well. It is chaotic and full of energetic people who love the good life. In the middle of this improbable country is the impossible city of Venice. A city, built more or less in a swamp, should not function at all, let alone have been a world power just as a city for four hundred years. I love this place – it is simply magical.

Venice may be the most romantic and photographic city in the entire world. So naturally, Genius Boy hit something when putting the camera away last night that left it with no charge in the battery, so I took no pictures on my own camera at all, all day. Not when we took the water bus to St. Mark’s square or when we toured the Doge’s Palace. Not when we took the water taxi around the eastern end of the island and then out to the beautiful small island of Burano. And certainly not as we walked back home across much of Venice, including over the famous Rialto bridge. Happily, Meredith N. took a bunch of photos and gave them to me, so Ye Olde Blog is not barren.

So, we did indeed start our day taking the twenty-minute water bus down to St. Mark’s square. The bus goes right down the entire length of the Grand Canal, so it in itself is a good way to see Venice. The plan at St. Mark’s was to spend about four hours there, touring the Venice city museum, the Doge’s Palace, and St. Mark’s itself.

The main feature of the fine square around St. Mark’s is St. Mark’s – it is an amazing church, having been built around 1100, and is well decorated inside and out. The square is huge, with fine buildings all around it, with the city museum on the opposite end from St. Mark’s. There are multiple high-end restaurants that feature live music (classical or jazz) outside as a means to draw in customers, but it also adds great ambiance to the square.

We got our museum/Doge’s Palace combination tickets in the museum, which is supposed to have short lines. In our case, there was only one group of six or eight ahead of us, but they took about five minutes to process – I have no idea why. The museum is manageable sized, meaning you can see everything in about an hour if you don’t stop to read every description card, most of which are in Italian anyway. The museum contains things you would expect from a maritime power, like globes and models of ships and maps and such, but it also showcased some of the fine rooms that were in what is now the museum. It had several hoards of coins found around Italy. It had, oddly, a very old reliquary box discovered in Turkey about 100 years ago. It also had a small but respectable archaeological museum in one wing. Following what was to be the pattern of the day, we set a meet-back time so everyone could go where they wanted to, which we did again after we met up. As such, Meredith and I spent about thirty minutes more at the museum than the others, before we moved on to the Doge’s Palace.

The Doge was the elected-by-peers leader of Venice when it was powerful and rich. His palace reflected that by being perhaps the most impressive display of wealth and power I have ever seen in a building, and I have been to Versailles. Everything in the palace was ornately decorated – walls, ceilings, staircases – and most of the decorations either glorified Venice or the Doge specifically. The Doge’s seat, no matter which room we were in, always was in line with some artwork depicting Jesus, usually looking down at where the Doge would sit. That includes the biggest oil painting in the world, featuring Jesus in heaven with five hundred saints surrounding him. The entire palace was designed to let you know who was in charge, and it was not you.

We toured the entire palace, and the famous Bridge of Sighs where prisoners could see the outside world through a window before being brought to the cells, which we also saw. Most of the cells had a door that you would have to stoop through to get out of, and there were holes in the walls that I guessed were used to pass food though so you would not have to open the door. Combine that with corridor doors every few dozen feet, and I have no idea how anyone would ever escape from there.

We had lunch down a tiny little alley near St. Mark’s. It was full of eateries, including some fairly aggressive waiters out front telling us how sad we would be if we did not eat at their establishment. We found an inexpensive sandwich joint, and then agreed to meet in the square around 3:00. Meredith and I headed off to explore St. Mark’s.

For many years, my favorite church anywhere has been St. Paul’s in London. I love the majesty and simplicity of St. Paul’s, and having services in English helps. London has competition now. St. Mark’s is visually amazing. The floors are covered in mosaics of patterns, the walls are made of different types of marble, and the ceilings are fully covered in mosaics of biblical stories and tales of the saints. The dominant color is gold – everywhere on the ceiling that is not covered with figures is all in gold tiles. It is brilliant and awe-inspiring. It was hard to know where to look (other than up).

The only slight downside is we wandered in while the organ was being tuned, and it was the upper (piercing) register. I had never thought about an organ being tuned, but it involves playing the same note for a long time. Still, I suppose we got to hear the organ.

We wandered the main floor of the church, and then paid five euros to see the in-church museum, which takes up the balcony area. It has mosaics that were taken down in the late 1800s for a renovation, some paintings and tapestries, some huge choir books, and, most importantly, the four copper horses that used to stand on the balcony of the outside of the church. If I understood correctly. the horses were cast around the year 200, and were taken from somewhere that Venice conquered (maybe Byzantium?), and they were brought back to the church and put on display. They were moved inside the museum in the 1970s to protect them, and replicas were put outside.

The other reason to tour the balcony is to see some of the mosaics up close. There are some that come right down to the floor in the balcony, and even the ones on the ceiling are about fifty feet closer. There is even a stone ledge to sit on, so you can stare upwards in some comfort (and without running into other people). Finally, the museum tour lets you go outside on the balcony, which overlooks the square, and even out there you get very close-up looks of some of the exterior mosaics. You can see the lagoon with all the boat traffic, and the square with all the foot traffic. The sounds of the bands playing float up to you, and you can even sit down on a ledge next to the church facade. It is quite wonderful.

Our last stop in St. Mark’s was the golden altarpiece. You can pay two euros to go up front where the priest ministers from, and behind a screen, facing away from the congregation, is the elaborate altarpiece from around 1100. It is all gold, and covered in over a thousand precious stones, and it is quite large – probably six feet by twelve feet. We also got to see, close up, the standard altar with the tomb where St. Mark’s bones are kept (fun fact – while the church was being built, they forgot where they put the bones; after a public prayer service, the doge found them in a hollowed-out pillar).

We met up with the group in the square, as arranged, and walked over to the water buses. It took six of us, and asking an attendant, but we finally figured out how to get the two boats we needed to get out to one of the islands that I wanted to visit – Burano, where the people are famous for making lace. The first bus took us around the east edge of Venice, which Meredith and I had never seen. It ends in a huge park, with gardens sponsored by or inspired by various nations. It looked beautiful, and so is now on my list for my next visit to Venice. The boat ride was gentle and about forty minutes long, causing me to almost nod off and giving Jacob a chance to doze. We transferred to the next boat and rode it for another thirty minutes or so; the boat stopped briefly at the island of Murano, which is famous for glass, but we didn’t have time to get off and visit. That is also on the “next time” list.

We arrived at Burano about 5:30, and not surprisingly, our route took us through a narrow shopping street. When I heard that the island made lace, I pictured endless white doilies. I was quite wrong. The Venetians made lace into dresses and scarves of all colors, and they were beautiful. If we’d had more time on the island, Meredith would have had a new wardrobe. Instead, with a little help from a restaurant that was already fully booked, we found a restaurant on the main drag, which we had accidentally wandered off of. After a leisurely meal, we again split up, agreeing to meet at 9:00.

Burano in the evening is pure magic. The homes are all painted bright colors, and after 6:00 the vast majority of tourists go home, and the island is very quiet. Meredith, Tim, and I walked over to the local church, which has a tower that is visually leaning to one side. Toward a playground. That was being used by happy children. I assume they keep a close eye on the tower.

Tim wanted to sit in a park facing the lagoon, so Meredith and I strolled about, enjoying the quiet town. There were groups of older women talking together, and a few men puttering on boats in the small canals. We saw about ten cats, but only two were tame enough to let us pet them, and even that was warily. We were completely captivated. As darkness fell, we crossed a bridge over to the next island. It had a lighted path that went around the island, although we did not know that at the time (we found out by seeing a jogger reappear multiple times), We walked along that waterside path, eventually sitting on a bench, looking over that the fairy-light-lit town of Burano, while listening to a group of young Italian men playing soccer on a field behind us, unseen behind a high hedge. We happily sat there for about twenty-five minutes.

We met the others early, a little after 8:30, and about five minutes after the boat for Venice pulled out. That was fine, as we caught the next one at 9:10. The ride back in the dark was interesting, as we could only see the navigational lights dimly lighting the water behind us, as well as distant lights of the shore and the occasional boat, including a large and elegant party boat decked out as a pirate ship.

Once back in Venice, we walked back to the Grand Canal. There, Jacob said he wanted to cross the Rialto bridge and go back to the hotel a different way. We all agreed to go with him, and the trip back included a bonus stop for gelato, which kept our daily steak going. The walk back was wildly Venetian – some wide streets, crowded with people, some narrow alleys with no one around. It is all part of the package that makes Venice probably my favorite city in the word to visit.

The line at the Accademia, where the statue of Michelangelo’s David is housed, is long. Really long. The doors open at 9:00, and we got there around 8:50, and the line for the reserved entry was already fifty people deep, and the non-reserved line was even longer. By the time we came out around 11:30, the non-reserved line was around the corner, a half-block long.

We did get in around our reserved time of 9:00, and it turns out the Accademia is not all that big. We spent two hours there and covered the entire museum. The big draw is David, and there are always a bunch of people crowded around him. In the same hall are Michelangelo’s Prisoners statues – sculptures that he never finished that look as if they are escaping or are trapped in the marble block. That makes that hall the main attraction.

But there are other halls and exhibits, and I liked those as well. They have a small separate wing dedicated to musical instruments, including a very odd keyboard/guitar combination for which it was not fully clear how it worked. They had a special exhibit hall showing collected works of a circa-1400 painter, Giovanni dal Ponte. His works were mostly religious in nature, and you could see some hints of the Renaissance in his work. It was interesting to see him treat the same subject (like the Annunciation) multiple times in slightly different ways. One of his paintings of the Annunciation was the subject of a short film in the museum on restoring artwork, and it was impressive what a difference cleaning and restoring made.

Most of the other six or seven galleries were made up of religious paintings, and so we had a good time trying to figure out the stories being told or the saints included in the picture. One of my favorite ones was of Jesus, where above the main subject were small pictures of scenes from the Passion, in the form of disembodied hands and faces and such; so, for example, you had just the hand of Peter holding a sword, cutting off the ear (and just the ear is shown) of the high priest’s servant.

After the museum, we grabbed sandwiches from a shop, and then ate them in Piazza Santissima Annunziata, a square surrounded by entirely Renaissance architecture, with an orphanage, a church, and a hospital all from around the same time. It was a pleasant space to sit, and we took our time.

We then wandered the town a bit looking for a specific gift or two to buy, but failed to find what Regina was looking for. We did, however, find gelato. That wrapped up Florence for us, or so we thought, so we went and retrieved our luggage from the convent, where they had kindly let us store it for a few hours, and we made our way along the twenty-minute walk to the train station.

We were headed to Venice next, so we walked up to a ticket machine to buy tickets, and discovered the next train was in three hours, at 4:00. So we had some time on our hands. These things happen when you travel. Much later, Meredith realized there were two different ticket machines for the two different train companies, so it is possible we could have gotten an earlier train from the other line, but we had no idea.

At any rate, we sat outside on the curb for a little over two hours. Regina and Meredith N. went shopping (and found some things), and we were able to help out a nice German man whose phone was out of charge. I had my charged laptop, so I let him charge off of that, while we chatted with him. He was in Florence visiting a friend, and then was going to Milan to meet his girlfriend, and then on to Croatia. He was working on an advanced degree in classical archaeology. He charged his phone for about twenty minutes, was very grateful, and then went his way.

After Meredith N. and Regina got back, Meredith and Jacob wandered off to browse. Jacob found some things as well, and so we passed the time. It was not an efficient use of two-plus hours, but it was not wasted either.

The train to Venice took two hours, and we got settled in our very swanky hotel. It is a Best Western brand, but it is not like any I have stayed in anywhere in the States. Our room is a three-room suite with gold wallpaper, and the hotel is right on a canal. Great location.

We got a recommendation from the man at the desk on where to go to eat, and while we did not find his restaurant (never a surprise in serpentine Venice), we did get off the beaten path and found an excellent restaurant, where we ate a very leisurely meal, outside, next to a canal, as evening very softly fell. The lights came out and Venice became magical. So, while we did not do any official sightseeing or touring, it was a great introduction to Venice.

After breakfast at the nunnery (bread and butter with coffee or juice), we struck off toward the Arno River to go to the Museo Galileo (the Galileo Museum). Along the way, Jacob asked if he could grab a good-looking pastry from a cafe, so we sat in the square in front of Santa Croce while Jacob ate. It was another sunny day, if a little cool in the shade, and there are many worse ways to start your morning,

We got to the museum a few minutes before it opened, so we spent the time along looking at the rowers on the Arno while Meredith N. and Regina went along the outdoor gallery of statues along the Uffizi Museum, looking for a particular statue of a scientist. Once we reconvened, we waited for a couple of minutes for the museum to open.

The Museo Galileo was built from the private collections of two wealthy and powerful Florentine families, and is mostly made up of scientific instruments, maps, globes, and curiosities. The museum focuses on Galileo, as he was the first modern scientist and a contemporary of the Medici family, who ruled Florence.

The instruments and displays are very interesting in themselves, and the experimental equipment was often of the highest quality, made of stained wood or shaped glass, and often decorated. But, in addition to the objects on display, we had a guide for just the six of us – an ex-pat from California who became an Italian citizen about fifteen years ago and has since married an Italian man. As such, her English was flawless and she was able to make cultural references to things like Seinfeld. Meredith and I prefer guided tours, and this was no exception. She pointed out the major and/or interesting pieces and told us how they were used. It included a huge eight-foot-across complex globe showing the seven layers of the heavens going around the Earth (the Earth-centered model of the universe). We saw maps where the coasts were well mapped, but not so much for the interior. We saw dozens of early telescopes, including the only two surviving telescopes that Galileo made. There were lots of different types of clocks and early thermometers and barometers. We learned Florence founded the first scientific society in 1660. The tour was excellent.

We stayed after to tour for a bit to look at the part of the exhibit that we had not yet seen, the most striking of which were life-like models of babies in the womb, some of which had forceps around their heads, presumably as doctor training models. These were from the 1700s – I had no idea human anatomy was so well understood then. We finished the museum by spending a few minutes in the small hands-on area where you could roll balls down planes and the like.

By now it was around noon. On their wanderings the night before, Jacob and Regina had seen a line for a sandwich shop stretching a whole block, so they wanted to go there, and that sounded great. We had to wait in line for about thirty minutes, but we were able to grab huge sandwiches made on homemade focaccia-style bread, which we took with us to sit in the square outside the Uffizi. While we ate, we were entertained by a nearby person who played an excellent living statue that moved if you put money in his box. He especially was creeping out the grade school kids that came up to him.

After lunch, we ducked in the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio, which is before you have to pay admission. The courtyard was lavish, and a good reminder that the owners of these places when they were still palaces liked to let you know you had entered a home of wealth and power. It was impressive.

The next stop on our little tour was all things Duomo. You can get into the church of the Duomo for free, but if you want to see the baptistery with its amazing murals, or climb the dome itself, or see the crypts, or climb the bell tower, you needed an all-in-one ticket for fifteen euros. Since we all wanted to do some of these things, we got tickets. We bought them through machines individually, and as such, only four of us got tickets before the dome-climbing option sold out. Since Regina and I are both afraid of heights, we volunteered to stay down on the ground. The others had different times, so Tim and Meredith were going up together, and Meredith N. and Jacob were going after them.

To start with, though, we went into the church, which is very plain and simple inside, except for the dome, which is lavishly decorated with scenes from the life of Christ and His final judgement. Inside was also where you could go into the church crypts, which in this case had been turned into an informative display showing the different archaeological periods of building on the site, starting with the Roman ruins found during renovation. It was a small exhibit, but was very well done.

The biggest surprise for me in the complex was the baptistery. I had expected it to be like the church, and the walls were simple, but the domed ceiling, which spanned the entire interior of the space, was covered in brilliant mosaics. Jesus on the judgement seat took up about a quarter of the space, and the rest was given over to illustrated stories from the Bible. The artwork was amazing.

After this, we split into our pairs based on climbing times. Meredith and Tim went to wait in line, while the rest of us went to get gelato. We failed at that because we got distracted by the display of pastries at the shop instead. I had one of the best desserts I have ever had there – profiteroles drenched in a fudge sauce. By the time we finished eating, Meredith N. and Jacob felt they should get in line, so Regina and I wandered off to explore.

We headed to the river and then down past the Ponte Vecchio. We took the first narrow-looking alley we found, and it led to a tiny 1823 church, which was sadly locked. The alley then led to the high-rent shopping district, where we wandered past Gucci and Armani and their ilk without stopping.

We got back to the Duomo about forty minutes before we were to meet the others, so Regina and I went back to a store where they embroidered things. Regina wanted to pick up a souvenir for her nephew, so we got to watch as a woman stitched his name and other words onto the cloth in excellent “handwriting” at high speed. It was a very impressive display of skill.

That still left us with about thirty minutes, and Regina wanted to sit in the sun, so I went back in the church, and eventually saw where people could come in to pray, over in a side chapel. That seemed like a great idea, so I went outside to find that door, where I ran into Tim and Meredith coming out from their climb, which they had loved. Meredith joined me, and we went inside to pray for a few minutes.

We all met together in front of the Duomo museum, where most of the original artwork has been moved for safekeeping. Replicas were made for the actual church. Regina suggested we all meet back in the lobby at 6:30 so we could go at our own pace, and that seemed like a great idea. I got separated from everyone when I used the bathroom, but that turned out to be okay, as I had a great time exploring the museum. I loved seeing the original cast doors up close, having a good time seeing if I could identify the scenes from the life of Jesus (I could for all nine scenes I could see up close). I also loved the small room dedicated to the music of the church, with huge choir books and an interactive display where you could hear the music being sung while seeing the page it was being sung from. The room dedicated to the building of the dome, an architectural marvel, was also great.

But my favorite display was the Duomo itself as seen from the rooftop terrace. I stumbled upon it almost by accident – there is only one staircase that goes all the way up, and I happened to find it. The view puts you right under the dome, about half-way up to it. It is by far the best view of the dome I have seen (other than maybe the bell tower, but that has screens in the way). I went back inside hoping to find the others, and found Tim and Regina. They were eager to see the view, so up we went, and they loved it too. So, we tried to find the others, but they had already left the museum. Jacob asked if he could come back through, and they let him, so I took him up, We were soon followed by Regina, Meredith, and Meredith N. Tim had gone out to get them, and they sneaked back in (which was fine since they had tickets and could not seem to get the attention of anyone to ask if it was okay). In the end, everyone got to see the terrace.

We turned our attentions to supper. Regina wanted pasta, which is not hard to sell me on, so we went to a nearby restaurant, only to be turned away for the lack of reservation. Happily, the second place we tried was able to seat us, and the food was quite excellent, especially Regina’s pasta. We followed supper up with a return visit to the pastry shop from earlier in the day so Meredith could try it, and I could not let her eat alone (nor could Jacob or Meredith N.).

We finished the day by doing an evening stroll across the Arno, and up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is built on a hill that overlooks the city. Regina has some leg problems with hard climbs, so she stopped and hung out with Tim about halfway up the hill. The rest of us made it to the top, where we had the piazzale, rather surprisingly, mostly to ourselves. The views of the city were magnificent, and as an added bonus there is a copy of the David statue there. It was a lovely spot, and we stayed for about twenty minutes before heading back down the hill to rejoin Tim and Regina and then walking home.

A full Florentine day, with about twelve miles of walking in it. That may have burned off the pastries. Maybe.

Actual travel, the process of getting from point A (Toronto) to point D (Florence), when things go well, is rather boring to narrate, so I’ll keep it short(er). We started the day in our Toronto hotel, and after a great breakfast, made out way to the airport in a very cold rain. Given the rain, it was unfortunate that I remembered that I had left my credit cards in my car only after we had walked across the whole parking lot. I let the others go on while I jogged back and got them.

The Toronto airport was a breeze – no line at check-in, and a very minimal wait at security, which included pre-filling out US customs forms since we were flying into Boston. That was a huge blessing for us since we had a tight window in Boston to catch our next flight (one hour and forty minutes). Anyway, the end result of no lines in Toronto was that we waited at the gate for about three hours. Ooops.

Boston worked out as well – no customs to clear, and even though we had to change terminals, there was a walkway connecting the two terminals that only took about five minutes to walk. Boston also had a minimal security line, and so we made it to the gate with about an hour to spare before take-off.

The flight to Rome was uneventful, which is always good. Meredith graded and I played the computer game Civilization 5. Once in Rome, we cleared customs, got our luggage, and headed for the train station, where an airport official spotted me trying to figure out which way to go and took that as a chance to tell us about how we could get a van to Rome’s main train station for 15 euros each, which is more or less what the train costs, but with no wait. I was a bit skeptical, but not very alert, and since it sounded like more or less the same cost, we agreed.

Our driver was nice, and spoke decent English. He did try to convince us he could take us all the way to Florence for the same cost as the train (he claimed about 95 euros each), even though he claimed he did not really want to drive us there. Again, Meredith and I were skeptical, and asked to just go to the train station. That was good, since the tickets to Florence on the 120 mph train were only 47 euros each, and not 95. Also our driver was conveniently bad at math – six people at 15 euros each is 90 euros, but he thanked us for the three euro tip when we gave him a total of 108 and were waiting on some change. Meredith questioned that, and we got it down closer to 90.

The train to Florence was fine, except the track number was not announced until very close to the scheduled departure time, and so while we made it to the train, we had not been sitting down long when the train moved out. The weather was perfect, and so barreling though the countryside for about ninety minutes was very pretty, when I could stay awake.

Our hotel was about a twenty-minute walk from the train station, so we managed the crowds and cobblestones and cars fairly well, often distracted by the beauty around us. We were staying at a nunnery that rents out rooms, and two of our three rooms were ready. Mer and I waited for our room in the pretty garden, where some flowers were already in full bloom, and there were a couple of orange trees bearing fruit.

Once our room was ready, we napped for about three hours, a tactic we use to make the first jet-lagged day much more bearable. We met up with Regina and Tim, Meredith N., and Jacob. Regina had said she could not sleep, so she had gone out and tried to order a pepperoni roll, and instead got an Italian beer, Peroni. When we left the nunnery to go to supper, as we stepped onto the street, we saw a group of young ladies all wearing fifties-style garments, with jackets that read, in English, “Pink Ladies.” Of course.

We had supper at a restaurant down near the Duomo (the cathedral), where the restaurant served organic pizzas. The food was welcome, and quite good, and the background music was mostly music from America in the fifties and sixties.

After our having eaten, Meredith took us on a foot tour of Florence, starting at the Duomo and the square it sits in, including its nearby baptistery. We walked down a wildly popular shopping street to a large square which was Florence’s equivalent to the Roman Forum. We then backtracked to the shopping street to see a church that had been converted from an old granary in the 1500s that is surrounded by excellent early Renaissance statues of saints and other biblical figures. We wound over to Pizza della Signoria, where the David statue used to be, now replaced with a replica. There is also a porch with a dozen classical and Renaissance statues decorating it, as well as being in one of the finest squares in the city.

We then head over to Florence’s river, the Arno, and the most famous bridge in Florence, the Ponte Vecchio (the Old Bridge). We walked across the bridge to the other side, and then returned back up the river so we could go find Meredith’s favorite gelato (Italian ice cream) place from when she was in school here back in 1993. We found it, had some excellent gelato, and then finished the tour by going by the square that has the Santa Croce church. It was uncrowded, the lights were on, and the evening was cool, but fine. It was a good way for most of us to end the evening, but Jacob and Regina decided to forge on for another hour on their own. That was bold of them, and I was pleased they felt comfortable doing that.

It all started back in October. We had a memorial service for Meredith’s mom, Carlene, at CVCA, in the library. Since Carlene had worked at CVCA for thirteen years and had loved books, we thought it would be appropriate. It also made it easy for our friends and colleagues to make it to the service since it was at CVCA itself – our colleagues could just stay.

The service was lovely, and the support was incredible. One of the things brought out in the service was how Carlene helped to lead several trips to Europe during her teaching career. One of our friends, Regina, came up to Meredith after the service and told her that was wonderful, and she (Meredith) should do the same, but with colleagues. Meredith laughed, but then told me the story later, half wondering if we could do it. So, when I saw Regina, I asked her how serious she was, to which she replied, “Very!” And so a trip was born.

Our trip consists of me and Meredith, Regina and her husband Tim, another English teacher also named Meredith, and our friend Jacob. We initially had two others on the trip, but things popped up to keep them from going. Still, six is a good (and mobile!) number for attempting this kind of trip for our first time.

We left after school yesterday in two cars. I don’t like to caravan since it is hard to coordinate two cars, so we agreed to meet at the hotel in Toronto. We left in our car, with Jacob, around 4:00. It was a fun little trip, taking about six hours with stops for supper and one rest stop, with a one-car wait at the Canadian border. Jacob got a text that Regina, Tim, and Meredith N. had checked in to the hotel about five minutes before we got here.

So, we leave today at 2:00. We fly in a small plane to Boston, where we have a slightly tight window (one hour and forty minutes) to get through customs and security to get to our next plane. I’m hoping and praying the first plane gets in ten or twenty minutes early. I have read several stories online of people making the same change successfully, so that is good.

We are off for a week, getting to Rome Sunday morning and scheduled to leave the following Sunday. In between, we hope to get to Florence and Venice. It should be a fun trip.