After a month and a half of procrastinating I’ll get around to updating the world on our week and a half high speed journey through Italy and into Switzerland that we did back in the first week of June. Logistically it was quite complicated. Mary left China and made a 1 day stop in Istanbul for business and then continued on to Rome. I left Nashville and had a red eye flight to Rome that got in at 8 am. Yuki was already in Rome finishing a 2 week study statues course (or something like that) but wouldn’t free up until the next day. Haiyan (Yuki’s mom) would not get to Rome until 2 days later. I met Mary at the hotel she stayed at and ultimately we checked out and went to the hotel we were staying that night. It should be noted that Rome was all booked up as it was the big national holiday weekend (like the 4th of July) coming up on the weekend so we changed hotels about every day. Mary and I spent the afternoon and evening wandering around Rome and doing the usual things like posing in front of fountains.
The next day it was off to the train station where we met up with Yuki and we headed to Ercolano near Pompeii. Ercolano is the site of Herculaneum which was one of the other cities buried at the same time Pompeii was. It was buried much deeper and actually Ercolano is built on top of it so not much has been excavated but what has is actually better preserved that Pompeii. There is a walking tour on YouTube.
The next day it was up and off to Pompeii. Pompeii is a much larger area that what I expected. The way we entered got us to what I’m pretty sure was the baseball stadium first.
This gave us the opportunity to take a picture that I’m sure has never been taken by another person, ever. Posing with Mt. Vesuvius in the background.
AS you walk around Pompeii it is easy to forget that Pompeii was not a rich city it was just a run of the mill town and yet has all these columns and stuff that we tend to associate with wealth and culture. (just look at our dining room)
After about 5 or 6 hours it was hot and we had seen enough so it we decided that we would hop the train and head to Sorrento to kill the rest of the day.
We walked from the train station to the coast, which of course required shopping but we got there and did a quick pose.
Went to one of the bars and had a couple drinks
and then back to the hotel and to a restaurant on the water for dinner.
The next day it was up and back to Rome, check int the hotel and pick up Haiyan from the airport and begin the hardcore Roman tourist activity. We started in the Colosseum area and posing.
We wrapped up the day at some weird not traditional Italian restaurant place for dinner.
The next day was more Rome tourist things like the 3 coins in the fountain thing.
The Parthenon
And the Fiat informal motor museum.
That night Yuki and her mom went to the Vatican and since Mary has been there twice and I’ve been once and we were both still jet lagged (6 hours each in opposite directions) we ate and went to bed as the next day we were heading off to Florence.
We get to Florence and spent the rest of the day wondering around looking at statues and stuff.
A late afternoon lunch
More statues. And while we are at it I will admit that when it comes to statues I may not be on the cutting edge (although all other art forms I am) but just what is going on here.
Late in the afternoon we made it to the river and the bridges across for more posing
Reviewing the “posing for pictures” pictures
Then it was back to the hotel area (across the road from the Dumo) which offered some artsy picture shots.
The next morning Mary and I were up early waiting for the breakfast places to open which allowed for more posing.
Yuki and Haiyan finally got up and made it to breakfast.
This afforded me an opportunity to sit at our street table and do what I love to do when in Italy which is to watch the crowd for the latest Italian fashion designs. After all Italy is the home of that kind of stuff.
Here we have a design for the discriminating Asian traveler
Here for women we have this years theme, glossy.
And finally, an unanswerable question. What is it with Asian women doing airplane poses?
After that informative and eventful breakfast it was over to the Statue of David place.When I first saw the Statue of David ten years ago or so it was one of those eureka of art moments (I was going to say epiphany but I can’t spell it) If your response to that is wtf well just hold on a moment.
When I was a kid we had a World Book Encyclopedia. I think my parents bought it when I was 7 or 8 years old and it was on the built in shelves of my bed from the time I had the bedroom before Lori was born. It tended to be the go to thing when bored or didn’t have anything else to do and over the course of the 10 years or so I was in that bedroom I’m sure I looked at every page at least once and actually read a high percentage. Now anyone that as seen a late 50’s early 60’s encyclopedia will remember that all artwork was presented a a standard size picture with some history about it, although unless you looked up the guy that made it not a lot of history. Now I think that they gave the size in the description somewhere but if they did that never registered with me. So as a result in my mind all artwork is the same size and all statures are the same height. There are basically 3 works of art that finally broke me of that misguided mindset. The first time I went to the Met in New York and walked into the room with Washington Crossing the Delaware I was of a “well that’s surprisingly big, won’t be hanging that over the fireplace ” although I had seen much smaller copies all over the place. Should be a law that copies have to be the same size as the original. The second time happened at the Louvre a few years back with the Mona Lisa. Looked at that and though that “jeeze he must have painted this to be one of those little decorative paintings that people hang in their bathrooms” The size just didn’t match the level of famous. So when I saw David for the first time once again I was totally surprised by the size which leads me to make this proposal. All artwork shown in encyclopedias should have a Carol Merrill person standing next to it pointing so that we can tell haw big it is. I attempted to provide one of these but the crowd, my pointer and the auto focus on the camera were not cooperating. But you get the idea and can tell that the Statue of David is only about 4 ft tall.
WE looked at the statue and from there eventually got to Michelangelo park overlooking the city. Its got a copy of David (and apparently an old woman breaking wind on another woman)
It’s the park from which all of the iconic pictures of Florence are taken.
We spent the rest of the afternoon touring the home of famous dead people and the home of statues.
For example Michelangelo, Dante and Machiavelli
One of my favorite statues from the Uffizi
Before the Medici left all these statues to the state they were in the various houses. You have to wonder what it was like to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and have to travel past all these busts and statues. Did you have to say hi howya doin to each of them?
The next morning Yuki and her mom went on to Venice and Mary and I moved on to Lugano Switzerland. Even though it’s Swiss it is in most ways an Italian town only about a 45 minute train ride from Milan. We got there and checked into our hotel late afternoon and Mary checked out the balcony.
Lugano is apparently a vacation spot and also it seemed to be more upper class than what we were. A lot of Maserati and Porsche and at least one bright red Ferrari 488 GTB on the streets. But it fit the needs of just a day without needing to look at statues or other artsy things. The next morning we walked the park and took the funicular to the top of the mountain overlooking the city. (by the way every town should have a funicular even if they don’t have a big hill just for the name)
An hour long sitting at a table on the mountain with a late morning snack of beer and french fries was quite nice.
These were all from the building at the very peak of this mountain.
After a tour around the lake on one of the water taxis for an hour and dinned at a highly rated restaurant and a bunch of walking around shopping in way over priced stores (one lady wanted over $2000 for a set of sheets and they were not even fitted sheets) it was time to bring this trip to an end. Although while shopping I did notice one thing that surprised me. Apparently the second coming wasn’t the big deal it was built up to be as that Jesus guy is apparently running a jewelry store in Lugano.
The next morning it was back to Rome and I caught a morning flight back to the US and Mary had to get to Chicago through Turkey and she got delayed a day so she didn’t get home until 2 days later.
As always the full unedited not curated camera dump is posted to the right.