Italy in 5 days: Florence

 

In Florence, even a simple bridge seems a triumph of the Renaissance. Instead of simply crossing a river, the Medici and the artisans they employed built a structure strong enough to support gold, the shops to house it and the people who flock to buy it.

Don’t worry if you get to Florence without a hotel, we didn’t, and we only had to talk to walk into two hotels before we found a room that after a little bargaining was in our price range. 60 euros a night. Did we get ripped off or get a steal? You tell me.
 



There's even this painting of a delicious sandwich at the Uffizi

Once checked in we queued up to get into the Uffizi art museum. After an hour wait and three hours exploring its hallowed halls, I will admit, the Uffizi is an amazing museum. In particular Raquel and I found a painting by Botticelli of Madonna and Christ so beautiful it eclipsed Botticelli’s own Birth of Venus only a few paintings over. There’s also a quite scandalous sculpture of a woman in ecstasy, a two sided painting of a dwarf in all of his glory and the first female breast ever painted. Even a man easily bored by stuffy old art museums can spend a few hours there.

 

 

But my favorite sight to see was the Domo. Pictures certainly speak more than words, but with the Domo even those fall short. It is a massive structure of white, green and red marble that is so big one cannot ever appreciate it in its entirety, because, unlike the structures of Pisa which sprawl languidly on a wide expanse of green grass, the Domo is hemmed in by six story apartment buildings. One cannot ever get far enough away from it, so it always feels like it is constantly on the verge of swallowing up the viewer. I had to move in close, but this is no less mend boggling, for every inch of this massive marble structure is carved. The walls, the pillars, the windows, the doorframes, even the doors themselves are carved into popes and prophets, sigils and spirals, flowers and finery the likes of which I’ve never seen anywhere else in the world.

To leave it behind is to lower one’s expectations, but it must be done, for we had other cities to see.

Yet this did not prove to be as easy as we’d hoped. After Florence we spent a day in Pisa but had to stop back in Florence to catch a train to Venice via Milan, but alas we misread our tickets and got off a stop too late. A new ticket (at no cost to us, they must be used to incompetent tourists) and fifteen agonizing minutes later Raquel made the grave mistake of ordering a—gasp—iced coffee!

No sooner did the words leave her mouth than the cashier, an older woman undoubtedly married to the man manning the espresso machine sneered and told her husband in heavily accented English, “she wants an iced… coffee...”

The man could have prepared the milk for my cappuccino with the steam coming out of his ears. For a full minute be banged pots, smashed pans and furiously paced back and forth, stopping only to glare at this less-than-human who’d dared order a coffee at a temperature any less than scalding. Not wanting him to knock the place down or attempt to decapitate my wife with a sugar spoon I quickly changed the order to a frappe instead. He visibly relaxed, and by the time he brought us our drinks, “here is your frappe and a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, hot cappuccino,” he seemed downright pleasant.

Caffeinated and terrified we made for our train to Venice, happy to escape with our heads, and a train to put them on.

If you liked this story check out Rome Part I or Part II go visit Greece with me!

Italy in Five Days: Rome Part II

After the amazing exhaustion that is the Sistine chapel, we still had the rest of an ancient city to explore. We hopped on a train (frighteningly off-schedule and claustrophobic after living in Japan) and headed to the old town. Our first stop was to recharge outside the church of Cappucin with a cappuccino. With this dose of meta-caffeination we were ready to see Rome.

And see it we did. We walked into Basilicas to find catholic masses underway or just other tourists

marveling at their splendor. In a toy shop a magician performed a private show in which he transfigured cards back into themselves and severely tested the material limits of a silver chain. In a tiny shop no bigger than bedroom an Italian watchmaker replaced Raquel’s watch’s battery with a smile and in a bookstore behind a cathedral we perused esoteric tomes containing knowledge of everything from astral projection to the origin of the tarot.


We explored the Pantheon. Its altars for Zeus and Athena long ago replaced with effigies of Jesus and Mary. The sun from the hole in the roof cast an unusually equal light upon the saints and martyrs, lifting them to the status of the pair supposed to be their betters. Catholicism has 

Sun worship at its finest at the Pantheon

whitewashed much of the world with its version of history, but this was one place where the pagan predecessors could still be felt. 

We ate gelato and a crappy overpriced meal and explored The Coliseum. It looks like the progenitor of every arena ever built. It is marvelous, and proves mankind’s obsession with the distraction of fun and games goes back much farther than all but the most diehard sports fans would care to admit.

But the most powerful moment of the day was stepping into an empty cathedral to find a lonely priest practicing on a magnificent pipe organ. It was hauntingly beautiful. After a sitting in the pews for a few minutes it began to overwhelm my atheist sensibilities.

In these hallowed halls, built centuries ago, I could feel Christ suffering, because for the first time in my life, I felt I had suffered if but a fraction of what any other person on this earth has endured. There are things worse than testicular cancer, to be sure, but not in my privileged life. Confronted with the beauty of this place of worship and the music it inspired from this man, I fell to my knees and begged God for health and a family. After surviving the first battle with testicular cancer, nothing else seems as important to me. And to be there, to see Christ’s pain, and what it inspires in people, to hear what it inspired this lonely man to play, brought me to tears and moved me to beg God for mercy.




If you liked this story check out Rome Part I. 

Italy in Five Days: Rome part I

Our time in Italy was a whirlwind of trains and sightseeing. We spent two nights in Rome, a day in Florence, a day Pisa, a night in Margherra outside of Venice, a day in Venice, then caught a train to Lugano via Milan. I do not recommend travelling like this. It tends to leave beard hairs frizzled and wifeys frazzled, but we had five days to kill before we had a free place to stay with a relative (the sister of the husband of my wife’s aunt) so what else could we do but see everything there is to see? So without any further ado, I give you 5 Italian cities in five days.

Rome

We arrived late in Rome, too tired to do anything but walk beneath an aqueduct to get pizza and beer and vow to set out early the next day.

10:00 am is the hour of the tourist. It is the time most people (yours truly included) can manage to get anywhere and still feel early, so it the time with the longest lines and the most obnoxious guides trying to sell you tours to skip them.

We opted for a cappuccino and wifi instead. Our weekend booked (except for Florence, more on that later) we set out after overhearing an Italian tell three young Americans about the market across the street.

“They put a roof over it but it’s still great! You should walk in just for the smell!”

Inside I found the most delicious sandwich in Italy, slow roasted porcetta and a crispy pork product that was something between bacon and chicharon. The textures of the noble pig juxtaposed on a fresh roll. For three Euros, there is no better food in Italy. 

Marble Selfie of the Beard

 

Our bellies full and our brains caffeinated we returned to the Vatican at about 1:30 to find the lines much more agreeable. Twenty minutes later we were perusing the popes’ collection of sculptures of the Greek and Roman Gods. You gotta love the Catholics. They renounce all the other religions but they take damn good care of their idols.

Starting with the room of maps, The Vatican is beyond anything I’ve ever seen. The ceilings are painted to look like marble reliefs. Angels and cherubs bordered in gold smile down on ancient frescoes depicting the world in incredible detail. After the maps comes a hallway filled with tapestries depicting amazing events more or less related to Jesus. The ones with JC are the best. He’s got a goofy smile and is flashing the peace sign.  

The Triumph of Christianity

Next comes Raphael’s rooms. My favorite piece is “Triumph of Christianity” which shows a golden crucifix standing over a broken marble statue of Hermes. In with the new out with the old! A room over is the “School of Athens” an eternal reminder of the greatness of those long-gone idol worshippers that the painters of the Renaissance was so obsessed with reviving.

But after all that, after kilometers of paint, tons of marble, and thousands of tourists, postcards, and priests we were upon it, the Sistine chapel.

The Sistine chapel is the most beautiful thing made by one man. It is as awe-inspiring as the Sequoias, as powerful as Niagara Falls. It is worth going to Rome, waiting in line, paying 20 Euros and wearing out your feet.

It is one man’s amazing vision of his faith, hopes and dreams. I don’t know much about the bible, only the basics of Genesis through Noah’s Ark, but perhaps that’s all anyone bothers to learn anymore because that’s what is depicted by Michelangelo and to have some sense of the stories in this masterpiece so important to us as a species that we learn these stories to better appreciate its splendor.

It is beautiful, breath-taking, and a little funny. Why are God’s buttcheeks painted so prominently? Why, amidst all this splendor, is there a scene of Noah drunk off his gourd? I think Michelangelo knew the power of emotion, and for anything to have beauty it must invoke laughter or tears.

And below it, behind the altar is the Final Judgment, which is as dark and frightening as the ceiling is bright and uplifting. Michelangelo painted it as a grim reminder of the price of sin. It is beautiful, but horrifying. To have the two visions of a Master, one of hope painted early in life and another of despair painted much later, is nothing short of miraculous. Go there. Listen to Rick Steves when you do.


This is not marble, nor is it the Sistine Chapel.
I was to overwhelmed by the place to rebel enough to snap a photo of the real deal.

 If you liked this post check out Part II or check out Greece!

Ancient Karthea

Kea is home to Karthea, a city that was first settled in the 9^th century b.c. All you must do to find it is drive an hour up a mountain and hike an hour down into a lush valley.

So we rented a scooter and embarked on an adventure through time. Up the mountain we drove, past tiny white-washed churches and up above the capital city and its prehistoric carved lion. Wind battered us and threatened to knock us from the plateau. Sand blew in our eyes to hide the way but we would not be deterred. We drove past stubborn mules and fought herds of cows for space on the road.  Finally we found an old half-dirt road that led to the trailhead.

We walked by stone walls built three thousand years ago to separate the tame from the wild. We walked under trees heavy with figs, pomegranates and lemons. We walked past skittish horses and their homes made of stacked stones. We walked past thirsty bees and scrubby bushes flush with pink flowers. We walked past secret caves and sacred springs. On and on we walked. The wild and the time didn’t seem so different after three thousand years.

An hour later we emerged on a beach. Three men labored to repair an ancient theater and a long-dry water cistern despite the sun and the wind. To our left we saw two temples on a thrust of land that stuck out into the sea like a stone battleship. We climbed the twisting marble steps to the temples at the top, as men and women did 2,500 years ago to worship their gods. 

We reached the temple at the top of the hill and entered the Propylon. The archeologists have replaced only a few marble slabs so it has its original shape: a box of fluted pillars, made to cage only wind and shade. We approached the temple of Athena and its wall of pillars that have crumbled to waist height. The archeologists rebuilt a few of them to help less imaginative minds marvel at what 2,500 hundred years of rain and wind can do to stone.

From there we could see the Aegean foaming with waves interrupted by distant islands. They say tragedy was invented in Greece. And with islands on the horizon, I felt compelled to swim out into the sea and explore but to do so would be to lose myself to the sea, and add another page to Poseidon’s book of tragedy.

We descended from Athena’s domain to worship at Apollo’s temple. They say it was the most important place in Karthea. It was set on a point of the landmass that felt like it was stretching out over the ocean, the prow of the ship. The temple collapsed long ago, and Christians, surely overwhelmed with the power of the place buried their dead with the marble bricks that once housed Apollo.

Further we descended until we reached the beach, desolate save for us and the seagulls hiding from the wind. There was no one around save my beautiful wife and Apollo and Athena, watching us from their ancient temples built upon this thrust of rock that separated the twin beaches, so I threw my clothes to the beach and walked into the Aegean to feel the ocean upon my naked flesh.

It was cold. Powerful. Marvelous. A sea nymph in the body of a fish beckoned me to join her with a tailfin waving lazily above the ocean waves, so in I dove. As I surfaced from the cold sea my lungs burned and I reveled in just being alive. Perhaps I would have followed that fish into the sea and joined the watery domain of the Poseidon’s sirens, but a beautiful goddess beckoned me back to land with a towel and a sandwich. She convinced me to put my clothes back on and return to civilization with her. She’s with me now, sitting across the table, and has cast a powerful spell on me. I love this woman, who makes me food and keeps me warm, and will continue to so long as my lungs draw air. Such is the power of the spell she has cast upon my heart, a spell strong enough to pull me halfway ‘round the world and out of the ocean.

I still surrender to her magic every time I look upon her.

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Feeling like a tourist in Kea

Don’t go to a tourist town in the off season. It ain’t worth it. There’s plenty to be said for visiting places during times besides the high season, but not if the low-season is a no-season. We’re currently in Kea, an island that is apparently famous for being close to Athens. I say this because whenever we’re asked why are we visiting Kea and we shrug and smile, the local undoubtedly says, “well I guess it’s close to Athens,” before overcharging us.

Perhaps if we were wealthier visiting Kea in May wouldn’t be so bad. The other night a group of maybe twenty old rich white people from the world over all dressed in togas had dark-skinned Greeks serving them tapas on the beach before they all retired to their private yachts, carrying their $200 high heels to spare their poor feet. That sounds like fun, what we’ve been dealing with is anything but.

Two days ago the wind picked up and all the rich people sailed away with their yachts. This dropped the population of Kea down to triple digits. I think Raquel and I currently make up around 25% of this island’s source of income. Anywhere we go hungry eyes watch us pass. I feel like a dog that just walked into a flea circus. Waiters sniff us from restaurants and bartenders waft coffee in our direction. The food is good, at least at the nicer places, and fortunately the two of us can eat drink and be merry for around 30 euros a meal. Not terrible for a roast chicken, fresh potatoes, tabouli and wine but to pay that for fried eggs, white bread and a coffee? Fortunately our AirBnB has a kitchen.

What’s really getting to me though is the little things. Like the other day we went somewhere that had wifi, and ordered a glass of juice, for 6.50! I can get a half a bottle of wine at a nice restaurant for 4 euros. Why is it that if we go anywhere but the nicest places we are considered nothing more than a source of income. It’s happened with coffee, with bars, with a taxi ride. Even the postcards are overpriced! This wasn’t the case on the island of Syros.

Ah… Syros. Where people smiled when they saw us and had menus with English and Greek. Here all the prices are written in pencil. I understand if I’m buying a ribeye steak or a fresh swordfish but a cup of coffee? Why is that because we’ve come to this island outside the regular time, we are being forced to pay extra? They’d all be starving without us! They make it seem that anyway.

Sorry about the rant, but I had to share. Maybe Kea is nice in July and August, when its swarming with tourists and the vultures have plenty to choose from, but in May, go to Syros, the bustling capital of the Cyclades, for in Kea there are no wallets to be emptied but yours.

Scooter on Syros

 

 

The Babe on the beach.

In a day on Syros you can see lost mountains, explore ancient villages, lounge in a funky beach town, and sip pineapple juice as you watch the sunset. And all you need is 15 Euros for a scooter, and a phone to call George. That was who I was currently talking to.

“I pick you and we drive to get scooter. Your hotel?” George said. I trusted this proposition because he’d paid for a signboard in town. I assume human traffickers don’t advertise.



The Beard on his beast, Flytrap

Er… we’re staying at someone’s house, not a hotel.

“I don’t understand. Your hotel name?”

Can you just meet us at the Express Mart in Finikas?

“I don’t understand. Your hotel?”

Express Mart! Finikas.

“I don’t understand. Express Mart? Finikas? Thirty minutes?”

Yes! Express Mart! Finikas! Thirty minutes is great!

“I drive red car.”

**click**

Thirty minutes later and I’m pacing back and forth in front of the Express Mart. Is that his car? What about that one? Do you think that’s him?

“That car’s blue. That’s a bus. That’s a cat.” Raquel is nothing if not patient.

Finally George pulled up in—as promised—a red car. We piled in and drove off to rent a scooter. Raquel chose a blue one, and named it Fly-trap after what it would turn our mouths into, and we were off, albeit briefly. It seems 15 euros doesn’t exactly cover gasoline. But there’s not much better in life than a full tank of gas and nothing to but explore, so we paid the seven euroes it cost to fill Flytrap’s tank and vowed to discover every nook of the island.



Aloe in Anos Syros

The island of Syros is beautiful in May. Daisies and lavender bushes fight for the attention of honeybees. Goats and sheep lost in a maze of meter-tall rock walls munch on lush grass already starting to turn yellow. Blocky houses with funky arches and courtyards shaded by grape vines crowd together in the valleys and a whitewashed church trimmed in blue sits on top of almost every hill. It’s breathtaking and wonderful and feels very much alive.   

Our first stop was Anos Syros, a town atop a hill built in the 13^th century by the Phoenicians. It overlooks the city of Hermopolis, and doted on by the locals. They all insisted that to not go and wander the streets was to not experience Syros.

So we parked Fly-trap near a marble staircase and looked towards the top of the town. A sandy colored church poked out of a mess of houses, laundry lines and gardens. With no clear way to the top, we meandered in. Up and up we climbed, through a labyrinth of courtyards, potted flowers and hidden tavernas. We smelled women cooking, heard children practicing the violin, and saw men painting and repairing mortar, readying the town for summer. We climbed past them all, under tiny arches, up crooked staircases, and over sleeping cats until we arrived at the church at the top of the hill.

The Babe got us lost

We caught our breath, let our grins tire themselves out and started our descent back down.

Wait, did we go this way, or that way?

“Ooh look a kitty!”

Wow that’s a beautiful view!

“Look another cat!”

We emerged from Anos Syros completely disoriented and a good hundred vertical meters below where we had left Flytrap. To take the obvious path would be easily a kilometer of snaking, highly trafficked road, so we braved the labrynth again to try to find our way out. After a painfully long climb up a staircase that meandered through wildflowers and brick ruins, we were back in the medieval hilltop town. Like  and the minotaur, I kept my hand on the right wall, and we found our way out.

Feeling foolishly accomplished, there was nothing left to do but explore the rest of the island.

So on we drove, around blind turns and cliff-hugging bumpy roads until we reached the church of St. Michalis on the far end of the island. There was nothing but a big black rock, fields of flowers and a farm with perhaps two dozen beehives. Our curiosity quenched we headed south to the town of Kini, where we did nothing but swim, nap on the beach, and eat fresh anchovies from the Aegean Sea. We watched the silhouette of a lone fisherman cast his line against the sun set of a perfect day.

 
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Greek Restaraunts and Waiters

 

Greek food is amazing. Everyone knows feta and olives but there’s much more to the cuisine. We’ve had roasted anchovies, crispy croquettes, lemony fish soup, and cucumber salads. Dining in Greece is also great because of the waiters. Everywhere we’ve been, except for one amazing bakery run by a grumpy baker, we’ve been treated as honored guests to be fattened and entertained.  

Crispy croquettes

It’s good to travel with Raquel because she eats half of my plate while I eat hers. The best meal we’ve had thus far was veal slow cooked with fresh green beans in tomato sauce and a massive hunk of mousaka. Raquel said the veal was so tender it fell apart when you looked at it, the green beans popped when sprinkled with feta, but we agreed the best was the mousaka. Potatoes and eggplant were roast to perfection then layered with spicy minced meat, house made tomato sauce, and topped with a layer of creamy béchamel sauce and (surprise) a sprinkling of feta. It was then put in the oven just until the top turned all brown and crispy. I know the ingredients and how it was prepared because when our waiter saw that we’d licked our plates clean he thanked us profusely, and when I told him it was even better than my dad’s mousaka, he proceeded to tell us, in perhaps too much detail, all of his secrets for the next fifteen minutes.

Fried fresh anchovies (better than the sardines)

There must be a fraternity the waiters join, and if you speak Greek to them they’re forced to lavish you in kindness. At a seafood restaurant on the island of Kea a waiter saw us looking at the menu and practically dragged us to the back of the place to look at the fresh fish.

Looks delicious! But we just ate.

He didn’t care. He knew we’d be back, we’d seen the fish after all.

We returned the same night and were greeted by the same man. He helped us pick out a scorpion fish (I like to eat strange things, and scorpion fish look strange) and two delicious red fish whose name I have forgotten. The scorpion fish has a texture something like crab and a rich almost meaty taste. Raquel could not stop eating its cheeks. The other fish was light, flaky and crispy with salt and I cannot remember because I thanked one of the waiters in Greek, and he practically fell over in delight. Soon as we finished our fish we were presented Mastiha. I tried to ask the waiter exactly what it was to which he simply asked, “You know Mastih? It is made of Mastih!” It is so delicious that Raquel actually drinks it, perhaps too quickly for when the waiter saw our empty glasses he snapped his fingers and they were refilled. Raquel slid her second shot of this wonderful drink to me (she’s still a lightweight, no matter how good the booze) and I proceeded to become pleasantly inebriated. On our way out we thanked our hosts, efharisto, to which they added, efharisto poly, or thank you very much. A meal and a language lesson. Marvelous.

Amazing rabbit and onions. Notice the
falling-off-the-bone quality

But our best host was a man in Hermopolis. He was thin and goateed and did everything with a flourish, whether it was pouring wine or clearing plates. He recommended the rabbit, and we thankfully listened to his suggestion. It came with caramelized pearl onions and pile of fried potatoes. We rounded out the meal with a bowl of fat fresh beans topped in feta and white wine. The rabbit was savory and decadent and was accented by the sweetness from the caramelized onions which popped in your mouth, braising the rabbit in their juices with each bite. Between morsels of rabbit we scooped up the beans and feta with our fried potatoes and watched our waiter. The only time he wasn’t singing was when he was acting like a monster to make little children laugh, doing pratfalls when he banged his head against the signboard, or clearing a table, an activity he liked to do without a tray, much to the chagrin of the other waitress, who would follow him to be sure he didn’t drop anything. He repaid her assistance by placing a potted plant on her tray anytime she got too close. Maybe it was just the wine, but we found it all hilarious.

And what’s better than a fine meal served with a personal touch? A week of them.

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