Once again, we wind up in Milan

Our hotel room

After almost three weeks of traveling, we had reached that point of any vacation in which we were very tired and had run out of clean laundry. And once again, as in 2003, we were ending our trip in Milan. The last city in a trip usually gets the short shrift, and knowing this, we tried to remain alert. We wanted to appreciate Milan.

We had had such nice hosts all through our trip that at first we felt a little at odds in this big, anonymous city. But being New Yorkers, we figured we could find our way around and entertain ourselves.

Because we were staying in the same hotel as on our previous trip, we already knew that we didn't want to have dinner that first night on the nearby Via Dante. We felt it was the Milanese equivalent of Times Square. So we asked the hotel clerk (a very kind girl whom we also remembered from our previous trip) where we should go. Once we got to the area she recommended, we still felt that the selection of restaurants was a little tourist-y (they were the kind where the waiters stand outside and try to get you to come in), but we finally selected one and found that the food was good, if expensive. We sat outdoors.

We had, unknowingly, chosen a restaurant on the street where the fortune tellers hang out. We had barely begun our meal when the first one set up her table. She was wearing a red dress, a red sequined shawl, a lot of make-up, and she had dyed-blonde hair. As groups of young people walked by, the women often dressed in shorts and heels, she would shout, "Ciao, ragazzi!" to get their attention. But the only two groups I saw stop at her table were both English-speaking, and the women were tall, pretty, young blondes. Can you guess what she told them?

There were also people walking their dogs, a toddler who wandered around the sidewalk near our table, and a man who kept trying to push a dozen roses on us. The rose-peddler was rather annoying, but on the whole, we enjoyed having some street life with our dinner. Bob got to use a new favorite get-rid-of-peddlers line that he had invented in Sarzana: "Parlo solo cinese." It usually gets a laugh (being so obviously false), and sometimes it gets rid of the peddler.

Towards the end of our meal, we realized it was getting dark, but from the wrong direction. The wind picked up, and we heard rumbling. But we were already halfway through dessert, so it didn't concern us.

Besides, we were very entertained by the fortune teller. She seemed to be hedging her bets against the storm, removing first one chair from her table, then another and another, and stacking them against the nearest store front. By this time she had been joined by several other fortune-tellers, none of whom were doing much business in this threatening weather. They sat at their tables like so many flies gathering, all up and down the street, candles sputtering in the wind. Bob wondered aloud whether she could predict whether it was actually going to rain. The next moment, a gust blew out all her candles.

We finished our meal and set off towards the nearby Brera Quarter (in the opposite direction from our hotel) with our map, hoping to see La Scala lit up in the dark. We made it as far as the Chiesa di S. Marco and were once again getting our bearings when the wind picked up suddenly and blew whirling dust in our faces. Lightning flashed, and it became very obvious that it really was going to pour. We spat out leaf bits, laughing, and started to beat it back to the hotel. We did stop briefly, though, under a bar awning where a crowd was watching the final game of the World Cup. Bob poked his head in and looked towards the screen. "Zero/zero!" someone yelled out. The question didn't even need asking. On the way back by our restaurant, there were even more fortune-tellers. I noticed one in a bright orange dress with a large, green satin hat. She almost glowed in the shop lights.

We had barely walked through the fortress-like doors to our hotel when we heard the storm break with a fury. But we were safely inside. We sat in our glass hotel room, watching the constant lightning outside and the end of the World Cup on the hotel-room TV: "E' finita! L'Espagna e' la campiona del mondo per la prima volta!"

The next day, CZ and I wandered around in the heat while Bob went to meetings. Lots of things were closed, because it was Monday, but we familiarized ourselves with the Parco Sempione, the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele, and the Duomo.

CZ took the photos of the interior, the bronze relief, and the candles, above

Bob had been going to various meetings with potential Italian clients all along, but in Milan, this became more or less the primary purpose for the trip. After one of these meetings, he came back to the hotel with an interesting story: He had met a young woman from Castelnuovo di Garfagnana who was perfectly fluent in both Italian and English. And the reason she spoke English so well was that she had spent her first eight years in Scotland--she was one of the Scots-Italians.

This young woman, Tamara (pronounced Ta-MAH-ra), offered to meet us for dinner after work so she could show us an area of town she liked, and so we could trade impressions of Castelnuovo. We ended up walking to the Navigli section, a student area in the southern part of town that reminded me somewhat of Greenwich Village. It was also the section of town that contained a lot of old canals that the Renaissance Milanese had once used to transport goods to the nearest river. Leonardo da Vinci had a hand in designing them. Now they made a nice excuse for a row of restaurants down either side.

We didn't have a particular restaurant in mind, but all of them looked better than the one we'd eaten in the night before, so we were happy. We ended up in one that had unusual takes on all the traditional Italian dishes. Tamara explained what it was like to grow up in Castelnuovo from the age of eight until she went back to college in the U.K. Yes, it was nice and cozy--maybe a little too cozy when you're a young single. She liked Milan better, though she knew that many people didn't. Tamara also said her native Scottish accent could be a little misleading, because every now and then while she was in college, she wouldn't understand some word, and people, not realizing that Italian was her first language, would simply think she was a little dense! It was fun to be able to get in-depth impressions from someone who knew so much of Italy.

By the time we walked home at around ten p.m., the whole district was teeming with students. They sat around S. Lorenzo delle Colonne, talking, smoking, and performing music. Once again I had that slightly confused, dislocated feeling that I'd had several times before in Italy. During the day, it seemd that the churches were overrun by tourists (of which I was one) and looked upon as places revenue. At night, they were places where people hung out. How did the Italians feel about them as churches?

Bob on his way to a meeting

On the next and last day of our trip, Tuesday, CZ and I each picked a sight we wanted to see. We spent the morning in the Pinoteca della Brera, Milan's chief art museum. It was fun to see so many of the principal paintings from art history survey courses in person--Raphael's The Marriage of the Virgin, Mantegna's Dead Christ, Bellini's Madonna and Child, Piero della Francesca's Madonna and Child with Saints, and an enormous Veronese dinner scene with Mary anointing Jesus' feet. We sat for a long time just taking in all that was going on in that one painting.

In the afternoon, we went back to an archeological museum that we had visited in 2003. I was a little disappointed to find that CZ had no memory of it, but I think she actually enjoyed going there this time. She likes the idea that Italian cities have remains of their previous incarnations underneath, and that if you look closely you can puzzle out what's what. This particular museum is built over part of the late Roman city walls near the emperor Maximin's palace. One of the wall's towers had been incorporated into a church cloister, which was in turn bombed during WWII, and then partially turned into a museum with the church still extant next door. This church, S. Maurizio, wasn't even particularly famous, but it had very well-done frescoes. And out behind the museum we found an archeologist at work, digging in the yard of the cloister. And of course, every set of ruins has its cats, who have been here all along. Once again, we were witnessing the continual layering that is Italy!

Frescoes by Bernardino Luini in the Chiesa di S. Maurizio, next to the museum.

A Roman sculpture from Caesarea Maritima.

Top to bottom: Dripstones in the shapes of dogs, ruins of an imperial palace (a couple of blocks from the museum), and an archeological dig behind the museum

A day on Lake Como

Mr. B and Vera

(This post is continued from The Hobbit House, below):

Vera's dad, Sr. B, met us down at the lake by mid-morning on Saturday. Vera had hinted that he wanted to take us out in his boat, but he didn't really tell us what we'd be doing exactly. I think he liked the surprise element! And like Sr. Bertolani in Castelnuovo, I think he liked to practice his English.

So first Sr. B took us to the western side of Lake Como as far as Bellagio, where we had stayed in 2003. He had told us about the way each town along the way earned its livelihood. He also pointed out every villa and told a bit about its history. At least one of them had been the setting of an old film. Almost all of them were grand.

During the previous parts of our vacation, every time we had told someone that we were going to stay with friends in Como, they would inevitably ask, with a mischievous grin, "Is your friend George Clooney?" Apparently George's residence on Lake Como is quite well-known, so it got to be something of a joke. Sr. B picked right up on the joke. Every time we saw a villa on the lake, he would say, "Many people think this is where George Clooney lives, but it isn't." (Occasionally he did know the person who lived there, though.)

As we circled back around at Bellagio, I thought we would just head back to Argegno, but this is where Sr. B revealed his surprise. We were going to a friend's restaurant, by boat! The restaurant was in the town of Careno, on the shadow side of the lake. Sr. B explained that the shadow side was where the locals who worked supplying the rest of the towns lived. Because it didn't get as much sun, the vacationers didn't flock to that side. Also, there wasn't much room to build, because the hills rose straight up from the water. But we liked Careno immediately.

This restaurant was apparently one you had to know about by word of mouth. It was meant to be approached from the water, where the proprietor's wife would go down to welcome the boats. You could possibly find it while in the town, but you'd have to go out of your way, down a steep hill. The restaurant had a name, but there was no sign outside, and even Sr. B himself didn't know it. He just knew the proprietor. And it didn't have a menu--they just served whatever they were cooking that day.

I must say that being taken by surprise to this restaurant, by boat, and hosted by Sr. B was one of the most special, fun, and quintessentially Italian things we did during the whole trip! The courses were all fish from the lake. There was a fish pate' appetizer, a salted fish almost like a large sardine, small friend fish with risotto, and finally, an apricot tart (thankfully, without fish!). This came with a bottle of wine and some limoncello. I was dubious about the limoncello, but it wasn't strong like the kind sold in the U.S. And this being an Italian meal, we sat talking for two hours, in the lazy afternoon heat.

After we were finished with lunch, Sr. B had another surprise. He got a set of keys from the proprietor and took us to a tiny church next door. It was only one room, with a couple of pews, a vaulted ceiling, and some frescoed decoration. A crucifix stood in a window near the back. Some markers on the portico outside the church were carved with the family name of the proprietor. This was apparently his family's ancestral chapel.

As we walked back down to the boat, we came across a bocce court, and Sr. B took some time to explain the basics of the game to Bob. They even rolled a few balls. I gather that it's a little like outdoor bowling.

Finally we motored back across the lake (where Sr. B at last pointed in the direction of George Clooney's estate), and everyone went home for an afternoon rest. But we met again for dinner. This time Sra. B came too, and we went to a mountain-style restaurant. Sr. B explained that there were two distinct regional cuisines, one lake and fishing-oriented, and the other mountain and game-oriented. (I kept forgetting that we were only two miles from Switzerland!) At any rate, the mountain restaurant was much more upscale than the lake one. We also enjoyed meeting Sra. B, and although she spoke exactly two words of English the entire evening (repeated verbatim and without comprehension from something Vera said), we found that we understood enough Italian that we felt she was part of the conversation. She reminded me just a little bit of Zsa Zsa Gabor, with slightly disheveled (in a cute way) red hair.

The next day was Sunday, and I took a walk through Argegno, not exactly knowing where I was going. Down by the water, I found a large church that was not meeting for the summer. Instead it had a sign directing people up the hill to the church with the bells that played songs. But as the sanctuary itself was open, I sat down. There I found a psalter in Italian (two different translations) and read psalms for a long time. It worked well to sort of whisper them aloud. Since they were all familiar to me in English, I had no trouble reading them.

I haven't been to the Riviera, but I would imagine Lake Como is sort of the Italian equivalent. It's where well-to-do Milanese go to spend the weekend. While having breakfast by the water, Bob and I decided that Argegno must be the part of Lake Como where young families who couldn't quite afford the fancier towns went, because there were babies everywhere! But we decided that for all its glamour, we liked Castelnuovo better, because it really felt like someone's home.

During our lunch in Careno, Sr. B told us about his friend Bruce from Miami. "He is a good friend, Bruce!" he would laugh as he told stories. Bruce liked big hotels and cigars from Havana. Once the Bs went to visit him in Miami. But one thing puzzled him: "Bruce lives a 'click' life. He stays in his house, with air conditioning. He goes to his car, with air conditioning. He goes to the pool. He washes the dishes, click. He turns on the TV, click. Everything is a button."

Perhaps it was trying to explain what he meant in limited English that made him stick to concrete descriptions, but whether he knew it or not, he had vividly captured one of the main differences between Italy and the United States. Whereas Italians prefer beauty of all sorts at the expense of efficiency or even comfort, Americans tend to prefer the opposite. Not always, but often. Sr. B was, wittingly or unwittingly, describing dependence on technology and luxury of a particularly American type.

Not that I'd want to turn off my air conditioner in Miami, either! But Sr. B did show us a lovely alternative to a life that goes click.

The Hobbit House

We drove into Como on Friday evening, after leaving Castelnuovo in the morning and stopping for the afternoon in Cremona. Our friend Vera came straight from work to meet us in the main piazza, and then we all went to have dinner and a walk around. It was dark by the time we finished dinner, and as is the case every evening in Italy, there were crowds of people, of all ages, walking around and having a social hour. On one piazza people were setting up for a rock concert, while in the next piazza a brass ensemble was playing. We looked around for a while, but Vera had to go to a wedding party in Milan, and we were tired from a long day, so we all drove on to nearby Argegno, where the three of us would be staying in Vera's vacation house.

When we got to Argegno, we followed Vera's car way uphill to a tiny parking lot above the town. There, her dad was waiting with another, smaller car. We piled all the suitcases into this car and he drove into the town itself--down a very steep hill (we're getting used to this by now), between very narrow streets. Occasionally we'd hear a thump. We were driving down steps!

But before we got nearly to the bottom of the town, Vera's dad stopped at a little door and got out. As he opened it, he made some polite excuses of the "Oh, it's nothing!" sort, and lead us into Vera's townhouse, which he had renovated himself. Perhaps it was partly that we were so tired, but we were especially delighted by its coziness. "It's a hobbit house!" CZ and I exclaimed, because the first floor was all stone and almost completely underground. There was even a small cupboard with runes on it! In fact, the whole place was a storybook conglomeration of little salvaged odds and ends attached to the walls and hanging from the ceilings. It could have been a hobbit hole, or Badger's home, or Mr. and Mrs. Beavers', with an Italian accent.

As we climbed up the flights of stairs, CZ revised her opinion somewhat. "It's really more like a treehouse, so it's for elves. Hobbits would never live on this many floors." She was right about the treehouse aspect, because the apartment consisted of four storeys, each of them a tiny room, except that the main bedroom (on the third floor) was paired with a bathroom--so the order was living room, kitchen, bedroom/bath, loft. But the name "hobbit house" had stuck, and that's what we call it now when we talk about it amongst ourselves. (Although CZ, being a stickler for accuracy, sometimes mutters, "Elf house!")

The hobbit idea might also have come on because we were so tired from traveling that we felt like hobbits after a day's march, so we went straight to bed.

But here are some photos I took the next morning:

Top to bottom: The front entrance to the townhouse, a view from the entrance, some alpine momentoes (we're only two miles from Switzerland), and two views of the kitchen, one through the wrought iron stairs.

Top to bottom: The main bedroom, with a little window that had to be opened from a ladder, stairs to the loft, and me taking photos of myself in the bathroom mirror.

Top to bottom: The main bedroom as seen from the loft, and the loft itself, which is above the bathroom.

The next morning we woke up to bells and the usual crying swifts. These weren't just any bells, though, but bells that played various complete songs at different hours. CZ went around humming them and wrote a couple of them down in her notebook while we were there. (She also practiced in her loft, and once, after a pause, there was applause from the street below!) After the bells, we started hearing people walk by, and occasionally we heard motorcycles and even a car or two. (Thump...thump.) I was so curious that I had to get up and look! (And besides, I was hungry and there was no food in the house.) When I opened the window, we were in the middle of a tiny hill town, and yes, there was a stepped street below. A few houses down, the street narrowed even more, so much that even the ubiquitous Italian Panda couldn't have gotten through it.

We went out early and found a cafe by the lake for our morning coffee and brioche. Our weekend at Lake Como had begun. But more about that later...

Vera's house, as seen the next morning

Cremona

The scene in this photo is what I was looking at when I realized I really liked Cremona. It's a park in the middle of the city. I liked the way the light filtered throught the trees. It might have also helped that I was eating lunch.

We'd stopped in Cremona as a side trip on our way from the Garfagnana region to Lake Como. We thought that since the city was famous for its violins, we'd see if anyone knew anything about CZ's violin. It's old, but no one knows who made it or where. It's kind of a fun mystery.

So we went straight to the Stradivarius Museum. We meant to go in, but we didn't get that far. We asked the lady behind the front desk if she knew of any shops where someone might be able to help us with our violin. She recommended someone right away, and American who restored the museum's violins.

The shop's address was only a couple of blocks from the museum, so we went there right away, met Mr. Carlson, left the violin with him, and went to get some lunch and have a look around.

You'll notice that there's a sort of bicycle motif in these photos and also in other ones throughout the trip. This is partly because Italy is so bicycle-friendly, and Cremona, being flat, was especially so. But it's also just because I liked all the different kinds of bikes. I think this rubber ducky one, above, was my all-time favorite, though. While we were having lunch, I also saw a baby squeezing a rubber ducky on his dad's bike. (Not the one above!)

When we returned to the violin shop, Mr. Carlson has some interesting things to say. First of all, our violin likely wasn't Florentine, as we had thought, but French. He gave us the name of a maker whose violins were similar, and an approximate year.

He told us the likely reason for the hole in the back of the scroll was not for a processional, as we had been told, but either just to hang it up, or because strings used to be really long and violinists would let the extra length poke out the back (somehow--I never quite understood completely).

He also said that the f-holes hadn't been so much repaired as purposely recut. The French maker's violins had a thin sound, which someone had tried to fix. And since most violins are identified by the cut of the f-holes, we had lost a big clue as to the maker. The conclusion: Our violin had a good sound and was probably worth what we paid for it, but it wasn't like we were sitting on a winning lottery ticket--an unidentified violin by a famous maker. Which was fine with us, because we bought it for CZ to play.

We got to talking about what it was like to be an American living in Italy year-round. Mr. Carlson said that Cremona was a beautiful city, but it had an unfortunate tendency to stay foggy and rainy in the winter, and to retain pollution, because of its location in the Po valley. "If Cremona were in Tuscany, everyone would be here!" So I guess Mr. Carlson choose his city for much the same reason as we chose our violin: For his own musical enjoyment.