One of innumerable beautiful canal views in Venice

We were in Venice for a few days in early June and now back for three days in late July. What’s changed?

1. The crowds are bigger; and
2. It’s hotter than hell.

Of course, the first thing you have to add is that Venice is a seriously beautiful city. There’s a reason all these people are here. Every so often you’ll hear of some other city being called “the Venice of <somewhere>.” Not true. Never. This is a one-of-a-kind place.

But the crowds. Wow. Earlier in the morning and in the evening it’s not quite so bad; the biggest cruise ships either haven’t pulled in yet or have left. But in the middle of the day it feels as though you can’t move sometimes. And it doesn’t help that temperatures are breaking into the 90s.

Still, did I mention that it’s beautiful? Beauty enhanced by the fact that our hotel was a 12th century building, right on some smallish canal. And sort of coincidentally, when Dan & Laura & Charlie & Elizabeth went for a gondola ride (Mark and I are way too cool to do something that touristy), they went right below our window. See?

The Germains in a gondola right below our 12th (or 13th?) century hotel

Otherwise there’s not a lot new to say about Venice. The rest of them all went to the Guggenheim Museum in Peggy Guggenheim’s old Grand Canal palace while I went to a park to read. They saw lots of modern art and got to read about how she slept with hundreds and hundreds of people. And buried her many dogs right there, too.

Charlie, Laura, Elizabeth, and Dan at the Guggenheim Museum right on the Grand Canal

Food is a bit of a challenge in Venice, given that tourists outnumber the locals by 20-to-1, or something like that. One night we went back to a place where Mark & I had gone to in June and liked. It was pricey, but there’s nothing particularly cheap in Venice. This time? Not so good. When we asked about an item on the menu – €7.00 for a plate of olive oil, thinking it must be vegetables or something in olive oil – we were told no, that was the cost of their very special olive oil for dunking bread. Cheap places give it to you for free, but not here. A small bottle of water was €4.00; you can usually get a big bottle for €2.50. And when we’d been waiting for 45 minutes after we’d finished our appetizers and still didn’t have our main courses, they started to explain and justify instead of just apologize, ‘cuz pretty obviously they’d just forgotten about it. Lest we complain too much, though, they did comp us two bottles of wine. So we didn’t complain anymore.

OK, crowds, heat, bad restaurant experiences; that’s too negative. For all that, just walking around Venice for a couple of days is a fabulous experience. Heck, just getting from the train station to near your hotel via the “vaporetto” – the local bus-in-a-boat – on the Grand Canal is a great experience. And there’s great art, of course, too; enough Tintoretto to last a lifetime. It may be a while, though, before I feel the urge to come back and do it again.

Titian’s Assumption, in Venice’s Basilica di Santa Maria Glorioso die Frari, was on Laura’s must-see list, and it was worth it. No less an aesthete than Oscar Wilde called it the most beautiful picture in Italy.

Me and my old college roommate Jeff. After making these travel plans with Dan & Laura, we discovered that Jeff and his wife Sue were going to be in Venice on a couple overlapping days – preparing to bike the Dolomites for a week, to make it completely coincidental. So Mark & I had a great dinner reunion with them our first night.

Speaking of old college roommates … they’re still crazy after all these years

Cool Charlie & Elizabeth

Did I mention the crowds in Venice?

Another beautiful canal view

The courtyard entrance to our 12th (or was it 13th?) century hotel

On our last night we had drinks at the Westin, right on the entrance to the Grand Canal. Expensive, yes, but with these views totally worth it.

Our travel mates for the next two weeks: Elizabeth, Laura, Dan, & Charlie, posing here in the Bargello

We came through Florence last October and loved it: beautiful architecture, fantastic museums, even great running along the Arno. So when our friends Dan & Laura wanted to travel in Italy this year, there was no question that we’d come back. I mean, it’s Florence.

There’s not much new to say about the city; it didn’t change a lot in the last eight months. A big change for us, though, is that we were a lot more active with the Germains than we were on our own. We can be kind of lazy as we’re traveling around and don’t always get to all the tourist sites one should. And not that rarely we fail to make reservations in advance for key places like Da Vinci’s Last Supper in Milan. When traveling with friends, though, who need to cram more stuff in on a time-limited vacation, we step it up a notch.

A view of Florence from atop the campanile

And so it was in Florence. Some of it we saw last year – the Duomo, the Baptistry, the Uffizi – but the big highlight for us was the the Grand Museum of the Duomo, something Dan bought tickets for before he left the States. Wow – what a tragedy that we’d missed it last year. Chock full of great art, along with a full-scale replica of the medieval facade of the Duomo before it was renovated in the 16th century renaissance style. Very cool.

And then there was that David guy. Again, one of those things for which you need to get tickets in advance. So we had tickets in advance. Mark & I have seen him before; we were here in 1995 and we’d both been there years before we met. Still, it’s a danged impressive piece that I probably enjoyed even a little more this time having just read Irving Stone’s biographical novel of Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy.

David

There was one noticeable difference in Florence: while there are a lot of tourists in Florence in October, there are A LOT of tourists in July. Oh my God. The historic core of the city is a pretty small area and there were just thousands and thousands of tourists everywhere. Next time we come here, we’ll do it off season.

We’re traveling with the Germains for two weeks; from Florence we go to Bologna, Venice, and Rome. So without a lot new to say about the city, here are a bunch of pictures.

Charlie and Laura, pretending they like each other

The Ponte Vecchio over the Arno River in evening light

The Bargello, the oldest public building in Florence and at one time a prison, houses a wonderful collection of statues and is probably my favorite spot in Florence. This Bacchus was done by a young Michelangelo and was in fact rejected by the Cardinal who commissioned it. After all, Greek gods are supposed to be GODS, not dissipated, louche drunks.

Here’s Verrocchio’s David, also in the Bargello. Not quite as masculine as Michelangelo’s.

Laura in front of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus in the Uffizi

Meanwhile, over in the Grand Museum of the Duomo was this grand Mary Magdalene – living as a saintly hermit after the crucifixion – by Donatello. It looked so modern it was hard to believe it was well over 500 years old.

So good she needed a close-up

This colorful painting, also in the Grand Museum, was by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo’s first art teacher

Laura & Mark in front of the original doors to the Baptistry of St. John, now kept in the Grand Museum. Created by Lorenzo Ghiberti in the early 15th century, Michelangelo called them the Gates of Paradise.

The Baptistry, dating from the early 12th century, is the oldest part of the cathedral complex. This is the ceiling, clearly Byzantine, with no signs yet of the Renaissance to come.

With both the Duomo and the bell tower, there was a lot of climbing to be done. Here are Dan and Elizabeth far above the city.

And me and Mark

Looking down on the Duomo from the bell tower

A view of the cathedral while climbing up the bell tower

And finally, shortly before getting to Florence we discovered that our old friend Karen – from way back in our DC days – was going to be in Florence on her honeymoon the same time we would be there. So we took MA & Karen to dinner to celebrate. Thanks Facebook!

The Duomo, the highlight of any trip to Siena

We’d been to Siena once before, but it was over 20 years ago and only for a day or at most two. So with a couple days before meeting Dan & Laura in Florence it made a perfect stop.

Siena is such a beautiful city in part because it failed. Back in medieval times Siena – allied primarily with the Holy Roman Emperor – competed with Florence, a supporter of the Pope in his battles with the Holy Roman Empire. By the late 13th century Florence had won and essentially subjugated Siena. So while Florence flourished and moved into the Renaissance, Siena remained stuck in its Gothic time warp. By the time the plague hit in the mid-14th century, killing half of Siena’s residents, they no longer had the strength to resist the Florentine Medici encroachment.

A little pre-dinner stop on one of the winding side streets of Siena

That history is abundantly alive as you walk through the city today, with UNESCO recognizing it as “the embodiment of a medieval city.” The highlight of all this is the Duomo, dating from the 13th century. The exterior is simply stunning, a gorgeous blend of white, green, and red marble. And then you go inside. Again, simply stunning, with black and white marble stripes giving the space real character. The marble inlaid floor, with over 50 panels designed by dozens of artists, is one of a kind. One of the side doors in the church leads to the Piccolomini Library, named for the guy who later became Pius II, has beautiful frescoes all around the walls and ceiling. These pictures can only begin to give a sense of it.

Interior of the Duomo

St. Paul, standing outside the Piccolomini Library, was sculpted by a young Michelangelo in the early 16th century, one of four of his statues in the Duomo. It is said that the face is a self portrait.

The canonization of St. Catherine of Siena, one of the frescoes in the Piccolomini Library (presumably before she was beheaded). The character in red tights in the lower left was Raphael, who was a young assistant to the primary painter Pintorichio, standing to his left.

There were a few other sites associated with the Duomo that were treats as well. A nearby museum houses a lot of the original artwork from the church, while the nearby baptistry has works by Ghiberti and Donatello, two of the most important early Renaissance sculptors whose works inspired Michelangelo. At some point in the 14th century there was a plan to expand the Duomo massively. They got some of it built, but then the plague hit and the economy went to hell and it was discovered that there were some serious problems with the architecture and they abandoned it. The good news though is that one of the major walls is still standing and you can climb up for some great views.

Some of the original statues from the Duomo, now housed in a nearby museum. They were made to be viewed from far below, explaining the strange way they lean out when viewed straight on.

Mark atop the wall that was supposed to form part of the New Duomo. The expansion was never completed but the remaining wall makes a great viewing point.

What else? The Piazza del Campo is the main square and the location of a twice-yearly horse race that’s been going on since the 16th century. The iconic tower of the Public Palace is another long climb with great views.

View of the Campo from atop the Tower. During the daytime heat, people were always lined up inside the Tower’s shade.

And then there’s St. Catherine of Siena. A saintly native of Siena (and probably a little weird), she died in Rome in 1380. Siena wanted her body back, but they knew they couldn’t get the whole body past the Roman guards who protected important relics. So a few of them went down to Rome, cut off her head, and brought that back, where it’s now proudly on display in a big church. They don’t let you too close, but it’s clearly a head.

St. Catherine’s head. Photos weren’t allowed, so this is cadged from the web.

And just in case there’s any doubt about the authenticity, there’s a sign in both English and Italian that says

The relic of the sacred head of Saint Catherine of Siena has been conserved in this basilica since 1383.

Numerous official and historical documents have established its veracity.

The relic is the real head of Saint Catherine of Siena.

OK, does that settle it?

Finally, two changes we’ve noticed since our last visit. The small but sad change is at the top of the tower in the Piazza del Campo. When we were there in 1995 there were no “artificial” barriers around the perimeter. You could sit on the stones and – if you made a mistake – fall to your death. We were amazed that there had been no lawsuits requiring them to close it off and we’ve remarked on that difference between Italy and the U.S. many, many times since. Today? Yeah, railings around the top.

You used to be able to just sit on that wall, though it could be fatal. Alas, now it’s safe.

And the other big change? The number of tourists. My God, but Siena is just swarming with hordes of tourists. Now admittedly we’re there in peak season but still. Wow. The world is getting richer and millions more people have the means to travel. On balance that’s a good thing. But it turns a place like Siena into something more akin to Disney World than a medieval city.

From here we’re off to Florence to meet Dan & Laura. I’m sure we won’t have so many tourists there. Right?

A view of Siena and the Duomo

One of the marble inlays on the floor of the Duomo. This is Fortune, showing how unstable good luck can be with one foot on a sphere and the other on a boat with a broken mast.

Hermes Trismegistus in marble on the floor of the Duomo. Believed to be derived from the Greek god of religion and mythology, Hermes, Hermes Trismegistus was thought to be a divine source of wisdom. Given his pagan roots, I was surprised to find him here in the Duomo, but his writings were big during the Renaissance.

Siena in the light of a setting sun

Madonna with one of the ugliest Baby Jesuses I’ve ever seen

The Piccolomini Library, inside the Duomo

Another view of Siena

Me & Mark atop the wall of the never-finished New Duomo. The new church would have been enormous, reaching al the way back to that bell tower.

Lunch

More elegant food

This boarded up hotel was right across the street from our favorite lunch stop. We’re thinking with a little renovation this could be our next project.