This is totally harshing my Italy vibe.

I know airline stories are like bad childbirth stories (spare us the gory details!), but I’m writing this anyway. (you know, catharsis).

After getting up at 3:30 AM to catch my flight from Milan, I got to the airport to find they’d re-booked all of my flights – this meant that I didn’t have a lot of time to spare at Heathrow. I arrived with less than the minimum amount of time recommended between terminals, and sprinted to security. The guy there took a look at my boarding card and signalled to the people in the Fast Track line to take care of me, saying, “you have ONE HOUR.” I ran off, stripping myself of belts and shoes as I went, with the theme to Mission Impossible swelling in the background.

I made that connection, but my luggage didn’t. Due to filing my lost luggage report, I missed my connection to SL – they rebooked me on the next flight, I boarded, and then…

Flight Attendant: Was that lighting?

(Interesting FAA Fact: At an airport, if traffic control sees lighting, nobody gets to move for five minutes. Ground crews go inside, everything stops.)

We were on the tarmac for six hours.

That actually wasn’t so bad. The flight attendants were great, and the plane developed something of a cocktail party atmosphere (though I don’t usually sleep through 50 % of cocktail parties).

They led us back through the airport, and we found ourselves outside security. This was a mistake. If you ever get stuck in an airport due to a weather cancellation, avoid leaving the gate area. They have carpet there. And for non-airline-caused cancellations, they won’t put you up in a hotel.

A nice Korean guy and I found a space on the second floor by the chapel, and I slept with my pack towel under me, and my pashmina over me.

The next day went something like this: Stand in line. Get standby tickets. Fail to clear standby. Be told by arm-folded desk agent that he/she can’t help us and he/she is off duty anyway. Repeat.

I did weasel my way into the Crown lounge and got biscuits, drinks, and a nap in a comfy chair.

One of the other girls and I were bonding over our hardships.
Girl: I don’t want to spend another night on the floor with one of their little pillows!
Pause.
Me: You had a pillow?
Girl: It was a really small one!

Then, magically, standby worked. My Korean friend and I were the last people on the plane, and were ridiculously excited to be there. I watched the weather, practiced my yoga breathing until we actually were in the air, and seriously considered biting my nails.

I have never been so happy to see those big salt flats and touch down in Utah.

How did my life go so quickly from “idyllic” to “I want my mummy!” on the Suckometer? But to be honest, it was a small price to pay for three months of easy living, and I didn’t have any of the horror stories of some of the other passengers (missed wedding, lost job, split up from kids).

The flight was a stunning journey – I had window seats, and so saw the snowy alps and blue lakes by Milan, then a picture postcard view over the Thames, where I got to count the famous edifices- Tower Bridge, Millennium dome, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buck House. Then New York,and the wild west.

Now, if they could just find my luggage…

Hot in the City: Milan

Milan was hot. Not sure that I have much else to say. Really hot. Exhaustingly, drainingly, stickily, why am I bothering to lift my lukewarm water bottle to my lips, it’s just a waste of valuable energy as I’m going to die of heatstroke anyway, and I might as well use my last vestiges of strength to drag myself to that gelateria in the distance so I can die happy, although it’s probably a mirage come to think of it hot.

OK, so there were one or two interesting sights. Apparently I’m still having issues with believing guidebooks, or at least internalising what I read in them, because the guidebook told me that Milan’s duomo was the fourth largest cathedral in the world, and my reaction when I saw it was still “wow, that’s absolutely enormous!!!” And beautiful, and quite different from all the Tuscan ones I’ve got used to lately.








There was a rather creepy crypt downstairs, where I couldn’t help imagining nasty Inquisitional-type things happening (not based on historical fact), and an installation that consisted of a big black square overlaying most of the screen of a segment of Zeffirelli’s film about the Passion.

And then I went to the Brera Pinoteca, where they had everything from 4000 year-old figures to Braque. Standouts were Piero della Francesca’s Pala Montefeltro, Raphael’s Spozalizio della vergine, and Hayez’s Kiss. There are some paintings that seem to light up the room when you enter, and those were the ones for me today. The fact that I could still care about paintings when I was on the brink of death from dehydration says a lot about Piero and his colleagues.

Here’s the park. Doesn’t it look nice and green and cool? It’s not.










Here’s me ready to go home now. Utah’s probably lovely and cool right now, isn’t it?







I might manage one or two more posts before I wrap this up, but if not, thanks for reading - I can't tell you how nice it's been to get your blog comments and emails!

Una Bella Notte

As I was leaving in a day or two, Firenze decided to hold a fireworks display in honour of me, which I thought was rather sweet. It happened to be St. John the Baptist’s day, too. We went down to the Ponte Vecchio, listened to the singer there and watched the sunset. We walked a little way along the river as the fireworks began. There were people EVERYWHERE, lining the streets on both sides of the Arno, and spilling out of the Uffizi area. The fireworks were lit from the Piazza Michelangelo, and were stunning, going on forever, with a big gold, red, white and green finale.









Evening on the Ponte Vecchio. My camera was in the wrong mode, so my fireworks pics are rubbish.

Lucca

Silk working and the many merchants with their great abilities brought great richness and the town was interested by a lots of transformations. But wealth and richness oft mean envy and rivalry between the families; Lucca, Guelph, was in contrast with the Ghibelline Pisa.

That’s not me, that’s the Citta of Lucca tourist brochure. I do love dodgy Italian-English translations. Plus I thought it might be nice to get one or two real live facts on my blog before I wrap it up, in case you’re tired of me being all “omigosh you guys this is like totally awesome.”

I didn’t have incredibly high expectations of Lucca. I’d heard of its famous walls, but couldn’t somehow bring myself to a state of frenzied anticipation over some walls. Besides, I’d seen the Etruscan walls at Fiesole – what more could bricks and mortar hold for me?

Well, it turns out that “walls” was a pale shadow of a description. What we have in Lucca, I would describe as ramparts, and massive ones at that. There are grassy picnic areas and a wide path on top, and they give you a great view down onto the town’s buildings and into the walled gardens. I rented a bike for an hour and cycled around there, ringing my bell at the tourists, and on such a hot day it was great to have a little breeze in my hair.

(It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been on a bike, but apparently it’s just one of those things you don’t forget how to do. It’s like…it’s like…gosh, I just can’t think of a good analogy here.)

Then I explored the town all afternoon. It’s a great city to walk around— amazingly unspoiled, laid-back atmosphere, friendly people. I visited a few of the churches and museums, then flaked out in the sun on the ramparts for a while.




The Walls







parts of "portrait of a lady' were filmed here.








really pretty church. Santa something.







the duomo







The roman amphitheatre

Really, Mind-numbingly Stupid Things I Did That I Was Too Embarrassed to Write About Before Now (Incomplete).

And you thought the train to Fiesole was a low point. As I start preparing to go home, I thought I’d share this little summary. This list is clearly marked INCOMPLETE, hopefully ensuring that the Gods of Karma and Superstition don’t think I am suffering from hubris and make me do something even stupider in the next few days.

Don’t judge me.

Booking my overnight train to Rome for the WRONG day and not realising until the conductor told me, and then being freaked out for the whole journey, as every time a new conductor came round I expected them to drag me off the train and either leave me on a platform in the middle of Austria/Italy in the middle of the night to be murdered by mountain bandits, or put me in jail for train fraud and then have me SHOT by firing squad in the morning. What? It was night – so maybe my imagination gets a little overactive at night. Leave me alone.

Leaving my computer cord in P’s car in Vienna, before taking the train to Rome. Thank you, Royal Mail. The Italian postal service refused to take it to the convent, thus beginning my rocky relationship with them.

Taking the train to Fiumicino airport in Rome. Well, part of the way there. This was unwise, as my plane was leaving from Ciampino. Fortunately something said “maybe you should check your ticket,” and I hopped off quick smart at the next station.

Leaving my camera at the hostel in Rome. Bless the honest innkeeper and his safe for keeping it secure for me. And bless the voice in my head for making me check my bag just before I got on the train. The right train, for once.

Yes, I know I shouldn’t be let out on my own. I now check my plane ticket home about six times a day. I do notice that all these things seem to be connected to Rome, so let’s hope that that is the Bermuda triangle of my brain. But NOT hope in a HUBRISTIC, ASKING FOR TROUBLE kind of way.

Summer Days

Theatre in the Street
Italians apparently have a real thing for Charlie Chaplin (did everyone in the world know this but me?). There was a Charlie Chaplin exhibit in Bologna, there are books on him all over the place, and there was a Chaplin impersonator/performer on the street near my apt the other night. He started setting up, and within minutes a big crowd had assembled to watch him swing his cane and make balloon animals.

Music in the Square
A piano was placed in the Piazza della Signoria today, and handsome men took turns playing it, rather brilliantly. I stood and listened for some time, and then heard a burst of clapping from behind me – a bride had just tossed her bouquet and a middle-aged woman caught it. You see quite a few wedding parties in the piazza – it’s apparently Florence’s equivalent of temple square, and is a beautiful place for a wedding – and you automatically have about a thousand people there who are happy to celebrate with you.



Don't you think the man on the right looks astonishingly like the nervous guy in Ocean's 11?




















Singing in the Hills
In the evening, I went to a concert given by an American girl I met at church. When I first beheld her I thought she might be a bit touched, but it turns out she’s just rather brilliant, and once I disabused her of the idea that I was a BYU undergrad we got along famously. She’s a graduate voice student at a prestigious school, and has sung for all sorts of prestigious people. She’s got a wonderful, wall-shaking voice, is a knockout performer, beautiful, and has the energy and likeability of an excited six-year-old (not the kind that kicks your airplane seat and pulls your hair –feel free to be a hater of that breed). She’s also got one of those quirky names that usually only daughters of Hollywood actresses have, so I really hope she’ll be a big star and we can all enjoy seeing it in print.

The concert was held up the hill behind the Bardini gardens, in Barbie’s Tuscan Dream-villa, complete with beautiful gardens and panoramic view. The concert was held in the frescoed library, and was a rather fun program of Italian and American music (mostly opera). After everyone had clapped and kissed, we sipped drinks out on the patio in the late solstice sunshine.

And for variety’s sake, around 11 PM there was a brass band playing the theme to the Flintstones under my window.

Festa

Tonight I was in my apartment, working diligently, when I became aware of a noise outside my window. I didn’t pay much attention at first, assuming it was the street washers (they have little trucks that wash the streets every so often, which is a GOOD THING given the amount of dog poop around. I should introduce the pooper scooper amd make zillions), or possibly the Hare Krishnas (they like to chant a LOT), but then I realised it was a more regular noise – thump thump THUMP…thump thump THUMP…and when I looked out my window, there was a long line of men wearing renaissance costume, banging drums, and twirling flags, making their way to the Ponte Vecchio. I have NO idea why, but it was very colourful and Florentine.




(Check out the guy in the orange trews. In a very stylish country, orange and mustard-coloured trousers with everything are a rather questionable trend.








Life imitating art.

It’s fun being able to see Italian art and people at the same time. You can see the same faces on the street that are in the 600 year-old paintings. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Oh, that?

The other day I walked round the corner and wondered why everyone was looking up and taking pictures – was something happening? – and then realised that it was the Palazzo Vecchio drawing their attention. When did I become blasé about the palazzo Vecchio? It’s not that I don’t still notice how beautiful it is, it’s just not a novelty any more.

I love daily life here – and I love that it’s become familiar to me. I don’t need a map to find my way to the supermarket. I have my favourite places to read, favourite street bands, and I notice when my favourite shop window displays change.

Only one more week of this…



My own pic of the Palazzo Vecchio, taken when I was a young tourist two months ago.