Genova

Genova is a port city, again with a long pedigree – it’s one of the longest continuously inhabited cities in the world, going back to the 5^th millennium BC. It was an equal ally of Rome during the Punic Wars, and was subsequently absorbed into the Roman Empire. Between the 11^th and 18^th centuries it was one of the most powerful maritime powers. All of this is reflected in the buildings and palazzos around the old port.

We’re staying in the Bristol Palace Hotel – a 5-star Art Nouveau establishment on Via XX Septembre in the heart of the old city. Beautifully restored with marble floors, period furniture, and an ellipsoid staircase spanning six floors which allegedly inspired Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. And, unlike our previous hotel in Florence, you can actually see things.

After breakfast we assembled downstairs for a walking tour of Genoa, led by our guide Paula…who was wrapped up to the nines as if expecting a Southerly gale! The sun was shining and, OK, it was a bit brisk at the beginning of our walk, but really? Anyway, she took us on a medieval walk around the city, pointing out many of the things that we’d seen yesterday but also looking into the nooks and crannies, showing us Christopher Columbus’ house, churches and palazzi, some long-established shops, and ending at the Teatro Carlo Felice Opera House. She also explained why there were so many George crosses decorating the place - apparently it belonged to Genoa long before Richard I appropriated it.

Christopher Columbus woz ere

 

Whose flag is it anyway?

The big church

Inside the big church

A secret garden

The fountain in Piazza De Ferrari (Smith's Square)

At the Opera House she handed us over to Anna, who gave us a tour and talk including a glimpse of the backstage area – usually completely off-limits to the public. The original 19^th century opera house was damaged by Allied bombing during WW2, and whilst it was repaired several times, ultimately they decided that this was unsustainable in the long run, bowled it completely, and rebuilt it in a more modern style. The new opera house reopened in 1991 and has many design features such as three interchangeable stages which allow very elaborate production design. We’ll see how that pans out tonight.

There was a further visit available for the Palazzo Rosso, but we decided to skip that in favour of lunch. We’d been advised by Kelly that there was a square a little further down Via XX Septembre that had lots of little eateries in it. We headed down there and found that whilst technically true, what she was describing was essentially the Italian version of Lambton Square: many of the eateries were of other nationalities’ cuisines, and it was a communal eating area. Not quite what we were after, so we wandered a little further along, down one of the streets leading off the main drag, and found ourselves a nice little café called Don'Cola, an with outdoor seating area where we were able to get a decent lunch of gnocchi, spada with pistachio crust, and salad; all washed down with local wine and beer.

After lunch we took the ascensore up to a higher level of the city for the views out over the city and towards the harbour.

In the evening we headed down to the hotel bar for cocktails, before making the three minute walk around the corner to the Opera House for their production of La Bohème.

 

Getting to Genova

We had high hopes…

We were all assembled at 8:15. Maybe, just maybe, we could beat the traffic and get out before gridlock set in in Florence; but there was a mix-up between luggage shuttle buses (our big touring bus isn’t allowed down Florence’s delicate streets, so we always have to rendezvous outside the Carrefour Express about five minutes away, and it was 9:10 before we actually got under way.

 The day started out bright and fine, and we admired the Tuscan countryside as we rolled on down the Autostrada. But dark clouds loomed on the horizon – quite literally – and by the time we arrived at Sestri Levante, a small town in Liguria, it was raining. Not exactly pissing down, but enough to dissuade us from admiring the town in anything more than a perfunctory manner. After a brief retail interlude for Italian clothing, we stopped at a trattoria and had our first seafood of our trip, as we are now by the sea! Spaghetti di mare was fresh and excellent, and Nicola had ravioli.

Our next stop towards Genova was at San Marguerita, where we were also expecting to take a ferry to Portofino. The ferry operator had called us whilst we were en route to let us know that ferry operations had been cancelled for the day because of the weather, so we went instead to find a local church which was excessively decorated inside, in the catholic style; and followed that with hot chocolate, again in the Italian style – a thick, creamy custard-like concoction topped with whipped cream.

San Maguerita on a rainy day

We arrived at the Bristol Palace at around 4:00pm, and were soon ensconced in our room. The palace is 5-star establishment, with such features as “light” (difficult to find at our previous hotel), and of course fully functioning plumbing, walk-in shower, robes, slippers, all that mullarkey. We’re staying here for three nights.

Once unpacked we went out to explore the local area. There’s a walking tour tomorrow, so full details then, but we walked past a lot of big old buildings, commenting “there’s a thing”, and we’ll find out more about them in the morning. We checked out some restaurants and decided on one, but like most of the restaurants here it didn’t open until 7:00pm. No matter, we found the Soho Restaurant and Lounge Bar, and settled in there for some cocktails – pink spritz for Nicola, and, finally, a Negroni for me. We’ve been out and so busy of an evening that we haven’t really had time to stop for cocktails – it’s been wine wine wine all the way – so this was the first chance we’d had. It was goooood.

 

 

San Gimignano

We were up early to get on the bus for a day exploring the Tuscan countryside. Despite our “early” departure, we were caught up in the Florentine* traffic and didn’t really get out of town until about 10:15. What is the answer to this? Is there any point in doing an early start (8:30am), or might we as well have a later start when the traffic has died down? These and other philosophical questions flitted briefly through my mind, until we reached the outskirts of Florence and the driver was able to put his foot down.

We reached San Gimignano at around 1030, and walked up from the bus park to the main gate. It’s a picturesque walled town (technically a city) of 13^th century vintage – although the village dates back to the 3^rd century BC, the current walls weren’t built until 1261. It’s situated at the top of a hill commanding the surrounding countryside, and the town is also quite hilly. We had an hour to explore in the sunshine, and wandered around, found a model of the city, looked into some other nooks and crannies, and generally mooched.

 

We then headed to our lunch venue, a vineyard called Poggio Alloro (Laurel Hill) to try some of their wines. They are more than just a vineyard, with their own cattle, sheep and pigs, olives and other produce. Nearly all of what we had for lunch was either their own produce (wine, olive oil, salami) or locally sourced. We tried two whites and two reds, then had lunch. As we finished lunch a few drops of rain started to appear on the awning, so we had a hurried tasting of grappa – both plain and saffron-flavoured – and limoncello, before reboarding the bus as the heavens opened.

Well, it all turned out to be a storm in a teacup. A brief shower, but unfortunately one that stayed long enough for us to cancel our second town, Castellina…because who wants to walk around in the rain? We drove back to Florence for a relaxing afternoon before tonight’s entertainment – this time a concert of love duets from various Italian operas.

 

* Served with spinach

Florence

Today’s entertainment was a walking tour of Florence. We met our guides, Marianna and Uli, at 10:00 and split into two groups, to take in the sights of the city. We first stopped at the Palazzo Strozzi, which turned out to be one of the first banks of Florence. In the Renaissance, Florence invented banking, amongst other things, which led it to become pre-eminent among the city-states of Northern Italy.

On our way to the next place we stopped at a wine window, literally a hole in the wall through which wine was sold. 

Our next stop was Santa Maria Novella, a church which epitomises the ethos of the Renaissance with its perfect proportions. Uli said he wasn’t going to give us a load of facts and figures about this…but then he did anyway, emphasising the proportions of the doors, windows and columns.

From there we proceeded to the Duomo & Giotto Bell Tower, which was once the largest dome in the world. Outside is the baptistry, an octagonal building which represents the first six days of the Creation, the seventh day of rest, and the eighth day, the resurrection. If you ain’t baptised, you won’t be there. It also contains an early Renaissance concept – self-portraits in bronze of the artists who created the doors, as an early form of advertising.

The Octagon

We then headed to Piazza Repubblica, which has been rebuilt almost entirely in the late 19^th century, destroying and replacing the old market and some residential palazzos, the old Jewish Ghetto, and various other historical buildings. The threat of a cholera epidemic gave impetus to the slum clearances. It was a symbol of the new Italy, recently united into a single country. Everyone hated it. 

3D map of the city, with braille

Our final stop of the morning was Piazza della Signoria, which is outside the Uffizi Museum. There’s a replica David outside the museum, as well as a fountain with Neptune, and a statue of Cosimo De' Medici on a horse, as well as various other statuary. The place was pretty well swarming with tourists by this point. Here, we were left to our own devices to find lunch, to reassemble at 1:30pm for the tour of the Uffizi.

We found a little café suitable for lunch, then headed up towards the Basilica de Santa Croce, with the idea of having a look inside…but the queue to get tickets would have eaten up all our remaining time, so we admired the outside and met the rest of our group at the appointed hour.

The tour of the Uffizi took the form of a history of the development of Western art. Uli started us off in a medieval room, pointing out the medieval style of painting, its purpose and philosophy behind it. We then gradually worked towards the Renaissance, stopping to observe key developments in art along the way – such concepts as background, movement, perspective, nude, non-religious subject matter, and perspective of air. It was all very interesting, but I developed a bad case of museum back, and we decided in the end to skip the visit to see David – housed in the Accademia Gallery, a little further out to the north of the city, as a sculpture too far.

Medieval art

David outside the Uffizi

 

In the evening we went out for dinner at Ristorante i Tre Pini, housed in an old Tuscan farmhouse, where we enjoyed a typical Italian meal...again. However, the antipasto and crostini were high quality, and this time the meat was roast pork. During dinner we'd been entertained by a guitarist and two singers - a soprano and a bass - and after dinner we sang along and joined in. Our guide Bonnie, after a few glasses of wine, was in fine form, much to the surprise of the professional singers. He is, after all, a classically trained tenor, but they didn't know this at the time.

 

Lucca

Our first day in Florence was spent…mostly outside Florence. We had no engagements in the morning, so after a leisurely breakfast we set out for a quick walk around the city centre, taking in such sights as Palazzo Strozzi, Piazza della Repubblica, and Ponte Vecchio. We’ll be covering all these again tomorrow on our guided tour so I didn’t take my camera, safe in the knowledge that we’ll being seeing them all again soon.

Back at the hotel in time to depart for the day’s big event: a trip to the city of Lucca, about one hour’s drive from Florence. Lucca is famed for being the birthplace of Giacomo Puccini, him of the operas. When we arrived we had a quick walk into the central square, Piazza Napoleone, and were released for about an hour to explore. As we had breakfasted well and were due to have an early dinner, we decided that lunch would consist of gelato, and found a suitable gelateria. We had also been told that Lucca was the best place for shopping, so scouted out some locations for later perusal. Unfortunately at the time we arrived most places were closed for lunch, and wouldn’t reopen until 3:30pm. No matter, we had other things to occupy ourselves in between.

San Michele church in Lucca - patron saint of Marks & Spencer

At 2:00pm we reconvened, and were joined by two guides from the Puccini museum. The Puccini museum is very small, basically being the apartment in which he was born and grew up, and unsuitable for groups of 20. We therefore split into two factions, and took opposite routes so as not to trip over each other.

Giorgio took us to the museum, which is in an apartment block of 14^th century vintage. Naturally, it’s very small compared to modern buildings, and is also still home to some members of the general public, who share the building with the museum. Giorgio gave us a tour including Puccini’s Steinway piano, some original costumes from productions of his operas through the years, including the gown worn for the original production of Turandot from the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. There were also various other artefacts – letters, scores, photos – and Giorgio gave us an edited highlights package of the life of Puccini.

Yer man Puccini, fag in hand

The Puccini family tree...composers in red

We finished around 4:00pm and then had another hour to explore and shop. We tried the first place I’d spotted earlier, in search of a new leather jacket, but they didn’t have anything suitable that fitted me. We then set out for a feature of Lucca which had evaded us so far – the Piazza Dell’Anfiteatro, which is unusual because it’s not a square; it’s an ellipse. The place is now entirely given over to bars and restaurants so, having seen it, there wasn’t much else to do but take a picture, turn around and leave. On the way back, however, I espied some leather jackets in a shop; in fairly short order I'd found one that fitted, and a money changed hands.  

An ellipsoid square

We met up at the agreed place and went on for our dinner at Ristorante All’Olivo. This turned out to be the best meal we’ve had so far in our travels – antipasto beautifully presented including crostini as well as salumi; an artichoke heart lasagne; a main of slow-cooked lamb; and finally what can only be described as Italian apple pie.

After a hurried espresso, as we were running a little behind schedule, we quick-marched for three minutes to reach the church that was hosting our concert for the evening. Not an opera, but 6 arias by Puccini, interspersed with three from Mozart. Jack & Wolfie’s greatest hits, if you like. It included the inevitable Nessun Dorma, and other songs from Turandot, Madame Butterfly, Tosca and La Bohème. The pianist also got to give a virtuoso performance with a fantasia on Madame Butterfly.

We had a short walk back to the bus, then drove back to Florence, arriving back at the hotel around tennish, with most of the party ready to drop by that stage. Tomorrow – more Florentine adventures!

 

Orvieto

We made an early departure from Rome, and, despite the cat-herding nature of our bus boarding that we’ve experienced so far, actually managed to get on the road before 9:00am. Our destination is Firenze – that’s Florence to you Anglophones – but we were stopping at the picturesque town of Orvieto on the way.

Orvieto is mainly known for the wine of the same name. The old city has been around since the Etruscan civilisation which pre-dated even Rome. The old city is on a high cliff face, with the more modern city down below, connected by a funicular. We were interested in the old bit, and met our guide at the bus park, who then took us around the city, pointing out interesting things. It has a remarkable cathedral which we were initially unable to enter, as the bishop has some mad idea about running church services in it, of a Sunday. We admired the exterior and continued on our tour. At the end, we arranged a meeting place for later, then all headed off to lunch. Many of us had espied café Montanucci, which served that rare delicacy which has been missing from so many of our meals so far…vegetables! We pigged out on salad and roasted vegetables, augmented with pasta pesto (‘er indoors) and chicken for me. We found that we had just enough time for a ten-minute tour of the cathedral – bumping into Kelly, one of our guides there, so we knew we weren’t late – before rejoining the rest and heading back to the bus.

The walk back to the bus, and a quick look around the ramparts at the town below, actually proved quite exhausting, as temperatures by this stage had climbed to 30°C. The tour had been arranged in springtime specifically to avoid the higher temperatures, but Northern Italy is currently experiencing a spring heatwave, which is expected to last a couple more days, when temperatures are expected to plunge to around 17°C, and rain.

Back aboard the bus, and it was a couple of hours to Firenze. We had to debark a little before reaching the 25Hours Hotel, as it’s in the heart of the Old Town and inaccessible to tour buses. A five-minute walk brought us there, and our luggage arrived separately by minivan.

The hotel is themed around Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the rooms are split into Heaven or Hell. We are all allocated rooms on a Hell floor – the blurb in our room tells us our sin is violence, in the inner circle of the seventh ring of hell. The décor reflects this, with red walls and dim lighting, and Welcome To Hell!!! inscribed on the toilet and shower doors. But everything is modern, and one of the complaints about the last hotel in Rome - the high-sided bath to step into to have a shower - is now obviated with a decent-sized walk-in shower.

We settled in and explored the local area – finding both a pizzeria and a launderette. We’d checked out the hotel’s laundry prices and were resigned to dropping $300 to clean our clothes – but no! the local automat came to our rescue, as did two extremely obliging locals who showed us the ropes, told us how much things cost, and all the rest. The local pizzeria proved extremely helpful too as we were able to sling everything in, walk back to the hotel bar for a quick beer and cocktail, then load the drier and sit eating pizza whilst it did its stuff. We nabbed the penultimate table at pizzeria Centopoveri, and queues were forming outside the door whilst we ate. Top-hole pizza, with a side salad (because you never know when you’re going to see salad again, apparently), and we returned to our hell-hole with bellies full and clothing laundered. Result!

 

The Colosseum

Earlier this morning there was a tour of the Teatro Dell’Opera, the Rome Opera House, where tonight we will be going to see La Sonnambula, an opera by Bellini. Full of historical context and all that it might be, I decided to skip this particular tour, so if you want details you’ll have to ask Nicola. I met the tour group at the end and we reboarded the bus to go to the Colosseum.

The Colosseum, or the Flavian Amphitheatre, to give it its proper name, is in a central point of Rome and is the must-see attraction. We walked a short distance from where the bus parked us and joined the throng at the entrance. We were fortunate to have priority tickets but even so had to pass through security like everyone else, then our guide explained all about how old it was, how it was covered in marble originally which has since been “recycled” elsewhere. Some parts of it have fallen down and rebuilt in more modern brickwork – not because they thought no-one would notice, but to stabilise the structure of what’s left. We ascended to the first floor so we could look down into what remains of the understructure – there were two levels beneath what was originally the floor of the arena. The capacity rivals some of the world’s larger stadiums, and everyone had their own seat allocated based on their status.

After about an hour of touring the Colosseum we headed to a restaurant nearby. “Oh no”, I hear you cry, “another tourist rubbish place like yesterday". But no, in fact this restaurant managed to give us a decent lunch. Yes, set menu, yes, pasta (cacio e pepi again), and main of what described as beef but was in fact veal…but served with a salad that was more than mere garnish. Honestly, someone should tell these Romans about the existence of vegetables. Not to worry, it was all washed down with a very acceptable ansonica, and we finished up with what appeared to be a frozen chocolate mousse. We also hatched a plan about where to go in Florence on one of our free nights there, as two of our number are very familiar with the city and have a favourite restaurant.

We headed back to the hotel for a rest, and to start packing. We’re leaving early doors tomorrow to take in Orvieto on our way to Florence, so need to be prepared.

Tonight we’re going to the opera! More on that later.