FINALLY!

Oct 12; 2AM
Oct 9
Great stay with Don & Diane but too brief; arrived at 7pm and left at 8am the next day but enough time to catch up, eat a great mushroom & cheese lasagna made by Diane and have a great night’s sleep.

Oct 10
While checking in at the airport I was joined by a throng of people speaking in Italian - what a great sound. I was told that this was the Las Scala orchestra, leaving their gig in Toronto and on their way to a performance in Washington. I had allowed lots of time to make my flight from Kennedy Airport to Rome even though I was arriving from Toronto at La Guardia and leaving from JFK airport. An 1.5 hr flight delay because of the weather made the connection a little more tense as I waited for the airport shuttle at La Guardia. But there was little reason to worry - I even managed to get a 10 minute manicure before boarding. Business class was a real treat; champagne upon arrival on board, reclining seats, a virtual home entertainment unit at every seat and great food: I had the crab cakes and some nice Pino Grigio.

Oct 11
Somehow I think I contracted food poisoning as I arrived in Rome hot, dizzy and with a serious tummy trouble, having not slept a wink. The American Airlines staff as well as those at Fiumicino Airport were wonderful and I was put in a wheelchair, whisked through immigration, and brought to the baggage claim area where someone got me my suitcase and a luggage cart. Then I was on my own at 8AM on a sunny Roman day feeling like something washed up on the tide.
I pushed my 4 pieces of luggage to the train station at the airport, bought my ticket, and clambered aboard the Leonardo Express for Roma! Thirty minutes later I arrived at Roma Termini and took a short but far too expensive cab ride to my Hotel Montreal. (I walked the distance in 15 minutes when I returned there take the train to Tuscany.) My room was small but clean, painted in shades of pink, looking out over a quiet street on the second floor (which they call first). After showering and crashing for 3 hours I made my way to a Bancomat to get some Euros, have a small lunch of bean soup at a local café and then visited the large beautiful mosaic covered church of Sta. Maria Maggiore nearby. Then I crashed for another 3 hours and finally took myself on my first walk around this big old city, visiting Piazza Barberini, Bellini’s Triton fountain, The Spanish steps, Via Corso (a high class Robson St) - stopping in to a pharmacy to get stuff for my poor stomach, and then picking up some yogurt and mineral water - all I could comfortably digest. I made an attempt at using the hotel’s Internet (it couldn’t accommodate my own laptop) and was able to connect with my email and my U Vic course web site. Phew! I still don’t know the results of the Vancouver strike, but that’s for another day.

Oct 12
Woke at 9am after having slept 11 hours and felt 100% better. Walked to the Coliseum and then around the old Roman Forum. Wonderful, thousands of tourists speaking hundreds of languages moving around in groups of 30 or more. Just as I began to explore the Palatine Hill - the oldest part of Rome - the heavens opened up and dropped buckets of rain down on us. Imagine all of these tour groups dispersing madly in all directions, each individual trying to find cover under some ruin or other. I made do with a thickly leafed tree and then the entrance to some form of archaeological workshop, where I nibbled on bread and cheese I‘d brought from the hotel for emergencies When the rain abated I went in search of a place to sit down & have an espresso, but finding nothing nearby returned to the Forum as the rain seemed to have stopped. But 10 minutes later it poured down again and, giving up on that site, I made my way home by Metro and then by foot through the winding streets getting lost at least 4 times, back to my hotel where I napped for a couple of hours and worked on their Internet to teach my course. Had a nice meal of sole and salad and a glass of house white in a local trattoria and then to bed - a little later than the previous night. I think my inner clock is readjusting, as are my innards!

Fri, Oct 13. (Uh Oh)

A blue sky, hot day. A pre-booked morning visit to the beautiful Borghese Gardens and its amazing museum, (Galleria Borghese) containing the collection (often ill-gotten) of Schippione (sp?) Borghese, nepote (nephew) of the Pope (hence nepotism). Lunch was cheese, bread, apple and water, eaten sitting on the garden grounds under the trees, watching large grey and brown birds roughly the size of magpies, sing and fly around me. Umbrella pines, fountains splashing in the sunlight, acacia trees, cool shady paths made this a beautifully designed place of peace and beauty - not the Stanley Park wildness but a place where the senses are calmed, people bicycle and kids play.

Things heated up as I managed to find my very complicated way out of the park and into Flaminio Metro near Piazza del Popolo, exiting at Ottavio Metro and heading toward the Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica. I had decided due to limited time that I wouldn’t visit the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel but had intended to do a walk through the Basilica, but one look at the mile-long line up to the entrance convinced me that it would have to wait until another year - time was precious and the weather very hot and steamy. Instead, I sat in the shade of one Bernini’s many columns that formed an oval colonnade around the obelisk in the piazza, and spend a pleasant 30 minutes watching the crowd and gazing on the magnificent façade and Michelangelo’s dome.

I then wended my way past the huge Castello di San Angelo (every early Roman building in this city seems enormous to me- that‘s what you get when you run an empire) across the San Angelo Bridge decorated with Bernini’s angels, and animated by living people dressed up as Tutankhamen or the Statue of Liberty standing still in the midday sun under their layers of costume collecting donations. What a way to make a Euro!

I loved best wandering the little narrow streets of old Rome, looking into antique store windows and coming across sun-lit piazza after piazza surrounded by Baroque or Renaissance churches. I bought a gelato (pistachio) and found my way to Piazza Navona but was disappointed because the main central 4 rivers fountain was under wraps being restored. So I enjoyed myself by watching the street performers and the crowds around them.

On to the Pantheon where I had a cuppa tea (more and more I’m beginning to feel like someone out of a Merchant Ivory movie - the older woman, not the younger, exploring the somewhat threatening old streets of some exotic urban capital, sipping tea and watching the world with detached wisdom) in the Piazza della Rotonda and read up on the oldest and biggest of domes ever….) Once I squeezed myself through the crowds in the entrance way to the Pantheon I found myself in that extraordinarily huge airy space lit only by sunshine coming through the oculus at the centre of the dome. Although there must have been 500 people in there, it didn’t feel crowded. I said "hello" to Raphael who is buried there along with sundry popes and emperors, and then left that majestic space and made my way to the obligatory Trevi Fountain where I deposited the one remaining Euro in my pocket into the hands of a beggar instead of into the water. Thousands of teenagers were hanging out, flirting and throwing coins over their shoulders, like wedding corsages, into the splashing waters. Took a long walk home, got lost at least twice, and back to the hotel for a much needed nap, pasta dinner and bed.

Sun, Oct 14 -Sunny blue sky day. Time to head north to Tuscany.
Breakfasted, packed and checked out in time for my 12:50 train to Chiusi, Tuscany and the main part of my trip. It was a smooth train trip - those Italians sure know how to run them efficiently. At 2:30 I descended from the train onto Tuscan soil.

Three hours later: I feel like I’m in a movie again! The kind of movie where a urban chick has to face up to her dependencies of the outside world - things like connecting to the Internet, going out to a movie, taking home a movie, going to her fridge, cooking, snacking in the middle of the night, taking a bus to anywhere she wants to go. Apparently I didn’t realize that the school is NOT in Pienza with its cafes, banks and bank machines and beautiful 15th century architecture as I hoped to get to know, but a 6 kilometer long winding road away only accessible by bicycle, car and foot…..

After a 60 Euro taxi drive from Chiusi, I had arrived at "Il Colombaiolo" outside Pienza and found out it was the wrong one. The one I was booked at was another place by the same name outside the ancient tiny village of Castelmuzio! Another 15 Euros later I finally arrived at the farm house and my room with a view. Back of the beyond. But beautiful! Here come the watercolors’ and the camera. More later...