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My parents wanted to take me out to a nice dinner. I never decline free food. We went back to the hotel for a rest and a change of clothes. When the sun went down, we went out.
My dad doesn't wear suits. He has had one suit for the last fifteen years. He didn't even know how to tie a necktie. The one tie he owns is a zipper tie-a pre-knotted tie that you loop over your head and zip up like the fly of your pants. Before we left, I insisted that he buy a new suit. He broke down and bought a new one, but he hadn't worn it until that night. After I changed into my suit, he came down to my room for tips on how to wear his. I showed him how to knot a tie, how to check his dress line, and a dozen other little tips. Never button the bottom button of your jacket. Make sure all your leather (belt and shoes) and all your metal (belt buckle and wristwatch) match. Keep your shirt buttons and your zipper in line. Buy a cheap shirt, but never buy a cheap tie. Women fret over earrings. Men fret over ties.
He looked handsome, but very uncomfortable. If we had given him half an excuse, he would have torn off the suit and changed into jeans and a flannel shirt. My stream of advice made him more nervous, so I cut it off and just told him he looked great. Mom hooked her arm around his, and he finally relaxed.
We didn't know exactly where we wanted to eat, so we just wandered around the Piazza di Duomo for a while. The sun had set. The plaza was empty and quiet. We didn't see anything we liked, so we drifted toward the river. We spotted a little restaurant tucked away in an alley between two streets. All the good restaurants are tucked away in an alley between two streets. Italy's like that.
They gave us a seat outside. Mom and Dad looked like Lady and the Tramp eating spaghetti. We wished Mom a happy Mother's Day. I think that was the highlight of her trip. She got to dine at a Tuscan restaurant in Florence on a Spring night with her husband and her only son. That's a pretty good Mother's Day gift.
When he brought out our food, the waiter took a minute to size up Dad's suit. “That's a nice suit,” he said. I think Dad might have blushed, and he told the waiter it was Italian. The waiter asked, “Where did you get it?” Dad told him he bought in Indiana. The waiter smiled. “Then it's not an Italian suit.” Maybe it wasn't Italian. It was probably made in Singapore. But it was nice enough for an Italian to compliment it, and that made Dad's day.
We stuffed ourselves with steak and bread and wine and sweets. There wasn't anything that could top that meal, so we slowly drifted home and went off to sleep at the hotel.
Our hotel had a little restaurant in the basement, and we met there for breakfast. My parents were as excited as they had been the day before. They had seen half of Florence the previous day. They still hadn't run out of energy. I tried to look smart by quoting passages from my guidebook, but they had already seen every place I mentioned. After a few minutes, we decided that they knew the city better than I did now, and they should plan the day.
The first stop was the Uffizi Gallery. It has the biggest art collection in Florence, but on that day it also had the longest line. We stood in line for an hour and barely moved. We decided that if we stayed there, the Uffizi would be the only sight we saw all day. Mom suggested we visit the Pitti Palace, so we jumped out of line and headed across the river.
Formerly a royal residence, the Pitti Palace houses five of the most important art museums in Florence. The day before, my parents had bought a combination ticket to all five galleries. Of the five, the Palatine Gallery was the only one they liked enough to visit again. The Palatine has a unique design. The paintings aren't organized in neat rows like in most museums. They're hung in clusters, and they cover the walls from ceiling to floor. Where the wall does peek through, you can see the frescoes painted there. It looks less like a museum and more like a noble's home. We thought Lorenzo Medici might drop by to give us a tour.
The gallery had an great exhibit on Catherine de'Medici, daughter of Florence and queen of France. There were dozens of paintings of Catherine, all in chronological order. The front of the gallery had portraits of Catherine as a baby and a little girl. Halfway through, an expansive salon was filled with paintings of her wedding (by proxy) to Henry II of France. The halls in the back of the gallery showed images of the queen, her husband, and her children. Interspersed with the portraits were paintings that Catherine commissioned from artists in Italy and France. It was an amazing intersection of history and art.
After the Palatine, we headed into the Boboli Gardens. The Gardens were built (they were definitely built, not grown) behind the Pitti Palace as a retreat for nobles and visiting royalty. They're the size of a small town, and I can imagine that a nobleman in the Palace could spend his whole time in Florence between the Palace and the Gardens. The rear of the Palace opens into a vast grass and gravel courtyard. A wide path leads upward into a small forest and then branches off into dozens of little paths between the trees. You could spend all day in those little dirt pathways, and you should. If you visit Florence, buy a few bottles of wine, get a nice loaf of bread and a basket, and spend a day picnicking in the Boboli Gardens.
We left the Palace and the Gardens and wandered back across the river. We wound up in yet another plaza listening to a gypsy band play traditional music. My parents' energy finally gave out. They sat on the steps next to a fountain and watched the gypsies play. I took a walk around the plaza and bought my mom one of the band's CDs. She told me later she listened to it all the way home.
The overnight train to Florence was a shaky ride. We spent the night in a little sleeping coach with three small fold-away bunks. It was a tight squeeze, but it was good just to get out of Naples and into Tuscany.
The conductor woke us up at five in the morning, about an hour before our arrival. I stepped out of the coach and stood in the aisle. The sun had just come up. It gave the countryside a nice golden tone. The train cut through the western edge of Tuscany, where the coastal plains mingle with the Appenine mountains. Low hills with smooth slopes, with little vineyards on the eastern side. Big green carpets of grass dotted with wildflowers. Wide valleys criss-crossed with irrigation channels and rows of grain. That's Tuscany. I wish we had taken a daytime train to Florence. I would have spent the whole trip staring out the window.
When we arrived, I really wished we had taken a daytime train to Florence. Then we wouldn't have gotten there six hours before check-in. We pulled into the train station a little after 6 and got to our hotel a little before 8. But the concierge told us we couldn't check in until 2. She was nice enough to take our bags, but we couldn't enter our rooms for another six hours. There was no talking her out of it. No matter how much we needed a rest, a shower, or a change of clothes, she wasn't going to let us into our rooms.
We left the hotel and found a little cafe serving pastries and coffee. While we sat outside and got a caffeine boost, we eagerly went over our new map of Florence. My parents planned out the whole morning, and I almost fell asleep at the table. I was exhausted, but my parents were bouncy. I think the new city gave them extra energy. They unfolded maps, spread out guidebooks, and reloaded both cameras and the video recorder. I thought they might rent a pair of pogo sticks. I wanted to curl up in the hotel lobby and sleep while we waited for the room. They wanted to see every inch of Florence before noon. They won. They jumped out of their chairs, I staggered to my feet, and we all walked down to Piazza di Duomo.
That's the Plaza of the Dome, so named because it surrounds a massive domed cathedral. Mom wanted to go in the Cathedral right away. I told her there was no way we were going into a church looking like we did. She gave me a knowing smile and said, “God doesn't care.”
Now, my mother had a point there. If there is a God, he probably doesn't care if you walk into a church in a tailored suit or butt-naked. As long as you believe, that's all he cares about. But I don't believe in God. And if he does exist, then neither he nor I care too much about what the other thinks. I do, however, believe in people. And the people who do believe in God, especially the ones who worship him in five hundred year old cathedrals, tend to get upset when you walk in their place of worship in the same clothes you slept in last night. Besides, the line to get in was a mile long.
So we skipped the cathedral. We hung around the plaza for a while and walked down to the Arno River. Once we reached the Arno, we spotted the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge on the Arno that's covered in cafes and shops. I walked across the bridge in about ten minutes. My parents caught up to me an hour later. The bridge was crowded with tiny shops, and they decided to visit all of them. When we met up again, I told them that we should split up and meet back at the hotel at check-in time. They agreed. I wanted to look around on my own a bit, but I quickly wound up back at the hotel. It was noon, two hours before check-in, when I asked the concierge again if I could check in early. She told me firmly that, no, my room wasn't ready yet. I stumbled into the lobby and nodded off.
The concierge realized she had a choice: She could get an empty room ready for me, or she could have a scraggly-looking man sleeping in her lobby like a homeless bum. She woke me up and told me that my room was ready. I thanked her profusely and grabbed the key.
I was in my room for about five minutes before I fell asleep. I woke up a little after two and called the front desk. I left a message for my parents telling them to meet me at four instead of two, and I went back to sleep. I woke up again at four and called the front desk. I told the concierge to call my parents in their room and tell them that I was done for the day and to meet me in the morning. Then I went back to sleep. When I woke up again, it was already Sunday.
And this is where the trip took an odd turn. While I was unconscious, my folks were discovering Florence. After we split up, they crossed the river and found the old Medici Palace. They toured the museums in the palace and wandered through the Boboli Gardens. Then they walked back to the hotel just in time for check-in. When they heard that I was sleeping, they took a little nap themselves. But while I slept all night, they got up after just a few hours and hit the town again. By the next morning, they knew Florence better than I did.
When we met for breakfast, I was flipping through the Lonely Planet guidebook looking for ideas. They were listing all the places they'd seen last night. I closed the guidebook and asked them where we should go. For the whole vacation, I made the itineraries. I had told them where to go. I had lead them around like a tour guide. This day, they got to lead me.
The modern town of Pompeii is a thirty minute train ride from Naples. The ride hugs the coast for the first ten minutes and gives passengers a gorgeous view of the Mediterranean Sea. Then it turns inland and glides up the mountains around Vesuvius. On the day we rode the train, a slate gray sheet of rainclouds blanked out the sky, and thin streaks of mist hovered around the volcano's peak.
We got off the train in Pompeii and took a little walk through the town. There are actually two Pompeiis. There's the ancient city that was totally destroyed by a volcanic eruption, and there's the modern town that was grew up right next to it. Some people never learn.
The wait to get into Pompeii was a lot shorter than we expected, and the crush of tourists wasn't nearly as bad as it was in Rome. You'll note that, in my photo log of Rome, almost all of my pictures have a bunch of people walking in the shot, while many of my shots of Pompeii are totally empty.
Pompeii is a place of contrasting impressions. Parts of the city, like the Basilica, are empty and desolate. The Basilica was the heart of Pompeii. Traders made deals there. Judges enforced laws there. Vital decisions were made, and ceremonies held, in the Basilica. Now it's just an empty courtyard with cracked walls and broken columns. There are no judges dispensing justice, no nobles or priests. No more ceremonies for them. There's just enough left to show us that real people lived and worked there. There's enough missing to remind us that our greatest monuments are only temporary. It reminded me of a line from The Waste Land: “Son of man...you know only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats, and the dead tree gives no shelter.”
Other places were busier, almost cheerful. The streets were narrow and crowded with tourists. We stayed out of the main part of the street and walked on the sidewalk. The lanes weren't hard to walk in. They just looked so much like our modern streets that we unconsciously stepped out of the lane and got on the sidewalk. At the intersections, we even crossed on the raised stepping stones the Pompeiians left for us. We didn't need a guidebook for that. Just by looking at the stones we knew what they were for.
The theater looked alive that day. It's a big half-circle with cascading marble seats and an open stage. I sat down in the top row and watched the action on the floor below. I guess that was watching from the cheap seats back in the day. There were about a dozen other tourists on the stage. An Italian guide with a big red umbrella was giving some elderly Americans a lecture in broken English. A middle-aged couple flipped through their guidebook and half listened to the guide. Mom was down there trying to make friends with a stray dog that was sprawled out asleep. They drifted from one end of the stage to the other, but, for as long as I sat there, they never left. The tour group followed the guide with the red umbrella upstage and down. The couple looked in the stands like they had a question for the audience. The dog wouldn't move, and neither did Mom. It looked like, well, a play. If you squinted your eyes and used your imagination, you could sit in the theater and see a dozen Roman actors and a big sleepy dog.
The amphitheater was stirring. A big oval arena like a scaled-down Colosseum. Gladiators fought here. City-wide meetings were held. Sometimes riots took place. Up to twenty thousand people watched at a time. The dirt floor in the middle of the amphitheater was open to tourists, so we strode into the arena floor. We had the view the fighters must have had when they looked into the stands. I know it sounds cheesy, but just for a second I heard Russell Crowe saying, “What we do in life, echoes through eternity.” It wasn't really Russell Crowe. I think it was Dad mumbling under his breath. Mom was humming the theme song to Gladiator. It was fun.
The gladiator barracks, where the fighters lived and trained, is the most tranquil part of the city. A large rectangular courtyard flanked by columns and surrounded by a row of small two-story cells. The courtyard is open and covered in fresh grass. Dirt covers the cells' floors and the tops of some of the walls, and weeds and flowers sprout from every open spot. Dead ruins and fresh greenery make for a relaxing scene. I crawled into one of the old cells and took a seat on the stone floor. I spent a while there looking at the courtyard, reading, and filling in my journal.
I didn't feel overwhelmed in Pompeii like I did in Rome, but I didn't quite feel relaxed either. I felt...temporary. It's difficult to describe. I won't go into it here. Just know that walking through a ghost town that used to be a metropolis makes you feel temporary. If you want a really good description of Pompeii, something better than I could ever give, I recommend you read Mark Twain's 'Innocents Abroad.' You can read his chapter on Pompeii online here.
When we visited the Colosseum, we saw the Forum from a distance, but we didn't go in. By the time we finished touring the Colosseum, the Forum was already closed. I've found that most of the tourist sites in Rome close well before sunset. Today, our last full day in Rome, our top priority was to see the Forum up close.
The Forum was the center of ancient Rome. The city's major government and religious centers, as well as mansions for priests, senators, and sometimes emperors, were built there. After the Empire collapsed, the city center moved to other areas, and the Forum fell into disuse. Today, it's a major archaeological park, both a tourist draw and an ongoing excavation. There are two large intact arches that served as the east and west entrances to the Forum. A temple dedicated to Jupiter-now topped with a crucifix-is perfectly preserved. The Forum was used for over 900 years, and the preserved architecture represents buildings from every stage in the Roman Empire. It was fascinating to see so many different building from the reign of Julius Caesar to the death of Nero.
The Forum is a place that's hard to describe in words and easy to describe in pictures. I won't bother with a long description here. I'll just point you to my photo site: http://expat.fotopic.net
