Life in Venice

Really you need to see Venice. I wouldn't mind if you read about it too...

The train to Venice didn’t offer much in the way of scenery except for the promise of distant mountains and the occasional placid lake. Suddenly the landscape vanished. We were hurtling across the turquoise Mediterranean, sharing the road with barges and fishing vessels. We cut our speed and glided into a non-descript train station. We went to the tourist information office and figured out where our hostel was located. The testy Venetian woman pointed at a long island across from the main square of Venice. She then offered to sell us ferry tickets.

Guide books informed me the public ferries were the busses of Venice, only much more expensive. As an expense and a bus, the vaporettos dually repelled me. We would walk. We squeezed out of the phone booth they call tourist information and stepped outside. And there it was. Venice.
A wide canal flowed by the front steps of the train station with boats puttering along the dilapidated, pastel buildings. We followed foot traffic and the detailed map into the maze of the city. I was lost immediately. Streets changed names every block and never met at right angles. Canals sliced across the street requiring side trips to small bridges. The way to navigate Venice is to follow occasional street signs pointing in the direction of major landmarks. You ignore the street names. So do the locals. There is no set system for numbering buildings. Instead you just pick a number when you build (though there haven’t been many new buildings in Venice in quite a while, giving the mail people plenty of time to study-up).

After discovering we were going east when I thought we were going west, I swallowed my navigational pride (with my brother’s enthusiastic support) and went back to the central station. We would ride a bus. With a youth card acquired at the TI, we bought a three day pass for the vaporettos. This turned out to be a great move since our hostel could only be reached by vaporetto. I guess we could have tried to swim, but our passports might have gotten soggy.

We threw our bags in the middle of the deck and motored into the harbor, past cruise ships and barges. Yellow DHL delivery boats were loading up at the warehouse, and construction rafts floated concrete trucks over the waves. Venice is a surreal city of water. When I went to Copenhagen, I was told it was the “Venice of the North.” When I when to Hamburg, I was also told this was the “Venice of the North.” Bruges and Amsterdam vie for the title in their chunk of the North. But none of these places are Venice. There are no cars in Venice. There are no bikes. Their absence isn’t driven by draconian city planning, but by practicality. The canals are the streets and narrow alleys give way to steep, stepped bridges that make bikes a silly investment. It is a flooded city. A city that isn’t just financially supported by water, but physically supported. Back off Northern Venices. Ya got nothin’.

Our hostel was a no-frills barracks with a couple of steel bunk beds punctuated by an occasional communal bathroom. But out our window was the clear Mediterranean. We could see St. Mark’s Cathedral and the lighthouses, bell towers, and domes of the drowning city. I would have paid for the view, but I got a bed to go along with it.
It was time to explore that view. First we hopped onto a vaporetto to the mouth of the Grand Canal and the spiritual center of Venice at St. Mark’s Square. The wide piazza is surrounded by expensive cafés that feature live string quartets that have entertained everyone from Napoleon to Twain.

But the cafés don’t hold your attention. That goes to the Cathedral.

From the 12th to 16th centuries, Venice was the wealthiest city in Europe. It was an economic empire that mediated trade between Europe and Asia. They had a lot of cash flowing in and they wanted to show it. So they built a Cathedral. The place was inspired by Byzantine architecture with domes popping up across the roof. Spires topped by saints reveal a little Gothic influence. The interior is literally covered in mosaic. Every corner of the ceiling, and every inch of wall is blanketed with tiny tiles of glass and ceramic. The heavenly backdrop is luminous gold. The designers had so much space that they broke out the more obscure biblical stories and holy people to cover the interior. Walking into the nave and craning our necks, we could only gasp, “Wow.”

We toured the interior, admiring the intricate floor tiles and the golden alter with hundreds of tiny portraits of Christ and the Apostles, all in the stern, Eastern iconic style. Apparently no one smiled for the camera in Byzantium.

Then we went up a narrow staircase that would never pass code in the U.S. to admire four bronze horses, symbols of Venice’s former power. The horses were cast in the 5th century B.C. in Greece. Then Constantine carried them off to Constantinople. The Venetian Crusaders brought them home for the cathedral. Then Napoleon carted them to Paris. The French finally returned them in the 19th century, and now they are sheltered from acid rain while copies take the brunt of industrial offense. The horses chomp their bits and they muscles tense in mid step. I am continually amazed at the anatomical detail the Greeks worked into their art. Over the next couple of days, this admiration would only increase.

On to the Domo’s palace. At the peak of her power, Venice was ruled by a Domo, or Duke. He was elected by a grand council that included prominent businessmen and important families (crazy how those go together). He wasn’t a tyrant. Just an executive with constitutional duties to councils and legislatures that governed different aspects of municipal affairs. The palace was both the Duke’s home and the primary governmental meeting place. It’s also bathed in art. Maps of the world from the 1700s and portraits by Old Masters like Titian and Tintoretto are literally on every wall. It was exhausting moving through each chamber, trying to put together the complicated network of Venetian politics and history while keeping an eye out for important artists.

Our final stop was the jail which lead directly to the court of justice. Byron called the bridge between the jail and the court the Bridge of Sighs, imagining the incarcerated taking in his final view of the harbor before being condemned. Romantic, it’s true, but a little less so now while construction swathes the palace and provides ample advertising space.

As the sun prepared to set we hopped onto a Vapparetto down the Grand Canal. With a Rick Steves audiotour in our ears we puttered through centuries of opulence followed by evidence of slow decline. We saw the Rialto Bridge, and the Jewish Quarter (thank you Billy Shakes for giving me some context), then on past palaces and markets.

Every guidebook comments on Venice as the dying city. It’s no longer a world power, and the inconvenience of living there is driving people to the mainland, but it didin’t seem overly seedy. It may be shrinking, as it should. It doesn’t need to be as large or powerful as it once was. Now it is a kind of historical Disneyland, a retreat from the way you expect life to function.

There is not motor traffic except the chopping of rotor blades. Gondoliers row relaxed, loving couples (and Japanese tourists) along narrow by waters lined with ferns and petunias. Ever city should be afforded the opportunity to age with such grace.


As the sun set over the bay, we dove into the city, vaguely hoping to find a place for dinner, but not rushing ourselves. There was a city to take in. We finally settled down for some pasta and calamari, eavesdropped on some Irishmen, and moved to a Jazz Bar. There wasn’t any live music, but there was a lively atmosphere and more affordable beverages than we found in Milan. This seemed counterintuitive since we were on a series of islands where everything is supposed to be more expensive than the mainland, but we didn’t want to ask any questions.

Then into the night. The moon was shining through a thin veil of clouds, illuminating the quiet canals. We stopped on a dock jutting into the Grand Canal. A lone gondolier slowly navigated his craft out of a small channel and into the main stream. The only sound was his oar slicing the current. We watched in silence, then turned from the surreal scene of Renaissance palaces and watercraft without comment.

As we crossed the city towards the hostel, we found an isolated tributary that wound past buildings that have been floating in the bay for centuries. We listened to the water lapping the deck and watched the moon reflected in the water. If there was a time to have Carolyn by my side, that was it (no offense Josh). We poked our toes into the water. I’m not sure either of us can articulate why we needed to do that, but it felt like the right thing to do. We then began our happy, slightly wet march back to St. Mark’s Square and our bunk beds with a view.

The next morning we returned to St. Mark’s with plans to leave our luggage at the free baggage check by the Cathedral. The attendants weren’t happy with our clever, time-saving plan and told us the bags could only sit there for an hour. Damn. Back to the hostel to leave our stuff in five Euro locker. With some Tetris-like shoving we crammed both our packs into one locker and went in search of some art.

The Academia in Venice is the best place in the world to enjoy the work of the Venetian Renaissance (go figure). We did our duty admiring Titian, especially his depictions of the story of St. Mark, the patron saint of Venice. The winged lion with the gospel, the symbol of Mark, is literally everywhere in the city. I wonder if there are any citys with St. Matthew’s winged human (not an angel) festooned on every bell tower and boat? This is what the internet is for…

Before leaving town, we needed to hear if there was any news on the Rialto. The Rialto Bridge is a Renaissance edifice that arches over the Grand Canal. It’s also the center of tourism and souvenir stands. Josh collects masks, and Venice is famous for its Carnival masks. While I considered a hand-made journal, he evaluated masks. Most were cheap souvenirs. Then we found a small shop with pictures of Tom Cruise in a golden mask declaring, “Featured in Eyes Wide Shut.” This might be authentic.

The proprietor was at work painting a Harlequin mask when we stepped in. At first he seemed skeptical that these two American tourists would stay for more than thirty seconds. As Josh examined his options (and wallet), I earned us some credibility points by asking about Stanley Kubrick and the artist’s work for the San Francisco Shakespeare company. When we left, everyone was satisfied. Josh had a very authentic addition to his growing collection, and I got to chat with a Venetian.

We grabbed massive sandwiches from a street vendor and settled down on an empty dock to watch the boats go by on the canal. Venice seemed to invest us with a desire to dreamily watch the city move by. It was a breathing movie set, a fantasy. It was all it was cracked up to be. But we couldn’t sit dreamily all afternoon. It was time to spend some time in the golden light of Tuscany….
More photos of Borths Boy wandering.

Milan Part Uno: Pretty Buildings

Milan is one of the northernmost cities in Italy and has a reputation for not really being Italian. Personally, I thought this made it a great segue into Italian culture as we graded from the stodgier Swiss-and-German influenced north to the vespa-and-mob dominated south. The problem with our strategy was Milan is a tough city to really enjoy. It has a few remarkable sights, but it’s difficult to really revel in great art and architecture when the bars close at eleven and the drinks cost seven euro. So, I will spare you the frustrations of wandering the “fashion district” that was remarkably difficult to find and skip to the good stuff (the buildings for now):

The Milan Duomo. In 1386 the archbishop of Milan saw the gap in the middle of the city, left by the old Roman basilica (Roman courthouse) and later cathedral which had recently burned to the ground. He decided to fill the gap with a hip new structure in the French Gothic style. Nearly six-hundred years later (in 1965 they declared it complete) it stands as the symbol of Italy, and is one of the most memorable huge churches I’ve seen recently, and you can scroll through these posts to appreciate how many huge churches I’ve notched on my belt. The building is wide, the architect missing the memo on a narrow nave fronted by two massive bell towers, with small-ish windows pocking the façade. The girth of the place allows it to gleam. The white and pink marble was cleaned and the scaffolding only removed a few months ago, marking the Milan Duomo as one of the only non-scaffolded churches I’ve seen in my wanderings.
The interior is cavernous. Because it’s so wide, the light from the narrow stained glass windows barely make it to the edge of the pews, let alone the center aisle. Not a great spot to get hitched.

Here the interior looks a little brighter than it was thanks to a stead pew and an extended shutter speed. But it still feel like spelunking.

A few windows stood out including one from the ‘20s showing the expulsion of Lucifer, and the gargantuan windows behind the altar. Each of three was divided into small blocks, a comic strip of the Old Testament, a comic strip of the New Testament, and a final group showing holy people. Because it was divided into so many complicated scenes, the windows lost a little of their grandeur. They were actually more impressive from the outside where the swirling marble frames created a massive, cohesive whole.

Windows that are kind of hard to appreciate as the distance increases, but the scale stays constant. This window depicts holy people doing holy things.

The exterior of the stained-glass windows was almost more interesting than the colored panes.

The final standouts of the interior were an intricate 12th century candelabrum packed with biblical imagery, and a grotesque statue of St. Bartholomew carved by Marco d' Lopez, one of Da Vinci’s students. The apostle was skinned alive then crucified in Armenia for being an outspoken Christian missionary. He is now tastefully the patron saint of tanners. I’m sure he would love to hang out in a leather workshop if he could meet and mingle today.

A massive 12th century masterpiece. The base is about five feet wide, and a couple dozen candles would have stood about 15 feet off the ground. Dragons support the base with demons yanking on their teeth and ears. In the filigree are scenes from Genesis and allegorical stuff about the Earth.

The statue shows Bartholomew before his martyrdom is complete. He holds the Gospel of Matthew and placidly gazes into the cathedral with his skin casually thrown around his shoulders. D’ Lopez had clearly taken up the illegal practice of human dissection, because the statue has all the right muscles in all the right places. Wow art can be disturbing.

St. Bart modeling 50 AD's favorite fashion accessory at the first Milan Fashion Show.

As I said, the interior is not why you go to the Duomo. You go to climb to the roof. Hundreds of spires and flying buttresses soar over the building, each crowned with a different holy person. You get a great view of the city and can appreciate the intricate detail on every block of stone. Little vignettes and angles are incised in each cross-beam and capital. I almost typed that they’re mostly ignored by tourists, but you have to ignore most of the masons’ efforts, or you would never get off the roof.

Carvings that arch over a nondescript pathway. How many hours does it take to carve something like that? Now you know why it took 500 years to pull this off.

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II: One of the prototypical shopping malls. It was built in the 1870s to celebrate Italian unity (Emanuele II was the first king of Italy). Steel and glass domes and ceilings cover designer stores so chic I’ve never heard of them.

The main attraction is the mosaic work. Allegories of the four continents look down on the central mosaic which has symbols of each of the major Italian cities. I forget which city he represents, but one of these mosaics depicts a small white cow. For good luck, you put your foot on his crotch and spin. Everyone does it - tourists, school-kids, locals – they all spin on the poor animal. The best place to watch the spectacle is to settle into a chair at McDonalds, where you can get a beer for 2.50 E. Beverages at any other café in the Galleria would have set us back 8 or 9. Thank you Mr. Steves.

As Josh and I enjoyed the novelty of McDonald’s beer, an older woman next to us shyly interrupted and pointed at us. We heard some Italian and the word “Gee-mon-ee” followed by an interrogative pitch-change. I nodded. It’s a bad habit. When someone starts speaking to me in a foreign language, I default to affirmation. I suspect this will get me into trouble at some point in the near future. In this case though she simply looked satisfied with my “Si.” Only later did I realize “Gee-mon-ee” was “gemelli” or “twin.” We got frustrated. Sure we’re both blond and have blue-ish eyes. We look like brothers, but don’t look identical. For one, I’m significantly more attractive than Josh. Maybe all Americans look the same to the Italians. Next...Art! Opera!

Becoming North-men

Sorry about the hiatus. My brother and I were wandering Italy for the last two weeks. I was so close to being caught up, then I went and did some more exploring. I'm not complaining, but I'm sorry to leave my readership (i.e. my mother) waiting. So the catch-up continues...

The Photo Album with more of France illustrating this post.

The next morning we were up and moving towards the train station to catch a ride to Rouen. We knew they had one train every hour and we planned to arrive at the station with some time to get breakfast. Unfortunately, they rearranged the schedule and we had a lot more time to kill than we expected. Loaded with all of our luggage, we went into the quiet streets in search of something to eat. Tiny cafés were plentiful, but they wouldn’t fit our bags, so for our final meal in Paris was eaten at Quick, a sterile fast food chain that seemed to be McDonald’s French cousin.

Our time to head out towards Rouen was imminent so we walked back to the station where I had to wrestle with the validation machine before we could board. I’m gaining an increasing appreciation for the ease of German transport and the inefficiency of other national high-speed systems.

Rouen is an industrial town with a rich history that goes back to the Hundred Years War (War of the Roses) as France and England raged back and forth over who could claim the crown and Northern France. As we rolled through the city in a cab, we glimpsed a half-dozen towers of churches in different styles that spoke to the antiquity of our new surroundings. We arrived at the car rental place while they were on lunch break. One of the more annoying aspects of traveling through Europe is the unpredictability of lunch time. In France people seem particularly dedicated to their two-hour break in the day.

So we had some time to kill. We dropped our luggage in an accommodating hotel and went to see the Rouen Cathedral, made famous by Monet’s brush as he painted the façade at different times of day, setting up multiple canvases so he could move to the next one as the light changed. The interior was high-flying gothic constructed of light stone that made the whole worship space brighter than most Gothic churches I’ve visited.


We wandered through the quaint shopping district where you could buy fine cheese, wine, chocolate, and duck pate. In case you forgot, we were in France. Joan of Arc was burned in Rouen, and now the city center features a very modern church dedicated to the patron of France. The warped beams of the interior evoke the Viking longboats that gave the region its name (Normandy = North Men) and frame medieval stained glass windows that survived World War II. The church they once decorated did not.

With lunchtime over we grabbed our car, resurrected Brigitte and started North to Bayeux. Our destination was a Norman manor house in the middle of the French countryside. The place was owned and operated by two British sisters and their husbands who decided to quit their jobs in England and open a rustic bed and breakfast in France. Really, who wouldn’t.

The manor and farm houses were reminiscent of a Jane Austen setting with dignified shutters lining every window, and stately chickens wandering the grounds. Our room was a massive piece of the attic with skylights flooding the interior with light. As we were given the tour of our temporary residence, one of the proprietors mentioned the beams over our heads were four hundred years old. At some point I may not find such a statement shocking, but that time hasn’t arrived quite yet.

There was a large common area around a fireplace and bookshelves stuffed with paperbacks and classic novels. A cozy home that we quickly left so we could check off another place we should see before we die: Mont St. Michel.

At some point in the 12th century, a group of monks decided they needed to move to the coast. They built their abbey on a spit of land that was cut off from the mainland every day at high tide. As the abbey expanded, they moved further upslope until they had constructed an entire town ringing their secluded outcrop, crowning the town with a Gothic spire and a gigantic figure of St. Michael getting ready to lop Satan’s head from his shoulders.

Mont St. Michel first becomes visible on the horizon as you drive in on the highway. The flat coastline is suddenly punctured by the fantastical walled castle, the inspiration for hundreds of fantasy pop artists. The peninsula/island has been a destination for pilgrims for centuries. These proto-tourists forged the way for the modern restaurants and antique shops that line the road to the Mont. Finally we arrived on the coast, parked the car and took in the view of the walled city from the mainland (along with dozens of Japanese tourists). Breathtaking.

We stopped for dinner at one of the many restaurants that billed themselves as classic Norman establishments. The place was cavernous with dining area after dining area. Dozens of waiters and waitresses shot from the kitchen hauling oysters and fish fillets. The interior was reminiscent of Bill Knaps or Red Lobster and it was incredibly entertaining to watch the efficient marshaling of the staff by supervisors and managers, a distinctly American practice.

We finally arrived back at the manor house. Dad was exhausted from a day of driving, but stayed up long enough to sit by the fire and chat with one of the husbands who maintained the grounds. He wore a green vest and a jovial expression, and I knew I was in the cozy company of hobbits. Really, Tolkien's hobbits are idealized Brits, and the owners of our bed and breakfast were pretty close to ideal. Then it was time for bed before we made our assault on the beaches of Normandy.



The photos again.

Gargoyles and Impressionists

The next morning, fueled by pain aux chocolate (also known as Schococroissant or “A croissant with a bunch of chocolate in the middle”) and fantastic coffee, we set out for another symbol of Paris: Notre Dame.

The Cathedral has always been highly significant in my imagination. I honestly didn’t know anything about the cathedral in Cologne before I arrived on the banks of the Rhine, and arguably it’s the more impressive building, but there was a kind an excited anticipation fueling my progress to Notre Dame.

As a Catholic Midwesterner, I’ve always known the name Notre Dame University, and somehow always have known it shares a name with a big church in Paris. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is also one of the finest animated Disney movies they ever created (“The Lion King” is number one in my book, but I have this thing for animals, you see.). The Disney Hunchback drove me to read an abridged version of the novel (I thought it was the real thing and felt duped when I later found the Victor Hugo Classic is more than 200 pages). So, I was pretty pumped as music from the movie’s soundtrack looped through my brain. Finally we emerged from the Metro and saw the twin bell towers dominating the plaza before us.

The structure is has a kind of solidity that the Cologne Dom lacks. Perhaps because this entire Cathedral was built during the actual height of the Gothic, while the façade and bell towers of the Cologne Dom were completed in the 19th century and are a kind of loopy Neo-Gothic. Still beautiful to behold, but it’s not as ancient as Notre Dame. The gargoyles and saints leered down at us as we filed into the building from perches they'd clutched for six hudred years.


The stained glass and rose windows were capturing all the light of the clear spring morning, the shards of color falling on tourists and the faithful as everyone prepared for Holy Week. But Dad and I quickly left the solemnity of the cathedral’s interior for a higher power: We wanted to see Paris from the roof (I have a history of climbing churches).

The line seemed incredibly long and we weren’t quite sure if it would be worth the time. It was long, but it was worth the time. Fortunately, for most of the wait we were entertained by a street performer who made his change by sneaking up behind people while the crowd looked on. I was waiting for a protective husband or mother to sock him, but most people were too bewildered to become violent. Ultimately, there’s some comfort in that.

After hauling up a couple hundred stone stairs, we finally broke out onto the “bridge” that goes between the two towers. There we were able to meet and greet some of the more famous inhabitants of the cathedral:





After spending some time taking in the view with some pensive gargoyles and checking out the massive bell that only rings on special occasions (for fear of shaking the bricks to the ground), we went up to the next level top of one of the bell towers. The view was breath taking.


We then went all the way down the stairs accompanied by a little girl who sang, “We’re going down the stairs!” to the tune of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” for the entire descent. I couldn’t shake the song for a solid six hours. She was lucky she was so gersh dern cute.


Our next stop was the Musée de l'Orangerie or just “The Orangerie.” The museum houses a relatively small collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist work from a private collection. The centerpiece of the exhibit are Claude Monet’s “Nymphéas” or “Water Lillies.” There are eight canvases in the series, and each stretches 30 feet. They’re among Monet’s final canvases and were painted as he developed cataracts, his eyes forcing him to paint on a larger scale just so he could see what he was doing. The paintings were made exclusively for this museum. You enter one of the galleries and are literally surrounded by water lilies and natural light. Each canvas depicts a different time of day and slightly different arrangement of trees and lilies. Absolutely gorgeous, and almost too much to take in.

One of the massive galleries housing the massive canvases.

A detail from one of Monet's final works. Each of those flowers is about the size of a dinner plate.

All men who jump in rivers in Paris are in Seine.

On to the Orsay. Most people know about the Louvre, the museum that houses ancient to early 19th century art. The Louvre is an art history book come to life…to a point. Once you reached Impressionists, it cuts off and before 1986, you had to trek all over the city to get the rest of art’s modern history. Then the city took an abandoned railway station and installed the Musée d'Orsay. Name the great Frenchmen and you’ll find his work: Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cezanne, Courbet, Pissaro, Manet. Throw in Van Gogh…again, overwhelming. The art seemed endless, but never monotonous. We also discovered new names and works. I’ll only give you a small sample here:

Paul Gauguin's "Arearea. Joyeusetes" (1892). Gauguin had a brainwave. What if I got out of Paris? What if I painted, you know, the rest of the world?

Olympia (1863) by Édouard Manet. Not an idealized nude. Thus a scandle. Manet loved it.

Georges Seurat (1891) The Circus. This is the guy that did that huge picture with the woman in a bustle and a monkey on a leash (A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte). I didn't know he could get...trippy.

Don Quixote and the Dead Mule (1867) by Daumier. I've made it a new goal to see as many Penguin Classic book covers as I can. Check.

Nikolai Nikolaievitch Gay's Le calvaire (1880-ish). One of the more striking, excruciating crucifixion paintings I've ever seen.

We went on a day the museum was open late, and we stayed until closing time, slowly herded towards the door by the guards. After waving our arms for a couple hours, we flagged down a cab and had dinner at a slightly darker restaurant than we had visited the night before, Café Terrane. Our waiter seemed like he was born to serve, with perfectly groomed facial hair and just enough of a business-like demeanor to make you feel like he would never want to intrude and would only do so when it was absolutely essential. I enjoyed rabbit (only the second time I’ve eaten lagomorph) in mustard and crème sauce. I’ll admit that I spent a good chunk of the meal trying to figure out if I was eating dark chicken meat or rabbit. When I finally got to the bones I knew I was dealing with a mammal. Desert was a sampler of crème brulee, little slices of cake, and espresso. So good. So filling. So tired, and we had THE palace to visit the next day.