Florence and Venice, Where Rocked Socks Were Knocked and Left Behind

After an epic treatise of Como, I shall save myself the effort and you the burden of an excessively long post about Florence and Venice, which together lasted a mere 3 days.

So below, you get pictures and comments on each. Deal with it.

Heather and I at the best place we ate in all of Florence: Trattoria dei 13 Gobbi. At the bottom of the picture: Florentine Steak. I never thought I'd eat steak outside of America that would rival its best, but lo, that's what we had. Holy smokes, yum.

Florence, from the Duomo Belltower.

Florence, from the Duomo Belltower. Edge left is the Duomo dome. Further out: hills of Tuscany.

Florence, from the Duomo Belltower.

Florence, from the Duomo Belltower. An old palace in the center-left.

Heather, characteristically gorgeous, with the Duomo dome behind.

Erik, squinting.

Another fabulous dinner, outside. More steak, not quite as good this time.

And lo, we arrived in Venice. Former capital of the world. Actually no cars.

Perhaps the best spot, in front of the old Customs House. Panoramic looking northwest from there.

Streetside Vivaldi!

And a great video of our Streetside Vivaldi folks.

Along the Grand Canal. The boat is public transit (a bus).

We stayed away from tourist sites as much as we could, discussing art and religion, looking down alleyways and upon bridges.

We hired an awesome gondolier to take us around.

HEre we are, with yon awesome gondolier in the background.

The grand canal, from the gondola.

Heather, gondolier, and his awesome daughter who hung out and spoke as little English as we did Italian.

Ride over :(

Looking upon the grand canal from the main bridge across it. Note no other bridges down there--it's a pain to cross if you don't know where you're going (generally a pain to get around, actually).

Oh, Venice. You are one big piece of art. Maybe not good for much else, but definitely pretty.

Canal at night.

A road at night. Mars is faintly visible out there.

Our last photo: the lively part of the city, where the young kids hang out. If we'd had a second night... ah, well :)

Lake Como, Where Life Came Back

Como

Ahhh, Lake Como.

The first month of our trip, in Paris, was still (to a large extent) "work mode." We had pretty clear schedules and a lot of work that we wanted to get done. After all, we were "living" there and each have a number of goals that we want to accomplish by the time we get home. Great.

But there was a bit missing, at least for me. I never quite felt like I was on "island time" (as my father would say). Now there is some internal debate here as to whether Lake Como helped me let go of the future and embrace the moment, or whether my brain's shift allowed me to find Lake Como. A tough question and one I shall answer perhaps another time. For now, be content with discovering Lake Como, as I was.

The approach to Menaggio (the village in which we stayed) started at the city of Como itself (to which we took a train from Milano). Hurtling up the west side of the lake, we could see Switzerland out the left window (despite rumours it does not sheen with gilded gold) and from the right, villages tucked into the alps speckled the coast. Most buildings were a pastel of pinks, yellows, and oranges on the walls and very typical Italian red terracotta shingles atop.

The whole lake was "charming" in a way that seemed uncorrupted despite centuries of being a tourism/vacation retreat. Perhaps its remoteness has proven a barrier to the overly casual tour-and-photo tourist, preserving taste. Whatever the reason, it generally lacked the garish-ness of mega-tourism (though it still had some of the usual Italian garishness in places)... a stark departure from Milano. Menaggio bustled with local activity, and the tourists largely-speaking seemed to be staying for a bit longer and were there to get their fingers in the mud, get food at the grocery, and relax during the day with cappucinno.

We were generously hosted by Heather's parents, who had rented a place on the hills of Menaggio. Below are some dreadfully inadequate panoramics of the view from the back porch. This is what we saw upon waking and just before sleep (it was, of course, dark just before sleep but there was no way I was going to get a photo of any consequence).

Lake Como from the Porch

Days were slow and here I was largely forced to let go of my penchant for planning. This happens every now and then (Nantucket, Tahoe), but typically I have seen it as a departure from my more legitimate existence rather than an integral part of it (really, planning should consume only a fairly small portion of life, or else one is doing it poorly, no?). Even in my first trip to Nantucket, I spent a large part of it planning Puerto Rico... and once I got to Puerto Rico, plans fell apart and I spent most of it trying to fight fires back in the US that I pretended to have left behind. I was only going through the motions, in the end.

We took a day to hike up one of the local peaks. We had above us the reward of the most spectacular view of the lake (and of the nearby lake in Switzerland)

To think I once took pride in being told that I "live in the future." Alas, if that future never comes then one never ends up really living at all, does he? My brain will fight to be distracted for a very long time, I think. What an irony it would be if I started spending my time fretting over when I would finally stop letting my mind distract me too much, but it's an easy trap to fall into. I've been told to "live slower" and I reject that, as I don't wish to sacrifice quantity for quality. But, ah, I don't think I need to. A more attentive mind can have both.

I think the next challenge here is to be able to apprciate the uniqueness and beauty of Cambridge, MA and wherever I go to site next as I did Lake Como. To be in love with one's present life without having to fly across an ocean to do it--there is something to aspire to.

Below are pictures from the hike:

From the Way Up

From the Way Up

The Pangles Survey the Landscape

From the Way Up

From the Way Up. Menaggio below.

From very near the top. Alps to the right. "Refuge" to the left.

Looking down, from the Refuge.

Secondary Peak.

Panoramic from Secondary Peak. Lake on the Right is in Switzerland.

Heather, below the primary peak.

Heather, in front of Lake Como.

Heather, in front of Lake Como.

Erik, in front of Lake Como.

Como (right) and peak (left).

Madonna, on the secondary peak, just as she is EVERYWHERE in Italy.

Heather, in front of Lake Como.

Heather, in front of Lake Como.

Heather, in front of Lake Como.

Heather, in front of Lake Como.

Milan: A City of Spectacles, Empty Inside

Ah, Milan. We were here for two days. It had quite a few interesting bits (below) but overall felt dead and empty. Heather tells me that apparently there was a men's fashion show the week before and after these in particular people tend to flee the city in the summer for Lake Como (where we are now... and it's amazing) so it clears out big time on the weekends. We were there Saturday/Sunday and we definitely noticed. We felt some major bad juju there when walking around.

Generally the city also felt like it, as Heather put it, "lost a former glory." Graffiti was everywhere. Buildings looked old and sad in a way. Apparently it's quite rich and the GDP is huge but I was, from that, expecting some seriously ritzy-looking buildings (in particular as much of it was bombed during WWII), but it was a lot of rusticated (which means the bottom floor looks like a fortress, with small windows and uninviting "gates" of doors) stuff with bare upper floors. All in all, kindof depressing and made us feel desperate for life.

The other weird thing about the city was how awfully touristy it was. In all our walking we didn't find a spot that didn't feel touristy. To be fair, we were mostly in city center, but no part of Paris or any other city I've been to felt as touristy as this, and it never stopped in Milan. Strange street acts (from bizarre meditators to clowns), people pushing stupid rubber-band-gliding-light-things, fake designer bags in the street--it was everywhere, all the time. 

Anyway, enough depressing. Time for the good stuff.

Watch this video, seriously. Amazing, short clip of a Japanese Rastafarian guy with serious business skills on this kindof bell drum something-or-rather. He said it was from "America" and I'm not entirely sure what that means. If anyone has any ideas... leave 'em in comments.

He also played a pretty sweet didgeridoo, too.

Other unrecorded spectacles included a pretty talented (but odd) beat-boxer, a guy in a really sad, beat-up/dirty looking Mickey Mouse knock-off costume, a clown, some sort of Eastern cult full of white people marching about mostly naked and singing, a mime whose major trick was sitting on an invisible chair (his right foot was clearly stuck by being nailed/etc into a wood board below his carpet), a saw-player, and others. The most spectacular, as it were, was this pair of meditators (below). One guy, "balanced" on a pole of bamboo, and another guy holding up the pole (no supports under his wrist). They just sat there for god-knows-how-long, meditating. Looks like a pretty impressive feat of mind of matter, no?

From the completely-unmoving nature of the bottom guy's arm, the suspicious covering of most of his hand by his robe, by the somewhat-elevated shag carpet, etc, I am fairly certain they had some sort of steel structure supporting the pole that traveled along bottom guy's right arm. Top guy was clearly on a flat platform that met at the pole, but it was tucked through by his robe. Very impressive work and clearly still required some fortitude to maintain. 

More mundane... An old Banco Popular had a statue that looked suspiciously like the globe statue outside the UN building in NYC.

We passed by the Pride Parade being set up in the northern part of the city. Looked like a good time but we were gone all day.

 Heather spied out what-looked-like someone's old and very impressive house with a number of Italians, likely scholars of some sort, that we could not recognize.

An arcade of expensive, touristy stuff, with nice architecture.

This is where things got actually lively. By this time we were pretty desperate for some human life and found it here. Folks from all over the continent and likely elsewhere were along this canal, packed with cafes, restaurants, and bars. Heather is below enjoying a Spriz (an Italian pre-dinner cocktail).

 Here's the view from one end of the canal. Despite itself being a smidge touristy, it had more than enough real people and real liveliness to get the job done. We were happy enough here.

But overall, we were more than happy to move on to Lake Como, rivaling Vancouver and Tahoe as most beautiful place I've ever been. More on that later.