European Adventures
Chapter 7 - ITALY
After a final mail pickup at American Express, in Strasbourg, we headed south towards Provence and then on to Italy.
Enroute we stopped at a couple of nice campgrounds, one of which had riding stables. Provence smelled great! The aroma of pine trees and fresh wild herbs growing in the forests and fields was wonderful. We were able to gather fresh rosemary which added a nice flavour to a chicken dish. We were also able to buy bulk Cote de Rhone and Cote de Provence wines from Cooperatives at prices less than $2 a litre. Nice wines at nice prices.
We spent a couple of days in Aix-en-Provence, the birthplace and home of the artist Paul Cezanne. The city has, very wisely, capitalized on this fact and has designed tourist routes, both walking and driving, that take you past important sites in his life. I am not sure what he would think of the view of Mount Ste-Victoire today though. The nearby industrial centre at Marseille pours out a constant stream of ugly pollution that certainly reduces not only the view, but also the beauty of the countryside.
After a quick visit to Monaco we entered Italy on the fourth of October. Because the numbers in Italian currency are so large we got a prepaid card to cover the cost of the Autostradas, the Italian toll roads. This worked well for the entire month that we were in the country and saved a lot of time and confusion at the toll booths. Particularly in northern Italy the highways are an engineering wonder. It was only after we had been driving for an hour or so that we realized that we were not driving on natural ground but that the highway was nothing more than a series of tunnels and bridges. On one stretch of road, about 270 kms long, we drove through 104 tunnels, the shortest of which was 78 metres, the longest was more than 4 kms long. Because of the cost of building and maintaining these highways, the tolls are very expensive. If you don’t want to pay the tolls you are normally limited to roads that are really not suitable for pulling a trailer on. There are some notable exceptions but we generally used, and paid for, the Autostradi.
Our first stop was Genoa. Our main reason for stopping here was to pick up mail at the American Express affiliate. Unfortunately for us they had lost their franchise, moved and no longer provided “Client Mail Service”. After a very frustrating phone call I was told that they now redirected mail to the Milan office of American Express. This was on October 6th. We did not get any of the mail sent to us in Genoa until December 12th! By this time we were now in Marbella, Spain, had visited Milan twice, phoned from the American Express office in Marbella, which had also relocated from the address that we had been given in Canada, and we had just about given up hope of ever seeing any of this mail. There were several pieces that we know were lost but we did get most of it. Getting mail is always a tricky problem and if you don’t have the correct address it is even trickier.
In spite of the problems with mail we did enjoy seeing the sights in Genoa. There are palaces, squares and streets full of art treasures. The Via Garibaldi has a dozen palaces built between 1558 and 1565. Many of these buildings have now been taken over by banks and other commercial enterprises and have been beautifully restored to their former glory.
We took the train to Milan for the day. We were able to get the Metro right in the train station and that delivered us right to the Cathedral. This is one of the most stunning churches in Europe. It is built of white marble and bristles with belfries, gables, pinnacles and statues. Construction started in 1386 but the facade was only completed in 1809, on the orders of Napoleon. The Brera Picture gallery has a great collection of largely religious paintings. It is housed in a charming building but I’m afraid I saw a little bit too much of suffering saints and persecuted Christians, and was happy to return to Cathedral Plaza, sit down and watch the very fashion-conscious and exquisitely dressed Milanese ladies walk by.
Speaking of sitting down: If you go into a bar in Italy and ask for a drink it is much cheaper if you stand at the bar and drink your glass of wine or cup of coffee. If you do decide to sit at a table the price will at least double! Sometimes the cost is worth it but even in a little, no atmosphere bar the same policy applies. It may not be a rip-off but it is certainly national policy, and for us tended to aggravate.
We had hoped to visit the CINQUE TERRE, on the Ligurian coast. These are five small villages that have been able to maintain their rustic charm, and Rick Steves had raved about them in his travel book on Italy. Mother Nature decided to intervene and we were subjected to several days of continuous rain so we moved south to a campground just outside of Pisa. This campground was located on an American military base, Camp Darby. Because I was Canadian Air Force, we were able to stay there and use some of the Base facilities. This was our base for the next week to explore some of Tuscany.
Tuscany is full of charming, historic towns and villages. San Gimignano, a 12th century town that has many towers in the town itself, not built for defensive purposes but to allow the textile manufacturers to hang their saffron-dyed fabrics inside to dry. Here we had a picnic lunch on the steps of the cathedral while we listened to classical music being played by a German flautist in the Piazza del Popolo. Volterra, another medieval town with a cathedral that has a lovely gold and blue ceiling. The octagonal Baptistry across the plaza dates from 1283. We also enjoyed Monteriggioni, a totally walled town, sitting high on a hill overlooking Chianti. The wall and 14 towers were erected in the 13th century. Greve-in-Chianti, a town with a wine shop on every street, and a statue of the explorer Verazzano, who has a bridge in New York City named after him, in the main square. We enjoyed a lazy stroll in Via Reggio, a seaside town with some very interesting Art Deco architecture and a thriving ship building industry. We saw huge yachts being built and refitted.
Driving between all of these towns and villages took us through miles of vineyards and olive groves. Most of the grapes had already been picked but many of the farmers were just getting ready to harvest the olives. They do this by spreading nets under the tree and then whacking the tree with sticks to make the olives fall. If they are ripe they do. If not the farmers must then use their hands to strip the olives from the branches. Most of the olives are used to make oil and only a very small percentage are used as cocktail snacks.
Campo dei Miracoli, or Field of Miracles in Pisa is the location of the Leaning Tower. The tower was begun in 1173 and completed in 1350. The tower started leaning in 1178, while under construction, and it has continued to do so ever since. The architect actually kinked over the top portion of the tower to try to offset the lean. It looks nice from a distance but close up it is a construction scene. There are steam pipes drying out the subsoil and 670 tonnes of lead to counterbalance the lean, as well as various cables and cement collars to help in the process. Galileo was born in Pisa and used the Leaning Tower in his experiments in gravity. Also located in the Field of Miracles is the cathedral, started in 1064 and the Baptistery. The Baptistery was built in 1153 and has incredible acoustics. The day that we were there a choir was singing and the sound was marvelous. The Camposanto (Sacred Field) is so called because it is said that Crusaders brought soil back from the Hill of Calvary for this burial ground. The white marble walls surrounding this cemetery hold some gorgeous 14th century frescoes. Many of them were destroyed by Allied incendiary bombs in 1944 but some are being restored. The most impressive is the “The Triumph of Death”. Very graphic and in some cases quite grotesque.
Many of the highways in Italy still use the same names and follow the same routes as the ancient Roman roads. The Via Aurelia is a case in point. It starts in the northwest of the country and ends, as all Italian roads do, in Rome. We drove this highway and camped in Ostia, the old port of Rome.
We took the train from Ostia to Rome on a Sunday. A much more peaceful day for sight-seeing in a large city because there is little or no commercial traffic. We had been to St. Peter’s Basilica on a previous trip so decided to give that a miss this time. We visited Santa Maria Maggiore, built in AD 432-440. It has impressive mosaics and the ceiling is said to have been gilded with the first gold brought from Peru. The Trevi Fountain, cleaned and restored in 1990 but already starting to take on a slightly soiled look, is now more pleasing to the Romans because they really did not like it when it was sparkling white. The Pantheon, an ancient building perfectly preserved, was built in 27 B.C. and converted from a temple to a church in the 7th century. The Piazza di Spagna was called this because in the 17th century the Spanish Embassy was located there. The Spanish Steps, which the postcards show covered in flowers, were actually covered in people, soaking up the last of the autumn sun. In the plaza there are about a dozen new statues of people in contemporary costume. They are very realistic and tourists gleefully drape their arms around them and get their pictures taken. New art in an old city. Much of Rome seems to have been cleaned recently and more work is underway. It is a real treat to see many of the buildings restored to their original white marble finish.
Our next campground was 100 metres from the entrance to the ruined city of Pompeii. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in August 79 A.D. it completely buried the city, killing many and leaving a hidden record for future generations to uncover. It was only in the 18th century that excavation was started, and it is still going on today. We devoted a long morning to exploring the ruins, but you could well spend weeks there and still not see everything.
We drove around the Sorrento Peninsula and the Amalfi Coast. The views were outstanding but if we did it again I would drive the Amalfi Coast from west to east rather than east to west. The majority of the sights are better seen going in that direction and there are spots to pull off and get some photos.
From Pompei we drove north to Umbria. Our destination was a campground outside of Assisi. Although it was the 24th of October, it was, according to our guidebook, supposed to be open. It wasn’t and we couldn’t understand what the locals were saying except they kept saying something about an earthquake. We finally found a campsite on Lake Trasemeno, just beyond Perugia, and settled in.
The next morning we found out what they meant about the earthquake. On September 24th a major earthquake had hit the area and caused major damage to much of the surrounding area, and killed many people as well. We had planned on visiting St. Francis’ Basilica because of what we had read about in so many of our reference books. It sounded charming. Unfortunately the Basilica suffered major structural damage and is closed for the next two years! Almost all the other churches and public buildings are also closed, and many homes suffered as well. This was a major disappointment for us.
Umbria also has many interesting hill towns, and we used the campground at Perugia as our base for a week to explore this area. As much as we enjoyed looking at the scenery, it was really quite cold with a biting wind that seemed to come right down from the Alps, and we were frozen stiff as we walked around the towns. Sure took the fun out of our visiting.
We did a day trip, by train, to Florence. The cathedral there was begun in 1296, and although two different exterior facades were started and destroyed, it wasn’t until the 1870s that the pink, green and white marble facade we see today was actually completed. The dome is decorated by what must be the largest painting of the Last Supper done in the Renaissance. When planning St. Peter’s in Rome, Michelangelo said, “I can build a dome bigger, but not more beautiful, than the dome in Florence.” The painting has recently been restored and is indeed a work of art. The Cathedral Museum has many of the original models and drawings used by the architects as well as an unfinished “Pieta” by Michelangelo, done when he was 80. 
In the Uffizi Gallery many of the rooms were closed, so we did not have the opportunity to see all of the art treasures there, but we did see many. We walked across the Ponte Vecchio and drooled over the gold and jewellery in the shops that have been established there since 1593, when the butchers were expelled. We saw other sights but with the cold and wind we wore out by late afternoon and returned to our campground.
It was now November first and our thoughts turned to where we would spend the winter. We had decided on southern Spain but had no definite site in mind. We said farewell to Italy and headed west. I’ll tell you about our winter next issue.
Until then, Happy Camping.
