A couple of weeks ago, I returned from an eighteen-day "tour" of northern Italy. It was an unguided tour, as I hopped from city to city, traveling on Italy's excellent railways, staying only briefly in each town.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I did stay five nights in Florence, my first contact with Italy -- indeed with Europe -- at the age of 21 in 1961. The other stops were generally for two nights, which, since the train rides were relatively short, generally gave me one full day and most of the day of arrival for exploration, for once more getting a taste of each city..
Besides Florence, I chose towns that I had visited one of more times in the past, and with which I wanted to re-establish a sense of familiarity.
Florence
I had just visited Florence for several days in May 2023, but as Hemingway would have said, if he had hung out in Florence rather than Paris in his youth:
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Florence as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Florence is a moveable feast.
Mary McCarthy, in her excellent book combining a study of art and a telling of history, The Stones of Florence, spends her entire first chapter describing all the reasons that no one likes Florence anymore.
Florence is a manly town, and the cities of art that appeal to the current sensibility are feminine, like Venice and Siena.What irritates the modern tourist about Florence it that it makes no concession to the pleasure principle.
This was in 1959. Today, tourists too often seem to love Florence to death -- cars are banned from much of the center, and tourists pack the streets and sidewalks -- loving it perhaps far more than they love even Venice or Siena.
The Uffizi is one of the world's great art museums. The last couple of times I'd been in Florence, the line for admission was too daunting. This time, I made a timed reservation, easily arranged on-line, and waited in no line at all. Many of the great works of art that you have seen in art books hang in the Uffizi. Florence was the primal fountain, the original source from which virtually all of later Italian Renaissance art flowed. The Uffizi's exhibits are more densely concentrated than those in the Louvre, and the museum's focus is on painting -- Renaissance painting, primarily, although the lower floor contains later works up through the nineteenth century.
When you get tired of Renaissance painting, you can walk a few blocks to the Bargello, a castle-like building -- a former prison -- and view some of the great works of Renaissance sculpture. I went primarily to see Donatello's work in its various stages, but much of it was unavailable for viewing. I suspect this was a temporary problem, and by the time of my next visit to Florence, it will have been remedied.
My other major pilgrimage in Florence was to the Basilica of Santa Croce, the largest Franciscan church in the world, and the setting for early scenes in the movie of E. M. Forster's novel, A Room with a View.
I also did a cursory inspection of Florence's second major art museum, the Pitti Palace, but I may have been burdened with two much art in too short a time. I enjoyed the Pitti more for its architecture -- it served as the Medici home for many years -- than for the art it contained.
Up the road north from Florence's center, past the villa where 80 American students -- including me -- studied in 1961, is the town of Fiesole. A major Etruscan center in its day, founded in the seventh century B.C., centuries before Roman legions constructed the settlement of Florentia on the banks of the Arno, Fiesole became a favorite residential area for British expats in the late 19th-early 20th centuries, refined folks who wanted to escape the daily bustle of Florence below. The town is reachable on Florence's municipal bus system, taking a No. 7 bus from the central train station. There are some ruins, including a partially reconstructed Roman amphitheater, but no sites to visit that I'd consider major. But it made a pleasant morning, wandering the streets and hills of the small town, observing the big city below, and having an enjoyable lunch on the main square.
Beyond all these familiar Florentine icons, the greatest pleasure from visiting Florence results from simply walking the streets of the city and mingling with the crowds -- both residents and tourists.
Como
After five nights, a high speed train took me to Milan, where I quickly transferred to a regional train to Como. The transfer was made at the Porta Garibaldi station, rather than the familiar Stazione Centrale, but the transfer was so fast I hardly noticed the difference. After three straight years of arrival in Como before being transferred by ferry (or sometimes bus) to a rental home just north of Menaggio, the Como San Giovanni station and its environs were very familiar.
The street leading away from the station led directly to my hotel, just a couple of blocks back from the ferry terminal. I had the rest of the day to wander about the city. The next day, I satisfied a curiosity dating from my first visit to Lake Como in 2021 -- to ride the funicular up the mountain side and find out what's on top.
The funicular station is on the lakeshore, a short walk along the harbor. The ride was fun, but the views from the funicular were usually obscured either by tunnels or by wild vegetation along the side of the track. At the top was the small town of Brunate. Very pleasant town, with some good views of Como and the lake below. Signs marked various hiking/biking trails leading out of town, and I ended up hiking 45 minutes up a fairly steep trail to the Faro Voltiano lighthouse. Decent, not great, views of the city below, but a feeling of accomplishment as I eventually sat nursing a post-hike cappuccino in Brunate.
I learned that the Italian word for lighthouse -- faro -- derives from the Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Just a little etymology lesson.
I discovered after returning to Como that the lighthouse was clearly visible from the city below, once you know which direction to look.
Venice
The following morning, I took an early train to Milan, where I connected with a train to Venice. I'd been in Venice only two times before: with my university group in 1961, and a one-day visit the summer after law school in 1974. Besides those two brief visits, my image of Venice derived primarily from the words in Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, a vivid but probably melodramatic literary painting of the city in 1911.
My train arrived in Venice's Santa Lucia station, perched on the Grand Canal. I transferred to a vaporetto, which carried me several stops along the canal until I disembarked at the Rialto Bridge. l had received written instructions from my hotel how next to proceed, and the hotel wasn't far from the bridge -- but making my way with my baggage gave me a lesson as to the torturous windings of the street patterns in Venice. As I remarked in my journal, it was a short distance, but required climbing up and down two bridges, and negotiating sharp turns at six intersections of increasingly narrow "streets."
An often overlooked attraction in Venice is the Lido, a long, skinny, sandy island a short distance by vaporetto from the main Venetian islands. The Lido is the beach of Venice. The main events in Mann's novel take place on the Lido, where the protagonist was a guest at the Hotel des Bains, one of the two important deluxe hotels in 1911. A travel article that I read shortly before leaving home urged visitors not to overlook the Lido, and so I didn't.
If Venice proper is a delightful chaos of tiny, twisty streets and touristic crowds, the Lido is just the opposite -- calm and peaceful, long, wide tree-lined avenues, and an atmosphere that recalls Mann's world, but without the Edwardian stuffiness and overdressed bodies of that world. The Hotel des Bains is closed, sadly, and has been for over a decade, but the Excelsior, at the other end of the island, which I didn't see, is still receiving guests. And, of course, there are many other hotels now in business.
I spent only a few hours wandering about the Lido -- most of the beaches are owned by private beach clubs, which do sell daily memberships. The beach clubs are where you find changing huts, refreshment facilities, and long rows of beach chairs. But just to get a feeling for the Lido shore, I walked to a spiaggia libera, or free, public beach. Very nice, very sandy, but not much different from our own beaches.
Returning to Venice proper, I had lunch -- expensive -- on the Grand Canal near the Rialto Bridge. Later that day, I visited the eclectic, quasi-Byzantine interior of the Basilica San Marco, and spent an hour sitting at a table on the Piazza, sipping my first ever "aperol spritz" -- an impressively refreshing aperitivo, costing a mere 13 euros ($14.50) -- while listening to an orchestra across the piazza playing "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby."
I was living in a dream world. But isn't that what today's Venice is all about?
Milan
The next morning, I returned to Milan by train, where I stayed one night. As I wrote home, only partially in jest, my sole goal in Milan was to wash my clothes. Which I did, in a very nice self-help laundromat not far from my hotel. My main surprise was that I didn't have to buy soap for a euro, as I had at an earlier wash in Florence. The soap was included in the price (and inside the machine), and was added at the appropriate time by the software running the machine. For some reason, this amazed and delighted me. And still does.
Riomaggiore
After my one night stay in Milan -- so important a stop in those years when we are en route to a stay at a rental on Lake Como -- I took the longest train ride of the two weeks -- a four hour ride on a very modern train, with a full service diner, crossing to the Ligurian coast at Genoa, and then south through the Cinque Terre. In May 2023, I had stayed at Levanto, just north of the Cinque Terre, and had visited four of the five towns making up the national park. All except Riomaggiore, a lacking that I remedied on this trip.
Riomaggiore is built on a steep hill. The train arrives in the harbor area, and the streets immediately become vertical. There is an elevator near the station that will carry you part way to the top, upon production of one euro or proof of hotel bookiing, which I used once, when I first arrived with baggage. Thereafter ... well, you get used to walking up hill, and watching all the life that's going on about you. The walk soon seems far less forbidding that you first thought.
My hotel was quite a distance up the hill, and my room was small but pleasant, with a small terrace. It's difficult for me to compare Riomaggiore with the other Cinque Terre cities, because I was visiting in very early September, while my visit to the other cities was in May. On its face, I'd say that the other four cities seemed calmer and more sedate in their visitors than Riomaggiore. Riomaggiore was about as picturesque as you could hope for, but there was a certain youthful hysteria in the socializing, in the drinking, in the volume of voices. That said, I was never made to feel uncomfortable in my status as an older visitor. The crowd was loud, but also friendly.
But like the other Cinque Terre towns, once you've let the atmosphere soak in and have enjoyed the dramatic scenery of small buildings piled atop each other going up the hills, and once you've had a meal or two, and nursed an aperitivo at one of the many sidewalk bars -- there isn't really much more to do. If you're a hiker, there are hikes, but that quickly leads you out of town. I stayed two nights in Riomaggiore, and that was probably about right. If I was with friends, three nights perhaps. But it's not a place to spend the week as an aimless traveler -- as opposed to, say, as an artist, or a writer. Or using the town as a base for hiking.
I liked it. At times, I was overwhelmed with how much I liked it. But after two nights, I was ready to move on.
Pisa and Lucca
It's a short train ride from Riomaggiore to Pisa, with a quick change of trains at La Spezia. My hotel was a short walk from the train station. I arrived at my hotel early in the day, left my baggage, and warned them that I'd be back late in the afternoon to pick up my baggage and formally check in. Very affable desk clerk.
But I was quickly back at the train station, and jumping aboard a train for a half-hour ride to Lucca. I had only the one night planned in Pisa, before heading back to Rome and my flight home. I had initially planned to spend a day in Lucca while I was staying in Florence. I noted, however, that the train ride from Florence to Lucca was about 2 1/2 hours each way, as opposed to a half hour from Pisa. So I chose to wait to see Lucca until I reached Pisa, understanding that I'd have only the afternoon in Lucca before I returned to Pisa and prepared for my early train to Rome, via a connection in Florence.
Clinton, my sister Kathy, and I had visited Lucca in 2009, while staying in Florence. My main memory was of circumambulating the city atop the medieval walls. And so on arrival, I immediately climbed to the top of the walls. The walls were built to protect the town's independence from aggressive armies from Florence and Pisa. The walls were apparently daunting enough that neither city ever attempted an attack, and they quickly achieved the park-like atmosphere that they have today. Circling the city is about a 2 1/2-mile walk (or bike ride -- many bike rental businesses in town), and takes maybe an hour. It's an agreeable walk with scenery of the neighboring countryside on one side and of varying views of the city on the other.
After completing the walk, I visited the Lucca Duomo (cathedral), beautifully Tuscan on its exterior, and impressively Gothic inside. By that time, my mildly arthritic legs were aching, but dawdling for a time for an afternoon aperitivo proved an excellent remedy.
I returned to Pisa and checked into my hotel. I questioned whether I wanted to add more miles to my legs by walking across town to the Leaning Tower (Torre Pendente), but I knew I'd never forgive myself if I didn't. Excellent decision, I discovered. The walk proceeded for a stretch along the Arno river as the sun sank lower in the sky, then across the river for another half mile or mile to the great piazza that contains the Leaning Tower, the Pisa Duomo, the Baptistery, and other associated buildings. The tower leaned just like it does in photos! I remembered visiting it as a 21-year-old, when some friends and I all charged to the top. Back then, a number of the levels had no protective railings, and it was up to you if you wanted to risk your life getting too close to the edge. Things seem a little better (?) regulated now, but my legs weren't up to the climb.
Instead, I had an excellent dinner at an outdoor cafe immediately in front of the Tower. Watched the crowds, and remembered when tourists were fewer, hairs on my head were more numerous, and my legs were sturdier. But the memories were happy, not sad, and my spirits were wonderfully buoyed by the excellent Chianti that accompanied my dinner.
Le Deluge
The next morning, I had breakfast and headed to the station for the regional train to Florence. To my dismay, virtually every train out of Pisa was canceled, in compliance with a 24-hour nationwide railway strike. After finding no alternative means of getting to Rome, I changed my flight booking by 24 hours, and returned to the hotel where I begged for another night's rooming. They had no empty singles, but the very sympathetic clerk found an available triple, and some possibly applicable discounts that made the amount I paid only slightly more than I had paid for my single the night before.
An excellent opportunity to see Pisa in depth, you suggest? While I was having lunch near the station, the skies opened and the heaviest rainfall I remember ever seeing surrounded me under the sidewalk cafe awning. I tried to wait it out, but eventually waded my way back to my hotel, drenched beyond belief by the time I arrived. The rest of the day was spent in my somewhat gloomy hotel room, reading my Kindle, while it poured outside.
"What an adventure!" someone commented on Facebook. "That's the kind of adventure I can have in Seattle," I responded, "only more so."
The next morning was bright and sunny. I skipped the complication of a change of trains in Florence, and found a non-stop train to Rome. My room in Rome awaited me, I had one final dinner at an outdoor cafe around the corner from my hotel. And the next morning, I was on a flight back to America.
Do I recommend such an unguided "tour" of northern Italy? Need you ask?
