Italy, Malta, Sicily, and Greece Oct. 2019

Italy, Malta, and Greece- October 2019

Oct. 3- Dulles to Munich to Florence

Maybe I have figured out the Dulles trip at long last. This time we drove up midday during the week- after Grandparents Day at TES. We ran into little traffic and the GPS from the car took us right to the airport Hilton. There we parked and will have the car available when we return (spending the night Friday the 18th at the hotel and having brunch with Tonya on Saturday).

We arrived mid morning Oct. 4 in Munich. Our seats on the plane were in those pod like things and I don’t think either of us got much sleep. After eating dinner, the express one, the flight was too short for much sleep even if I had been comfortable. The flight to Florence was on Air Dolomiti, and AD did not recognize our tickets as qualifying for the Lufthansa business class club. When we got to Florence no one had told us about the short runway so we were very surprised when the pilot hit the brakes extremely hard after touching down. The cab was 26 euros to the Hotel Lucchesi. The main thing I remember about the ride into Florence was the striking architecture of the Dept. of Justice building. I found it very harsh looking and sending the message- don’t break the law here or else.

Our room was quite nice and facing the back side of the hotel so much less noisy (however there was a drawback I hope I remember to mention later). We unpacked and met J&G in time to pick up the children at their schools which are right off the Piazza Santa Croce and very near J&G’s apartment.

The school buildings are both (R&T in one public school and A in a contiguous pre school) quite old. The parents stand in the street outside the doors to meet the kids at the end of the day. T’s school uniform is a funny looking smock like thing, but it is very practical.

R has to take 4th grade English and shared with us her weekend homework assignment- a set of about 20 or 30 nouns she has to change into the plural- cow into cows etc, ie pretty easy English homework. She thought this was quite funny.

Oct. 5- Saturday for J's family means a trip to the open farmer’s market with all 3 kids and Kingsley. There was also a bit of a flea market or area with street vendors next door to it. We went back to the apartment (BTW we found out they have been in temporary quarters for 6 weeks but on the weekend we return home they will have moved from the 2nd to the 3rd floor in the same building, which gets them a few more square feet of room (1200 to 1500 total!!)) for lunch. The boys have one room, R her own, and then one for J&G, plus a small kitchen with a huge coffee maker, a living room and an entry hall. Later on we took a walk to a playground and dog park since there was little interest in the Galileo museum. I introduced R to the basketball game of Horse, which then became Pig! And then the start of Hippo. Maybe this was good for the future since R is the tallest in her class (by a mile). The park was right on the Arno and I saw a paddle boarder out there.

Oct. 6- J&G arranged a driver to take us to Lucca (about an hour or so away). On the way the kids all entertained themselves and Kingsley after whining a bit fell asleep. A kept “reading” from his book in Italian called Cars Due about the movie. The book has a lot of pretty big Italian words in it and A has memorized it more than he can read it. The driver was listening to him say the long words and kept muttering to himself “Phenomeno”. Lucca’s main feature is a defensive wall that is wide enough for walkers, bikers and picnickers. It also is famous for a tower that has trees growing out of the top as well as the birthplace of Puccini. We climbed the tower (maybe 180 steps) and walked on the wall. Another worthwhile site is the old Roman amphitheater which the town has preserved but replaced the seating with houses.

On the way back to F, we stopped by a vineyard for a wine tasting and tour. I learned more about wine making than I have ever known.

Monday, Oct. 7- The children are back in school. C and I went to try to see the Duomo early but the line was long. We bought tickets to the Bell Tower, museum, Duomo Tower and Baptistery for the 4 of us. The Campanile was closed due to construction temporarily. However we went back later and climbed the 414 steps to the Campanile and went to the Museo de L’Opera and Baptistery, all parts of the Duomo complex. The B was less well lighted than I remember so I had a hard time seeing the wonderful mosaic ceiling. I enjoyed seeing the “Gates of Paradise” and figuring out the Bible stories with each panel, Penitent Mary by Donatello and the broken Pieta by Michelangelo again. For lunch we went to San Lorenzo to the market for riboletto.

 

Oct. 8- This was the day of our Medici tour with Elizabeth (from Va. Beach but living in F for 16 years teaching Elon semester abroad students), starting at Piazza San Marco (Fra Angelico Annunciation, with the rainbow gold flecked wings on Gabriel as well as Piero Medici’s penthouse monk’s cell and the home of Savonarola (leader of the original Bonfire of the Vanities)- new to me) then Medici Riccardi House for a revisit for me to see the vivid and complex paintings by Gozzoli in the private chapel and then we finished at Piazza San Lorenzo since that was the Medici’s home parish church. This was also new to me. We did not go into the church proper. We went into the back into the crypts to see the statue of the last of the Medici who wisely put it into her will that all the Medici art had to stay in Florence, the new area behind the church, and then the tomb of Lorenzo by Michelangelo with the famous “Night and Day” sculptures.

Leaving Elizabeth we went to Santa Maria Novella to see the church as well as the special Leonardo and Nature exhibit which was fantastic.

That evening we took A out for a short excursion to buy him a toy car and then took R out for all you can eat sushi. She had hearty helpings.

Oct. 9- This morning we awoke at 5:45 to the sound of garbage trucks coming along the street behind our room. They really were taking a long time so I opened the window to look for them- bad move! They weren’t garbage trucks, they were cleaning the sewer and the sewer smell got into our room and took the longest time to go away.

This was the day for the 4 of us to have a Uffizi tour with Alessandra. She was an excellent and knowledgeable guide and showed us the highlights with lots of detailed explanations. The problem with the Uffizi even in October is the crushing crowds which made it difficult to hear A’s explanations and to see the artwork clearly.
Here are a few of the Uffizi's treasures but, of course, I have forgotten all the great background Alessandra gave us on each one-

Then the four of us went lunch at a place where L and J got their meals during their art class in 1996 or so. We then climbed the 494 steps to the top of the Duomo. This was interesting because one gets to go between the layers of bricks used by Brunelleschi to cover the previously unable to be covered dome.

One last trip for gelato that night and then off for the W&L trip.

Every day in Italy the weather was 70-75 degrees, sunny, and perfect.

Thursday, Oct. 10- We had a very early departure to Rome then to Malta. We met J and D on arrival at the airport and then Bob P met us in line to register at the hotel. Our room wasn’t ready but we just hung out until it was. In the evening there was a welcome party with very tasty ors d’oeuvres. I think the party took place on part of the old city walls.

The W&L folks make up about half of the ship’s passengers, about 85 in all. There are some familiar faces from some W&L trips and some from Nat Geo trips. There are 4 of us here from my class, and even one whom I cannot recall at all. We had 365 in the class and I am very surprised at this.

C and I have counted a couple of times and we think this is our 8th W&L alumni college event- New Orleans, National Parks, Panama Canal, now Malta Sicily and Greece, then Putin, Tchaikovsky, Law and Literature (Snow Falling on Cedars), and counting Law and Lit next weekend with Little Fires Everywhere. 8 out of the 10 needed to earn the much coveted blue golf shirt.

Oct. 11- Malta. We started the day with a tour to two Maltese archaeological sites (Hagar Qim and Tarxien) dating from about 3500 BC including two temples and a discussion about how they moved the huge stones. Then we went to the museum to see the original stones as well as some small carved models of women dated from about the same period.

 After that our guide turned us loose on the streets of the main city Talletta. J&D and C& I went to St. John’s Co-Cathedral. I wanted to see the two Caravaggio paintings (The Beheading of John the Baptist and St. Jerome Writing). The church is completely covered in decoration and is dedicated to the Hospitallers order which got bounced around until about 1600 when the HRE gave them Malta. The decor is way over the top and the audio guide was not very helpful.

 The two paintings were great but we could not get too close. The 4 of us then went into a restaurant for a tasty lunch.

Just as an aside, Maltese have their own language which is close to Classical Arabic but written in our alphabet. English and Italian are the second and third languages.

Malta had a rough time during WWII as a British base being bombed by the Germans but we did not have an opportunity to see any WWII related sites.

Other Maltese factoids from our guide- St. Paul was shipwrecked here in 60 AD or CE. Various conquerors have been, in approximate order- Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Aragonians, Templar Knights, Napoleon, then the Brits. The islands which now have about 400m people became independent in 1964, a republic in 1974, and joined the EU in 2004. 98% are Roman Catholic. The main industry is now tourism. There are a lot of people with blue eyes in the southern part of the main island from the British soldiers in WWII.

Oct. 12- Catania/ Siracusa. Today began a pattern which I had to mention in my “comments”- The description of the day’s excursion was very short on details, like what specifically we would be seeing and how long the bus ride was. In addition the organization of the busses was haphazard.

The ride was about 45 minutes from the port of Catania to the ruins in Siracusa. I slept but there was a traveler in the row behind us who carried on a conversation with his seat mate which prevented those around me from hearing the guide’s narrative.

Syracuse was the first Greek colony in Sicily, colonized by Corinth. The Greeks built a theater here in about 350 BCE which was remodeled and expanded by the Romans.

We walked around the theater, up and down, went into a cave called Dionysus’ ear, learned about the plant that gives us capers which grows in the walls somewhat spontaneously, saw the Roman circus (it was really hot for all these activities), and then went into the archaeological museum.

In the back of a couple of my photos you can see a modern domed church which is Madonna della Lacrimae, named after and built on the site of a house where a family's Madonna picture started crying real tears.
 

Oct. 13- Taormina- This town is about a 20 minute bus ride up a twisting hill road. From the dock we could see Mount Etna puffing (last big eruption 2002), and the village used for Corleone and the Messina Strait were just out of eyesight distance.

We walked thru the town to get to the theatre which again was Greek first and then Roman. (Roman architecture is noted for the introduction of red bricks.) This one could hold 5000-7000 people in contrast to the one in Siracusa which could hold closer to 20,000. The Taormina amphitheater had "supersuites" too!!

Oct. 14- Olympia. The dock was in Katakalon, a short drive from Olympia. Our guide in Olympia was the most enthusiastic one we had. She had great hand gestures, was a great storyteller about the background myths, and would really lean into her presentation. The site in Olympia is huge with lots of ruins and not much reconstruction. As with the other places we have been, it was originally Greek (including the Greek arch although that is supposed to be Rome's architectural contribution) and then altered by the Romans. We saw an array of temples and the original stadium, all of which was under about 25 feet of soil when first excavated.

The stadium was very interesting in that I imagined a track but the races were really more like dashes out and back over multiple times depending on the length. The athletes were all male and did run naked. No women were allowed in the stadium except as trainers or owners of the horses in the chariot races.
When we went to the associated museum, we saw the Venus statue which is eerily similar to the Venus de Milo.

After the ruins and museum our intrepid guide took us shopping for some jewelry patterned on an olive leaf and also on the Menander style. Luckily C is a frugal shopper.

Oct. 15- Delphi. We docked at Itea and then took a short bus ride to the base of a hill. All of the ruins at Delphi are up a considerable hill with the oracle site lowest, then a small theater, then a stadium at the very top. Other than the prophecies Delphi is notable as the site where the Greeks threw Aesop (of fable fame) over the edge for some infraction.The museum at Delphi was similar to the other ones with the main prize here being a bronze male charioteer statue.

After getting back to the ship we proceeded thru the Corinth Canal. If you look at a map of Greece you will see the main part in the north and then a "hand shaped" peninsula separated from it by a very small isthmus in the middle. The French in the 1800s blasted the isthmus to create a canal so both sides of the peninsula are now connected. I knew about this somewhat but what I did not realize was how many highways cross above the canal.

Oct. 16- Nafplion- I have to say I got faked out today. When we saw the daily program calling for a 6.5 hour tour to more ruins and leaving at 8 am, I voted to take a vacation from my vacation and skip the tour. Then, way too late in the morning, I found out the tour today included Mycenae, the home of Agamemnon and his treasure. Who knew?

It wasn’t all bad though- C and I went to town for some exercise and took a very scenic walk along the edge of the mountain (below which is the town) around to some cliffs and then to a practically deserted beach (stones, not sand). We decided to go swimming in our clothes. The water temperature was perfect, the water clear and very salty and the whole walk/swim/ excursion was great. We even got to see a man climbing a straight up cliff face. His girl friend was on the beach and I asked her if he knew what he was doing. She assured me he did. I then asked her if she had seen “Free Solo” and that got a nice laugh.

Oct. 17- Hydra. Today started cloudy for the first time on this trip, and with a lot of fog. The town runs up a hillside and all the buildings are white. We went into town for a hilly hike and some other wandering. The town allows no cars but uses donkeys and mules for carrying. There were lots of sailboats. I thought Betty would really like it here until 2 day trip cruise ships came up and dumped a ton of tourists.

We spent the rest of the day reading and relaxing and packing to go home from Athens tomorrow.

Oct. 18- Piraeus, Athens. Kind of foggy. Early wake up. C left the room about 7:15 and our across the hall neighbor said good morning in a pretty full voice. C responded quietly. He then said everyone needs to wake up early today in the same voice and C said “but we don’t need to wake them”. Good job, C!!

The traffic to the airport was thick and there were a whole lot of motorcycles zipping in and out and between the cars and busses. Our driver did not seem to be in a big hurry to reach the airport, probably because he knew he had a full cargo hold of big, heavy suitcases to unload when he got there. I helped one traveler with his bags and I think each one must have been 80 pounds. I have no idea what he could bring that would weigh so much.

Our flight from Munich to Dulles was long, long- about the 8.5 hours. I watched 3 movies including a very confusing one where the plot did not make sense (Red Sparrow) and the excellent The Best of Enemies, about school integration in Durham in 1971.

We had a couple of tots behind us who were very noisy at the beginning of the flight and at the end but slept most of the way. How can such little children speak German and I can’t handle French! Two words I picked while we were landing that the girl was saying over and over were “in America”.

Passport control was a breeze and our bags were waiting for us. Then we had a cold 25 minute wait for the hotel van. It is cold here!

Up at 3 am and getting used to being on EDT.

About the speakers on the cruise-

As usual on these trips the crowd was pretty elderly (older and feebler than I am), and in this case, being a lot of W&L people (about half the ship- 85/165), a lot of folks set in their ways and oriented to the view from Fox. I heard one old guy, not an alum, grumbling about the tilt of the speakers (which really hadn't been expressed). I kind of wonder why he came since he knew who would be there.
The lecturers were very diplomatic in what they said, but the trip unfolded as all this crazy news broke in DC.
Fareed Zacharia really impressed me with his knowledge of world events over long periods of time and with his perspective. He is a PhD from Yale in Political Science and knows his stuff from Herodotus thru the present. He gave a great capsule summary of where we are in Syria and how we got there. The Syrian puzzle involves Sunni/ Shia; Persian/Arab; New ways and old ways; state and terrorist; terrorist vs terrorist; and Turkey vs Kurds; with the US and Russia thrown in to spice it up. His other pearl of wisdom was that in US history with one exception the tallest candidate for president wins.
Daniel Mendellsohn was also terrific. He gave a great lecture on Herodotus and Thucydides and then another one off the cuff on the evolution and roots of Greek drama. He is also quite a showman and kept the audience laughing quite a bit. Regrettably, he did not speak at all about his Odyssey book.
The Herodotus lecture dated the beginning of history for western civilization to May 28, 585 BC, which was when a natural philosopher accurately predicted a solar eclipse. Since we were on the Peloponessian Peninsula, he talked a lot about Athenian hubris and the Siracusan Catastrophe led by Alcibiades that marked the beginning of the end for Athens.
We were supposed to have Michael Hayden from CIA or some other "spooky" place but he had a stroke and could not come. The substitute for him was John McLaughlin (whose name the French staff on the ship could not pronounce until it got a lot of coaching from the passengers). He was Deputy director of the CIA and so just as informed. He introduced himself as a member of the "deep state", meaning a non-politically appointed government professional. He had lots of detailed insight into past events, CIA mistakes and CIA wins. He talked a lot about secrets and mysteries- secrets you can find out from data but mysteries are unknowable. John prefaced one of his remarks about presidential security briefings with the words "in a normal presidency". His last lecture was on "spycraft" which as a fan of spy novels I ate up.
Marc Conner who is Provost of W&L and former head of the English department was on the trip as token W&L faculty representative, but he got drafted into a panel discussion and provided the view of world affairs from a literature perspective (Shakespeare, Tolstoy etc). His solo lecture was on the odyssey theme in literature and was just great. It was called "Journeys in Literature and Mind". He covered post traumatic stress recovery thru Ernest Hemingway's Big Two Hearted River and The Sun also Rises; some Shakespeare; The Great Gatsby bit about "my middle west"; and Joyce's Ulysses. 
One notable quote- all human wisdom can be seen in the Bible, baseball, and flyfishing; maybe with Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Moby Dick for support.

Back to Daniel Mendellsohn about Greek theater since we saw so many and his off the cuff lecture on Greek drama: In about 525 for some reason the Greek democratic experiment began in Athens. They had an "ecclesia" of 5000 citizens and then a council of 500. From 500 to 400 BCE Athens had its Golden Age. The theater began as a celebration of the birth of Dionysus, with the concept of alcohol lowering inhibitions. At first it was just the chorus but then when a leader stepped out from the chorus the possibility of dialog and tension was created. There was the leader and the response. From there more characters stepped out. Theater evolved as a way to question the state outside of government, in stories based on mythology. We have very few of the plays from the Golden Age, only a small sample of the output of Aeschylus, Euripedes, and Sophocles as well as Aristophanes.