May 15 Musee de la Chasse

I'd had such fun at this museum the previous night, I dragged Ira to it this morning. It's really almost insane. Someone has taken a perfectly boring museum about hunting and animals and made it a madcap mixture of old and new, traditional and experimental. The first room you walk into is the "Boar Room," which is fairly traditional. There are paintings of boar hunts and then a stuffed sanglier in the corner, all sharp tusks and wiry hair. Just off this room is your first indication that all is not your grandfather's hunting museum. It's a small owl room. I've put in two pictures here, but they really can't convey how eerie this closet is. It's dark, and there's a stuffed white owl head seemingly floating in front of you. And then you look up and the ceiling is covered with owl heads looking down at you, feathers radiating out from each large-eyed face to meet and overlap so that the entire ceiling is covered in feathers and beaks and those yellow glaring, staring eyes!


Next up is the stag room, of course with taxidermied, antlered resident. There was a photography show on the ground floor about animals in houses, called Animonuments, and the artist had taken this stuffed stag out and photographed it in a lot of places. My favorite was the beast surrounded by hunting dogs who were sniffing it curiously. Not quite what they were used to!

Then there was the wolf room. Look at the friendly guy I've placed here. Laughing at us or threatening us? It seems like both. WOlf as trickster coyote. There's such an odd melange at this place. I've been twice and now I can't imagine going to Paris without coming here.



The unicorn room was one of the strangest, another small space, this one lined with shelves and containing objects like an oversized curiosity cabinet. There was a unicorn horn, of course, but the rest of the items moved more strongly into pure fantasy. There were abstract creations of bone and horn and hide. There was a video of a white unicorn in a heavy rain, moody and seemingly purposeless. There was a specimen jar filled with some type of animal abortion, too complex to be anything but the early stages of a nightmare. Have I mentioned how strange this place is?

Dogs, monkeys, birds, horses... they all get their own room. There's always a mixture of animals and objets and contemporary art pieces that make you take a second look at the more traditional art that surrounds it. Whoever curates this museum has done a wonderful job. Perhaps the strangest piece is in the trophy room, which is lined with heads of African beasts, at least 100 of them. As you walk in, there is a motion detector that starts one of the heads. It's a pure white boar, whose tusked mouth starts to move as it groans and roars in an unearthly manner. Then it begins to talk in a guttural voice, seemingly foretelling your doom in the pits of animal hell, consigned to be endlessly trampled, gored, and eaten as the spirits of dead animals exact their eternal revenge. It's creepy as hell, anyway.

What a museum! I loved it. We have friends who are joining us in Paris and I might just have to take them there. I'll leave you with one last image. It's like a dense waterlands of reeds, made out of cardboard. In front of this is an old-fashioned cabinet with brass buttons and the names of birds, perhaps fifty of them. When you press a button, you get the sound of the bird's call. If you press enough buttons, you get a symphony of the calls, just as if you were in a thickly populated marsh. Wonderful!

May 15 Bistro Benoit

We'd been here before on a previous trip and loved the classic bistro layout, very old school, with lace curtains and flower china and a raft of waiters. Benoit even has seltzer bottles in the windows, which makes us feel at home. It being Sunday night, we had an early reservation at 7:30. It was us and a troika consisting of two Japanese men and an Anglo who spoke the language fluently.

They started us off with an amuse bouche of cheese puffs. I had mine with my customary aperitif of Jack Daniels (avec des glacons). We both had the white asparagus, slathered in this cheese/butter sauce that was so good we dipped the bread into it throughout the meal. The spears were big and fat and tender and delicious.

Ira wanted to keep it simple, so he just ordered an appetizer consisting of an elegant concotion of veal tongue, thinly sliced, alternated with rich foie gras. It was so rich I had to help Ira out. Of course, he helped me by having a few white beans from my cassoulet. It came in a big cast iron pot, which the waiter showed me, then carried off to a nearby table to "decant" so to speak. He then placed an enormous portion of beans, volaille, sausage, and bacon on my plate. It seemed too much to eat, but I did, and washed it down with the perfect glass of Bordeaux Pomerol, the type of glass where the last taste is the best.

For dessert, Ira had the fraise bois with a touch of Chantilly. I ordered the orange souffle, which turned out to be an outrageously large portion of frozen orange sorbet, covered in thin strips of candied peel and then drenched in enough Grand Marnier to have my head swimming from just the fumes.

After this repast, we wandered through the area, which is stuffed with bars (including a bear bar!) and young people. By now, the alcohol was wearing off and it was cold, so we walked the laborious 5 minutes home. Have I mentioned how well placed our apartment is? If you're coming to Paris, stay in le Marais. It's where the action is.

May 14 Les Ombres

We had lunch at the rooftop restaurant of Quay Branly, Les Ombres. The room is totally enclosed in glass, so you had a marvelous view of the buildings on the rise beyond the Seine. And, of course, the Eiffel Tower dominated the view. Our waiter was flirty. He wanted to read my tattoo, asked if I had others. We got great service because we were good sports about it. We started with an amuse bouche of mushroom soup with dried black olives crumbled on top. My first was a mixture of asparagus, a soup with a spear as a stirrer and then a baked spear covered in a pistachio crust. You can't go wrong with asparagus. Ira had the foie gras, which was silky and tasty, with some sea salt on top to really bring out the flavor. The best part of his dish was the melon accompaniment, along with an apricot jelly. They went perfectly with the foie gras, the clear fruit flavor cutting into the creamy richness of the liver without overpowering the aftertaste. It was a well-chosen combination, one that may make an appearance in Sonoma this year. Ira had the riz de veau, which was lovely, but too much. I had to help him with it! I had langoustines in a rich sauce composed of fennel and cream. There was a crusty decoration made of light bread that really did little else but adorn the plate, though it was attractive, so I snapped a photo of it. We split a dessert of incredible chocolateyness, ice cream, a "froth" of chocolate in a thin chocolate cup and a dark, rich cake. We managed to crawl out of there without too much difficulty because we chose portions "a picorer" that is, to peck at, rather than the full size portions.

We then went in search of the Monument des Droits de l'Homme, information on which was hard to find. That is, information about where it was located. It was easy to find out how it's part of the Masonic/Illuminati/New World Order plot. We had to rush a bit after some difficulties adapting to the cuisine, but once we located the facilities, lo and behold, there was the monument. It's a quirky thing, not at all monumental, but rather human in scale. It's a Mitterand creation, but far from one of his Grands Projets.

Then we came home and rested and had another quiet evening. I explored the neighborhood a bit, going in the other direction from the river. I saw La Perle, a trendy cafe bar/bistro where Galliano ruined his career. The Marais is wonderful. I walked down a random street and was met with trumpeters playing a New Orleans tune. I was out for La Nuit des Musees, which meant that all the museums were open late, some until midnight. My goal was the Musee de la Chasse. I'll talk about it later because I'm dragging Ira to it tomorrow. It was so much fun, both elegant and kitschy at the same time in some strange way. More on that later... For the nuit des musees, this particular museum had young people reading poems about hunting. You'd be standing next to someone, admiring a polar bear, when they would suddenly break into declamation and read a short poem. Great fun!

I'll leave you with some pictures of the Tour Eiffel. I took about a million.

May 14 Leviathan

Our first stop after breakfast was the Grand Palais. They have an exhibition of Anish Kapoor entitled Leviathan. You enter through a rotating door with obscure glass, so right away, you're a bit disoriented. Then, you enter into this huge "space," dark brown, with walls that seem to recede when you get close. High up are three big holes that undulate away from the curved walls. The atmosphere is a bit pressurized, so you feel physically strange as well as being surrounded by this dark interior. You're definitely inside the insides of something. You can't see what's in those other spaces, but you want to float up and into them. We spent a while there, just experiencing it. Some people were sitting down, others trying to touch the walls. I watched people come into it for a while, and most of them got a delighted look on their faces. (Some looked shocked and almost dismayed.)

We then continued into the huge space of the Grand Palais, one of those 19th-century steel and glass concoctions that are marvelous to behold. Now, Leviathan resolves itself into three huge, purple spheres, connected in the middle and pushing into the space, filling this huge room. (The Kapoor sculpture in Chicago is called "The Bean," I dubbed this one, "The Aubergine.") It's glorious. Kids are running around in delight at the space. Adults are snapping photos and climbing the elaborate staircases to get different view. Both Ira and I thought it was marvelous, already an extraordinary highlight of the trip. I'll leave you with pictures, but nothing really gets at something this large without being next to it, or seeing how small people are next to its bulbosity.

Thursday, May 13, le Marais

Ira went out for breakfast fare while I gingerly said hello to a new time zone. He came back with a baguette from Hure. Crispy crust and we pretty much wolfed it down in seconds. The baguette was good, not great. I'll want to taste more before we decide on a boulange for our stay.

We took the bus to get to the Eiffel Tower. We wanted to try the bus routes because then we'd see the streets of Paris rather than go through a hole in the ground. Ira did some sketching and I took some pictures. It was crowded with tourists and Africans selling Tour souvenirs, barking dog toys, and flags. The weather was lovely. We didn't bother going up because we'll get a private elevator up to the second level for our dinner at Le Jules Verne. Our next stop was just up the hill at the Trocadero. Ira wanted to see the Maritime Museum, particularly their exhibit on Le France, a giant cruise liner built in 1962 (since scrapped). The museum was wonderful, with examples of figureheads--including a giant Napoleon.

We took in a leisurely lunch at Le Coq, where we sat outdoors between two tables of beautiful French women and enjoyed steak tartare and a club sandwich respectively. Great frites of course, and the place was filled with BCBG french people.

The architectural museum was wonderful. The first floor consists of medieval remnants, and I got some great shots of demons torturing poor souls. Ira was most interested in the modern section, and we saw video on a mind-blowing bridge that opened in the south of France in 2004, co-designed by Norman Foster.

They also had an example of an apartment from the l'Habitation Unite, by Le Corbusier, a public housing project in Marseille that is justly famous for its design and ambitious scope. We loved walking through it and seeing the marvelously simple materials.

On our return, we found out the drawback of the bus system. Well short of our stop the bus shut down and everyone had to get off. Then the bus took off again. We didn't find out what was the matter, but we walked the rest of the way home, stopping at a cafe that overlooks the Centre Georges Pompidou for a cooling ice cream. My god the weather has been wonderful. I wore my sunglasses all day. There's rain coming next week, but for now, the skies are blue and warm.

Before returning home we shopped for dinner tonight, just some pates and cold items that we'll eat at the apartment and rest up for tomorrow.

OK, Blogger was down, and then I had some technical difficulties here at the apartment, but I'm finally online. Here's the account of the first day. I'll catch up later. Some pix of the apt will be up later too. Now, it's off to the Grand Palais!

May 11/12 San Francisco to Paris

I had some charming seat mates across the Atlantic, a couple from Berkeley who were just friendly enough to pass the time and no TOO friendly, just perfect. Meeting Ira at the airport was easy. His plane landed 30 minutes after mine and he was right out and we hopped in a cab.

Here's where things got a bit sticky. We had to wait on the street for two ours with our bags before the apartment people came to let us in and give us a key. I was pissed, and the woman attempted to lie and say we were supposed to be there at 3:30. I showed her the e-mail confirming we would be there at two and her confirmation. That shut her up.

The apartment is fun. I've included a few pictures. The only drawback is that the sleeping loft is only right for very small people. But no matter, the living room is expansive, and the location is perfect.

I was a bit jetlagged, so we took it easy the first day. We're at 7 rue Pecquay, in the heart of the Marais. We scouted out likely locations for a boulangerie, and cheese shop, and market. We came back with water and juice and yogurt for breakfasts.

Lunch was at a casual little bistro called Bistro Bouledogue , which indeed does have a little bulldog woofing away at the bar. Nice, simple meal. I had a croque bouledogue, which is the typical croque monsieur on fancier bread and Ira just had some forgettable cheese. We then wandered rue Rambuteau and circled around the Centre Georges Pompidou, which is looking a bit dirty again after its last cleaning. (By contrast, Notre Dame has been cleaned and it looks shiny and new!) We strolled off in that direction, heading for Ile St. Louis. We passed by City Hall, which had a kids basketball tournament in its front courtyard. Of course, the building is an unholy mess of things, but it's a fun mess.

At the Ile, west down and had enormous ice cream sundaes, a Liegois for Ira and something called a Coupe Betise for me, which translates roughly into "Naughty Cup." We then walked home and took a nap and made plans for dinner. Our first choice, Benoit, was full up, but we got in at Les Fous d'en Face, which was charmingly funky. Wood interior with lots of aging posters stuck on the walls and random jeremiads against "vins d'autoroute," which burn on the way down and on the way out. Ira's first was gorgeous, white asparagus fanned out on a plate with a beurre blank. Then there was this rosette of pastry dough containing diced tomatoes, which were a wonderful complement to the asperge blanc. I had ouefs cocotte, which is basically a shirred egg with a dollop of cream on top. My second was andouillette and mustarde, with some greens on the side. Ira had a vegetable pate. The wine, despite the restaurant's commitment to it, was only mediocre. We ended the evening with a walk home through the boy bars of the Marais, everything hopping on a Thursday night.

Ciao Italia!

Don't have time to write up the final day of the trip, but we saw some great art, went to ruins, and had two terrific meals. So, basically, routine. Long long long day of travel tomorrow, then Sunday I get to go home and check on the babies. (That's how I'm referring to my tomato plants that are hopefully fine and comfy in their sheltered beds.)

Thanks for following along. I'll have some cleanup stuff for the archives, but it's back to reality soon!

Taxi to Maxxi, Santa Maria del Popolo, Trevi Fountin, and Il Colosseo

We did a lot today, so excuse the rushed tone of this. Our first stop was out of the centro for the first time to see the MAXXI, Zaha Hadid's new contemporary art museum. It doesn't open until May, but we wanted to take photos of the exterior. Plus, we had a humorous encounter with it four years ago. I'd read about it in a magazine, where they talked about how wonderful a building it was. (Note the tense; it's important.) When we got to Rome in late 2006, no one knew about this museum. After asking around, we finally found someone who knew where it was. We took a taxi out there and found a construction site. And by construction, I mean one Italian dude with a pail. Clearly this was not a museum that was open. I feel for that poor magazine editor, faced with a 3-month deadline and an assurance from a smooth representative of the Pritzker-winning starchitect. It's four years later and despite their slogan, "It's Not Quite Open." It does look gorgeous though. Next trip to Rome. We're there!

We told the taxi driver to wait. He looked at us like we were insane, but that's OK, because we are! Then he took us to Piazza del Popolo, architecture that has been around for a while. We stopped at perhaps my favorite church in Rome, Santa Maria del Popolo. Most everyone goes there for the Caravaggio paintings in the Cerasi Chapel, and who can blame them? They're gorgeous. "The Cruxifixion of St. Peter" is one of my favorites by that artist. The look on the old saint's face is heartbreaking, both pained and resigned at the same time. And Caravaggio plays his usual psychological games by having the men erecting the cross be simple workers, so it looks like they're just hired hands doing a job. "The Conversion of St. Paul" is another strong canvas. The stance of the horse is my favorite part of this painting, how it raises its right foreleg and looks down with concern over its fallen rider. The reality of both the movement and the tenderness of the horse is one that horse owners will understand. (And the composition of the horse is further strengthened by having St. Paul's companion's sturdy legs behind the horse, serving as "supports" for the animal. Both paintings have extreme foreshortening as they are on the sides of the chapel and meant to be viewed that way.

That's way too much description and they're not even my favorite paintings in the church. That honor belongs to a lovely Pinturicchio painting of the holy family, "Adoration of the Shepherds." I've included a bad representation here, but it's just a simple and lovely painting with lots of fine detail that you can both enjoy and ignore. Every time I go to Rome I fall in love with this painting again.

We walked back to the hotel via the Trevi Fountain. Ira loves this spot, despite the crush of tourists. His first trip to Rome he stayed in a hotel opposite. At the time, kind of down-market. I believe this was in 1959, so it must have been pretty special. It's still a lovely fountain. We've passed by it three times on this trip and we always stop to admire it (and to rest! We've walked a lot.)

I'm going to have to cut this short. It's getting late and we have our last day in Rome. A domani.

Caravaggio and the Palantine

There was a big Caravaggio show at the Scuderie del Quirinale. We had arranged to get timed tickets while still in the U.S. and things went pretty smoothly. Of course there was a long line, but it took about 20 minutes to get to the front door. Once in, the show was magnificent, well designed and of course the paintings were a joy to look at. The walls were painted a deep, dull red, the pictures in black frames and beautifully lit. It was a combination that really worked with Caravaggio's palette. You've seen his paintings a lot, but it's hard to see a lot of his paintings in real life, in this kind of controlled setting. We took about two and a half hours to make it through the show and we both loved it. Later in the day we added the cherry to that experience by visiting the San Luigi dei Francesci, the french church in Rome that has a chapel with three enormous and important Caravaggios, including the sublime "Vocation of Saint Matthew.

We wanted to eat lunch near our hotel so we ended up back at the Piazza Navona and back at Tucci. (I had the name wrong in the previous post; it's Tucci, not Tocci.) It's really a fine restaurant to eat at. It combines good food with the location in front of a prime tourist location. You don't always get that, even in Italy.

After lunch and a quick nap, we took a taxi to the Palantine Hill. Ira wanted to see the museum there, but it was really the whole site that impressed him the most. Luckily, the weather was glorious. We've had a whole week of rain in Rome, the first time we've had to use umbrellas, but yesterday afternoon the sun came out and it shone over the Palantine! This is the hill that everyone wanted to live on in Rome. It has remnants of old mansions inhabited by the likes of Cicero and Livia, but the museum also included evidence and reconstructions of some of the earlier inhabitants in the 7th century BC, when they were living in mud huts and making simple pottery. About 500 years later theses same peoples were building marble palaces, the ruins of which can still inspire us today.

We walked a lot yesterday. All over the Palantine, then across the Forum, then back to our hotel. We did stop for a gelato, of course. Then we rested for a while and then went on to the rooftop bar of our hotel, me for a drink and Ira to sketch the rooftop of the Pantheon. It was so lovely to watch the sunset and see the wide expanse of Rome that we will return tomorrow if the weather is as cooperative. (It seems to rain in the morning and leave the afternoons and evenings free. We'll see if that pattern holds.)

Last night we ate near our hotel again. There are a lot of fine establishments right there! This time we graced Fortunato. Apparently, lots of Roman businessmen from the Senate complex nearby go there to eat. There were still a few men-in-suits tables that night. The meal was terrific. I started with a gnocchi with a radicchio and gorgonzola sauce that was incredibly delicious. Then followed it up with polpetino a vitello (veal meatballs) and a contorni of Roman artichoke. Ira started with the taglioni cacio e pepe, then has calamari fritti. The wine was a nebbiolo and went perfectly with the meal. It was just starting to rain when we got out of the restaurant, but we were only 2 minutes from our hotel!

Clerisseau at the Convent

It took three trips to Rome, but we finally managed to see the Salle des Ruines at Il Conventa de Trinite de Monte. It's a room painted by Clerisseau in false ruin style, which makes it romantic and charming. The first lodger was a priest named Thomas LeSeur.

The convent gives tours of their cloister and artworks. They are famous for a refectory with some charming trompe l'oeil paintings of the wedding at Cana. They also have several "perspective" paintings in upper hallways, paintings that appear as one thing at one end of the hallway and as another when you stand in front of one. They were restoring one of them, but the one we saw appeared to be St. Francois de Paule praying below a tree. When you stood in front of it, however, it became a hillside dotted with small reminders of the Saint's life. (The nun, who was charming and lively and intelligent made a joke about one incident where he is said to have cast his cloak on the water and walked out of a sinking boat. "He was the first surfer." We had the tour with a large group of french students, however, so she didn't show us the room. I asked after the tour and she said to come back in the afternoon at three and that she would have 30 minutes of spare time.

So we went to view some wonderful churches that we happened upon, then had a delicious lunch, and then went back for our appointment. The nun was clearly busy, but just as charming as before and delighted to show off the room to fans. As she was opening the window she said, "it's transformed by natural light." And she's right! It was painted to look like a crumbling stone ruin, converted to a shack. There was a wooden door, a big hole in the roof "to let in more light" as Goethe remarked when he visited the room. There's even a parrot perched on one of the roof beams. The pictures aren't great because there wasn't a lot of light for picturetaking, but we we had so much fun I had to share the experience.

And just to satisfy the foodies, we had an incredible meal at Armando al Pantheon, which is just on the other side of the piazza from our hotel. I started with a spaghetti alla verde (arugula, lemon, and parmesan). Ira had the spaghetti alla Claudio (oil, garlic, mushrooms, and saffron). Both were cooked to perfection and both will make their appearances at Shrader Street soon! My secondi was anchovies over a bed of cabbage and it was superb. Ira had a pepper steak that was tasty but a little too ordinary (i.e., he could have had it in the States). Still, it was a tremendous meal and we love eating in Rome.

Rome Is Like Home

We had fun in Naples. The art is great. But the food is just OK. The tomato sauce they put on pasta is excellent, but once you've had it, you've had the gamut of Neapolitan sauces. For lunch today in Rome, Ira had spaghetti with a pesto sauce and I had risotto and scampi with a cream sauce (that also included red peppers, so it was a marvelous combination taste, smooth and delicate at first with a subtle burn as an aftertaste). The pastas were so good that we swapped plates halfway through. And this was a meal at Tocci in the Piazza Navona, a big touristy piazza type of place that shouldn't have food this good. Then we went across the piazza to have tartufi at Tre Scalini. The only drawback is the marvelous Fontanea dei Quattro Fiumi is still under construction, as it was three years ago. (Luckily I got to see it unscaffolded five years ago on my first visit to Rome.

Then we strolled around. Ira bought some Paolo Conte CDs at a store. Then we hit a few marvelous churches near our hotel. The Church of Santa Maria sopra Minevra looks to be not much when you see it. There's a great sculpture of an elephant bearing an obelisk in front, but the face of the church is plain. Inside, however, it contains some extraordinary works of art. The overall look is tremendous, with painted gothic arches. (This decoration was added in the 19th century, but it looks incredible.) My favorite painting was done by Filippino Lippi. I've put a detail of his "Annunciation" as the first photo in the blog. I've enjoyed his work for years. (He had quite a beginning to life; his father was a monk and famous painter who basically kidnapped a nun, married her, and had a child who also became a famous painter. There's also a statue of the Risen Christ said to be by Michelangelo, but it's not very interesting. Fra Angelico is also buried in this church.

Santa Maria Maddelena was the first church we visited. We knew nothing about it, but saw an open door and went in. (That's a rule of ours because you never know when a church or exhibition will be ciuso. In fact, when we walked by this church minutes later, the doors were closed.) The first thing you see was enormous scaffolding that obscured most of the interior. We walked in, however, turned around, and there's the most marvelous organ loft, which I've added here in a picture. The dim lighting doesn't do the picture glory, but the experience is tremendous. We spent a quiet few minutes in there enjoying its opulence before leaving (too early I might add as I checked the guidebook and it says the church's sacristy is "one of the most beatiful in Rome." Luckily it's close by.

That's it for now, it's time for a nap and then an evening stroll followed by dinner. I've included some random pictures below for your entertainment.

Crazy Taxi

It's a travel day today, and even though we're already in Roma, I'm going to just post a quick story and some pictures of Neapolitan grafitti and then we're off to lunch. The story is the most amazing taxi ride we've ever taken. It was Sunday night, and we were going to the other side of town for a semi-fancy meal. (I don't think they have fancy meals in Naples, or at least, not that we could find. Everyone wants to send you to a restaurant "very typical cuisine of the region and not too expensive.") The streets were crowded. It was during the passagatta, and apparently, people like to go out Sunday evening in Naples.

From the start, we could tell that our driver was an expert. He drove with the same speed and controlled aggression as other drivers, but we were jolted less. He seemed to find spaces that only Vespas could find. Each time he was able to surge ahead of other cars. And then we rounded a corner to a complete mess at one of the turnabouts, police lights, packed traffic, no one going anywhere. After a muttered "Madonn'" our cab driver took a quick right turn and then proceeded to take us on a hair-raising, high-speed run through the neighborhood of Santa Lucia. The neighborhood (or borgo or rione) is important because after a particularly nifty move, the driver turned to us and said simply, "this is my neighborhood." His meaning was clear. He knew these streets like a dog knows his own scent. At one point, as he slowed down to round a hairpin turn and shoot down yet another narrow alley, he exchanged a quick insult with another man. "He is my friend. He is taxi driver too. He no work today." Then it was off for the final descent down a twisty street that spat us out on the main boulevard. By this time, we had moved beyond fear into exhilaration. My only regret is that I didn't bring the camera so I could have had some video to post on YouTube. I would have had to put on a disclaimer. "This video is not speeded up in any way." We'll be dining out on this crazy taxi story for years.

While we're lunching in Rome, here are some Neapolitan grafitti pictures for your enjoyment.

Caserta

We had planned to take the train out to Caserta to see the great royal palace of the Bourbons. In the taxi, he proposed a price to driver us there, so we took it. I'm glad we did because we arrived at the reggia about an hour before the incredible crowds. When we walked up the grand staircase, there were a few people on it. When we walked down the grand staircase, it was packed solid with touring Italians.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First we toured the gardens. They go back more than a kilometer until they reach a grand waterfall. It's an impressive sight to see such a long line, but more impressive is that it continues through a long gallery that runs the length of the palazzo and then on to Naples. (Now the view to Napoli is broken by the train station and other construction, but back in the day, the road was planted with magnificent stone pines that went on for miles. You can still see stretches of the pines on the road back to Naples.

Ira didn't want to walk the long stretch to the back of the garden, so we hired a horse and carriage. It was hilarious. The driver wanted to complete the trip in as little time as possible, so we were rocketing around the gardens like an E ticket ride at Disneyland. At one stretch, it seemed like we were racing another carriage on a parallel path. Still, they wanted us to take pictures. When we got to the "baby castle" (i.e., the little castle) and I didn't take a picture they waited patiently. When I realized what they were waiting for I took a picture of a nearby tree that was much more interesting, and then they continued our gallop. It was a fun, breathless way to see a long stretch of garden on a hot day.

I'm glad we didn't walk much because the interiors were enormous. It makes Versailles look like the Petit Trianon. The Bourbons lived there until the early 19th century, so some of the later rooms had an old-fashioned rather than "old and grand" look. But the public rooms were sufficiently impressive, with gorgeous paintings, and furnishings, and bas-reliefs. Vanvitelli was in charge of the construction and he had free reign to continue in a particular style that carried well through all the grand rooms. There was not a lot of great art there, but all of the art was well done. I've sprinkled some details of ceiling paintings in this post, because they really were charming.

Again we went to the train station. I waited in line to buy tickets for the train that was to leave in an hour, Ira went out to see what there was to see. He came back in a rush and said, "follow me." He'd found a bus that was leaving right then. We hopped on, we paid 4 euros for the both of us, the bus roared off, and we were back in Naples before the train had even left Caserta. Thank you autobus, and thank you for being quick witted Ira!

Back in Naples we ate at the modern, chic hotel, the Romeo. Of course, the dining room with the view was ciuso so we made do in the lunch room. It was an odd meal. They had the motions of serving in a fine place down, but they were strangely hesitant. After lunch we took a long stroll down a chic shopping street and then came home to rest and to blog. Roma tomorrow!

Paestum and Ravello

We had researched the train schedules to get to Paestum, and the trains were either too early or too late. Ira made the tough decision to hire a private car and driver to take us to Paestum, and still have time to get to lunch and see some gardens at Ravello. At 9 am we confidently set forth. Unfortunately, it is May 1, and everyone had piled into cars and were headed to the coast for a weekend of camping. So the drive down took two and a half hours instead of 90 minutes, but we did make it.

Paestum was the inspiration for this part of the trip since it's one of the very few places in Italy Ira has never been. Paestum is a complex of Greek temples and ruins located in what was for many centuries a swampland filled with mosquitos and malaria. So it wasn't until the 1800s that people really "rediscovered" Paestum and began to study it. There are three temples left upright if not intact: dedicated to Athena, Hera, and Poseiden respectively. In between are the ruins of quite a lot of other building, gymnasia, ekklesiastica, a huge forum, and many smaller constructions that seemed residential, with tiny foundations surrounding a small piazza. I wandered around and took pictures while green lizards scampered away. Ira sat on an ancient rock and sketched the temple dedicated to Poseiden. As a result, he became one of the attractions. Everyone wanted to take a picture with the artist guy and talk to the artist guy and generally annoy the artist guy. I was some feet away enjoying the spectacle. Despite the interruptions of his newfound fame, Ira did manage to complete a sketch of the temple before we have to leave.

We had 90 minutes to make Ravello and more importantly, make it to the ristorante before the kitchen closed at 3. We couldn't take the Amalfi Coast because it was wall-to-wall traffic, 3 kilometers in 3 hours. So we took the back way up the mountain to Ravello, starting at a town called Angri. We did get held up by one of those old 3-wheeled work vehicles, but we finally managed to lose him and we sped down the hill on a white-knuckle driver to make our lunch appointment. We had a lovely lunch. My rabbit was fine, as usual, and my pasta particularly good. We haven't been eating as well as we'd like in Southern Italy. They make some things well, but they don't have a lot of variety, and once you've had the veal, you've had the veal!

Now we had about two hours and two gardens to see. The was Villa Rufolo, which is just off the piazza. And before I get to the garden, the piazza is one of the best I've seen, with shallow steps on the church facing a broad piazza with a line of stone pine fronting a ravine with a view through the trunks to the other side. Leading into the piazza are a warren of small, sometimes tunneled streets, all of them filled with tourist and luxury shops. Ravello seems to specialize in that lovely Italian majolica. We were not there to shop, however! Villa Rufolo is an old complex. As a tourist stop, it's perfect, with towers and vines, and small squares, and archways, and of course, the view. At one end of the garden you stop and see all the way south to Africa!

After that it's a long walk across town, up and down a steep hill with many steps until you reach Villa Cimbrone. (Along the way you pass the hotel where D.H. Lawrence wrote "Lady Chatterly's Lover.") And Villa Cimbrone has its own brush with celebrity, as Vita Sackville-West (of "Orlando" and fame) helped out with the garden as a frequent guest of the Becketts. You enter the garden walls and immediately there is a long allee. The first part of it is covered with wisteria, which was in full bloom in a purple shower above our heads, some stretches in shadow and some in bright light bringing different moods to the purple whether peaceful or in explosion. At the far end of the walk is a simple temple structure and a statue. It's there that the garden turns from lovely to extraordinary. Once you hit the temple, the walkway goes off to the right, and it edges a cliff of some 500 feet straight out over the Tyhrrenian Sea. I got a touch of vertigo as I leaned over the railing and had to sit back on the benches to relax after the hike and to enjoy the unobstructed view of the complete blue sea. There are white busts in a row along the edge and they offer the perfect contrast to the blue blue water. We just sat and felt the breeze blow around us until it was time to head back to our patient driver and head for home. Tonight a quiet dinner and then tomorrow, perhaps Caserta if we have the energy!