And now we say “Buongiorno” | Italy 2024

I spent my first two week break in Italy. The first break comes up quick, after only three weeks of work. As such, much like last year, I booked my trip only two days before I left. Actually, that might be an improvement! I did already have the vague idea of what I wanted to do as well, so it was really a matter of figuring out what transport would work with my class schedule.

Rome

On Friday, a few hours after my last class, I took the overnight bus from my town to Rome. It’s meant to be about ten and half or eleven hours but it took us a little longer. It was raining when I arrived, but I had my umbrella ready and slung my raincoat over my pack. It was far too hot to wear it and the rain wasn’t fierce.

At my hostel – I rarely stay in hostels, but it was a necessity for this trip as Italy seemed to be quite expensive and I’d booked very late – I couldn’t check in when I arrived but I could leave my pack to go wander the city.

I had five days in Rome, and I mainly stuck to the hits: the Colosseum (inside and out on different days), the Pantheon, the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. I listened to some Rick Steven’s audio guides for some historical context at these sites. And of course, I ate lots of pizza and pasta, although I sometimes struggled to pick the right place and the right dish. In fact, my favourite food in Rome was, I think, aragostine – a small, crispy pastry of so many layers, filled with a pistachio cream.

Unfortunately, the fountains were all fenced off and almost entirely all turned off and drained, as they are doing a lot of works around Rome in preparation for the upcoming Jubilee.

I was, however, pleasantly surprised by how many different things turned out to be free – buildings I would think looked interesting, and as I got closer, discovered I could enter without needing a ticket. The Villa Borghese is a huge and really quite lovely park (where I saw a squirrel too!), and as I was walking through there, I discovered a free art gallery you could walk through, and in fact it seems there were a couple more besides!

What else for Rome? I accidentally bought scam postage stamps that almost never make it to their destination. Just from what seemed to be a regular newsagent type place. But, apparently, it’s the post office or bust in Italy. I thought they looked a little strange after I’d bought them, and it said I couldn’t use the usual red post boxes, so thankfully I took to the internet before posting them and discovered they were not regular stamps. I packed it in after that – I would wait for French stamps. They may be slow, but so far, they have at least arrived!

I also went to a Leonardo Da Vinci museum which I had high hopes for, but it turned out that everything was a replica and the signage informed us that the real items were on display in the Louvre, or a London Museum, or even Bill Gates’ private collection!

Rome was interesting to me because of all the place where it didn’t feel as old as other places in Europe. Most of the regular streets feel a bit newer than in other European cities I have been in. This is in complete paradox with such major ancient ruins. Even those are lucky to be standing – massive pock marks cover the Colosseum where metal fixtures once were. The Pantheon is really the only maintained ancient space, with constant maintenance to keep the building looking like it would have done originally – somehow both new and old because of this – but even then, the statues have been changed over from Pagan, to Christian, to cultural/historical with some Christian imagery. And even some of the metal in the building had already been melted down for use in Saint Peter’s Basilica before there was this explicit dedication to the building’s upkeep.

The Pantheon was my favourite thing in Rome. I think. Choosing anything in absolute is rather difficult for me. But I knew very little about it before I got there. I thought really it was all about the outside, but the ticket in is only 5 euros, so why not?

Well! So glad I went in. I was gobsmacked in the truest, most literal sense of the word. The outside is nothing compared to the inside.

And now, I am going to spoil it for you perhaps, so feel free to skip to the Florence heading, if you would like to unwittingly walk into this building sometime in the future.

The Pantheon sports the most insane, incredible dome I have ever seen. It is apparently perfectly spherical, with the ground intersecting at the exact halfway point, and it rises to a large hole in the centre through which you can see open sky. Repeating square patterns are perfectly cut into the dome to draw your eye to the centre and to reduce weight. The thickness of the dome slowly reduces further up the dome which is how it maintains its structure to this day. Apparently, the calculations are so perfect that from an engineering perspective it’s pretty unbelievable that it was done without any computer calculation or modern building technologies. Or something like that. Honestly at this part of the recording I was a little distracted – you can understand intellectually that something is mathematically perfect, and that’s cool and interesting… but there is a part of your brain that doesn’t need to hear it, that can see and really feel the perfection in a way that you can’t necessarily articulate. The way your subconscious might deem something visually pleasing because it’s symmetrical but on a conscious level you could never say why you liked it, beyond “I just do.” Absolutely gorgeous.

Florence

In Florence, I had one main goal, and that was to see Michelangelo’s statue of David. A success! It is housed in the Galleria dell’Academia di Firenze, which also has a plaster section and a music section (which seemed to be considered a separate museum even though it was on the same ticket).

Apart from that, I was told one of the chief delights of Florence is just wandering the streets. Where Rome feels new for all its ancient ruins, Florence is the kind of old that’s been kept. Florence is what you expect, and perhaps hope for, of a European city. You can tell the history is there, but the people haven’t let it become history, you understand.

I was a bit ill here however, so I spent a lot of time sitting and writing in gardens. One day I stopped in a park with a big fountain that I had come across incidentally, found a superb bench to eat my lunch on, settled down to work – so in the end I was too late to go into the university botanic gardens that I’d been aiming for. But better, I think, to be engrossed in what you’re doing.

I did plan to take a pasta making class here, but ended up abandoning this plan because I didn’t think I should be in an enclosed space without a mask at that time. Which is a bit sad, but some things just can’t be helped.

When I was doing better, I took a day trip. First to Pisa, to see the Leaning Tower of course, and then on to Lucca, the walled city. I walked around the whole of the city walls, and a little bit through the centre to see the town.

In Florence, I also did Michelangelo’s palazza, which is a square that lets you look out over the whole city, with a few different surroundings gardens (even off season, I enjoyed the rose garden on more than one evening), and has a rotating cast of busking musicians. So many people come to enjoy the experience, particularly at sunset, that all the seated people makes the stair case into something of a labyrinth. Then , of course, there is the famous Duomo, Florence’s key cathedral. The view of this in the evening once it has been lit up is especially good from the palazza. It has a very impressive dome and, at ground level, a lot of intricacies to enjoy as you wait in line to eventually enter. If you don’t want to climb the dome, you can enter for free, and personally I found the outside more captivating than the inside.

Florence was also my best stop for gelato, having gone on a free gelato tour with the hostel my first afternoon in town, and I finally got to try the kind of gelato I’d been looking for: not whipped up, and covered with a lid, in a stainless-steel drum. I had looked into it, and apparently that was the best stuff. The ones that look most impressive are whipped up to contain more air to minorly extend the product for the vender, and also because it’s eye-catching. And it really is! I searched and searched in Rome without success, but seeing all the different little places revealed to me in Florence, I’m sure I just didn’t know where to look. (I would manage it just the one time by myself in my next city.)

Truly a large portion of this part of my trip was just me walking places. The buildings in Florence seem reasonably well preserved, and when you think of a generic, pretty European city, Florence is basically the picture you think of. It’s what I find myself expecting as someone from a comparatively ‘new’ country.

Venice

So, Florence feels like Europe. Venice feels like another planet. I had to pause a couple times to try and process, “Whoa, I’m in Venice.” Venice is all canals, bridges, and narrow, secluded alleyways. In any other city, you’d avoid this kind of street, but Venice doesn’t really have any other kind. They say Venice is quite safe, however, and I never felt at all otherwise.

A key note for travellers to Venice is that you cannot rely on Google Maps – my best navigation tip is to use Google Maps as if it were a paper map. Take note of street names and turns, and completely ignore the little blue dot. Check the suggested path before you start and make sure that at every point where you have to cross water there is actually a bridge marked there and that Google isn’t suggesting that you just magically gain the ability to fly. It does that sometimes. Venice is magical, but so far hasn’t given me actual superpowers.

For a lot of the trip (except for the last day which had intense fog all day long), I was navigating by the sun 50% of the time, having gotten quickly tired of constantly having to check my phone. Even in a narrow alleyway between buildings, you can still vaguely tell where the sun is coming from and I feel like this saved me a lot of frustration in the end.

I had thought, on my first day there, that there was no way to cross the Grand Canal without a boat, so I paid two euros for a two-minute gondola ride from one side to the other. It was quite fun! A thirty-minute gondola ride sets you back ninety-five euros during the day (and yet more at night), so I think I was really winning with that one! Thankfully, I was travelling with a pretty light backpack, otherwise I would have had to avail myself of a ferry ticket, which would have cost me 9,50€. Also, the line was super long but everyone else was waiting in groups, so I got to cut pretty majorly, because they had room for one more person and I was by myself.

After that initial trip though, I realised in fact there are three crossing points and one of them is the incredibly famous Rialto Bridge, which was on my hit list, what’s more. But I’m going to blame travel fatigue, and also I never would have found the little gondola ride if I had remembered the bridge. From that first day though, I did a lot of walking. No complaints, I do enjoy it.

My Venice hit list, on the main island: Saint Mark’s Basilica, the Doge’s Palace, Rialto Bridge and the Grand Canal, the Bridge of Sighs, and, of course, the Libreria Acqua Alta (a bookshop where the books are kept in boats and bath tubs to protect them when high tide, the “acqua alta”, floods the city)!

Also on my list were the Murano and Burano islands. The first is known for the glass work, and the second for lace.

I bought the eleven-museum pass specifically because I knew I would definitely go to those two museums, in addition to the Doge’s palace, which already justifies the price of the ticket (a total steal for me really, because I love a little museum). Armed with a 24-hour ferry pass for the day, I was away. I took the long way to Burano first, spending an hour on the ferry ride before we arrived and took to the brightly coloured streets. All the houses are painted in vivid colours, each one different from its neighbour. Honestly, the rest of the world needs to get on board. It was utterly delightful. It’s worth going to Burano just for this reason, even if you have no interest at all in lace. Both these islands still have their own canals too, like the main islands of Venice. (If you have joints that won’t let you do stairs, Venice could be a real trial. Thankfully it was not an issue for me.)

After enjoying a wander down the streets and mentally noting where I might want to buy postcards on the way back if I didn’t find a better store, I arrive at the lace museum. Even without the pass, it is a ridiculously cheap museum – only 5 euro a ticket. This is because it is quite small. There is a very long video near the entrance which has a section on the general process of lace making, and then another section about the history and threatened survival of lace making in Burano. I watched the whole thing and this ended up being most of my visit. After the video, you go upstairs and there are several cabinets which you can slide drawers back and forth to see various displays. There was also some intricate paperwork made to look like lace, made out of maps, and they have several paintings on display which feature either impressive lacework or people depicted making lace. There was one beginner lace-maker getting some advice on the next part of her project, so I did get to watch a little bit of live action lace making, but I don’t think it’s usual in the off season. (As an aside, you can expect this hobby to appear in my rotation at some undetermined point in the future – I have a crochet project to finish first, and am determinedly exercising self-restraint to Get. It. Done!)

I got lunch on Burano (a delicious tomato, mozzarella, basil panino – I think the difference being the type of bread that makes it not a panini perhaps? It was the second one I’d had in Venice, a true food delight), and then headed back to the ferry port.

My next stop was Murano, where I headed for the glass museum. Sadly no live-action work happening here, although there were several smalls screens dotted around the edge of the displays that showed how various pieces are made, or how they get a particular design to form in the glass. When you consider how fragile glass really is, it’s a little crazy to see it stretched and almost thrown about sometimes in its liquid form. There were then several different rooms filled with displays, the glass grouped by type or technique – milk glass that mimics porcelain, for example, or pieces that all contain small threads of coloured glass which criss-cross over each other.

After the museum, I wandered a little, but Murano is not so pretty as its neighbour, and it was getting to the close of the day, so I ended up heading for ‘home’ (my hostel bed). At the last minute, I saw a stall where they were selling glass pens for 10 euros – previously they had all been upwards of 50 euros. The nib shape was a little different, but I decided to chance it. I have since made it back ‘home’ (France) and am pleased to report that it is still in one piece and it works beautifully.

Of the three cities, Venice was by far my favourite, and may have even eclipsed Paris as my favourite city in Europe?!?! Yes, ok, either way I’m a cliché, but I simply don’t care. Paris has so much to see (well, if you’re an art and museum girlie, like me), but so does Venice, and Venice has the additional ‘out of this world’ feeling. Either way, I had an excellent end to this trip, a wonderful start to being twenty-nine, as I had my birthday while I was in Venice.

It was a wonderful little trip, and I hope desperately that we, as a species, don’t let Venice effectively fall into the sea, so that many people can enjoy Venice in all the years to come.