The end of the trip

The trip is winding down, and I will be heading home, I hope, tomorrow. I say "I hope" because Delta isn't making the return trip easy on me. Two flight changes so far, and they have a few more hours to play around with me. The problem is that they have shrunk the number of flights so much that if one is canceled, it is no longer the case that you can hop on one a few hours later. But I am sure that I will get there sometime, though later than I had hoped.

It has been a good trip, though a bit overlong. Not too much, but by just a few days. That was a judgement call on my part--I have been saying that I have never taken a two week vacation, but I just recalled that I was in England for three weeks in 1998, so I guess I have done this before. Still, I told someone today that the relaxation of the trip is fading as I realize and remember all that I need to do once I get back. I guess vacations are always like that.

Italy has been surprising. It is very accessible as a country, even without any Italian. Actually, Latin and Spanish blunted my illiteracy a bit, and I find I can read signs and menus enough to know that I am not ordering the tripe or going in a woman's bathroom. No small feat, that, and worth celebrating a bit. Yep, two of my triumphs of two weeks in Italy were that I didn't eat cow stomach or head into the woman's loo. I am sure that they are going to do a travel story on me--the semi-incompetent American.

The big surprise is that if you are careful, Italy is very affordable. Public transportation is cheap, and I am staying in an above average place for about $65, no $66, no $67, no $68 American Pesos a night. I joke because the dollar has lost 17 cents (and counting) to the Euro since I booked my room three weeks ago. I offered to pay my tab in dollars, and my inn keeper basically laughed. But still. A Diet Coke is $1.38, a pretty good chocolate bar is about the same, and if you are willing to eat on the street and from the market, you can easily eat all day on 20 Euro a day, and eat very very well. Today, for example, I had a chocolate croissant and an Americano with milk for breakfast, and then bought some yogurt from the market for something healthy. I had bite of chocolate and part of a soda for lunch on the run, and then went to a deli at a nearby market and bought some Tuscan prosciutto, some lasagna, and a corn, onion, and cheese thingy, and splurged on a bottle, not a box of wine. Total for the day for food was a little over 16 Euro. If I would have "settled" for a great, ham, cheese, sun dried tomato and balsamic vinegar panini and a bottle of beer or Coke, I could have made it in just over 10 Euro, and felt that I ate very well today.

That leads me to my student consumer price index for bread, cheese, meat and beer/wine. Two people could eat all they wanted and pretty much drink all they wanted from a market for about 8 Euro, and eat a very good meal, with above average ingredients and probably even get a bit of buzz going if they drank all the wine. I know that you can't have a picnic in the US for that, not unless it was with Wonder Bread and PB&J. It was fun figuring out and comparing the prices, for they didn't make a lot of sense. Olive oil is more expensive here than in the US--go figure out that one! Milk is more expensive but you can get a 1.5 liter bottle of water for about 35 cents. Orange juice is always much less expensive than soda, but pasta is more expensive than in the US. Up is down, war is peace, etc.

The real test of whether I would come back here is not whether or not olive oil is expensive or whether I can find cheap Soppressata. I found that for the most part Italy was and Italians were warm and friendly--much more so than France and the French. Not much of a surprise there, I suppose, but I like it here. There is a tendency to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount and number of masterpieces and churches and ruins and towers and views. I think that would be mitigated if I was traveling with people and you could say, "Yes, I saw this and that and such, now let's go eat and drink wine." There might be more of a balance--when you travel by yourself, it is easy to forget that and go from one church to another to the museum to the scenic view to the...

I explored Florence, but I only touched Tuscany. While public transportation got me into the countryside a little, I do think that to really explore (and to find that villa to buy) you probably need to have a car. That has it's own set of challenges such as parking and the anarchy and chaos of Italian roads and drivers. If you could rent outside of the city, and could avoid all that, I suppose you could manage, and it would be worth it to be able to get lost in the countryside. I know I mostly saw the tourist side of things, though I did wander pretty far afield in the city.

But it was a good trip. I pushed myself a bit by trying a new country/place instead England for the umpteenth time or Prague for the eighth time or whatever. I saw many things that I have taught about and art that I have only imagined or seen in books. In some ways it is almost cultural literacy 101. Yes, I taught Western Civ, but to see where Savranola burned those books or to see the REAL David, you don't really feel the impact or the weight or the realness of all that history. That part was fun--I should done this when I was teaching Western Civ--I think I could have made it more real for those students who were no doubt bored to tears in that class.

My last pictures are a hodgepodge. I was in Fiesole, the Florence suburb that commands the highest ground in the area. It is a vertical town with stunning views of the area. No less so is the simple "chapel" of the Church of San Francesco. It did seem more "holy" to me than the elaborately carved and shining alters of the basilica and the Duomos. And lastly, a sunset, by request. I will probably have a wrap up post once I edit the 1500+ photos that I took but that will happen when I get home. Until then, this is it from Italy.