Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Our trip to Pisa was to see the Leaning Tower. It took almost 200 years to build due to various wars (contrast that with the Colosseum which got built in a decade). At 55+ meters tall, and with 251 steps, it started to tilt during its construction itself. By the 1990’s, the tilt was almost 10 degrees. Subsequent restoration work has reduced the tilt a bit. When we climbed the tower, we could see several bells on it – hence its other, less famous name as the bell tower. Right next to the tower is a cathedral with a massive dome, named the Duomo di Pisa. We couldn’t go into that, but the cathedral next to it (see pic above) was open. Impressive artwork inside cathedrals was almost expected by now in Italy, and this one didn’t disappoint. ~~   And then it was a quick train tide back to Florence, pick up the bags and onto Venice. My wife had seen a lot of another water-y city, Amsterdam, so she wasn’t sure how different Venice would be. Until she saw it – very different. ...

From Rome, we took the train to Florence. In Italian, it’s called Firenze. It is the one city whose English name doesn’t sound anything like its native name. (Roma – Rome, Milano – Milan, Genova – Genoa, Napoli – Naples, and then Firenze – Florence. Google gave no answers on the naming contrast, only the same exasperated question by so many others: “Why did the English decide to Anglicize Italian names? Surely they are not too difficult to pronounce?”   So let’s leave the name aside. Florence is a small town, with none of the hustle of a big city. Quite, relaxed, peaceful, enjoyable. The city is home to the famous Pont Vecchio bridge (literally Old Bridge) which has many shops on it, esp. a lot of jewellery and gold shops.   The city is also home to some of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, from Michelangelo to da Vinci to Botticelli to Donatello and so many more. The list of great artworks was, therefore, never-ending… (The Medicis, the richest family of t...

A fter the Vatican visit, the next day was all about going around in Rome. Starting with a guided tour of the Colosseum. Our guide asked us to guess how long it took to construct the Colosseum. The answer was surprising: just 10 years. It takes longer today to build a metro station in Rome today, she joked. Rome may not have been built in a day, but it sure wasn’t built at a crawling pace either. Jokes aside, our guide acknowledged that was possible because they used slave labour back then.   The underground system below the arena that housed the wild animals and gladiators with its many holding areas and passageways is open and visible. This guide too was an archaeologist (like the one at the Vatican), which explained why she was so keen to convey the reality of the Colosseum, not the nonsense that Hollywood peddles, she said contemptuously.   Yes, it was all bread and circus, something to keep the masses entertained. No, gladiators did not fight to the death. Sure, ...

The main item on our first full day in Italy was a guided tour of the Vatican. As I said earlier, our hotel was close to all the tourist spots of Rome, so we walked to the Vatican. Along the way, we stumbled upon an obscure, easy to miss church. Even that had such beautiful art on the walls and ceiling as well as mosaics. It would turn out to be a preview of the excellence of Italian art during all our trip.   Our group guide (about 10-12 people) was a part-time archaeologist. She pointed out that the Vatican is a separate country, not a part of the “ Republic of Italy” (I’d see that Italians everywhere take pride that since ancient times , they’ve been a republic, not a monarchy). The guides give everyone a radio receiver and earphones so you can hear the guide in crowded, noisy places even if you wander off or fall behind.   Right before going to the main part of the Vatican, our guide stopped us at an open area, and pulled out some chart paper sized prints of diffe...

Foreword : When in Rome, do as the Romans do. So I will use the Italian names for places. Only in the titles of the blogs though, not in the body. The other reason for using Italian names is that the language is musical to hear, due to the vowel ending sound to most words and also the way they say it. Even “Ferrari” sounds better when pronounced by an Italian. Enough said, let’s get started. ~~   We’d planned to visit Italy in December ’23 but didn’t because the visa came just a day before the journey. Even though we’d applied it for many, many weeks in advance. We didn’t have the stomach to wait for the visa until that close to the trip (we’d also lose a lot if we cancelled that late). The next time, we applied for a French visa which came so much faster and went to France, Netherlands and Austria last year. We used that same visa for the Italy trip this year.   I’ve never cleared immigration as quickly as we did in Rome! They just check for a valid visa and don’...

Our hotel in Rome was walking distance from the Vatican, and we stumbled upon this church on the way. Almost invisible, its entrance was easy to miss, appearing like the door of all the buildings next to it. Even that unknown church (Google couldn’t help) gave us a glimpse of the artworks of Italy that we would experience over the next 10 days. It even had a finely polished table at the center, which provided a perfect reflection of its ceiling. So much easier to take a pic via the reflection (us doing just that in the pic below). Later, I felt they could have created this “reflection” system too for ease of photography. But then again, no photos allowed in the Sistine Chapel.   After a point, the endless religious themed sculptures can feel repetitive. So sculptures like these in the Vatican provide a good break. Only later after seeing the Statue of David in Florence did I notice something about the goat (top-left above) – like David, the statue cannot stand on just the legs, s...

The headlines about Germans being poorer than the Italians and the Spanish and other Europeans make for amusing reading. Those headlines were based on ECB (European Central Bank) data, no less. Which rules out the data source as being wrong. But, let’s face it, the headline is so obviously and completely wrong. Who in their right mind thinks of Germany as being the poor cousin of Europe? So what exactly is wrong here? The one word answer: statistics. As in that famous line about statistics and damned lies. As in it’s as much about what is revealed as what is hidden. Now for the longer answer. Turns out most people in Spain and Italy own homes whereas most Germans don’t. So when you calculate the net wealth of an individual, you add the home value in Spain and Italy but not in Germany. Oh by the way, the ECB data was based on 2008 home values, and, unless you lived in a cave, you’d know the values of those homes today would be much less. Much, much less. Additiona...

I have been reading this travelogue, Neither Here Nor There , where Bill Bryson talks very humorously of his travels through most of Europe. His experience in Italy got me thinking: Rome, Naples, Milan and Florence. Bryson found corruption to be rampant. People parked their cars whichever way they liked, drivers didn’t follow any rules (in fact nobody followed any rules). Beggars and pickpockets targeted tourists and cops wouldn’t register complaints. The Italians didn’t bother to maintain their museums or other tourist attractions: Bryson says (and I don’t know if he said that tongue in cheek or if it’s true) that the Colosseum isn’t the ruin that it is because of wear and tear, rather it is a ruin because people used to chip away at it with sledgehammers and take the chunks to kilns to make cement! That reminded me of a comment one of our neighbours had made decades back, “What great ruins the Italians make!” Back then, we were amused by his lack of understanding of the...