(Tuscany, Italy)…The road, the Via Empolese in Cerbaia, that goes alongside the sublime Villa il Poggiale near the small village of San Casciano Val di Pesa seems always to be busy, a small mystery to me, but a step off it onto one of the side roads leads to a nether world (see photo) of olive fields, vineyards, sun-kissed Tuscan farmhouses, narrowing lanes and grassy driveways marshaled by Black redstarts. In November, the smell of olives perfumes the air, and half-hidden men armed with long poles and large blankets move along groves and, their modus operandi escaping me, select trees from which to strip off fruit. The next day I visited the Fattoria di Maiano (www.fattoriadimaiano.com/en) to see where some of these olives end up. On the other side of Florence, just south of Fiesole, the Miari Fulcis family, made counts and countesses (the current head is a countess, Contessa Lucrezia Miari Fulcis dei Principi Corsini) centuries ago, run this fattoria. It’s the largest farm in the area, and produces the delicious Laudemio olive oil (other oil manufacturers also market their wares with this name, as a collective; www.laudemio.it). Their house—well, mansion—possesses a columned courtyard, a terrace overlooking mazelike topiary, a church, Spinello Aretino’s fresco, La Madonna della Misericordia, and an olive press, called a frantoio in Italian. A tap gushed oil, and you are welcome to dip a finger in the flow. Parts of the movie adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel A Room with a View were filmed in the main dining room.
One of the countess’ relatives was Lorenzo Corsini, who became Pope Clement XII in 1730. He was responsible for the façade of San Giovanni in Laterano, which is Rome’s cathedral (St. Peter’s is the Vatican’s), and the construction of the Trevi Fountain. Two Benedicts, XIII and XIV, bookended his papacy (I loved writing this sentence). Another relative was St. Andrew Corsini, who died in 1374, was Bishop of Fiesole and once floated over the field of the 1440 battle of Anghiari, which is the subject of the “Lost Leonardo,” a painting by Leonardo da Vinci that has, obviously, disappeared. Some believe it is “hiding” beneath a Giorgio Vasari painting, which, if true, will itself become “lost.” In San Giovanni in Laterano, there is a chapel built in St. Andrew's honour by Clement XII, which obviously was not a coincidence.
Back at the ochre-yellow Villa il Pogialle (www.villailpoggiale.it), I marvelled at never finding my way from my room—Room 1—to anywhere I wanted to go. It was fantastic to get slightly lost and discover new sitting rooms, the kitchen, the back door, the side terrace, etc. It, too, had a sense of mystery about it, which was added to by it being administered by a diminutive Scottish woman from Selkirk.
The road to Florence passes by the village of Pozzolatico and the basilica of San Miniato al Monte (St. Minias on the Mountain), which gives one of the best views of Florence’s Duomo and Campanile. St. Minias was a survivor. The Roman Emperor Trajan Decius disliked him and threw him to the lions, which refused to eat him, so the pontifex maximus decided to take things into his own hands and have the man beheaded. Even this did not stop Minias, who coolly picked up his head and walked up the hill to where his church now stands. He should use such immortal skills to clear the “entertainers” away from another scenic overview of Florence, along the same road, which include an utterly incongruous Chilean pipe band and two Native American dancing “shamans” selling Kachina dolls. Perhaps this is just our new global world, for wandering up the slope, on the auspicious date of 11/11/11 (Nov. 11, 2011) was a newly married Chinese couple surrounded by Chinese friends. The church has some ornate interior decoration, which extends between small details of knights wearing conically shaped helmets while attacking dragons to large frescos completed by Aretino. The exterior stairs leading to the basilica also are dramatic and reminded me slightly (although these stairs lead straight up) of those at Bom Jesus do Monte in Braga, Portugal—probably just because both were coloured white, either of whitewash or Carrera marble.
Back to Pozzolatico, we took the vegetables we had purchased in Florence’s San Ambroglio market and started to prepare lunch at the expansive I Tre Pini (www.ristoranteitrepini.it) restaurant, which is owned by the marvellous named Libero Saraceni (“Free Saracen”). I was in charge of the tomato tapenade soup, and I also helped make ravioli. All of this was possible because I had the great fortune of being on a trip organised by Trafalgar Tours (www.trafalgar.com/usa/bemyguest) on, specifically, its Be My Guest progam, which opens usually closed doors and permits travellers to utterly savour the tastes and notions of a region’s life. Normally, I avoid group tours, but I was so busy, laughing and learning on this trip, none of the usual group tat—monotone guide voices, instantly forgotten facts, half-stabs at visiting anywhere, etc.—was able to seep in. And joy of joys, while we cooked, there was red wine and fried courgette flowers to sip and munch on.
Stomach filled, I investigate Florence. The exterior of the Duomo is quite beautiful, as are the Gates of Paradise on the Battistero di San Giovanni, which is where Dante was baptized. It is a short walk to the Ponte Vecchio, but I’d rather look at that bridge from the adjacent Ponte Santa Trìnita, which was destroyed by the Nazis in Aug. 1944, and see the Vecchio’s colours and shapes reflected in the River Arno, rather than the reflections in the tacky gold on display in its tacky gold shops. Vasari, as well as painting, also built the Vasari Corridor, which connects the Ponte Vecchio with the Uffizi Palace in Florence—just another of the connections that make history and modern life here fascinating and palpable.
(Curaçao)...The Southern Caribbean island of Curaçao, poking out of the continental shelf of South America, 40 miles north of the coast of Venezuela, is part of the Netherlands Antilles, six West Indian specks that also include Aruba, Bonaire, Sint-Maarten, Saba and Sint Eustatius. Americans know well of Curaçao’s most famous son, baseball player Andruw Jones.
The main gripe heard here is how Curaçao, the largest of the six, ends up paying for all the others (it’s probably a little more complicated than that, but that is what one hears time and time again from the grumblers), especially in the years since Aruba became an autonomous province still linked to the parent country, The Netherlands, but not to the other five. As of this October, Curaçao will copy this administrational formulation, leaving the bills for the remaining four very small islands on the far larger lap of Holland.
The island’s built-up area is in the middle, around capital Willemstad, and there can be traffic. For peace, tranquility and flavor, head to its far southeastern and northwestern tips (the island is tilted, so that its westernmost and northernmost points and, likewise, its easternmost and southernmost points are very close to each another).
Southeastern Curaçao—Curaçao comprises two islands, Curaçao itself and Klein, or Little, Curaçao, a sliver that it is possible to amble around in a very, very slow hour. One person owns all the eastern portion of the “mainland” island, which remains unsullied and results in Klein Curaçao being unsullied, too. To get to Klein Curaçao, passage on a boat is needed from any of the harbors and inland bays closer to Willemstad. I caught one organized by Ocean Encounters (oceanencounters.com), the diving outfitters affiliated with the 350-room Hyatt Regency Curaçao (curacao.hyatt.com), which opened on the formerly empty Santa Barbara Beach, east of Willemstad, in April, with two restaurants and a large spa. Our two-deck boat had space for approximately 40 people and was fairly stable, but if you suffer from seasickness, you might remember to pack the Dramamine, as the channel between Curaçao and Klein Curaçao, like many channels all over the world, can be choppy. Usually is it possible to unfurl the sails in one direction, which provides for a slightly more comfortable crossing. It took us two hours to get there.
Klein Curaçao has no permanent houses, merely a small row of fishermen’s shacks. Some are in ruins, even though one still sported a framed painting on a tatty wall open to the elements. No fishermen were around, although maybe they had already finished for the day. A couple of shelters have been built for the sun-lovers, snorkelers and scuba-divers who come here. The scuba-diving is drift-diving along the island’s reef with one diver towing a surface buoy so that the boat captain can keep an eye on the position of the submerged. There are two interesting things on the island. A ruined lighthouse, with a red roof and peeling dusty-rose walls, was built in 1850 and again in 1879 and 1913, which might be testament to the winds and storm surges hereabouts, though Curaçao officially is outside the hurricane belt (Hurricane Omar brushed it in 2008). This really is a desert island, with pure water, views of only sea to every direction and abandoned buildings that suggest, quite reassuringly, that not every speck on earth is meant for habitation. The white beaches and cerulean sea evoke gasps of happiness.
Northwestern Curaçao—The area around Dorp Westpunt seems tailor-made to assist relaxation. Its beaches—Forti, Grote (Large) Knip, Kleine (Small) Knip, Jeremi and Lagun—are pocket handkerchief-size strands wedged between coral coasts that reveal amazing snorkeling yards from the shore. If you had not enough imagination to realize the forces of nature over millennia, you would swear that the tourism bureau had cut these minute playgrounds right into the coastline every mile or so for the express benefit of tourists. Usually at each beach are a small concession shack and five or six upturned rowboats. Wake up early enough and you might have one of these beaches to yourself. My base was the Lodge at Hura Kolanda (kurahulanda.com), close to the spot called Nordpunt, or North Point.
The hotel has 74 accommodation units in either rooms or suites that all sit on a bluff with private patios. Thatch-roof and waterside bars and restaurants lend the requisite tropical feel, and steps lead down to Kalki beach (its stony composition helps make for clearer water) and the dive shop affiliated with the property. Even if you do not scuba-dive, visit Ocean Encounters West (oceanencounterswest.com), which has the nicest diving set-up I have seen, with its own bar-restaurant right by the pier that allows divers to avoid having to be away from the action. It can also take you to the amazing Blue Cave, where snorkelers swim beneath a ridge that clears heads by less than a foot into a cavern where, bobbing on the surface or with mask submerged, awaits a glorious subterranean world of dancing, blue-white light and, if lucky, as I was, large lobster and gorgeous drumfish.
A drier world awaits at the nearby Shete Boka National Park. (“Shete Boka” is an interesting introduction into the world of Papiamento, the language spoken in Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao, as well as Sint Eustatius, a combination of Portuguese, Arawak, English and Dutch. I speak Spanish to some degree, and as I was told the name Sheke Boka means “Seven Mouths,” I can quite easily see the Spanish words “siete” and “boca” and (I’ve looked this up) the Portuguese words “sete” and “boca.”) There are seven mouths here, but the northern coast, literally right around the corner from Dorp Westpunt, is not for swimming, the waves crashing through eroded, rocky inlets with the occasional blowhole. Up on the arid shelf are views of cacti, thorn scrub and Curaçao’s highest point, Mount Christoffel, which rises 1,230 feet.
A couple of other local spots should be sought out. The first is St. Peter’s, the church in Dorp Westpunt, that has a painting on it of St. Peter holding an oar, which caused me to do a double take when I drove by it, while the second is Jaanchie’s a restaurant that is notable for bird feeders (outside) that attract Yellow orioles, Troupials—colored orange and black—Rufous-collared sparrows and strange-looking Bare-eyed pigeons, the black circles around their eyes reminding me of old Hanna-Barbera Tom & Jerry cartoons in which hapless Tom is tricked by wily Jerry into looking through an ink-stained telescope. The restaurant is also colorful, and a whole afternoon spent here is an afternoon not wasted. The food has received mixed reviews, but I loved the conch, a usually tough dish that here is very tasty. The shrimps looked like the frozen kind, however, and if you choose the iguana (yes, it tastes like chicken) as a soup or a main dish, you will undoubtedly be rewarded with a visit from the restaurateur himself who will explain with a wink in his eye it supposed aphrodisiacal qualities. (They do not serve keshi yená at Jaanchie’s, but if you can find it, choose it. Literally translated as “stuffed cheese,” this dish has its origins in the days of slavery, when the slave owners would import Dutch cheeses and leave to their slaves only the rinds. The slaves would secretly reheat the rinds, which still contained a little cheese, and fill them with whatever was on hand. Today only a small handful of restaurants prepare this dish, and the recipe has been updated for more civilized times, most notably in that the filling is wrapped in larger amounts of cheese, which also now is soft. I ate a curry-flavored one at the Restaurant & Cafe Gouverneur De Rouville, which is on the Otrabanda side of Willemstad and looks out at the city’s famous riverfront, filled with chicken and vegetables. Here is a recipe—kuminda.com/viewrecipe.php?id=1051952295.)
(Italy)…News comes in of Venice, which in the week beginning Nov. 30 is suffering from its worst flooding in 22 years. The height of the water in some places has reached 1.56 metres above its normal level. I was in Venice last month, and on two days when the moon was at its fullest, the streets were covered with a foot of water. It is quite entertaining to the tourist, but to the residents and the city itself, such continual attacks are a threat to this beautiful city, which was settled, it is thought, by refugees fleeing from the Germanic horde. I was staying at the home of good friends, Francesco and Ivana, the former a Sardinian, the latter an Italian of Slovenian descent. Much walking is required of this place in order to have at least some of it remain with you when you leave. There are some major thoroughfares (narrow ones) that visitors troop along to get to the Piazza San Marco and the Rialto Bridge, and if you want to avoid these, then a detailed map is needed, along with the idea that you will walk and walk and not get very far. Often a street will look like a dead end, only for the smallest of arches to appear that leads to a small bridge and…etc, etc.
I loved everywhere here, but one special, beautiful spot is the Ponte Chiodo on the Fondamenta di San Felice, in Cannaregio district. It is one of only two bridges in all of Venice, including its lagoon isles, that does not have side railings. It leads only to a door of a private house, the Palazzo Chiodo (whose residents no doubt were teetotallers, or walked very carefully).
The other example is the Ponte del Diavolo, on the island of Torcello, which has two attractions: a Cipriani restaurant and the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, in which are the relics of Croatian Saint Heliodorus and a very faded, hard-to-decipher plaque dating from 639 that is the earliest mention of Venice. The walk back to our friends’ home from the Ponte Chiodo would take us past the imposing church of the Fondamenta Madonna Dell’Orto, near to where are four statues of moors, one of which over the long passage of time has had his nose rubbed down to a grey shine. Not surprisingly, this is called the Campo dei Mori, and the artist Tintoretto lived here. Indeed, he is buried in the Madonna Dell’Orto. One excellent bar in the area is Al Timon, on the Fondamenta degli Ormesini, which serves excellent tapas, known here as cicchetti.
Another hot spot for these is the Do Mori, on the Calle dei do Mori, which is not near Campo dei Mori but next to the wonderful Rialto Market, which sells fruit, vegetables and fish. Francesco has been going to the same fishmonger here for years and calls him “maestro,” which is a touch I like, for the man surely picks out scallops and cod like Giuseppe Verdi picked out notes to suit the seasons. Do Mori purports to be the oldest bar in Venice, and its patrons come in for two or three cicchetti and a glass of house white before tackling the crowds again. And there are crowds: 60,000 residents and some 25 to 30,000,000 tourists per year. Back at Al Timon, the walk home would be then across a small bridge with a guard turret, which was closed at night to keep the Jews inside their ghetto (spelt gheto in the Venetian dialect, in which John is spelt Zwane, the slangy derivation possible here if you say Giovanni very fast without too much care to pronounce each syllable).
The ghetto—founded in 1516, the Jews were not subject to the curfew only after Napoleon invaded La Serenissima in 1797—has five synagogues, some of which it is difficult to spot. On one corner is an office run by the Jewish Chabad Lubavitchers community who are the latest arrivals and perhaps its most vocal one, in which every time I passed I saw a video playing of its dear Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who I remember seeing once in Brooklyn in 1993 driven in a limousine. I was also in Venice, apart from sightseeing, to run the 23rd Venice Marathon. Jokes abound of how it is possible to run 42.2 kilometres in a city that ostensibly has no streets.
The course starts outside of the city (a-ha!) at the 18th-century Villa Pisani, which through a gap in the wall I could espy its maze, whose labyrinth of hedges lead to a small tower wrapped by a circular staircase and on top of which is a statue. The race runs along the Brenta Canal, through some quaint towns and the not-so-quaint Maghera and Mestre industrial areas, in which some of the largest boats and cruise ships are made, and out into the Parque San Giovanni. By this time, runners are tired, but soon coming into view is the skyline of Venice. The last five kilometres are in Venice itself, and over the top of 14 bridges are placed ramps so that steps are not required to step up. There’s even a special pontoon bridge to get competitors over the Grand Canal, and this can only be run—actually, by this stage of the event, walked—by official marathoners, which is a delicious sense of entitlement if you’re a traveller. It was the day after that I visited Torcello and the other Venetian islands, letting the vaporetto water taxi do the work, not my hamstrings.
Murano is famous for its glass, which on the rare occasion can be seen in its manufacture, the blowers preferring the cool that comes in through open doors to the gawks and stares that also enter. Of the sellers of these expensive creations, Venini is the most expensive and has a beautiful shop right where the vaporetto stop is. Wandering far away from what is certainly a touristy spot, we found the sterling Ai Bisatei osteria, on Campo San Bernardo, where we ate a local, hard-to-find specialty, spleen seasoned in lemon and pepper.
Burano is famous not for glass, but for lace, as well as for its colourful houses. A local told us that this is a relatively new concept and that the bright colours actually harm the brick buildings, which would originally be whitewashed only. The penultimate island—before Torcello itself—was Mazzorbo, which is the quietest by far and is connected to Burano by one bridge. Right on the far corner is the 8th-century Chiesa di Santa Caterina, which has the most wonderful worn marble floor. Within a roadside shrine, on the way to the church I saw the small painting of Christ that is the subject of the photo above.
(Italy/Portugal)...I have never felt much moved to adopt religion, but I have always enjoyed visiting religious sites. Not churches, cathedrals, temples, etc. per se (in fact, I’ve become a little immune to such sights now, in the same way that I rarely want to visit large city museums) but more rather ruined monasteries and castles established by strange religious orders. Luckily, there are many of these, be they established by the Saracens, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians, the Jesuits, even the Christadelphians, a group that believes the literal word of the Bible.
There was a small church of theirs, nothing less than someone’s house, around the road from where I grew up in northwest Kent, and I always considered it slightly scary. This most probably was because it was not normal, in that it was not the “normal” church, not the “normal” thing people did and not the “normal “ thing people believed in or would talk about. Tomar is a large town on the banks of the small River Nabão in central Portugal. Here there is a large, impressive Knights Templar castle based on the Temple of the Dome of the Rock of Jerusalem. Perched high on the hill overlooking the whole plain, the castle was constructed in 1160 by Gualdim Pais, grand master of the Order of the Knights Templar.
When Philip the Fair of France sponsored a papal bull outlawing the Templars, many of the order hastily fled to the extremities of Europe, including the British Isles and Portugal. The Tomar castle served as one of their retreats, although this branch was dissolved seven years later following another bull from Pope Clement V. Then, as now, the real reason for such a move was money. In Portugal, the Ordo de Cristo replaced the order.
The Portuguese king Dom Dinis championed the new group, and Henry the Navigator was for some time the head of it. The sails of the Portuguese ships of discovery that reached India and the Far East displayed a red cross against a white background — the emblem of both the Knights Templar and, perhaps not coincidentally, the flag of England. The Ordo de Cristo declined in the 16th century and was abolished altogether in 1834.
It was a well-kept ruin when I visited and enjoyed its main cloister, which hosted the 1581 coronation of Philip II of Spain, who succeeded to the Portuguese throne following the death of the Portuguese king Sebastiano I. The walk that leads around the hill to the castle gives an impressive sense of the castle's isolation and power, its courtyard displaying pale raked sand, artistically arranged flowerbeds and wonderfully designed metal contraptions for tying horses to. Immediately inside the main door is a high 16-sided altar, where it was alleged the Templars celebrated mass on horseback. A short car journey from Tomar is the famous pilgrimage site of Fátima, where three children, Lucia dos Santos and her cousins Francisco and Jacinta Marco, saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary on May 13, 1917, whilst tending sheep. The area is actually named after a 12th-century Moorish princess and was sacred to the Islamic people who at one time inhabited this area. Now all the site is concrete and tacky souvenir stands.
Tomar and Fátima could not be any different if they tried. I also enjoyed Assisi in Italy. I had stayed in Perugia overnight and caught a very early train after walking downhill from Perugia’s centre to its lonely station. Assisi also has a station a long way from town. Famous for being the home of St. Francis, the town retains a feeling of tranquility, most visitors staying on the bottom level that leads to the cathedral rather than walking up its steep slopes.
My favourite religious site there — and it is merely a church, not ruined in any way — was the quiet church of San Stefano, a 13th century gem on a zigzag lane just off Via San Paolo. Apparently, when St. Francis died on October 3, 1226, its bells rang out despite the absence of bell-ringers. On any day one visits, the place will always nearly be empty of people. The old man in the photograph operated a very colourful street organ. People dropped pennies in a basket for him.
