Next Stop: Sanity!

Positano, Italy, might be the most beautiful place on the planet.  It’s certainly the prettiest place I’ve ever visited, and that’s saying something, given that I’ve been to Paris, Venice, Hawaii, Jamaica, the English countryside, and Columbia, South Carolina.

Or maybe I just have strong feelings for Positano because I almost didn’t live to see it.

I should explain that, accompanying my group was a guy named Rick Steves, the travel guru, in the form of his 8-pound guidebook.  In the section on Positano, Rick encouraged us to take the bus from Sorrento to Positano, and he specifically said to get off at the second Positano stop.

Positano, you see, is built on the side of a mountain.  Its narrow streets wind back and forth down the side of that mountain to its gorgeous beach.  And on the way down to the beach, Rick Steves said, Positano has more women’s designer clothing stores per square foot than any other place on earth. In addition, the Positano sandalmakers create custom-made sandals while you wait.  I had found my mothership.

About thirty minutes after we left Sorrento, the bus stopped, and the driver yelled, “Positano!”  and people started getting off the bus.  Just to be sure we didn’t miss our stop, the SECOND STOP, someone in our group asked the driver.  

“No, no, this is first.  You get off next stop,” he said.

We sat back down and gawked at the view from our bus seats.  And ninety seconds after the first stop, the bus stopped again.  We stood up and got off and watched as the bus pulled away.  A woman who had gotten off with us then said, “Where are you going?  This is my house.  If you want the bus stop, you have to walk down the road.”

Holy hairpin turn, Batman!  We were on a narrow mountain road with a rock wall on one side and a sheer cliff on the other.  The shoulder on each side of the road was a good 18 inches deep.  We began walking single file, hugging the rock wall and cringing as cars whizzed by and the people in them pointed and laughed at the estupido Americanos.

We griped about the bus driver the whole rest of the afternoon.  Why hadn’t he stopped us from getting off when he did the woman a favor and let her out at her house? 

Then again, why hadn’t we thought to look for the bus stop sign and the crowd of folks waiting to board our bus?  

We got off at the wrong stop because of a rigid adherence to a guidebook.  Rather than looking around at the circumstances and thinking for ourselves, we were committed to getting off at the second stop because that’s what Rick Steves said to do.

That was the last day I read the Rick Steves guidebook.  That day in gorgeous Positano, I decided that I’m not going through life any longer with my nose so buried in a guidebook that I miss the view. 

A New Appreciation for Mondays

After only 1 ½ days in the world’s most romantic city, our tour guide, Vania, a native of Venice, met us at our hotel and guided us, suitcases in tow, through the narrow cobblestone streets of Venice, over two bridges, and through two campos to a waiting water taxi, which took us to the Venice train station. 

At the train station, Nathan’s lovely wife pulled the group train ticket out of her packet of travel documents and confirmed that we had 45 minutes until our train, the #10 to Florence, departed. 

Thirty-five minutes later, Nathan’s lovely wife had every person in the group searching their bags for our ticket.  After I searched my bag, I sat down on my suitcase in the middle of the train station and began playing iPhone solitaire. 

Five minutes after that, a panicked Vania went to the train office with a photocopy of our ticket and begged on our behalf for mercy.  She came back sadly shaking her head.  I could tell she was worried about having to take care of the stupid Americans for another day.

That was when a conductor for the #10 train, seeing the looks of dismay on our faces, approached us.  “Did you lose a ticket?” he asked.

“Si, si!”  we all yelled in unison.

He held up our ticket.  Apparently, someone had found our ticket on the ground and turned it in.  I turned to the relieved Vania and said, “You’ll have a good story to tell at dinner tonight.”

She smiled for the first time all morning.

If Venice is the world’s most romantic city, Florence has to be the most artistically inspired city on the planet.   It’s the birthplace or chosen home of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Dante, Botticelli, and Galileo. 

And for those impressed by art that's a little more modern (not to mention the architecture of today’s high heels), Florence is the birthplace of the great fashion designers Roberto Cavalli, Salvatore Ferragamo, and Guccio Gucci.

It’s most famous resident, though, is a 17-foot marble statue named David. 

David’s story is interesting.  He was commissioned to a sculptor named Agostino in 1464, who hacked away at the legs for a year or so before losing the commission in 1466 when his master, Donatello, died.

A guy named Rossellino took over the job but quickly lost the contract.  The hunk of marble lay neglected and exposed to the elements for 25 years before a young Michelangelo thought he saw something in the miserable piece of marble and beat out Leonardo da Vinci for the job of completing David.

He got the commission on August 16, 1501.  And then the 26-year-old got up and started the job on a Monday morning.  

Michelangelo famously worked under the premise that David – now the standard of artistic perfection -- was in the stone all along.  The rough edges just had to be chipped away.  It’s a metaphor for us all, I think.

And isn’t it great to know that inspiration is possible on a Monday? 

Finding Romance in Venice

What do you do when barbarians keep attacking your city, stealing your money, ravishing your women, and burning your houses?

If you’re a group of northern Italians who like to color outside the lines, you begin rebuilding the city on an island in the middle of a lagoon.  Then you build on the island next to it, and the one next to that, until you have almost 120 islands connected by bridges combining to form your city.

Somehow, that city evolves into one of the wealthiest republics in the world.  And hundred of years after that, it becomes known as the most romantic city on the planet.

The history of Venice, of course, has all the elements of a good story:  money, sex, religion, tons of conflict, and a little irony.

Every little island had, and still has, its own campo (our word for plaza) and its own church, which means Venice boasts nearly 120 churches.  Of course, the biggest and most famous of all the churches in Venice is St. Mark’s Basilica, also known as the “Gold Church” because its domes are inlaid with gilded mosaics.

Venice was an extremely wealthy republic until Napoleon conquered it in 1797. During his campaign, the four horses on St. Mark’s façade were taken as spoils of war (they were returned by France in 1815).  Interestingly, those four horses were booty taken from Constantinople during the Crusades, and the church itself was founded upon the remains of the Apostle Mark, which were stolen from Alexandria, Egypt.   Supposedly, his remains were smuggled past Muslim guards in barrels of pork.

Even the grandest cathedrals of the world have a slightly checkered past.  I love that.

As for the sex in Venice’s history, housed in the Venetian arsenal along with hundreds of swords, spears, guns, and shields, was a 16^th century chastity belt.  And from the looks of that belt, the Venetians were obviously concerned about protecting every form of booty in their town.

That belt has to be the envy of every redneck dad who sits at the kitchen table cleaning his gun when his daughter gets picked up for a date.

The chastity belt made me wonder how Venice came to be known as the most romantic city in the world.  I was pondering that irony as we left the Doge’s Palace and headed for the famous Rialto Bridge.

Lenny Kravitz sings a song called “What Did I Do With My Life?”   The words of the chorus get me every time:

You can live any way you wanna

All you have to do is dance

Achieve anything you thought of

You just have to take the chance

You can fall in love with your life

'Cause that truly is romance

What did I do with my life?

During my gondola ride in Venice -- with a third-generation gondolier singing “O Sole Mio” and pointing out Casanova’s residence -- I had this thought:  I freakin’ love my life.  I am, quite possibly, the happiest girl in the world.

Venice, I get it.

Chewbacca Would've Had Trouble in Italy

As the keeper of three incorrigible dachshunds, a three-legged Australian Shepherd, and a Bengal cat prone to STD’s, I was hardly surprised when my trip to Italy was jeopardized by a wayward pussy.

Since we live in the same neighborhood, my traveling companions offered to give me a ride to the airport.  Our flight was at 9 p.m., and they were to pick me up between 6:30 and 7.  Knowing my traveling companions, whom I’ll refer to as “Nathan” and his “lovely wife,” I expected my pickup to be somewhere around 7:10. 

At 7:15, they pulled into the driveway, where I was sitting on my suitcase playing solitaire on my iPhone. As the mother of teenage daughters, I learned to play solitaire while waiting to hear the clop-clop of their high heels on the stairwell, meaning they were FINALLY ready to go.   Somehow, solitaire keeps me from getting nervous and upset about being late.  This time, I was too busy worrying about uncovering the Ace of Hearts to obsess over the rule that you should arrive at the airport two hours before an international flight.  That schedule, my friend, was gone with the wind.

Nathan and his lovely wife were late because they couldn’t corral their cat.  They were having the hardwood floors in their home refinished during the trip to Europe, and the cat was discombobulated by all the furniture moving and suitcase packing that had gone on that day.  When it came time for them to leave and for kitty cat to go stay with the wife’s mom, kitty was nowhere to be found.  And when she was found, she was a bundle of claws and teeth.

We made good time getting to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport .  Thankfully, efficient curbside check-in and light traffic in the security lanes on a Thursday evening had us at the gate with time to spare.

I’ve never been a huge fan of flying, and those overnight flights in economy class are the stuff of nightmares for me.  Well, they used to be.  On this trip, I discovered the magic combination of Ambien plus KLM’s complimentary glass of wine with dinner. 

I woke up when the captain was saying the Dutch equivalent of “Put your seat backs up and store your shit.  It’s time to land.”

As a public service to my readers, I offer this advice:  Don’t EVER change planes in Amsterdam’s Schipol airport.  That’s the airport the crotch bomber bluffed his way through back in December.  Now, they’re cavity searching all blonde-haired Americans to make up for their grave mistake.  A direct flight to Italy is the better choice, especially with that unpronounceable Icelandic volcano still causing trouble.

All the travel hassles were forgotten, however, when we landed in Venice.  A ten-minute walk took us to a water taxi that delivered us to a spot on the Grand Canal just a short walk to our hotel.

John Berendt, who wrote the bestselling Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, wrote a book about Venice called The City of Falling Angels.  The book opens with a devastating fire that destroyed the Fenice Opera House in Venice in 1996.  The Fenice has since been restored, and our hotel, the Fenice Hotel, was within steps of the Opera House.  I’d also picked up a book called A Thousand Nights in Venice by Marlena de Blasi.  It opens at a small wine bar called Vino Vino, which I spotted while pulling my suitcase over two bridges and several cobblestone walkways on the way to the hotel.  Having already recognized two spots I'd read about, I began to feel right at home in Venice.

Right at home, that is, until I got to my hotel room. The shower in my room was nothing more than a hose and nozzle attached to the spigot, and it was not attached to the wall.  It had to be held by hand.  Since I have as much hair as Chewbacca, it’s pretty much impossible to lather my hair with one hand.  

And shaving in Venice?  Wasn’t. Going. To. Happen.  I now know why European women are legendary for not shaving their armpits.  They can’t.

I Found the Perfect Man!

I get tickled every time I hear the George Strait song “She Let Herself Go.”  In case you’re not familiar with the song, it goes something like this:

When he said he didn’t love her no more, she let herself go.

Let herself go on a singles cruise,

To Vegas once, then to Honolulu,

Let herself go to New York City

A week at the spa, came back knocked-out pretty

When he said he didn’t love her no more, she let herself go.

Last week, my friends, I let myself go.  I went to Italy, where I ate plates full of pasta and drank red wine every single day.  I enjoyed a sunset gondola ride in Venice.  I brought home an Italian man named Umberto (pictured above).  Okay, he’s a vase from the Murano glass factory in Venice, but as men go, he’s perfect; I’ll always know where he is, and he won’t try to tell me what to do.

I visited a winery in Tuscany and shipped home a case of both red and white.  They arrived today.

I saw Michelangelo’s David (another perfect man -- strong, silent, with abs of marble) and the Sistine Chapel.  I stood in the ruins of the Roman Coliseum. 

I ate pizza at Pizzeria da Michele, the one Elizabeth Gilbert raved about in Eat, Pray, Love.  And yes, it is quite possibly the best pizza on the planet. 

In short, I had the time of my life.  And for the next week or so, whether you like it or not, you’re going to read about my trip. 

And for the record, I’ve done everything else in the song except the Honolulu thing.  That one, I did three times.