The Duomo in Milan
Ciao, Tutti!
It has been a while since I wrote about Italy to you guys, and it will be an even longer time before I can write about it again. I arrived in Berkeley almost 48 hours ago without my bag because it missed my connection from Paris, but I expected that because we only had a 50 minute layover to run through the enormous Charles de Gaul airport, so I packed everything important on carry on baggage. Plus we were 25 minutes late. Anyway, I have my bag now, and without final exams to worry about, I have time to write my last travel edition of the blog.
Two words of warning before I go into this: 1) This is by no means the last blog. I only expect this blog to become more music-oriented, like the Sam Goldsmith website, rather than a online travel journal. I will still be writing, so don't forget about me!
2) Since I haven't written in so long, there is too much to write, as always. I have about 280 pages in my personal travel journal, which is not yet finished, and multiple pounds of scrap booking things. I will try a new thing with this blog so that I don't wear everybody out, especially me. I will make a slide show with in-depth captions, so the blog will revolve around the photos rather than the story. Plus, there isn't much of a story except I was traveling throughout northern Italy for a few days taking pictures.
I apologize to all who are still waiting for my postcards to arrive. I have them all here with me, most of them being written, but knowing the Italian postal system, I figured I'd rather deliver them in person, or at least mail them from the states.
Music Announcements
I must include this segment first, since a development occurred for the 20th birthday concert. The Bowery Poetry Club moved the date until the following Sunday, September 28, 2008, from 6:00-7:30, instead of September 25. I earned 3 more days as a teenager. If you plan to come out for the show, I'd wait a little longer before making plans because, who knows, they might change again.
The premier of Guest Artist will be on Saturday, June 28, 2008, at the Bluesix Acoustic Room at 9:00. Will be a great show, worth the trip into San Francisco to see. The Inspiration Sextet will also be playing a sequel to last summer's Jazz School performance, though there will be some personnel changes due to people leaving town early, and the two shows will feature entirely different sets of music except Guest Artist. Come to both! 8:00 at the Jazz School, August 17.
Good to get that out of the way. Now for the main show:
Genova
This is a view of the city of Genova from the port. Genova is the second biggest port in Europe, the biggest being Barcelona.
The city of Genova. I took this picture from something called the "Bigo," a device that lifts you 40 meters above the ground at the pier next to the aquarium. Speaking of the aquarium, which I have no pictures of... Genova has one of the best aquariums I have ever seen, very well-organized and very fun. I learned a lot of Italian words for marine animals there.
I thought this stairway was pretty. I was walking over a bridge and looking down on the roofs of the apartment buildings. Genova is a city with drastic hills and many height contrasts. Because it's built into the mountains, it is rather long, and most everything one would want to see is by the coast. But I like overhead views.
This is the cathedral of Genova, a work in progress when viewed from the inside, filled with many obvious add-ons and architectural features that don't fit the rest of the design. I liked the facade a lot, though, and they had an amazing treasure museum with the Holy Grail and the plate where John the Baptist's head was kept. It was creepy, but I had just written a paper about these sorts of holy relics, so it was pretty fascinating, too.
An overhead view of the cathedral. In all the other cathedrals I had seen throughout Italy, the structure was similar, but this one was different. There is not much space in Genova, so instead of having the two chambers off to the sides they built their cathedral with the two chambers along side the center altar, so the church takes up less square footage. I took this picture from atop a tower of the royal palace.
The small house is supposedly where Christopher Columbus was born. I didn't go in since I wasn't all that interested by it. Seemed like a tourist trap.
Torino
I didn't get many good pictures of Torino, and I didn't like it as much as the other two cities. But I did get to see some great panoramic views of the too-modern city and the Alps behind it. The main cathedral was very uninteresting, actually about the same size as the other large churches and in now way in a more centralized position than some of the others. And the facade was so dull and bare. And another church had the famous Shroud of Turin, which I saw by accident, not knowing what it was until afterward when I was wondering why there were so many pictures of it up around where tourists were supposed to go. I liked the green building with a dome and spike at the top. "Il Mole" used to be a Jewish temple, but now it's the national cinema museum.
The Po river and the hill I climbed to get my panoramic views. Also on top of that hill was a mountaineering museum, which was interesting. I think I liked the proximity to the Alps more than the city itself, though this may have been because everything was closed for the May 1 national holiday, or I might have been worn out from being a tourist and not sleeping much.
Here is a great panoramic view of the city. The big building is Il Mole. I don't really know too much about Torino, except that it's very French and very baroque, and apparently it was very important in conjunction with Milan and Genova in the Italian industrial revolution. I could tell it was French with the big, square, bland piazzas with repetitive buildings all in the similar design as Versailles. I liked the other side of the Po River better because it was greener and I could see the city with the amazing mountain backdrop. I really did like the mountains. There's a video that won't upload to my computer right now, but I could see the mountains forever and ever it seemed from my perch on the hill. It was quite serene once I got out of the main city.
Milan
I did not actually visit Milan. I only walked through it to get to the Duomo, which was all I wanted to see of the city, except perhaps the opera house that's so famous. I would rather see an opera then the place where it's performed, though, so I didn't care to go, and besides, with only 3 or four hours in Milan I needed to give the Duomo proper respect, and I don't even think that devoting all my time in Milan to it was a big enough tribute to it's awesomeness.
The day was so bright, the cathedral was so white and clean, and the architecture was so bizarre that I was befuddled at times while I was looking at it. I often wasn't even able to tell what I was looking at on first glance, whether there was a wall in front of me or at my side, objects' distances from me, the angle at which I was approaching, etc. It was almost a mystical baroque mind trick device, so elaborate that there is not more sense of front, back, or shape. And yet it was still definitely a duomo, like the others I had seen in my travels.
After going inside (and seeing two preserved bodies of saints, speaking of holy relics), I took the climb to the top, and I enjoyed not being tired as I heard the other Americans panting and muttering curses under their breath as they struggled up the tall and narrow staircase. Kids would come down, and I could hear, "cento trentuno, cento trentidue, cento trentitre" under their breath as they counted the 131, 132, and 133 steps. I don't know how many there were, but people seemed to think there were a lot.
The top was a very strange thing. It was basically a marble roof structured the same way as the roofs of our houses are today, with marble stucco and everything. The view was not so great because Milan doesn't have a very interesting skyline, but it was quite amazing to be able to walk on the crooked roof of the amazing cathedral and look down on its mighty piazza.
San Elpidio al Mare concert, May 3
This is the theater we played in for our last concert in Italy. More people showed up after the soundcheck, but it was difficult to take pictures in the dark. It seated somewhere between 300 and 500 people and was pretty full by the time we started playing. Even though we didn't play all that well for a variety of reasons, including personal, technical, and physical, we played well enough and the people liked it quite a bit, so that was good. I felt good about it, and I had played well, despite the fatigue and lack of practice from the vacation I had taken the preceding three days, and everyone has off-days and you just have to take it like a professional. The place was on a hill by the Adriatic sea, about a 4 hour drive away from Florence, in the region of Marche.
We ate dinner in a castle, actually, and wonderful osteria, which was about the biggest restaurant I had ever seen in my life. The man sitting next to me (who took the picture) talked to me really fast in Italian about how bread is made in Marche, and between the speed and the heavy Marche accent I could only understand about half of it. Still, after my Genova trip where I didn't speak a word of English for 3 days I felt stronger in Italian than ever before. Just in time to take the exam and then take my leave.
On the left is Greg, the guitarist in the band and one of my suitemates, and on the right is Simone, our Italian drummer who we had all become very close with during our travels throughout Italy playing, as well as with our bassist Piero. They are standing next to an advertisement for our show that night. These were up all over the city, and we had an article in the newspaper, so I guess it was a big deal. We are already making plans for Piero and Simone to come out to New York this fall to visit, trying to make suer we'll have enough room in our dorms to put them up for a week or two.
After a basically zero-hour night sleep, the only thing waking me up was this beautiful view of the Appenini mountain range. I think after all this time looking at city monuments and churches and artwork I have started to become very fond of natural beauty, even more than usual, and I have started to miss Yosemite quite a lot. There is a point where every church looks the same unless it's the Milan, Florence, or Siena Duomo (Even St. Peter's is just a bigger version of less interesting churches I've seen, just with a great Michelangelo sculpture at the front). I'm sure it gets like that with mountains eventually, but not. You could make the greatest cathedral ever and it still won't be as grand as a giant mountain.
That is one thing that made me feel better about leaving Florence, feeling that I was ready to be done with travel and tourism. I don't feel like moving city to city and seeing the monuments anymore, I feel like staying put and living, visiting people and nature. I could stay put in Florence and still be happy, but it's time not to move around so much. Speaking of tourism, Florence has started to become more and more crowded and congested with obnoxious Americans, and probably those from other nationalities, too, but the Americans are the most noticeable because they're the most obnoxious. They make it streets so crowded that it's tough to walk down the street to the supermarket, let alone to the Uffizi, whose line was so long I never even made it back to say goodbye. That, the increasingly hot weather, and the zanzare (mosquitos) are the only things I can think of right now that I won't miss about Florence.
As a goodbye present to myself I went to Fiesole, a little rich town outside Florence that has the best view of the Arno Valley. I've been into overhead views a lot lately, as you can see, but I do think that it's a good way to wrap up the semester, the wonderful, life-changing semester. I could see the whole place from where I was standing, all of everything I had been enjoying so much for the last 4 months, all so small as if it was in a little jar to take home with me, a little memory in the blue haze of the sky. No matter what happens, it's a city, a great city, and I can always come back because it's not going anywhere, and even if I don't for some reason, it will always be that little collection of buildings with a red dome of to right of center. When I got there in January, that view would have meant nothing to me but a pretty landscape, like the view of Torino, Milan, or Genova. But this trip gave this place meaning to me, meaning of more than just a place with pretty buildings, but the closest to home I have ever felt outside of the Bay Area. It's like I could see time, the whole time I had been there as I looked at the city, though I could also see the history, the Romans coming down from Fiesole to make a small town on the Arno, the building of the baptistry, burning Savanarola outside Palazzo della Signoria, the recent elections that seem to be taking place every year since World War II. Never have I made a trip where the ending seemed so complete, and so I was not overly sad to return home a few days later.
Mi piaci, Firenze, e non ho voluto partire. Penso che ci vediamo a presto. Lo so
-Sam goldsmith
