Viva Italia

Padova, Italy,  Friday 8/28

We left Annecy on Wednesday morning and drove over, under, and through the Alps into Italy. The Alps are quite different than the American Rockies or particularly the Cascades. Steeper slopes and less clear-cutting. Lovely vistas and, of course, castles randomly (probably not, actually, randomly) placed in seemingly inaccessible places on the sides of the mountains.

The Alpine countries are really, really into tunnels, which I guess is a result of the steepness of the slopes. We probably went through ten tunnels in total on this leg of the trip, but the grand champion of the group was the Frejus Tunnel: 13 kilometers (and 40+ euros) under the border between France and Italy. Once out of the Alps, we had a long drive on the Italian autostrada, or motorway.

A couple of comments about the autostrada. First, the authorities are inconsistent in their method of tolling. In some places, you pay a toll every so-many miles (or kilometers). In others, you take a ticket when you get on and pay the appropriate toll when you get off. It is confusing because you never know whether you're going to get a card or pay a toll until you get to the booth.

Second, rules aren't rules in Italy. Lane markings are just a handy guide in case you want to follow them. Speed limits are likewise followed only sometimes. Turn signals are for foreigners, and if you want to keep two lanes available for yourself, you just center yourself on the line until you decide which one you want, which might be a mile to two later. And the typical following distance for some Italian drivers on the autostrada is, oh, maybe one meter.

Third, the route across northern Italy from Torino to Milano toward Venezia is totally industrial. It reminds me of driving Interstate 80 past Chicago and into Indiana and Ohio. There is no scenery, just factories lined up along the highway for hundreds of miles.

We drove past Torino and Milano in our quest to our first Italian stop:

Formaggio Quattro Portoni

As some of you may know, we have fallen in love with an Italian cheese called Casatica di Bufala, a soft water-buffalo-milk cheese we have found both at Cheese Bar and at New Seasons. The last time we were at Cheese Bar, we got more information about the cheese-maker: Quattro Portoni, We drove south of Bergamo to a little town (10,000 population) called Cologno al Serio. I had emailed them on Tuesday telling them that we had enjoyed one of their cheeses very much in Portland, were traveling across northern Italy, and would very much love to taste more of their cheeses and see their farm. A polite reply invited us to stop in the afternoon.

We arrived around 1:30pm, which was mistimed because everything except restaurants, including creameries, is closed from about 12:30 until some time between 2:30 and 4:00. We had an hour to kill before Quattro Portoni's shop (located outside the village) opened, so we decided to explore Cologno al Serio.

What an interesting town! It is a walled village with a moat outside the walls.

Walls of Cologno al Serio with moat and gate

There are four arched entries into the old city, each of which is about one car-lane wide, but cars zip through them, dodging each other and any bikes or pedestrians who happen to be in the way. The name of the creamery literally means "Four Gates" and some of their cheeses are named for the individual gates, for example, Casatica. We went into the old city through the Rocca gate. Looking up on the side of the arch as we passed through, we found a small picture of the Virgin Mary watching everyone who passed in or out.

The  Rocca gate to Cologno al Serio

Looking through the gate into the old town

Virgin Mary watching all who pass through the gate

Inside the town walls is a beautiful, large church with statues of saints all around the sides and two bell-towers, one very large and the other somewhat more modest.

Parish church from the side

Parish church from front

The larger bell tower

We walked around the streets a bit and stopped for some excellent gelato (two big scoops for 1€50 --- Italy is cheaper than France!) before heading back out of town to Quattro Portoni.

We arrived at Quattro Portoni just after their scheduled opening at 2:30, but the door to the shop was locked. One of the employees came out and opened the door. We tried to explain to him who we were and that we had sent a message the day before, but his English was fragmentary. He fetched a co-worker with a bit more English, who then called for the boss, Bruno Gritti, who owns the enterprise with his brother Alfio. Bruno greeted us warmly with better English than his employees and led us to a barn across the courtyard, where he had set up a table with all of his cheeses for us to taste. He offered us wine and water with the cheese and summoned his wife Elena, whose English was quite good. 

We spent an hour with Bruno and Elena, tasting through all of the Quattro Portoni cheeses, sipping wine and water, and asking dozens of questions about their business and how their cheese managed to make it to Portland. (We learned that we were mispronouncing the name of our favorite cheese: it's ka-ZAHT-ee-ka.) They were most gracious hosts, answering our questions (even the dumb ones) patiently in tag-team English: when one was lost for a word the other chimed in and made us understand fully. After tasting the cheeses, Elena took us on a tour to meet the stars of the show: the 1,000 water buffalo they keep out in back. 

They started using water buffalo in response to intense competition in the local market for cow cheese and restrictions on the amount of allowed production. They bought some buffalo from a farmer near Roma who was getting out of the business and soon switched entirely to making buffalo cheese. Buffalo mozzarella is known, and prized, in the United States, though rarely produced there. But Bruno did not stop with mozzarella; he has an entire line of buffalo-milk cheeses, from soft camembert-style to cheeses as hard as the cheddar we know in America. All of them are delicious, and we ended up in the shop buying about 10 pounds of assorted cheese, which Bruno kindly packed in styrofoam with an ice pack to keep it cold. We'll have a challenge keeping it cold on the road for the next few days, but it is such wonderful cheese that we are willingly taking a chance and making all accommodations to try to keep it good. (Frozen peas or carrots from a grocery store make good ice packs!) We left at 3:30 with full stomachs from the tasting, a full case of cheese in the back of the car, and having made a couple of new Italian friends in Bruno and Elena. An experience we wouldn't trade for any we have had on this trip!

One of the barns

Elena and Bruno Gritti

One of the thousand

Yum! This bar tastes great!

Some of the wonderful cheeses in their shop

Cremona

After leaving Quattro Portoni in the afternoon, we drove south to Cremona, home of the great craftsmen who defined the violin in the 16th through 18th centuries. We stayed just one night in Cremona at the Hotel Duomo, just off the cathedral (duomo) square in the center of the city.

Hotel Duomo with restaurant below our room window

The cathedral itself is rather drab on the outside with a hodge-podge of different colors of stone, but it is magnificently and overwhelmingly ornate on the inside, with frescoes competing with mosaics competing with statuary competing with gold leaf everywhere for your eye. On one side wall there is a plaque with all of the bishops of Cremona ... dated going back to 326, but there are ten more before that whose dates are not shown! The bell tower or Torrazzo was of special interest because it pre-dates the convention of the 12-hour dial and clockwise movement. It is an astronomical clock that has four hands, but I wasn't able to figure out how to read it.

Façade of Cremona duomo

Torrazzo/Bell tower

Astronomical clock on Torrazzo

Pictures of interior of duomo

Bishops of Cremona

The Hotel Duomo has a restaurant that, like all restaurants in this part of the world, spills out onto the sidewalk and, because the street is closed to traffic, into the street. We were very hungry about 7:00 after walking around the area. When we walked back down our street, the Metropolitan Caffe right next door (in the distance in the hotel picture above) had dozens of patrons and very few open tables but our hotel restaurant had no customers at all, just three sad-looking waiters hoping for some action. We decided to sit down there and have a light dinner, at least partially because no one is smoking in an empty restaurant!

The food and wine were very good and by the time we left there were lots of diners. By the time we were ready to go to bed directly above the restaurant (outside our window), there were many, many diners and they were making a lot of noise. It was one of those nights that made me glad that I sleep with my time-worn little pillow over my head! And speaking of pillows, the one that the hotel provided screamed Simon and Garfunkel: "I am a rock!" And not a smooth rock, either. Oh well, I was tired and slept well despite the noise and the pillow.

On Thursday morning we headed around the corner to the Museo del Violino, a relatively recently opened museum dedicated to string instruments and the role of the great Cremonesi liutiai: Amati, Guarneri, and Stradivari. This is a modern museum at its best, using modern technology to explain and illustrate how violins are made and discussing what (to the extent that anyone knows) was technically special about the instruments of these revered makers. We learned much about what makes a violin sound the way it does and how they are put together. Then we saw dozens of old instruments from the great makers and all of the winning instruments from their triennial violin- (and viola-, cello-, and bass-) making competition, the next of which starts in September. 

Among the interesting things we learned was that Stradivari's brilliance nearly destroyed the Cremona violin industry in the early 1700s. With the Amati and Guarneri dynasties petering out, no one could compete with Stradivari, so many young luthiers picked up and moved elsewhere, particularly to Milano, where a new school of violin-making dominated the 19th century. The craft did not really take off again in Cremona until 1937, when a major celebration of the bicentennial of Stradivari's death brought the attention of great violin-makers back to Cremona. Now there are nearly 100 violin shops scattered around the city, many in the old, central district. In walking around the cathedral, we passed at least five shops. It seems that the local industry has been reborn. As we approached the end of the museum exhibits, we looked at our watches and discovered that we had spent two hours in the museum without even noticing the time that had passed!

No pictures were allowed in the museum, but we did get this interesting one of a modern sculpture in the courtyard:

Our last stop in our quick tour of Cremona was to try to find the site of Stradivari's workshop. It is now an upscale shopping mall, swarming with locals and tourists. But at least there is a plaque on the wall commemorating the city's most famous and successful citizen. (Well, there were a couple of popes, but how does one compare Heavenly Grace with heavenly music?)

Top: Stradivari plaque on site of his shop.  Bottom: The building that stands there now

Padova

On Wednesday morning we ended our short stay in Cremona and headed northeast to Padova, a famous university town only a few miles from Venice. We arrived exhausted after leaving Cremona in the early afternoon and driving through heavy traffic on the autostrada. All the energy we had for Wednesday evening was a couple of glasses of vino and some munchies in the hotel bar. 

If Stradivari is Cremona's claim to fame, then surely Galileo is Padova's. We are staying at the Hotel Galileo, on the edge of the modern university campus outside the old city walls. Thursday was a long day of walking (19,000 steps!) to and through the old city, seeing the sights, but also exploring residential neighborhoods on our way from Point A to B to C to D and back to the hotel. We started by walking past the university and into one of the gates over the canal and through the walls of the old city.

Our first stop was the justly famous Cappella degli Scrovegni, a chapel attached to the now-demolished palace of Enrico degli Scrovegni, a wealthy financier of the Middle Ages. We were lucky to get in; reservations 72 hours in advance are generally required but they happened to have an opening this morning.

Scrovegni commissioned the painter Giotto to paint frescoes depicting the lives of Mary and Jesus to completely cover the walls and ceiling of the chapel, which he completed in 1305. Of course, photos are not allowed, so I can only provide a couple of external shots and a personal review as someone with little knowledge of art history: They are fabulous! Many parts have been restored beautifully; others remain in weathered and damaged condition. 

To minimize the potential for further environmental damage, visitors now enter in groups of 25 into an "air-lock," where they remain for 15 minutes to allow the air in the room to adapt to the chapel's temperature and humidity. (During this 15 minutes, we got to watch a very informative movie with English sub-titles covering the history and significance of the frescoes.) Then we were allowed into the chapel for 15 minutes while the next group sat in the air-lock.

Two views of the Cappella degli Scrovegni

Adjacent to the Cappella, and admission-free with the same ticket, is the City Museum (Musei Civici di Padova). We spent more than an hour wandering through the exhibits and enjoying the paintings and sculptures. Again, no pictures allowed, so I can't really illustrate the interesting art that we saw.

After a quick lunch, we headed through the old city to the historic university observatory, where Galileo and Copernicus once taught and did their research on the solar system. It is only open once a day for tours and we were not at the right time, so we did not get to enter.

Padova University Obervatory

Later in the day, we walked by Galileo's home on a street now called Via Galilei:

The other "big" site in Padova is the Basilica of Saint Anthony, where the saint's remains lie in an elaborate monument in one of the transepts of the church. Many people were moved to tears by the experience of placing a hand on the back of the monument, and others knelt in prayer at its front. Signs at the entrance to the basilica clearly warned that photography was not allowed, but when we saw priests snapping flash photos, we decided we could get away with a discreet shot or two:

Basilica of St. Anthony

St. Anthony's tomb (in center)

In the piazza outside the basilica is a famous bronze statue by Donatello, another local hero:

Our final stop on the all-day walking tour was at the Botanical Garden of the university, which was originally a research facility searching for plants with curative powers. Now they aim mostly to inform people about ecosystems and to present examples of the kinds of plants that grow in different climatic zones. We thought that the most interesting were these giant water lilies:

After a busy day of walking, we treated ourselves to a nice dinner at the hotel restaurant with a lovely bottle of prosecco from Sorelle Bronca, a winery run by a pair of sisters, which won a recent award for the best prosecco in all of Italy. It was indeed yummy (and a serious bargain at 18€ for the bottle, cold and served at our table).

So tomorrow we are off to our final destination: Bratislava. It is a long drive through Italy and Austria and into Slovakia. We have a hotel booked there for a few nights while we look for more permanent housing. Given that we arrive on a Saturday evening, Sunday will be a sight-seeing day. Then Monday we have an appointment to look at apartments with a real-estate agent. I'll post news when there is some ...