Finalmente (Finally): Our stair-step journey

First, my apologies to the blogmaster (daughter Ainslie) and her followers for taking so long to post. Naturally I had intended to do it immediately after our return from Italy. It’s been a month. Yet I think about our travels every day and look at the photos we snapped with a yearning to go back.

As the blogmaster (Ainslie) wrote in her introduction, I traveled to Italy with KT – my best bud, my confidante, my traveling compatriot – for 10 days. You could call it our “stair step, or “Stair Master” journey, for Italy seemed to be a country of steps – narrow, tall concrete steps; rock steps up and down all the 443 bridges in Venice; steps into the terraced hills overlooking the Italian Riviera and the five-village cluster of Cinque Terre.

A sampling: we climbed the 414 steps of the Campanile, the bell tower that shadows and eyeballs the ancient Duomo, Brunelleschi’s iconic dome that commands the Florence skyline and that Michelangelo described as a cricket cage. We scooted up the 33 steps, then down the 33 steps on the other side of the famed Rialto Bridge in Venice, then the 63 steps up to Luca’s apartment, our quarters in that mudflat city of canals and alleys. And we trudged up and down at least 2,000 steps along our hike into the mountains from Corniglia to Manarola in Cinque Terre.

It’s a good thing. I ate way too much gelato and cannolis. And I can’t forget the pizza. Ah, the pizza. Best I’ve ever consumed. The worst in Italy was far, far better than what they serve up here.

We arrived in Italy, after flying over the Alps from Munich, about lunchtime Florence time and met Ainslie at the train station. First order of business: Find the apartment we had rented off airbnb.com (a great website for all you travelers) from Marta, a sweet Florentine who owns two apartments overlooking the open market in Florence. Marta was waiting for us when we arrived, lugging our baggage. We got our first taste of steps – 15 of them to our charming apartment. Marta stocked our apartment with a bottle of wine, pastries, milk, coffee and orange juice.

After getting Marta’s instructions and keys, we set out walking in this incredible city that is a shrine to the Renaissance movement, born here in the 14^th  century. I was enthralled with the art and age. Everywhere there were sculpture and frescos. Great palaces had been turned into museums.  It was like Michelangelo, Leonardo (and we’re not talking about Dicaprio here), Donatello, Dante and Bellini still walked the streets. I couldn’t stop looking up. The architecture, ornate yet tasteful, was magnifico.

 Our second order of business was lunch: pizza for everyone. Ainslie took us to the best pizza joint in Florence: Gusto. But its line was out the door. So we found another place nearby that didn’t have a line. I ordered a funghi pizza and proclaimed it favoloso. Ainslie assured me there was better pizza to be eaten in Florence.

Fortified, we struck out again, and wound our way around the Duomo to Ainslie’s apartment that she shares (past tense now) with five other UNC women. Their kitchen window framed the Duomo. It was that close. How cool. After a tour of the apartment, jet lag set in and we left Ainslie and found our way back to Marta’s apartment. We spent three nights in Florence and late afternoons walked to the other side of the Arno River to climb the 84 steps up a hill overlooking Boboli Gardens that offers a panoramic view of Florence to watch the sun dip from view. What an amazing way to end three amazing days.

While Ainslie finished up classes before her Easter break, Katy and I trained to Cinque Terre for a couple of days and to Corniglia, the middle village of five. Since Corniglia is the least accessible (from the train you have to take a shuttle or climb the 330 steps to reach it), the village is the least touristy and thusly the most intimate of the five.

It was raining when we arrived, so we took the shuttle up a windy (often perilously) road to Corniglia and followed directions that Lisabetta (she, too, was delightful, full of Italian charm and energy) had given us to the apartment we rented from her. From a balcony on the second floor, over the terra cotta shingled roof, we had a beautiful view of the Italian Riviera.

Since Corniglia is less touristy, there are fewer restaurants from which to choose, and it seems many of them don’t keep to a consistent schedule. We probably spent two hours walking the streets and alleys trying to decide among the eateries that were open on a Monday night, then seeing more steps to wander up and down exploring – and finally at about 9:30 p.m. we just decided on paninis and a bottle of Cinque Terre wine in a small beer joint. It couldn’t have been a nicer way to end that day.

The next day was a hiking day. Since much of the trail that linked the five villages was still closed because of the October floods (see Ainslie’s previous blog post on her visit to Cinque Terre) we hit the trail behind Corniglia’s dominant church and started the trek up. And up and up. After an hour, we were still going up, rock step after rock step. And the higher we went, the more magnifico the view. From here, you could see how the multi-colored villages clung to steep cliffs, all but Corniglia stuttering down to the water.

The hills/mountains that overlook Cinque Terre are terraced with grapevines and olive trees (wherever we ate, the proprietor brought us a bowl of Cinque Terre-grown olives while we waited for our meals). If we hadn’t climbed the trails, we’d not have understood the local farming, with the single-rail funicular lifts built up the mountains so farmers can get supplies to their vineyards.

Three hours later, we made it to the next village, Manarola. We did stop along the way to gawk at the views. We met Germans, Italians, Americans, French and two women from New Zealand. Manarola was totally different from Corniglia. Full of life and restaurants – and tourists. Near the water we sat and watched five Italian men dicker over the sale of a fishing boat – or at least that’s what we thought they were doing. It was hard to tell if the sale was going well for the owners – we left before the deal was sealed.

There I found this quote about Cinque Terre inscribed on a wall from the Italian writer Giacomo Bracelli: It really is a sight to behold mountains that are not merely steep, but are veritable crags over which birds can hardly fly. So stony as to fail to retain any moisture, but yet covered with vines so thirsty and delicate as to resemble ivy rather than vine. Here they make wine fit to adorn the tables of kings.

From Manarola, we walked to Riomaggiore, which only took 20 minutes along the Via dell’Amore. And from there we took the train to the village on the opposite end – Monterosso al Mare. Then it was back to Corniglia and a restaurant near our apartment known for its pesto lasagna. Of course, I ordered that. Unbelievably good. Cinque Terre is known as the birthplace of pesto.

The next day, we said goodbye to Cinque Terre, and trained back to Florence to pick up Ainslie and train to Venice. What a city! A city of decay and decadence. A city that exudes power and elegance.

 I’ve wanted to see Venice all my life -- just to witness how it could still stand after so many thousands of years. I read a story about the restoration of a theater in Venice and, since the theater was on an historical site, the architects had to bore through the foundation to find the foundation of Marco Polo’s childhood home underneath. And under Marco Polo’s home, they found another foundation and another under that foundation that dates back to the 8^th century.

 Which proves that the waters of Venice continue to rise and the city keeps raising itself to survive. Truth is: Venice is built on top of millions of wooden pilings sunk into the muck of a mudflat. Beautiful palaces, churches, cobbled alleys – built on top of muck. How does it stand and not fall from its own weght and the changing tides?

After the train from Florence, we took a vaporetto (water bus) to our apartment (also rented from airbnb.com) past St. Mark’s Square and near the city’s arsenale. Passing under the famous Rialto Bridge, I looked back to snap a photo, and there hanging from the bridge was a banner advertising my nephew (Ainslie’s cousin’s) BJ’s documentary (he is co-director and it had opened at the Venice Film Festival) about the late Vogue editor Diana Vreeland. Actually as we later discovered it wasn’t a banner advertising the movie, but an exhibit connected to the movie. Still, I shouted: “Ainslie, there’s BJ’s movie!” We got a wonderful rush and I thought: My, how small the world really is!

 We stayed at Luca’s apartment, a charming flat 63 steps up. Luca was off celebrating Easter, but his parents from Trieste (1 ½ hours away) were there to greet us. What lovely people. And talk about energy. They were the essence of Italian expressiveness.

After they left, we struck out into the city. Like Florence, art was everywhere. It is a city of riddles – of Verdi, Vivaldi; Hemingway, Ezra Pound and a cast of colorful American expatriates, including Peggy Guggenheim. Of masks. Of footsteps and the singsong of different languages and dialects that aren’t drowned out by cars or vegetation. Of narrow streets and alleys – and 443 bridges over canals – forming a great maze where getting lost is part of the experience and expands the mystery. Travel, of course, is by foot, or a variety of boats: including water taxis or buses, or the famous Venetian gondolas. It was quite a spectacle.

We ate. We walked. We climbed steps and descended. We traveled across the Grand Canal to a museum to see photographer Elliott Erwitt’s “personal best” exhibit. We traveled to Murano, known for its Venetian glass, and nearby Burano, known for its lace and colorful buildings.

We walked. We ate. We snapped photos, constantly enthralled by the beauty and mystery of this once great European power.  On Easter morning, Katy went to a service at a nearby church and suddenly all the bells clanged throughout the city. After her return, we set out for one last look at Venice. Rain threatened, but we kept trudging through the city – looking for the Fenice Opera House. Katy and I had been reading John Berendt’s book about Venice’s famous opera house, which in 1996 burned from a spectacular fire.

Like Berendt’s “Savannah book” this book was a travelogue devoted to Venice. We had to see the Fenice – restored, not to its original elegance. Yet still elegant and as close to the original as the Venetians could rebuild.

We took a self-guided tour with headsets, then it was back to Luca’s apartment to collect our things and train back to Florence for a day. The next day we left Florence – and Ainslie -- at the train station and flew home.

I couldn’t – and can’t  – wait for her return home. Christie is with her now, and after a week of travel, they fly back to Charlotte. I know this is long-winded (it wouldn’t surprise my editors at The Charlotte Observer) but I can’t close without writing this: I was delighted to see how Ainslie had blossomed from her “European experience.” Not too many years ago, she was girl who’d go to sleepovers and call at 2 a.m. because she was “homesick” and wanted to come home. Now she is a young woman of the world, ably navigating the globe like Marco Polo of Venice on his way to China.

I couldn’t be prouder of her.