Tag Archives: Italy

Appunti d’Italia Parte Due: Firenze

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Despite only having been in Venice for less than forty-eight hours, it was time to head for Florence, and after a hurried breakfast at the hotel the group shuffled on to a vaporetto in various stages of jet lag. The practical guideline for travel acclimation is one day per time zone, and we were only on day two of being nine hours ahead of Seattle. This time the boat ride did little to jolt us into sentience.

Instead of heading to the south waterfront as it had yesterday, the vaporetto took us clockwise around to the northwest side of the island to the Port of Venice, where a tour bus was waiting. We loaded and set off immediately, following the SR11 highway on the Ponte della Libertà — the lone direct road connection between the mainland and the island for both vehicles and trains. Enrico shared that due to the high costs of living in Venice (along with fewer options for things like everyday groceries), many people choose to live on the mainland and take the train over and back each day for work.

From his front seat with the microphone, Enrico kept up a running dialogue on the passing landscape. Politically and geographically, Italy is composed of twenty different regions, each roughly the equivalent of an American state. Venice is the capital city of the region of Veneto, the eight-largest region, bordering the Adriatic Sea to the east and extending about a hundred and twenty miles inland to its western boundary at the Lombardy border. When most people think of “alpine”, they tend to think of Switzerland, Austria or perhaps even southern Germany, but with nearly a quarter of the Alps within its borders, Italy is arguably one of the most alpine of the eight countries bordering this mountain range.

Heading south on the A1, we passed from Veneto into Emilia-Romagna and through its capital city of Bologna. Here Enrico commented on the importance of the contributions made by the nearby cities of Modena and Parma to the culinary world, being noted for balsamic vinegar and Parmesan cheese, respectively.

We passed from Emilia-Romagna into Tuscany, and the topography turned into postcard views of rolling hills and cypress groves. There was a soothing flow to the countryside, with graceful and orderly rows of vineyards dotted with terracotta-topped stone farmhouses. Of my three prior trips to Italy, two were spent nearly exclusively exploring Tuscany. In addition to Florence, we have also visited Cortona, Siena, Vinci, Lucca, Pisa, Arezzo, and San Gimignano, so these vistas were both familiar and comforting. Again Theroux: “The only way to know a place is to go there slowly.”

Soon we were seeing highway signs for Florence, or rather for Firenze, as English historically exonymized many European city names, anglicizing Firenze as Florence, rendering Venezia as Venice, etc. The phenomenon isn’t unique to Italian place names, but I feel it more acutely here — something of the musicality intrinsic to Italian feels like it gets lost in the adaptation, while I don’t feel the same about reforging “München” as “Munich”. English is also very much not alone in this practice. To wit, Munich in Italian is “Monaco di Baviera”.

We entered the city from the northwest and made our way to the hotel at the northern edge of central Florence. In keeping with the pace of the itinerary, after dropping our luggage we headed south on our walking tour, opting to take the local streetcar for the first part to cut down on some of the steps. The streetcar dropped us off right next to the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze, which houses Michelangelo’s incomparable statue of the biblical David. This wasn’t part of the tour, though several in the group had already made separate plans to visit. The street adjacent to the Accademia, however, led straight to the magnificent Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, known colloquially as simply “the Duomo,” where we would meet our local guide and start our tour.

Having seen the Duomo on two previous occasions, it was no less breathtaking, but this time I was less intent on photographing it than I was in listening to its history via our local guide. I think the biggest thing I learned that wasn’t obvious from simply walking around it was that the current marble facade isn’t the original — this was added more than four hundred years after the completion of the initial structure.

While we walked around the periphery, we didn’t go inside. Entrance was free, but this also meant that our hosts couldn’t pre-order tickets for a certain entry time. There were also hundreds of people in the line that stretched around the building. As on my prior visit, much of the northeastern flank of the Duomo was undergoing restoration and was walled off to the public by plywood up to the second story.

In my first visit here, I had photographed the head of an angel framed in a niche or recess on the side of a building in the central district, and in my notes I had identified it as being an architectural detail on the Duomo. In my last visit, I had been unable to locate this same bust, and assumed it must have been hidden by the protective plywood. On this trip I was again unable to locate it. This fostered doubts about it being located on the portion of the Duomo under restoration, as its background lacked the green and white marble characteristic of not only that section, but of the overall exterior. I showed the photo to both our tour host and our local guide, and neither had any idea where it might have been.

From the Duomo we moved south to the Piazza della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, and one of my favorite spots in the city. My attraction lies in the multiple outdoor statues scattered throughout the piazza, including a replica of the David. As the guide began walking the group through the history of local government, I wandered off to take pictures. Since we would not be seeing the actual David on this trip, it was enough to see the replica, and there are several other impressive statues here. I particularly like both the Fountain of Neptune and the Medici Lions. Now as before, I found the fountain striking in its scale and ornateness. The statue at the center of the fountain — ostensibly Neptune, in full and imposing Renaissance musculature — actually has the facial features of Cosimo I de’ Medici, the Florentine duke and benefactor who commissioned the fountain. According to our guide, the fountain is often interpreted as a Renaissance political monument disguised as a mythological fountain, but to me that doesn’t detract from its grandeur.

The Medici Lions are a pair of stone lions that sit on opposite sides of the portico in front of the Loggia dei Lanzi. While they are quite similar in appearance, the two lions differ in age by more than a millennium. The one on the right as you face the Loggia dates from Roman times, while the one on the left was sculpted by Flaminio Vacca in 1598 to intentionally mirror and balance the Roman one in this setting. I first saw them twenty years ago, and found them intriguing for a very personal reason. They are each depicted with a paw atop a sphere or globe, symbolic of power and dominion. Astrologically, Jess is a Leo and to my mind is fully capable of running the world, so to me these pieces embody her power. As with “Ilysa’s Bridge” in Venice, these will always be “Jess’ Lions”.

From the Piazza we continued southwest to the Arno River for a brief view of the Ponte Vecchio. To me, the east vista where we stopped isn’t as picturesque or photogenic as the west side — especially now under the harshness of the midday sun. But here again, we were forced to move on at the speed of the tour. From the bridge it’s a short walk to the Galleria degli Uffizi, which houses an extraordinary collection of Renaissance painting and sculpture.

As with the Accademia, we wouldn’t be visiting the Uffizi this trip. This tour was structured to trade depth for breadth, and focused on what it considered the high points. There simply wasn’t time to explore a museum of this size, though it was floated as a possibility for “free time” the following day. As I have written about on several other occasions, I have an ongoing fascination with a particular work in this museum — Leonardo da Vinci’s “Annunciation”, his painting depicting the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she will bear the Son of God. I’ve seen it in person twice before, and — even in a room with several of Da Vinci’s other paintings — I was immediately drawn to it in a way that I can’t even begin to explain. This wasn’t a print of this painting in a book, this was the actual painting on wood panels that da Vinci’s hands created over five centuries earlier, and it spoke to me both intellectually and emotionally on multiple levels — artistic, religious, and historic. The import of the illustrated moment (even if I don’t accept the religious canon), the associated and alluring possibility that angels existed and once spoke directly to us, the incomprehension at how Mary could be expected to react to this proclamation, all combined to leave me standing there in silence. At the same time, having seen the Mona Lisa at the Louvre in Paris, I can honestly say that I didn’t have the same reaction. It was equally fascinating to see this icon of western art in person, but it didn’t impact me at nearly the same emotional level. By comparison, the Winged Victory of Samothrace had an equally powerful effect on me, and it remains my favorite work in the Louvre.

Paralleling the Duomo, a significant portion of the exterior of the Uffizi was behind plywood as protection during a decades-long process of restoration and updating. On the exterior walls near the entrance, there is a statue gallery with standing figures of notable Renaissance artists, scientists, and thinkers. Many were covered up by the construction, but I did manage to get a photo of Da Vinci’s likeness as we walked past.

The next stop was the Piazza di Santa Croce, the square adjoining the Basilica di Santa Croce. Here we parted ways with the local guide, and Enrico led us to a local pelletteria — a maker and seller of leather goods — where we were given a brief presentation on leatherworking and given tips for spotting quality products versus cheaper goods in the local marketplaces. After a bit of shopping and the requisite coffee and gelato, we headed back to the hotel. Several of us met in the courtyard of the hotel for a relaxing glass of wine before walking around the corner to our scheduled dinner. Dinner was good, but not on the spectacular level of my prior experience here, and I was beginning to understand that the restaurant experiences for this tour were curated to accommodate thirty-plus people with varying dietary needs and preferences at a single seating.

Between the hotel and the restaurant, there was a covered walkway that fronted a row of small bars and pastry shops (pasticcerie), with outdoor tables full of locals talking, drinking and smoking. That kind of relaxed, vibrant social activity in the evenings was very much central to our prior Italian experience, and a few of us made a point of stopping there on the way back from dinner for a much-needed break from the pace of the day.

The well-practiced choreography of this tour was now fully evident: Go to a place, have a local guide walk you through some of the major sights and local history, see an example of artisanal wares for which the area is known (with, of course, the attendant opportunity to purchase said goods), and have a fixed-menu meal featuring local cuisine. Enrico has done this same tour several times, and it’s clearly a system — he knows all the hoteliers, all the guides, all the shopkeepers where we stop, and all the restaurant owners. It was truly a fast-moving “highlights” tour, and we were beginning to chafe a bit at the schedule. We certainly had the option to not participate in the tours and demonstrations, but those were part of what we had already paid for. In addition to the very full base schedule, there were numerous additional options and excursions available for additional cost (e.g. the private gondola ride in Venice). The main excursion offered for the following day was a trip to the nearby medieval hill town of San Gimignano, and while the majority of the group had signed up for this, we had chosen not to. We actually really love San Gimignano, but we had already been there three times and wanted to have a more relaxed day in Florence.

While it would have been nice to see the Annunciation or the authentic David again, this is the dilemma created by limited time — to see the things we enjoy and/or which move us again, or choose to be open to new choices and new experiences. We chose a modest agenda with some new elements — sleeping in (as much as lingering jet lag would allow), visiting the Pitti Palace and the adjacent Boboli Gardens in the morning and the Basilica di Santa Croce in the afternoon, with random strolling, shopping and eating in the interim. We had known about these attractions from prior trips, but hadn’t previously taken the opportunity to see them. The Pitti Palace is a massive Renaissance palace on the other side of the Ponte Vecchio from central Florence that became the principal residence of the powerful Medici family, and the Gardens are expansive formal gardens on the adjacent hillside.

The Palace itself was visually stunning, but somewhat overwhelming in its opulence. Like the Duomo and other structures here, the scale defies easy capture, and I soon lost interest in taking pictures — what do you focus on when every room is full of art — furniture, statuary, and decorative objects — and every aspect of each wall and ceiling is covered in beautiful paintings? I had read that April and May were good months to visit the Gardens, but other than a few small gatherings of apple and pear trees, there wasn’t much yet in actual bloom. They’re not primarily flower gardens, they’re much more structural and architectural — known for their sculptures, fountains, and sweeping views over Florence. Even so, there were entire beds of what were clearly roses without a single early bloom. Even the Fountain of Neptune (clearly a common visual theme here) was closed, drained, and surrounded by construction. Similarly, the historic Kaffeehaus at the top of the gardens was also shuttered. Nonetheless, we could appreciate the scale and ambition of the grounds, and the unhurried nature of our walking suited our appetite for the day.

We knew the area around the Piazza di Santa Croce was a good place to shop for jewelry — particularly gold — and Jess had a specific style of bracelet she was interested in, so we headed back in that direction. After some leisurely shopping, we went into a small shop that had something promising in their window display. I thought the large black vault next to their counter looked somewhat familiar, but I was completely turned around regarding our location. We had actually crossed back onto the Ponte Vecchio from the south side (we had only ever entered from the northern central Florence side), and were actually standing in the same exact store (the Oreficerie Del Ponte Vecchio) where we had purchased jewelry on both our previous trips. The first trip I had bought Jess a small fleur-de-lis charm (the symbol of Florence), and the second time I bought a replacement. The original piece, along with nearly all of her jewelry, had been stolen in a home break-in a few years later.

Buoyed by this serendipity — and a successful purchase — we had lunch at a cafe on the Piazza and then toured the Basilica. While much smaller in stature than the Duomo, it was still an impressive Gothic cathedral. But what made it truly special is that it contained the tombs and memorials of many of Italy’s most influential historical figures, including Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli. There were also cenotaphs honoring both Da Vinci (buried in Amboise, France) and Dante (buried in Ravenna on Italy’s eastern coast).

Having studied Galileo (as well as his Polish counterpart Copernicus) as part of my aerospace education, it was truly moving to be standing in front of his grave. As with the presence of the Annunciation, this was not abstract — this was the past made real. It’s not that Americans have no sense of history, it’s that our association with antiquity in particular is limited and only obtained through study or travel. Florentines, by contrast, spend their daily lives in immediate physical proximity to this legacy, and the collective works of these individuals are their direct cultural inheritance. I found that difficult not to admire, and perhaps even envy.

With our exploration for the day complete, we paused for an espresso on the Piazza, where I felt the first moments of actual relaxation for this trip. My Italian was also beginning to find its footing, as I was using each encounter with a waiter or shopkeeper as an opportunity to practice.

We shopped our way back to the hotel, admiring the Duomo one last time and stopping for a glass of chianti at one of Florence’s many “wine windows” — small arched openings built into Renaissance-era buildings that were originally used to sell wine directly to people on the street. In addition to leather and gold, Florence is also known for its tradition of artisan paper and bookbinding, and Jess found some lovely decorative wrapping paper.

There was no included group dinner for that night, so we took our four local friends out to a restaurant very near our hotel that we had experienced on our last trip. Antica Trattoria da Tito is a very casual dining environment (the interior walls are covered in hand-written graffiti) with hearty, delicious Tuscan food and a playfully irreverent staff. The sign at the entrance lists the “rules” against ordering coffee drinks with milk (they are only open for lunch and dinner — past the eleven AM cultural cutoff for milk in coffee), asking for meat to be cooked any way besides rare, and “other tourist bullshits”. We managed to slip in without a reservation, and enjoyed what was for me the best meal of the trip so far. Our friends had, unsurprisingly, loved San Gimignano, and we traded stories of our respective day over bruschetta, wild boar ragu, ricotta tortellini, and steak Florentine, accompanied by a superb red wine and finished with a generous shot of limoncello. In keeping with the spirit of the day, we then headed back to the row of cafes for our final evening in Florence, rounding out the night in true Italian style with more wine, Aperol spritzes, storytelling, and laughter.

Appunti d’Italia Parte Uno: Venezia

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The ability to traverse great distances quickly can lead to what the travel writer Paul Theroux called “parachuting in” to new places. He disdained air travel for the most part, preferring to approach more slowly by road or rail to get a sense of how his destination sits in the surrounding geographic context — entering a city slowly and from its periphery as opposed to being suddenly plunked down in the middle of it. This is the approach of the unhurried traveler with the luxury of time, not the one on a fixed schedule. For this trip, we were decidedly the latter.

Group travel is not typically our style, yet we were joining friends for a ten-day tour of Italy with stops in Venice, Florence, Rome, and Sorrento. My travel philosophy has always been “If you try to see everything, you risk experiencing nothing,” which left me with some reservations about the ambitious itinerary. Even so, the trip offered the chance to see parts of Italy I hadn’t seen before and to make our first trip with these friends.

With apologies to Theroux, less than fifteen hours after departing Seattle and with a quick stop in Frankfurt, we touched down in Venice. While I appreciate the capacity to reach distant locales quickly, I have long held that it is a disservice to the world’s great cities that our first view of them is often jet-lagged from the back seat of a careening taxi cab. Venice, in this respect, was a welcome exception. The Venice airport is located in the city of Tessera — about five miles north of the island of Venice. Our hotel was further to the southeast on the nearby island of Lido, and reaching it required a spirited twenty-minute jaunt by water taxi, or vaporetto (“little steamer,” from the original steam-powered versions). Straight line distances mean less here, as the islands and canals dictate irregular routes, and the fresh air and lurching about as the vaporetto navigated around other boats and their wakes helped to blunt the onset of jet lag.

Our first evening together was a welcome dinner at the hotel, where we met our host and guide (Enrico Schattermann, an exuberant forty-something from Naples), began getting acquainted, and went over the tour itinerary. The group numbered thirty-two travelers from the United States and Canada, ranging in age from forty to the late eighties. There were couples and singles, a pair of sisters, a mother traveling with her daughter, people celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, and widows and cancer survivors making their way forward. Enrico reminded us that this was a highlights tour, and we would be moving quickly and seeing lots of things — “monument snacks” he called them.

Enrico and I also had our first conversation in my halting Italian. I had dabbled with the language before our first trip to Tuscany almost twenty years ago, but before our most recent trip three years ago I had begun studying more seriously and was eager to practice. In my experience, language apps can give you a basic vocabulary and some grammatical footing, but they don’t necessarily prepare you well for the pace and complexity of an actual conversation, so the exchange was humbling. Enrico, though, was encouraging and patient.

After a mostly sleepless night — jet lag being the price we pay for such rapid relocation — and a quick breakfast at the hotel with a heretical cappuccino from an automatic machine, we boarded a vaporetto and headed to Venice proper. Local ordinances wisely disallow tour groups of more than twenty-five people, so at the dock we split into two groups and met a pair of local guides (Carlo and Rebecca) who spoke accented but certainly understandable English and would show us the city. We were also issued what Enrico called “whispers” — headsets that allowed him or a local guide to speak softly while the group could hear the commentary clearly despite the surrounding noise. Early April is considered shoulder season for tourists, but Venice was already teeming with visitors, with organized groups like ours everywhere. I’ve always considered the sight of a gaggle of tourists following a guide with a raised umbrella or flag to be a bit cliché, but here we were. We were all wearing name tags, but at least our guide didn’t have a flag.

We immediately set off along the waterfront, stopping first to view the Ponte dei Sospiri (Bridge of Sighs). I had it in my head that this bridge was the titular inspiration for Robin Trower’s hit song and album, but in fact he took the term from the name of a racehorse he saw in a newspaper, whose name may or may not have been inspired by this notable span. The famous (and likely heavily romanticized) explanation for the name came from its function — connecting the court chambers in the Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) across a canal (the rio del Palazzo) to a prison — so condemned prisoners were said to have sighed as they caught their last glimpse of Venice through the small stone-barred windows on the passageway.

This was also where I had my first flash of impatience with the pace of the tour. Since the bridge straddles a canal that opens onto the larger lagoon, our vantage point was likewise on a small bridge (the Ponte della Paglia — literally the “Bridge of the Straw” after the straw trade that used to occur nearby), which did not offer much standing room for the increasing crowds. Americans generally prefer more personal space than is common in many other places, something I’ve been reminded of often in my travels. I knew the jostling was practical rather than personal, but it always takes me a little time to readjust.

I also believe that when it comes to photography in particular, there are only two kinds of people: those who take pictures of what they came to see, and those who take pictures of themselves in front of it. We are firmly in the first group, and for years we would go on entire trips and come home with no photographic evidence we had been there. I don’t begrudge the second group, but they definitely occupy more space in the moment.

My approach to photography has always been to study, compose, shoot, review, and then repeat. Twenty years ago I carried my big DSLR camera, multiple lenses, a full-size tripod, and all manner of gear all over Tuscany. I only use my phone camera now, but the process — which takes a bit of time — hasn’t changed. I also think it’s important not to spend my vacation looking at the world through a camera, so beyond whatever time I spend trying to capture a subject, I want to pause and simply take it in. Whatever my preferences, it quickly became clear that we weren’t going to spend much time here. I had just worked my way through the crowd to an unobstructed view and snapped one or two shots, and the guide was already moving on.

As we moved past the Palazzo Ducale to the Basilica and Piazza of San Marco, the routine repeated: stop, hear one or two facts, get a moment to “take your pictures,” then move on. After a slight ticket mix-up for the Basilica tour (Enrico had been given entry tickets for another group, so for this visit I was “Marco” and Jess was “Linda”), we were able to spend some time inside. Again, the tour was fairly brief, but the interior was stunning. I also began to appreciate the whisper units, as I could easily hear our guide over the other tour leaders shouting to their groups without headsets, disturbing the ostensible sanctity of the space.

Although I had never been there, Venice — and Piazza San Marco in particular — felt almost familiar from its use in films over the years: Bond films, The Italian Job, Ocean’s Twelve, Inferno, The Tourist, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and many others. To the tour’s credit, I learned a great deal about how an entire city could be built on wooden piers across a scattering of islands, and about the substantial role Venice had played in international trade long before Italy became a unified country. The tour also made clear that alongside standard Italian — rooted in Tuscan/Florentine and adopted nationally after unification — there remain older related regional languages, including Venetian, Neapolitan, Sicilian, and others. Carlo also spoke Venetian, and we could hear subtle variations in his speech compared to Enrico, who grew up speaking Neapolitan.

Venice is also famous for its colorful hand-blown glass. After the Basilica tour, we left our local guides and moved on to a demonstration at one of the region’s oldest glass houses, Vecchia Murano. Nearly all the glassware is produced on the nearby island of Murano, but Vecchia Murano had a working furnace in Venice. There we watched one of their master craftsmen effortlessly turn a blob of molten glass into an ornate vase topped with a delicate horse in a matter of minutes. We then got a brief sales pitch on the quality and durability of their products, and we all flinched every time the presenter banged the glassware on the table to prove its robustness. Afterwards we toured their extensive showroom, a maze of collections and demonstration rooms where the same table-banging continued in several languages — clearly they were set up for the tourist trade. While we admired the artistry, much of it seemed too ornate for our style, and we moved on without buying anything.

After lunch at a nearby restaurant and a quick but expensive cocktail on the Piazza, our next activity was a gondola ride. While it had initially seemed like a predictably touristy excursion, I ultimately decided it was one of those quintessential but corny must-do experiences, and I signed the two of us up for a private ride. What I didn’t know was that we would be accompanied by two musicians — a vocalist and an accordion player. For around twenty minutes, we toured the canals with the gondolier expertly navigating even the tightest turns (becoming a professional gondolier is apparently an extensive process) while being serenaded with traditional songs like “Souvenir di Venezia” and “Volare.” For a short stretch we moved out into the Canal Grande, the main canal that bisects Venice in its meandering reverse-S course, but the water there was choppier because of heavy vaporetto traffic. The breaks between songs became opportunities to practice my Italian, and I learned that the accordion, a French word, is called a fisarmonica in Italian. This was all clearly an exercise for tourists, as we continually passed other gondolas doing the same thing, not to mention the sign in English for “Tips” at the disembarkation point, but it was enjoyable nonetheless, and I’m glad we took advantage of it.

From there, we all took a stroll back northeast along the Canal Grande to the Ponte di Rialto, or the Rialto Bridge, the stone bridge completed in 1591 that for centuries was the only bridge across the Grand Canal. While it was swarming with tourists, it was architecturally interesting and offered great views of the Canal to the north and south. Standing at the apex of the bridge, I was reminded of the comparatively short span of American cultural history. As we prepare to celebrate a mere two hundred and fifty years as a nation, this bridge alone is nearly twice as old, and even it sits among much older structures — parts of the Basilica di San Marco date from the eleventh century. I was repeatedly struck by how these monuments aren’t at all isolated — they are part of the fabric of the central city that thousands of Venetians experience every day.

After stopping at the Rialto, we had a few hours of free time before catching the vaporetto back to Lido. Many in the group chose to tour the Doge’s Palace or go to the top of the Campanile in Piazza San Marco, but we were already feeling a little tired of the crowds. Up until 2021, Venice permitted large cruise ships to dock right in the historic center, bringing tens of thousands more tourists to a city that already felt overcrowded. As busy as it was, Enrico noted that “this was nothing” compared to high season or before the cruise ship ban.

We decided to do a little exploring and shopping away from the main piazza, and to find some coffee off the beaten track. On a lark, I looked up the location of the bridge where Rebecca Ferguson’s character Ilsa Faust was killed in a fight in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. I’ll freely admit I’m a huge fan of hers, and was disappointed to see her character killed off. Finding the bridge took a bit of doing, as it was a decent walk from the city center and an otherwise unassuming structure. Its real name is the Ponte dei Conzafelzi, though I will henceforth refer to it only as “Ilsa’s Bridge.” Some sources identify nearby Ponte Minich as the filming location, but that bridge lacks the ornate metal railing visible in the scene, so it may refer to the broader shooting area. I love the challenge of using technology — in this case ChatGPT, YouTube, and Google Maps — combined with personal experience to solve these little riddles.

Walking back toward the main square to reconnect with the group, we found a little café for a coffee, which inadvertently led to the first comical event of the trip. The restroom in the café was like many in these older buildings — some distance away through a labyrinth of hallways. It was a single-stall restroom, with an actual manual key rather than any sort of lever or handle that locked the door from the inside. When I went to unlock it to leave, the key suddenly spun freely and the door remained locked — the shaped working end of the key that operated the lock had completely sheared off. My first reaction was to fiddle with it in disbelief, but to no avail. My next thought was to text Jess and have her summon help, but my phone was back on the table in the dining room next to my empty espresso cup. There was a small window high on the back wall open to the street, but I couldn’t hear anyone passing by. I knocked on the door and called out a couple of times to see if I could attract the attention of anyone waiting, but there was no answer. Fortunately, after a few minutes I heard footsteps and then someone knocked on the door. I shook the door and tried to explain what had happened, but jet-lagged and trapped in a Venetian bathroom, I pretty much mangled it. What I meant to say was, “La chiave si è rotta” (“The key is broken”), but what came out was “La llave está rota” — the same phrase, but in Spanish. My Spanish is much better than my Italian, and because both languages share a common Latin origin and have many similarities, they often get tangled between my brain and my mouth. Usually it’s something innocuous like saying “por favor” (Spanish) instead of “per favore” (Italian) for “please,” but this time it was a whole sentence. Either way, I was promptly rescued from my misadventure, and the combined adrenaline and espresso saw us quickly reunited with the group, and we were soon headed back across the lagoon to our hotel.

When traveling, we prefer to explore the neighborhood around our accommodations, eating, drinking, and shopping locally. Even though we had to catch an early boat to the mainland to meet our bus to Florence, we walked the fifteen minutes or so down the waterfront to the central Lido business district in search of a casual dinner. We ended up meeting our four Northwest traveling companions for a delicious dinner of pasta, salad, and wine at an outdoor café. Tired but content from a very full day, we were rewarded with the sight of the sun setting over Venice as we made our way back to the hotel and our much-needed beds.

The View from the Thinking Chair

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Having worked from home for nearly five years, I have adopted several strategies for breaking up the otherwise monolithic stretches at the computer working on the emails, spreadsheets, proposals, and the thousand other details necessary to propel my business forward. Many of these involve the conscious and regular scheduling of face-to-face interactions with clients, partners, and teammates, but these have been effectively stifled by the coronavirus seclusion. One continuing, pre-quarantine habit that has helped sustain my mental health is what I call the Thinking Chair, which is my exaggeratedly serious name for the place I take my coffee breaks.

Each afternoon, generally somewhere between 2:30 and 3:30 PM, I get up from my work desk, make some coffee — usually a double espresso — and go sit outside on the patio for at least 30 minutes. Sometimes I have my phone with me to check in on various aspects of the non-work world, and sometimes not, but either way it’s a pause; a time to be away from work, be outside and, well, think. Like a cat, I move my chair into any available spot of sun. I breathe the open air, and listen to the sounds of my yard and the weather, which sometimes include wind and/or rain as my patio is covered and I try to carve out this time regardless of the forecast. When it gets particularly windy, you can hear the older cedars in the surrounding yards creak as they sway, a sound that is simultaneously comforting and worrying. In the current imposed dormancy of the quarantine, the nearby road noise is pleasantly hushed. My regular interludes in the Thinking Chair are also opportunities to let my mind step outside the more orderly confines of focused work, and just randomly play with whatever presently occupies my consciousness. I find that this habit allows me to clear my head, and afterwards return refreshed to work. It engenders a sense of gratitude (I have a roof over my head, I have food to eat, I have work to do, and I have the luxury of taking a coffee break), and I often come up with interesting writing ideas or even, ironically, occasional solutions to work problems during this time.

The first thought that crosses my freshly-caffeinated mind today is that right now I am supposed to be finishing up a long vacation in Italy. I should be watching the sun set on the Adriatic Sea from the balcony of our rented apartment in Ravenna, and thinking about tomorrow morning’s train ride to Bologna and our evening flight back to London and then on to Seattle. I should then be getting on another flight for a family reunion on the northern California coast over Memorial Day Weekend. But I’m not. Those trips were cancelled, along with many others, and instead I’m sitting on the back patio at my home on an overcast and drizzly Northwest afternoon, sipping coffee that comes nowhere near the quality of what I remember from other trips abroad. So many things have changed. So many cancellations and postponements. So many people no longer with us. So much division and hostility among the rest of us.

With so much loss and future uncertainty, the backyard foliage coming into its spring livery offers a more hopeful contrast. The heathers have had their brief bloom and are now settled into their seasonal greenness. The azaleas and barberrys are showing a robust hint of great promise, while the coneflowers seem content to keep their secrets a bit longer. The lavender, rosemary and woolly thyme have all increased their hold on the open space, and appear lush and verdant in the intermittent rain. I marvel at the new growth on our gem magnolias. These young trees were severely battered by last winter’s snows to the point where all three are several feet shorter than they were last year at this time, and are still missing many of their previous branches. We weren’t sure they would even survive.

Our resident squirrel stares at me briefly from his perch atop one of our landscaping rocks, then quickly retreats and sprints his way effortlessly up a sheer stretch of fencing. I am instantly jealous of his apparent immunity to gravity. Back in my mountaineering days I was a decent rock climber, but unlike our squirrel, I seemed to plateau at a certain level of difficulty. The American system of climbing grades is based off the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS), which ranges from class 1 (hiking over flat ground) to class 5 (technical rock climbing), and then provides further incremental gradations for class 5 depending on increased difficulty. A climb in the 5.0 to 5.7 range is considered easy, 5.8 to 5.10 is considered intermediate, 5.11 to 5.12 is hard, and only a handful of the world’s most elite climbers can complete anything of the 5.13 to 5.15 variety.

As a “weekend warrior” when it came to climbing, I could consistently top out routes up to 5.8, but could never successfully complete anything 5.9 or higher. After being frustrated with this for a while, I sought out an instructor at a local climbing gym to see if I could push through this ostensible barrier. After watching me climb several routes, he reached the following conclusion: I didn’t seem to trust my feet. When I asked what that meant, and what I could do to work on it, I very clearly remember him putting his hands on his hips, furrowing his brow, staring me straight in the eye, and saying, “Today, I am going to challenge your definition of a good foothold”.

I had been taught that rock climbing in particular could be broken down into three constituent things: Vision – the bigger-picture puzzle-solving skills to see a way to the top and the sequence of moves required to get there, Mechanics – the ability to understand and use the laws of physics and gravity to assist you in skillfully maneuvering and manipulating your body over the required sequence of moves, and Conditioning – the ability to apply strength when strength is needed, flexibility when flexibility is needed, and the endurance to ration both of these over the time necessary to complete the climb. I had never really considered the trust aspect.

What began was a process of reviewing my footwork mechanics – ensuring my weight was securely held by my arms and the leg opposite the one I was about to move, quickly and smoothly placing the ball or toe of my free foot on the new hold, rotating the foot towards the wall to lock the hold, then shifting my weight to the new hold to free up my other limbs to move – and then practicing these mechanics on progressively smaller and smaller sizes of footholds. I spent hours in the gym practicing, mostly on holds no more than a few feet off the ground. After a few weeks of consistent practice, I was able to advance from “requiring” several exposed inches of rock to support my foot to being comfortable on fractions of an inch, and I ultimately completed several 5.9 routes. As much as the mechanics were critical, I found that that they were almost secondary to trust – the simple, compelling belief that the preparation and placement I had done would actually hold my weight.

My coffee is finished, and I begin the physical and mental transition back to work, taking with me the fresh lessons from both the magnolias and the memories of climbing. Everything, no matter how badly damaged or beset by circumstance, can begin to find its way back. Trips can be rescheduled. More intimate personal connections with family, friends and colleagues will return. The challenge to our contemporary definition of a good foothold has been forced abruptly upon us, and now we must embrace both hope and grief as we rediscover our ability to trust our own feet beneath us.

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