Why we went to Italy.

Queuing for customs - between plane and terminal.

Food, History, Art, Scenery, Shopping, Clear skies - how many more reasons do you need to visit a place?

Our last European trip was extra exciting because my sister, Poss, was joining the adventure, it was booked 6 months in advance (anticipation always increases expectations) and it would be the longest time we had ever spent in one trip - a whole 15 days!

"What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago." 

--Erica Jong

The Thames at 6:30 am.

"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." --Orson Welles

Just flown over the Black forest, now along beside Lake Constance with the Alps soon to come!

"You may have the universe if I may have Italy." --Giuseppe Verdi

Of course we knew 15 days was never going to be long enough. To control the shakes, caused by vacillations between a soaring joy (to be able to trend in the footsteps of Leonardo, Marco Polo, Montessori, Pavarotti, Julius Caesar, Peter, Dolce & Gabbana) and terror (of missing so many  morsels of flavour and works of art because of our demanding yet limited itinerary), I made myself think of our trip as a dégustation menu. A series of small portions that made you want more but allowed you to experience as much as possible in one seating.

How much Margarita pizza can a Margarita pizza eater eat?
From left to right: Venice, Milan, Rome, Naples (where it was invented - we didn't seem any of the shops where you could order it by the meter!)

Willow's enormous Calzone in Rome.  For a change Petal ordered a cheese burger in Sorrento and got two!
Back to the Margarita: Capri, Naples - shared for lunch.
That's enough for a while - in Athens the Greek feasting began with a cheese ball!

Italy has only existed as a country since Garibaldi, with the backing of USA troops and finances, unified the different regions in 1870. Up near the Alps and Varese (a little town where the first ever gelato cart was used in the 1920s) Garibaldi fought off the pesky Austrians in 1859 at the beginning of his campaign.

Poss's camera lens looks suspiciously like a gelato cup - luckily it was never given a scoop.
Third or so gelato in Venice on Murano Island.

The earliest and strongest city state became an Empire. The Greek settlements around the south and Gaul settlements of the north were soon overtaken by the Romans - who seem  to have descended from the Etruscans (a tribe from what is now Turkey who settled in the central area of the peninsula).

From the left: a dodgy looking bloke in a Venetian Doge's crown,
Augustus Ceaser - after Julius' assassination and the following civil war he pulled Rome back together.
Juliette - a statue in Verona even though just a figment of an Italian poem that was then massaged into a play about a pair of particularly spoilt and impulsively stupid teen lovers, by Shakespeare.
The Egyptian goddess Isis dressed in Roman garb after being copied from Greek Statues but still with her feather on her head and retaining the same purpose in myth as she did in Egyptian religion.

This Tuscan pasta with white truffles and porcini mushrooms
in Florence was one of my favourite meals.

Out of the collapse of the Romans the Vatican managed to hold Rome as a central spot, Medieval Venice became the richest and most successful city for a while with its trade routes going East and West, its innovations with glass, lace and Chinese noodles and a formidable navy.

Gelato in Florence,  Perhaps if they'd invented it a few centuries earlier - rather than the crunched ice run down to Rome from the Alps with a bit of honey on top - the regions would have chilled out and gotten on better with each other.

The Renaissance was born in Florence with Cosimo Medici's patronage of the arts and encouraging the ancient texts he collected from Greek philosophers etc to be translated into Latin. The learning flourished and spread to Milan making Tuscany and Lombardy the richest regions as Naples and the regions south of it fell under Spanish occupation and were kept in the dark with the introduction of Isabella's inquisition. The French King, Charles, invaded the north and spread the Renaissance through Europe as various Popes did deals with both north and south trying to exert their rights to rule the land. Leonardo was rescued from the demands of ruling families by the next French King with interests in the north, Francois I, and was given a home in his castle in the Loire Valley.

From the left: Galileo in Florence, Napoleon (it said so on the plinth!) in Milan, Cosimo Medici in Florence,
Machiavelli in Florence, Leonardo in Milan.  No statues of Pavarotti anywhere - heard him singing in a few stores though.

Eventually in the 1790s Napoleon attacked with the aim of unifying the country - making it a strong barrier between France and enemies in the East. He sold Venice off to Austria and ransacked the northern towns of their treasures. The land disintegrated into a series of Principalities backed by various European powers.   Perhaps the political wit of family and villages in these battles of survival lead to the still powerful mafia manipulation and corruption that is closely associated with the south of the country to this day.

The best ever Amarena (black sour cherry) gelato in the whole trip from this Verona Gelateria!

Garibaldi and his movement put the King of Sardinia (the big island west of the peninsula) on the throne as King of all Italy in 1870. By 1919 Mussolini had deposed and exiled the 1st King's grandson and crumbled the country's early ideals in a fanatical desire to recreate the Roman Empire. The plan ended in a country over run with foreign powers fighting their war up and down the peninsula. Some time after WWII, Italy declared itself a Republic and has steadily been rebuilding it's economy ever since.

This chain is throughout the posh places of Italy - we watched the girls making the rose cones as we gobbled down a two scoop pottle of gelato each. 

Travelling down from Venice to Naples, it still feels as if the different regions exist as different countries; like a collection of citrus fruits in a string bag they remain connected as a whole but maintain their obvious differences with a conscious pride.

 It was so hot in Rome - hot air and baked paths, statues and monuments radiated heat from under our feet.
All of us thinking a gelato would be a fine idea!
da Vinci's revenge on the Pope is still being worn rather nicely by the Swiss guard at the Vatican.

Claiming to be the World's best Gelato store - as was another one about 50m away, in the Medieval town of San Gimignano. M and Petal tried to make rules for a gelato competition that disallowed repeat flavours or even same flavours if someone else had ordered it in that session - no one complied - especially Poss who probably had café scoop at every stop!

Gelato stores are open to midnight seven days a week - this one is in Florence just across from our hotel.
Iced café so we could bask in the store's air-conditioning at the train station in Florence when our train was delayed - only time! The main line trains were fast, comfy and had wifi with plugs for juicing up all the appliances. Poss still reckons that the iced café at the Milan station was the best.

Our last splurge - late one night after a wonderful meal at a Neopolitan Osteria (local family run restaurant).  Just as well we only had breakfast and early dinners every day otherwise the air lines may have demanded to weigh us before we boarded!