Juliet's Breast in Verona

When we left for Italy, my husband Bill knew we’d be visiting my deceased husband Vittorio's family and friends. He thought maybe he'd meet five or six. By the end of the trip he'd met 24. The final batch of family members waited for us at the bus station in Verona -- Catarina, a fiery Sicilian beauty, who'd helped me connect with many of these relatives was there with her equally spirited mother Maria Rosaria. So, too was a pensive Livio (Vittorio's nephew) and his vivacious wife Marilena.

Perhaps it was the presence of the Sicilian faction that added the spice to our visit, making it one of the most memorable; perhaps it was the four women in Livio’ s life. Whatever the seasoning, the arguments, laughter, and singing that punctuated the time we spent in Verona that made it the day Bill and I recall with the greatest delight.

How Livio’ s family loved their “discussions.” Livio’ s women argued with Livio about what to see and how to get there with as much determination as Livio insisted on a different itinerary. Meanwhile, Bill’s camera panned from one event to the next, capturing the human interactions that so delight him. They continued to wrangle as we walked from cathedral to square – Livio proudly pointing out the restoration projects on which his son Alessandro (Catharina’s husband) was working – the women suggesting other routes. Arriving at the Casa de Giulietta. Livio insisted that Bill should pose for a photo with his hand placed strategically on the breast of her well polished statue, while I joined him. Note the dubious smile. Men and breasts. From babyhood to old age do they ever get over their love of the female breast?

Lunch at Livio’s was punctuated by more exuberant discussion about what to see next, Marilena—knowing exactly what he was up to with his camera--peeped over our heads, grinned at him and waved. With Torricelli as our destination, we headed off in separate cars: the men in one, we women in the other, both groups certain that they knew the way best. While climbing the steeply cobbled streets we met and, amicable that we’d both done “good,” proceeded to the top. From under the balustrades of the old Austrian castle at the summit, we viewed the city of Verona shimmering below us against a backdrop of golden dusk, lights twinkling from windows along the quay and bouncing in brightly colored streamers over the River Adige.

Supper that night, a succulent Sicilian veal, was punctuated with stories of the past. When memories touched on the years when Vittorio and I met and fell in love, Maria Rosaria leaned back in her chair and sighed, "Ah, Amore." I looked around the table at the family gathered there with my Bill and was flooded with gratitude that love wields such power in Italian families, embracing all the facets of life lived to its fullest.

In lovely Sirmione on the Lago di Garda

We departed Trento on a cool misty October 22 and headed from the Alps down to the lake country. The drive along Lago di Garda thrust me back into the past, when I traveled there with my deceased husband Vittorio and our baby Thomas when we stopped for lunch at a small roadside trattoria. The owners, a lovely warm couple with a wide-faced smiling daughter told us they did not open until evening but, seeing the baby, told us to come back in an hour and we could share lunch with the family—a delicious minestrone with crusty bread, greens from the garden and wine. While we waited, we rented a small rowboat and floated happily offshore with the warm sun on our faces and our baby asleep in my arms.

Bill and I were spending two nights in Sirmione, a tiny lakeside town on the peninsula on the south-side of Lago di Garda. Villa Rosa, a lovely family run B&B only a mile’s walk from the heart of the historic town , was family owned and operated. One of the family actually spoke fluent English (the first such speaker we’d encountered on our trip), provided us with a map of the town on which she marked the route to the famed Terme Catullo, the thermal waters visited from ancient times for which the town was noted.

A lovely lovely tree-lined boulevard took us past the Rocca Scaligera, a medieval castle into the town which opens into an ancient arcade filled with small shops, many offering gelato. We succumbed, of course, having found a shop where the banana gelato was slightly gray rather than bright yellow – the sign of homemade vs factory produced gelato – and sat on a wall next to the quay savoring our cones. Having been totally seduced by the dark chocolate and coffee flavors we never did get to try the banana.

The Aquaria Spa was a mystery that unfolded experience by experience. We first had to learn to learn to use the moving lockers by swiping our magnetic watches over a screen. My locker, number 10, arrived on its hanger. Clothes and purse tucked sagely within, the door closed, and off it went--one of hundreds of such lockers on the mechanized rack.

Noting that most people were wearing flip-flops, I thought them very wise. Those floors were slippery plus! Then I saw the posted notice requiring the use of flip-flops. Bill and I slunk along as unobtrusively as possible, managing to avoid being noticed by spa attendants while negotiating the large panoply of thermal options. A channel of heated water lead into a channel of icy water, from there to a sulfur-rich pool to another adorned with massage options of all sized and shapes: whirlpools, rolling beds, powerful jets that forced water over one’s shoulders and heads, another long channel lined with stone seats where we moved from seat to seat deluged by water from above.

Three hours later, our nostrils suffused with the scent of sulfur – an "aroma" my bathing suit carried back to the states where it hung around for several months thereafter, despite many washings -- we showered and walked through the spa gardens back into the pedestrian friendly cobbled streets. A delicious meal of fresh fish, grilled vegetables, wine, and crostini at a lovely outdoor restaurant in the town square, and leisurely walk through the gathering dusk back to our comfortable room at Villa Rosa, ended a very lovely day in Sirmione. Good choice, Beryl, I congratulated myself, realizing that we hadn't seen one other American family during the entire afternoon.

Trento in the Italian Alps

The Grand Hotel in Trento, is a classy old hotel smack in the heart of the city. Delicious room, tasteful décor, scrumptious breakfast buffet, great drinks in the piano bar, and my precious Bill enjoying i there with me.

Trento was on our itinerary, not only because it is a beautiful city in the Italian Alps, but because we wanted to visit with my deceased husband Vittorio’s niece Concetta and her family who live just above the city in Piano di Sopra.

Unlike Teresa, who seemed content to leave us on our own during the day, Concetta, immediately assumed the role of tour director. That afternoon we walk through streets lined with Renaissance palaces, visit the Duomo and descend to the recently unearthed early Christian church beneath it; then sit and sip espresso at a small café on the main square. That night, Concetta’s entire family comes for supper: her two sons, their wives and children fill her small home. It’s all Italian conversation in Trento but we manage to chatter away, and Bill, with his smattering of Spanish and German, fits right in.

The following morning Concetta wants to take us north to Bolzano, so we set off, presuming she knows the way. It is only when we’ve passed an important exit for Bolzano, that we learn Concetta does not drive. She peers over the top of her glasses at passing signs and shouts “Di La!” at the last minute. “Di la?” Bill asks. Concetta does not say “a la destra” or “a la sinistra,” so Bill has no idea in which direction to turn.

Bolzano is a beautiful mountain town, with flowers everywhere, wooden balconies overlooking busy marketplaces bright with fruit, vegetable, cheese, and pastry stands. We have a lunch of beer and sausages in a German restaurant, then wander along the Lauben -- with its medieval arcades and expensive shops.

On the way back to the parking garage, I tell Concetta that I’m sure glad she’s with us because I was totally lost. “I think we are lost,” she moans. "I can't remember how to get back to the garage." The three of us burst out laughing and merrily inquire of passersby where that garage might be. Succeeding we return to Concetta’s house where she's prepared a feast: polenta with fresh fungi (mushrooms) grown by her son Lucca, local gorgonzola and Asiago cheese, and for dessert a chestnut and raspberry torte. Again, the entire family crowds round the table in her tiny living room.

Bill, who’d thought he’d only be meeting a few people in Italy, begins to count them. By the end of the trip he will have met 24 of Vittorio’s friends and relatives. Bless him!

© Beryl Singleton Bissell 2009

Forte Dei Marmi on the Italian Riviera

From Florence, we headed to Forte Dei Marmi, a lovely seaside town with exquisite villas tucked behind walls on tree lined streets. After settling ourselves at the Hotel Pigalle a simple, summery B&B only one block from the heart of this fashionable seaside town on the Ligurian Sea we headed to the town center where, at an outdoor café, s little girl of around four approached our table with a pad and pencil, and pretended to take our order. She set off for the table next to us where she encountered a baby in a high chair and decided she’d rather play with the baby.

We’d come to Forte Dei Marmi so Bill could meet some of Vittorio’s good friends and enjoy the sea air and relaxed atmosphere. Giuliano took us and his wife and 12-year-old son to one of the exceptionally fine seafood restaurants in the area. Wanting to share the sea’s bounty with us, he ordered our meal. The first course, was also a first for me -- individual plates of raw fish: tuna, oysters, sea bass, and squid. Granted, the presentation was wonderful and I did my best to enjoy the “fresh from the sea” quality, but I much preferred the shrimp cooked in a delicate base of oil, that followed, a pasta with teeny, tiny clams (found only in the Forte dei Marmi area), flounder with artichokes, and pear, lemon and berry ice. We even had dessert, crème brulé with delicate cream-filled pastry shells.

The following day, in response to his question “What would you like to do tomorrow?,” Giuliano drove us toward the Cavi di Marmo -- the Carrara marble quarries -- stopping on the way at the old mountain town of Colonnata. The bells for Sunday Mass were ringing when we arrived, but we’d not come for Mass, though it was Sunday, nor for the famous Lardo di Colonatta (seasoned lard) produced there, but to view a large block of marble depicting the dangerous “lizzatura” system of transporting the immense blocks of marble down the mountainside via a series of wooden tracks that claimed the lives of many miners. The mines themselves were awe-inspiring -- a working mine more than a mile deep within the mountain, and the “blindingly white sunken amphitheater” where Michelangelo chose the marble for his famous Pietà.

At a restaurant near the Carrara seaport, Giuliano treated us to another feast, this one entirely of cooked fish: tiny octopus, a large fish with lacy red fins and great bulging eyes, varied fresh vegetables in herbed oil, and for dessert, seared strawberries and vanilla ice cream layered in paper thin pastry. When he dropped us back at the hotel, we were so stuffed that we fell onto our bed and slept until 3:30 that afternoon.

Having the evening to ourselves, Bill and I walked in the cooling dark along streets lined with high class shops and beautifully dressed Italian tourists. We bought fruit, bread, cheese and wine to eat in the quiet of our hotel room balcony and were savoring our rustic feast when the hotel manager, who’d been yelling (and I mean yelling) into the phone at the front desk came outside to cool off, noted our feast and the drying socks we’d draped over the terrace wall, shook his head in disbelief, and stormed back inside, leaving us convulsed in laughter and providing one more memory to savor at will.

Impressions of Florence

After numerous turns around a town square outside the walls of Florence, the GPS system leading us to the wrong building in a different section of town with the same address, and several phone calls to Donatella Mia, the proprietress, we finally arrived at Villa Malavolta B&B within walking distance of the city of Florence.

Rather than write about the city with its famous landmarks, I want to focus on my impressions of our stay there, memories that continue to enchant me six months later.

Impressions of our B&B: Donatella, tall and elegant and the exquisite walled villa that had been in her family for hundreds of years. Books piled on tables, on floors and nested in towering bookcases; walls rife with paintings; wooden floors supporting heavy antique furnishings; our blessed room – white and sun-washed, with its comfortable bed and little terrace overlooking an inner garden. On that terrace, accompanied by bird song and under the gaze of an ancient pine we ate chocolates and cheese and apples.

The city Florence with its narrow streets and darkened alleys, the frescoes and sporadic sunshine, people leaning backward to take photos of the wonders above them, students sprawled before the Chapel of St. Margaret, sketching the facade of the church whereDante was married and he first saw his beloved Beatrix. Bill is in his glory, his camera catching more than memorable buildings. He especially adores capturing the faces of the people, their gesticulations as they shop and talk, the arguments loud and often accompanied by laughter and gestures of apology. In Florence on our first night, we took the wrong bus and, at the insistence of a determined red-jacketed woman sitting in front of the bus – empty now of all riders save us – the bus driver turned the bus around and took us to a stop where we could catch the “correct” bus back to the Villa.

A plentiful breakfast of fresh pears and berries, coffee and brioche served in the 300-year-old kitchen launched our very long second day in the city where we visited the sites we missed the day before, sites our hostess said we shouldn’t miss. We walked to the artist’s quarter to dine where she told us the literati and artists ate – Trattoria Casalinga--and where we sat next to a portly, dark-eyed, dark-haired, boil-pocked man who slurped his food with immense gusto. We dined on Bistecca alla Fiorentina, served not in ounces but in pounds and we took the correct bus back to the villa late that night.

On our final morning, I was privileged to accompany the B&B proprietress Donatella – a well-known artist whose works have been exhibited worldwide -- to her artist's studio located on the other side of the garden where she not only paints but builds incredible three dimensional works with neon lights and Lucite. We left our car at the Villa and climbed the tree-lined Via del Monte delle Croce to catch the best views of the city from the Piazzale Michelangelo. We visited the starkly beautiful interior of the Basilica of San Miniato and walked through its terraced cemetery of family vaults and ornate tombs accompanied by music emanating from the basilica as a middle-aged monk drew beauty from the great organ within.

Assisi: parking ticket and all

We came to Assisi seeking St. Francis and Clare. We found them. We found, as well, a greeting from the Assisi police: a parking ticket. Parking in Assisi is limited to residents only.

Unaware of the ticket that awaited us on our return to the car, we blithely visited the Basilica of Santa Chiara and knelt before St. Clare's “miraculously preserved” body which, though blackened from its exposure to air, is in much better condition than poor St. Lucy, whose "in-corrupt" body I’d viewed years earlier in Venice.

a chapel at the Carceri on Monte Subasio

We then set off for the Basilica of San Francesco, and happened upon a side alley leading to a small shrine I’d not been to before. The Chiesa Nuova is the home where Francis once lived and where his father – a wealthy cloth merchant -- once imprisoned him.

Francis, as the story goes, had been praying in the rundown chapel of San Damiano, when the crucifix spoke to him, requesting that he “rebuild [Christ's] church which is falling into ruin.” Francis, believing he was meant to rebuild the decrepit chapel where he received the message rushed back to his father's shop, sold an expensive bolt of cloth, and gave the proceeds to the priest to use to restore the chapel. Francis’ father, duly enraged by such profligacy, had imprisoned and repudiated his son.

While on the way to the Basilica of San Francesco, I was reminded that people actually live in Assisi when we encountered a small group of Italian toddlers dressed in checkered pinafores and linked hand and hand that wavered like tiny butterflies across the Piazza Comune.

To get to shrine, which very immensity would embarrass the saint were he alive, one must traverse many narrow, winding, cobbled streets that, without a map, could totally confuse the traveler. But the view as one walks downhill toward to Basilica from the city makes it, in my estimation, the best way to approach the shrine. The sweep of the Cathedral before us, the wide boulevard and sculptured lawns, made getting lost well worth our confusion.

Beryl on the walk down from the city to the Basilica of San Francesco

I'd hoped that in visiting Assisi, Bill would encounter some of the spiritual aspects of its heritage that had led me, as a teenager, to enter the Poor Clare Franciscans. The Basilica is famed for its art depicting Francis's life, so while he moved thoughtfully from one Giotto fresco to another, I sought the lower level, drawn by the knowledge that there I’d find the tomb of St. Francis.

The lower Basilica is a place of dim light and silence. There, away from the voices of guides and pilgrims praying in large groups, one can kneel or sit quietly, to contemplate the mysteries of a life so filled with love of Jesus that its light still radiates throughout the world.

I’d named my daughter Francesca after this beloved saint, and while kneeling there, bathed in the light of a hundred or more flickering candles, my heart was filled with thoughts of her. I asked for a mass to be offered for Francesca who’d died nine years earlier, praying that she'd found the peace she'd been unable to find in life. I lit a candle for my son Thomas. On the way back to the upper Basilica, I passed a modern day Francis: a young pilgrim in torn sweater and ragged pants, kneeling, arms cruciform at the back of the chapel, his face uplifted in prayer.

There is much to see in Assisi and we packed as much of it as we could into one day. We visited the convent of San Damiano, the birthplace of the Poor Clare Order, where St. Clare had lived and where bouquets of flowers marked the place where she'd sat in the refectory and the floor where she'd died.

The refectory at San Damiano

We walked the paths of the Carceri on Monte Subasio. We visited the hovels at Rivo Torto. We stood within the tiny chapel of the Portiuncula where Clare had dedicated her life to God and where Francis – marked with the wounds of Christ – yielded back to God the life he’d lived for love of God.

Our souls surfeited, our legs aching, we went in search of food and found it across the street from the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli where the Portiuncula sits like a precious gem within the great vaults of its interior. Legs rested, appetites satisfied, we headed back to the Hotel Delfina in Foligno for a night's rest before heading to Florence on the morrow..

On the way to Assisi: Foligno

We ate breakfast on the terrace in Amalfi, served by skinny Renaldo who buzzed and hummed about, making an occasional nervous foray into conversation about his marriage to a Russian woman from Eastern Siberia, his three year old child, how he works all night and goes home to play with his child before sleeping in the afternoon – all in Italian mind you. The young man who helped Bill carry our bags to the car, down the numerous flights of stairs, was not nearly as affable.

“For one night in this hotel you need all these bags?” We didn’t bother to explain that bringing all the bags into the hotel wasn’t our decision. The young woman who helped us unload informed us that “Your car will be parked in a public garage,” and insisted everything be removed before giving it to the attendant to park.

Even our GPS had a hard time finding the Delfina Palace Hotel in Foligno where we would spend two nights while visiting Assisi. A new 4-star hotel, the Delfina was a sprawling but mostly empty hotel set in a formal landscape of gardens in a rural setting along the Via Romana Antica outside Foligno. It was the only place we stayed that had an abundance of empty parking spaces – unusual in a country with too many cars and too many tourists. During our first night visit, we saw only five people -- two men and a woman in the lobby bar, the girl behind the desk and the waiter in charge of the breakfast room but our room was spacious, making up in comfort what it lacked in activity.

Deciding that we did not want to eat in the sprawling empty dining room, we headed into Foligno to find a place to dine and got hopelessly lost in a tangle of dark streets. A young woman in a still open flower shop personally took us to Lassame Lento, a tiny, hidden, and unimposing little trattoria where we feasted among single working men on varied antipasto selections, tagliatelle with tartuffe (truffles), house wine, and for desert a delicate panna cotta with fresh berry sauce.

Our evening in Foligno came to a close as we walked back to our car, preceded by three Franciscan Friars in their habits, laughing and eating ice-cream cones as they walked.