The Italian experience

Having come back from a really hectic but enjoyable trip to Italy, it's only now that I've had a chance to sit back and reflect on the experience. We (my wife and I i.e.) had the good fortune to visit quite a few places in the short trip that we undertook covering Rome, Florence and Venice, and most important of all ran into some really good weather...after living in UK I've learnt to appreciate that good weather can be as big a gift as any!

I would be doing Italy a great injustice if I try to summarize the country and our experience in a few phrases. However if I'm pushed to the wall and have to pick a few it would have to be: awesome coffee, friendly people, great weather, country of enviable history, and most of all a country whose citizens have a highly evolved sense of aesthetics (the phenomenal number of historic monuments in Italy, many of which go back thousand of years are a standing testimony of this fact. If you are looking for more recent examples, how about the Ferrari!). It might seem funny I say this but one of the things I will never forget about Italy is the idea of walking into a Cafe and having a shot of espresso while standing at the counter as opposed to taking a seat. While this seems trivial, I found that a new cultural experience...so different from the way I have been used to having coffee/tea in any cafe be it in India or in the UK.

Each of the 3 cities were wonderful and unique in many respects. I will really struggle to pick any one of them as the city I liked the most. Especially given the fact we couldn't spend more than 2-3 days in any of them and that's hardly sufficient time to understand the true character of the city and it's people. As you'd expect, before heading off to Italy we had conjured up a mental image of each of the cities and what our experience would be like. By and large the high expectations we had were met, if anything, they were only exceeded. In my view any listing of the greatest cities in the world simply has to have Rome somewhere up there at the top. I am ill qualified to talk about it's history...seriously! It's innumerable museums, monuments, piazzas, fountains, churches, are just astounding. As a rule of thumb you can expect to see some monument/ancient ruin in practically every bylane of Rome, and what's more that structure would be no less than 500-600yrs old, often times several 1000s of years old! I can probably write a separate blog just about Rome and maybe that's exactly what I'll do! So let's move on...

The train arrived in Florence quite late in the evening and we were really weary by the time we got there. As planned we headed straight to the hotel to give our legs the much needed rest they deserved. Though we spent just a day in Florence (not such a great idea in hindsight), it was arguably the best day of the trip. It has everything you could ask for. For the history buff, it had monuments, museums etc which could rival Rome in terms of their antiquity and historical significance. For the shopaholics, Ponte Vecchio must feel like Mecca. For the foodie, it's cafes and ristorantes can quite easily rival any other city in Italy in terms of delectable items that were on offer (we particularly enjoyed our meal at Osteria Antica Mescita San Niccolo, one of the typical family run restaurants). Florence had the feel of a being a compact city which made it easily navigable and enjoyable, especially for a visiting tourist. Possibly an area where it scored over Rome.

Of the 3 cities, Venice stood out in terms of how different it actually was from what I'd previously imagined. One almost got the feeling that island of Venice had been frozen in time and is now exactly the way it was say in the 11th-12th centuries. I was expecting to see a maze of canals with quaint, brightly coloured houses on either side, people peeking out from the windows, gondolas criss crossing the canals and so on. Yep..and that's exactly what I saw in the main streets of Venice. Btw, there are no motor vehicles in Venice, all roads are pedestrianised. The main road were like beehives teeming with people, lots of canals, bridges and shops and overall the experience of walking up and down the innumerable bridges was just great.

It was an altogether different story in the side alleys which probably accounted for probably 60% of Venice by area (that's my guess)! The buidings were not exactly in great shape, most of them seemed to be unoccupied and almost derelict with plaster falling off, graffiti all over, and the ones that did have plaster on them could definitely do with a coating of paint. Do the locals lack the means to keep them in order (that will be hard to believe given the number of tourists coming in), or have they been deliberately left to deteriorate (to give a feel of the old world perhaps!). That question still plagues me. Hopefully I'll find out the answer soon. Now this might seem like a radical statement to make but some parts of Venice looked exactly like how a chawl would look in one of the not-so-affluent suburbs of Mumbai!! Really to me...there are in fact two Venices. The Venice I really enjoyed was the charming city that has managed to preserve it's resplendant beauty, retain it's historical way of existence including a slower pace of life, wonderful canals, bridges, shops etc. The other Venice which I've described i.e. unkempt, shabby and at times scary I didn't quite relish. Having said that, the other islands in the lagoon like Murano, Burano, Lido etc were superb.

Got to sign off now folks. More from me later. Ciao!