feldmanlarry

With some help from Keith, I had a list of the minimum activities I had to do over the two full days in Dubrovnik. I did the first one on the list below over and over, whenever I had a few minutes. I showed some pictures on yesterday’s blog (April 20). It’s stunning, maybe the single most beautiful location I’ve been to during this entire month.

• Walk around the Old Town’s shimmering pavement filled with bars and restaurants
• Take the cable car to the overlook at the top of the mountain
• Walk all the way around the city walls (Kings Landing from the Game of Thrones)
• Take the ferry to Lokrum Island
• Walk to the RIT branch where Keith went
• Walk to the Beach

There is so much to show about the city walls that I’m going to break this day into two parts. Notice that the word “walk” appeared many times in the above list. I have an app called “Moves” that is always recording where I go, by what means of movement, and the number of steps. This day broke my all time record at 12,737 steps, which according to the app is 5.9 miles (9.5 KM), 2 hours and 48 minutes, and 583 calories. The app works really well and is free but you have to remember to keep it on in the background all the time and carry your phone with you at all times, which I do anyway.

The walled Old Town of Dubrovnik is where they filmed Kings Landing in the TV series Game of Thrones. You feel that you are in the middle ages. It’s beyond words how perfect the place is. Probably twenty times this day, I was shocked to see something totally unexpected, particulary on the walk on top of the castle walls.

My day started in an ugly way. I have had a great deal of trouble getting 3G data on my cell phone throughout this trip. I have bought SIMM cards in Amsterdam, Venice, and Dubrovnik and its been a hassle each time. A guide I had here got so angry when I just mentioned the word T-Mobile. I won’t talk about it more here, maybe later.

Here are views of King’s Landing from the cable car and from the top of the mountain.

There was a museum on the top about the terrible attacks on Dubrovnik during the crazy breakup of Yugoslavia. They actually shelled the walls of the old town. The first two paragraphs below are fascinating. Keith had walked up here rather than taking the cable car and was told not to deviate from the trail since there may be some shells remaining.

There were many steep steps down to the entrance to Old Town and many more steep steps down to the main street.

On the way there was a Jewish museum. Here’s a sign ordering the confiscation of Jewish property and a list of Jews who died here during the Holocaust.

Here’s the bell tower, which is just a few feet from my apartment and goes off 4 times an hour all night. It’s beautiful but I’m glad I’m a sound sleeper.

By far the highlight of the day was the walk around the walls of the city. This were a total of 4,343 steps according to a web site, with towers every so often to climb. I stopped every couple of minutes to marvel the quirkiness and beauty.

I appreciated the contrast in this picture between the ancient walls going off on the right and the definitely not medieval basketball court.

This is the tower that’s the highest point.

Here’s a view out a turret.

Steep stairs.

Halfway around the walls is the Pile Gate, the main entrance to the Old Town and the amazing main street called the Stradun. My apartment is near the bell tower, which is at the end of the street.

These two pictures are looking out the wall on the Adriatic Sea side.

I got caught going the wrong way on the walls and had to do a time out.

This experience reminded me of when I was at the Christ statue way up high in Rio de Janeiro. It just can’t be shown well with my camera and my limited photographic abilities. Even if you’re not a Game of Thrones fan, if you ever get a chance, you really should go to Dubrovnik.

The Pope speaks from a window in St. Peter’s Square most Sundays at noon. I was told to get there early if I want to sit so I made sure to be there by 10 AM. I found a guard rail that had a direct view of the window for my 2 hour wait. The whole time I was there I was talking with people from all over. I spoke French with a Moroccan cook who works up in the Tyrollean Mountains of Italy. Another was a Sri Lankan who grew up in London but now lives in Spain and Germany. Then I met a Parisian woman who lives in Venice as a claims adjuster for car accidents (not in the city of Venice where there are no cars). I had a brief conversation in Russian with a Polish nun. If I had come later there would have been no place to sit and it was pleasant to sit out in the sun with all these people.

I’m not religious but I was very moved and excited to see Pope Francis. He seems like such a force for good and a badly needed breath of fresh air for the Catholic Church. The Pope was speaking from the building in the center way back from the second window from the right in the top floor. I wish I had a better zoom on my iPhone but the picture below is my best.

The Pope is a tiny speck in the open window.

Here’s an article about what he said. He also gave the Regina Coeli, which I read replaces the Angeli until the Pentecost . You could feel his passion about the death of these 700 immigrants who died and also for all immigrants. He then gave a shout out to a dozen or so pilgrim groups, who all get a chance to yell when they’re called.

=======================================================================

“(Reuters) – Pope Francis, speaking after some 700 migrants were feared dead in the Mediterranean, on Sunday appealed to the international community to take swift and decisive action to avoid more tragedies. “They are men and women like us, our brothers seeking a better life, starving, persecuted, wounded, exploited, victims of war. They were looking for a better life,” he told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday noon “Faced with such a tragedy, I express my most heartfelt pain and promise to remember the victims and their families in prayer,” he said, departing from his prepared text. “I make a heartfelt appeal to the international community to react decisively and quickly to see to it that such tragedies are not repeated,” he said, before asking the crowd to pray “for these brothers and sisters”. The latest disaster happened when a boat carrying migrants capsized off the Libyan coast overnight, in one of the worst disasters seen in the Mediterranean migrant crisis, officials said on Sunday.” ======================================================================

I was moved to tears for the third time this trip, this time by the energy of the tens of thousands of people surrounding me and the passion of Francis. Afterwards there was a group of Polish people doing some kind of dance to a guitarist playing religious folk music.

I couldn’t think of a good reason not to join them. You clap when you step with your right foot, then twist forward and clap again after 4 steps. I got someone to take my picture trying to do that step even though they had already moved on to a new song.

I’d like to dedicate this experience to my father-in-law John Stempien. He would have been thrilled to see the Pope and to experience the joy of these Polish people and of all the tens of thousands. I wish he had been there.

The French woman who sat next to me recommended I go to an area of Rome called Trastevere and to a restaurant called Ripa 12. Even though I was really tired and needed a break, I took a brief rest and then a taxi to that area. It was a really lively place, with a jazz band playing, lots of churches, and people everywhere (more Italian than international).

The Ripa 12 restaurant didn’t open until 7 and it was 5:30 or so. The good restaurants all open at 7. Suddenly I got a strong feeling of fatigue. I needed to eat soon and head back. I’d have to find an acceptable but not great restaurant. The one I found had the most important food I hadn’t eaten yet in Italy — artichokes. My father and I were fascinated with artichokes since we travelled in Italy in the 1960’s. I sometimes have one for snack. The one I ordered was swimming in butter as was the Saltibucco.

I think the traveling is getting to me. I wouldn’t want to go home yet but I’m getting worn down. I had a quiet evening at the hotel working on the blog and watching Italy beat the US on women’s tennis. Serena Williams won her match but the other American lost badly and Serena couldn’t help enough to win the doubles. On to Dubrovnik tomorrow.

My morning was exactly what I needed. I ate breakfast at the hotel and went up to my room and worked on the blog and relaxed.

My Israeli friend Neta was coming to Rome from Florence by train this morning then leaving for Israeli this same evening. I was jealous because she got to spend another night with the group we hang out with in Florence. I invited her to join me on a walking tour of Rome that a guide had laid out for me.

Rome has so many bizarre fountains.

I’ll steam an artichoke and pull off the leaves one by one. The leaves get dipped in a salad dressing. When all the leaves are gone, you have to scoop out the choke part. What’s left is the stem and the best part, the artichoke heart. It’s so good. I wonder if I could live on nothing but these artichokes.

My friend Ken Wilkinson has created beautiful artistic clocks, an app with “impossible” clocks, and a children’s book about clocks. I’m sure he would have wanted to spend some time in this shop.

The famous Trevi Fountain was under construction but they had a walkway through it and I threw just one coin with my right hand over my left shoulder as is the tradition.

Here’s Neta in front of the Spanish Steps. We were both too tired to climb them.

We ate at a restaurant which is part of the “slow foods” movement. Neta’s pizza has eggplant, zucchini, red peppers and tomatoes. I love the irregular shape. They let you cut it however you like. I’m not a big pizza eater but the super thin crust is how I like it.

We walked all the way back to my hotel where she got a car to go to the airport. It came late and I felt again a little bit of the feeling I had with my parents always being late for traveling. It wasn’t her fault and fortunately there wasn’t a lot of traffic so she got on the plane with plenty of time. On the walk back, we ran into so many monuments and churches. Here’s just one.

Neta is a really fun person. I wish her all the best. She will have to start searching for another art therapy job. I’m sure she’s amazing at her job and really makes a difference in people’s lives. She thanked me for helping her to do some of the things in Florence and today’s trip. She was great company today and is a really interesting and thoughtful person. I’m very glad that our paths crossed.

In 2009, there was an internet poll to select the 7 man-made wonders of the world. I saw the last of the 7 in the fall of 2014 when I went to Macchu Picchu in Peru and the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. But I was cheating a little since I had only seen the Roman Coliseum when I was a teenager and I don’t really remember it. So today was the day I could say that I have seen all 7 of the man-made wonders of the world. The guide had a different style than all the other ones. Someone asked her where the headphones were and she replied that she’s an opera singer and doesn’t need artificial amplification. Her presentation style was much more as a dramatic actress rather than as a scholar. Most of the time it really worked well. She frequently asked us to imagine what the great events that occurred here were really like. She recounted stories such as Brutus killing Julius Caesar right at this spot where the ruins of the Roman Forum are. I was overwhelmed by my first look at the Coliseum. It’s actually similar to an American football stadium. It’s 180 meters long, which is about 200 yards. The football field of play is 120 yards plus there is extra space on both ends so the Coliseum is just a little longer. The Coliseum held 55,000 people stuffed together, which is less than a typical football stadium. The tour went to two places that most tours can’t go to. The first was the underground area where the slaves, gladiators, and animals waited for their moment to perform. I gave the link to the tour company in the morning blog. The guide was again very dramatic and tried to get us to feel what it must have been like to know you were probably going to die brutally in front of 55,000 people. We went back up and I took a bunch more photos. I made it a point to talk to all 10 of the other people on the tour.    The other place this tour had special permission to see was the very top of the Coliseum. There’s no question that the Roman Coliseum belongs in the list of the top 7 man made wonders of the world. When I left, I was very surprised that all the traffic was gone from the large boulevard right outside the Coliseum. I looked down a street and saw thousands of people behind a large banner. I waited for them to start to pass by and asked a few people if they spoke English or French. Finally, I found a woman perhaps my age and asked her what the demonstration was for. She said it was for jobs and housing. I walked with her and a while and decided to join the demonstration. I’m for jobs and housing too. The woman worked in a laundry and told me how hard it was to find housing. She said a group of homeless people occupied a building and were thrown out. She and I had a nice conversation in English. At one point she said she hates Americans because America is always starting wars and killing people. I agreed with her but told her that there are many Americans such as me who do not agree with our war culture. A friend of hers joined up with us and I could understand her telling him that all Americans aren’t bad, just the government. I respected her wish not to be photographed. They reached the end of their route just steps from the concert I was going to. There were a lot of police and the demonstrators lit some flares. I felt just a little bit of danger. This was a point where “my brake”, Margaret, came through in my head and said it was time to say goodbye to my new friend and to the demonstration. I found a pizza place that promised to get me food quickly since the concert was starting soon, at 8:30. The concert was such a sudden change from the craziness of the street. There was a male and female ballet dancer, three singers, and four musicians. I loved it when they were all on stage at the same time They did some Tchaikovsky and Italian language operas from Mozart, Rossini, and Verdi. I had a good conversation with some French people on one side but an annoying conversation with a Jewish couple from Connecticut on the other side. The Jewish person was so loud and so scared of the world. Her mother had been to Israel several times but she was too scared to go. I know Israel is not the safest place but there have not been any attacks on tourists in years (unless I’m wrong). There are millions of Israelis going through their normal life not in fear of being attacked. Many people would say it’s too scary to go to the US because of the violence there.

My friends that I hung out with in Florence advised me to buy their 8 AM tour Vatican tour. It was about a 15 minute walk from my hotel and I had to be there at 7:30 AM. Ugh. But the rewards for getting there so early were great. Not only would I be able to skip the long lines, but we would enter the Sistine Chapel before the gates opened at 9. The tour was only a British couple and me, which was unusual. The tour company is wonderful. If you’re ever traveling in Italy, I’d highly recommend italywithus.com

Another guide had been hired for a family with small children. I’m guessing they paid extra after bad experiences with the children slowing up everyone else. This reminded me of what I was like at 4 years old when my parents took me on ships all the way to Sri Lanka and from there to Japan. I was a real problem for my parents. The quote my mother used to love telling was when I told her that I didn’t ever want to see another “interesting thing” for the rest of my life.

The Sistine Chapel was stunning. I can’t explain what it felt like to be in this massive chapel with the stories of the Bible painted in such wonderful detail and colors. No pictures were allowed there, which made sense to me. Here’s a picture from the internet.

.

After the Sistine Chapel our guide took us to the Vatican Museums. Here’s a corridor which doesn’t look like the corridors in Stright Hall where I taught.

I’m not doing justice to these beautiful maps that were quite accurate.

Our guide’s pace matched my pace perfectly. She picked out the most important or fun items and kept us moving. She was working on her degree in archaeology and had a degree in art history. She knew her stuff.

We had to be let in by a guard to this room of animal sculptures. Another perk of this tour.

The guide explained that this tomb for a child was mass produced. Everything was done before except the head, which looks like the child who died. You can see a line where the head was added.

I loved this statue of Bacchus, the god of wine. I hope my eyes don’t look like that when I see alcohol.

The British guy with me on the tour joked that this looked like a toilet. The guide said it truly is a toilet. They put some kind of receptacle below the hole and emptied it when needed. The expression “going to the throne” goes back quite a ways.

Where there’s a toilet there should be a bath. As a side note, in the French village I stayed in and elsewhere in France, the toilet room is totally separate from the bath area. It’s convenient if two people need to use the two rooms but not if one person wants to use the two rooms.

My guide didn’t want to take this picture since she thought I was touching the statue. It’s a famous sculpture of Hadrian as the next photo explains.

A very different beautiful map, of Corsica.

The tour with the guide ended around 10:30 and after getting us to skip the line, she left us to appreciate St. Peter’s Basilica on our own.

It’s hard to give you a sense of how vast and ornate St. Peter’s is. This picture doesn’t help much. Sorry.

This was a list of the dead Popes ending in 2005 with John Paul II. There’s lots of room for more.

One of my favorite moments of this day is when I entered a room in St. Peter’s Basilica that was for prayer only. There was a guard making sure people understood that no pictures were allowed. I sat there quietly and reflected on my life and the people in my life. I wasn’t calling up any deities but it was a form of meditation. If there’s no god I was doing the same thing as prayer. If there is a god, it might listen to people who haven’t expressed loyalty to its particular form or not. It wasn’t prayer in the sense that I wasn’t asking for anything but maybe that’s not necessarily what prayer is about. Of course, I have no idea what prayer is about, never having done it in my life.

You have to take a picture of the Swiss Guards.

It was just 11 AM or so and I had done more than I usually do in a day at home. I went back to the hotel to rest before the 2:30 tour of the Coliseum and a classical concert at 8:30. I’ll write about that and the demonstration I joined in a separate blog. Here’s a picture of a woman putting her clothes out to dry as seen from my balcony.

I was surprised how relatively good I felt after the excessive alcohol consumption and getting back to the hotel at 3 AM. Fortunately, I was able to sleep until 11.

A big problem was barely averted. I left some clothes to be washed at the hotel on April 15 and wasn’t back to check if they had come. When I straggled down to the desk at 11, they couldn’t find my clothes. He ran out and put a note on the truck for the laundry that just happened to be outside the door. My clothes were there, unwashed. The hotel had forgotten to give them my clothes the day before, One day late with the wash normally would not be a problem but I had to leave right away for Rome. As the man at the desk said, it’s better to have the clothes unwashed than to not have them at all.

I took a taxi to the train station and figured out the machines that sell the tickets for a train leaving in about 40 minutes. Several people told me that the Italian trains are often late. The two I took were on time and incredibly fast. The sign here says 248 KM per hour or about 155 MPH.

Seeing the beautiful Tuscan countryside go by made me realize that I need to come back and see much more of Italy beyond the three cities I was seeing this trip.

It hasn’t happened in a long time but in the past, whenever I would consume too much alcohol, I wasn’t able to do much the next day. Maybe in my old age I should become a lush.

This is the second entry for this day. The first one dealt with 9 AM to 4 PM and this one is for 4 PM to 3 AM the next day.

Chiara, our guide, invited the two of us who were on the tour to go to a wine tasting before for the afternoon tour of the Accademia. This turned out to be the first of too much alcoholic consumption. The owners were promoting their export business and unfortunately they had someone like me who knows nothing about wine. They all pretty much tasted like wine. I could tell some difference but not that much.

It was a really good time. The couple of the right were on their honeymoon. They struck me as possibly typical young, outgoing, fun-loving Floridians (whatever that means). I made a comment to Chiara (the blond standing up) that Americans can be obnoxious and she totally disagreed. She felt Americans were usually a lot of fun and easy to get along with.

Besides the honeymoon couple, there were Chiara, Nicole and Neta, who by the end of this night I would call friends.

Chiara invited Neta and me to join her friends and co-workers for dinner, which is really an unusual and wonderful thing to do. It’s worth the time to talk about these six people. I put the languages they spoke after each person. This would make an excellent Venn Diagram)

1. Chiara is an amazing force and free spirit. She’s an excellent tour guide, involved with fashion, and a potential pop star (check out one of her videos at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHEStL3ozG0). She’s the kind of person who just gets people involved. During the long evening, it was clear that people naturally gravitate towards her. There is so much she can do with her life. (French, Italian, English)

2. The person on the far left of the picture below is Nicole. She’s a sultry French woman who reminds me of Edith Piaf. You sense there’s a great deal of mystery behind her. She was the only one who didn’t speak English but that gave me a chance to speak French with her. Chiara told me Nicole is her best friend. Nicole was the one who egged us on to go clubbing and hearded everyone together. Another fascinating person. (French, Italian)

3. I became good friends with Neta, the person in the corner next to me. She’s an Israeli who is also traveling alone. She spend years in India and was often considered to be a native when she was wearing local clothes in India. Her parents are Jews who left Yemen and Bulgaria so she’s called Sephardic. My father was the other type, an Ashkenazi Jew, since his parents were from Romania and spoke Yiddish. She had just quit her job as an art therapist in a women’s shelter. She was in Florence to see the originals of art that some of her children had tried to copy. (Hebrew, English)

4. The guy next to Chiara with the sunglasses on his head is David. He’s the boss of the Florence travel agency, Italywithus.com, which worked amazingly well for me and Neta and everyone else we came in contact with. I’d highly recommend using them if you’re in Italy. Every time I spoke with David, he mentioned another place he had lived or another part of his background. He had lived in Florida, Ireland, Italy, and several other places I’ve forgotten. He clearly was a very competent boss and as it turned out a very fun guy to party with. (English, Italian, ???)

5. I didn’t get to know the guy next to David wearing a vest. His name is Lorenzo (my name in Italian) and is working on his dissertation on the history of the mafia. He is teaching an online course for the U. of New Haven. I would have loved to have spent some time talking about the mafia with him but he left after dinner. (Italian, English)

6. Geet is the guy in the right corner of the picture. He’s from Sri Lanka and was the person who convinced us to join their tour of the Uffizi Museum that morning. He had a gentle way about him while speaking passionately about the tours. He convinced me and I didn’t regret it. He’s another fun-loving person filled with stories about his life. (English, Italian)

For desert, I had a Florence specialty of biscotti dipped in an almond liqueur. Chiara explained how to eat it with what turned out (I think unintentionally) to be a slightly obscene gesture. Or maybe it’s the obscene gesture turned upside down.

After dinner, we went to a folk club. We were no longer in tourist land. There were some international people there who were living in Florence mixed in with the Italians. The music was not really my style, until this woman came up and sang Aretha’s “Chain of Fools” while holding her baby.

We left the folk club around 12:30 AM and Nicole got us all to go to a jazz club, called The Jazz Club. We had to pay 6 euros ($6.50) to join the club but it included a free drink. It was well worth it. There were several musicians jamming together at first. One was playing an instrument I had never seen before called a handspan or hang drum. I got to speak a little Russian with the guy who played it who was from Moscow. It’s a Swiss instrument but based on the steel drum.

Two vocalists came on later who were amazing. They sang scat or bebop. The guy was obviously heavily influenced by Billy Preston. “You keep on using me until you use me up.” My group of six started dancing. I haven’t danced that much in years. I sat down after a while and there of my friends were dancing with their arms around each other and had a massive fall. It was scary at first but when everyone seemed to be OK it was a highlight of the night.

We closed the bar at 2:30. I had wine tasting of small amounts of 6 or so wines, prosecco (like champagne) and two glasses of wine at the restaurant, the almond liqueur at the restaurant, and a beer at each of the clubs. This was more alcohol than I was used to drinking in a month or so.

The experience of the six of us walking through Florence was greatly enhanced by the beautiful buildings and statues everywhere. Where else can you see something like this on your way home at 3 AM?

This last one is a copy of the real David.

Here’s a picture of the three women and of our whole group.

I couldn’t handle the Turkish food that the local ones in our group went for. I need to crash. The trip had been greatly enriched (along with my liver) by partying with these people.

This day had two days. There’s a separate entry for the evening. The highlight of this day for me was the sculpture of David. But there are the little known paintings of the front and back of Larry Feldman. I think I’m a little taller.

When I look at my pictures, I know some of these are very famous. Some are from the Uffizi Museum and some from the Accademia di Belle Arti.

It doesn’t seem right that this is all I’m posting from two of the best museums in the world. I had two great guides who explained so many things. Sometimes though, you have to appreciate the fact that at the time it was amazing even if little of the details remain.

The tour company is really good. they know their stuff and they have many special perks they pull off like getting into the Sistine Chapel at 8 AM when few people are there and going to the dungeons of the Coliseum. You can look them up at italywithus.com

We spent quite a bit of time just looking at David. Someone had to make the joke that he was planning to look like David after another year or so at the gym. No one else stepped forward in the tour so it had to be me making the joke. David is stunning. Even I could tell that this was world-class.

I don’t remember seeing him from the side or especially from the back. He is impressive from all sides.

It felt good to be in these museums with great guides from italywithus.com. The company does have the best tours.

Even though I’m not good with color, the stories behind the pictures meant for an enjoyable day. I couldn’t say the art was unforgettable because I’ve already forgotten most of the stories but the feeling of being there is unforgettable.

In 2011, I went on a 4 week trip to Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Istanbul, and Athens. Soon after I went on another 4 week trip to Korea, China, India, and Bangkok. On both of those trips I had a down moment after 3 weeks. My mind and body feet like it was time to be home. Moving around and facing new experiences every day got to me after three weeks.

Today I hit the three week wall. One part of it is that I’m used to just throwing my bags and leaving stuff around. When it’s time to pack up, I clean everything and stuff things back in the suitcase. When I travel with Margaret, she civilizes where we’re staying. She puts things in a logical places and keep everything straightened up. I miss that (but not enough for me to do when she’s not here).

But don’t feel sorry for me. I’m having one of the best experiences of my life and I’ll be home in 2 weeks.

I rode the big mass transit boat called the Vaporetto to the train station. Here was my last look at the Rialto Bridge.

The train to Florence was uneventful, exactly on time, not like people had told me to expect. The view from Michelangelo Square way up above Florence was amazing.

Riding around in a Ferrari was fun (or it would have been but the tour bus was much nicer).

From my hotel window I could see the beginning of the Ponte Vecchio right across the street.

Here is the full Ponte Vecchio.

Everywhere you go in Florence there are sculptures or quirky things like this.

Crossing the river at night.

Little did I know at the end of this day that the next day would be exactly what I needed to break through the 3-week wall.