Please don’t be concerned that I’m going to be dropping in and out of Italian in this post. The title pretty much exhausts my knowledge of the language. Oh, and ‘attraversiamo’, from Eat Pray Love. Okay, that’s it now, done.
I have to say reading Dad’s letters is no easy feat. He was a master of squeezing about four pages of writing into a single aerogram – remember them? Which makes reading them akin to code-breaking. I think he missed his calling at Bletchley Park.
Ah, Italy. I have only been there in E M Forster novels and Merchant Ivory films, and of course, Eat Pray Love. As such I have an impossibly romantic notion of the place. Having met plenty of Italians overseas though, I imagine it is less like travelling demurely with a maiden aunt and more like getting pinched on the bum, a lot.
If every city has a word, I imagine Rome’s is romance, La Dolce Vita.
Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning. Giotto di Bondone
Florence 29/2/60
Dear Mum and Dad,
I hope all is well at home I am having quite a swift tour of Italy which has been quite interesting but rather tiring. The food varies but is mostly starch, and for the money, not very nourishing, you would get a very miserable meal 10/- in a cafe.
Since I wrote last I have visited the Sistine Chapel and seen Michelangelo’s famous painting on the ceiling and also work by Raphael. I also visited the usual tourist spots. Roman Forum, Colosseum, Piazza di Spagna, Keats, and Shelley’s memorial and the old Appian Way.
On Feb 20th my friend Pat and I took a train to Naples, to which we both took an instant dislike. It is a dirty place with many pestering beggars so we took a ferry to Sorrento, which is a really charming place. We booked into a lovely hotel with a superb view of the bay and most inexpensive. It is quite the nicest place I have stayed at.
The Sunday saw us on a Ferry to Capri. It i certainly a very romantic spot – a great tourist centre and of course very expensive. There are ways of avoiding the expensive aspect of this and I have written a letter to David (Dad’s cousin, an olympic rower) outlining the economies he might like to use if he comes to Rome for the Olympic Games.
We spent the day walking round the island past Mussolini’s castle, old ruins, beautiful houses and gardens, and along the steep winding road, which you look down from quite a height onto this beautiful blue sea. We did not go to the Blue Grotto because the tide was not right.
We then caught the ferry back to Sorrento. On Monday we went in a local bus to Amalfi on what must be one of the most scenic driveways of the world. It is a fantastic drive along a steep, narrow, mountainous road with a sheer drop to the sea on one side and mountain peaks soaring up on the other with orange and olive plantations and vineyards on the side of the mountains. We were accompanied by a new Australian couple from Brisbane.
On the next two days we visited the ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Unfortunately it was too cloudy to go up the Mount Vesuvius but the ruins were very interesting. Many of the houses were still standing and were very well preserved. Some of bodies were visible and distorted with the agony of their fate.
You could see the charcoal remains of loaves of bread and other food stuffs, the tools they used, and cooking implements, keys, cut-throat razors etc. all indicating a very high standard of living. Many two and three story houses were still standing. The excavations at Pompeii were commenced in the 18th century and are still continuing. They cover an area of about a square mile! It is an extraordinary place.
Our next port of call was Naples and there we stayed overnight and visited their local museum which house quite a lot of the artwork and relics from Pompeii and the Herculaneum. We then hurried back to Rome.
For extra cost we were able to fly to Pisa on the 28th. We took a bus to Florence, with the idea of returning to Pisa on the 3rd to fly to Milan. We passed the leaning tower on the way, it is quite impressive.
The bus took nearly four hours to get to Florence we though that it never would. It went on and on stopping everywhere and we were very fortunate in getting a seat.
Florence is a beautiful city with beautiful shops, particularly for leather goods. One is always reminded her, and all over Italy, how courteous and pleasant their policemen are. They are very pleased to help and in Florence most of them seem to be able to speak English very well. Today we visited Loggia della Signoria which is famous for its architecture and statues including the famous ‘Rape of the Sabines’.
Next door is the Palazzo Vecchio which dates back to 1298. It’s chief interests are the big, rambling, ornate rooms with paintings on the walls and ceilings, and many fine sculptures. The chief drawback to these kinds of places is that there are so many of these sorts of buildings and museums about and usually the lighting is so bad that it is very difficult to see anything. I get so sick now of heavy Roman statues and gaudy art that I probably miss a lot. I don’t know how I will see a fraction of what there is to see.
Love from Chris
Oh, how magnificent a problem, to be concerned not to see all the treasures of Italy. It strikes me that these travels are very much in the style I recall from childhood. Dad is a great believer in building Rome in a day, well, if not building it, at least touring it!
Our travels were always fly-by-night tours, we would spend a day, or at the most two in a place, madly scrambling around trying to see everything, then boom! Time to move on. Decades before the Race Around the World reality TV shows, Dad had that style of travel down.
As such, he has seen so much of the world, he is a tireless traveller who will walk from sunrise to sunset to experience a place in its entirety, to soak it up and be spat out into the next place to start over again. It’s a hell of a way to travel.
Dad told me another Italian story last night at dinner. His American friend, who turned up again in Rome, I think Dad missed a major romance right there, insisted Dad have a haircut to tame his wild, colonial locks. They found a hairdresser in Sorrento, who Dad claims, worked by picking up single strands of hair and cutting them one at a time – he was there all day. Probably the only time Dad sat still on the whole trip! It does speak volumes of the Italian way of savouring every moment, every sensation in life.
I am inspired by the regal self-assurance of this city, so grounded and rounded, so amused and monumental, knowing she is held securely in the palm of history. I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady. Elizabeth Gilbert
Images:
Title Image: Trevi fountain walksofitaly.com
Michangelo’s Creation of Adam Sistene Chapel wikimedia.org
Appian Way romanhomes.com
Capri torresaracenacapri.com
Amalfi Coast Drive shedexpedition.com
Herculaneum blogspot.com
Pompeii wikimedia.org
Leaning tower Pisa blogspot.com
Loggia della Signoria esploriamo.com
Dad's travel diaries 
Loved reading this Tina. You really have Dad’s measure. It’s great to reminisce on those travels and in hindsight how much we gained even if we did grumble at the time. I remember our first trip to London together and we did the usual sightseeing during the day, went to a play and then met John and Johannah (who were living in London at the time) for supper and I woke up with my head in a bowl of soup!
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Ha ha! That’s hilarious mum! xxx
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