Visiting Assisi (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Assisi (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The homes in Assisi are built with rose- and white-colored stone.  Breezes rushed up the streets.

We took a tour of the Franciscan Basilica.  First, we went to the lower church, which is where Saint Francis (1181 – 1226) is buried.  The lower church’s dark interior made me associate everything there with death.

Mass was in session and black-clad nuns sang all the responses in Latin.  Saint Francis is buried under the altar downstairs, which is why there is a constant prayer vigil around his grave.  Saints’ remains have been stolen and set up as pilgrimage sites elsewhere. (Venice’s San Marco and Santiago de Compostella or Saint James in Spain, for example.)

The upper church with its sunlight streaming in made me feel happy.  The frescoes here depict the life of Saint Francis and are also attributed to Giotto, but American art historians dispute this claim.

One of the paintings shows Saint Francis holding up a church, which alluded to his holding up a corrupt church that chose to co-opt him rather than excommunicate him.  Saint Francis understood that a hideously poor society endangered nobles and the Church alike.  Saint Francis knew how to alleviate some of the suffering of the poor.

After visiting the Basilica, we walked through the streets of Assisi.  Fewer Vespas charged around her, which allowed you to hear birds chirping.  People spoke softly here even in the tourist shops.

I ate bread and cheese for lunch and a fizzy water.  I was still on “wedding-photo diet” on my own budget even though we ate well with my college roommate’s family.

The next church we visited was the church of Santa Clara.  Santa Clara was the friend of Saint Francis.

We were the only tourists in this church.  In a small chapel off to the side is the robe of Saint Francis and a dress and overcoat worn by Santa Clara.

As we were standing by the grate looking at the Saint Francis’s belongings, a Saint Clare nun appeared behind the grate and spoke to us in Italian.  She gave us Saint Francis prayer cards, which I taped into my travel journal later.

The nun had a transparent black veil over her face and was completely covered, so that no part of her body could be seen except for her hands.

We went downstairs to the crypt where Santa Clara’s tomb was under the main altar here, too.  Her remains were moved and can only be viewed from the small window in front of us.

While we were there, a group of black clad nuns came in and pulled a red drape across the window and sang.  Their voices made the hairs on my arms stand up.

When they finished their song, we left very happy with our visit.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Sienna (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Sienna (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sienna requires climbing up a steep hill on foot; it is located on top of a hill like most medieval towns in Italy.  Towns were located on top of hills for defensive purposes with the church being the ultimate fortress complete with weapons.

Brown buildings with lots of lookout towers bear witness to the town’s turbulent past.  My travel guide said that Sienna had several wars with its neighbors, particularly in 1230.

In 1230, the Florentines catapulted manure and dead donkeys over the walls of Sienna in an attempt to cause plague in the city, so its inhabitants would die.  

Dead plague victims would make it easy to take all of Sienna’s gold and silver and take control of the city’s food supplies and gain tribute payments from the field managers.

I noticed several statues of Romulus and Remus with their wolf mother, a symbol of Rome throughout the town.  The Siennese appear to have aligned themselves with Rome against Florentine domination.

The first place we visited was the Palazzo Publico and the square in front of the palace.  I admired the copy of della Quercia’s Fonte Gaia in the shell-shaped fountain.

The original fountain suffered quite a bit from people sitting on it during the fast-paced horse race called The Palio.

Inside the Palazzo Publico, there was a lot of restoration work being done on the frescoes from the 12^th century.  As in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, the Palazzo Publicco had a large mural depicting the city’s battles with other cities.

My favorite murals were painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti and entitled The Effects of Good and Bad Government.  Good government featured lots of markets and orderly work in the fields.

The scenery Lorenzetti depicted still resembled the rolling countryside we passed through on the train.  We visited the Duomo and ate a lunch of bread and cheese in a park washed down with fizzy water.

We walked in the midday sun and skipped the siesta, so we could see every beautiful street in this town.  Fatigue overcame me on the train back to Florence.  I slept all the way there.

Later that night, the parents of one of my college friends came to get us to take us out for dinner in his air-conditioned BMW.  I think they took a trip to Europe, so Laurent would not starve on our long honeymoon in Europe.

We were going to eat Chiana steak with wine at a Michelin starred-restaurant with my roommate and her family.   I told my roommate’s dad I wanted to drive around in the air-conditioned Bimmer all night and go to a drive-in for a cheeseburger and vanilla shake and lots of fries.

Her mother categorically told me, “No.  And, this is the end of the Brooke Shields eating or breaking ribs, so they'll reheal to make you very thin and tall.  You have to eat three meals a day and stop binging.  You have to buy some bigger jeans and eat a big pasta lunch at least once a day with Alfredo sauce twice a week.”

The University of Chicago is very multicultural and has many Jewish mothers with doctor dads, who do anorexia nervosa patrol, even for the Norman-French witches in the graduating classes.

My college roommate told me I was going to get hooked up to a cheesecake IV, if I did not consume more calcium.

Skinny-dink, French Laurent got “the memo,” too, on eating and not having to look like a model now that he was married.

“You have had your glamor wedding photos, so eat antipasto – wine, cheese, and expensive salami – before your main dish,” my roommate’s dad said.

I do not like cheesecake, so I ate pastries coated with honey and fresh pine nut seeds and got a cappuccino after that.

I thoroughly enjoyed rolling back to the Duomo in the air-conditioned Bimmer even though it was cool outside. 

When we got to the Duomo, Laurent and I ran off giggling into the labyrinth of streets around our hotel, knowing that the University of Chicago Hassidic dad and mom gave us a license to eat and drink well.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Pisa (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Pisa (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Plan A the next day involved a train ride to Pisa.  All of the city’s most famous monuments are conveniently located together for tourists.

Laurent had to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa to get a panoramic view of the town.  (It was still open to tourists at that time.)  I did not want to huff and puff up the narrow, Medieval stairways in the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I spent my time watching tourists taking pictures with the Leaning Tower of Pisa behind them.  I do not think they knew they could go up in the Tower, because they could not read Italian.

When Laurent reappeared, we visited the Duomo (Cathedral).  I was happy to see the little Hercules on the Baptistery Font that heralded the Renaissance due to its use of ancient Greek ideals of beauty to sculpt it.  This little Hercules was sculpted by Nicola Pisano ushered in the Renaissance in the 13^th century.

Small pieces of fresco paintings lay in orderly piles on the floor.  Bombs from World War II had shattered the frescoes that were lying on the floor.

The love and devotion that went into tedious work like that amazes me, but preserving the patrimony must have been a real motivator for the restorers I thought and maybe good pay or job perks.

The cemetery was full of Roman sarcophogae that were reused during the Renaissance.  Many professors from the University of Pisa had graves there.  I wondered if the tradition in Italy was the same as that in France where graves were recycled every 30 years unless the family keeps up a grave payment.

Even though Pisa lies to the west of Florence, we still had to enter Florence on the east side using the train.  There were gardens everywhere, but the east side of town was poorer than the west side.

There was a large area of small houses made of corrugated siding that did not make it into the tourist guides to visit.  Poor people in Italy seemed much poorer than those in the United States; they had gardens and ramshackle homes, but were borderline homeless.

I was beginning to become somewhat acclimated to the heat and had good things to say about the food, particularly my lunch that day.  My appetite was returning.

I tried a menu item called ribollita.  This item is a Tuscan soup made with bread, beans, vegetables, and whatever vegetable leftovers may be in the house.

It is served hot and comes topped off with a generous helping of olive oil.  I loved it, but almost melted in the heat like a chocolate bar when I ate it for lunch.

Another food item that Laurent and I liked was the bread with the dried fruit in it and the lush Tuscan peaches.  I even developed a liking for fizzy water.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Touring Hilly Fiesole outside Florence (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Hilly Fiesole Outside Florence (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I read that the Italians were formal dressers, so I brought knee-length skirts with me as well as short-sleeved blouses. 

I did not want to be turned away from visiting churches due to skimpy and inappropriate attire.  All the churches have signs outside them that tell visitors to cover up shoulders and not wear shorts and mini skirts in them.    

There are security guards and church ladies in the churches who will make you leave for trying to enter a church dressed inappropriately.  If you protest, they will tell you to file a police report.  (That could take two days out of your tourism.)

This formal attire was making me lose pounds in water-weight loss, though, as we walked around sweating in lines at museums.

After visiting Santa Croce that morning and admiring the Giotto Frescoes, which reminded me of Greek Byzantine painting from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in its composition style, I went back to the hotel, showered, and took a siesta.

Laurent was still sleeping when I woke up, so I made some notes about Florence in my journal that I would verify later:

Florentines like music and the arts.  Even when we were in non-touristy areas, I saw workshops where crafts were being made.  Magazines for young people seem to have a few articles about the arts, too.

Vespa scooters and cars without mufflers seem to be the favorite mode of transportation.  Old and young alike ride on and in them.

Vespas are more practical in the center of town, because the streets are pretty narrow.

We took the bus up the hills around Florence to Fiesole, where it was cooler.  There were gardens full of sculpture on the way up the hills and homes with ochre-colored walls and orange-crescent tiles on roofs.

The homes in Fiesole have panoramic views over the city of Florence below, which we could also see from the bus windows.

We visited the Roman ruins in Fiesole.  I wondered if there were any famous Romans lived there.  The Roman museum, we visited held Etruscan as well as Roman artifacts.

I wanted to learn more about the mysterious Etruscans, who were Tuscany’s original inhabitants.

The Roman circular theatre in Fiesole has been used since antiquity.  We saw a poster that was advertising a performance of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.  I wanted to see Shakespeare performed in the language of Dante.

“Too expensive,” Laurent said.

The church in Fiesole was closed for the siesta.  We ordered a pizza with prosciutto and drank a bottle of fizzy San Pellegrino water.  We drizzled olive oil on our pizza and savored each salty bite.

I took out our map of Florence and tried to pick out the monuments that we could see from our pizza parlor garden dining spot.

Brunelleschi’s dome on the Duomo was the landmark for identifying other landmarks.

We did aerial tourism from the pizza place until the bus came to take us back to Florence, giggling about our cheap tourism to a ritzy ‘burb of Florence.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Uffizi Galleries and the Bargello Museum in Florence (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Uffizi Galleries and the Bargello Museum in Florence (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The next day, we were the first people in line at the Uffizi Galleries.  The Uffizi were definitely going to figure into all of my Plan As until I visited them.

The Museum contains a microcosm of Renaissance paintings, but the room that struck me the most was the one with the monumental paintings of the Madonna and Child by Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto.

These mothers holding their sons were massive, upright, and powerful.  They derived their strength from motherhood and taking care of their children.

Later in life, I would see Egyptian sculptures and realized that the mother goddess tradition never really died out in the Mediterranean.  I wanted to be like those Madonnas someday.  I liked children, despite working in a consulting firm.

Those Madonnas were my favorite paintings in the Uffizi.

I love painting, but I preferred sculpture, so we ran off to see the Bargello Museum.  Plan A actually worked that day, so we entered the museum without a hitch.

Michelangelo’s paunch-bellied Bacchus (the Roman version of the Greek Dionysius) looked like a sophisticated John Belushi from the Animal House movie as he spilled wine for the generations.

I remembered sitting in the art history library at the University of Chicago with photographic plates memorizing artists, dates, and unique aspects of various works for exams.  I knew I was planning future vacation itineraries at the time.

Memorizing art works that way is hard, but I recognize even minor works now thanks to all the hard work that I put into studying those black-and-white plates.

I asked Laurent to take my photograph next to Donatello’s frail-looking David, who made the exploit of vanquishing Goliath seem even more amazing.   Verocchio’s sweet David looked like he was wearing a dress and a fashionable one at that decorated with flowers.

The Bargello Museum used to be a prison, and the frescoes around the top of the rooms showed various forms of torture.  I do not think the Renaissance Florentines believed in reform, parole, or release.

By Ruth Paget - author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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