Author Archives: cathompson

What the Burger?! Subhed: a Glorious Day in Gyeongju

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Written by Courtenay

Monday, Oct. 10, 2022 – Gyeongju – We have had two wonderful days experiencing Buddhist temples and ancient Korea, renting a car in Busan and driving up to the “museum without walls,” the ancient capital of Gyeongju. We had envisioned a rather calm, spiritual end to our two weeks in Korea, when we could slow down from the sights, sounds and bustle of Seoul and Busan for some peaceful, you know, Zen time, at the ancient (7th century) Silla capital of Korea. Little did we know that the national holiday on Sunday, celebrating the 15th century invention of the Korean script, was also a school holiday on Monday. And everyone – I mean everyone! – from all over Korea seemed to have converged on Gyeongju, and our hotel, to celebrate the three-day weekend with their families. It was a madhouse.

But first – we left Busan yesterday and rented a car. Rick was, as always, the intrepid driver and got us out of the city with one clutch, last-minute lane-change onto the correct highway north. On the way to Gyeongju, we stopped at two Zen temples – Beomseosa and Tongdosa. Tongdosa was our favorite – just a stunning setting and a beautiful 20-minute walk up along a river to reach the temple itself. We had a lovely bibimbap lunch just before at a restaurant I had found online – and it was a miracle that they not only could seat us, but that it was by a large sliding door, so we ate inside but had plenty of breeze. It was one of our best meals in Korea so far – and I was gently scolded for eating my rice with chopsticks, when I should have been using the spoon. So much to learn! It had been raining hard during lunch, but it had cleared up by the time we walked up to the temple, and we had a wonderful time. When we arrived at our hotel in Gyeongju in the late afternoon, we were met with a cacophony of children – they were everywhere. We were the only people who did not have a stroller in tow, or a grandmother. Literally.

This morning, we still didn’t realize the scope of the crowds, or the fact this was a major family weekend getaway. We drove into Gyeongju proper, where the 7th-8th century burial mounds and sites are located, and we found ourselves in standstill traffic. Rick, fortunately, was able to pull another clutch move and took a side alley and found a parking space next to a bike rental outfit. We rented three bikes and took off on a tour of the historical sites. The guide books had talked about how magical it was to cruise freely through the ancient, grassy burial mounds, but there were so many people, and children, that we had to gingerly make our way along the paths, hoping we wouldn’t take out any small children or elderly people who veered into our way. But the air was fresh and the wind was brisk, and the grassy mounds – containing the graves of emperors and noble people from centuries past – the pines and maples, were all fluttering in the breeze. We made our way to the National Museum, where we saw beautifully wrought gold crowns and jewelry, grave goods found in the mounds, and stone pagodas and other treasures collected from around the ancient capital of Silla.

We finally made our way back to the parking lot – the location of which we remembered from the hilarious restaurant nearby called “What the Burger!?” – and we found a seriously dysfunctional situation: everyone was trying to leave from the same exit, into the same clogged street, and there was a bit a road rage, and we sent Rick out on his bike to scope out the escape routes. Again, he had a clutch move, and we found a back exit and were on our way to the beautiful temple of Bulguksa, and the nearby grotto of Seokguram.

Bulguksa was lovely, nestled on the side of a mountain, a 7th century temple that was vibrant with offerings from the 21th century – flowers and paper lanterns fluttering in the wind, holding the hopes and wishes of modern people from an ancient tradition.

Seokguram, on the other side of the mountain, had an amazing view of both the city and rice fields of Gyeongju and the sea beyond. I made a small offering and was allowed to ring the huge bronze bell, the sound was astonishing, just lovely. The grotto, perched high up a hill in a carefully engineered, manmade cave, held the most beautiful Buddha, a 9th or 10th century statue, that embodied absolute peace – a Tang-Dynasty-style, with a full figure and graceful drapery. It was my favorite Buddha of the trip. After a long walk back to the car, we made our way back to the hotel, and with most of the families gone, so it is so much quieter tonight.

We head to Seoul tomorrow, and are so excited to have dinner tomorrow with Sunghee, an old friend from the fencing world, who is here visiting family. Her husband, Sungmin, has been our best tour guide and cultural consultant and cheerleader throughout. We are deeply grateful to him for his help on this trip, and for his support over the years, especially through my tough times of early diagnosis. They are a dear family to us, and we are so looking forward to reconnecting with Sunghee, whom we have not seen for a very long time.

Yeoseot?! Yeodul?! San-Jyu-Pun!!

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Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2022 – Today, we took a deep dive into Korean culture and history, starting with another sprint to make the only afternoon English language tour of the Secret Garden at the beautiful Changdeokgung Palace, a 15th century Joseon-era palace where members of the royal family had lived as recently as 1989. We had been told the Secret Garden was a must-see, so we booked the tour, thinking it was 50 minutes but was in fact a full hour and half and included 97 other Westerners, including a group of Germans dressed up in traditional Korean clothing, their phones pinging and constant narration making it hard to hear the soft-spoken guide. But the gardens were beautiful and expansive. Tigers once roamed there, eating an occasional guard, and providing leisure space – theaters and study areas and ponds and pavilions – for emperors and their retinues. We learned that noblemen wore many layers of white clothing and were known for an almost Monty-Python funny walk, with their hands clasped behind their back, walking in a sort of zigzag pattern as they perambulated and cogitated. (Turns out that is how I like to walk, minus the white clothing, which I would have spilled something on immediately.) We learned the women wore up to 25 layers of clothing, and saw where fires were stoked under buildings to provide the famous ondul heated floors. Like the other palaces and grounds in Seoul, the original 15th century wooden structures were burned by samurai invaders in the late 16th century. Only 35 percent of the post-1610 buildings remain, but they are being painstakingly reconstructed. (The modern world intruded too: Just feet from the emperor’s most important pavilion, zombies were filmed coming from a shallow pond in the recent K-drama, “Kingdom.”) The forests seemed to have survived intact, and though we were in the heart of Seoul, it was quiet, the sound of frogs and crickets occasionally chiming in. 

 After touring the palace proper, we checked into a hanok, or traditional Korean dwelling, for a special one-night stay in the Bukchon Hanok Village, a hilly neighborhood between two palaces where the Korean government has tried preserve some of the older homes. Twisting streets are lined with homes with upward sweeping tile roofs and slatted wooden windows. Some hanok host guests, while others have small shops, such as a chic perfumerie where we found a scent called “Lumberjack” and hanbok-rental outfits. (Hanbok are the beautiful traditional Korean dresses that anyone can rent – and get into palaces for free!) Our hanok, the Rakkojae Binkwon, had a gorgeous setting, with the main building overlooking a grassy terrace and a spectacular view of downtown Seoul, its tower gleaming blue in the background, the blue signaling clean air.

Our rooms had a front seating area, with floor cushions and low table, and rich mahagony-colored wood walls and beamed ceilings. Rick had a hard time with his long legs sitting at the table, but there was a public room at the center of the building (with an all-important washing machine) where he could stretch out and see the view off Seoul from the open sliding doors. We slept on thick futon-like mats, but it was too warm to test out the ondul heating. The staff, who were wonderful, served us dinner on the terrace. There was an English-speaking staff member who greeted us, but manager spoke little English, but much more than my Korean. As she showed us around, as I started to panic when I realized there was no washing machine in our room (as advertised), Rick seized the controls and began to pantomime washing his jacket. The manager laughed with delight at his communication skills and led us to the common room. I, however, was tasked with the job of determining what time we would eat. After some confusion, I managed to blurt out “chonyeok,” which means dinner, and she nodded with delight. (Any communication was greeted with such joy between us! It’s amazing what a few words can do. ) Korean numbers are notoriously hard (for me!) and I requested yeo-seot-shi – 6 o’clock – and she held up one hand and her thumb, I held up one hand and my forefinger, as we Americans do) and she added “Sam-ji-pun.” And I nodded with delight – since it sounds just like Japanese – 30 minutes past the hour! Nee nee, totally san-jyu-pun, I said, totally mispronouncing the Korean. So it seemed like we were set on dinner. But now breakfast – achim. I was pretty sure I had us down for yeo-dul, but then another staffer got involved and said they want dinner at 8??? And we had to start all over again with our numbers – I must have seemed like what Asma’s family calls “tube lighting.” In India, the old tube lights first flicker and then take a while to illuminate – my brain is definitely on “tube lighting” mode with Korean. I will try to ask when something closes – and I KNOW I learned to say it – and all I can come up with is… blank. And as soon as I leave the store, I remember tada!!! Or tada heiyo! Too late. Tube lighting.

 Final note – as I left the convenience store a one minute walk from our hanok, I looked to my right and saw a logo with an N and a D entwined. I thought, What??? And sure enough, to my right were the entrance gates to the Notre Dame Educational Center. I poked my head through the gate but could see no one around, except a statue of Mother Mary in the garden beyond. A city of 25 million, 13 time zones from South Bend, and we chose a hanok right next to Will’s home. Another cosmic moment for the cosmic travelers.

Adventures in Korean Art

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Sunday, Oct. 3, 2022 – It was another perfect day in Seoul, starting with a visit to a hillside museum and traditional garden overlooking the skyscrapers of downtown and ending with the arrival of Asma and a stroll through a downpour to see the lights and flashing video screens of a festival celebrating Korean pop culture. Modern Seoul is bright and shiny and constantly moving, like the hypnotic, dreamlike video art that is everywhere – on the sides of buildings, at subway entrances, inside museums. But today we were reminded of how that modern culture taps into centuries of history, how the modern high rises are backed by mountains where hikers still walk on the ancient walls, and modern painters look to ancient ceramics for inspiration.

With rain forecast for Monday, Rick and I decided to to get out of the city while the weather was still nice and seek a little quiet in a neighborhood called Buam-dong, just a short cab ride up into the mountains north of the city. These mountains stood as fortresses of a sort for emperors past, protecting the Joseon era capital from northern invaders, and they are etched with protective stone walls built starting at the end of the 14th century. They look incredibly steep, snaking up the sides of the hills, like the Great Wall of China or the walls above Kotor. There is a popular hiking route that follows these walls, and we saw lots of Koreans – many of them older than us – wearing brightly colored hiking gear and carrying ski-pole hiking sticks, as they set out on what must be a mega stair-master workout. We decided to stick with the museum.

And what a museum! My family – especially Will – knows how much I love an art museum, and the Seoul Museum now ranks high in my favorite museums ever. It wasn’t large, but held a stunning collection of mostly 20th century Korean art, about which I know nothing. Both Rick and I found so much to love. It really was thrilling to walk from room to room and discover yet more beautiful and fascinating works of art. One room was filled with paintings that we assumed were of traditional Korean scenes, perhaps something from the Joseon dynasty. But as I looked at a group of men gathered around a long table, I thought, something looks suspicious here. This is a Last Supper! In fact, in the 1950s, the painter Kim Kichang had painted an entire cycle of the life and death of Christ, much like the Giotto’s we saw this spring in Padua.

There was an exuberant massive painting of apple trees by Daiwon Lee from 2000, thickly textured paintings of persimmons by Oh Chigyun, a wonderful rooster by Lee Ungno, and some incredible reinterpretations of traditional pottery by Ko Younghoon, King Ikjoong, and Son Seock, whose deeply textured works mysteriously changed colors as you viewed them from different angles. Through the museum, there were incredibly beautiful depictions of nature, evoking the best of Van Gogh, and a real focus on beauty. There was also a deep connection to the past in many of the pieces. Which was so wonderful when you stepped outside into the traditional hillside garden behind the museum, which brought together past and present with a sacred rock at the top and modern Kusama Yayoi pumpkin at the bottom.

With help from a Wesleyan graduate and her mother and brother out for a stroll, we managed to find another of the cafes I had found online – one that promised a view and outdoor seating. It was a steep hike, and our navigation system took us up a weird path and I had almost given up on finding it when it appeared – a funky cafe with a VW bug as entryway art. It didn’t have food for lunch, so we ordered what turned out to be yogurt drinks and an apple tart and carrot cake (Rick is trying to get his vegetables in somehow.) But it did have a fantastic view of the city skyscrapers and the ancient stone walls.

After two failed attempts to flag down a cab, we decided to brave the bus system, which turned out to be incredibly easy, especially with the instant translate feature of Google Translate, which helped us figure out what the end stop would be – miraculously letting us out not far from our next stop, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Confucian shrine Jongmyo, where the spirits of Joseon emperors are enshrined. Rick was a gamer to visit the shrine, when I knew he was tired, but we were feeling quite daring after having successfully taken a bus. Sometimes it’s the little things.

Asma arrived in the late afternoon, just as it began to pour. But she, too, was a gamer and declared that after her exhausting plane ride (coming shortly after a long shift being a doctor), she was up for a walk in the downpour. So off we went down to City Hall, and up to the Gyeongbokgung Palace, past sad clusters of people with rain gear and umbrellas, braving the rain to watch events of the various festivals celebrating modern Korean culture. If the weather had been nice, I think the square would have been crowded with people. I had thought it would be surreal to see Asma here, but strangely, it seemed completely natural to me.

That evening, we had planned to go to the top of Namsan, which has an iconic tower with an incredible view of the city. So instead we stayed close to the hotel – but the only place we could find with a covered porch was …… the fried chicken place! It was a jolly dinner – sometimes what is easiest is best – and then we got Asma back to the hotel for a much-needed sleep.

Monday, Oct. 4, 2022 – We woke to the confusion of a National Founder’s Day – a national holiday celebrating the mythical foundations of Korea and also apparently a day 30,000 demonstrators were scheduled to gather near our hotel for a very loud, raucous rally. The hotel warned us that it might be very difficult to get in and out of the hotel, so we headed to the National Museum of Korea to get out of the rain and away from the noise. The museum was spectacular, and we were able to trace nearly three millennia of Korean history through the massive museum. There were gorgeous pots, gold jewelry, mysterious Buddhist sculptures, beautiful bronze objects such as bells and mirrors. The displays showed the rich connections between the ancient Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures, and explored influences on the art of all three cultures from the Central Asian Gandharan cultures, which in turn had been influenced by Hellenistic Greek culture via Alexander the Great. That Greek Hellenistic art lead to the Buddha wearing Roman togas as far away as Korea and Japan is to me the essence of being human – we are all so much more connected than we are often lead to believe, that cultures are not so separate. Distinct perhaps, but sharing much history, though we realize it or not.

Oh and the Moon Pots! Here were the actual porcelain pots that inspired the modern Korean artists we saw yesterday.

We took the subway back home, on recommendation of the hotel, given the crowds. But the rain apparently must have kept the numbers down. Men yelled from loud speakers all afternoon, but it is 6 p.m. now and the crowd has gone home and it is quiet again. We are heading out in a little bit to visit the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, a futuristic piece of architecture by the late Zaha Hadid, and have some street food from the Gwangjang Food Market. We are so daring, we will take the subway, which was incredibly easy to use. Wish us luck!

One day, one city, two of the world’s most beautiful buildings: St. Peter’s Basilica and the Pantheon

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Will and Amy in the Vatican Museums
Looking up in St. Peters

ROME – Tuesday, May 24, 2022 – I was dreading this day – in the best possible way – because I had bought a private tour for the Vatican that started at 7:15 a.m. and I had no idea what to expect, except that Will and Amy would likely be fairly grumpy to get up at 6 a.m. to see yet ANOTHER museum and church. It turned out to be absolutely wonderful – we had a guide for just the four of us, and she took us through parts of the vast collections of the Popes, seeing treasures from the ancient world – statues that changed the way we see – to the Renaissance and beyond. The ornate palaces of the popes, their self-aggrandizing art, their pillaging of ancient monuments, the famous Papal apartments of Pope Julius II with the amazing Raphael paintings, the Sistine Chapel! Rick was able to see his beloved School of Athens, which Will apparently was drawn to as well, with Aristotle holding his book the “Ethics,” a work Will has been wrestling with for the past year at Notre Dame. We also waited a half hour in the hot morning sun to see St. Peter’s Basilica, an awe-inspiring space the length of one and a half football fields and whose side arms are bigger than most churches. Rick commented that most of the churches we have seen on the trip would fit inside this one glorious space. Will perhaps gave it his highest compliment ever, saying it was like a movie.

In front of the Pantheon

Afterwards, we went to the Pantheon – how could we see two of the world’s greatest structures in one day? Did that really happen? It is a transformative space, with its beautiful oculus and coffered ceiling. We had some wonderful granita afterwards, and you could see the majestic structure peeking around the corner, and it really didn’t feel real. I was once skeptical when Yale University’s Diana Kleiner proclaimed the Pantheon was the most beautiful building in history, but I am now a convert. St. Peter’s may be spectacular, but the Pantheon is almost like one of Plato’s “forms,” the ultimate ideal of what a building should be. We will have to ask Will if I am totally off base on this one.

The oculus in the Pantheon

Tonight, we are off for Dim Sum at a well-known restaurant a 3 minute walk from our hotel. Three minutes is about all we can handle after a very long, hot day. And I didn’t even mention the Caravaggios that Rick and I squeezed in after the Pantheon – the paintings of St. Matthew at the Contarelli Chapel at the Church of the Francesi (near Caravaggio’s haunts) and those at the Santa Maria del Popolo – where we had to wait for 25 minutes to open, so we bided our time with an excellent museum on Leonardo, recapping all we saw in Milan two weeks ago. Rick was exhausted but a good sport. And we learned the trick to lighting up the Caravaggios – both churches required you to put a few euros in a machine to illuminate them – otherwise you can’t see much in the darkness. But the key is to let the lights dim, then the crowds leave, then you put money in and enjoy them in peace for a few minutes. We were transfixed by the Calling of St. Matthew – my new favorite Caravaggio, though Rick confessed his favorite is the still life of fruit we saw back at Milan’s Ambrosiana. It’s a fair choice.

Ok, my 15 minutes are up – actually 20 – so I must go. Tomorrow we will visit the Coliseum, the Palatine Hill with its view over the Circus Maximus and the Forum! Party on, Nero!

The art of a too-brief visit to Florence

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An after-dinner walk over the Arno looking upriver at the Ponte Vecchio Bridge

ON A TRAIN FROM FLORENCE TO ROME, Monday, May 23, 2022 – I love super-fast trains. Love them. From my first ride on a Shinkansen in Japan, I was hooked, and the Italian super-fast trains, the Frescciarossa, are just as smooth and fun as their Asian counterparts. Ok, so they don’t really run on time that much, but ours was only 9 minutes late, and now we are speeding along across the Tuscan countryside watching the hills and red-roofed houses flash by our windows. 

 We had a wonderful, if very brief, stay in Florence, where we met up again with Grazia, who drove the 1 ½-hour drive to brave the heat and the crowds of a Florentine weekend with us. Florence is a small medieval city, with narrow, winding streets despite the best attempts of the ancient Romans to set it up as a traditional grid-patterned Roman military camp – the traces of which still remain in the main (wider) streets and the piazzas, one of which was the old Roman Forum. But I digress. The fact is that Florence is small, so when it is filled with masses of tourists – as it was this weekend – it feels extremely crowded. Regardless of what you may read in the news, European travel is full-on this summer. There were many Americans among the throngs, many of them young, but we also heard UK English, German, Russian, Chinese and Italian spoken among the tourists. 

Will and Amy at the Uffizi

 The theme of our weekend with Grazia was art – very old and very new. I have been focused this trip on showing Will and Amy great masterpieces of the past, but Grazia pulled me into the present, taking me to an NFT art show (what???? Yes, my thought exactly) that was running alongside the Donatello exhibition at the Strozzi Palace. It is digital art, sold digitally, sometimes for very large amounts of money, apparently using crypto or something. I am rather skeptical, but perhaps I am just too old. Grazia’s friend, who deals in art, is taking notice of the trend however, so stay tuned when you hear about NFTs. Grazia and I saw a massive digital artwork in the entryway of the storied Renaissance palace – it was a huge white frame filled with swirling, psychedelic shapes that constantly morphed and seemed to spill out of the frame into our space. It actually made us think of the introduction of linear perspective I have been so obsessively telling W&A about – how Donatello in sculpture and then Masaccio in painting continued the revolution in art toward humanism and realism started by Giotto (and Pisano before him) in the early 14th century. Maybe people looking at this new-fangled art perfected by Leonard da Vinci were met with the same skepticism. Unfortunately, my loyal gang of art lovers were worn out and missed the NFT show, as well as the tour of an amazing collection of modern, 20th and 21st century art collected by Grazia’s friend’s father. The collection included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, as well as many other artists I was not familiar with, but should have been. My friend Twink would have been over the moon. 

But lest I forget, Rick and I were also able to have an amazing experience examining, up close, the amazing 15th century frescoes by Masolino and Masaccio at the Brancacci Chapel south of the Arno River. They are being restored, and visitors are allowed to climb the scaffolding to see the frescoes in small groups, for a half hour. It was amazing to be able to witness this transition from stylized to more realistic, between abstraction and realism – a tension that we saw play out in the modern art of the Casamonti collection as well. Oh yes, and we took W&A to the Uffizi late yesterday before joining Grazia again for a final Florence farewell dinner. Oh, just a few Duccios, Botticellis, Leonardos and Michelangelos before dinner. And we had some amazing food in Florence – the first night, Will and Amy sought out Chinese noodles while we had dinner with Grazia and a few friends from Florence and Rome at the 4 Leoni. Grazia also set us up for an amazing lunch at a hotel-top restaurant with beautiful views of the city – and the best truffle pastas.

Dinner last night was lovely, too, and it was funny, because we first said goodbye to Grazia Saturday night, because she was headed back home on the coast after spending the night at her friend’s house. But then she decided to stay, so we spent Sunday afternoon together at the modern art museum, and said goodbye again. Then she walked her sweet little King Charles Spaniel around a while and decided to stay for dinner! So we had the pleasure of a wonderful Florentine meal with her before she hit the road for home last night. So every time we said goodbye and see you soon, it was true. So hopefully, it will be true again. So we are off to our final stop – Roma! First on the itinerary is pizza, followed by the Roman Forum at night. Tomorrow morning we will get up at 6 a.m. for our early-morning breakfast tour of the Vatican

From the frescoes of Padua, to the mosaics of Ravenna, and on to the towers of Bologna

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The Scrovegni Chapel in Padua
The Kiss of Judas

BOLOGNA, Italy – Friday, May 20, 2022 – We have been extremely remiss in our blogging, so much so that my mother called me last night to remind us to “keep sending those blogs!” It’s nice to know we have a loyal readership. 

Let’s see, where to start? Maybe with our daytrip to Padua, or Padova, a small city outside of Venice with perhaps the most important works of Western art, ever, frescoes by the Florentine artist Giotto di Bondone, in a small early 14th century chapel next to an ancient Roman arena. Rick and I left Will and Amy in Venice to spend the day on their own, going to the Biennale, Venice’s huge modern art extravaganza, and shopping. But Rick and I opted for the medieval, traveling the 30 minutes by train to Padua, home of one of Europe’s oldest universities (Galileo studied there) and also the home this weekend to a saber Grand Prix, where several of Will’s friends and teammates are fencing. Will’s coach from OFA, Adam, and his daughter are here, and we are missing them in Venice by just one day. We joked with Will that his Notre Dame teammate and friend Jared Smith was going to take a break from the fencing to meet us at the Scrovegni Chapel, and that Jared just LOVED it. 

Angels in mourning

But all kidding aside, the Scrovegni chapel was breathtaking. I literally was moved to tears, not only by the beauty of the frescoes with their deep humanity – with pathos and humor instantly recognizable to a 21stcentury observer – but also that I was able to see them in my lifetime. With Covid and all, I wasn’t sure I would ever make it here. We only had 15 minutes in the small chapel – entry is restricted to limit the humidity, which can damage the frescoes, dating from 1303-05, but it was so moving to see them in person. Apparently, Dante (whose tomb we saw yesterday in Ravenna) was a friend of Giotto’s, and they are said to have hung out in the chapel while Giotto was painting it. You wonder if the depiction of hell in Giotto’s Last Judgement inspired Dante’s Inferno. The main walls are covered with deeply colored panels, telling the stories of the life of Mary, of Jesus and of his Passion and resurrection. It was hard to see the detail from the floor, but I had studied them in classes with Dr. Rocky (see previous posts) so I knew what to look for – the funny “side-eye” glance of a shepherd sizing up Joachim’s mental state, the bulbous, wine-sipping priest whose shape is reflected in the nearby wine jugs, the look of despair in the eyes of Mary lamenting her son, or the angels above who mourn with their whole bodies. And who can forget the two kisses – that of the parents of Mary – the “first kiss in Western art” according to Rocky – and the kiss of Judas, in which Jesus looks straight into Judas’s eyes at the moment of betrayal and basically melts him with his laser beam. These frescoes were part of the pre-Black Death zeitgeist in Europe, when Christianity, art and literature were being humanized, brought down to human scale. Dante was soon to write the Divine Comedy in the vernacular, in the Tuscan dialect, so that common people could understand it, if not read it themselves. At the time, everything written – and spoken by the priests in church – was in unintelligible Latin. Giotto was doing the same thing in paint, making the stories of the Bible human, making the people human, with real emotions, rather than the distant, otherworldly, highly stylized Byzantine figures of the Madonna and Jesus. This paved the way, after the Black Death, for the Florentine Renaisance of the 15th century. I tell you all this because it was incredibly exciting to see these frescoes, and think of all that came after, and before. They are just so beautiful, and even for a non-Christian, they are moving portraits of all the range of human emotion, and body language. People still make the same gestures, facial expressions, exclamations of full-body grief that people did 700 years ago.

A beautiful 5th century mosaic sky

Fast-forward to yesterday – when we went to another important city and art pilgrimage site – Ravenna, a long two-hour drive south of Venice. A professor at Stanford, Martin Evans, who has since passed away, said once in a class I was in that everyone should try to go to Ravenna once in their lifetime to see the incredible mosaics from late antiquity. So I did. Finally. This ancient capital of the Roman Empire as it was collapsing in the 5th century has some of the world’s best preserved and most beautiful ancient mosaics  – probably because it is so far out of the way no one bothered to plunder them. Our favorite was the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia – the 5th century AD daughter of an emperor who once wrote love letters to Attila the Hun – she was a scream. It isn’t believed she is buried here, but it is an absolute jewel box worthy of an imperial personage or a girlfriend of Attila. The deep blue sky of the small dome sparkled with gold stars looked like an ancient Persian rug, the beautiful plants, animals and Apollo-esque Jesus-as-Shepherd, all felt deeply tied to pagan antiquity. While the other monuments felt more political – the Emperor Justinian declaring his sovereignty (he had retaken Italy from the barbarians in the 6th century) in his portrait in San Vitale, or the wholesale re-writing of the mosaics at Sant’ Apollinare in Nuovo, where the barbarian-yet-Christian Theodoric had his courtiers repurposed as Christian martyrs by later Catholic re-conquerers. If all that sounds confusing, don’t worry, it is. But it was amusing – or canny – that the mosaicists failed to airbrush out the hands of his courtiers, still stubbornly holding onto the columns of the palace. Their bodies had been “mosaicked” over with curtains. But everywhere, the colors of the tiny tiles and the skill of the unnamed mosaicists were stunning. We had let Will and Amy go their own way, dropping them at the beach, while Rick and I sped through the beautiful old town, hopping from mausoleum to basilica. We had intended to take Will and Amy to one last mosaic-filled church on the way out of town, but it got so late we had to skip that last church. So they will have to come back on their own, one day, and see these mosaics themselves.

The Towers of Bologna

 After loooooong hours of driving and perhaps 500 traffic circles, we arrived at Bologna last night, after driving from Venice to Ravenna, to the beach, to Ravenna again, to the beach, and then finally to Bologna. Bologna is a great city, with an estimated 40 km of covered porticoes – we had breakfast under a wooden one dating back to the 13th century – and swarms of young people. It is crowded but not with tourists – yes, there are tourists too, but mostly it seems to be university students, and people rushing to work – many on the not-quite-sea-worthy bikes that are ubiquitous. It has a nice vibe, and tons of great food, and shopping, and energy. We are glad we had a quiet day here and are gathering our energy for our trip to Florence tomorrow, where we will meet up with Grazia again. 

 So Ma, look! I blogged! 

La Dolce Vita

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MANTOVA, Italy – Sunday, May 15, 2022 – On our first day in the city best known to the English-speaking world as the place where Romeo fled after killing Juliet’s cousin, we tried to ease into an Italian frame of mind, with a late-night dinner in an ancient piazza, enjoying the still-warm evening air with an old friend.

Grazia, whom I have known since Will and her daughter Chiara started pre-school together at Catlin, grew up 45 minutes away in Asola, where her mother still lives. So she made the trek from her home near the Cinque Terre, almost 3 hours away, to welcome us to Italy and catch up after many months of only the occasional text or FaceTime call. She arrived looking glamorous, as always, in a white T-shirt and jeans – how does she do that??? – with her little King Charles Spaniel, Maya, at her heels. We spent the late afternoon sitting in trattorie, exploring the barrel-vaulted splendor of the Duomo, wandering the medieval historic core, stopping at shops she has known since she was young, as always searching for the best, most authentic foods typical of the region. As you may know, Grazia is an amazing cook (I still remember the lasagne she brought to the first preschool potluck) and an expert on Italian regional food. I helped her edit recipes years ago for an app and blog she was creating, and so I had actually learned about many of the specialties she pointed out – and tasted – as we walked – a rose-shaped cake, an almond confection. I had forgotten the Mantua connection! In any case, it was just wonderful to see her and catch up on her life, her family and her many projects.

We had a very special dinner on the Piazza dell’Erbe, near the old clocktower, after a day that was unseasonably hot and extremely crowded with tourists, many of whom were Italian. It felt more like a crowded Florence in August than spring in an off-the-beaten-path Northern Italian city. However, by the time we had dinner at 8 p.m. (late for us, early for everyone else) it had started to cool down and the sky turned a deep blue, and it was just lovely. Grazia managed to talk the maitre d’ into giving us the best table on the edge of the seating area, with the nicest view and the best air flow.

We ordered the Rice from Mantua, or Risotto alla Mantova, which has a special place in all our hearts. Grazia taught me to make this dish years ago, and it is one of Will’s favorite comfort foods. I always knew I wasn’t making it quite right, since I didn’t have the proper kind of pork, but I wondered how close I was getting to the authentic dish. When the waiter placed the dish in front of us, it looked, well, like Rice from Mantua – the rice had the right shape, the meat the right texture, the taste startlingly familiar. Will seemed astounded that it really was like our favorite dish – we were eating our home cooking in the hometown of Virgil, in a medieval piazza thousands of miles from home. To be having the authentic dish with Grazia herself made it all the more special. After two years of the pandemic, and several more before that of my own surreal cancer trauma, it felt like an experience I would never imagine I would have again in my life. And it felt so normal, to be sitting with an old friend, catching up, enjoying the food and the evening air. So simple. So precious.

Milano: Michelangelo, Leonardo and the Finger

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Milano – Thursday, May 12, 2022- We arrived to Milan yesterday after a miraculous day of travel with no delays, hassles or mishaps. Not only was it a miracle to have no flight issues these days, but it seemed like a miracle that we are actually on a trip. For the past two years, we had gotten so good at making, and then cancelling, plans – Japan, Sweden, South Korea – that it seemed unreal until the last minute that we would even go this time. But here we are, thousands of miles from home, in a world that looks unchanged in many ways- crowds of tourists, no Covid restrictions except required masking at a few places. It’s surreal that northern Italy was one of the first places hit worst by the pandemic, and here is the busy city of Milan, its streets crowded, the trams and buses clanging along, sharply dressed business people grabbing lunch at the outside trattorias.

On top of the Duomo

We checked into our apartment near the Duomo – it’s a sort of AirBnB – a few converted rooms carved out of the top floor of an office building – and headed to the over-the-top Gothic fantasy that is the Milan cathedral. The fourth-largest cathedral in the world, we rode to the rooftop on the elevator (thank God and the Madonnina statue at the tip-top of the cathedral that we didn’t have to take the stairs) and marveled at the more than 1,200 statues that festoon the pink-white confection of a structure – everywhere you look, there is sculptural decoration, from statues standing atop spires to a lowly pigeon carved into the steps on the rooftop. The Visconti family that started building this cathedral in the 14th century to glorify their despotic reign were late to the game – Gothic was going out of style by the time they got started, and it took more than 600 years to complete. We were surprised by how hot it is here in Milan right now, and it was very hot up on the roof, so we headed down for a pretty mediocre, expensive meal on a terrace with a fabulous view of the facade of the cathedral. The view made up for the food.

First Gelato

Today, we started with a walk through the fashion district of Milan, where armed guards stand outside shops with names like Prada, Gucci, Missoni, Chanel – while inside, stern masked employees glowered through the windows lest we should decide to come in and dare to look at the merchandise we clearly couldn’t afford. The streets were lovely and old, though, and it was fun to see the high fashion in the windows. We then walked to the Castello Sforzesca, the medieval castle tricked out by the ruling Sforza family in the early Renaissance. Ludovico Sforza was a Renaissance prince, not unlike Lorenzo the Magnificent de’ Medici in Florence. Sforza hired none other than Leonardo da Vinci to be his court artist for 18 years. It was for Ludovico that Leonardo painted his Last Supper, which we saw later in the afternoon. But first, we wound our way through a museum that Rick feared would never end – though it did end with Michelangelo’s last Pieta, a half-finished work of a standing Mary holding her dead son Jesus. Michelangelo’s first Pieta is the more famous, at the Vatican, which he did in his early 20s. This one was done just before he died at age 89. Rick said it was the saddest sculpture he had ever seen – the work of a man losing his powers to create. To me, it looked almost modern, an abstraction of grief and mourning.

Waiting for The Last Supper

We then trooped to the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazia, to see Leonardo’s Last Supper. It had been hard to get tickets, and they had sent all these strict instructions about having to bring our ID, and show up at least 30 minutes before to prove we were who we were and do a temperature check etc. etc. Amy even wore a long dress to make sure we wouldn’t violate the dress codes to cover knees and shoulders. Well, it turns out that none of that was necessary – we were welcome with a shrug and told to wait our turn. So we checked in early and stood around in the blazing sun waiting for our 15 minutes with the great late 15th century masterpiece – a masterpiece that had begun to schlump off the wall where it was painting just a few decades after Leonardo finished it. It’s a miracle the painting – considered the first of the High Renaissance with its perfect naturalism and single-point perspective – survived at all, even narrowly escaping a bomb in WWII. It’s beautiful, though faded and hard to read, but really pops when you stand back. It seems to literally recede into space, giving the illusion that the room extends beyond the wall. The painting has had a huge impact on art ever since, and it was remarkable to actually be in the refectory where he painted it.

Amy and Will then headed out on their own and found a Starbucks in a beautiful old building with a baroque facade, while Rick and I stumbled onto the 3rd-4th century AD ruins of the imperial capital of Ancient Rome when it was in Mediolanum, or Milan. They are right across from where we will have dinner tomorrow. We then wandered into a square with a huge Michelangelo-esque statue of a hand with its middle finger extended. Known as “Il Dito,” the modern sculpture by Maurizio Cattelan appears to be giving the finger to the financial institutions surrounding it, especially the stock exchange building, a post-2008-meltdown Bull of Wall Street. But it could also be that he is flipping off the fascistic architecture of the building itself, which is quite ugly. It also had echoes for me of the famous huge hand of the Emperor Constantine, on view at the Capitoline museums, with its colossal finger pointing up. He was the first to make Christianity legal in the Roman Empire – is there a knock at Christianity too? Who knows? That’s the fun of art – ancient and modern – trying to figure it out.

København, where the skies are blå and the øl is kalt

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We arrived in Copenhagen on a cold, blue-sky day, when everyone in this city was out in front of the cafes and bars drinking beer and enjoying the new-found sun. We were able to take in the views from the Round Tower, before eating some smorrebrod, walking around the cobbled city, weaving in and out amongst the pedestrians and bicyclists, and now about to crash from no sleep. The best news of the day, however, is that Will made it safely to Taiwan — again with apparently no sleep — but he reports he is well and having the time of his life. Gotta go catch some sleep or this blog post will continue to make little sense. So god nat from Copenhagen central — a view of the famous spiral church steeple from my window — and sending love across the two oceans. Missing my little big boy… Oh yea, and that dog.