VENICE, Italy — May 17, 2022 — We arrived in Venice as dark clouds gathered at the end of an unseasonably hot May day, winding our way up a twisting ramp to the sixth floor of a parking garage on the city’s edge and then dragging our bags up and over a half dozen pedestrian bridges on a twenty-minute trek to reach our AirBnB. We tried to eat at a pizza place that sits just below our rooms on the edge of Campo San Polo, Venice’s largest and prettiest piazza, but were refused an outside table because of the possibility of rain. Grumpy and frustrated, we took our pizza up to the rooms, but quickly cooled off when the clouds opened up, and we sat watching the heavy rain pound down on the beautiful piazza, and sheet lightning flared over Venice late into the night.

That’s been the theme of our time in Venice — unusually warm weather, lots of walking, and some minor annoyances, but always a very cool reward, such a stunning 16th century painting, or a cup of pistachio gelato, or an unforgettable view, around the next corner.

A visit to St. Mark’s Basilica, for instance, required a considerable march across much of Venice, and when we finally arrived and presented our tickets, we were denied entry because Amy’s skirt did not cover her knees. Meanwhile, one male tourist after another trudged past us into the basilica showing their legs. Anyway, a nearby street salesman offered up a fairly garish scarf/wrap in exchange for five euros (such a deal), and we made our way into the basilica. Of course, it was hot in there, and crowded, and the scaffolding in front of the building took some of the shine off the bronze horses that overlook St. Mark’s Square. It wasn’t a great experience, and we came back out in the blazing sun slightly disappointed, but then, yet again, Venice delivered a welcome respite.

We hired a water taxi, one of those sleek, beautifully maintained wooden boats, to take us on a ride from St. Mark’s up the Grand Canal, under the Rialto Bridge, and then back down the Grand Canal and into the maze of narrow side channels that lead into the San Polo neighborhood. It was a fabulous experience, one of the highlights of our trip, just cruising up the main canal lined with fading palazzos, dodging the gondolas and overloaded water buses. The taxi driver gabbed on his phone the entire time, while we stood in the back of the boat, the breeze in our faces, and watched Venice go by and by. We were dropped off only a few yards from the Campo San Polo, our home away from home. That was cool.

MANTUA, Italy — May 14, 2022 — We left Milan this morning, picked up a rental car, and made an uneventful two-hour-plus drive to Mantua, which welcomed us with this stunning view as we crossed the bridge over the lakes that ring the beautiful medieval city, the birthplace of the ancient Roman poet Virgil as well as a jewel box of Renaissance art and architecture. We were allowed to drive into and across the bumpy, busy main piazza to our hotel, the Palazzo Castiglioni, which hosts six large, incredible rooms in a renovated palace that sits right on the square. It was all so special, everything and everyone so nice, until we went to lunch, did a tour of the Palazzo Ducal, one of the highlights of Mantua, came back to our hotel hot, thirsty and in need of a break, only to learn that somewhere along the way I (Rick) had lost the key card that let us through the iron gates into the palazzo and on to our amazing rooms. During their fencing travels, Rick and (usually) Will have lost hotel room keys all over the United States and Europe, but this was a doozy, for it required Courtenay, who was already somewhat tired, frustrated by her husband’s inattention, and even less coherent in Italian than usual, to inquire about the lost key in several crowded locations, only to come up empty, while leaving behind a trail of confusion. We finally had to circle back and call the very nice hotel proprietor, who speaks little English, and seemed potentially short-tempered, to report that I’d managed to lose our key card after safely holding on to it all of an hour or so. Welcome to Mantua!

So far, however, this has been our only fail. Our last full day in Milan yesterday was a good, good day, which included all four of us visiting the Pinoteca di Brera art museum in the morning, where we saw many, many, many beautiful paintings of a half dozen or so Christian themes – or as Courtenay’s favorite virtual art professor Rocky Ruggiero lovingly puts it – “always the same damn thing.” Will and Amy escaped then for an afternoon of non-stop shopping across Milan’s famous fashion district, while Courtenay and I had lunch and went right back at it, venturing next to the Ambrosiana Art Museum. In fact, the Ambrosiana was wonderful. This compact museum is studded with great works, most notably a display of Raphael’s “cartoon,” his charcoal drawing, the actual blueprint, for my all-time favorite painting, “The School of Athens,” which we saw years ago in the Vatican Museums. Raphael’s huge drawing, well over twenty feet long, stands alone in an otherwise dark room, a powerful display and one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. There were other great works in the Ambrosiana, including Caravaggio’s stunning Basket of Fruit and Titian’s painting of Mary Magdalene. After we left the Ambrosiana, we marched on to the historic San Lorenzo Maggiore and Sant Ambrogio churches, which are quite old, and just fine, but perhaps by then I was wearing down. While I hung in there with the art, more art, and the churches, Amy was guiding Will through Milan’s endless retail offerings, where he caught his breath on the strategically placed “boyfriend couches” outside dressing rooms. He seemed fine after his afternoon of shopping, cool even, in a new pair of sunglasses. The day, and our memorable stay in Milan, ended with a chef’s tasting dinner at Le Brisa, where we had a table on the edge of a lovely garden, and toasted our unforgettable time in a city that we enjoyed very much.