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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.