Naples

We are writing this post for the third time.  2 previous attempts disappeared.  We think it was due to the wifi connection.  So we recall our days with Riley in Naples from our new apt rental in Bologna.


Sunday, July 6.   We arrived in Naples by train and proceeded to La Ciliegina Lifestyle Hotel.  Very nice rooms, but they lost our reservation.  Luckily, Leslie had the confirmatory email in her phone.  It was too early to check in so we went off to the museum.  When we returned, they had found rooms for us for the one night and arranged for us to transfer us to another place for the other two days.  We spent the afternoon at the archeology museum, which is known for its assemblage of well-preserved objects recovered from the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

E.g:







We had dinner at a longstanding family restaurant.  Good, but nothing to blog about.

Monday July 7. We left our luggage with the hotel to be transferred.   We chose a very hot day to visit the excavation sites.  Most of you are familiar with pictures of  Pompeii, so we limit ourselves to Riley's panorama:

We will miss Riley's panoramas.

We selected a few photos from less-visited Herculaneum:

Plaster ceilings:






Mosaic made with glass tiles:





We checked into the venerable Grand Hotel Santa Lucia.  Our luggage was waiting.  We ate across the marina at one of the seafood restaurants.  Excellent. (shrimp pasta, pasta with mussels, pasta with clams.)

Riley got many fine views of Vesuvius.  This was from the restaurant.

Tues, July 8. 

Capri.  Cool and too windy to see the blue grotto, but we did enjoy the vivid shades of the water on a short boat tour.



Riley's choice:

We spent the most time in Anacapri, where we found the Axel Munthe Museum.   A sign outside said
the gardens came in second in a most-beautiful-garden-in-Italy contest held in 2013.  We would like to know what came in first.





Dr. Munthe owned this table, which we admired a lot (the design in the middle is a quincunx):



Common Mediterranean pine tree:

 

 For dinner, we were referred to Sobrillo for the best pizza in Naples.  We ordered salami; Riley pesto.  Both gave credence to the claim .  The wind blew over and shattered one of our wine glasses!

Wed., July 9.  This morning we visited the Cathedral church of San Gennaro.  Little is known of San Gennaro (Janurius) except that he was a bishop martyred under Diocletian around 305.  The chapel contains two vials of the blood of the saint.  Three times a year, the blood miraculously liquefies.  The failure to liquefy portends a disaster, perhaps plague, perhaps a bad football season. The chapel dedicated to the saint:



Impressive tiling near the tomb of the Saint:



 Riley and Bruce took the tour of Underground Naples.   There is a vast system of tunnels and tanks that served as a water supply going back forever.  In 1885, after a cholera epidemic, the cisterns were closed and drained.  In WWII, they served as bomb shelters.  These toys  are a poignant reminded of those awful times:

We then took the train to Fiumicino so we could stay close to the airport.  Our last dinner was at the Bisetto, a lovely restaurant.   We had lobster (Leslie), mussels and orate (Bruce), and clams (Riley).

Thurs, July 10.  We left Riley at security to return to Knoxville, took the train to Bologna, and crashed.  We will miss him.

Pisa, Roma, Riley

Retro addition:  Riley took this dramatic shot of the Temple of Saturn in the Forum.

Also, we forgot to credit Riley.  The pictures of the Vatican Square and the crema were his.

July 4, Fri.  We took the train to Pisa and back.  Riley & Bruce climbed the leaning tower.  Riley took this picture with his phone.  


The tower brings in huge amounts of money, some of which is used for maintenance and restoration in the cathedral complex.  The cathedral interior is glorious.











As is the stonework in the Bapistry:

 

 On the train ride back, we learned a bit about the Italian rail system, paid 90+ Euros to upgrade tickets and a fine of 24 Euros.

We took a taxi over to the Spanish Steps and ate at a trattoria randomly selected.  Bruce had Roman style veal;  Leslie had lasagna; Riley had pasta with porcini.


July 5, Saturday.  A lot  of walking on our last day in Rome.  We started at the Pantheon, proceeded to the Piazza Novella with its Bernini fountains,

over to the Campo Fiori,

past the former synagogue,

ending at Trastevere for a late lunch.  Our attempt to visit the St. Catherine complex was thwarted by the wedding of (we were told) the Prince of Belgium, which closed off the square and the church to the public.

We had dinner at the Greek restaurant next door.  Quite good moussaka, souvlaki, and dolmades.

In Rome with Riley

June 30.  We leave Boston for Newark where we meet up with Riley and fly to Rome.  Car and driver late.  We are staying at the apt of Cristiano Sibilia via Belisario, 6, Rome, Lazio 00187.  This is very spacious wth maybe 15 foot ceilings.  We napped from 11:30 local time to 1:30 and then went to lunch.

 

 

We arrived a the Coliseum at about 3:30 on the day of the memorial service in Israel for the three teenage boys who were murdered near Hebron.  The souvenir kiosks were decked in Israeli flags and conducting no business during the service.  We were told by an employee that all of the kiosks were owned by Jews.

 

  The Colloseum has been undergoing some conservation and compatible construction.   You can see the extensive scaffolding behind Riley.

Riley's phone takes panorama views:

 

 

 

 In 2010 they added a second floor to the area with tourist access and put in some interesting exhibits. 

 

We ate sandwiches for dinner and watched the disappointing world cup game.

July 2, Wed.  After breakfast, we took the bus to Termini to buy tickets for Pisa.  Faced with mobs, we used the ticket machine.  It wouldn't take our chip-less credit cards, so we fed it cash. Then we took the subway to the Palatine and Forum, spending several hours. 


We finished the day at the Capitoline Museum, where they keep the she-wolf

and the Dying Gaul and Caravaggio's Fortune Teller. 

Pizza at Al Forno della Soffitto, just around the corner.  Gelato at Nostre, truly great.

July 3, Thurs. 

Molto mobs at the Vatican Museums and St. Peters Basilica.  To get to the Sistine Chapel, you proceed through a number of galleries.  Even taking the short cut it takes a couple of hours.. They have a small van Gogh  pieta, painted shortly before the artist's death.

 

 

This is a figure from the Raphael rooms.  He is prominent in a fresco that depicts a fire episode near the Vatican.  A good excuse for a mannerist nude making an escape from the conflagration.

 

 

 

 
The Sistine Chapel is as wonderful as when we saw it a while back, shortly after the restoration.  But now there are very few seats and no artificial lighting.  The crowds made it unpleasant and imposable to linger.  (Perhaps we should try again in October or February.  But we are told that the Chapel is always overcrowded).

For this blog, we record a few works we thought were unusually good or interesting:

Dali: 

Ensor:

Baskin:

We ate lunch at the café on the Pinecone Courtyard.

 Fresolla (bagels?):

We took a hot and lengthy walk to St. Peter's Basilica.  Riley climbed the dome:

Bruce and Leslie had a chance to admire the marble floors, fine mosaics, and Papal Tombs.  Pope John 23 is now a saint.  He was beatified in 2000 and then made a saint by Francis based on his opening of Vatican II:

After a cab ride back to our street, we enjoyed café crema:

After a rest, we dined at a local seafood place, il Golfo.   A major treat.  Sweet and sour monlfish, gnocchi with prawns,  saltimbocca chcken, a lively Veneto white wine.

NY, NY

We are in NYC from Monday, June 23, until Friday.  The train from Boston was late to leave and delayed further on the way.  We arrived too late for daytime tourism.

We are staying at the very trendy NYLO hotel.  Dinner at RedFarm, an inventive Chinese restaurant.  We had filet tartes, duck spring rolls, chicken stuffed with shrimp.  Dessert from bakery across street.

June 24  Today we visited The Cloisters, a museum of Medieval art and architecture at Ft. Tryon, around 199th St., at the Northern tip of Manhattan.  We had not been there for many years, but it hasn't changed. 



St Michael kills a wonderful dragon:




A capital of the damned going o hell:






 A last judgment in ivory:

Interestingly, more space (lower left) is given to souls led to heaven than to souls in hell (lower right).  The upper left is the enthronement of Mary.

We dropped in to the Museum of Natural History for a exhibit on the flight of pterosaurs.  Lots of models.




June 25  Lower Manhattan.  The Financial Center is still too much under construction to get a sense of it.  The whole area is a massive construction zone, making it quite unpleasant.

There is a lot of public space on the waterfront and the Manhattan Sailing School.





 We saw the 9\11 Memorial.   The line for the Museum was too long, so we skipped. Lunch at Fraunces Tavern, where Washington gave his farewell address to the Revolutionary War troops. 

Staten Island Ferry.  We took that in 1964.  It was five cents.  Now free.



 



We ate in the room.  Wine was 6.5%.  Yuk.  Bought at drug store; NY marketing restrictions.


June 26, Friday.   Neue Galerie.    Small.  The temporary Exhibit was the Nazi Degenerate Art show of 1937.  We saw an exhibit on this subject in the 90s in DC.  DC was larger, but the Neue did a good job on context.  For example, we learned that some of the proscribed artists were actually Nazi supporters.  Emil Nolde was a party member. 

There were also  some examples of officially approved art, including this triptych, the Four Elements by Adolf Ziegler.

Patrons to the Neue exhibit were told that Hitler himself purchased it and it was hung over the fireplace of his apartment in Munich.

The remaining show areas housing the permanent collection at the museum (smaller than the temporary exhibit) feature several Klimt paintings, including the famous portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer which Ronald Lauder purchased for the Museum for $135 million in 2006.

 

We ate lunch at the Sarbasky Café, waiting on line for the upstairs room.  Very pretty and noisy.  We had weisswurst and bratwurst, beer, and this cucumber lemonade:

We then took in the Met.  We spent some time in the Japanese section, which we had neglected in previous visits.  We found this fountain, by Noguchi, especially attractive. 

 

 

Felice and Lee have furniture by this artist.  The Met uses a few of his items in a sitting room:

 



 

 

 

 

 We finished the day at the Avery Fisher Hall of the Lincoln Center.  Alan Gilbert conducted the New York Philharmonic performing Beethoven's Triple and Emperor Concertos.  Yefim Bronfman was the pianist.  Glen Dicterow and Carter Brey, the orchestra's principal violinist and cellist, respectively, were the other soloists.  The program also made us aware that a violinist he conducts, Yoko Takebe, is Gilbert's mother.  In the same vein, Marc Ginsburg heads the second violin section where he directs his wife, Judy.  (They are retiring together). 

 

    This concert was the last in a cycle series of the Beethoven piano concertos.   We were in the last row of the last tier.  The last performance of the Triple Concerto we attended, in DC, had us in row C.  Row C was better.   The performance of the Emperor Concerto was near perfection, every nuance somehow reaching us.

 

 

 

  Friday, June 27.  Leslie's passport was not found by Rohanna's neighbor, but we learn that USPS says it was delivered Tuesday.  So we are up early (6:20 train)  to search Roh's house and, if necessary, return to the State Department.  It was on the table in Roh's entryway in very plain sight.

 

  

 Sat June 28.  Brunch with Barney's branch.  Doug & Rachel and happy Ella Leah; Pat and Richard; Daniel; Jeremy and Maro (first meeting, witty and lovely); Mort & Anna (back from China, off the Greece later this summer. No pictures as Bruce left the chip out od the camera.

 

Rachel gave us a tour of her new synagogue.  Very impressive, very beautiful.