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:: Piano Piano
August 27, 2000
Piano Piano
Northern and Southern Italy
Legend says that the archangel Lucifer stole a sliver of peace. When Jesus discovered the theft, Lucifer flustered, dropped his bounty and tumbled to Earth. Lucifer's landing became Mt. Vesuvius, the tear Jesus shed over the angel fell onto the volcano's slope forming a vine, and the sliver of peace became the Isle of Capri.
My visit to this piece of peace in the Bay of Naples, five kilometers from the southern coast of the mainland, fit perfectly the theme for the latter half of my Italian holiday: "Piano piano."
"Andiamo, piano piano," was the consistent lyrical charge of our tour director each time we disembarked the bus I spent more time in than all of my Italy hotel rooms combined. "Piano piano" or "slowly slowly" was the instruction of watchful parents over their young during the "passeggiate," or after-dinner stroll that begins every evening in Italy around nine. And it was the request made of me by a new bartender who had difficulty understanding "Amaretto on the rocks."
It could have been the ninety-degree temperatures, the oppressive cross-country bus rides or end-of-world-tour weariness, but "piano piano" was a pace that was working for me.
On the approach, Capri appears as a sleeping giant, its fortress-like mass belying the delicate architecture, bustling streets and natural beauty of its interior. And like the heavy velvet stage curtain that unveils a magical yet tenuous world, so does the rock of Capri reveal the shimmering crystal water of the Blue Grotto.
Before riding the funicular to Capri, the middle section of this three-tier island, we beat the cruise ship rush and headed directly to the pier at the island's first level, Marina Grande.
For fifteen minutes our twenty-passenger motorboat glided in the shadow of the rock then approached a swarm of rowboats, each waiting to transport four visitors into the grotto. After gingerly transferring from one boat to the other, we lay flat as instructed, legs and arms draped over one another. Our oarsman rowed toward the cave entrance - four feet high and five feet wide - counted "uno, duo, tre!" then shot us through the opening using an overhead chain for propulsion.
Once inside, Gail, Mary Lou and I gasped in unison. The cobalt blue water had turned a glowing silvery aquamarine from the refraction of sunlight off the sides of the cave and the white sandy bottom.
Though tempting, I didn't reach Anacapri, the island's top level. That would have required queuing up at a bus stop, angsting over the duration of the ride, whipping through the town, then mad-dashing in a taxi down to Marina Grande to meet the tour group on time. "Piano piano," I reminded myself, opting instead for a one-hour iced coffee break.
Considered among the world's most spectacular, the Almafi Coast stretches for fifty kilometers from Sorrento to Salerno. This dramatically uneven waterfront covers three towns - Almafi, Agatha and Positano where we enjoyed a short stop. There's nothing to do except take it all in: The drive, beach, jaw-dropping private homes and water toys, the neighboring Galley Islands and the long white streaks behind the hydrofoils skimming across the twinkling zircon water.
Over the next five days we made brief landmark stops in Sorrento, Assisi, Venice, Verona, Milan, Lake Maggiore, Pisa, Florence and Siena before returning to Rome.
Sorrento offered a stylish town center for a passeggiate; Assisi beckoned a look at its basilica named for St. Francis; Verona unveiled "Juliet's balcony" on the former residence of one of the real-life feuding families - the model for Shakespeare's play; and Milan flaunted its Duomo or cathedral, the third largest in the world after St. Peter's in Vatican City and St. Paul's in London, and its internationally renowned La Scala opera house, which has a small but impressively curated museum.
At the beautiful Lake Maggiore, one of three lakes in northern Italy near the Swiss Alps, I experienced the fastest customer service ever - precisely two minutes from the time I called reception. And the Tuscan region offered Pisa's sixteen meter leaning tower - now closed since 1990 for safety reasons - and an evening of wine, dancing, and belt-popping antipasto at a hillside Renaissance villa.
Our tour director told us that Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, deserved at least ten full days. Not difficult to understand since this Tuscan capital claims as native sons by birth or influence, Dante, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Donatello, Machiavelli, Raphael, Boticelli, Giotto and Galileo among many others.
We had an afternoon.
Traveling at the height of Italy's tourist season, we accomplished a stop at Michelangelo's David at the Gallery of the Academy, a stroll across the Ponte Vecchio - one of the oldest bridges in Florence - and a visit to the 15th century Pitti Palace, currently an art museum and the former home of the Medici, Florence's ruling family for three centuries.
And ninety minutes of free time in Siena allowed for appreciation of its earthy sepia architecture.
It's difficult to feel a culture when you're traveling through it at rocket speed, but I needed only to linger for an evening in Venice's St. Mark's square to know that I would return to this magnificent water city.
Expert at managing expectations, our tour director loaded us into gondolas the minute we arrived. Even in broad daylight and sweltering heat, our float through the old city along the famous canals was enchanting.
We stayed in the Lido, one of Venice's 118 islands, and took the vedrato or waterbus to the main center - St. Mark's square. Satisfying points of interest included the grand basilica of San Marco, the bell tower - cleverly designed to protect the city by concealing its waterways - and the Bridge of Sighs, the connector over which prisoners in transit to lifetime or death sentences exchanged a final glance with their loved ones. But the experience that allowed Venice to live up to its reputation as a city of magic and romance was an outdoor evening at one of the orchestral music cafes underneath the white linen canopies at St. Mark's square.
The famous flocks of pigeons slept and the air cooled in the evening square, its immensity pierced by Pachabel, Ravel and Vivaldi, the tinkling of glass and the appreciative bursts of applause.
Positioned at a table between the melodious strings and stream of passeggiate, we toasted the night's delights, exchanging few words - mostly smiles and satisfied glances. Our check arrived too soon, and the clock's hands swept too swiftly as the promise of an early rise brought mood, moonlight and music to an end.
Disembarking the vedrato at the Lido, I traded "Goodnights" with my café companions and slowly, slowly, ascended the hotel stairs to my room.
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