Quiet time

For the last four days I've been catching up with sleep as I work through my jet lag. Each night I'm able to stay up a little later and get up a little later; last night I went to bed at 10 and woke up at 5. I think I'm at the tail end of the jet lag, so I'm hopeful tonight I'll be 11 to 6, which is normal for me.

I've sent in the material for the job application. I have no hope of an interview, even, because they advertised on Craigslist, so there will be hundreds of applicants, I think. And that will be fine. However, if I claim to say "yes" to whatever comes along in the universe, and then this comes along which is not quite what I had in mind (full time work), and I say "no", I'm not walking the talk.

I've noticed myself isolating a bit this week. After spending nearly three weeks with 18 other people in Italy, I've taken some time for myself. I did go for a sunny walk today with my neighbor and her two kids, but that's about it. I do paperwork and correspondence and that feels sane and right to me.

I've set a goal of reading one magazine a day from my basket before I read any books. The idea of having that basket in order is appealing to me, small as it is. So when I finish this entry I'll go do that.

There's no place like home this week. Then, next week, we're doing a road trip to Utah for Thanksgiving. Am I crazy or what?

What I learned from our trip to Italy

We've been home for 36 hours now. We're still out of sync with our sleep from time zone changes and the ending of Daylight Savings Time, so we wake up at 4:00 a.m. Still, three weeks away does yield insights. Here's what I learned.

1. Italian food is plentiful and excellent. Tastes are extravagant and subtle, never wasteful. We don't have to eat everything placed before us, but it would be nice if all we eat is of value. I'm going to try to eat wisely and well now that we're home.

2. The days got short quickly while we were gone, and the rain started. It's dark now when I wake up, but I'm not depressed. I'm still interested in lots of things and my time at home allows me to pursue them.

3. I'm no longer interested in exploring options for semi-communal living such as cohousing, where everyone has their own residence, but there is common land and a community building. The 17 other tour group participants were interesting and good to travel with, but I need more quiet time than I expected. Discarding the cohousing option has actually simplified things, because I will no longer need to investigate that option and visit cohousing sites.

4. I may decide to work at least part time. When I was in Florence I logged into a favorite travel company's website to see if they offered any trips in Italy that wouldn't go to destinations I've already visited. I found out the company is advertising for a writer/editor/proofreader for its series of guidebooks. I decided to apply for the job - not because I need the money, but because I really like the company's mission and the job sounded perfect.

5. If you leave a designer cat home, and they're secure in their environment, they are thrilled to see you when you return home, and they follow you around, sleep next to you on the bed at night, and sleep on your computer desk during the day. They purr loudly and give up all pretense of feline aloofness.

6. Traveling with a husband can be touchy at times, and it's wonderful to have separate schedules and activities at home.

7. If you eat heartily while traveling, but you walk three to five miles a day on cobblestone streets and on hills, you can still fit into your clothes when you get home.

8. It's possible to learn a lot about history, art and architecture on a trip, and still be profoundly tired of walking around looking at old churches.

9. Even though you like to travel, it's great to be home for two weeks before you leave on the next trip.

Home again - Atlanta layover from Rome

At the end of this post, the first four photos are from the Vatican Museum in Rome. All of them struck me for one reason or another, though none is famous, as far as I know. The last is a sculpture, very famous and very beautiful. I'm surprised cameras were allowed in St. Peter's.

We walked a LOT in Rome. In the course of four days, we saw the Forum, the Coliseum, The Vatican Museum and St. Peter's, the papal crypts (really interesting), the Pantheon, Trevi fountain, and Spanish Steps. Yesterday we walked five miles in the interest of our final day of tourism.

Our flight from Rome to Atlanta took 11 hours. We have a three-hour layover here, where I'm writing this blog entry, and then a nearly five hour flight to Seattle.

The trip was fascinating, tiring, lots of fun and very educational. I never had a bad meal, didn't get sick, met interesting fellow travelers, and figured out how to flush every foreign toilet I encountered! And I learned enough words in Italian to get by.

But tonight it will be very good to sleep in my own bed.

No free internet in Rome

We've checked into our last hotel and will be here from today (Monday) until Friday, when we fly home. Our internet access costs 5 euros an hour and is very, very slow. So most likely this will be one of my last posts this week. To get a logon and password I paid my money and gave them my passport to make a copy of. It gets stapled to a receipt and sent to the police station! When in Rome....

Our group of 19 is beginning to break up as we start this four-day optional extension in Rome. By tomorrow, five of us will have departed for home or other Italian cities. We had our last group dinner tonight. For the next three days we'll be on our own for meals. Which will actually be a good thing, since our group dinners have usually been multi-course feasts that I haven't finished.

Our tour guide will be with us until Friday. Tomorrow is ancient sites, I think, and then the Vatican, a recommended optional tour. I grew up Protestant but married a Catholic and converted. For over a decade I was a liturgical musician, but after my divorce in the mid-80s, the church didn't seem to know what to do with me. I stopped going. I was angry for a number of years, but gradually took a different spiritual path. On this tour I've visited a number of churches; the one that left its mark was the basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. I've come to an okay place with the Catholic church even though I have left it behind.

Usually I don't discuss this kind of subject in my blog, but it's been the most significant outcome of our Italy trip - and it wasn't something I either sought or expected.

I haven't posted many photos in the last few days. We've been in cities, where photos are tougher to take. And in most of the museums and churches no photos are allowed. I'll see what visits we make in the next few days.

Last day in Florence

It rained all day today, so my poncho came in handy once again.

This morning we went to high mass in the Duomo. It was the first time I'd been to mass since a funeral several years ago. We've seen so much religious art and architecture in the past two weeks it seemed appropriate. It did feel weird, though. The printed service was in Italian, but most of the mass was in Latin!

Our last museum was the Bargello - with Donatello's David which is, according to Rick Steves' Italy guidebook "the very influential first male nude to be sculpted in a thousand years", plus works by Michelangelo and other artists. We had no tour guide for this one, so most of it was as unimpressive to me as other art I've seen. That's all me, though.

Tomorrow we leave for four days in Rome before we fly home.

You've probably noticed I'm a fan of Rick Steves. I logged on to his website yesterday and read that his company is looking for a copy editor to work on revisions of their 30 guidebooks and phrase books. His office is two towns over. I may apply for the job just for fun.

Getting comfortable with Florence

We had a couple of destinations today: the Galileo Science Museum, to the side of the Uffizi Gallery near the River Arno, and the Accademia, on the other side of Old Florence.

Art has been patient during our multiple museum/church tours during the last couple of weeks. So it was my turn during our time in the science museum. I listened to a Rick Steves podcast while Art read about the various instruments and gadgets from previous centuries.

This afternoon we arrived at the Accademia at 4 p.m., by which time our tour guide said there would be no line. Wrong. Art in his white jacket marks our spot after half an hour.

We did get in, though. After buying our ticket, we rounded the corner of the first room and there he was. Michelangelo's David. I'd seen pictures, but they didn't do justice to the real thing. I must have stared at the sculpture for 20 minutes. I'd never known David had a slingshot strapped across his back. Or that his hands and head were oversized because he was supposed to be on top of the Duomo, 200 feet or so above the ground, where his proportions would have seemed more natural. Or that for nearly 300 years he stood outside. Or that, from the side, his eyes are full of fear as he looks at Goliath.

The really cool part was that I'd given Art my iPod to listen to the podcast about the Accademia, which he did while we were standing in line. Then, when we went inside, he explained the place to me.

There are four incomplete statues in the space leading to David. They've been called The Prisoners because they look like humans trying to emerge from rock. That happened because Michelangelo didn't finish them. But it looks intentional. The man was a genius. I've already ordered "The Agony and the Ecstasy" to reread when I get home.

Day trip to Siena

I am learning a lot about art in spite of myself. I found out that frescoes (essentially watercolors done on wet plaster) get dirty from burning candles in churches over centuries, so eventually they fade but can be restored. At the cathedral in Siena there was a room full of frescoes that was closed off for hundreds of years because it was never used. Eight years ago the room was opened up to the public, and the frescoes are as fresh as they were at the time they were painted. Here's a shot of part of the ceiling.

I've also learned about how two-dimensional art gradually yielded to three dimensions in painting and sculpture, but it took a while. This 13th century pulpet in Siena was revolutionary for its time. Part of the purpose of the art in churches was to teach the people, who were illiterate, the message of Christianity.

I have a new camera and haven't figured out how to turn off the flash, which isn't allowed inside the museums and churches, so these shots were taken by my husband Art. I've included them here as proof that we are, indeed, visiting the great churches and museums of Italy.

Siena was a big city in the Middle Ages, as big as Florence. Siena was located on the primary road to Rome but not on a river or coast. It was a banking city with a population of 60,000. After the Black Death ravaged a third of the population, Siena slept for several centuries. Today it is thriving - again with a population of 60,000.

Tonight, back in Florence, Art and I successfully navigated the city streets and found a restaurant recommended by a friend in Seattle. We've learned enough about the Italian language and menus to be able to order exactly the meal we wanted: a shared caprese (slices of tomato and cheese), individual bowls of Tuscan vegetable soup (base is black cabbage), and a shared chicken dish with lemon. Sounds like a small accomplishment, probably, but we've come a long way since our first meal in Italy ten days ago. We feel almost comfortable here now.