See Me Now

               We’ve come a long way since the days of Traveler’s Cheques, phone cards, and internet cafes. Now we all have computers in our pockets with apps available for navigating or buying just about anything. Obviously travel is much more convenient when we have all this tech power at our fingertips. On the other hand, now we’ve got new worries: device syncing, power cords, pickpockets, roaming charges. It almost makes me nostalgic for old school paper maps.                                     This map comes from Baedeker's Northern Italy Handbook For Travellers,                                      which is the tourist guide Lucy Honeychurch used to find her way around            ...

Actually, it’s not called fútbol in Italy. Or in many places, really; that’s just an affectation I picked up to distinguish it from American football, but I suppose it’s time to drop my pretension. I’ve learned that in Italian, it’s calcio . As I said in my last post, my goal is assistere ad una partita di calcio ( to attend a soccer match) a Firenze. I decided to become a soccer fan after visiting Spain in 2016 with my friend. She and most of her family members are originally from South America where people are known, among other things, for being passionate about soccer. Under her influence as well as that of the Spanish people, I vowed to ‘become one’ with the beautiful game. Upon returning home, I quickly became overwhelmed—so many leagues, so many teams, so many tournaments. It’s not like following the NBA where there are 30 teams to keep track of. In soccer, there are around 30 teams per league . Multiply that across only the top five leagues in Europe and that’s already 150 ...

              If everything goes right, I’ll get to attend a soccer (fútbol) match when I’m in Florence. I put it that way because although I think I’ve bought a ticket from what I hope is a legitimate sales outlet, I’m operating on faith that it’ll all work out.   A Digression: One thing about us Americans is that we are accustomed to being absolutely sure about logistical details. Our stores and services have their hours printed on the door, for example, and we are confident they will open at the stated hour.   In fact, we’ll stand there on the sidewalk impatiently shifting our feet and glancing at our watches until someone from the inside saunters over with the magic key. Not so in Europe, as far as I’ve experienced. Store hours are often unannounced and irregular and asking anyone passing by yields only a shrug. They’ll be open when they open, seems to be the prevailing sentiment. This attitude plays ...

Seeking to get to up to speed on all things Firenze, I recently finished Stephanie Storey’s historical fiction novel, Oil and Marble.   It covers the years 1499 – 1503 when both Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti lived in Florence and were artistic rivals of sorts. It was an entertaining way to re-learn about this period, but I had to wonder about the mix of history to fiction. As I read, I toggled quite a bit to fact check from other resources and concluded that Storey did a fine job of being true to the actual historical framework. As with shows like The Crown, the fiction comes in in how she imagines the characters’ day-to-day activities, dialogue, and motivations, which she did to great effect. I also toggled a lot to google maps so I could visualize where various events took place. I still can’t get over the fact that people today traipse around on the same streets and in the same piazze as da Vinci and Buonarroti (and Dante and Botticelli and Raphael and so ma...