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If you are claustrophobic, scared of heights, suffer from bouts of road rage or fearful of head on collisions while reading a map in a foreign language and whipping around switch back roads, then Northern Italy by Rental Car may not be for you.

I have never in my life been so fearful in a vehicle. I couldn’t tell you how many times an oncoming tour bus nearly drove us of the road or how I hated to look out the window while driving up the Alps. It seems like guard rails are not really mandatory, but 10,000 feet is still a long… way… down. And of course Randy wasn’t exactly taking it slow and easy. Some people may find this fun - not me.

But for me, the scariest thing of all are the tunnels. You are literally going through the centre of a mountain - think about all that pressure and weight on top of you. The presence of emergency exits, fire extinguisher and SOS telephones doesn’t help relax me too much either.

I had heard a story from just a year earlier of a tunnel tragedy in Switzerland - two transports collided and everyone trapped by the accident were basically incinerated - the cars melted. This all went down just north of where we were driving. They’ve started to work on a solution to this problem though - a longer tunnel - but for a railway passage. So, I was slightly apprehensive when I saw our first long tunnel coming up on the map.

This next clip is taken in one such tunnel. Well, this one is on the side of a mountain, not directly under it - note the "windows" on the side. Wait a minute… an escape would be easy if a collapse should happen! You think I’m paranoid?

As you may have guessed, most of this interpretation is dramatized for comedic effect. The short ones are relatively safe. Enjoy the musical interlude.

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From what I understand, I have the makings of a Old Crazy Cat Lady.

First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I have a cat. He gets prime real estate on the bed, is pampered and tended on like a child, has his own water fountain (because tap water just isn’t good enough) and rarely has to eat anything that’s been left out more than a half an hour.

I talk to him, brush him and sometimes rock him to sleep. I even have the long crazy hair and a generally cranky demeanor directed toward "young people".

The only thing working clearly against my being an official member of that club is that I’m not single and am too young to meet the first word title qualification. Still, whenever I see a kitty I have to stop and say hello - I don’t want to get a bad reputation in their community… "Oh yeah, there’s that rude human I heard about - don’t even bother rubbing up against her leg".

How does this have anything to do with Italy you may ask? Well, as mentioned in a previous post, while walking the Cinque Terre trail it’s hard to not notice the overpopulation of them. There’s little feeding stations all along the path where people would leave canned food. As a result, they are quite friendly and approach hikers readily, expecting to be fed.

Here is a clip of one such cat that followed us downward for about 100 steps - I felt bad - I’m guessing that eventually he’d have to go back up. You’ll see that he actually tries to come aboard at one point. As Randy said, I had bought baby food because I’d seen an injured one on the path the day before and was thinking this would nurse him back to health. Please forgive the shaky camera work and us both sounding like dorks.

Funny how a cat only shows affection when it wants something. Hey - I’ve been told I have that "quality" as well. :)

I was asked several weeks ago to be part of a web site project in which a picture was taken by photographers from around the world, each at exactly the same moment.

Link: This Planet.

Take a look for the Newfoundland picture. It’s not particularly flattering - there was no planning or staging involved.

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One thing that is immediately obvious to the visitor in Italy is how the arts are held in very high regard. This is true not just for Florence, widely acknowledged as the birthplace of art as we know it, but is prevalent in all areas that we visited.

One good example of this is in music. As you travel, you hear it everywhere - most often live. Granted, much of it is preformed for tourists and often you’ll hear the same handful of songs, but as a former musician, I can tell you that we never witnessed anything but very talented performers.

Sadly though, just as we arrived in Florence, there was some civil unrest underway on part of the artistic community in response to the shortsightedness of the then-in-charge government (as noted at the time in these stories by CBC and NPR (with audio). In recent years, the situation seems to have improved somewhat though (Guardian / UK).

IMG_8488: From San Gimignano. We seen this woman playing and singing in the town square one afternoon. Later that evening, she was practicing in a nearby building.

IMG_7970: From Lucca. This guy was beautifully playing (what I think was) original music.

Originally posted on Wednesday, October 19, 2005, 01:19 PM NST.
2005? What is this?

Not until we completed the various tours of Florence did we have a real understanding for the number of famous works of art within the city. Yesterday, in the Uffizi Gallery, we saw Leonardo da Vinci’s first painting where he invented a technique to reproduce more life-like scenes - a techniques that was instantly copied by every contemporary. In the next room sits Michelangelo’s only painted work other than the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Rome. Sorry, no photos allowed. In case you haven’t guessed already, they don’t allow pictures or filming of any kind at any of these venues.

IMG_9319: A view from the Uffizi. You’re allowed to take pictures inside, as long as the camera is pointed outside.

The right guide is what can make a tour enjoyable and informative though - they seem to be mainly teachers and students taking some work on-the-side here. Although it’s no wonder that the tour companies have hired knowledgeable people, because not only is each company licensed with the city, but a representative from the city accompanies the group to ensure that they are giving an accurate presentation.

Anyway, this may be the last entry to this weblog - we’re on our way home soon. We’ve had a good trip and hope you all have enjoyed the pictures. It’s cool hearing the comments we’ve gotten (good and bad!), so if you’ve followed along but haven’t yet sent a message, please fire something off to info@kimgoodyear.com

Thanks
See ya
Kim

EDIT: Not so fast! We’re gonna travel in reverse through our trip and post some streaming video from each region. We’ve been looking trough them and will be posting the more interesting ones every few days. It should be entertaining and educational, as long as no one is offeneded by a couple of Newfies mangling some Italian words and place names, perhaps peppered with a bit of swearing. :)

The Ponte Vecchio is among the most famous bridges in the world. Built in Roman times, and rebuilt again several hundred years later, it survived even the massive bombings of World War II.

Much like the Rialto Bridge in Venice, the Pont Vecchio is lined with shops on either side. It’s closed to vehicular traffic now, and is basically a gold and jewellery shopping center that spans the Arno River as it runs through Florence. Our tour guide told a story of the butchers that dominated the bridge up until 500 years ago - the ruling family had them ousted in favour of the jewelers who could pay higher taxes and attract a more prestigious crowd.

The gold merchants are still there, as can be seen in this video. But the working class still returns at night - illegal street vendors, with their imitation handbags and other wares, easily portable, wrapped in blankets. When the cops show up - agents of the modern day Medici - the street vendors vanish.

PA180001.MOV: Walking the Ponte Vecchio, 27MB

Orientation: View Google Map. This video starts looking west up the Arno. The walk starts at the northern end of the bridge, and almost makes it to the south end, just short of us running out of card space. :(

One of the shoots we did for a magazine has finally come out. Aimee Power, Miss Newfoundland and Labrador, is sharing the cover of The Newfoundland Herald this week with the Miss Teen winner, Danielle Seward. I did the shots of Aimee, and Sara Rostotski shot Danielle.

There’s a nice photo spread inside too. We did that one in studio and on location at The Winteholme - took about an hour. We had so much fun with that shoot that we did another one, outside at Government House. The photos used in The Herald are all from the first shoot though.

We’ve been playing around lately with video formats for the wedding stuff, and that’s naturally led us to thinking about a movie on the wedding site (a DVD Video Album, as we call it).

Anyway, after spending the better part of the day today fiddling around with video formats and DVDs on the new Mac, I remembered that we’d taken a whole pile of video while in Italy. Randy had a cheap little point / shoot camera - we didn’t even realize until after we bought it that it did video too. Funny, because that just made it seem like more of a toy to me at the time.

I wish I’d remembered these videos sooner, but at the time, before our enlightenment, they were basically a distraction - the wonky format wouldn’t play on the PeeCee laptop that we’d dragged along. All that was needed was a quick trip to the Apple site to download QuickTime for Windows. To get your very own QuickTime, follow that link. Note that you really don’t have to give them your email address - just un-select the boxes and click “Free Download Now”.

Anyway, here’s a video of those damn bells swinging. I’m gonna go back through these and post some more later - the sights are more beautiful with sound. …well, except these sounds - TURN DOWN YOUR VOLUME!

Originally posted on Sunday, October 16, 2005, 05:26 PM NST.
2005? What is this?

The first thing we did this morning was climb a mountain. On the “other side” of the Arno river (which cuts the Florence and metro area not quite in half), they’ve constructed monuments and named roads after various famous artists. From up on Monte alle Croci (mountain of crosses, it’s also home to a graveyard) you can get a nice panoramic of the city.

IMG_9076: A view of the Ponte Vecchio.

Our book says it’s best to visit early or late in the day, as the area can become overrun with tour buses and vendors selling trinkets during mid-afternoon. We were out of there by 11am, but not soon enough that Kim couldn’t photography a few weddings in progress.

After that, we went on the first (of three) tours, during which we saw the actual David. The women seem to stare at it for a really, really long time. I have to admit - he has a nice ass.

This is a shot from tonight on the Ponte Vecchio - a bridge over the Arno that is lined with shops (as seen from the mountain in the first shot above). All the shops are closed in the evening, at which point the illegal street vendors take over.

The merry-go-rounds here spin really fast!

That last one is the view out of our new hotel room window. Let me tell ya… it’s not hard to wake up in the morning when these things start swinging… or at every half hour for that matter.

Randy

We’ve placed an ad for the wedding stuff in this month’s issue of The Current. I’ve found that some people don’t seem to get the point, but I really love it. Thanks to Andreau Connors for coming up with this for us.