final post. day 87.

Unless something bad happens!

It struck me I've probably spent 32 hours in train stations but never took pictures. I buy through app Trenitalia, but you can also buy tickets, biglietti, 2 ways

 the arrival departure boards are often separate. 

This is Civitavecchia, a very small station. Rome's Termini station is like a small city. It has 32 active  tracks, binari,  and 450,000 people move through it daily.

This small station handles 10K people on cruise ship days, and less than half that on a day like today.

I'm sleeping at the airport tonight, Rome FCO. Flying out early, too early for cabs and buses. 🤷‍♀️

Civitavecchia

A major port for Rome. Container ships and cruise ships both dock here.

i walked the lungomare (lit., along-sea) my first morning before dawn

You can't go in to this 16th C fortress

But you can walk this out to a spit of land. 

Except walking, i probably won't do anything here in my 43 hours. But dawn reflection over the sea is nice

i had hoped, in a strange way, knowing I'd hate it, to watch a big cruise ship disgorge 1500 people at once, but no docking is scheduled. So I've been saved from my own odd curiosity!

pisa, part 2

The museum of antique boats, Pisa

I prepped for this museum visit by watching two videos on Roman boats a and warfare, presented by scripta manent, a YouTube channel i really like.

The museum ends up also being a mini archeology museum, Bronze Age, early Etruscan, then they have excavated nothing from 450-50 BCE. Then Rome and boats in particular.

2 hours there wore me out! It's one of my 5-8$ museum finds I'm so happy i figured out how to find. First, i took a 2- block detour to get my river walk in, should I not get a second chance.

For anyone who speaks Latin, here's today's quiz. 

Some very large amphora. Early Etruscan. 2500 year old burial goods, amazingly intact

Wait, you want another Latin quiz? Here you go. It's instructions on how to keep Julius Caesar's tomb after he dies, which he wasn't yet. I know that cuz i cheated on my quiz and used Google Lens.

A Large anchor, roman ship.

A film on how they navigated by stars, with useful rhymes to remind sailors, also in Latin. The film was in Italian. Some signs are in English, but I read Italian, and only go look for the 2-3 words i am typically missing. 

Absolutely my favorite thing in the museum. This is a mock-up of the train station departure boards in every station in the country, but it's for ancient boats! Number of days to each port, in Roman numerals. So clever!

A timeline about who controlled Pisa when, with the excavated ships laid in. Excellent signage. Good curators.

Here's a shipwreck they found underwater, recreated.

a boat, a river ferry, i think 

another boat, and a shot where I tried to get some of the ax strokes. You can see them, and it's like you're communing with the boatbuilder across time. So cool.

You don't think about amphora designs often (okay, I'm a Time Team geek, so I do sometimes) but they had many displays on them, world region, time, design, what they carried...  Oops upside-down. Lol. The grain or fish sauce would leak out! This shows how they tied them in and cushioned with straw.

This cool map of marble that was transported throughout the region. The small round bit is Carrera  marble, which I saw the mines for Wednesday.

Graffito of roman fighting ship, probably by a sailor hanging out  after visiting a prostitute or restaurant or both. Very accurate! 

Enjoyed it mightily. A+  museum curators. 

Pisa, part 1

I don't know about you, but i feel my whole childhood had a leaning Tower of Pisa illustration. Every year, in some textbook. In illustrations about travel in general. It's iconic. 

Then i watched a long program on it this year, and what really wowed me weren't the engineering stories, trying a dozen times to keep it from falling, but the stonework details. 

But let me back up. On the way to Pisa, staring out the train window, i saw this sight

i was like "hey, whoa, what are some Alps doing way down here?" I thought I was looking at Dolomites, misplaced.

Nope. These are the Carrera marble mines. Like Michelangelo 's David, and 200 other famous statues and buildings' white marble. Isn't it lovely? 

I'd move to that coastal city in the foreground, just to have that view every day!  However, the marble's reflection screwed up my GPS, so maybe  not. 

Then I got to Pisa, and I immediately loved it. Good vibe, clear instructions, good bus system. The bus went along a river walk I knew I'd have to walk, and passed this gem of a church.

My apartment is right next to a soccer stadium but it manages to blend in with the neighborhood somehow. I can't explain it, but if you didn't know it was there, you could drive right past and still not know .Luckily, the team is away while I'm here. 

The Medieval walls are my first tourist aim. About a 5 km walk up high, with views. I decided to do it later, as it was 8:30 already and I wanted to beat the bigger crowds at the most popular site.

What most people see first, vendors.

then enter and see the duomo

then walk past it and see every tourist in the universe taking the same stupid shot of "holding up the leaning tower."

the cathedral is under construction. I liked this clear sign.

All the signage was top notch . Cathedral on left here.

Tourist experience available. 

Stone carving details on cloistered cemetery roof. They knew their craft, these guys.

Stone detail in the Tower, multiple kinds of marble plus carving.  

And finally, my own iconic shot if the tower, from the opposite side you usually see. It leans to the left, and not quite as much from this angle. 

In 2 hours, when it was all open, and a thousand tourists were paying a lot to get inside all this, I was at home in A/C

Genoa

A city needs good public transit with simple ways to pay to be a good tourist city. Ideally, they have "tap n go", with your credit card, phone, or smart watch held for a second to a reader on tram or bus, and you're good for 2 hours, jumping on any transport. Second best is cash on board. You plop a 2 euro coin into a box and get one ride. 

Genova has neither. And it doesn't have a bus ticket machine at the train station, which some places do. And that would be not tragic, except for getting to your hotel the first time, and if it weren't as hilly as San Francisco, which makes walking a true commitment. You can see these streets just north of my apartment climb and climb by their shape.  That's a map of steep hills. 

Luckily, I only had one full day here, so I walked the flat areas near my b&b that morning for exercise and forgot about tourist activities. Getting to and from the train station with 12 kilos of luggage was no fun, but I was only 30 minutes away. And the temp was 30, not 35 as it was in Ferrara with a similar bus system problem. Could have been worse. 

The beach here is rocky, the waves more intense than on the east side of Italy. Can't really say more as they didn't make it easy to discover more . 🤷‍♀️

Happy to move on to Pisa, where they do have tap n go on buses! Last stay is Civitavecchia, where i have 2 nights in the center of town so should not need a bus.

food prices

Vegetables and fruits are fresh, local, organic, and most are inexpensive. These shallots cost less than a quarter each. 

Tomatoes that taste like tomatoes are 33 cents for a large one.

Rice is a little pricier than in US. Pasta can be $1 per kilo, or up to twice that. 

Great olive oil is 10-20 euros per liter. Single farm, the high end of that range.

Balsamic vinegar is less than $2 a liter. Not joking. I never bought it, as i didn't think I'd use it all, but theoretically a deal. 

A chunk of focaccia of four 3x3" servings is less than $2. And loaded with olive oil. Well worth 50 cents per serving.

Food out is not cheap...but it's also very good. You don't tip, so add exactly 0% to the bill. 

A medium dish or cone of gelato is 3-4$ 

Meat is pricey, but all organic, free range, free of hormones, chemicals, and no brines that you pay by the pound for.  Burger on sale, $10 a pound, chicken breasts, $6, pork, $5, and you can get brains, kidneys, all sorts of innards. I wasn't buying in lamb season, but when it is, it's comparable to pork price, they say. I've learned about slaughtering here, and it's pretty amazing info. Veterinarians examine every cow and lamb, before and after slaughter. Only one farm per day uses the slaughterhouse. I saw one restaurant with tomahawk steak for only $18/ pound. You'd probably be served 2 pounds. 

Fruit and veg are only what's in season. Very little in the freezer section. Very few canned vegetables. They want it fresh, local, in season, and are happy to wait for and celebrate fig season or blood orange season or whatever season the next time it comes around. 

Cheese and prosciutto, which i lived on, is $7.50 a pound, but well worth it. Mortadella and speck, two other popular lunch meats, are $4 a pound. 

Yogurt is about $.89/ 100 grams.  I didn't buy eggs, but they are only sold by the six pack, and mainly used in recipes, not as omelettes. 

You don't buy beer by the six pack. One at a time is how they are sold. Less than a dollar a can for good Italian beer. Wine can be found for $3-$29.  Asti spumante is made here in Turin. About $6/ bottle. 

Coffee grounds are $5/ pound. (Actually 500 g is what i mean when I say a pound, but with how weak the dollar is my prices per pound are correct. )

It's good food. 

Primo Levi's tomb... or not

Chemist, author, and Auschwitz prisoner #174517, Levi is buried a half hour from my Turin apartment. I walked there this morning, to a cemetery with a Jewish quarter. 

When i got to the cemetery, i was immediately distracted by the opulent tombs and monuments.

miles of them lining roads.

With cool sculptures, as above...and

all kinds of architecture, gothic domes, neoclassical columns, and art Deco tombs i like a lot. 

as i wandered through aisles of this, i thought it was competitive, and said aloud, "it's tombage!" Which rhymes with plumage. 

on and on, road after road, until i stopped and asked GPT, "this is the size of Foro Italico, i think. Right?" Nailed it. Foro Italico, major aroman Olympic venue is 50 hectares. This cemetery is 51!

The signage was great. Maps

and individual grave info. 

With the little codes to scan to learn even more..

It was like the Turin Museum of The Notable Dead. 

One of my favorites was a tomb of intellectuals, probably child-free, mostly professors. The guy who installed gas lighting in Turin, professors of Sanskrit and Latin. Journalists, poets. Zoologist, early adopter of blood transfusions... I swear i gained IQ points just standing there. 

Elsewhere, a famous organizer of Turin's 1821 riots, an operetta comedic soprano, a Secretary of the Navy... You could literally spend 2 hours per day there for a week and learn so much!

The art was incredible. Copper angels, statues like the guy above with his dog, delicate stone work, black marble that wowed, wrought iron designs...

 Portico after portico, collonade after collonade like this one with several signs in each one. 

As it ends up, you need an appointment to see Levi's tomb, and i belatedly realized it was Shabbat anyway, so i had the wrong day free. But here it is, from the cemetery's website, in winter. 

Whoever designed and curates this? Bravissima or bravissimo! What an amazing find.