Just 10 Seconds

Ponte Vecchio- The audience burst into applause as the sunset.

Some places I’ve traveled I remember for the sights– picturesque views from hilltops, gorgeous domes and cathedrals, sunsets in bursts of rose and orange over the water. Florence has all of that, but I remember Florence for its people, especially Pietro.

We met at a gelato festival, as I was unsuccessfully deciphering my map to determine the route to the Uffizi, a fabulous art museum. An old man with short-cropped, white hair, large reddened nose and glasses like my grandfather’s materialized before me.

Pietro’s smile shone as if he appreciated every moment’s beauty and wanted to share it.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

I mentioned the Uffizi and presented my map.

“I’ll take you there,” he offered. “It’s a short walk.”

I thanked him. Relieved of my duty to navigate, I enjoyed the scenery as we walked.

“I like to take tourists around my beautiful city,” Pietro told me, as we passed the colorful mosaic Duomo. “I have lived here all my life. But as I get older, Florence becomes more beautiful in my eyes.”

We approached a small church.

“Let’s go inside?” he asked. “I want to show you something very beautiful.”

From the outside, it had looked like nothing special. Inside I beheld intricately carved marble columns, inlaid marble floors, and a bronze fountain with a cherub playing the harp.  

“Botticelli!” Pietro said, proudly. “Can you believe it? Most tourists miss this, so I took you here.”

We admired the fountain. Then he was off. So much to see!

Pietro and I in front of the Campanile. 

An hour into our walk, I gave up on the Uffizi realizing I’d prefer to see Pietro’s city through his 75 years of acquired admiration. I spoke little Italian, and Pietro’s English was only five years in the making, but he had an aura that kept me close.

Pietro pointed to a series of skywalks connecting many of the old buildings. “The work of the Medicis,” he told me. “Have you heard of them? Very important family in Florence.” He proceeded to recount their incredible contributions to art, politics and every other element of Florentine culture.

“Florence is the most beautiful city,” he exclaimed as we continued through the Piazza della Signoria.

Pietro pointed to the replica statue of Michelangelo’s famous David. “One of two copies,” he said. “The better of the two. The other is on top of the Piazzale Michelangelo and quite ugly, but the view from the Piazzale – what’s the word? Italians say ‘Magnifico!’”

“Magnificent?” I suggested the obvious.

He shook his head, shrugging. “No, in Italian it’s more than that. But ‘magnificent’ will do.”

Pointing to a number of other statues lining the piazza he named each artist and told me, “These are the real works of art in the city.”

“They appreciated beauty back then,” he said. “Every job was important: artist, waiter, garbage collector. Everybody played an important part in making the city beautiful. It’s still that way here, but not so much.” His eyes became sad. Then he brightened. “They gave us the art we have today. They’re still with us. We’re still inspired by them.”

Musicians playing on a bridge, with Ponte Vecchio in the background.

 We turned a corner. “We’re here,” he said.

I frowned.

“At the Uffizi,” he said. “You wanted to visit today?”

I nodded.

He checked his watch: an hour ‘til close. “I’ll go with you, show you the highlights.”

Without Pietro, I’d probably still be aimlessly wandering those hallowed halls, overwhelmed by all there is to see. I got the Chevy Chase tour of the Uffizi. Pietro clipped an incredible pace with a bad knee after “planting 100 tomato plants this morning.” Determined that I wouldn’t miss anything, he parted the clustered crowds with a wave and a smile.

Titian’s Venus of Urbino. Leonardo’s Annunciation and Adoration of the Magi. Bronzino’s two-sided The Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante. Lippi’s Madonna and Child with Angels. Caravaggio’s Medusa, Bacchus, and the Sacrifice of Isaac. Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo. Every big-name Italian artist seemed to have an entire hallway. Then –

“BOTTICELLI!” Pietro cried in ecstasy as we entered a large room almost entirely dedicated to the beloved artist. Primavera, Madonna del Magnificat, Birth of Venus, Mystic Nativity…

“Beautiful!” Pietro wiped his eyes. “You had to see Botticelli.”

“I’d like to thank you,” I said, when we’d completed our tour, my mind still reeling with art magnifico. “How about a cappuccino?”

He suggested Caffé Rivoire. “I’ve been going there since my school days,” he told me.

Upon arrival, I looked for a table.

“We’ll stand,” he said. “Much cheaper.”

I worried about his knees.

He reminded me of the 100 tomato plants this morning. “I can stand for coffee.”

The bartender knew Pietro, of course. I got a cappuccino. Pietro ordered “black” coffee in a tiny glass cup and half-filled it with sugar, sipping quickly. His wife would be expecting him for dinner.

Drinking a cappuccino. 

We parted at the bus stop.

Kissing my cheeks, he boarded the bus and disappeared.

I lingered at the bus stop sign long after he departed. If I left, I’d wonder if that afternoon had even happened.

Looking over Florence from the top of Piazzale Michelangelo.

Afterward, I decided to hike to Piazzale Michelangelo, where Pietro’s least-favorite David stands. I wanted to look down on Pietro’s beautiful city, watching the sun set in peaches and plums against the skyline.

Instead, I got hopelessly lost. Wandering aimlessly along the hilltop, I was on the verge of giving up, when I almost ran headlong into a guy about my age.

Enjoying gelato with Emmanuel.

 He introduced himself as Emmanuel. He was also looking for Piazzale Michelangelo. With his better map, we arrived as the sun set, washing Florence in golden rosewater. We spent the rest of the evening together. Over fettuccini, we marveled at the timing of our meeting. “Just 10 seconds in either direction and we’d never have met!” he said.

First Pietro, then Emmanuel, even the glorious sunset forever casting the city in gold upon my mind. So much beauty. And just 10 seconds either way, and it might never have been.

Across the Canal and Into the Bar

On the Road with Hemingway - Venice, Italy

Gondolas gliding along the Venetian canals.

Almost all Ernest Hemingway travelers I’ve come across make a beeline to Harry’s Bar as soon as they hit Venice. But, while the bar was one of the writer’s favorite places in the city (Hemingway even had his own table in the corner by the window and was served a Montgomery – a dry martini 15 parts gin to one part vermouth – as he sat down), going straight to Harry’s upon arrival is certainly very un-Hemingway. For one thing, Hemingway would have visited several bars on his way to Harry’s (it’s a long walk from docking). And second, there is far too much to see in Venice to spend your first moments in the city closed off in a bar – even one as beautiful as Harry’s.

So instead, of hitting Harry’s bar as soon as I arrived in Venice, I decided instead to walk around the city. I enjoyed breathtaking views of the bright, arching bridges and shimmering canals. I dined at a seaside café and watched a boat race. I enjoyed my first gondola ride, skimming past history to the soothing songs of my gondolier, stopping only once when we got caught in a gondola traffic jam under a bridge. We skirted between tight passageways – crumbling brick buildings on one side and golden stucco buildings and window boxes bursting with red and purple begonias on the other. Dusk fell, setting the clouds on fire and the water twinkling in pinks and golds.

Posing with the owner of the mask shop, after finding the perfect mask.

 I dipped inside a small mask-making shop and met the man who had owned the place for over 20 years. “I don’t use plastic,” the owner told me proudly. “Just papier-mâché.” I tried on columbina half-faced cat masks, full-faced bautas with gold trimming around the eyes and bright green feathers pluming from the top. I tried a two-faced jester: one face grinning the other crying. And then I saw it: hanging in a far corner of the shop: a beautiful volto mask, covering the chin and forehead, with bright red lips, cracked white face and antique religious motifs along the arched cheeks and forehead blooming with taffeta and bells. I tried it on, and, looking through the mask asked him the price.

Pro-abortion protest inside Basilica di San Marco.

I attended a church service at Basilica di San Marco and witnessed a pro-abortion protest in the midst of the service – dozens of supporters holding up signs with the start of every hymn. I sat in the Piazza San Marco and enjoyed the live orchestra at Caffé Florian (the oldest café in Italy) over an incredible Coppa Caffé Florian – a decadent concoction of coffee gelato, tiramisu, chocolate and Florian coffee liqueur and topped with whipped cream, chocolate sauce and pirouette cookies. I watched the pigeons circle the piazza, listened to the bell toll in the Campanile and then climbed it myself for great views of the city.

Decadence at Caffé Florian

Coppa Caffé Florian

View from the top of the Campanile.

I walked along twisty stone paths on my way to The Gritti Palace – a gorgeous, ornately decorated hotel on Campo Santa Maria del Giglio. Being a fine, elegant hotel facing the water, it quickly became another one of Hemingway’s favorite hangouts. Both Hemingway and the English novelist W. Somerset Maugham called The Gritti their home back in the 1950s and ‘60s. Hemingway wrote much of his initially unsuccessful novel Across the River and Into the Trees in his grand Presidential suite with a picturesque view of the Grand Canal. Wandering onto the Gritti terrace, Hemingway would dine on scampi and a bottle of Vapolicella while watching the gondolas skimming by.

View of the Grand Canal from inside The Gritti Palace.

I spent a luxurious evening at the Gritti’s Longhi Bar drinking daiquiris. The snug bar was caked in colorful Murano glass sconces and huge hand-carved mirrors displaying cherubs and the fleur de lis. Sipping my daiquiri and nibbling on pitted olives and mixed nuts, I enjoyed my prime view, overlooking the Grand Canal – watching couples ducking into gondolas, bottles of wine in tow.

Enjoying a daiquiri inside the Gritti's Longhi Bar.

I imagined how different it would have been for Hemingway sitting on that very terrace on January 25, 1954, reading his own obituary almost 60 years before. The New York Daily Mirror’s presumptive headline read: “HEMINGWAY, WIFE, KILLED IN AIR CRASH.” Hemingway and his fourth wife, Mary, had been flying over an East African jungle on their way to Murchison Falls on the Nile for a safari, when their plane crashed. But neither died. (The only way Hemingway ever got rid of his wives was by divorcing them.)

Enjoying the view from the Gritti's terrace,
overlooking the Grand Canal.

Although Hemingway was banged up a bit with injuries affecting everything from his skull, shoulder and spine to his liver and kidneys, instead of going home to recuperate, he headed to the Gritti, where he drank large doses of champagne in lieu of medicine and played baseball with friends in his suite, knocking out a window in the process. When the manager of the Gritti found out, he was impressed – not angered – by the damage, proclaiming that after 300 years of existence, Hemingway was the first person to play baseball in the Gritti and so he would “reduce Signor Hemingway’s bill by ten per cent.” I am more careful of my surroundings as I finish my long drink, toasting Hemingway’s safari survival and trip to Venice.

The infamous clocks hanging on the wall at Harry's Bar. Because the
only time that matters is Harry's Bar Time.

And, eventually, (on my second day in the city), I arrive at Harry’s Bar, just in time for brunch. I order a Bellini. The choice of a white peach cocktail composed of one part white peach puree to three parts Prosecco was quite un-Hemingway. For one thing, the drink would not be nearly strong enough for a man who claims to have lived in Paris off of a diet of clementines and cherry brandy. For another, the drink is pinkish and bubbly – hardly a Manly Man’s drink. But if I’ve learned anything from my trip tracking Hemingway’s path from journalist to novelist all across Europe it is that as a young, single woman, slight of build, it’s dangerous to act too much like Hemingway. Living on a diet of clementines and cherry brandy? (Couldn’t do it if I wanted to and wouldn’t want to – especially in Paris!). Besides, as an aspiring foreign correspondent, I could have easily ended up as Hemingway’s fifth wife. Two of his four were war correspondents; he divorced Martha Gellhorn because she was too much competition in the field, and Mary Welsh survived marriage simply because she survived Hemingway.

Toasting Hemingway with a Bellini at Harry's Bar.

 So I happily sat at the bar, sipping my Bellini (named for the Italian artist, as opposed to the Montgomery, which is the namesake of a British field marshal) and envied only Hemingway’s prime seat, overlooking the glimmering canals. The Bellini was simultaneously sweet and tart, the Prosecco rich and bubbly.

I befriended the bartender (per Hemingway’s suggestion – the man was on a first-name basis with bartenders all over the world), and the bartender promptly removed a thin book from a shelf behind the bar and opened it to a dog-eared page about Hemingway.

“That’s the owner and Hemingway,” he told me, pointing to a picture of two men, one clean-shaven, the other bearded, and both wearing sombreros. Both appeared drunk out of their minds, with Hemingway staring at an empty glass as if it were his long-lost lover.

The bartender, Giuseppe, told me that the book had been written by the owner’s son, Harry (who was named after the bar, not the other way around; the bar, consequently, was named after a customer – obviously one before Hemingway’s time).

I read the caption beneath the black and white picture:

My father is smiling in the picture, but Hemingway, with his gray beard, looks lost in a dream before a flood of empty glasses. My father and Hemingway had apparently emptied those glasses, and I remember that it took my father three days to recover from his hangover.

If you didn’t understand what I meant by the importance of not mimicking Hemingway too closely, now you do. Giving a famous bartender a three-day hangover is no small accomplishment!

But to understand this Hemingway – the one of Venice – we must take a look at the events in his life that took place between his Italian debut venture to Milan (a war can hardly be called a trip) and his eventual return as a carefree tourist in Venice. A young teenager just one month shy of his 19^th birthday arrived in Milan on assignment as a Red Cross ambulance driver for the Italian army back in 1918. But when Hemingway first stepped onto the watery canals of Venice, it was the summer of 1949, and he was already the well-established author of a number of novels including, most famously, A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls. He is also on his fourth and final wife. He has enjoyed the roaring twenties along expats Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound and the Fitzgeralds (among others), and he has managed to have falling-outs with nearly everyone he’s met, including three former wives. He has jumped countries and continents from Paris to the Key West to Spain (for the bullfights) to Kenya (for a 10-week safari), back to Spain to report on the civil war and then on to Cuba (the country claiming his most consummate relationship for he lived there for 20 years, albeit flings with other countries).

With all of this in his background, Hemingway arrived in Venice independently wealthy but still rather grim. He had enjoyed critical acclaim and popularity for his writing, but while in Venice he would go on to write what critics dubbed his first flop: Across the River and into the Trees – about the last day of a man’s life and the memories he focuses on just before dying. Perhaps the critics were hoping for something a bit more on the cheery side. Only Tennessee Williams of the New York Times said anything positive about the novel when it was first released. (And I guess if you can only have one fan, Tennessee Williams of the New York Times is a good one to have.)

Once, while at the Gritti Hemingway took Adriana Ivancich, a Venetian aristocrat and his love interest at the time, onto the Gritti terrace at sunset. And, according to a People magazine article published in 1980 (Adriana’s tell-all in which she revealed herself as the inspiration for the teenage Renata in Across the River and Into the Trees), Hemingway began to cry. “Look, daughter,” Hemingway told her. “Now you can tell everyone you saw Ernest Hemingway cry.”

I have a hard time imagining the man’s eyes even welling, not to mention actual tear drops and glistening cheeks, but the man was certainly a performer and an exaggerator – hyperbolizing even his poverty – so that perhaps he was not always quite the manly man he appeared in Pamplona when he took his pregnant wife to see the Running of the Bulls to toughen up his unborn son.

But Hemingway could always escape the pains of his life for the white tablecloths, wide windows and Montgomerys of Harry’s Bar. And as I toast Hemingway over my Bellini I can understand why he came here. People flit in and out for Sunday brunch, talking and laughing and exclaiming over the history of the place. And for a moment the diners clustered around Hemingway’s favorite table disappear and I see a man in a sombrero, a “flood of empty glasses” before him, sipping a Montgomery and refining his novel about death – a novel that would not be appreciated until years after his own.

The One Where I was Spoon-fed Pasta by My Italian Grandmother

I will remember Milan for its beauty. For its coffee. For its fashion. And definitely for the exasperated waitress who fork-fed me pasta.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. It all started with my guidebook. La Lattería was featured in my guidebook as a restaurant with typical homemade Italian cuisine. A word of warning: guidebooks aren’t exactly liars, they just don’t tell the truth either. (My explanation is forthcoming.) My guidebook told me a lot (of true) information. The menu changes daily. If you’re looking to escape the touristy clamor of the city, you should definitely go to La Lattería; get there late and you can dine with the locals elbow-to-elbow in crunched seating. But what I didn’t know, I would soon find out.

I started out with a friend in search of the restaurant. It took us forever to find Via San Marco, 24. Even when we were on the right street, the restaurant appeared to be nonexistent. Only a completely boarded up shack resided under #24. We walked up and down the street a few times, when we noticed a clapboard shack roll up. ? The warm glow of lights and the loud chatter of people all talking and laughing at once escaped as a woman dipped her head out from underneath.

“Are you looking for La Lattería?” she asked. She was one of the last English-speaking people we heard all night.

We nodded and ducked inside. The restaurant was packed – elbow-to-elbow, just like the guidebook had promised. The line ended at the door and snaked all the way up to the tiny, smoking kitchen ahead of us. As tables cleared, the line broke off and hungry diners moved to the empty tables. It was about 10 p.m. when we arrived, and we were among the last people who’d be served before they turned people out.

As we seemed to have quite a bit of time before we’d actually get one of the handful of tables in the one-room closet-sized restaurant, I asked for the bathroom. This request required a number of hand gestures and sign language, but eventually another diner who was Italian, joined me in the request, and we both followed the waiter out the door. I expected to find the bathroom nearby and was slightly surprised when we continued down the street, into a courtyard, through another building, into a second courtyard and to a shed.

I began to wonder if maybe we had both failed in our request. But then the waiter unlocked the door of the shed, showed me inside, and uttered a few hurried directions in Italian (which of course, I didn’t understand but I nodded, and said, “Sí,” anyway). Then he left.

Seeing a sink I searched for the toilet. The door shut behind me and I was immersed in total darkness. I groped for the light switch, found a metal pull, and well, pulled. It worked! A 20-watt bulb (I exaggerate not) flickered on and by the wee glimmer of light I made out the sink. From there, I searched for the toilet. Not a toilet in sight. But there was a porcelain-covered hole in the ground.

I hadn’t exactly expected a hole for a toilet. I’d traveled in Asia the past two summers and seen my fair share of squatters, but it’s different: in Thailand and India, you expect squatters. And you dress accordingly. Now, in Milan, I struggled with a dress and leggings.

Nevertheless, as I’d spent little time in the city and didn’t want to appear unable to conform to Milanese lifestyle (I was, in fact, in a non-touristy section of town, according to my guidebook), I had two options: 1) don’t go, or 2) struggle and deal with it. I struggled and dealt with it. You can deal with a lot of things when you really have to go.

Before stepping back outside, I checked myself in the mirror (because apparently no bathroom is complete without a mirror, but a toilet, on the other hand, is unnecessary) and composed myself. I was sure to smile at my bathroom-using companion as I slipped through the doorway; I tried to give an un-phased, undaunted look, and I apparently succeeded.

I was only a few steps outside the bathroom and struggling with the locked courtyard gate (probably that had something to do with the instructions I had ignored) when I heard a piercing scream. A scream that conveyed all the horror, fear and anguish that naturally come with discovering that there is no toilet in the bathroom.

The scream was followed by the shuffling of feet. I was still struggling with the gate when it magically opened. I stumbled forward. My bathroom companion whipped us both through the double-courtyard gates as if the non-existent toilet was chasing us. We were back at the restaurant before I’d processed that I was also now running.

I swear the waiter’s mustache twitched when he saw us re-enter the restaurant. My companion returned to her seat without a word of her ventures to her friends. I found my friend seated at a table upon my return (and it was all I could talk about for the next ten minutes). The only problem with our table was that my chair was squished between the table and wall (with the swinging kitchen door right beside it), and I had no way to actually get to it.

The waiter motioned my friend up from her seat, lifted the table (vase, silverware and bottle of olive oil balancing precariously on top), shoved me into the seat and shoved the table back on top of me in one swift motion that said he’d done it a thousand times before.

I was wedged so tightly between the table and the wall that I promptly lost feeling from the waist down.

The waiter placed menus in front of us and instantly demanded our orders.

We returned blank-faced stares.

The only word I understood on the entire menu was rigatoni. We asked for more time.

He rolled his eyes, threw up his hands and yelled a few things in Italian. Then he got another waitress to intervene. She too rolled her eyes, threw up her hands and yelled in Italian, so that it became a chorus of two rolling their eyes, throwing up there hands, yelling in Italian, repeat.

We furiously studied our menus. Still, only rigatoni.

And then: I heard words I actually understood! At first I thought I was having one of those before-the-Tower-of-Babel moments where my two semesters of Italian finally paid off and I was fluent! Then I realized that the Italian couple beside me was speaking to us in English.

“They really ought to have English menus,” the woman apologized – a mighty generous apology considering that we were in Italy, but I appreciated her gesture all the same.

“Do you have a suggestion of what to order?” I asked. They both seemed very happy with what they were eating.

“The xxx is quite lovely,” the man smiled, rattling off the name of the dish in Italian.

“The what?”

“Raw meet salad,” he said. “Would you like to try it?”

I stifled a grimace in my napkin. “No thank you,” I said.

“Or you could try the pasta con prosciutto” the lady said.

“No suggestions!” the waiter cried – suddenly, miraculously, speaking English.

“Why not?” the woman demanded.

“They might not like it!” he said and stalked off.

“We’ll take our chances,” I told the woman. “What do you suggest?”

With my the pasta con prosciutto.

I ordered the pasta and ham bathed in a light sauce and my friend ordered a Mediterranean-style cooked fish – both the couple’s suggestions. (They were a little disappointed that we hadn’t ordered the raw meet salad.)

My pasta came out first. We’d decided to share the two dishes (mostly because my friend was slightly concerned about the potential rawness of her fish), so I waited. After all, my Mother had taught me good Southern manners, and you never eat before everyone is served. (That’s etiquette 101, Darlin’.)

I’d waited a good two seconds when I suddenly heard another scream. At first I thought that it was my bathroom companion, who’d found a porcelain hole in place of her plate. Instead, it was our waitress (Eye-Roller-Hand-Waver #2). She approached me with all her usual reactions, as I sat, rigid in my seat, hands folded, completely unconscious of what crime I’d committed but sure that I’d broken some incredibly sacred Milanese law.

And that’s when she shoved my plate forward, grabbed my fork and spoon and proceeded to twirl my pasta. She jerked the fork toward my mouth and I opened on command.

Between mouthfuls of pasta, I tried to explain in broken Italian my rather awkward Southern position.

She would hear none of it (although she appeared to understand all of it – even the English interjections – proving that some sort of pre-Babel-esque situation was at work here). She intimated that the pasta would get cold, would be ruined. She brought out the fish.

“But it is not ready,” she said, rolling her eyes and waving her hands. Then “EAT.”

And that’s when I made the fatal mistake. I took a knife to my pasta. That is, I picked up my knife, it was poised over my plate, and the waitress lunged across the table and seized it from my hands. (Cutting your pasta is a big no-no in Italy – something I knew but had forgotten in my state of cultural bewilderment.)

“Compartire, compartire” I repeated the verb “to share” – trying to explain my seemingly inhumane action.

She returned with another bowl and sat down at the table beside us, carefully spooning equal measurements of pasta between the two bowls and heavy-handedly dousing both with olive oil – all the while shaking her head and talking furiously to us in Italian. She did the same with the fish.

She then proceeded to warn us that neither would be good. We had waited too long and besides the fish was not ready.

We smiled anyway and took tentative bites, as all eyes in the restaurant were glued to our plates. And it was then that I had two simultaneous realizations, 1) I instantly understood what it was like to be a fish in a fishbowl with one’s over-zealous owner watching you eat, and 2) I realized that our waitress was not the control-freak, crazy woman I’d originally pegged her to be but instead was like any good Southern grandmother worried over how her guests will receive her hospitality.

And as I ate (and eat I did, for I feared the consequences of not eating every noodle in my bowl), I began to laugh. And then my friend laughed. And so did the couple next to us. And then the whole restaurant – even my bathroom companion – began to laugh, save my Italian grandmother. We laughed and laughed until the tears rolled down our faces and into our bowls.

And after we took our last bites and paid our complements to the chef, my Italian grandmother cracked a smile.