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.

Ever After from Milan

On the Road with Hemingway - Milan, Italy

The cathedral "white and wet in the mist."

Milan is a city begging for a fairytale. It was practically designed with Disney in mind. A director’s dream: from the Duomo’s lacy lattice-work to the arabesque columns and glass ceiling of the Galleria to the plush red velvet curtains and gold filigreed box seats at The Scala. But instead of a fairytale story, Milan got Ernest Hemingway – not exactly the fairytale type.

The picturesque quality of Milan is forever imprinted on my mind, as it was on Hemingway’s (witness: A Farewell to Arms). No image resonates more strongly than my very first view of the city: coming up the stairs of the metro at the Piazza del Duomo, I was almost overpowered by the frosted turrets of the most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen. Made of white Candoglia marble, the Duomo shone like finely cut crystal in the sunlight – seeming to soar forever into the clouds. The cathedral was one of 19-year-old Hemingway’s favorite places to walk arm in arm with his first love, Agnes von Kurowsky.

Standing in the entrance of the Galleria.

Turning around, I beheld Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II – and yet another one of the couple’s old walking grounds. The Galleria is the world’s first shopping mall, and its grandeur begs the question why anyone ever bothered to build a second, for none compare to the magnificent intersecting glass arcades that dome above the rows of posh shops. Inside the Galleria, I wound my way through intimate sidewalk cafes with red geraniums blossoming over their terrace boxes and wandered passed clusters of people sipping their cappuccini and macchiati during their work break or meeting with friends for leisurely lunches.

The warm glow of the shops inside the Galleria.

The shops glowed like melted candlewax – Prada, Louis Vitton and the art bookshop Libreria Bocca – were each outfitted with elegantly sloped arches and bowing marble figures. I glided over intricately designed mosaic floors and up to the third floor of Gucci, where I plumed and preened in pumpkin pumps, swirling about the loft as if all those hundreds of heels were in my own personal closet. I was assigned a personal shoe-fitter, Michele, who brought down several boxes. I opened them with Christmas morning excitement, exclaiming as I slid the leather shoes over my heels and checked all of the angles in the mirror. At over €500, I had to leave the heels behind, but as I tore myself from the shelves and descended the staircase to the outside, Michele whispered words of solace. “If you change your mind,” he said. “We’ll be here, waiting for you.”

On the top floor of Gucci trying on the pumpkin heels.

My first night in Milan I treated myself to an evening at the opera in the famed Teatro alla Scala (heavily referenced by Hemingway in A Farewell to Arms) and found myself in my own private gold-filigreed box seat, surrounded by plush red velvet curtains and immersed in the modernized drama of “Oberto Conte di San Bonifacio.” The romantic tragedy which was about love, deception and ultimately redemption and murder was performed with all of the gusto and bravado universally expected of operas yet also containing the eloquent subtlety inherent only to the very best productions. The audience practically hung over the balcony clutching at every grand, operatic breath. I was so close to the stage that I could see the stage director’s hands flitting back and forth behind the opera box situated at center stage.

In my private box seat at La Scala.

I spent the first fifteen minutes of the production searching for the surtitles and then realized that most of the audience understood the Italian opera. So I hung onto every word that I understood and made up the rest, later checking my recreation against fact on Wikipedia, when I returned to my hostel that night. But even without a full understanding of the storyline, I appreciated the historical importance of the evening – watching an opera that debuted in that very theatre over 170 years before. The characters and scenery had been modernized, but the predicaments and situations were much the same.

Awaiting the opera to begin.

During the intermission I wandered through the marble halls with grand gold cherubs bursting from the ends of tall white columns and sipped a macchiato with the other guests. I basked in the unrushed luxury of fine coffee and good opera, enjoying a few hours to escape from the busy city streets to pull for characters wracked in the agony of their own twisted lives. The curtain fell to a boisterous standing ovation. Only over the sumptuous curtsies and bows did the performers break character and allow opera aficionados to call out their real names.

Inside La Scala.

I rejoined the city streets pampered in the comfort of others’ sorrows – that is, an Italian opera is an excellent self-esteem booster. You always leave thankful that your life is not nearly as terrible or complicated as those of the characters on stage. So filled with the magic of the evening, I could hardly bare to return to my hostel and admit its end. Instead, I returned to the Galleria for dinner. Feasting on pasta carbonara and tiramisu, I watched couples strolling arm in arm under the domed structure and was reminded of another couple: Ernest and Agnes.

Dining at an elegant sidewalk cafe in La Galleria.

 But the Milan that I enjoyed that first evening – and indeed for the duration of my travels – was somewhat different than that of Hemingway’s Milan in 1918. Unable to join the army due to poor eyesight, 18-year-old Hemingway registered as a Red Cross ambulance driver. He reported for duty in Milan and was quickly stationed in the small town of Schio. He returned to Milan later that year when he was injured while pulling a fallen soldier out of harm’s way. He met Agnes in Milan. She was a Red Cross nurse, who would later break his heart when he returned to the states, expecting her to follow. In her place came a letter: confessing her love for an Italian officer. (Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms almost perfectly mirrors his own life: the protagonist, Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an injured ambulance driver for the Italian army, recuperated in a hospital in Milan, where he fell madly in love with his nurse, Catherine Barkley. Only the ending is different. And it’s certainly no fairytale ending for Catherine.)

On the site of the old Garibaldi Station, Hemingway's
first view of Italy. 

 I wanted to see Milan as Hemingway first saw it, so I returned to Garibaldi Station where Hemingway first stepped foot in Milan. The station has long been torn down and replaced by statues in Piazza della Republicca. In its place: Milano Centrale – one of the main European train stations built to accommodate large numbers of travelers. But while Hemingway’s situation (injury and recuperation) in Milan was quite different than my more luxurious experience (opera and pasta), much of Hemingway’s Milan still teems with activity – save the Red Cross hospital where he recuperated. It has now been replaced by a bank. The Galleria and Duomo are still favorite places for couples (and singles alike) to pass through, and Hemingway’s splattered references to Via Manzoni, the Scala and La Cova in A Farewell to Arms cannot go unnoticed by the attentive reader.

Outside La Cova, right after cappuccino and cake.

 Walking down Via Manzoni, the street where Hemingway recuperated in the Red Cross Hospital, I eventually came to the Golden Rectangle and La Cova, an elegant café famous for its expensive coffees (about €15 if you sit) on Via Montenapoleone. La Cova is where I learned about the merits of standing (with the locals) at the bar. Refusing a seat more than cuts your bill in half. (Befriend the lady at the pastry counter and you might just get a piece of cake thrown in, too!)

The warm glow of the display window, featuring frosted cakes ringed with chocolate ganache and whipped cream and topped with fresh berries greeted me at the entranceway. As I made my way inside and pushed through the hoards of businessmen on their mid-morning coffee breaks, Hemingway’s description of the café in the short story “In Another Country,” ran through my mind:

We ourselves all understood the Cova, where it was rich and warm and not too brightly lighted, and noisy and smoky at certain hours, and there were always girls at the tables and the illustrated papers on a rack on the wall.

I became one of the crowd in Hemingway’s Cova.

Perhaps the most beautiful cappuccino in the world - with the design of
a sunrise composed of cream and chocolate dust.

The Cova, and in general, Milan, is where I fell in love with Italian coffee. Milan introduced me to the macchiato and to the cappuccino. It is in Milan that I learned that coffee is not just a beverage – it is a passionate art form. From the Cova to Caffe Duomo, bartenders would good-naturedly compete to compose (and compose they did!) the best and most beautiful cappuccini. Leaves, smiley faces and sunrises – all designs sprinkled in chocolate and bestowed on me with the order of “uno cappuccino.”

While Agnes never followed Hemingway back home after the war, Hemingway’s love for Milan did not end with the relationship. Even Hemingway’s rather terse language cannot help but infuse the poetry of the city into his prose. And I found that preserved love for the city is still deserved almost a century later. The warmly lit windows of The Cova, the wine shops along the sidewalk, the open-air Galleria – are all still there. And the Duomo – the cathedral “white and wet in the mist” – is just as beautiful as Hemingway describes it. And once again, I’m back with the lieutenant and Catherine:

We walked along. There was a soldier standing with his girl in the shadow of one of the stone buttresses ahead of us and we passed them. They were standing tight up against the stone and he had put his cape around her.

"They're like us," I said.

"Nobody is like us," Catherine said. She did not

mean it happily.

"I wish they had some place to go."

"It mightn't do them any good."

"I don't know. Everybody ought to have some place

to go."

"They have the cathedral," Catherine said. We were

past it now. We crossed the far end of the square and

looked back at the cathedral. It was fine in the mist.

(A Farewell to Arms, Chapter 23.)

Milan may not be the setting of many fairytales. But then again, I think Hemingway would like to keep it that way. And, we’ll always have the Duomo.