Milan

This is our last day in Italy. We didn’t have the early start that has characterised our previous hotel departures – instead, we left at a more sedate 9:30am. This allowed us to make the short journey to Modena, and Luciano Pavarotti’s house.

Pavarotti was born in Modena and maintained strong connections with the area. When he retired he built a house on the outskirts, where he lived the remainder of his days. Whilst doing so he set up an academy for young singers, and taught or coached promising young opera singers. We toured the house, which is full of memorabilia, costumes, Grammys, platinum records, scores and books. Once we’d completed the tour we were treated to a concert from two up-and-coming singers: Yolanda, a soprano, and Giuseppe, a tenor, who gave us renditions of arias from various operas, accompanied by a pianist. Afterwards they stayed for interrogation by members of our group.

After the concert, we crossed the road to the restaurant attached to the house, for our very last traditional Italian lunch: antipasto, this time with hot bread pillow cakes, followed by risotto with balsamic vinegar (we are in Modena, after all) and roast chicken breast. Pudding was a vanilla ice-cream with caramelised peanuts.

We boarded the bus for the trip to Milan. We had about an hour to ourselves in Milan, to look around. This was hampered by (a) it being Mayday, so most of the shops were shut; (b) a demonstration outside La Scala opera house, requiring a police presence and road closures; and (c) it was raining. We wandered around a bit, then met up again at the agreed rendezvous outside Tiffany’s. As ever, one of our group was completely lost, but we managed to find her on the way back.

The big thing in Milan

The big shopping place in Milan

Our final journey was to the airport, about an hour out of town. We checked in, nd headed up to the lounge. Six hours to Dubai, then 16 hours to Auckland. Home on Friday.

 

Bologna

On our final full day in Italy, we had a bit of a rest in the morning, with no engagements. A chance to catch our breath, before heading to Bologna for a tour of the city, followed by an early dinner and the final opera of our tour, Tosca.

In the morning we had a final wander around Reggio Emilia, a coffee in the café outside our hotel, and then boarded the bus for Bologna. There we met our guide, Julia, who told us all about Bologna. The city doesn’t have quite the same cachet as some of the other cities that we’ve been to on our tour, but still there were some interesting points. It’s another city with an ancient university – this one reckoned to be the oldest in the Western world, having started in 1088. Some of it was damaged during WW2, but has been reconstructed as much as possible. Where the frescoes were unrecoverable they’ve simply painted white, not wanting to create a “fake antique” look. There was an anatomical theatre, where demonstrations of dissections were carried out, watched over by statues of Anatomia and all the forefathers of medicine – Galenus, Hipoocrates etc.

 

The new library, on the site of the old library

The really old library

The tour was then interrupted when one of our number was knocked down by an unheeding cyclist. She sped off into the distance, leaving Mike on the cobbled street. Fortunately one of the bystanders was a doctor, and within short order he was off to hospital for an x-ray. He turns out to have a broken hip, so not a good end of the holiday for him. This necessarily cast a downer on the rest of the day’s proceedings as people wanted updates on how he was doing. I managed to get a picture of the perpetrator speeding away, so hopefully the police can use that to help identify and bring her to justice.

We then had a look inside the big church – not the cathedral, that’s elsewhere – and it’s full of big church things. It’s one of the largest churches by volume in the world due to its 45m height. But it also contains science, in the form of a meridian line, which is lit by the sun through a tiny hole in the roof at local noon.  

Inside the big church

After a bit of free time – we found a café and I had a Negroni – we met up again for an early dinner; yet another plate of antipasto followed by tortellini. Not having had anything to eat since breakfast, we fell upon this like the wolf on the fold.

After dinner we quick-marched to our bus again, as we were running a little behind schedule. This was exacerbated by the bus driver taking a wrong turn, and also the fact that Kelly had gone straight to the venue from the hospital – she’s our main Italian speaker among the guides, and the driver didn’t have much English. We made it through with a minute to spare, and Kelly greeted us, handed us all tickets willy-nilly, and we sat down straight away.

The opera, Tosca, was well executed but no particular new settings or surprises. Scarpia was particularly loathsome. Spoiler alert: she dies at the end.

Aceto Balsamico

Aceto Balsamico Di Modena is a thing that we all know. For many centuries, no-one took much notice of it. It’s produced in a long and involved process taking many years, nay decades, in the lofts of various farmhouses in the region.

Then, one day, someone revolutionised the process, industrialised it, and copyrighted the name. This is what’s sold in shops around the world as balsamic vinegar, and it bears about as much resemblance to the real thing as Nescafé does to espresso.

We went to the Cavazzone farmhouse, which is owned by Umberto Sidoli, who also owns the Hotel Posta. The farmhouse was originally built for Baron Franchetti. After he died, it was bought first by the architect, then by the Sidoli family. Why was it sold? The baron’s children basically pissed away his fortune. Umberto’s great-grandfather bought it in 1919, and it has been in the family ever since.

 In their loft they produce the traditional balsamic vinegar. They can’t call it “of Modena” because that’s copyrighted, but theirs is the original and genuine product. Grape juice from four different varietals is boiled up, fermented, then barreled in a series of five different woods – oak, cherry, mulberry, juniper and chestnut – and left to mature for decades. It doesn’t matter what order you start with the barrels, but once you have, it’s fixed for that series of vinegar. The barrels are uncorked but covered with linen cloth, and evaporation happens over time. Once it’s ready, maybe five, 10, 20, or even 30 years later, you can take up to 1/3 of the liquid from the final barrel. You then top up from the next-most-recent barrel, which is topped up from the third, etc. etc. This means that the liquid sold is described as, for example, “at least 20 years old” rather than giving an exact year, as it is constantly being blended. The final product is a rich, thick, syrupy liquid, nothing like what you buy in a supermarket.

The ageing loft

After explaining all this, as well as the history of the house and his family, Umberto took us downstairs for a tasting of the differently-aged vinegars. As they get older, they get sweeter, more syrupy and complex in flavour. We tried one of them accompanying boiled eggs and parmesan cheese. This was followed by a pasta-making demonstration from our chef. He showed us how to make the pasta, then rolled out some he’d prepared earlier and showed us how to make tortellini, and similar filled pasta, as well as tagliatelle and other grades of ribbons.

This was all making us very hungry, and we sat down to a dinner in the restaurant – a typical Italian dinner. This time we had both tortellini and risotto with asparagus after the antipasti, and finished on roast pork with – you guessed it! – balsamic vinegar, and finally panna cotta with a balsamic glaze.

That concluded our education in balsamic. We reboarded our bus and went back to the hotel.

 

Reggio Emilia

We arrived in Reggio Emilia late in the afternoon? Reggio where? Although classified as a city, it’s more like a small town, in the heart of the Emilio-Romagna region of Italy. It’s famous for its cheese production – it is the centre for Parmigiano Reggiana. Hotel Posta is the former horse post from days of yore – in fact some parts of it date back to the 16^th century. The current owner is the 4^th generation of the family to own it - about which more later.

We were up with the lark to take a short bus ride to a local cheese factory. We were all on time, this time it was the bus driver who was late. He blamed traffic. There is no traffic. Anyway, we were soon all aboard and on our way to the factory. We’d missed the beginning, and were fully prepared to face the wrath of our guide (apparently last year when they were late, they were roundly scolded), but this time it was all smiles…either they’d sacked the previous guide, or they’d been on a Customer Service course since then.

We’d missed the milk delivery part of the tour, but joined in where they were heating up the milk then adding rennet to create curds and whey. Our guide, Anne, explained the cheese-making process, which is roughly similar to all other cheese-making processes. She was at pains to point out that what makes parmesan unique is the grass and other feed the cows eat, and that it only comes from this specific area. After draining and being put in moulds, at this stage a special band is placed around the cheese, imprinting it with Parmigiano Reggiano, the date, the factory and batch numbers. This only stays on for 24 hours and is sufficient to stay on the cheese for the rest of its life. It’s immersed in brine for 24 days, by which time the salt has penetrated 3 inches into the cheese. The rest of the salting process takes place by osmosis after the cheese is taken to the warehouse, where it matures for a minimum of 11 months, making a full year including all the other bits. Usually, however, it’s aged far longer than that.

Beaucoup de lait, pas de fromage...

Beaucoup de fromage, pas de lait

The smell when you walk into the warehouse is amazing, and Anne invited us to described the odour, including notes of citrus, pineapple, leather, and mould. Mould, of course, is the enemy here, and the cheeses are regularly brushed and turned on the shelves. They are also tested to ensure quality, and any that fail the “knock test” (with a special hammer to detect cracks/hollowness) are scored around the rind – effectively marking the cheese as being 2^nd grade. If it’s too bad, the scoring is particularly tight, crossing out the words entirely. If you see scoring on the rind of your parmesan, don’t buy it.

There's a lot of cheese!

We then went through to taste two cheeses, a 24-month “young” cheese, and a more mature 40-month. We compared the differences in texture, flavour, and saltiness.

Colour is not an indication of age

We returned to Reggio Emilia and Anne took us for a walking tour of the town, pointing out sites of interest. It doesn’t have the churches and architecture of the larger cities we’ve been to, but is more a model of a typical Italian city where the ordinary folk live.  After a light lunch at Macrame, we were left to our own devices for a couple of hours, before rejoining our bus to the Cavazzone farmhouse, there to find out about vinegar.

The big church

The theatre - Pavarotti gave his first performance here

 

Padua

We left our hotel almost on time. We’d arranged an early start to incorporate the time booked into the church in Padua, and nearly all of our group had actually got the message and complied. But there’s always one*…”Oh, I didn’t hear that”.

We left the beautiful, 5-star hotel Savoia Excelsior Palace Hotel for the last time, with many a tear in our eyes. The drive to Padua took around two hours, and we arrived to meet our guide, Michaela. Hold on, I know that name…yes, it’s the same guide we had in Venice. She took us around Padua, explaining its importance as a Roman city (the third largest in the empire). It’s also home to one of the oldest universities in the world, founded in 1222. We took a look around some of the oldest parts which are still extant – now home to the university’s administrators rather than students. It also has a very old café which never closes its doors – a very early 24/7. It also has an astronomical clock with an unusual feature – instead of the traditional 12 signs of the zodiac, it only has eleven – Scorpio occupies two sections (there’s no Libra). Legend has it that this is because the creator was never paid for his work, so decided to deliberately ruin it.

 

The old Justice building...now a market

Zoom in on Scorpio (3 o'clock)

We then made our rendezvous with the Scrovegni chapel. This was built by a wealthy banker in an attempt to improve his image. Bankers were held in low regard despite being wealthy – Dante put them in the seventh inner circle of hell with the usurers, so spending a lot of money on a chapel was a way to increase their standing. He employed the best sculptors and fresco painters of the day – some chap named Giotto did the paintings. This is what the chapel is now famous for; the rest of the palazzo has been demolished, and attempts made to remove the frescoes and sell them off were thwarted by the city council, who eventually raised the cash to buy what remained, and make it a public gallery. The system here is quite regimented: You turn up at your allotted time, watch a 15 minute video (in Italian with English subtitles), then spend 15 minutes in the chapel, as Michaela explained the significance of the frescoes, what they were depicting, and the influence on Western art. After 15 minutes you’re marched out so the next group can come in.

Heaven to the right, Hell to the left

We had a short lunch break, then found our way back on to the coach (guess what? Some of the group were late), for our onward journey to our final stay, the small town of Reggio Emilia. We’re staying here as it’s in the heart of cheese-, ham-, and vinegar-making country. So guess what? Tomorrow, we’re off to a cheese demonstration and tasting. Blessed are the cheesemakers!

 

* Not always the same one, but there's a small group of offenders

Trieste

Today is Trieste day. We were met by our local guide, Daniella, and went on a walk around Trieste in the spring sunshine. OK, spring overcast. Most of the locals were still in puffer jackets, scarves and boots, but I braved it in shorts and short sleeves…it was brisk, sure, but not winter.

We started off in the main square, which is full of main square-type buildings. Daniella explained the history of Trieste, how it became the second-biggest port in Europe when the Austro-Hungarian empire was at its height. Students of geography will note that Austria and Hungary aren’t famed for their coastlines – the Habsburg empire had very little coastline, so when Trieste (then part of Slovenia) came under their rule, they expanded the small village to a huge port city. After the end of WWI, it was decided that Trieste would become part of Italy, and started to decline – Italy already had ports! In fact, Italy is almost all coastline!

Square-type building

Another square-type building

We visited the site of a Roman theatre, which was excavated during Mussolini’s time – he was big on Roman stuff, and was keen to show that Trieste had always been part of Italy, not Slovenia. We also visited two Orthodox churches: one Greek, and the other Serbian, full of mosaics and other churchy stuff. We also crossed the Grand Canal – basically an extension of the port so that goods could be brought further inland. Much of it has now actually been paved over.

The Roman theatre

Greek Orthodox church

 

Serbian Orthodox church

We also stopped by a statue of James Joyce. He lived in Trieste before the outbreak of WW1 – indeed, he and his wife Nora had just started decorating their apartment with the intention to remain – when war broke out and he returned to Ireland. He’d already written the first chapter of Ulysses here, and if he’d remained, who knows? We might be calling the author Giacomo Joccio. He returned after the war, but then said he no longer liked it.

We had an hour’s break for lunch, so selected a restaurant right next to the hotel. The breeze was still a bit fresh so we asked if we could sit inside? “No”. No explanation, no apology, just “No”. Ah well. We ate pasta and drank local beer.

Local beer

At 1:30pm we reconvened, this time to explore the outer regions of the city by bus. Our first stop was at the top of a hill, where two churches had been amalgamated into one. They date back to the Middle Ages originally, and contain more mosaics borrowed from Constantinople, as well as relics of their saints – San Giusto and San Sergius. San Giusto may or may not be the person that St Just is named for, but no-one really knows.    

Basilica San Giusto

We drove on, and up, to a modern church situated at the top of a hill. Whilst the church had little to recommend it (60s brutalist concrete), the views from the top are the best in, and of, the city. On a clear day you can see Venice to the West, and Slovenia and Croatia to the south-west. We didn’t have a clear day but could still see a long way.

Trieste from above

Our final stop was the rose garden of the former lunatic asylum. Long since closed down, the garden is still maintained, with 5,000 different varieties of rose. But I’ve seen flowers before.

In the evening we had an early dinner at the hotel – finally! Some seafood!, then went to see Rossini’s La Cenerentola – Cinderella to you and me. Performed in a traditional setting, but very well done all the same, and jolly good fun. You know the story.

 

Ljubljana

Trieste is a port city in the very top right corner of Italy; the border with Slovenia is only around 10km away. We boarded our bus after breakfast – not without drama, as one of our assembly had failed to heed their alarm clock – and set out about half an hour late. This had a knock-on effect throughout the day. The drive to the capital, Ljubljana, took about an hour, ascending into alpine country with snow on the mountains alongside us.

Alps from the road

Our guide, Carmen, met us and took us on a walking tour of the city, giving us history and facts a-plenty. She referred to Trieste as Trst, and told us it shouldn’t really be part of Italy at all – it’s inclusion or exclusion has been contested over the years, much like the Debatable Lands in England. Modern Slovenia was formed when Yugoslavia broke up in the early nineties following the collapse of Communist rule in the Eastern bloc – very much to the relief of the Slovenians, as the country was the powerhouse of the former Yugoslavia, providing 25% of the GDP despite comprising less than 10% of the population. Independence and membership of the EU has been a boon to the country – evidenced not least by the road by which we approached Ljubljana, which looked suspiciously EU-financed.

 

The big church

The big shop

View from a bridge

We learnt about the bridges of Ljubljana, saw the university library, and various churches. We then went for a typical Slovenian lunch of fried polenta, goulash in a bread bowl, and a kind of apple strudel cake. All very Mitteleuropean. The goulash could have benefited from some actual spiciness.

We made our way back to the bus, and found that we were one short. Bonnie and Kelly set out on a search, and found that one of our party had had an accident. Dealing with that took another half hour, so we took off for Lake Bled somewhat behind schedule.

Lake Bled is what you get when you ask an AI to create a picturesque scene in the Balkans. It has a castle on a bluff. It has an island, with a church on it – the only island in Slovenia (there are none on its 46km of coastline). The backdrop is snow-covered Alps. It also has the summer residence of former president of Yugoslavia, Marshal Tito, now – surprise surprise! – a boutique hotel. We took a traditional oar-powered boat to the island, then climbed 99 steps up to the church at the top. View from the top were spectacular. We walked around the island, admired the view, then took the boat back again.

 

Castle on a cliff

Church, being picturesque

Church on an island

Back on the shore, we then went to Park Café, known as the original inventor of the kremsnita, or Bled cream cake. This is, effectively, a custard slice. With cream on top. We consumed those, with coffee, then left Bled and drove back to Trieste. Despite being enjoined to bring our passports, we weren’t stopped either leaving or entering Italy, and finally made it back around 8pm, somewhat later than advertised.  

Kremsnita

In the evening we were left to our own devices. What do cool young things (by which I mean, us) do of a Friday night in an Italian city? Restaurant, party, clubs? Laundry. We did laundry.