We've just returned from our Italian vacation and have much to share with you including photos of our visits to Milano, Firenze, Roma, Agerola, Amalfi, Ravello, Positano, Sorrento, Napoli, Pompei and Mount Vesuvius. As it will take a bit of time to upload and annotate all of the photos on our Shutterfly site, I'll post each city individually as the upload is completed.
On a preliminary note, when I was in college I had a 'Dead Poets Society' type English professor who believed in sensory writing in lieu of a retelling of events; that is, writing that conveyed an experience in terms of our five senses making for a palpable understanding on the part of the reader (This particular professor also abhorred the word 'very' saying that it didn't strengthen the adjective it modified in any way and felt that using 'very' in writing signified a limited vocabulary and an inability to express oneself articulately. To this day, I refrain from using 'very' in my writing though his equal abhorrence of parentheses did not stick with me).
In scrubbing our photos, I had a sensory experience of my own and recalled Diane Ackerman's remarkable book 'A Natural History of the Senses' and its broad assertion that recollections are often triggered by sensory memories/events. Below, I've listed my and J's Italy sensory triggers that will always call the trip to our minds and hope that they will make our trip dimensional for you in a way that's more lucid than the usual response to the question, "How was your trip?"
More to follow on our trip in the days to come!
SIGHT: Italy looks like...
The Madonna and Child. Both are ubiquitous with statues, paintings and carvings adorning niches, walls, ceilings, windows and unlikely, ramshackle roadside stands that pay homage to Mother and Child and offer comfort to passersby. (photo of stained glass window within the Vatican Museum)
Ruins, columns and arches (il Colosseo in Roma)
Frescoes. Art is inescapable in Italy and some of the most impressive pieces are the frescoes painted with quick, skilled hands by the likes of Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo and Raphael. (photo of a fresco in the Borgia apartments in Vatican City)
TASTE: Italy tastes like...
Citrus. In the south, lemons and oranges grow in abundance and are used as the principal ingredients in desserts, accents in meat dishes and flavor the traditional liqueur limoncello. (photo of citrus available in a stall in Sorrento; lemons the size of cantaloupes are to be found in Napoli)
Basil, fresh mozzerella, garlic and tomatoes. Italian food is preeminent. Marcel Boulestin maintains that, "It is not really an exaggeration to say that peace and happiness begin, geographically, where garlic is used in cooking." I was a very happy eater in Italy!
Espresso.
Gelato and lots of it!
SMELL: Italy smells like...
The sea and salty wafts. (photo of Amalfi)
Bougainvillea (photo taken in Positano)
Beeswax candles and incense. The heady perfumes of basilicas permeate the nose before one enters the chapels where stands are most often set out for candles lit to accompany prayers. (photo taken in the Milano Duomo)
TOUCH: Italy feels like...
Supple leather (Prada flagship storefront in Milano)
Cool marble. (Michelangelo's Pieta in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City)
Linen (photo taken in Positano where linen clothing offerings are plentiful)
HEARING: Italy sounds like...
Swarms of buzzing and humming motorbikes weaving in and out of traffic patterns. And honking horns, too!
Maria Callas, Verdi and symphonies where each person is a conductor who moderates trilling 'r' sounds, rolling consonants and long vowels with punctuated gestures of the hands that always seem to mark quarter time. (photo of La Scala opera house in Milano)
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