Trip to Italy, July 1998

I'm back from my biennial trip to Italy. I won't do a travelogue here--for one thing, this wasn't really a sightseeing trip--but I'll post some observations.

I had a very good setup, one that isn't available to most travelers. In the town of Umbertide, in the region of Umbria, where I grew up, the family home is still available to me. This time, I spent most of the time in another town in Umbria, Montecastello di Vibio, where my father was teaching at an international art school. The school provided a nice house and meals, some of the best school food one could want, home-cooked Italian meals with a vegetarian emphasis. It was an attractive hill town with great views of the surrounding landscape. With the meals provided, I was very glad to stay there; my mother and I spent a few days in Umbertide, keeping the house in order between tenants, and I visited with old friends.

The sights we saw included Orvieto, with newly restored Signorelli frescoes in the Duomo, and the nearby town of Civita di Bagnoregio, which Laurie in Rome had recommended on the list. It's a fascinating town without traffic, reached only by a footbridge. I went on one day trip with the school, to Ravenna, known for its early Christian mosaics. The night before, the faculty talked about also going to a show of ancient Roman painting in the nearby town of Rimini. The director found information on the show on the Internet, but felt she still didn't have enough logistical information to make the extra stop. Still, while the bus was going, she made some calls on her cellular phone and got enough information to arrange the stop. The show in Rimini was truly moving, paintings mainly from Pompeii and Herculaneum mostly in the collection of the Archaeological Museum in Naples, big parts of which are often closed. The show would be a blockbuster if it were in New York or Washington. For anyone interested, it is up in Rimini until August 30. Since Rimini is a beach resort, people might want to take a day trip there rather than try to find a hotel, unless they also want to spend time at the crowded beach. On the return, we made more use of the cellular phones increasingly ubiquitous in Italy. A good stop for dinner would be Gubbio. My mother is a friend of the owners of the Taverna del Lupo restaurant there; she called from the bus saying some of us would eat there, but could they recommend a cheaper place for the students? The owners arranged a low-priced meal at their associated restaurant, La Balestra. Another good restaurant we found was at the Hotel Villa Montegranelli, an upscale place outside Gubbio.

In Umbertide, Montecastello, and Montone (another hill town where we spent time), many of the narrow medieval streets had been dug up for repaving (there were attractive stone patterns on the streets that were completed) and redoing underground pipes and wiring. Reportedly European Union money was coming in to finance all these projects at once. Some project signs said repairs of damage from the 1984-85 earthquakes was an objective.

Speaking of which, Umbria in general was short of visitors because of last fall's earthquake, but none of the towns where we went had any damage. People should visit: they could get good deals! We didn't go by Assisi, which had the best-known damage, although most sights there are open. On the road along the Tiber Valley, I saw some buildings with scaffolding and some old farm houses without roofs, but such things could be seen at other times too.

Random observations on changes in Italy: we drove by, but didn't visit, what appear to be some very large new shopping malls. Trains, including Rome Metro and those of independent Umbian regional railway, were covered with graffiti. Not particularly new, but I could contrast American concerns for parental advisory ratings on television with the showing in Italy of a commercial (for grout) with nudity at halftime of World Cup soccer games, when all ages were watching.

In Rome the day before my return, I saw the new arrangement (open within the last month) of ancient Roman art at the Museo Nazionale Romano at Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, near Stazione Termini, including paintings and mosaics for now limited to guided visits; it's very impressive. That night, I had a very nice dinner with Laurie and Peter, then afterwards we met with the new list member Flavio.

Sometimes I've written to excess about making flight arrangements and the details of the flights. I'll say something here, trying to show some restraint. The last time I paid for a trip to Italy, I got very good educator fares, which I hoped to get this time. I called Council Travel, which specializes in these fares, first. The problem is, last time I went in September, when not many educators can go; travel in July is another story and these fares were sold out. Council booked a regular consolidator fare on Continental; while they held it for a week, I checked other sources: consolidators from newspaper ads, the Internet, and full-service travel agents. Consolidators on the Web often show fares on the books, but require human intervention to show availability for the date desired. Related to a recent topic on the list, a minority of the sites that promise e-mail response gave me any response. Some, but not all, Internet airfare search services seem not to look for connections that need more than one change of plane: for Kansas City-Rome that rules out Delta, TWA and all third-country airlines (Air France, KLM, etc.). I hope the agents took this into consideration. Anyway, I found nothing better that Council's original quote, and I went with that. It was a higher fare than I was used to, the cost of going in July. Before I was close to being able to book, I'd checked on the Web for months for published and consolidator fares as shown on the Web; they'd stayed in the same ballpark. The day after I made my commitment, I checked again and there was a published KLM fare $400 less than I paid. While that was irritating, I didn't let it bother me.

The Continental flights were of normal comfort; they were cross-listed with Alitalia, and most of the flight attendants were Italian. With the Alitalia code-share, many passengers were Italians and Italian-Americans connecting to Southern Italy. I like it when such a group applauds the landing. Rome airport had many new partitions to separate out intercontinental passengers and Schengen agreement passengers (those bound for most European Union countries, which no longer require passport control). After waiting in the Giotto lounge where I was entitled to go with my Diners Club card, I had to do much backtracking and going up back stairways to get to my gate. On arrival in Kansas City, all the passengers who'd made international connections in Newark found that their luggage had not been transferred after customs even though, in my case, there were over three hours of connecting time. My bag was delivered to my home the next day.

That'll do it; a trip to Italy is always reinvigorating for me.

Andrew

mcgarrel@griffon.mwsc.edu