Italy Through My Eyes

May 2008 - A Weekend in Spoleto

2008-05-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

This diary was written despite my resolution to have a totally relaxed holiday in Praiano for two weeks, without painting or writing. The weather was the factor that changed my mind. I hadn't been to Campania during May before and I hoped for solid sunshine, blue skies and warm sea. I should have remembered a five-day holiday in Venice in May a few years ago, when the weather was extremely cold, though bright.

If I'd looked back to that, it wouldn't have been a surprise to me when I found the Amalfi Coast chilly and showery for the first week of my stay there. It was invigorating rather than relaxing and I began drawing and writing most days. I hired a car for the second weekend and drove north to see Spoleto, in Umbria, where I'd been told there was a picturesque mediaeval town waiting to be discovered. The day that I drove my hired car out of Sorrento the weather changed and for the last six days of my stay it was hot, humid and intensely sunny, both in Spoleto and on the Amalfi Coast.

By this time I was enjoying drawing on the Amalfi paper I'd bought locally so the sights of Spoleto gave me new impetus. I didn't regret driving to see the town at all, and in all I made ten sketches on various local subjects, in Praiano and Spoleto. Below is the short record that I kept while I was in Spoleto.

My hotel in Spoleto was a real "find". I thought a hotel costing less than 40 euros a night would be harder to find than a blue tomato - and less appetising if you did find it. But my little hideout was just great. It's just at one of the gates to the historic centre of Spoleto, and surrounded by interesting buildings. I never actually went to the modern section of the town, I was too absorbed in the ancient part.

I arrived there at about 5.30 on Friday and when I'd settled in I went for a walk and began to see its possibilities. As I'd come round the corner in the main road to the town, I'd been taken aback by the sudden view of the fortress above the town.

This is the kind of castle I used to build on the beach - thick battlemented walls and square towers, all perched on a huge mound. I could see the castle from the hotel when it was floodlit at night. I set off towards it, through the town, that first evening in Spoleto.

I was surprised to find the Historic Centre was under wraps, most of it. It took me back to the eighties (or was it the seventies?) when an artist called Christo used to wrap up all sorts of things - Miami Beach, for example, and I know he gift-wrapped at least one skyscraper.

Spoleto may have been visited by Christo and turned into a work of art, or perhaps they're getting ready for the annual arts festival at the end of June. Anyway, there's scaffolding, tarpaulins and cranes everywhere. Every time I thought I'd spotted an interestingly weathered patina on a building further down the street, investigation proved it was a weathered sheet of hessian or poythene, covering maintenance works.

There are some beautiful and interesting buildings in the historic Centre of Spoleto, and I am looking forward to seeing the results of this programme of restoraion. Here's the Town Hall, the facade of which is clear of wraps, though there is work going on nearby.

It was a pleasant surprise to come across the unwrapped Duomo of Spoleto, at the foot of a wide flight of shallow steps - more like a bumpy ramp really - down into its huge piazza. I visualised the pageantry that the Catholic Church must have enacted here, with the backdrop of this stunning Gothic facade. Like every other tourist, I documented my progress down to piazza level with a series of photos.

Promising myself that I'd be back to pin the image of this Basilica on Amalfi paper, I walked on and found myself on a belvedere overlooking the valley below the castle.

It was nearly eight o'clock now. The castle was closed and I had to skirt round its hill. I came to the entrance to the huge Roman aqueduct that runs across the valley from the castle's rocks. It was still light enough for photos and I photographed the deep wooded cleft in the land as I followed the other tourists across the bridge that runs where the water must have flowed originally.

It was starting to get dark. I retraced my steps, past the wide vista of the valley, past the deserted Duomo steps, past the art shops and the souvenir shops and the leather and wood workshops, now closed, back to the ancient gate where I'd started. I had dinner in La Sacristia which is a pizzeria and restaurant housed in what from the outside is a crumbling ruin with weeds growing out of its rotting structure but which inside is a most cheerful and welcoming eating place, patronised solely by Italians when I was there (things will be different at the end of June I suspect).

And I had a bath in my English cast iron bath (the only one in my hotel, the manager told me - but it had a shower attachment as well, which I was glad about) and slept well.

Saturday May 24th: A very sunny morning today, and a sky of pure blue. Tomato juice, cappucino, cereal and croissants were on the menu for breakfast. I always eat well at breakfast, in case I don't get around to having lunch.

Today was a drawing day. I'd primed myself with Amalfi paper from a shop in Sorrento and put a new cartridge in my brush pen, so I was ready for the Cathedral.

The cathedral in Spoleto is big but simply proportioned. The main facade is Romanesque in its proportions and a very nice arcade was added in the 16th century which complements the older work beautifully. The campanile has a pointed spire.

The sun shone. I drew. The tourists above me breathed "Bellissimo" at the Duomo and later, as my drawing developed, "Complimenti". One lady wanted to photograph it and in return I got her to take a souvenir photo of me drawing it, on my camera.

As I walked back up from taking another closer look at the Duomo I noticed this sculpture outside the Chiesa S. Eufemia, in strong contrast with the church (which is undergoing restoration). There was no identifying placque. I thought of Marino Marini but this is more abstract than his images of horsemen and riders. Something urgent and windswept about it.

In the afternoon, I settled down in front of the Chiesa San Aseno, on the road back to the hotel. This is a robust seventeenth century Mannerist facade. It has huge capitals on top of pillars that run the whole height of the facade, dwarfing the entrance. It's a bravura piece of architecture. Two hours into the drawing I was ready to let the forms flow. I'd miscalculated the scale, though.

I have a photo of the whole facade and I'll probably do another study using that together with my drawing, when I'm back in England.

I ended my day with a meal in the restaurant I'd found yesterday when I was looking for the way into the carpark of the Hotel Casa San Borromeo, where I was staying. This is based in a building behind a coach park - not a very romantic setting, to be sure - with a facade so ancient, tumbledown and weed-encrusted that it's a surprise to go in and find a well run pizzeria and restaurant inside. La Sacrista was very busy, full every night of the weekend with locals and holiday makers, all Italian when I was there. The manager was helpful and friendly and there was a very welcoming atmosphere that made me go back each evening that I was there.

Its name suggests that it was originally the sachristy of the Chiesa S. Rocco, across the modern road into Spoleto. This church is also very old and I would have enjoyed drawing it if I'd stayed longer. It was closed for repairs and parishioners were redirected in a notice on the door to attend mass at San Aseno, further into the town.

Sunday 25th May: another brilliantly sunny day. I walked back into the old town of Spoleto to finish my picture of Spoleto Cathedral. I'd left it half complete the day before, intending to come back at the same time as I'd started it, to get the shadows right.

After I'd finished that little painting, I went on up to the Rocce de'Albornoziana, the fortress on the hill above Spoleto. It was about twelve o'clock and very hot. The banks beside the steep track up the hill were full of poppies and mallows. I even saw a large purple iris in the tangle of weeds and flowers.

The imposing walls of the castle were even more impressive seen close up.

The castle was built by Albornoza, a Spanish cardinal to the Popes Innocenzo VI and Urbano V, in 1360. The architect was Matteo di Giovanello from Gubbio, known as il Gattapone. Its position was originally chosen because it's highly strategic; it commands a view of the countryside for miles around. It was also intended to provide a court of honour for the cardinal, from which to govern the city and administer justice. At the end of the eighteenth century the administration of the city was moved inside the city walls, and the fortress reverted to its original strategic function. In the nineteenth century it was used as a high security prison.

Inside, the soldiers who guarded the city against invasion in the fourteenth century seem to have led an elegant life-style. Their dining hall, gallery and guardroom were covered in frescos, many added in the seventeenth century. Even when it was first built, the guardroom and dining hall were highly decorated with plant and flower forms, though the only lighting then came from narrow arrow slits in the thick walls. More windows have been added over the centuries.

Most of the remaining frescos were painted between 1400 and 1644. They are damaged but when they were complete the effect must have been very rich. The loggia which runs round the top of the central Court still has the remains of brightly coloured coats of arms and trompe l'oeuil paintings on its walls.

In the Camera Pinta, there are two cycles of frescoes commissioned by a Neapolitan family, the Tornacelli. The subjects are very Neapolitan, narrative scenes of courtly love and knights and ladies enjoying hunting and fishing in the country. (This information is from the information leaflet that came with the 7.50euro entrance ticket. As it's in Italian I hope I've got the facts right.) I enjoyed the frescos in the Camera Pinta and spent some time reading into them narratives that may not have been intended, as it looked as though someone had died beside a well in one of them. Perhaps he had just swooned for love of the lady who was looking on. There was also a battle scene with an audience of knights and ladies, which made sense once I'd read the pamphlet that explained the courtly subject matter.

I took some photos and enjoyed the peace and calm of the castle. Most people were having lunch so there was almost no-one there. Paradoxical to go to a place built for war and find peace there, I thought, but the building has been so cleaned up and immaculately presented, it's hard to imagine soldiering or brutal incarceration going on there. Papal functions, yes. I don't know whether its huge hall and two exterior courtyards are used in the Spoleto Arts Festival, along with the Piazza Duomo. I suspect they are not.

I photographed my way down to the old town again and called in to see the Roman house that is signposted near the Duomo. It was cool and dark, with some glass cases containing the bone hairpins and shards of pottery and glass that have been excavated from the site so far. I wondered what they will find when they excavate my house. Safety pins, single earrings that I've washed down the sink, and contact lenses, I suppose.

I returned to my base and climbed up to the Chiesa San Pietro. Today I had also planned to draw the carved relief panels on the facade of this big fourteenth century church across the main road from my hotel. Last night I went up there, too late to begin anything. and found it under restoration - almost a building site - but I got up close and saw the amazing Romanesque sculptures on the facade. The panels tell stories, no doubt well known to mediaeval parishioners. Parables from which to learn how to live - and die - successfully.

The sculptured reliefs are full of birds, beasts real and imaginary, and pious imagery. The good man on his deathbed is ushered into heaven by St Peter with his great key. In another scene, the sinner has his doings weighed and the sins are heavier than his good deeds. He's dragged from his deathbed by the hair and thrown headfirst into a very stylish cauldron, by smirking demons who are surely modelled on men behaving badly in the twelfth century as they can do today. The woodman with his axe who meets a prancing lion (but finds the lion is a friendly one whose injured paw he has treated in the past) is an archetypal image of aggressive fearful man. The lion is fierce and convincing.

There are twenty rectangular panels, mostly narrative but also containing a range of birds and beasts, including the four beasts of the Apocalypse. I had time to draw only the panels on the left hand side as you look at the facade, and didn't finish all of the painting I want to do on them.

I was befriended at the point where I was drawing the lions by a little cat (as opposed to a great cat). He was a tabby and he was looking for a kind hand to stroke him. I do speak Cat - it's mainly a matter of raising the vocal pitch to a gentle squeak and saying things like, "puddy-puddy-puddy, who's a nice little pussy cat then?" and not touching except if you are given a specific invitation to do so. This cat was full of invitations to stroke him and in fact kept insisting on climbing into my lap (I was sitting on the ground on a couple of pieces of marble rubble from the building work.) I was highly flattered. We reached an agreement that he could sit on my lap every now and then as long as he kept his paws off my sketch of the mediaeval reliefs.

I had gone past the barrier that said "Entrata Vietato" with impunity as it was a Sunday and there was no-one working on the restoration to stop me. A few other sightseers turned up and did the same, and a man who lived behind the site drove in and greeted me cheerfully without mentioning the barriers. My assessment that this was an Italian "Vietato" - a rational, pragmatic, flexible forbidding - seemed accurate in this case. The only potential for trouble was in the shape of a man who told me he was from Belgrade and suggested that I might like to see the interesting cupola at the back of the church. I explained to him that I was only interested in the facade and he shook my hand amiably, tried to kiss it politely, and went away.

I didn't finish my drawing - this is as far as I got:

The only image of the whole facade that I have is a postcard that was given to me by the owner of an antiquarian shop at the top of the steps to the cathedral. This kindly man chatted to me while I was drawing the Duomo in the morning and I took the opportunity to ask him about the big church on the south side of the town, because there was no sign of its name. He was very helpful, told me about San Pietro and said the reliefs on the facade are very important in terms of art history. I thought I had taken some photos of my own but I can't find them. What with the drawing, the cat and my acquaintance from Belgrade, it seems to have slipped my mind.

And next day I drove back to Praiano and spent three lovely hot days on the beach. Now I'm back in rainy England, at four in the morning, desperately missing the sun, the seas of deep acqua blue, tomato salads, pepata di cozze, garlicky gamberoni, and all the other Italian treats that draw me back there constantly.

But I expect I shall be back.

Italy Through My Eyes - 6 - Last Evening in Florence

2008-05-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

I drive into Florence confidently, recognising streets that I've driven on before. This time I'm arriving in daylight, though from a different exit off the autostrada than the one I left on seven days ago. The hotel's directions as to how to find them are simple: make for the centre and park in the underground carpark in the Piazza della Libertá.

There comes a point of course when the signposts to "Centro" give out. I'm probably there, but where is the Piazza della Libertá from here?

I follow my nose in a generally leftwards direction, remembering the map, and suddenly stumble upon it. The huge Roman arch and the fountain are unmistakable.

And after circling the piazza a couple of times I spot a sign off to "Parterre" with a large blue P sign. The only drawback is that the sign is in a slip road parallel with the main route round the piazza and I can't see any way on to that sliproad.

I pause and ask a taxi driver. He is extremely helpful and says something like "I wouldn't start from here if I were you". I have to leave the Piazza and with some fear and trepidation (I may never find it again) go off on a circuitous ratrun round one-way streets to get back into the traffic stream he has pointed at.

I come off on the wrong street, twice, do U turns where no U turns have ever been attempted before (to judge from the uproar of hooting it arouses) and after about ten similar faux-pas I get into the slip road I've seen and find that it seems to be a dead end with no further signs to the carpark I need. I pause and ask a kind looking man in a doorman's uniform where the Parterre carpark is. I am causing a traffic jam on this slip road now - and it does have an opening at the end. He waves across the road. "It's behind that palazzo there."

And sure enough, with no further signposts, that is where it is. It has taken me about 30 minutes of causing traffic mayhem to find it. Thank goodness there have been no traffic police about during that time.

The Hotel Colorado is in the Via Camillo Cavour, diagonally across the Piazza della Libertá from the Parterre. I take an overnight bag and leave my main luggage in the car. It's five miutes' walk once I've crossed the Piazza. And it seems to be locked up - it's only 5.30 so I bang on the door. Then I see a phone number on a notice next to the bell and in response to my call the owner comes down and unlocks the door. He seems surprised that it was locked.

The Colorado is very reasonably priced (50 euros for one night and a breakfast that I can't use because I am leaving so early next morning). It's round the corner from the Piazza San Marco and an easy walk from the main historic centre and Santa Maria Novella railway station. My room is small but very quiet, with a little balcony overlooking an inner courtyard. The plumbing is new, though there's no shower tray which does make having a shower rather a paddling experience. There are very nice white fluffy towels and soap provided. I'm very happy with it.

I have allowed S to know my Italian mobile number and he has phoned once or twice while I've been out of Florence. I've missed his calls aand now when he calls again I wonder if I should answer. But his help on my first night was so kind and got me out of a very difficult situation (paused on a junction of the autotrada on the edge of Florence, with no idea where I was). I decide that I should buy him a dinner on my last night, to say "Thank you". So I answer his phone call and we have a conversation of which neither of us understands much. We agree to meet in the Piazza San Marco.

It's too early for dinner - only 6pm - so we walk down to the Duomo area, and across to the Uffizi. A friend calls S on his mobile. I'm asked to say a few words to the friend, A, who speaks a little English. We laugh together into the phone. S is keen to make a party of the evening and it's planned - A will get his girlfriend and thay will meet us near the Pitti Palace. We walk across the bridge, S telling me about the time when the Arno flooded to a height of several metres, so that the Piazza Della Signoria was flooded. It was a flash flood, and according to S many people drowned. He was about six years old, in 1966, and remembers it vividly.

We meet up with A and his girfiend at a pizza restaurant near the Pitti Palace and have an excellent evening. S. won't let me pay for his dinner though I contribute a few extra euros towards the wine. Both S and A work in the leather trade. A makes prototype handbags for a top designer. His girlfriend, R, is a lovely girl from Madagascar. She has lived in London and speaks more English than A. We all get on very well, in a mixture of my terrible Italian, S's strong Florentino accent, and the English that A and R can speak. There's a lot of laughter which fills any gaps in the conversation.

I have to be up and at the airport at six in the morning, so I can't have a late night. But I wouldn't have missed this cheerful last evening for anything. Looking back on it next day, it makes up for the pain of getting up at dawn and trying to find my car - and my suitcase which I've left in the boot - and sleep-driving my way to Peretola airport to catch the plane at 7.55.

Ten Days in Tuscany and Umbria (4) - Orvieto

2008-04-27T13:40:00.001-07:00

13th April 2008

I've arrived in Arezzo, the birthplace of Michelangelo. I don't know what he'd make of it now. Like all the towns with evocative names that I've visited this week, it's spread and developed ugly industrial zones like pustules round the core of the historic centre that has been allowed to survive to feed the tourist trade. I know that sounds harsh, but as I'm doing this trip on a budget while trying to be as comfortable as possible I find I've booked hotels on the ring roads and in the trading estates that keep Italy afloat - they are great inside but the environment outside is a forest of concrete and giant advertising signs.

I've walked into the centre of Arezzo tonight - "Only a kilometre" said the nice receptionist as I left. But a kilometre is easily far enough for me to get lost in, and I must have walked about two miles, wishing I'd brought the car. I've promised myself a taxi back to the hotel and as I'm right by the railway station now, that should be easy to arrange.

But back to my day.... Orvieto turned out to be the exception to the rule I've set out above. Like Arezzo, it's just off the A1, which runs between Rome and Florence, but being high on a hill it's escaped the ravages of modern life, unless you count being turned into the most chic and pretty tourist town I've seen so far as a ravage.

I found myself missing Terni and its soft green mountains almost as soon as I set off. The road ran through gradually lower land until the attractive lumpy mounds of Umbria changed gradually to Latzio, where the uplands were set well away from the road, just in sight across a wide plain. There are clay and I suppose marble works along the way, and the trees are dusted white in some places.

The forms of the landscape along the autostrada remind me of the various areas of North Devon that I know - except that you don't get all those lovely narrow conical cypress trees in England. The delicate greens of the deciduous trees here are lovely at the moment, too. And the buildings are warm cream and yellows and peach colours.

At Orvieto I first went up the Funicular from the station, thinking that this was the only way up to the old town. Once I reached the top I realised I'd better take the car up because I was going to need more parking time than I'd calculated for when I left the car outside the station.

This lovely park is by the Funicular at Orvieto. It overlooks a huge view across the hills. In the turreted look-out place were lovers enjoying a little privacy on this sunny Sunday afternoon. I did feel just a little envious as I tiptoed past the opening to their temporary love-nest.

Having gone back for the car I drove up the hill past the strong mediaeval walls that barricade the place from all invaders - or did in the Middle Ages, before we were all invited in. It was a very good choice of citadel - I can imagine any army that laid seige to it getting a good helping of boiling oil and arrows on its head from the battlements.

Now, however, Orvieto is a very charming town, full of flowers and expensive stylish shops.

I parked by a church and walked towards the Duomo.

The shops were closed as it's Sunday but I found a good bookshop open and bought a guide book to read later. I'd parked outside the Chiesa S. Domenico, rather an austere church but with a faded little fresco above the main entrance. It is faced in part with the dark and light marble patterns that are a feature of Tuscan churches, it seems. From there I walked towards the Duomo, discovering other churches, towers and beautiful ornate doorways on the way.

The Duomo itself, though, was as much of a surprise as Florence's cathedral. It has a gigantic gothic facade, which took 300 years to complete, was started in 1290. Several architects were involved, therefore, and the building had safety problems - the transepts were in danger of collapsing from the start because of inadequate foundations, I read in my guidebook. The whole facade is a riot of decoration in carving, fresco and mosaic. The barley-sugar twisted pillars are there, with inlays of mirrored and coloured mosaic, and there are wonderful panels of relief, depicting sacred scenes, along the facade. Behind the facade the nave and transepts are faced with stripes of dark and light marble.

Inside, there are beautiful frescoes and carvings, free-standing figures and a lovely organ that I tried hard to photograph.

The huge rose window and other stained glass is also very lovely from inside. I spent a long time trying to take my own photos of the interior, laying my camera flat on the floor and propping it up on things, but I really needed my tripod.

Almost everyone in the streets seemed to be American or otherwise English-speaking. I got a lady from Australia to take my photo in front of the facade of the cathedral but I was wearing my rather strange blue Russian looking tunic and having a bad hair day, as you see...

The houses flanking the piazza where the Duomo stands are low, sway-backed and very picturesque. It's easy to imagine them as little dwelling houses when they were originally built. Now, of course, they are vey chic establishments of one kind or another....

I went into the little Museum of Etruscan Archaelogy, too, to look at the archaic smiles on the faces of the statues and the delicate depictions of stories about conversations and flying horses on the black and yellow pottery.

The sun was coming and going and by now it was about 4pm and getting cooler. I got back on the road and realised I was going to have to get some petrol before I went on to the motorway again.

Now, you learn something every day and today I learned that you can't trust automated petrol stations in Italy any more than you can in England. All the gas stations seemed to be closed (it is Sunday) so I took the risk. The thing rejected my Visa card, my Mastercard, and demanded cash. I fed it 20 euros and it clammed up. No assistenze button, no cancel button and no petrol. I gave up, wrote 20 euros off to experience and drove on. Just round the corner was an open and friendly manned Shell station where I filled up. So there was a relatively happy ending to that story...

Ten Days in Tuscany and Umbria (5) - Arezzo and my last night in Florence

2008-04-27T09:00:00.000-07:00

14th April 2008

This morning I am determined to find the "real" Arezzo. I'm now armed with a map of the historic centre, a guide book, and some good advice from the waiter in my hotel.

Last night I got bored waiting for a taxi to get me back to the hotel and I walked back. I surprised myself with my orienteering skills. I'd noticed a lot of landmarks on my circuitous route to the station and internet point. (I'd failed to find my way into the historic centre). Going back, I kept the domes and steeples on my left and it got me to the Zona d'Affari where the hotel lies. Once I entered the zone, however, I thought I was in trouble - trade outlets and car showrooms on every side -but somehow I made it. The receptionist who told me it was an easy 1km walk to the station deserves a special mention for lying in her teeth.

I had dinner in the hotel, rather late. The waiter looked put out when I arrived - he was hoping that his evening's work was done, I suspect. He softened up when I asked him if he was French - he'd spoken to me in French, apparently thinking I came from France. He is Italian and he told me he'd worked in the best hotel in Capri before this. I think he was missing that hotel.

When I asked him how to get to the historic centre he became helpfulness itself and we pored over the map he fetched me. He advised driving to a car park just outside the city wall.

So I set off this morning in the car, found a carpark (where I wrestled briefly with the ticket machine but finally got in) and walked up the via Porta Buia, near where I was last night.

Quite quickly I come across the Chiesa SS Annunziata, a sturdy four-square church founded in 1490 after the local people witnessed a miraculous weeping Madonna incident during a terrible storm, on this spot. There was already an Oratory there, built in 1349, and a painting by Spinello Aretino (1350-1411) of the Annunciation.

I go in and am surprised and impressed by the richness of the interior. I go round snapping pictures and that's when I realise my camera battery is flat. I resignmyself to drawing for the rest of the day - I'll recharge the battery tonight.

The sun is shining as I stand for almost two hours on the corner of the quiet street (Via Garibaldi I think) opposite the church and the shrine with Aretino's fresco above a rectangular doorway decorated with Romanesque reliefs. I recognise the four creatures of the Aplocalypse over the lintel.

I make an ink sketch. No-one bothers me, though there are some passers-by. (Most of them are on the phone anyway.) As usual I can hear men at work behind me - banging and cheerful whistling and shouting - and when they pack up for lunch one of them comes and checks out what I'd been drawing, in a very friendly way, before they drive off and I get on with the drawing.

It's twelve thirty and I've only drawn one church. Time to go on and find the Cathedral.

I take back anything nasty I said yesterday about Arezzo. Its historic centre is as interesting as any other centre I've visited in this region. The building material seems to be mainly a kind of greenish yellow sandstone. It must be quite soft and there's often damage to the surfaces of reliefs and walls. I notice that the shrine next to SS Annunziata has lost its reliefs up to a height of about a metre where animls and perhaps the faithful had rubbed up against them. Perhaps children and vehices have played a part too.

I pass on to the Piazza San Domenico and stop to draw the church, as there's a vacant bench. This church is undergoing restoration as I find when I go inside. There's a forest of scaffolding on a par with Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. From the outside it looks like an eighteenth century folly - one of those decorative ruins that English landscapers erected in estate gardens. The scaffolding is less noticeable from the outside.

But it seems to be "business as usual" - notices of masses are on display and the bells are hanging in the tower. I spend a pleasant hour drawing the exterior. I'm harassed only briefly by an educational group of Italian teenagers who practise conjugating Engish verbs at me after their politely enthusiastic "Complimenti" on my work. In their usual high-spirited way the boys are ready to tease me but one of the girls kindly warns them that though I'm English, I do seem to understand Italian - I'm grateful to her for that!

At the top of the hill, in the oldest part of the ancient settlement of Arezzo, I arrive in the piazza where the town hall and the cathedral stand.

I find the Cathedral closed for lunch. I sit on the steps admiring the facade, the main entrance a simpler, sandstone version of the Duomo in Florence, erected at the beginning of the twentieth century. Here the Cathedral is raised on a high plinth and reached via two flights of steps leading up from the piazza on all sides. It's very grey and cold, and rain is in the wind.

This is a much older door on the south side of the cathedral. The relief over it is 14th century and it has two porphyry pillars outside, taken from a Roman site.

I try to draw the main doors but instead settle for details of the intricate carvings of flowers, leaves and snakes that run round the barley-sugar sticks of the pillars. I'm there until two o'clock, then hunger sets in at about the same time as it begins to rain properly.

I go down to the Bar Il Duomo, just off the Piazza, and find it's rather like the Tardis, much bigger inside than it looked from the street. The staff - two rather handsome men and a lively pink-lipped lady who is teasing them shamelessly - are very friendly and I discover I can actually speak Italian to them unselfconsciously. I have a delicious plate of penne with tomatoes and basil and a custard tart and a capuccino and sit on, unharassed, writing this blog until the Cathedral opens.

It's later, when I read my guidebook, that I realize that though the Cathedral is interesting in its own right, it's the church of San Francesco that has the great cycle of frescos by Piero della Francesca, one of my favourite Renaissance artists.

I spend the afternoon in Arezzo Cathedral, drawing the great carved Choir Gallery by Vasari and the curious, archaic wooden Madonna and Child in the niche of the chapel below it. The statue is from the 13th century and has the stiff formality of Byzantine art. The Madonna's face is modern in its gaunt angularity and the Child seems a little old man in comparison with the chubby two-year-od infants that Renaissance artists depict in Nativity scenes.

There is a fresco by Piero della Francesca of Mary Magdalene on the left wall of the nave, near the main altar. Her hair, by tradition flowing loose, is spread in fine strands over her shoulders, as delicate as cobweb silk, and her gentle face is very beautiful. The Catholic Church's acceptance of this Mary, with all her apparent faults, is for me one of the most sympathetic aspects of this otherwise alien faith.

There's art from every century from the 13th to the 19th in the Cathedral and I browse happily there. A service begins at 5.30 which adds much to my experience though I can't understand many of the words. I don't leave myself time to see anything else - drawing is a long process.

At last I make my way down to the modern town. It's pouring with rain at nearly nine when I come out of the internet point near the station in Arezzo.

The Scenic has been parked for nearly eleven hours in the Parcheggio Balduccini and is in danger of being locked in for the night.

The Scenic and I have come to a working partnership. Hiring a car sight unseen is rather like entering into an arranged marriage - you can be lucky, or you have to work at it. The Scenic takes me smoothly and comfortably round Umbria and Tuscany. I have to trust it to leave itself locked, as long as I can check the boot. If I try to check the doors, it unlocks everything if the flat plastic "key" is anywhere within 10 metres, it seems. This has been a difficult adjustment for me, and so has the absence of a handbrake, but we have shaken down together. I wouldn't like to lose the Scenic at this stage.

When I get back to my hotel after a few circuits of the Industrial Zone to find it, I book in for another night, my last before I have to go back to Florence to catch my early flight to Gatwick on Thursday morning.

15th April 2008

I put my camera on charge, and this morning, in the rain, I set out to see the church of San Francesco, where Piero Della Francesca's cycle of paintings on the Miracle of the True Cross waits.

Here I am at the end of the penultimate day of my holiday, back in the Internet Centre in Arezzo to post what might be my last blog of this series. It's been raining on and off all day and now it's settled ino a solid downpour. I've come in to dry my feet out a bit. Luckily I didn't take the watery sunshine this morning at all seriously and I put on my big winter coat - with the boots and my cheekbones (what you can see of them after all this pasta) I'm definitely in Russian mode today.

This morning I find the third and probably most "real" Arezzo - the shopping centre. As soon as I see Upim I know I'm there. I pop in and buy a scarf I coveted in Ravenna's branch. I'm glad I did because it's turned very cold here. The commercial centre of Arezzo is very pleasant, with wide piazzas and civic sculptures.

I make my way up to the historic centre again and find I've missed the Basilica of San Francesco - it's shut for lunch till 2.30. Nearby is the Museum Home of Ivan Bruschi, an antique dealer and antiquarian who lived here for most of his life and left his whole collection to the municipality when he died in 1996. He also founded the Antiques Fair which takes place monthly in Arezzo. The Banco Etrusco was made trustee of the collection and the money to maintain it. (You can find information about Bruschi at this website
It's dry and peaceful in the Museum and I feel at home there. Bruschi was a proific collector of objects from distant times and places. It's one of those collections that is not labelled - you are just presented with the artefacts, from Etruscan times, from Africa, from the Renaissance - all intrinsically and aesthetically interesting, set out beautifully so that you can let your imagination and eyes roam among them. This is the only photograph I manage before I'm told off for getting my camera out.

In revenge I sit on the staircase and draw the view of an antique statue and the pillared windows of the Church next door, Santa Maria di Pieve. As usual a group of Italian schoolboys turns up after a while, and then my pens run out of ink, so I go back to the Basilica of San Francesco with my camera.

It's expensive to get a close-up view - 6 euros that would have bought lunch - but I'm not hungry because I've eaten really a big hotel breakfast.

It's still shut for lunch, but the sun is shining (short-lived as it turns out) and I sit in one of the cafes opposite the church of San Francesco and enjoy a fresh orange juice. Almost everyone else there is English like me, mainly teachers because it's school holiday time in England. I try hard to look Italian, or at least French.

It's certainly worth getting up close to the frescos of the Legend of the True Cross that Piero Della Francesca painted in the apse behind the high altar. They've had to be restored, in common with most of the historic buildings in Arezzo, because the town was devastated by Allied bombing on December 2nd 1943. The colours are absolutely beautiful. I look at prints and photos in the gift shop but none of them comes close to the right colours so I don't buy one.

There are pictures and information about Piero and the Legend of the true Cross cycle of frescoes on this site.

The frescos tell a story that appears nowhere in the Bible that I know but that spans the Old and New Testaments. It traces the story of the wood that was used to make the cross on which Jesus was executed, going all the way back to Adam's death, when it seems that the branch of the Tree of Life that would have saved him from death arrived too late. Then it was passed down the ages to become the Cross. It's a story full of miraculous pronouncements by angels. King Solomon makes an appearance, and there's a battle in which the wood is taken back from infidels. After the Crucifixion it's hidden to protect it but Judas knows where it is and he gives the information away under torture (there's a scene where Judas is pulled by his hair from a dry well where he's been thrown, by a callous man)

The Annunciation is there, of course. There's a beautifully stark noose hanging from a bracket outside a black window above the pretty space where the pregnant Mary is receiving the news from the Angel. That noose could be three dimensional, so carefully has the perspective and light been depicted. It's ready for Judas.

The figures are expressive and classically beautiful and the story is told with many subtle biblical references, such as the straining workmen carrying the plank of wood that is to become the Cross, in poses prefiguuring Jesus and the two thieves.

Having paid 6 euros, I am determined to get my money's worth. My drawing pens have run out of ink and I'm not allowed to take photos. But I have the hotel biro with me. So I stand through at least two repetitions of the guided tour going round the chapel and sketch the chapel's great window, flanked by the marvellous frescos. It will serve me as a reminder and perhaps form the basis for a coloured work later. I'm starting to get the gist of the lecture in the end, because I already know the story from the guide book.

I take a few more photos but the rain is getting really serious so I make my way back towards the station, my reference point in Arezzo. I have the good luck to pass a shop selling art materals on the way and buy two new drawing pens.

I've booked my last hotel, in the centre of Florence. It's extremely cheap but since I have to leave it at about 4.30 am on Thursday morning, to catch the plane that leaves at 8, I'm not too worried.

Ten Days in Tuscany and Umbria (3) - Terni and the Marmore Falls

2008-04-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

12th April 2008 - Terni and the Cascade de Marmore

Today I'm in Terni. The hotel is a comfortable one in the ugly industrial suburbs of the city and at first I thought I'd made a mistake, especially as the promised computer in the room turned out to be a slow, strange arrangement that couldn't deal with Myspace technology - no bulletins, no editing blogs or other fancy stuff. The view from the hotel does include the mountains, beyond the motorway bridges, but you wouldn't venture out on foot....

But now that I've spent a day here I've changed my mind - as I so often do once I settle in. I first parked in a street off the centre, and walked around a quiet business area. I found the usual Chiesa San Francesco,

which was in its own quiet piazza, and a street market selling very pretty things. I shall have to jettison some of the unnecessary clothes I threw into my suitcase at the last moment, to fit in the lovely shells I bought so cheaply. The onyx earrings are much easier to deal with, of course.

The man selling the shells flattered me by asking if I was Russian - for some reason I'm irritated when Italians instantly spot that I'm English, even before I open my mouth. But then, this is the Adriatic coast, not Sorrento. It could have been my new flat boots (bought cheaply at the station in Florence after the cobblestones had ruined the heels on my high-heeled ones). They do make me look as if I'm hoping someone will play a balaleika. I took a photo of this man as he blew a loud trumpet noise on a conch shell. He asked me if it was a video with sound and I rather wished it had been.

Next I looked for the way out of the city to the Falls of Marmore. This turned out to be much easier than I expected. I drove through the civic centre, which is graciously laid out and backed by the beautiful mountains that surround Terni. Then it was easy to follow the signs up to the mountainside where the highest waterfall in Italy tumbles and roars down in at least five stages, raising a huge cloud of spray that soaks everything around it. It's been made part of a hydroelectric scheme but it's also a lucrative tourist attraction, with 5-euro tickets enabling visitors to walk very close to the lowest torrent, and of course a thriving minimarket of souvenir stalls and cafes.

As tourist attractions go I rate it pretty highly. It's the most stunning sight. The water pouring endlessly down, round and over the rocks to the fast stream at the bottom - no man-made attraction could rival that. I sat in the cafe at the bottom and as usual got my sketch book out to record my version. Of course I took dozens of photos as well. But there's something about drawing a place that gives me such satisfaction afterwards, however inadequate the finished work may be. I had to work fast on this one, and managed to cover an A3 sheet with marks in pen and ink that will be the basis for another work I expect.

The sun came out in Terni and it was really warm for the first time this week. I have to leave tomorrow, to go to Arezzo, but I think I'll be back.

I stopped in Terni on my way out, to withdraw some cash and check the route to my next hotel, in Arrezzo. I decided to stop in Orvieto which is on the way. Even though it's Sunday, the internet point I used last night is open and the Indian owners are friendly and helpful. It's right near the bus station, where there's free parking all week, too.

Last night I got completely lost, trying to find my way back to my hotel just off the E45 and only a mile from the centre of Terni. It's a skyscraper block and I could see it all the time but couldn't get near the entrance - I was always on the wrong side of the dual carriageway! Just like Alice Through the Looking Glass, as my life often seems to be! I really must invest in a SatNav next time I drive in Europe.

Last night I had the best night's sleep I've had since leaving England. The double-glazing worked perfectly and I think the room next door was empty. So I'm in very good spirits, driving off to find the A1/E35 to Arezzo via Orvieto.

13th April 2008

I've arrived in Arezzo, the birthplace of Michelangelo. I don't know what he'd make of it now. Like all the towns with evocative names that I've visited this week, it's spread and developed ugly industrial zones like pustules round the core of the historic centre that has been allowed to survive to feed the tourist trade. I know that sounds harsh, but as I'm doing this trip on a budget while trying to be as comfortable as possible I find I've booked hotels on the ring roads and in the trading estates that keep Italy afloat - they are great inside but the environment outside is a forest of concrete and giant advertising signs.

I've walked into the centre of Arezzo tonight - "Only a kilometre" said the nice receptionist as I left. But a kilometre is easily far enough for me to get lost in, and I must have walked about two miles, wishing I'd brought the car. I've promised myself a taxi back to the hotel and as I'm right by the railway station now, that should be easy to arrange.

But back to my day.... Orvieto turned out to be the exception to the rule I've set out above. Like Arezzo, it's just off the A1, which runs between Rome and Florence, but being high on a hill it's escaped the ravages of modern life, unless you count being turned into the most chic and pretty tourist town I've seen so far as a ravage.

I found myself missing Terni and its soft green mountains almost as soon as I set off. The road ran through gradually lower land until the attractive lumpy mounds of Umbria changed gradually to Latzio, where the uplands were set well away from the road, just in sight across a wide plain. There are clay and I suppose marble works along the way, and the trees are dusted white in some places.
The forms of the landscape along the autostrada remind me of the various areas of North Devon that I know - except that you don't get all those lovely narrow conical cypress trees in England. The delicate greens of the deciduous trees here are lovely at the moment, too. And the buildings are warm cream and yellows and peach colours.

At Orvieto I first went up the Funicular from the station, thinking that this was the only way up to the old town. Once I reached the top I realised I'd better take the car up because I was going to need more parking time than I'd calculated for when I left the car outside the station.

Having gone back for the car I drove up the hill past the strong mediaeval walls that barricade the place from all invaders - or did in the Middle Ages, before we were all invited in. It was a very good choice of citadel - I can imagine any army that laid seige to it getting a good helping of boiling oil and arrows on its head from the battlements.

Now, however, Orvieto is a very charming town, full of flowers and expensive stylish shops. Plenty of souvenir shops too, but tasteful ones.

The shops were closed as it's Sunday but I found a good bookshop open and bought a guide book to read later. I'd parked outside the Chiesa S. Domenico, rather an austere church but with a faded little fresco above the main entrance. It is faced in part with the dark and light marble patterns that are a feature of Tuscan churches, it seems. From there I walked towards the Duomo, discovering other churches, towers and beautiful ornate doorways on the way.

The Duomo itself, though, was as much of a surprise as Florence's cathedral. It has a gigantic gothic facade, which took 300 years to complete, was started in 1290. Several architects were involved, therefore, and the building had safety problems - the transepts were in danger of collapsing from the start because of inadequate foundations, I read in my guidebook. The whole facade is a riot of decoration in carving, fresco and mosaic. The barley-sugar twisted pillars are there, with inlays of mirrored and coloured mosaic, and there are wonderful panels of relief, depicting sacred scenes, along the facade. Behind the facade the nave and transepts are faced with stripes of dark and light marble.

Inside, there are beautiful frescoes and carvings, free-standing figures and a lovely organ that I tried hard to photograph. The huge rose window and other stained glass is also very lovely from inside. I spent a long time trying to take my own photos of the interior, laying my camera flat on the floor and propping it up on things, but I really needed my tripod.

Almost everyone in the streets seemed to be American or otherwise English-speaking. I got a lady from Australia to take my photo in front of the facade of the cathedral but I was wearing my rather strange blue Russian looking tunic and jeans that were a little tighter than was flattering so my vanity won't let me post it here....

I went into the little Museum of Etruscan Archaelogy, too, to look at the archaic smiles on the faces of the statues and the delicate depictions of stories about conversations and flying horses on the black and yellow pottery.

The sun was coming and going and by now it was about 4pm and getting cooler. I got back on the road and realised I was going to have to get some petrol before I went on to the motorway again.

Now, you learn something every day and today I learned that you can't trust automated petrol stations in Italy any more than you can in England. All the gas stations seemed to be closed (it is Sunday) so I took the risk. The thing rejected my Visa card, my Mastercard, and demanded cash. I fed it 20 euros and it clammed up. No assistenze button, no cancel button and no petrol. I gave up, wrote 20 euros off to experience and drove on. Just round the corner was an open and friendly manned Shell station where I filled up. So there was a relatively happy ending to that story...

Ten Days in Tuscany and Umbria (2) - Ravenna and Rimini

2008-04-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

10th April 2008 - On the trail of St Apollinare

I went from Florence to Ravenna for a couple of nights and realised that what I had hoped would be an atmospheric, historic Byzantine town is now a huge sprawing industrial complex surrounded by all the infrastructure needed to support the port and the industrial estates that give it a livelihood.

The reason I wanted to see Ravenna was that I wrote a thesis in my first year at art college about images of the Pantocrator (God the Father) in Byzantine and Romanesque art and I'd got all my illustrations from books and never seen a single relevant mosaic. One of the finest is in the basicila of St Apollinare, always said to be in Ravenna. So I booked my hotel right opposite St Apollinare, Ravenna, found the place with huge difficulty because like all Italian cities it has a labyrinthine one-way system, and went forth next morning to draw the mosaic.

BUT I should have read my guide book - which I now did, and discovered that the original St Apollinare is in Classe, a bus-ride away.... I was staying next to the new church, which has only fragments of ancient mosaics on display, and none in its ceiling - in fact it has no cupola or apse big enough to house one.

So I got on the bus because I'd had enough of circling around in Ravenna in the car the day before. It all worked out very well. I spent the afternoon drawing in the ancient basilica and as usual providing welcome relief to the school children of all ages who were trying to avoid their history teachers lectures.

Then I went back to the historic centre where my hotel lay and had a very pleasant look around the local area. I found the Piazza S. Francesco where there is a beautiful church which has a Roman pavement, underwater, in the crypt. For 0.5 euros in a slot you can switch the light on in the crypt and peep though a hole near the altar at the strange sight of goldfish swimming around in a few feet of water over the remains of the Roman floor, among the graceful pillars and arches of the vault below.

Dante's tomb is there too, in a sepulchre that is being restored at the moment. I took a lot of photos of this area of Ravenna, which was interesting and pretty in the evening light.

The hotel where I stayed is a converted seventeenth century palace with lovely marble staircases, a beautiful little garden and a chapel. It's called Ostello. Galletti Abbiosi Dimora Storica. The breakfast was very good for an Italian hotel, the people were friendly and helpful and the bed was comfortable and the shower hot. It's quite near the train station and Upim and more expensive shops are on hand too. It was medium priced and good value and I would stay there again. This is the main staicase, with a rather grand, green marble balustrade.

The only thing that I thought might turn out a problem was that there is no restaurant in the hotel and at first I couldn't see anywhere to eat when I went out into the rain on the first night. When in doubt, I was taught by my mother, "ask a policeman". So, seeing a police van with some extremely paternal looking moustachioed officers sitting on the corner of the Via Di Roma, I did just that and was rewarded with directions to a lovely little place called "La Gardela".

There I had three delicious courses, half a bottle of wine and some water, for what I thought a pretty reasonable price, 33 euros. The place was packed with local people though next to me was a couple who reminded me very much of myself and my ex-husband in another life. That didn't spoil my evening at all - quite the contrary.

I discovered that Ravenna has its own leaning tower - a very ramshackle affair compared to Pisa's, and square in section, not round.

I didn't like to walk too close to it though it is clamped with metal stays to a height of about 10 metres, perhaps more. It looks ready to collapse. I couldn't see a name on it and it's not shown on the little tourist map I have, but it's in the area of the Basilica di San Giovanni Evangelista.

In that church I found a Neapolitan nativity scene, a big construction with a cave leading down to hell (you can see the demons and their unfortunate victims who are hung up by the heels and probably doing their best to repent fast) and angels hovering above. There's a group of priests gossiping and clearly ignoring a poor beggar, too. The whole scene is alive with gesturing hands as the characters converse, pray, lament, joke, poke fun and generally enact their lives. I didn't actually spot the crib because the surrounding action was so interesting. Of course I made a donation.

I also went shopping and bought some pretty things.

So though I did tell one of my myspace friends that I didn't think much of Ravenna (I was tired and the car and I were still not seeing eye-to-eye) I've changed my mind as so often happens.

11th April 2008

Yesterday, 10th April, I was in Rimini, on the Adriatic coast. In my usual careless fashion I failed to find the sea, though this town, and Ravenna, where I stayed the night before, are seaside towns and important seaports. Except in Praiano, where the sea is a source of continual pleasure to me all year round, looking at beaches seems a pointless exercise in April in the northern Mediterranean.So on this trip I've stuck to the towns and I haven't been disappointed.

Ravenna and Rimini are at the sea's edge of a huge coastal plain. The Netherlands are not less hilly. Bicyles are everywhere, especially in the towns. They greatly outnumber the scooters. Very different from the South, where bicycles are ridden almost exclusively by the very fit and lycra-clad.

Rimini seemed to me to have a very welcoming centre. I kept thinking, "This is a smiling town". It's calm, unhurried, at this time of year at least. I parked behind an immense crumbling castle, hugely castellated and buttressed.

Later I found this on the map I bought in the Piazza Cavour. It's the Castello Sigismondo. A plaque on the wall, erected at the same time as the castle by the look of it, dated it in the early 1400's. It's in extreme disrepair and I couldn't see an entrance though there were boys sitting chatting high up on the walls.

I walked towards the centre and found the Piazza Cavour, lined with dignified mediaeval looking buildings. The plaque on the most impressive one was in Italian and German, reminding me of the role of Italy in the Second World war but also that this coast is a favourite holiday area for German and Eastern bloc tourists.

I went on to the Piazza Tre Martiri.

I could see the Piazza San Francesco to one side. Every town in Umbria and Tuscany seems to have a church and piazza dedicated to this attractively gentle saint. In the Tre Martiri I found smart shops and brightly stuccoed buildings in Naples yellow and white, including a pretty white temple (hexagonal I think), il Tempietto di Sant Antonio.

From the far end of the square I walked down to the Arco d'Augusto that stands between the historic centre and the Parco di Bondi, a lovely green area.

A beautiful tree nearby was covered with magenta flowers, worth a photo on its own.

I retraced my steps and stopped in the Piazza Cavour for a very good tuna and bean salad in the Caffe Teatro. The owner, a cheerful, whistling man, was here, there and everywhere, welcoming clients and shooing away the cheeky pigeons that kept coming down and knocking over the tableware and pecking at the warm bread on the tables. The bill (6 euros for a salad and a large bottle of water and warm bread) was very reasonable, considering the status of the location and the large helping of fresh tuna in the salad.

Today I'm in Terni. I would never have thought of visiting Terni were it not that two of my Myspace friends work there. Neither of them live there but I made it part of my circuitous route back towards Florence, to see Terni out of simple curiosity.

Ten days in Tuscany and Umbria (1) - Florence

2008-04-18T14:53:00.000-07:00

7th April 2008 - Arriving

It’s one thirty in the morning of my first day in Florence. We are trying to lock the car. The car is a grey Renault Scenic that’s been wished on me by the hire car firm – I’m already planning to give it back as soon as possible. "We" is S and me.

The car and I already have a history, before S came. For the first twenty minutes of our acquaintance it sat stubbornly refusing to give up the secrets of its operation. I managed to unlock the doors but the boot stayed impregnable. It was after eleven at night (the plane was 6 hours late). I hadn’t thought to look for a handbook – the Fiat Punto I hired in February had had none.

I gave up and put my cases on the back seat. Next, found my way round the gears. OK. Now to start it. No key, just a card. I inserted it hopefully into a slot near the steering wheel. I was rewarded by an LCD dislay in Italian which included the word "Start". I pressed the button on the dashboard which also read "Start/Stop". Nothing happened.

Timing is everything with this car. You can’t rush it.

Finally it shuddered into life and I looked for the handbrake. In vain. There wasn’t one. This was a blow. How was I to make hill-starts? Hill-starts are my best subject when it comes to driving. I felt disempowered. But I edged out of the car-park and looked for the road to Porta Al Prato – eleven minutes away, according to the Internet information.

Now I realise the value of travelling with a companion. I need a navigator. I can’t read the directions and drive at the same time. And this is where my acquaintance with S begins. As I head back towards Forence, having driven some miles south down the autostrada in the wrong direction, S on his scooter draws alongside me while I pause indecisively at a junction on the almost empty A1. He’s observed my erratic progress down the highway and is in knight errant mode.

I have so much to thank S for. Having established that (1) I am English and (2) I am alone and (3) I need to get to a hotel near the Porta Al Prato (he corrects my pronunciation carefully) he tells me to follow him and we set off, through a maze of streets. We draw up in the street next to the one where the hotel should be and start circling round the block on the one-way system, looking for it. We park and take stock of the situation.

S speaks no English at all and relates his circumstances to me at length in strongly accented Italian, with charming smiles and a gentle politeness on his thin face that I can’t resist admiring, leaning through the open passenger-side window. He is also living in a hotel, he tells me, because he has quarrelled with his brother and has had to leave the family home. He works, mostly in the leather industry. It’s a hard life but he seems philosophical. He does mention that he’d like to visit England.

And now, here we are. We’ve found the hotel with difficulty – S has trundled my case up and down the street, insisting that it must be here, or there, or the other end – and we are, conversationally at least, almost on married terms – with S knowing best and me arguing (and in the end, both being right and both being wrong too).

Now we’ve found the hotel and parked in the street. We’re trying to lock the car. Every time we think we’ve done it, we try the handles of the doors to check, and find it unlocks itself again. This goes on for ten minutes.

It’s 1.30 am at least. We leave the car apparently locked (we dare not try the doors ) and find the hotel dark and closed. There is a notice, though, with a phone number for the night porter. S interprets it for me. I phone and the door is unlocked. S, behaving like a perfect gentleman, explains my circumstances and departs.

The night receptionist is all smiles, despite being woken up at this unearthly hour. He helps me to find the car again (I have forgotten exactly where we abandoned it, temporarily – it’s been a long day, after all) and leads me into the secure parking area of the hotel. I sink thankfully into bed at about 2.30am.

Florence 8th April 2008

It should be raining today but the internet is wrong, at least for the morning.

The first scooter comes past my window (three floors up but I might as well be under its wheels, it's so well defined) at 3.30. I've had about an hour's sleep. By 4.30 it sounds like a tank invasion outside, heavy vehicles trundling and roaring past – no hooting, though. This is not Naples.

At 6.30 I give up pretending to sleep and get up. The apartment is great. Spacious and everything the agancy promised. Except that it needs double-glazing.

At 8.30 I sally down to reception to negotiate for a quieter room. The hotel is full and two single rooms are out of commission because of a water leak. I resign myself to either another short sleep period tonight, or spending more money on another hotel because this one will charge me for two nights regardless.

I set off for the centre of Florence, a fifteen minute walk away, to visit the Duomo and other historic buildings that I last visited about ten years ago. There's a bus, number 17, the receptionist tells me, but I always walk if I can, because I more often come across things I'm not looking for then.

And so it turns out that as I take a turning down towards the Arno across a wide piazza I see a modern art exhibition of work by a Polynesian artist called Adi Da Samra, advertised on the wall of a Franciscan monastery, the Cenacolo di Ogonssanti..

I cross the square and investigate.

Led into a cool arched cloister I find myself in the presence of a beautiful fresco that I've never appreciated before this moment. It's in a long vaulted hall, the refectory of the monastery, which was built in 1290. The modern art lines the two long walls leading up to Ghirlandaio's "Last Supper". Though the modern artist's work, hanging along the walls leading up to the fresco, is brilliantly coloured and meticulously constructed, Ghirlandaio holds his own down all the centuries since 1448 when he painted this fresco. It runs the full length of the short wall at the end of the hall. The monks ate their dinners in the presence of Christ and his apostles.

I commit the faux-pas of allowing my camera to flash as I photograph it and am punished with what looks like the lifelong enmity of the guardian of the hall. She even objects when I sit down to draw it, briefly, until I am rescued by a pleasant colleague of hers who speaks (and probably is) perfect American. (Later she relents when I am speaking for a long time to the curator of the modern artist's work, and she brings us both four leaved clovers from a plant she has discovered in the cloister.)

I want to draw the fresco because it's so perfectly situated in its context. Framed by simple, elegant arches of white stucco, it echoes, imitates, plays with the real space around and outside it. The light, the perspective, the composition of the figures as they celebrate the last meal with their friend and leader Jesus, are so moving when you are actually there with the picture. The mystery of perspective and tonal trompe l'oeuil is parallel with the religious mystery that surrounds the subject, it seems to me.

Each of the figures has a distinct character, which I'm sure every observer has said before. And dominating the group is not Christ, but Judas Iscariot, the traitor, who sits as it were symbolically confronting Jesus from the other side of the table. His head is tilted up in interrogation and challenge, his beard pointing towards the leader's face. He is more in focus, more defined, than Jesus or any of the other disciples.

There is so much to say about this work, and I haven't time or space to write it now. I drew my sketch, which was even more difficult than I anticipated, then admired Adi Da Samra's art (genuinely because it really is stunning) and went out to continue my progress towards the Duomo. It started to rain, and I took this as my excuse for ducking into a little cafe and enjoying a really delicious plate of linguine, tomatoes and olives.

The Piazza del Duomo in Florence is an amazing place. I was last here ten years ago and it takes me aback as I round the last corner on the narrow streets leading up to it. I shall post some of my photos here when I get home and you will see how rich the architecture is. But you have to be actually surrounded by all that black and white marble, all the sharply defined windows and gables and pilasters and towers, the barley sugar stick twists of the pillars at the huge doorway, the profusion of architectural geometric forms, the huge rose window above the doorway and Brunelleschi's huge dome topping it off, with people like ants up there looking down from the gallery round the lantern - you have to be there to experience all the drama and richness of it.

By now you may be able to tell, I'm a big fan of the Duomo in Florence.

When I get there after lunch, the piazza is thronged with tourists, school parties and female beggars. The beggars are annoying and no-one seems to be giving them anything. I resort to saying "go and get a job" when they whine at me, but as the words for working and washing are only one syllable different from each other in Italian, I may have accidentally insulted one or two of them. They leave me alone after a while, anyway.

As the rain has stopped and there are queues to go inside the buildings, I decide to draw a sketch of the main entrance to the Duomo. There's nowhere to sit so I lean up against the railings round the Baptistry. As usual I've brought too small a sketchbook. My hand isn't very steady, the proportions go a little awry, but I'm soon engrossed and get the gist of it down on a double page. I'm seeing and understanding much more than my photos will give me, whatever the finished drawing is like.

After about two hours the skies open and a serious rainstorm begins. My cue to duck into a bar for cappucino and cake. I choose a seat overlooking an unusual, tilted view of the cathedral and start another drawing. The boy camerero (he looks like a painting of a naughty boy by Caravaggio but is probably about thirty) is chatting to four girls on the next table. He quickly knows their names, where they are from (Bari) and that they have lots in common with him.

All five take an interest in my drawings. When I show them the sketch of the temple of Hera at Paestum the waiter tells us that this is where he lives. He keeps such a straight face that later I'm still wondering if he really comes from Paestum.

The weather's clearing again but it's getting late. I walk on, to the huge piazza of Santa Croce, where I've been told there's an internet point. I take more photos - the enormous facade of the church, the statue of Dante Alghieri who was born in Florence. Then I go on to the banks of the River Arno.

Again I'm struck by the firmness and rigour of Tuscan architecture. Across the river are the solid rectangular blocks of palazzos and hotels, their carefully proportions rows of shuttered windows picked out in green and red-brown against the ochres of the stucco. Topped with shallow triangular prisms of roofs, they look as though not a millimeter should be changed, for the balance between positive and negative is perfect.

I can go across the Ponte Vecchia, with its gold and jewellery shops, to the Pitti Palace, or turn right and reach the Piazza della Signoria through the cloister of the Uffizi. I'm getting tired and dusk is falling, so I stay this side of the river and pass under the sombre windows of the dark grey Uffizi. There are still street traders on the steps, selling both originals and cheap prints (I bought one of each last time I was here). As usual, there's a chancer among them who tries to get himself invited for a drink with me, but it's all in fun and nobody loses face when I say "no".

A small glass of wine at the bar facing Michelangelo's statue of David costs 6 euros but it does come with nice nibbles - almost sandwiches - and olives and crisps.I sit there for some time, drawing the arcade that houses a range of statuary, all on violent themes. There's a rape, at least one killing, and Cellini's young Perseus holding up the dripping, writhing head of Medusa. Lions prowl the foot of the pillars.

The Rape of the Sabine by Gianbologna is particularly beautiful - composed like a pas-de-deux by ballet dancers. The woman is hoisted up high on the shoulder of the attacker, while her husband lies vanquished under his feet. Later, after i've bought a guidebook, I find out that the sculptor's original title for this piece was "The Three Ages". The "Rape of the Sabine" does seem a more appropriate title. I make a separate study of the sculpture as I sit nibbling and sipping my wine.

Dead on my feet, having survived the day on two or three hours' sleep and done five drawings, I fall into bed back at the hotel. I expect to be woken up again at 4am and I'm not surprised, this time, when the convoy of tanks rolls through.

Six days of Italy in February 2008

2008-03-09T08:20:00.000-07:00

This is my diary of my break in Italy last month. I've written it in the present tense - an affectation perhaps but the experiences seem to come alive when it's written as though it's happening now, I think....

February 18th 2008

The plane's late. It touches down at about 10.30 at night. At Capodichino airport I receive the keys of a hired five door Fiat Punto and find my way to the car park. Opening the boot needs input from a group of grinning Italian boys who are admiring the perfectly ordinary-looking car next to it. Having further expanded their grins by trying to get into the passenger seat, I try to come to terms with the gears - as expected, on the wrong side, arranged in an inside-out format. Driving on the right isn't the issue - sitting on the left is the issue.

Not too smoothly, I nose out of the car park and drive carefully round the block, searching for the sign to the motorway towards Salerno that I've so often seen from the Sorrento-bound bus. In the dark, everything's unfamiliar. Now I'm making for the centre of Naples, cursing loudly.

In a wide elegant square lined with hotels, I'm considering parking and asking for a room in one of them when I spot a sign to the airport. I head that way, in my relief cutting up a lone fellow-driver as I turn left across his path. I get my first good hooting-at.

I almost miss it again - a tiny turning on the right, almost an alley-way, signposted to the A3 out of Naples. At twenty-five miles an hour, I leave the city behind.

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"Keep always on the right after Pompeii," Tina has said. "Or you'll end up in Salerno." She makes it sound like a fate worse than death.

And here I am, at Salerno and by the looks of it on my way past it to somewhere called Giove. I hastily veer into a little turning off the dual carriageway, marked "Centro". I stop to phone Tina. She sounds exhausted but resigned to my stupidity.

I have to follow the coast road out of the centre of Salerno. It will take an hour, maybe more.

Wrestling with the unfamiliar gears, I follow my nose and the signposts begin to read "Costiera Amalfitana". Out of the other side of Salerno and on to a narrow pitch black road which seems to have been designed by an engineer inspired by a length of coiled string. The sea is on my left and to my right the rocks that have been dynamited aside to make the ledge I'm driving on. Round a steep bend I encounter a parked car to my right. There's a minor impact as my wing mirror clips it. I hear a tinkle as something rolls away into the darkness. Guiltily I drive on up the forty-five degree angle of the hill.

(Later I discover that it's the Punto's mirror casing that went - I don't notice for a day because the mirror face is undamaged, only the wiring is exposed and has to be taped up with a polythene bag to keep it dry.)

The journey takes me through Cetera, Maiori, Minori, to Amalfi. After Amalfi I start to feel more confident. The road is more familiar, wider, and finite. As I pass through the tunnel at Furore at about 12.30a.m. I feel I'm coming home. I - and the Fiat - have made it to Praiano, both more or less intact…

February 19th 2008

The day after I take up residence in the apartment next to Tina, she has to go to her mother's for two days because her uncle has died suddenly. Hospitably she invites me to go with her, but I say no, I want to go to Paestum and her mother needs Tina's undivided attention.

It's a lovely day, cloudless and sunny. I walk down the road to the Miramare to see if N is in and to show him my prints. The sea glints as if it's summer, not February.

The gate clicks open to my pressure on the bell. Old S is in the courtyard. He greets me with cries of surprise, pleasure and welcome. A, who has had an email from me to say I'm coming to Italy, comes out, his face lighting up. N is out, it seems.

"We are going down to the other house". A means the Miramare. "You can come."

We set off, old S pottering on ahead. He unhooks a bag of cabbages from a door knob as we pass. At the hotel, A unlocks the side gate where a generator rattles and pulses. We go down narrow stone steps to a yard I've not seen before.

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Cages of rabbits blinking at us expectantly. A is taking handfuls of dry food from a sack and filling the hoppers along the front of the two rows of cages. Each cage is just big enough for one large or two or three half-grown animals.

A's father is in the darker half of the outhouse. I can hear chickens and see him collecting eggs.

Now A shares the cabbages among the rabbits. They eat with satisfied, half-closed eyes, and preen their sleek fur afterwards.

The air is full of the deafening roar of the generator, but no smell. The rabbit cages, including the floors, are made of wire mesh and the droppings fall below them, dry and odourless.

"For eating?" I mouth to A. The noise prevents normal speaking. He nods. I think about battery farming and cruelty to animals. But these rabbits seem healthy and even happy. They're safe, dry and among their own kind. They're breeding. Even though they have never felt the grass between their toes, are they being ill treated? I decide they are not.

The chickens strut and peck freely in their half of the shed. There's a cockerel with half a dozen hens. They seem to be laying freely.

I'm left in charge of old S while A disappears. Or is he left in charge of me? I watch the rabbits, wishing I had my sketchbook to hand. The old man continues to potter for a while, then leads me back up to the road. At the gate, A appears, suddenly angry with his father's querulous questioning. He strides away, back to the house.

I follow the old man. He has begun to go down the steep steps towards the cabins. He collects a pair of secateurs and begins clipping the shrubby hedge at the edge of the terrace.

I'm not sure what I should do. The sun is warm, the sea calm and blue, the sky luminescent. I sit on a stone bench and doze. I'm totally at peace, as usual at the Miramare. The sea's wash on the rocks, the sounds of people working, even the generator, now far above me and muted, the occasional blare of the Sita bus passing by on the narrow road, all the familiar sounds wash over me comfortingly.

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A is on the terrace above, fixing some electrical installation in the cabins. As I say goodbye he tells me that the weather will be changing soon. The ruins at Paestum are very interesting, but only in good weather. I would do best to go there tomorrow, if I'm going.

This spurs me into a decision. I'll drive to Salerno, along the coast road that I had to travel last night, and stay tonight in a hotel there. Then I can drive on and spend Wednesday in Paestum. Tina is away at the wake for her dead uncle tonight, in any case.

The sun is going down on a beautiful calm day as I drive off. In Cetara I pause and take photos of the town and its tower on the headland.

I realise that the towns on the coast road conform to a pattern: a tunnel to approach the outskirts, a view across an inlet of the Bay of Salerno, to towers on a rocky headland. The town climbing up the hill behind, houses clustered round the mosaic dome of a central church, a piazza in front of the Duomo and the civic buildings. From Amalfi to Maiori, Minori, Cetara, I drive, savouring the clear blue sunset-shaded sky.

At Salerno I take a wrong turning and head a few miles inland, find myself on a toll road and take advice from the attendant, an understanding, twinkling man who has seen more lost tourists than I have had hot pizzas, I think. I end up safely in Salerno and it's getting dark.

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Salerno is a busy port with a wide sea front. I drive along by the sea, looking for a hotel. Remembering that Tina was concerned that I might not find hotels open beyond Salerno at this time of year, I stop at the first one I see, a large modern block called the Grand Hotel, right on the sea front. It has a wide paved area in front of it, packed with smart cars, with a notice warning all drivers not to park in front of the hotel.

There isn't any room to park there, anyway, so I dutifully drive through to a dusty public parking area behind. Too late I spot the underground parking facility. I can't face the manoeuvre to unpark the Punto which I have now snugly positioned between a truck and some scooters., I regret having left my smart skirt behind in Praiano because this looks like a hotel with pretensions. A vast foyer lined with marble lies behind the revolving door at the entrance.

The Grand Hotel is inhabited almost exclusively by men in suits, on expense accounts, which may explain the price and the marble halls. It's nice to have a proper shower and a bath - luxuries not available at the apartment n Praiano. I take full advantage of all the facilities before venturing out into the nightlife of Salerno.

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I've been surprised to find that the hotel has no internet access. It is disabled, it seems - a situation that I also find in one of the other two hotels I visit in the week. The receptionist has given me a map of the town centre and I walk for 15 minutes or so into the middle of the town, find a public internet point and read my emails. I'm glad to find that even Salerno has its café district where Italians are promenading and sitting, in fur coats and woolly hats, outside in the street.

I find a restaurant open but empty and unnecessarily I book a table for later. Then I go for an aperitif in one of the cafes. It's a ritual that I enjoy, watching people and drinking a glass of red wine with bowls of pastries, nuts and slivers of cheese included in the price. I choose Il Castello d'Artiche for this and the nibbles are excellent.

I go back and claim my reserved table in the restaurant. There are now three other customers, probably regulars, three men at one table, who look curiously at me as I am seated by the owner at the table next to them. It's a small, homely place with a good menu.

I opt for spaghetti with sea food, which is excellent, and a large grilled fish with a mixed salad. I know the fish will be expensive ( it's sold by the kilo and that's always expensive and unpredictable in price.) White wine to go with the fish and taramisú after it comes to €42. When I turn down the offer of a complimentary limoncello, the owner offers me a free espresso instead. By that time the only other customers are a family of three including a grown-up daughter, who are cheerfully celebrating something, I'm not sure of the details - my Italian doesn't extend far enough. It's a pleasant evening.

Back through the almost deserted streets, I hurry because I've seen a beggar earlier on, being hustled away from the internet centre where he'd followed me with a wheedling request for money. The girl running the internet centre, a buxom, raw voiced, cheerful young woman, has given the young mendicant no chance to hassle her customers. I don't want to meet him or his like again in the dark deserted street. But like most people in Salerno this chilly night, he's found somewhere out of the wind to shelter in. I hope so, anyway.

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20th February 2008

Breakfast at the Grand Hotel Salerno is a muted affair. The sun is slanting through the slats of the Venetian blinds and across the gold brocade tablecloths as the men in suits gravely pick out the miniature pots of jam to go with their croissants and bread rolls and pour milk on to their cereal.

I have misread the card in the bedroom that relates to breakfast and have already been served coffee there by a kind waitress who explains that breakfast in my room will cost me 20% more than the restaurant menu price, whereas if I go to the dining room it's included in the price of the stay. It's been so long since I've stayed in a hotel with room service, I should have remembered this universal rule. They don't charge me, this time, but I don't get coffee served to me in the dining room as well.

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In the car park where the Punto waits, I approach the car with sudden misgivings - at least it's still there. But has anything happened to it? I should have put it into the underground car park. Sure enough, on the bonnet there's an ugly scoring, about two inches wide, paint removed down to the metal, and deeply dented. I'm distraught. Then remember my collision damage waiver and tell myself to be philosophical. (It's only when I look properly at the documentation I signed for the car at the airport, two days ago, that I realise that this is old damage, recorded on the papers, perpetrated by a previous client)

Still fluttering from the apparent confirmation of my lack of responsibility in leaving the Punto in jeopardy all night, I gently accelerate and shoot backwards. Screaming quietly, I fumble for the brake and gear lever with both hands flailing. Lucky that the car that was close behind me last night has gone. I stop within inches of disaster. Dare I leave this car park? But I can't afford to spend my holiday in the Grand Hotel Salerno, so I pull my shoulders back, breathe deeply and tell myself that I am not really a waste of space in a car and I can do this.

I circle the one way system a couple of times and get on to the coast road again.

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"Just keep on going, with the sea to your right," Tina's advice was simple and it's effective. It's a long, dull, flat drive between pine forests edging the coast and a succession of tawdry motels and "resorts", all closed up for the winter, but at last the brown tourist signs are offering "Paestum" with a picture of a Roman arch.

I miss the direct route to the town and drive round three sides of the city wall to an empty car park which costs nothing this time of year because no-one is manning it. As I walk towards the entrance gate to the Graeco-Roman city I get a fine view of the two huge Greek temples at the seaward end of the settlement. In the distance there's another, near the ticket office. In between, low ruins of foundations, huge fallen dressed stones and pillars and a few tourists picking their way through the pathways among them. It's early and few people are about.

At the ticket office I have the usual gratifying conversation about my age as I try for a pensioner's reduction, forgetting that pensioners start at 65 in Italy so I have three years to wait. The smart young woman in the ticket office says all the right things about how young I look and I have to pay full price - good value - 8 euros for a ticket that lets me into the city and also its museum.

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The sun is high now. People are taking off their padded jackets, hats and scarves, to wander round the ruins and read information about the buildings whose remnants still stand. The three huge temples have been restored to some extent, I gather, but there has been much less restoration than in Pompeii or Herculaneum,

I come across a fenced off area where men with wheelbarrows and trowels are excavating the foundations of a house. As I pause to watch, one of them finds something in the dry soil, dusts it carefully and slips it into a polythene bag. Absurdly I feel privileged to have witnessed a sliver of the past brought into the daylight after who knows haw many hundreds of decades.

"Posso?" I wave my camera at the excavating men and they straighten up and grin.

"E molto interessante!" I gush.

"Si, si, lui é molto interessante, forse!" laughs the older one, pointing to the younger man. He smiles and is it my imagination or does he preen and pose a little?

"No, no, tutti! Tutto é interessante! Il lavoro!" I point the camera, snap the picture.

"Buon' lavoro, ciao" and I go on down the dusty path. I wonder how many artefacts lie in layers under my feet.

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Paestum's a huge site, a town, with a forum, a little theatre and these enormous temples which must have dominated the whole area, I'd have thought, even when the houses and shops were still standing around them. As I walk up to the seaward end of the site, where the oldest temples lie, the scale of the pillars becomes so impressive that I feel I have to do something other than take photos, even though photos are the most easy and accurate way of recording them. I perch on a fallen stone at a short distance from the Temples of Neptune and Hera and draw.

I only have a small sketchbook with me and the image soon becomes so large that I can only fit four and a half pillars on the page. I become interested in the worn stone details that have survived the 2,600 years since Paestum was founded by the Greeks, their weathered grooves and elegant Doric capitals outlined against the blue sky that has not yet begun to cloud over.

Very few other people are around and I don't find the usual obliging Japanese tourist to take a photo of me in front of this ancient structure to show the scale of it. I set my camera on self-time, perch it on the rock where I've been sitting, and rush over to the boundary fence of the temple of Hera. I try not to look too much out of breath and lean nonchalantly on the wooden strut of the fence.

Passers by glance up at me but I'm out of reach of curious art critics and happily work there for two hours. The sun begins to fade behind drifting clouds that foretell tomorrow's change in the weather.

Most other people seem to be strolling with their partners, except for an English family with a couple of precocious pre-teen children. The adults mutter to each other disapprovingly as they look up at me ("what would happen if everybody sat on these historic stones?"). But their attention is mainly on airing their knowledge of the technical terms of Graeco-Roman architecture as they field and encourage searching questions on archaeological themes from the children.

I used to know the parts of a Greek temple, when I was their children's age, but my patience with fact has worn thin over the years. I don't retain the details, just my awe in the face of the age and scale of these stones, the ritual and pageantry they've been used for, and the generations that have revered, assaulted, depended upon and finally neglected them.

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There's a very good web page on Paestum's history, with photos that are very like my own, and I'm posting its address here for you to look up, rather than plagiarising the work done by its compiler:

http://www.paestum.de/en/paestum.htm

On that page there is also a photo of the Church of SS Annunziata, an elegant peeling little baroque façade next to the pizza house where I go to fill a sudden void that opens up in my stomach when I finish drawing. I'm suddenly very hungry. It's three o'clock and Italians are either eating or resting if at all possible.

The tables are empty except for a lady of about my age who is immersed in her book. I'm brought a menu and I'm taken aback by the range of pizza toppings and the relatively low prices. I'm used to Amalfi Coast prices.

This eatery, in this tourist trap, provides a real pizza - not one of those cellophane wrapped, microwaved efforts that I've met in similar locations before. I eat well. I can't have wine, to my regret, because soon I'll be back on the road to Praiano.

A school trip of Italian teenagers makes a bid to take over all the remaining seats outside the pizzeria, chattering and laughing and teasing each other. Some of them are instantly aware that I'm not Italian and they start to greet me in English: "How do you do? How are you? Are you American? Are you English? Are you Aussi? Where do you come from?"

I'm tired and suddenly feel very English. My Italian language deserts me. I want to eat my pizza in peace. Luckily, the group decide it's too cold to sit outside and they all surge away, calling back chummily, "Goodbye" and "Have a nice day". I respond with "Ciao, á rivederci" and thankfully watch them chatter out of sight like a flock of exotic starlings.

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Before I leave, I want to use the other part of my 8 euro ticket and I cross the little piazza to the museum. I'm glad I did. Inside it's bright, modern and well labelled in Italian. This is a surprise and so different from the archaeological museum I visited in Naples in 2004 . There the mosaics and important finds from Pompeii and Herculaneum were displayed on the fourth floor with no signs to point the tourist towards finding them easily.

I find my reading of Italian is good enough for me to decipher most of the information in the museum here at Paestum and there are some labels in English too.

The pots in the museum are beautiful, sensual, bellied shapes decorated with pictures of figures of idealised beauty and ugliness, in terracotta, white and black. There are cycles of carvings from the peristyles of the temples and paintings and reliefs and paintings on whole tombs taken from the site. Statues and figurines are there, of all the periods of long history of Paestum, smiling their bland archaic smiles.

I spend a relaxed three quarters of an hour browsing in the museum. I buy the guide book in English,and wish I had the energy left to make some direct drawings of the items in the cases. But it's getting late and I want to drive back to Praiano in the light.

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I get back to the apartment next to Tina's at about six o'clock. We're both very tired. Tina has driven further than me, and she has had a much more stressful two days with her grieving relatives. She tells me about it over supper.

When I go into my apartment to get ready for bed, I'm aware of a strong smell - drains are blocked somewhere. I don't want to keep Tina up late, but she comes in and agrees that the problem is sewage based. Not much we can do tonight, though, so I put on my thick woolly socks, open the window and try to sleep.

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February 21st 2008

The rain on the balcony wakes me up at intervals in the night. Getting back to sleep is difficult because of the smell of drains that's wafting through the apartment. It's cold with the window open.

At seven I give up the idea of more sleep. It's very grey outside when I open the shutters. The heavy rain's subdued to a thin drizzle on the cold wind. A was right - I've done the best thing, going to Paestum while the sky was blue. But what can can I do on this grim grey morning?

The smell is overpowering and that's the deciding factor. (I've been a little spoilt by the splendours of the Grand Hotel, too, I must concede)

I dress and go and see Tina.

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"I've decided to use the car today, go and see a bit more of Italy, maybe stay over somewhere. I hope you don't mind," - I feel a bit disloyal - "but the weather is so bad and I only have six days here…"

Tina shows what a good friend she is. "I was quite surprised when you came back here last night - I thought you might've gone on, seen some more of Calabria. Of course I don't mind. It's your holiday."

This time I pack my smart skirt to take with me. I look on the map and wonder how far north I can get in a day. Tina and I have looked at the TV weather forecast over breakfast and it's sunny in Florence.

But first I must see N, at the Miramare. He asked me to bring some prints of my paintings to hang in the cabins. I put my bag in the car and walk down the road in the drizzle. The men who are always fixing engines in the workshop opposite the Miramare no longer stare curiously as I come down the hill and cross the road to ring the bell.

The gate clicks open after a pause and I go down the steps to the little courtyard. A is there, dressed to go out. N appears after a moment, in working clothes. He greets me warmly and makes us coffee. He politely admires the prints and buys three. I'm surprised by the one he admires most - the beach scene. "That's A's girlfriend," I joke, pointing to the figure in a black bikini in the foreground.

I explain that I'm going to drive north today, maybe to Florence, maybe stopping at Perugia, which I've heard is an interesting mediaeval town.

"See you in May," calls N as I start back up the hill where the Punto is parked. I'm expecting to come back before I go home this time and tell him so, but in the end that's my last sight of the two brothers before my next trip.

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The road to Perugia is not quite direct. I've decided to go there because I've been to Florence before, in another life, and because Perugia is smaller and less daunting to arrive in without a hotel booked in advance, I think.

The first hour is spent getting to Naples on the A3. I take a wrong turning off the coast road at one point and find myself in the dockland district of Castellamere, driving up a one-way lane that turns out to be blocked without warning at the other end. At least ten cars have followed me. I get out and wave my arms about, looking foreign, female and foolish.

"Cosa fare?" I call to the men behind who are tuning up their hooters. "Sono inghlese!"

An understanding, calm young man comes to the rescue, gets out of his car and moves the barrier out of the way. Led by me, we all do a U turn up the other lane of the road, in the direction we came from, and I'm back on track.

The dual carriageway broadens out after Naples and I join the Florence-Salerno road. This is easy, I'm thinking. I stop at a service station twice for petrol and a panino. I know I have to strike out inland sometime after Rome. The old saying "all roads lead to Rome" has never seemed more true. Rome seems to go on for ever - turning after turning is presented. I'm quite scared of finding myself in the centre of Rome and I keep going.

In the event I do turn off too early and I'm on the way to Aquila when I realise it. I stop at a service station and ask advice as well as filling up. Most of the petrol stations are manned rather than self service. My poor bashed Punto attracts sad shakes of the head from the middle-aged men who fill the tank. I feel embarrassed and guilty, as though I've harmed a vulnerable creature.

On their advice, I turn round at the next toll station and soon I'm back on the right road. The last part of the journey seems interminable but at last I see Perugia's hilltop. The sun is going down. It's taken me seven hours to drive from the Amalfi Coast to Perugia.

I follow signposts pointing to hotels and I'm led down into a dank dip between hills within the town. I take one look, turn round and retrace my steps - I'm tired but this is not the spot for me. I've seen another sign, to "La Perusia Ristorante & Villa" and that's where I make my stop. It's a good choice.

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I book in and I'm apologetically charged two thirds of the room rate of the Grand Hotel Salerno by a charming young male receptionist. The receptionists get younger as one grows older, I'm finding. (I suppose that also goes for policemen, ticket collectors, traffic wardens and really just about anybody with a job.)

He hands over the key to a double executive room, which he explains is normally much more expensive but it's a very quiet time of year for the hotel. I make myself thoroughly at home in this big comfortable room. In particular I make full use of the huge bath in the ensuite bathroom .

Then I go across the courtyard to the restaurant. I'm too tired to go exploring Perugia tonight and I'm hungry.

The restaurant is in the Villa, an eighteenth century mansion that was the original building on La Perusia's site. The restaurant is quite stylish in an old fashioned way, with the usual gold cotton brocade tablecloths and napkins and an aura of extreme decorum.

I'm glad I packed my smart skirt this time.

There are a few other diners and the waiter is kept fairly busy, bowing from the waist and pulling chairs out, handing menus and gravely making suggestions to clients who hesitate over their choice. He is an elderly man with a very professional persona and a slight limp. He asks doubtfully, will I have wine, or sparkling water? Both, I say without hesitation. A large glass of red is brought - I've chosen gnocchi (potato dumplings in a sauce) and a lamb cutlet.

The food is perfect. I find the glass of wine very good, too, and it's a relief not to be driving anywhere afterwards. By the time I've finished the meal and the waiter is starting to smile and offer me another glass of wine (I've had enough, though) I've decided to stay a second night at La Perusia.

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February 22nd 2008

The weather forecast on Tina's TV was right. It's a blue sky, fluffy cloud morning with the promise of real sun to come. I'm up early, having breakfast in the Villa, where the upper floor is set out with the usual cereal and rolls, slivers of cheese and thin cut prosciutto and some very delicious pastries and cakes. A couple whom I've noticed in the dining room last night are already there and we have a chat. They're from Oslo and speak and understand some English. They're leaving to drive home this morning.

The receptionist (a different, equally charming and beautiful young woman) gives me advice on exploring Perugia, and a map to guide me, and I set off towards the Centro Istorico, the old town district.

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It's fresh bright weather and I feel lucky to be here, in this provincial town surrounded by people who are not on holiday but going about their everyday business. Being built on hills, Perugia has wonderful views from every open vantage point. I slip behind the post office, for example, and take photographs from the car park there. Normally you would see for miles but today there's a change-of-season haze in the valleys.

After five or ten minutes I reach an enormous archway. A narrow street leads further up the hill beyond it. This is the Arco Etrusco. There are sixteen gates into the city listed in the guidebook that I buy in a little shop just inside the archway.

Perugia's history extends back to the Etruscan civilisation that came before the Romans. It's thought to have been founded in about 600 BC. The Romans took over in about 200 BC and after Julius Caesar's death the city became the centre of a quarrel between Octavian and Lucian Antony, two of the brothers of Mark Antony. It was besieged and burnt down in 40 BC and rebuilt by Octavian Augustus afterwards. It became a Christian centre early on, a bishopric in about 500 BC and was the focus of a lot of political intrigue and conflict up to 1000 AD. My guide book, written by Francesco Frederico Mancini and Giovanna Casagrande, gives a full account of the long and turbulent history of the town, right up to the present day.

The streets that run between the Arco Etrusco and the main piazza of the city, Piazza Novembre IV, are very ancient. Via V. Rocchi is nicknamed "via Vecchia" ("the old street"). a parallel street, via Bartolo, was opened in 1378.

I come out of the shadows of the tall mediaeval palaces and into the wide space of the Piazza Novembre IV. The Great Fountain is not playing, but the sun is beginning to shine properly now and in contrast with the side streets there are a lot of people in the piazza. On the steps of S Lorenzo, the Duomo, sit dozens of students from the university, as well as sightseers like me. From the height of the steps you can see far off, down at the end of a wide thoroughfare past the Palazzo dei Priori, a hint of the distant view across the valley. People are scattered like ants in the piazza below me.

The architecture, so different from the baroque curlicues and tiled domes of southern Italy, is vertical, pointed arches and square towers aiming at the sky. The battlements along the facades, trefoil windows and gothic arcades on the upper floors of the palaces remind me of the architecture of Venice.

I spend a long time up there in the sun, drawing my own version of the picture that is on the cover of the guide book. Surrounded by the babel of voices, speaking in many tongues, I'm happy to be part of the tourist scene. I'm accosted by a couple of people who want to sell me things but they go off philosophically enough when I shake my head and go on concentrating on my drawing.

There's an exhibition of Pintoricchio's paintings showing at the Galleria Nationale di Umbria, on the upper floor of the Palazzo dei Priori. I'm tempted for a moment but once I go inside the cool hall to buy a ticket I change my mind. It's on till the summer. The sun is too good to miss.

I buy a very large ice cream and sit on a wall near the Great Fountain to eat it. When I get up to leave, I realise that my sunglasses, which I'd taken off and put down on the wall to take a photo, have already left, probably with the group of students who were chatting nearby. Last time that happened to me was exactly three years ago, I think, nostalgically, the first time I visited Sorrento on my own.

I go into one of the expensive shops off the piazza and buy a pair of sunglasses at sale price. They have strange flanges on the sides and I'm not surprised they're on special offer, but they fit, and I can't drive tomorrow without sunglasses. The sales girl is very helpful and tells me they look absolutely sweet.

Then I wander about the old city, following no particular itinerary. I know I'll be back. That's when I'll use my guide book, which has six different walks mapped out, with information on the churches and palazzos that are on the routes. But today, I just want to find my own way around and soak up the sun and the atmosphere. I walk and walk and make a great loop, coming across tiny alleys and streets full of window boxes of flowers, little churches that are certainly in the guide book, and other gates in the city wall. I follow my nose and find my way back to La Perusia before the sun goes down.

In the evening I make the mistake of trying a restaurant in via Vecchio which at first looks promising but which turns out neither to serve authentically good Italian cooking nor to be as cheap as it first looked. I should have stayed in for dinner. When I pay my bill next morning I find that "Ristorante La Villa Perusia" is no more expensive than the dive that I visited tonight. You don't always get what you pay for.

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February 23rd 2008

I’ve slept well in my executive room in Hotel La Perusia and I’m quite sorry to check out, after a good breakfast. I’m pleasantly surprised by the charge for dinner on the first night. It was a large, delicious two course meal with a big glass of good red wine, a bottle of sparkling water and an espresso, in very civilised surroundings, and it cost €28 - about £17 or $35. Perugia costs me two thirds as much as Salerno per night.

I decide to drive south towards Naples the pretty way today (my flight is tomorrow evening from there). I see on the map that I can go to Assisi on the way back, and then down a road through hills rather than a flat boring motorway, and join the A3 further south.

As soon as I get into the car I realise that my day off has done me good. My left hand no longer leaves the wheel to search in vain for a gear lever and my right hand goes to the gears with unerring accuracy. I know how wide the car is. I feel like superwoman, especially when I find my way straight to Assisi with no U turns.

Assisi at 9am is peaceful and empty except for big trucks cleaning the streets, the odd monk and a few early bird souvenir salespeople opening up shop. By the time I leave at 11am it’s looking more like the tourist trap I anticipated before I came. I spend two hours wandering happily among the many churches and the old streets and steps of this hilltop town.

The guidebook lists twelve churches altogether. There’s also a fort standing above the town. The book recommends spending at least three days there, and there is so much to see, I shall have to go back after this flying visit and take in some more of it.

I park on the outskirts, where later I realise that all the coaches park, and walk in. I realise too late that I could have driven right up to the Church of St Francis, this early in the morning, but I do like wandering about in places on foot, anyway.

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The first church I come to is St Chiara, a big one with a castellated tower and huge flying buttresses. I spend some time admiring it inside and out, and taking photos.

By the time I find St Francis’ Church the sun’s quite high and the white facade of the upper church is dazzling. The weather is perfect. Brilliant sun, no wind. So still that there’s a haze all over Umbria. There are wonderful views from this town, but my photos probably won’t show them.

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The church of St Francis has three levels, two above ground and the third the crypt where St Francis, the founder of the Franciscan order of monks, is buried. He was canonised two years after his death, and that year, 1274, the first stone of the church was laid.

I contribute all my small change (about €5) to listen to an autoguide which if I’d finished it would have taken about an hour to show me round the church. It’s good, but I don’t want to leave too late.

The upper church has a beautiful, gleaming white facade and inside there are systems of frescos by Giotto, Cimabue and other great mediaeval masters. The church was very badly damaged by an earthquake in 1987 so the lower series of frescos, on St Francis’ life, are in particularly good condition because they’ve been perfectly restored. (I remember the worldwide public appeal for money to help with this work) The upper frescos are on the New and Old Testaments and are not in such an intact state. The colours are the beautiful warm earth colours (umbers, sienas) of the Umbrian geology.

I stand looking over the parapet of the piazza in front of the topmost level of Chiesa S Francesco. The marble piazza on the level below has a line of tourists straggling up to the entrance on that floor. I imagine that in the summer months the geometric pattern of the piazza will be hidden altogether by pilgrims and tourists.

A trio of young Italians ask me to take their photo as they stand against the wide landscape beyond the parapet. In return, I ask them to photograph me as I pose in front of the vast façade of the church. I’m dwarfed by the structure, of course, but I want to remember the scale of the building.

You can just see me in the doorway - I should have stood against the white wall.

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I emerge from the town at the wrong level to retrace my steps back to the car park and as usual see parts of Assisi that people who read their guidebooks before they start walking around don’t usually see. At last I find the car in the now crowded car park and I’m on the road for Sorrento via Naples. I’ve phoned Tina and explained that I’m going to stay in Sorrento tonight and see my friends G and L, who separately have helped me, in the past, to sell my work.

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I drive south towards the Terni junction with the A1 autostrada from Florence to Rome, through lovely wooded conical hills with farms and hamlets crowning many of them. I stop once or twice to take photos but inevitably the most wonderful vistas are on fast stretches of roads that have no stopping places.

I pass the place where I turned off towards Aquila through the Abruzzo National Park, on my way north two days ago. I shall go back there soon. The scenery was becoming more and more beautiful as I went inland along that road before turning back to find the Florence-Naples autostrada.

It’s an anticlimax to reach the flat industrialised area round Rome, which stretches down towards the barren bare mountains near Cassino and Caserta. The autostrada leaving Naples towards Salerno feels downright dangerous, it’s so narrow, and every time I venture into the faster of the two lanes there I find a pair of headlights practically touching my bumper and have to withdraw hastily.

The journey from Assisi to Sorrento takes five hours including about 20 minutes for stops. Not bad, I think to myself, in a five-door Fiat Punto.

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I’ve booked a hotel for the night in Sorrento, through the internet, because so many hotels are closed for the winter that I want to make sure I have a room. The Hotel Eden is close to the Piazza Tasso and set back off the road - I’ve often passed it and thought it would be a quiet place to stay, so I’ve booked it for this one night. It costs ten Euros a night more than Hotel La Perusia, including off-road parking.

It’s the sublime to the ridiculous, and I realise how expensive a town Sorrento can be. The room is a quarter of the size and infinitely less well appointed than the palatial accommodation I enjoyed last night. There is a poky shower room, a view into a courtyard through the small window with a little table under it, a single wardrobe and a single bed. There’s a feeling of neglect about the place, compared to the usual spotless, well tended hotels I’ve been in.

One of the reasons I’ve chosen this hotel is that it offers free internet access. I’m told that this is out of action. My laptop tells me about a wireless connection there but I am not permitted to use it. I am not pleased.

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I shower and change and go out into the evening street. L is there in his shop piled high with paintings of every kind and all qualities. As usual, he is pessimistic about business matters but he’s surprised and seems pleased to see me again after only two months. We have an enjoyable gossip about mutual acquaintances and I admire some of the beautiful still-life pictures painted by one of "his" artists, whom I met at L’s private view party for him at the Foto Bar in December. Then on to G.’s shop, where she keeps my signed prints for sale. I’m pleased to see that one of them is on show under the glass counter top.

My last port of call is to the Internet Café where Luigi greets me with his shy smile and I spend an hour checking my emails and checking into my flight online. The Internet Café is classic ’70’s chic - all glass tabletops and chrome and blue lighting - and it’s open till later than the cheaper internet point round the corner in Strada Tasso. I have a cheese panino and a glass of wine there.

Finally, for old times’ sake, I sit under the canopy outside the Bar Fauno. There’s not much room outside the Bar Fauno tonight, though, because a Ferrari sports car is occupying half the space. Everyone seems very excited about the car and there are pastry cooks all round it, having their photos taken.

Over my glass of red wine and bowls of olives and nuts I phone Tina for a chat. She knows all about the Ferrari. It’s totally made of chocolate. I am amazed. A lorry backs up at ten thirty and the chocolate car is driven into the back of it. I wonder how it survives ignition without melting. Still wondering, I go back to my little room at the Hotel Eden.

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My last day in Italy for a while. I weigh up whether to go back and spend it in Praiano but I decide to make my way slowly back to Naples instead. I don’t want to feel rushed in Praiano and having a plane to catch is a recipe for feeling rushed.

It’s another blue sky day, not hot but warm in the sun. I decide to go and look at Vico Equense, a town on the coast between Sorrento and Castellamare. There’s a lot of traffic on the coast road, most of it heading towards Sorrento.

In Vico I search for a parking space but end up in an underground car park near the centre. The town square is full of families, mostly dressed in their best for Sunday lunch. I arrive there as everyone is having mid-morning coffees. The cafés round the fountain in the town centre are full and I give up the idea of having my own mid-morning break. Instead I go for a stroll round the town with my camera.

The sea is absolutely glassy still and the blues of the water and the sky are enough to break my heart with nostalgia for summer. I recognise the vertical cliff at the Sorrento end of the bay from a watercolour picture that Tina has in her living room. In this hazy atmosphere it’s outlined in silver grey against the sea and the sky, a dramatic plunge from the plateau to the water.

The view in the other direction is softer, with hills and white houses and hotels spreading across grey-green land. The blue water shimmers.

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In the summer Vico is a holiday resort with its share of hotels and tourist amenities but like everywhere else at this time of year it has taken its own character back for the winter. I walk round the town in a loop, taking in the memorial that stands on the Naples side of the town and the old Duomo, a baroque church with a small terrace overlooking the great cliff.

When I get back to the main square, there are tables free outside the café that was full before and I sit there and have an espresso. I’d like to have lunch here but I haven’t seen a restaurant open.

I walk back to the car park entrance and realise that what looked like a hotel nearby is actually an enormous restaurant, called Pizza á Metro (Pizza by the Metre) with a pizzeria in one hall and a more general restaurant in another enormous dining room. Waitresses and waiters are hurrying among the tables, some pushing trolleys bearing rectangular pizzas with multiple toppings, others pulling sweet trolleys.

There are hundreds of people eating here: couples, families, a few single people like myself. I order a local dish (so the menu announces). It turns out to be a very large lamb cutlet, juicy and perfectly cooked in herbs. I treat myself to a delicious lemon pudding afterwards. The bill, about €12 (£8 or $16, including the cover charge for bread and a large bottle of sparkling mineral water, is the best value I’ve had all week.

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I have to be at the airport by 5.20 at the latest, to give back the car. I have a couple of hours in hand and on impulse I stop along the road between Vico and Castellamare, at a forlorn beach resort with a tattered flag and an uninviting beach of rocks and gravel, below the road. I just want to be near the sea for a little while before I go home. It’s a desolate place. Remnants of last year’s holiday-making litter the beach - a child’s shoe, a ragged towel.

And now I come across a deck chair with its legs in the margin of the water. It’s facing the wrong way so I drag it out and turn it to look out at the horizon. I sit in it and look out to sea. Between two rocks a white yacht is sailing slowly on the horizon. My last photo of the holiday is that view.