Italy in the Cold

In late January, we found ourselves on another trip -- this time for 9 days to Genoa, La Spezia, Riva Trigosa, Livorno and Rome in Italy. Chuck visited Italian defense companies in each of those cities (including some shipyards) and had great professional discussions with many of their executives. He hopes that this trip, too, will result in mutually beneficial exchanges of information. For this report, we'll concentrate on the non-business stuff.

We spent most of a weekend in Genoa before the "business" part of the trip. At the suggestion of Bill Solitario, a colleague at the Naval Postgraduate School, we paid a visit to the Cinque Terra, or five lands -- a series of five very isolated villages in the extremely mountainous coastal area between Genoa and La Spezia. It's amazing that people actually built their homes and villages in such isolated areas with such incredibley difficult terrain -- and did it without earth-moving equipment or power tools. Our whole trip to Italy was beset by very cold days with lots of wind -- we had snow flurries in Genoa and in Rome (and while we were in Rome there was nearly 2 feet of snow in Sicily!). Such weather probably does not show off this beautiful area nearly as well as warm sunny days -- but the beauty we saw in January, while being a lot more stark, was probably just as great. Our last stop in the Cinque Terra area was the monastery of Santuario Saviore, overlooking Rio Maggiore, one of the five villages. The views from the hilltop here made all the windy weather bearable.

Our stops in La Spezia, Livorno and Riva Trigossa didn't allow for much sightseeing -- except that Kathi did get a chance to drive through the popular (in the summer) seaside resort of Lerici. We took the train from LaSpezia to Rome and stayed in our hotel, a few blocks from the train station and near the center of Rome.

While Chuck was working, Kathi took a day to visit the Vatican Museum for a second visit there for her. The weather continued cold and windy for the whole visit, but we were able to see the incredible churches of Santa Maria Maggiore and Santa Giovanni Laterno -- on different days. They are both enormous and incredibly filled with art and spectacular decoration. Other places we were able to see were the Pantheon, the Roman Forum (both new to Kathi) and the Colisseum. The sightseeing highlight, though, was the Galleria at the Villa Borghese. The art housed there is incredibly beautiful and seeing it displayed among the fantastically well-designed and decorated rooms of the Villa is especially wonderul. (Compared to seeing art displayed in this way, the Louvre in Paris almost seems like a warehouse of art.) The highlights of this beautiful place were three Bernini sculptures that formed the centerpieces of three of the rooms. These have to be seen to be believed -- we would never have thought it possible to carve such beautiful, three-dimensional and lifelike leaves and flowing clothing from marble -- to say nothing of the human forms. If you're ever in Rome, don't miss the Villa Borghese under any circumstances. (Unfortunately, cameras are not allowed in the galleria.)

A few of the pictures from our Italian odyssey are at: http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/386974