Ravenna and Venice – Friday cont.

While Karin, Dan, and Cathy stayed at the villa in Radda to have a lazy morning and check us out with the landlady, planning to head back to Venice via the fast roads that we came in on, Bruce and Sue Anne took off through the hills toward Ravenna on the Adriatic coast. It’s a place known for the beauty of its mosaics, some going as far back as the 5th and 6th centuries. Sue Anne had been there during her student days, but it was a new experience for Bruce.

First, however, we had to surmount the mountain range to the east of Tuscany. It wasn’t tremendously rugged, but there were plenty of hilly and winding stretches on the road. While there were some sections of new highway, and more under construction, the road mostly went through towns along the way. Many of the settled areas had an appearance not unlike what we’ve seen in Alpine areas to the north.

We were so impressed with the quality of the roadside restaurant we had stopped at on our drive down from Venice that we decided to try another one on this trip. There were a lot of roadway workmen having lunch there, so we figured it must be good. It was the first place we ate where there was not a word of English anywhere. We did get the impression that most of the menu items were sandwiches on various kinds of specialty bread or other forms of doughy substrates, so we basically chose ingredients whose names we recognized and awaited the resulting surprise regarding their enclosure. Bruce’s prosciutto and cheese sandwich came between two Piadina, each of which was a round, flat bread, perhaps 1/8th of an inch thick, soft, and quite tasty. We later saw the word in signs all over the place, as it is apparently a local specialty. Sue Anne’s meal was basically pizza, but a very special one. The surface had been covered with small islands of various tasty foodstuffs, all ground up fine; then it had been cut into over 20 very small wedges, each no more than about three inches long, and rearranged into a star shape. Each piece typically possessed two or three distinct flavor zones.

There was a small gift shop area at the restaurant, where we bought a present, Adriatic salt, to bring home to Iolanda, the woman in Baltimore who had provided our Italian lessons. We also marveled at the DIY ice cream cone machine but didn’t take a chance at trying to figure out how it worked.

Here’s a picture of the view from the parking lot, typical of the whole trip through the mountains.

Then it was down the eastern side of the mountains and onto the utterly flat coast of the Adriatic. At least the map said that the Adriatic was over there, somewhere, as did signs that pointed toward the local Lido or beach. But there was never a view out to the ocean from the main road, and we didn’t have time to explore. We headed straight for downtown Ravenna and parked at the Piazza JFK. There might have been some sort of memorial there, but to us it just appeared to be a large municipal parking lot. The maximum ticket you could buy was for an hour and a half, so we had our work cut out for us, particularly in light of the very attentive ticketing staff we had observed lurking at the parking lot.

Fortunately three of the major attractions in town were right around the corner, and there they sold a ticket good at all five of the top sites. We made a quick trip through the small museum, looking at portions of mosaics that had been recovered from excavation sites. The next door Duomo and Baptistery were closed for lunch (a common situation in Italy), so we took off across town to see the two other major churches, San Vitale and San Apollinaire. Both were stunning. These few pictures will give you an idea of their magnificence. It’s hard to believe that these were all created from ½ inch squares of solid colored, matte or gold glass.

We invested a Euro in an audio description at one of the churches, which was money well spent. We learned that there were artists from two distinctly different schools working there simultaneously. The Byzantine school portrayed the saints and other holy figures as upright and stylized, with plain gold backgrounds, while the other school, the Roman, showed them as more animated and in the scenic outdoors. It also appears that the art community gained favor with the local archbishop by portraying him in mosaic, standing alongside some of the more significant figures of Christianity.

Then we headed back to the Baptistery and the adjacent Duomo. The Baptistery was stunning, but the Duomo turned out to be quite plain, and of an entirely different and less impressive era. We’re glad that we had taken in the marvelous work at the other two churches first. The keepers of the Duomo had recently (by long-term standards) installed pews, many of which sat directly on top of and obscured what artwork there was on the floors. The backs of the pews featured interesting and intricate woodwork, but the carvings on the fronts were all (nicely done) faux. Quite understandable, considering how uncomfortable real carvings would be on one’s back while sitting there.

On the way between these attractions we picked up a brochure announcing an early peek into some recent discoveries of even more mosaics, at sites now three meters below ground level. If we had had more time, we would have gone to see the also famous Saint Apollinaire in Classe, just outside of town. Next time.

Then we took off for Venice. Road flat the whole way. Still no ocean view, but one trip along a very long causeway. We had been looking for a hypermarket the whole time we were here, and finally we found one just a bit short of Venice. Bought a few items of distinctly Italian kitchenware at reasonable prices. Karin wasn’t sure how to react when we told her that there was also a Bata shoe store outlet there.

Hit the city at rush hour. Paralyzingly slow, and the car kept telling us to get gas. Diesel actually. Almost screwed that one up. Then GPS failed us. Told us our hotel was on the wrong side of the street, and we somehow didn’t look hard enough in the other direction. U-turn. Almost got locked into a gated parking lot. Almost backed into another car. Gave up on the plan of checking into the hotel before turning in the rental car, and headed straight to the airport. Later found out that Karin and Dan had reached the same decision. None of us wanted to get to the hotel and feel like the day’s journey was over, only to then have to put shoes back on and go turn in the car. Easy turn-in, quick walk to the taxi stand, exorbitant ride back to the nearby hotel (but at least the driver knew how to get us there, in contrast to GPS). K&D&C were already situated in rooms adjacent to ours. Tasty room service dinner. Pack. Shower. Set up very early wakeup call.