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Scattered Italian impressions not jotted down before:
- the Vespa drivers really wear helmets these days, each and everyone of them. Will wonders never cease?
- Ice cream in Florence is far too expensive; that's blackmail; ice cream in more rural Tuscan areas, though, is a benefit from the gods; Viva gli gelati!
- I never saw birds fly as fast as over the Piazza del Campo when I was lying on it, waiting for the concert to begin; those swallows must have been disturbed by the noise, but the longer one watched them, the more they caused an eerie Hitchcockian sensation
- Which reminded me about Orson Welles calling Italy the country of birds in Michéal McLiammoir's OTHELLO memoirs "Put Money In Thy Purse", which in turn reminds me now of a great black-and-white photo of O.W. in Italy at Feltrinelli's which I rather coveted, but alas, it was not sold.
Also, I finished Charles Dickens' "Pictures from Italy". Which is eminently readable like everything Dickens wrote and paints a refreshingly different, unromantic view of 19th century Italy, but I do have issues with it. First some general observations.
( Ramblings about Dickens cut for length )
- the Vespa drivers really wear helmets these days, each and everyone of them. Will wonders never cease?
- Ice cream in Florence is far too expensive; that's blackmail; ice cream in more rural Tuscan areas, though, is a benefit from the gods; Viva gli gelati!
- I never saw birds fly as fast as over the Piazza del Campo when I was lying on it, waiting for the concert to begin; those swallows must have been disturbed by the noise, but the longer one watched them, the more they caused an eerie Hitchcockian sensation
- Which reminded me about Orson Welles calling Italy the country of birds in Michéal McLiammoir's OTHELLO memoirs "Put Money In Thy Purse", which in turn reminds me now of a great black-and-white photo of O.W. in Italy at Feltrinelli's which I rather coveted, but alas, it was not sold.
Also, I finished Charles Dickens' "Pictures from Italy". Which is eminently readable like everything Dickens wrote and paints a refreshingly different, unromantic view of 19th century Italy, but I do have issues with it. First some general observations.
( Ramblings about Dickens cut for length )
