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(I feel like I am doing the thing where you don’t eat dessert until the end and everything has to go in order – i.e. updating the blog in chronological order – because I’m in Paris now and it’s hard to blog about stuff that happened a week ago! FYI Paris is lovely, the weather rocks, I’ve walked around enough that the blisters have healed and now my feet are just beaten up, but those are just scars of a trip spent exploring….it’s different to be on the trip without a car – obviously not necessary in Paris, but it’s just a bit different than the first two weeks..)
OK, Friday morning, I slept in a little and while Ern told me it was maybe 15 minute bike ride uphill to Bagnaia where Villa Lante was, he also offered me Yvonne’s car, so my late start necessitated that and let me tell you, it is NOT a fifteen minute ride uphill…..it’s a 15 min ride in the CAR. I would have been so crabby and overheated and more importantly, late to meet Ern in the afternoon, so the car was the way to go.
Before leaving Viterbo, heeding the advice of Mel who made this trip last year at this very time, I went to Ernie’s local delicatessen, Gigi & Mena’s, and picked up a sandwich. I had previously been introduced to Gigi as “sorella di Ernesto” and thus was warmly welcomed. Mena hadn’t been introduced so she was a little more curt until Gigi explained who I was, and then she warmed up. She put together a nice prosuitto and cheese sandwich on fresh bread and I was off.
Villa Lante – I’m less inclined to tell you the history of it, and you can read about it here, but it’s formal garden full of formal trimmed hedges, fountains and sculpture, described as being Mannerist style. I would have guessed Renaissance, but evidently Mannerist is “high” renaissance leading just into the period when everything went overboard in the Baroque period.
Water plays a role as it does in so many gardens. What I noticed about this (and so many of the other buildings, palaces, cathedrals) were some of the personal details. The man who commissioned the garden was a cardinal named Cardinal Gianfrancesco Gambara and I’m not sure if it was just wordplay or if the actual spelling of shrimp in Italian is gambara with an a, but he used the crustacean imagery on occasion around the garden.
There were only four other visitors at Villa Lante. I had the place all to myself.
This runnel runs on axis with the entire garden.
The runnel flows into this fountain with these two huge reclining figures
In front of the statues is this long table on axis with everything else. There's something about long communal tablees that I like.
After this, I ate my sandwich on a bench in the sunshine in the park next door. It was a totally relaxing morning.
Ern and I headed out on the road to visit Berto in Le Marche. By the time we rolled into town, it was about 7pm and we met up with Berto and his friend Rina and Rina’s sister, Marta, for dinner. Marta’s English is fantastic and Rina’s is much improved. They both understand English very well. We discussed movies (Rina, Marta and I share a common love of Ryan Gosling we learned) and television. They watch some of the current shows, but Ernie and I steered them towards The West Wing and Friday Night Lights for more American references. If they can follow the extremely wordy writing of Aaron Sorkin, then they’ll be fully fluent. FYI, they learned English, believe it or not, but watching Alf. Yes, I was also amused, but they love Alf and if my Italian could be as good as their English, I would have watched the Italian version of Alf too.
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That garden looks like a place to concentrate on when you need to think of a calming place, far far away from Seattle…
Comment by Amanda May 9, 2011 @ 2:45 pmOne of my favorites is the huge stone dining table with water flowing through the middle. Great photos, Marlene!
Comment by Melody May 23, 2011 @ 8:13 pm