Tallinn

The black bread in Lithuania at its freshest best is more like aerated treacle toffee than anything made of grain.  I found I could eat it in quite astonishing quantities.  Food otherwise is inclined to be simple  - meat, cured meat, soups, pickles, plainly cooked vegetables and, at this time of year, plenty of fruit.  To go with the good bread, there are greater tests of the bakers skill in tarts, cheesecakes and other pastry confections not to mention the ubiquitous marzipan.  In the window of the most famous and oldest cafe/confectioner in Tallinn, Malasmokk, too overcrowded with tourists at this time of year to sit in, there are marzipan houses and an entire population of marzipan figures.

In fact in two days we had a lot of ground to cover and not too much time for frequenting cafes. Estonia is wonderfully proud of itself and its emergence as a successful independent country and member of the EU from a history of serial invasion and occupation until the fall of the Soviet Union. Tallinn is a showcase for that history and for national amour propre.  The town is spotless and there are enough museums almost for every day of the year.  They include Kumu the rather spectacular modern art gallery opened in 2006, the comfortably sized Kadriorg Palace with its art collections, lovely baroque rooms and splendid tiled stoves, built by Peter the Great for his wife, the Empress Catherine and a wide range of smaller showcases such as the City Museum and the Museum of Occupations.  All history good or bad is to be remembered it seems and, where possible, celebrated.  The collections are not in general extraordinary or famous but the very best is made of what is available and, as a result, the viewer looks carefully at exhibits that might be passed over when faced with better known and theoretically internationally more important works and absorbs to a greater extent the history of each one.

The tall black church spires,with what remains of the city walls round the old city have made the remarkable skyline of Tallinn through centuries.  It must have seemed the setting for fairy tales when viewed from the chilly Baltic Sea on the deck of an approaching ship.  Now the modern town surrounds the old but the towering pinnacles of churches like the Niguliste and the Oleviste, not to mention that of the town hall with its soldier weather vane, Old Thomas, standing high above the red tiled towers of the city walls, remain the town's greatest landmarks and signposts.

Their interiors are the spare and whitewashed Gothic reminiscent of 16th and 17th century paintings of Dutch and Belgian church interiors and just as attractive and welcoming.  The towering space of the Niguliste, restored after Soviet bombing raids in 1944, is a repository of treasures such as a gloriously humorous Danse Macabre where death is definitely en fete unlike his rather grand victims. The Dome church has huge box pews at ground level and above them the family boxes, like enclosed opera boxes, of two of Tallinn's most powerful families.  Other families are remembered in the highly ornate armorial shields that cover the walls and in a variety of grand tombs. Most churches are possessors of beautiful and highly decorated organs.

The 14th century Church of the Holy Ghost adjacent to the Town Hall Square in particular has the atmosphere of a place both used and loved. It is more like a refectory with its painted galleries and air of welcome even when empty of people.  There is a real and unusual sense in all the churches of their role as centres of the community which cannot always have been the case. Now huge numbers of tourists are temporarily grafted on to the core of that community which for all its friendliness manages to remain somehow aloof and untouched or that at least is the rather comforting sense in the streets of greater Tallinn from very short experience.  That experience included a visit to the Estonian Open Air Museum, where traditional buildings have been transported and rebuilt from all over the country.  An ersatz, touristic glimpse of real country life it may be but away from the particularly overpopulated areas where tour groups congregate in force, a walk through the woods and by the sea there on a nice day is a pleasure and whets the appetite for a proper driving tour of the countryside of the Baltic States on another occasion.

We stayed conveniently centrally and quite comfortably in the Old Town in the Rixwell Olevi hotel, in a mildly decrepit originally 15th century building.  An initial hiccup with our first night booking after an extremely delayed arrival without any luggage courtesy of British Airways landed us one night in the typical contemporary hotel tower block of the Radisson Olumpia.  Little to be said about that beyond mention of the grimly plastic Sports Bar where we had a late night drink in the absence of dinner and the spectacular view of the city - a distinctly redeeming feature.  On the strength of some level of perceived fault on the part of the Olevi in not fitting us in that night in spite of a booking due to 'technical difficulties' that were either water or electricity related, they gave us a discount which rather made up for the Sports Bar.

Other famous sites of old Tallinn very close to the Hotel include the splendid variety of houses along Pikk Street, most famously, the House of the Blackheads, once owned by the Brotherhood of the Blackheads, the young, single merchants who had not yet graduated to membership of the Great Guild.  The Great Guild Hall on the same street is now the Estonian History Museum.  Unexpectedly these early buildings are neighboured by the glorious Art Nouveau Draakoni House with its splendid dragons and Egyptian figures as well as the 19th century apartment block that was once the HQ of Soviet security.

The Silvery Tay

I never go anywhere without my camera, except I did on this occasion and I regretted it extremely. Well my smaller camera had a flat battery, I was only carrying hand luggage and, for heavens sake, who goes to Scotland in March for a varicose veins operation and really believes they are going to take photographs. Then I had never seen Dundee, a city built on hills overlooking the Tay, truly silvery for two whole days of bright spring sunshine. Beyond the water, across the infamous rail bridge,become a joke image thanks to William McGonagall,  and its road companion, the further hills of Angus. Whatever the merits of the iphone, and other people's photographs using that medium look quite perfect, I cannot take a decent picture with a telephone and now I am sorry for it.

Dundee is a city full of quiet treasures, whether the steep streets of painted Georgian terraced houses or more expected dark sandstone Victorian public buildings of considerable grandeur to reflect Dundee's wealth. Built on jute, jam and journalism, there was more besides in whaling and ship building which included the construction of RRS Discovery, Robert Falcon Scott's Antartic exploration ship.  The renovated ship is now part of the Discovery Centre exhibition, an educational and highly enjoyable experience adjacent to the waterfront building site where a new Victoria & Albert Museum, its design inspired by a ship, is beginning to take shape.

Dundee is doing a grand job of celebrating its past with projects that will enrich its present and future. Jute wealth built the often slightly fantastical, folie de grandeur I suppose, merchants' houses that look out over the Tay, some adapted now as hotels, hospitals or offices.  Many of the honest tradesmen as well as the grandees of the City are buried in the Howff cemetery, in use since the 16th century and definitely a place to explore local life and death given a little more time than I had. I do enjoy a good cemetery but I was hurrying on this occasion towards the Verdant Works Jute Museum and a walk instead through the story of Dundee jute.

Restored machinery that is still operational drives the visitor through the processes that enriched the so called Jute Barons, paying for great private mansions, estates and the foundation of that formidable Victorian public architecture that epitomised the wealth of empire. The other side of that coin is well represented in the Jute museum: the urbanisation of poverty as workers poured in from rural areas to live worse on poor city diets and suffer the epidemic diseases of overcrowded humanity in the squalor of areas like Blackness. At the moment the Jute Museum has an additional attraction. The extraordinary Great Tapestry of Scotland is on exhibition in the High Mill, the whole story of Scotland in beautifully worked unique pictures.

The story of Dundee including the vast skeleton of a whale that mistakenly swam into the Firth of Tay in 1883 towards its nemesis in a city of whalers and whale oil is easily read through the displays in the McManus Art Gallery and Museum.  This splendid purpose built museum designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott was originally opened as the Albert Institute in 1867. Contemporary and historical exhibitions illustrating the role of Dundee and her sons and daughters at home and abroad are underpinned by wonderful Victorian neo-gothic architectural flourishes. There is an enjoyable  a Victorian gallery hung Victorian style floor to ceiling with paintings typical of the period and once owned by the Jute Barons, some rather more desirable than others.  The starring role is given to the pre-raphaelite Dante's Dream by Dante Gabriel Rossetti among other works by Millais, Sargent and a raft of less well-known 19th century royal academicians and royal Scottish academicians.

The shop here as at the Jute Museum and the Discovery Centre reflects the jute, jam and journalism theme with some imagination.  Rainbow displays of neat jute bags, meet DC Thompson comics with images of their best known characters; Oor Wullie with his spiky hair or, more famous outside Scotland, the Dandy's  Desperate Dan, whose 8 foot bronze statue strides proudly through the centre of the city with his dog, Dawg, and fellow Dandy character Minnie the Minx in their wake.  Jam means Keiller and the apocryphal invention of marmalade by Janet Keiller - now there are other names, represented in museum and tourist shops beside Scottish tablet and other sweets for which the region is famous.  Famous for baking too and there is little doubt that the fruit scones at the Balgove Larder just outside St Andrews are the best to be found as recommended by a notable vascular surgeon.  The food at Balgove Larder is all home or locally grown and the farm shop, cafe and steak bar clearly do a roaring trade on the back of excellent produce, desirable location and charming pigs who answer to their names - sad only when one goes missing.

St Andrews, a mere hop skip and jump from Dundee across the Tay is another beautiful city, famous for its golf, ancient university and the glory of the long stretch of beach hard by the golf course where the opening of Chariots of Fire was filmed.  These golden sands remain quite remarkably unspoilt although they are to all intents and purposes part of and an amenity to the city.  

I stayed at the Invercarse Hotel within five minutes walking distance of the splendid Botanic Garden, nothing like a good tropical house to warm you on a chilly day, and almost directly above delightful Dundee airport where 5 flights a day to London in no way disturb the peace and catching one is no more effort than catching a train. The Invercarse is spotlessly clean, friendly,and has a ballroom which is clearly a centre for festivities from weddings to, while I was there, a 'Maths' Ball and a fundraising golf dinner. The last guests from the latter left, so the hall porter told me, at 5.45 but nothing woke me from my slumbers in an unusually comfortable bed.  So sensible too to have the single person rate which is not always available and really does encourage the single person to stay instead of searching the AirBnB site for alternatives.

Beyond the Balgove Larder and the odd cup of coffee in a museum cafe I did not have time to explore Dundee eating further than the marmalade and that fruit scone. That is not entirely true but my son, also with varicose veins, can you believe the bad luck of that inheritance, and I were entertained royally at his house by our surgeon, his GP wife and Ruby their aged jack russell who enjoys going for walks these days in a pram to take the air,  With two universities full of hungry students there are plenty of cafes and restaurants including a considerable number of grand looking Indian establishment.  One senses in Dundee that there is, beyond the usual high street chains of coffee or clothes shops, a number of independent operations that would be worth exploring on another occasion - sadly my time ran out with a horribly early but efficient flight back to Stansted and the joys of the M25 into London, possibly the only downside to the whole expedition. Dundee is a well-kept secret.  Hopefully the new V&A opening in 2018 will put the city, only an hour away from Edinburgh, London too thanks to the airport, and all its attractions seriously on the Scottish tourism map.

Rome and onwards into Lazio

I always think I know Rome quite well, at least as to what extraordinary church, palazzo or ancient ruin is where and which of those I want to see.  Gaps in time, however, play havoc with middle aged memories and streets or Roman hills are not always at all in the direction remembered resulting in much harrumphing from ageing husband when the long road taken is not the right one and the tourist map doesn't have its name.  As for the Italian I once spoke quite well after a year living in Florence, well, I can manage a menu usually, most directions, just, but conversation beyond the 'ancora un altra bottiglia di vino per mio vecchio marito' is completely out of the question.  So far so depressing but being in the eternal city is far from that, especially, notwithstanding three spectacular thunderstorms and accompanying downpours, in June when it is hot but there is still air to breathe, the trees are bright green and flowering and there is the scent of jasmine on the breeze.

We stayed in the former convent, the Casa di San Giuseppe, in Vicolo Moroni in Trastevere, hard by the Piazza Trilussa with its useful taxi stand; all the restaurants and bars of Trastevere including the one where we suffered through the England/Uruguay World Cup debacle, and the glories of the mosaics of Santa Maria in Trastevere with its splendid cosmatesque pavement.  On this occasion we ran out of time for other adjacent pleasures such as the church of Santa Cecilia with its extraordinarily touching, true to death, sculpture of Cecilia, martyred in the 3rd century and recorded as her body was found when her tomb was opened in 1599; and San Pietro in Montorio with its austerely remarkable Bramante Tempietto.  We did manage to find time to eat well; in Osteria La Gensola for perfect fish and Paris for old fashioned atmosphere and a lot of prosperous priests enjoying the good things of life.  Elsewhere,  a simple lunch in the dolce vita interior of Dal Bolognese in the Piazza del Popolo was a disappointment with surprisingly leaden pasta including tortellini in brodo which, when properly home made, is my absolutely favourite melting moment but maybe we let the side down by not ordering more seriously, not booking so as to sit on the fashionable terrace and not dressing the more glamorous part.

My son who has escaped too much forced sightseeing in recent years at the hands of his mother, in Europe at least, by living in South America, showed remarkable tolerance for flogging round as many churches, palaces, fountains or anything else springing back to mind, in the day or two available.  Of course as is well known to be the case in Rome, everything is always shut at exactly the moment chosen for a visit and only the more obscure sites are not stuffed beyond bearing with other horrid people. St Peter's, O lord, I have never previously had even to think of queuing to get in to extent that it was completely out of the question. The Vatican I could have left out perhaps but said son was keen and with advance online booking, even as it turned out for the wrong date, we made it to the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael rooms with room to breathe and space enough to pause and take in.  Actually there is never really long enough for that, it is always just a promise for another visit and as it seems to be restore a fountain year and the Trevi is wrapped in canvas and scaffolding as tight as a Christo sculpture, the worry is where to throw the coin to ensure the return.   Once upon a time I remember, although are these memories accurate I wonder,  one could lie on the floor in the Sistine Chapel, without fear of furious guards or crowding, trampling feet, and gaze but those days will not return until at least one of the 4 horsemen gallops clean across the earth.

Over-populated or not, the Chapel remains remarkable in real sight, great 3 dimensional painted limbs bursting out into space from the arch of the ceiling, appearing almost as solid and muscular as their artist's massive marble figures elsewhere and equally lacking the whiff of sanctity.  There is a Michelangelo exhbition currently in the Capitoline Museum 450 years after his death which I found oddly unsympathetic, perhaps it is just difficult to enjoy his works massed together out of  its expected contexts even if they have never been those originally intended, most of all by his patrons.  We failed, time again, to get to San Pietro in Vincoli for the famous horned Moses on Pope Julius II, Michelangelo's greatest patron's tomb - it is an image of terrifying power and did at least end up in the right place albeit other sculptures made or partly made for the tomb are exhibited far from here and their substitutes are not at all the same thing.by lesser artists in every way. The permanent Capitoline exhibitions are fascinating, fine and educative as to the Roman image and life. They need to be taken in bite sized pieces really to appreciate them properly, as ever a flying visit is by no means enough for understanding or longer term enjoyment of mind. One can always enjoy the perfection of Michelangelo's Campidoglio, a snap of the eye takes in the wonder where Marcus Aurelius rules this astonishingly wonderful space in all his magnificence. Spectacular even in copy, the original of the statue is to be enjoyed these days in its rather hideous special pavilion inside the museum.

Of course, in the evening, as the huge wedding cake edifice of the monument to Vittorio Emanuele shines above the Piazza Venezia in the glow of the sun and the ruins of the forum take on earlier form in the lowering light, it is too late to drop in on the Bambinello sleeping in Santa Maria in Aracoeli - one for another day. The Aracoeli is usually high on the itinerary in Rome beside the Pantheon and Santa Maria sopra Minerva, both reached as soaked cobbles dried in the sun after a storm. The former as ever, stunning but bursting full, the latter quiet enough to enjoy the frescoes once the relevant coins were scraped out of pockets for the slot of the lighting machine.  We failed to eat ice creams in any of the old shops in the area or drink coffee in Piazza Sant Eustachio - there is a lot more competition for the crown of best of either than was once the case - but we did buy numerous pairs of red or purple cardinal's socks, now incredibly good value, in one of the several clerical outfitters. On any walking tour in this vicinity and en route perhaps to the Piazza Navona one would likely, as we did on another day, take in San Luigi dei Francesi with the marvels of the Contarelli Chapel, the Caravaggio paintings of the life of St Matthew, which, for the moment of looking, throw every other painter into the shade.
 

We went in the morning cool all the way up the Via Nomentana, fuori le mura, to the church of Sant Agnese and the next door blessed peace of Santa Costanza's high domed mausoleum with its glorious 4th century decorative mosaics of everyday life and nature.  Transport can be an issue when getting to or from more distant oases that leave the mega crowds behind although there is usually a bus to some recognisable destination and the Via Nomentana is a straight thoroughfare out from the centre of Rome.  As it was we took the Metro and walked from the Policlinico station through the university area to San Lorenzo fuori le Mura, the ancient site of pilgrimage that stands above the tomb of poor overcooked St Lawrence, now doomed for all time in art to carry about the gridiron that was the instrument of his torture and martyrdom. Better perhaps than St Agatha with her cut off breasts carried  by her on a tray like slightly bizarre blancmanges, she popped up in the church in Piediluco which we visited while staying in nearby Labro, beside St Apollonia with the tongs holding just one of her full set of pulled teeth.  The enormous Campo de Verano cemetery behind San Lorenzo ensures continual funerals to an almost crematorium-like level of queuing hearses and we naturally encountered one going on in the basilica as we tiptoed, eyes lowered, down the side aisles to view the mosaics in the apse and the catacombs beneath.

A rush back to Trastevere for a splendidly typical Roman lunch of suppli and carciofi alla giudia followed by variations on a theme of ossobucco or offal with friends while the rain deluged around our umbrella covered table and rivers ran down the street, then back to our tracks at the vast edifice of San Giovanni in Laterano. The Scala Santa was well attended both by pilgrims and by those carefully recording the painful upward progress on one or other digital device.  These chroniclers were often monks, priests and nuns who one presumes use such uncomfortable images further to propagate the mysteries of faith.  We of course sprang up the side stairs but I did once go up on my knees many years ago just to see what it was like.  I can't say I found it either temporally or spiritually uplifting although I have a great fondness for St Helena or at least the idea of her, this indomitable matron packing up her relics in the Holy Land and heading for home.The True Cross has certainly proved to be miraculous, multiplying endlessly down the years and making plenty of money for determined entrepreneurs on the way.  The basilica itself is magnificent, the sheer scale of the thing, the baroque, including enormous statues, overlaying centuries earlier and earlier still, mind blowing.  Then the delightful leavening of a beautiful apse mosaic that includes in its border, the river Jordan running under the feet of several saints and the Virgin patting a rather small pope, a Nicholas I think, on the head like a faithful dog. In or on the water there are putti having fun, riding a swan here and quite obviously wind surfing there while a pair of fine headed deer stand guard by the cross above. The cloisters of San Giovanni vie for the title of most beautiful with those of San Paolo fuori le mura and are masterpieces of the cosmatesque.

We were caught again by opening or closing hours at both Santa Maria Maggiore and lovely Santa Prassede nearby with its delicious mosaiced chapel of St Zenone.  Bother.  We made it to San Clemente, the basilica at least if not its several further layers of history down to the temple of Mithras.  Luckily the Irish Dominicans in charge here were holding a convenient mass in their church, so just a taster for us before trudging in some state of dehydration to a friendly gay bar in the close vicinity of the Colosseum for a much needed refresher of ice cold beer and then home to bath and change in anticipation first of a short baroque concert under the weight of marble and gilt of Sant'Agnese in Agone in Piazza Navona - interesting but a bit of a mixed blessing as to composers, followed by the England World Cup game against Uruguay where a hoped for English victory was snatched from us by the twinkling boots of Luis Suarez. At least he didn't bite anyone on this occasion.

On then towards Labro in Lazio, Umbria, for a wedding in that mediaeval hilltop village with its gloriou views across the deciduous woods and down to the lake at Piediluco just below in the valley.  First negotiating the route out of Rome, up the Via Nomentana again, easy I said although my Rome maps gave up before the tangenziale, the Grande Raccordo Anulare, which, like all unfamiliar ring roads is almost impossible either to get onto or off in the right place and direction. We did worse on our return and might be there still had we not finally spotted signs to the airport.  Once on the right motorway, heading more or less north, we fairly sped along and thoughts of lunch and sights to see meant Montelibretti simply because it appeared at the edge of yet another map before it ran out and seemed to have the Palazzo Barberini, a very shut up castello we discovered, and the church of San Nicola de Bari, likewise.  Lunchtime of course and where should we find it?

Looking over a parapet at the top of the hill we spotted the Vecchio Mulino which proved to be a cavernous pizzeria with a large terrace looking out over the valley.  It was discouragingly empty apart from one large table of elderly men on the terrace.  As it turned out the restaurant was hiding its light under an unpromising bushel; irritable waitress, elderly patron dozing fatly by the till, too many pizzas for him and none for us as the oven isn't lit until evening.  Set menus were thrown onto the table, take it or leave it but the elderly men were feasting on excellent looking mussels so we said yes once the beer, no Peroni, something unheard of, had taken the dust out of our mouths.  Well, apart from ending up eating a 7 course lunch and waddling out of the place feeling of like size with its owner, we struck lucky indeed.  Mussels were followed by rice with cream of scampi and the whole delicious beasts in there to prove it was real, a fritto misto di pesce, salad, and then the wheels fell off.  We struck up with what turned out to be a retirement party and they were making an afternoon of it with local scrumpy style wine in 2 litre plastic coke bottles, something rather better out of glass and, if we didn't watch out, god knows what in the grappa type line.  They followed up their set menu with cries for spaghetti and, by now, their best friends, we had that too, perfection and followed by a retirement cake of exterior garishness that belied melting sponge stuffed with fresh strawberries.  The espresso was good too and essential.  Many photographs and best wishes later, embraces for the cook and the waitress, the patron was back dozing again leaving his hard working daughters in charge, we escaped for Labro and a perfect wedding weekend..

We stayed in the light, bright and charming Albergo Diffuso Crispolti, part of a small group of establishments in Labro owned by the same family with rooms in a variety of houses around the village.  We had the junior suite at the top of the Albergo with two double rooms, one granite covered bathroom in the middle, all the rooms whiter than white with their decorative features correctly relying more on what was outside the windows than any over embellishment of their simple, elegant interiors.  The Albergo provided brunch of stupendous quantity and variety on the morning of the wedding for any number staying in its various houses including bridegroom, best man and most of the ushers who shortly followed up with an ushers lunch.  Those who had dragged themselves slightly earlier out of bed having not partied in the gardens of the castle at the village's highest point until dawn, explored the countryside - in our case Piediluco on the lake with its church of San Francesco, St Francis of course came from these parts, and he is portrayed in the apse of the church where other frescoes include St Agatha with her tray.

The church of Sta Maria Maggiore in Labro is itself a delight, the gentle faded blue painted ceiling arches just added to by wedding clothes and beautiful posies of white roses and oak leaves at the ends of the pews.  The service itself was taken, uniquely perhaps and with papal dispensation, by a female Scottish Episcopalian vicar from Edinburgh.  It seems the local bishop has a sense of humour. My only regret about Labro, on its apparently truffle studded hill, is that we mistakenly failed to take advantage of that rich harvest, early as it seems, since there were apparently a small hill of their own of fresh truffles on sale in the local bar as we left.

We returned to normal life and the airport for a late Sunday night flight via a soothing visit to the fountains and unfortunately Sunday crowds of the Villa D'Este in Tivoli after burning off some of the weekend's excesses with a storming walk round Hadrian's Villa. The ruins here astonishing as always for size and only spoilt like every major tourist destination by the barriers and fences and all the paraphernalia of health and safety that save us from ourselves by ruining every space and vista and destroying any real sense of what might once have been. There are still plenty of places, plenty of wonder and unique pleasures to see in the world and I continue to seek those most recently emptied by some drama or other, but, in the best known, one would sometimes happily welcome the four horsemen and be hanging on to the horses tails to see what has been before it disappears for good under weight of numbers and numberless edicts for our better touristic organisation.

Budapest weekend

What is the perfect city for a weekend? The infinite range of ages, interests, wealth and tastes can all be catered for within an hour or three's flight time from London or from most European cities to another courtesy of one or other cut price airline or, in the case of last weekend's trip to Budapest, less than inspiring British Airways.  Do free plastic sandwiches and  enough free drink to float a flight of stag and hen parties make make up for usually surly service and the feeling that yet another British brand is flying a very limp flag?  Maybe or maybe any airline where your own nationality is on view in its worst let it all hang out holiday mode is unlikely to appeal. That having said, 'Grandpa's stag party' accompanying our sleep deprived early morning travel group to Budapest last Friday hadn't managed to pour enough brandy down their gullets in a couple of hours to be either incredibly loud or incredibly sick so all was well even if the chilled stuffed breakfast croissants were less than tempting.

Arriving in Budapest in the late morning meant smiling passport officers and relatively short immigration queues, check in luggage arriving with reasonable despatch other than one bag cleverly left behind somewhere between desk and aeroplane at Heathrow - astonishingly it did arrive later as promised.  The sun was shining, practicing for Saturday's National Holiday celebrating the notably unsuccessful 1848 Revolution with passionate recitations of the National Song, marching hussars, flag waving, and the almost mandatory wearing of a rosette in the national colours - the Hungarians did after all get there eventually and such straightforward patriotism accompanied by generally smiling faces and the inclination to be both friendly and helpful to metro or map bemused tourists is extremely attractive.

We stayed in the delightful Brody House in Brody Sandor Ut just behind the flag and flower decked Hungarian National Museum; within walking distance of most of the major Budapest sites even as far as Buda Castle, a stiffish walk, relieved at the last uphill drag by a ride on the splendid funicular railway with its views over the Chain Bridge to the glorious secession facade of the Gresham Palace Four Seasons Hotel. In the other direction, Heroes' Square, with the National Museum of Fine Arts and the assorted pleasures of the Varosliget Park. We did walk to all those place too although we achieved enough understanding of the happily straightforward 3 lines of the metro not to walk through our socks and taxis are readily available in most areas.  Brody House is a treasure among boutique hotels; its rooms decorated by individual artists, painted baths in most of them, deliciously comfortable beds, with separate top class sparkling showers and loos. Some rooms it must be said, are designed for the more athletic guest with terrifyingly exposed boxy stairs to bathrooms on different levels.I would definitely have fallen down any similar obstacle given the quantity of alcohol consumed by us all, not even trying I doubt compared with Grandpa's stag, but our weekend was a 50th birthday celebration and middle age has either to be staved off or forgotten in the bottom of any number of glasses. We had the whole Brody house to ourselves which meant a relaxed help yourself atmosphere and everything laid on by friendly and relatively invisible staff to add to that effect. 

We dined and partied at a second Brody House establishment complete with live music on Saturday night post a Budapest city bus and boat trip, drinks on the boat in case of momentary dehydration of course.  The Brody bar offered an interesting line in killer cocktails which, like all the most dangerous drinks, tasted of the freshest, pure and delicious fruit juice and made your lips go numb halfway through the second glass.  I notice, from my range of blurred photographs of the weekend, taken with an unfamiliar point and shoot camera that clearly still requires some level of sober mental capacity, that aside from the odd entirely typical view of the city, the main point of focus in the foreground of every one is a row of glasses, grinning out of focus faces behind. Whether or not 50 is really the new 30......

Well we did walk a lot so we deserved it - lunch in the astonishing baroque/rococo New York Bar and Grill included.  It is a bit like eating among the angelic furbelows of der Wies church, that extraordinary rococo confection in Bavaria whose proper name is the the Church of the Scourged Saviour; not a perfect fit somehow with an explosion of gold, pink and pastel blue.  The New York Bar has plenty of added red plush, gilt and ormolu to match its painted ceilings and marbled pillars but there is substance as well as style in good straightforward Hungarian food; goulash, cured meats like mangalica ham, the product of a boar with a fluffy sheep-like coat, schnitzels, a New York burger, cured salmon, a variety of fishy soups of the perch and pike mittel European variety and lots of enormous cakes and ice creams.  Many of these are rather unnecessarily pictured in the menu and there is plenty of good red wine, white too I am sure,  or a spicy bloody mary if needed and it was. The coffee, as always in this part of the world, is excellent - the Turks are not forgotten.

As for sights and sounds to fill more than a weekend, they can nevertheless be more than tasted in a couple of determined days. The National Museum of Fine Arts has the most staggering European collection with odds and ends of Egyptian and other art gleaned from various private collectors over the years. The Italian collection opens with one of the most beautiful and moving Ghirlandaios of all; a St Stephen , once part of a polyptych in Santa Maria Novella in Florence and fitting for the patronal country of St Stephen although that one was a Hungarian king rather than Ghirlandaio's richly robed first Christian martyr with the stoning wounds bloody on his head. There is a vast Dutch collection that includes several glorious Brueghels with all contemporary life on show whether at a village market or Golgotha and a Noah pair of every animal or bird from every bestiary or menagerie available at the time.  I never remember which Brueghel is which so don't ask.

The neo-classical Museum of Fine Arts stands at one side of the great statue complex of Heroes Square opposite the Palace of Art where temporary exhibitions are held and at the end of the wide boulevard of Andrassy Ut. Any reader of old cold war thrillers will know Andrassy Ut as the address of the torture chambers of the secret police, before that the same house served the Gestapo similarly.  Now it is the House of Terror Museum, a remarkable contemporary exhibition space dedicated to the worst that can and did happen under the extreme regimes of left and right in Hungary.  It is compellingly horrifying to watch video after video of testament from those who suffered but survived, those who did not are memorialised in numberless black and white photographs.  For non-Hungarian speakers, and Magyar is hard to fathom, there are racks of copies of exhaustive notes in English covering the exhibits in every room.  Tourists from countries that have not suffered in similar ways may hardly comprehend the awfulness of those terrible times or of the lives destroyed by past contact with this place and everything it stood for.  We are left, however, with a sense of deep unease exacerbated by daily updates on Russia's present adventures in Ukraine. 

Lighter enjoyment is offered by the Art Nouveau whimsy on show in the Museum of Applied Arts, designed in 1896 by Lechner, an important exponent of the Hungarian Secession movement who also designed the Postal Savings Bank building in Budapest. The outside of the Museum is traffic stoppingly surprising with its green and yellow Zsolnay tiled oriental dome and roofs. Inside there is a remarkable sense of space and light.  The white painted girders of the great glass glazed and iron atrium are surrounded by cloister like galleries divided by indo-saracenic arches and filled with arts and crafts and art nouveau work including the most covetable Lalique and Tiffany pieces.  Only recently rediscovered in a store, the architectural ceramics of Alexandre Bigot, bought by the Museum's director at the Paris Exhibition of 1900, are astonishingly powerful. Art Nouveau and secession architecture  is everywhere in Budapest, grabbing the eye and the attention from the standard neo-classicism and neo-gothicism of formal 19th century institutional expectations and later reconstructions even if the Parliament Building and the endlessly rebuilt buildings of Buda Castle dominate the river views on either bank of the Danube as it runs through the city.

Exercise or relaxation means a bath or a swim in one of many spa water pools some of which, like the Gellert are part of huge complexes of hotels, saunas, hot and cold pools, massage and steam rooms.  Turkish influence hangs on in several old and beautiful Turkish baths and the yellow and white painted walls of the Szechenyi Baths surround baths from the hottest and deepest thermal springs in the city.  On Sunday morning the cafe there was the only place in the city over the weekend where I found pogacsa, the delicious buns flavoured with cheese, bacon, sour cream or paprika and probably a whole host of other possibilities. I couldn't buy one, no one serving on Sundays perhaps but these buns stick deliciously in my mind since another, teenage, Sunday morning decades ago when I drove into Budapest with a friend from Ceasescu's starving Romania.  Budapest may have been communist too but it didn't show in cafes and restaurants where gypsy violinists played and there was food, good food even then. Romania was nothing but the smell of cabbage and cheap petrol in the air; illness, deformity and misery to match the sound of carts on cobbles haunting dark power cut nights in Vlad Dracul's Sighisoara; and, as for food, nasty tinned fish and, strangely, chocolate easter bunnies in the food shops.  Could that possibly be a real memory? The first cafe we found open in Budapest had a basket of bacon filled pogacsa in the middle of the table and I think we ate the whole lot.

This Sunday, pogacsa- less but lunch in view, we strolled from the baths, past the turquoise tiled dome of the elephant house in the Budapest zoo, a large grey bottom just visible over the wall in the enclosure below. The zoo gate must be the most unusual anywhere in the world, a hindu inspired arched confection, complete with rampant tigers,  resting on large stylised stone elephants.  On past the Sunday model yacht enthusiasts at the Varosliget park boating pool, past the unfrozen ice rink and the misleadingly mediaeval turrets of the late 19th century Vajdahunyad Castle, back to the metro at Andrassy Ut and, bloody marys hoving into view, to Octogon and a short hungry walk to the sparkling haven of the New York Bar. 

After that, floating to the airport on a cloud of wellbeing that survived even British Airways and delays. Memories and souvenirs of Budapest come in worth its weight in gold Herend porcelain, also available worldwide at no extra cost. Less costly is something edible from the wide range of Hungarian salamis on show in the neo-gothic Central Market - worth seeing with or without such purchases.  Then there are all those fruity delicious alcohols in seductively elegant bottles in duty free and, for posterity, the indecipherable photographs.

So, a perfect weekend? All this and good company too? It will certainly do.....

  

The Earth belongs unto the Lord,

And all that it contains

Except the Kyles and the Western Isles

For they are all Macbrayne's

Caledonian Macbrayne ferries have been part of my life since I was 3 months old and first traveled on one to the island of Islay off the west coast of Scotland. I have been there for a few weeks of almost every summer since and far too many of those have blown away with the ever quicker passing years.In early days, we took the overnight sleeper train from Euston station in London to Glasgow Central - that involved bunk beds with red blankets, Nanny drinking medicinal brandy for travel sickness and tea for all of us with digestive biscuits brought by the conductor before a 7am arrival.  

After that a smart walk down the platform, porters and luggage in tow, and then, glory of glories, the Glasgow Central Hotel and breakfast in a dining room which seemed the summit of luxury as did any breakfast that started with with tomato juice, an improbable treat but much to my taste - there was orange or grapefruit too.  Then there was a solid breakfast menu of serious proportions; cereal or porridge; kippers; eggs; bacon; sausages, seldom to be recommended in Scotland in those days but who cared aged 5 or 6; fried bread; mushrooms; tomatoes; probably black pudding but we didn't favour that which probably meant Nanny didn't either; tea; toast; butter; honey, jam and marmalade; all in the perfect mini pots that we only otherwise found on the 4.30 tea time train from Paddington en route home Wiltshire after a day in London.  

I hadn't really thought about it but I suppose train travel in my childhood was still intended to be a vaguely luxurious experience and station hotels at major terminals most certainly aspired to grandeur in lashings of red plush and marble plated ladies loos. In later years the green carpeted lifts were used in a vain attempt to persuade my pekingese that they were grass where she could have a pee.  I was extremely worried about the state of her bladder since she refused to acknowledge Glasgow pavements as in any way lavatorially inviting - I don't think she was the first or the last, the lift attendant had a very knowing look in his eye as we traveled endlessly from top to bottom and up again and carpet shampoos or changes were probably a regular event.

After breakfast there was a far from grand trip on a very old, bone rattling train, with individual compartments and no passages, to Gouroch in the port of Glasgow on the Clyde.  Bracing air through the draughty windows gave us our first, breathtakingly exciting smell of the sea for that summer and we couldn't have cared less about the almost invariable rain drizzling down the window panes and misting the view.  At Gouroch we caught the first of the two ferries for Islay.  This one took us to East Loch Tarbert for transfer by road to our second vessel at West Loch Tarbert that would usually get us to Islay by tea time give or take the weather and the tides. The first ferry hardly stands in my mind at all beyond some of the passing scenery and especially the island of Bute in the Firth of Clyde where we used to stop sometimes to stay a few days with friends and where, I seem to remember, Nanny used regularly to take her corns to the the chiropodist in Rothesay who had a particularly good reputation.

There was a yearly debate over bus versus taxi travel from one Tarbert to the other during the overlong gap between the arrival of one boat and departure of the next which sometimes meant a brief sojourn in a Tarbert Hotel with little to recommend it or make it memorable beyond the pervasive seaside boarding house and school cloakroom smell of boiled cabbage and badly aired furnishings. Finally, with general relief, we embarked on the Lochiel, a ferry old enough to have been traveled on by my Father in his childhood and where a waiter called Hughie who everyone knew held sway in the dining room for a great number of years.  That dining room was something too, none of the self-service cafes of contemporary CalMac ferries, certainly not including the decorative effects of the most recently commissioned ship apostrophised as those of a Polish brothel.  This instead was a realm of calm service with long white tablecloths, properly laid tables, long white aprons over dark suits and food that appealed like mad to us but probably not to any more sophisticated palette and not to Nanny who expected a rough passage and sea sickness.  Inevitable scotch broth was usually followed by minced collops I think or possibly just scotch mince, maybe fish in some form and then pudding which I can't remember at all but must, one imagines, have included custard of which I am not overly fond.

We sat mostly on deck, my brother, Nanny and me,  in air that was very fresh indeed and only came inside if it was really pouring - we were never sick although plenty were when a stormy sea took hold.  Arrival in Islay was enlivened by the method of taking the cars on and off the ferry in huge nets, like hauls of fish from the hold, attached to cranes. In Nanny's day and carless ourselves we were met by Mr MacNeil in our resident landrover, his pride and polished joy, and finally home to the familiar whitewashed house with all its known delights to be rediscovered and enjoyed and my only fear, the faces that appeared at night in the shadows of blocked in bedroom fireplaces and kept me quaking in bed or riskily running down the passage to find Nanny and safety.

The Lochiel sank once in those years due to a drunken captain, a standard hazard in those parts I would think.  All passengers and crew survived and the ship was salvaged too but we worried a lot about the sheep who had been drowned on their way to mainland markets, and a handful of cattle too. Caledonian Macbrayne really does still hold the keys to exploration of the Western Isles with complicated hopscotch tickets to get you from one to another on quite a drawn out tour.  There are flights of course to some of the islands, certainly to Islay but they are not the way to travel with dogs, bikes, too many people, for they are, relative to distance, extremely expensive, or with a weight of supplies such as crates of wine, also otherwise particularly expensive on the islands where whisky otherwise rules.

These days we usually drive from the South to the Islay ferry, now just a single crossing from the port of Kennacraig, just beyond West Loch Tarbert.  That drive was once a major undertaking probably involving a night with friends on the way but now accomplished in a fairly easy 8 hours if motorways are clear.  This month we returned to the mainland from Islay for a short trip by car and more ferries that took us for a night on the island of Skye and then a meander up the extraordinarily beautiful coast of Wester Ross and back down through Invernesshire to return to Islay.  My photographs from the trip show rather more of the dark drama of this part of the world than the brightly shining days of the tourist brochures when photographers must sometimes wait for weeks to get that alluring sunny image.  Still we saw wild beauty to compare with anywhere in the world even with attendant showers and low cloud and all this an hour or two's drive from cosily tamed Invernesshire farmland and, given the size of the British Isles altogether, to the cities of the east coast of Scotland, to Inverness itself and to Glasgow, Edinburgh and all points south.  

We came to Skye on the ferry from Mallaig to stay with friends outside Portree, the village 'capital' of Skye, overlooking the sheltered harbour where summer sailors come in to moor for evenings or nights in dry land lodgings.  Driving up the coast we had already visited Arduaine Gardens, managed by the Scottish National Trust and, like so many Scottish, gardens, an extraordinary mix of the most esoteric rhododendrons and other spring flowering shrubs and bulbs, with the tropical looking palms and ferns that enjoy the relatively damp mild winters of this part of the world where the coastal air is warmed by the gulf stream.Of the various other gardens we visited on our travels, privately owned Attadale in Wester Ross probably won the charm stakes, not least because of the delightful small turreted house at its heart, a miniature fairy tale castle, its various woodland and garden walks with sculpture punctuations and its delectable walled kitchen garden with an an imbedded fernery under a naturally dripping cliff face.  Inverewe, a little further North is NTS owned again and has a spectacular site that curves round the shore of Loch Ewe where seals galore can be seen on the rocks and occasionally shyer sea otters.The garden mix here includes enormous trees, sequoias, redwoods and indigenous species and the most stunning quercus cerris argenteovariegata, an amazingly beautiful spreading oak with variegated leaves; plus a vast range of rhododendrons, acers and unknown flowering shrubs; water plants including great canopies of gunnera and a wide range of herbaceous plants from all over the world including the remarkable schefflera macrophylla from Vietnam.

In Scotland of course there are castles and we managed a range of those from mostly ruined Dunstaffnage on Loch Etive and completely ruined Urquhart Castle at Drumnadrochit on Loch Ness to Dunvegan on Skye, still inhabited by the Chiefs of the MacLeod clan and their magical Fairy Flag; Blair Castle, home of the Dukes of Atholl,  a white washed fairy tale castle full of stags heads, swords and other more desirable treasures, a lone piper pacing outside the front door; and then the ruins and remains of lesser and greater forts and tower houses on islands and promontories all the way up the coast including restored and inhabited Castle Stalker near Port Appin where an unusually good roadside cafe offers it up as a lunch time view.

On Skye, natural scenery outbids any man made structures for dramatic grandeur, the lowering Cuillin hills most of all if they show their heads at all through the clouds - a year or two ago my daughter sent me a photograph headed 'view of the Cuillins', it was completely black aside from a few raindrops on the camera lens.  Extraordinary geological manifestations in rocky outcrops and pleated cliffs formed from ancient lava falling steep to the sea, add to the mystery of this landscape and fit well with fairy flags and fairy glens, with all the hardships and sorrows of life in the highlands and islands throughout history and especially the horrors of the clearances that have been burnt into soil and memory.  Skye too means the romance of Bonnie Prince Charlie's escape and Flora MacDonald although there is not much of romance about the peculiarly stark and ugly Victorian celtic cross that marks her grave in Kilmuir Old Graveyard next to the Museum of Island Life with its rebuilt crofts and representations of 19th century village existence. 

We left Sky on the great curve of the Skye road bridge over Loch Alsh and on up through the hills and rocky lochs of Wester Ross, spending a night at Shieldaig where the Shieldaig Bar and Coastal Kitchen provide dinner of an astonishing standard in what appears to be an incredibly isolated village on the shore of Loch Shieldaig.  It makes use of the freshest local fish and has a proper wood fired pizza oven as well to add variety.  Fantastic service and altogether a great experience to add to a comfortable enough bed and breakfast stay just outside the village overlooking the loch and only unfortunately beset with the Scottish plague of midges on an evening with not a breath of wind and enough warm occasional drizzle just to encourage the biting further.

So onwards, North, East and South around the beautiful inlets, and inland lochs of Rosshire to flowered and manicured Beauly in Invernesshire  where the wonderful old tweed shop is run by staff who may well have been there for a hundred years themselves. After that the Loch Ness tourist trap where Urquhart Castle is well served by a visitor centre that tunnels under the main road and out through a huge shop, information area and cafe to a terrace overlooking the Loch and the Castle and west again to Invergarry.  Blair Castle was our last port of call, via the powerful commando memorial overlooking the hills where they originally trained at Lochaber,before the final drive back to the ferry again at Kennacraig.  It would be easy enough to be seduced into visiting potteries, art galleries, more open gardens, houses and castles, were you inclined to such things, all he way through the Highlands where artists of greater and lesser ability congregate and multiply remarkably.  We fell for a rather surprising chocolate museum and manufactory, supplying high quality chocolate of every variety to passing trade and presumably chocolate afficionados who are prepared to travel for their pleasure, but only bought one bar as a rather ungenerous present.  

Truth be told, the late Spring is really the time for Scottish tours when spring is at its best in the gardens and there is no reason why the weather should be worse than in the summer in this most unreliable of climates.  because it is there and so close, I have seldom traveled far on the Scottish mainland beyond the straightest line to stay in someone else's house.  The tourist trade has been busy this year and we met representatives of most European countries during a very short space of time. The ruins of Urquhart Castle reverberated with as much of a muddle of languages as the tower of Babel.  As usual we forget those pleasures that are nearest to home and anyway try to escape to warmer, drier parts of the world but there is no doubt that we miss out if we forget altogether to go and look at what is on our own doorstep.

No hope for spontaneous tourism but it's still special

It is hardly a chore to spend a long weekend in Florence and, at this time of year, the autumnal climate is at least clearly just that, rather than the early onset winter gloom we get in Britain to chime with ghouls and ghosts and ghastly trick and treaters at Halloween. It is still however, high season for tourism, especially other Italians on the Ognisanti holiday weekend and planning is unfortunately required to avoid the huge queues at all but the most obscure sites.  Restaurants are heaving although booking there at least does seem relatively easy by this late stage of a poverty stricken year and we ate deliciously, centrally, and if not cheaply due to seasonal wonders, the earthy corruption of white truffles most notably, certainly on local Tuscan treats. Paoli, in the Via del Tavolini, produced huge raw vegetable salads where the truffles were mandolined to drifts of papery slices matched with the thinnest discs of zucchini.  Il Pennello in the Via Dante produced garlic laden vongole in broth and a slightly less successful peposa, the long cooked and determinedly gristly beef stew that is the signature of of Impruneta, a village now almost overtaken by the city of Florence. The Osteria Caffe Italiano, almost next to glorious Vivoli’s, the ice cream dream of forever, in the Via Isole delle Stinche, provided such enormous cannon balls of the freshest buffalo mozzarella that it was almost impossible to eat anything else.

We did manage to see enough to fill our weekend more satisfactorily than standing in the longest ever lines waiting to see the wonders of the interior of Santa Croce. The Giotto frescoes, unlike many others always attributed to him seem not yet to have been debunked as his work.  As my daughter said, why not leave it alone even if the art history scholars of the past like Bernard Berenson did occasionally make some curious attributions that have well deserved their later questioning. The glorious Ghirlandaio frescoes in the Sassetti Chapel were conversely quite deserted by tourists, the church surrounded by ongoing roadworks that are presumably ruining the lives of the grand traders in the Via Tornabuoni, one of the grandest shopping streets in Florence. Like so many similar products of wealthy sponsors of the 14^th and 15^th centuries endowing churches with great works of art and securing, they anticipated, by their pious acts and pious images, their place amongst the blessed, chapels like this are almost too rich to take in during the usual brief visit and need either revisiting regularly or at least a pair of binoculars and lying on the floor to view delights towards the high arched ceiling. 

The Uffizzi gallery is of course quite out of the question for the impulsive unplanned tourist unless you enjoy queuing – you must book online well in advance.  Advice we had failed to take ourselves when visiting Arezzo to see the Piero della Francesca, Story of the True Cross in the Bacci Chapel of the church of San Francesco.  We were lucky only to have to wait a drinking, shopping hour and a half to get in amongst the holiday crowds.  These frescoes stick in my mind from first sight when I was 12 as some of the most extraordinary anywhere, not I suspect only for the luminescence of Piero’s painting, the light on the Emperor Constantine as he dreams his famous dream, but also for the romance of the story of St Helena and the true cross. Fairy story, apocryphal nonsense or anything you will, it is a delicious tale, told best by Evelyn Waugh who has Helena as the daughter of old King Cole – that merry old monarch. Here again there is too much to see at once, one can take only an impression in the time allowed for viewing and there is little space for lying on the floor but what an impression it is and how it stays in the mind’s eye. The solidly beautiful young woman in a green dress, Piero’s Mary Magdalen, crowded by the 18^th century tomb of Bishop Tarlati into a corner on the wall of the Duomo offers a closer view of his work, silvery light falling on the glass jar of ointment, the individual strands of her loosed hair falling over the shoulders of her cloak.

On from Arezzo and more off the beaten track into the Tuscan hills and Tuscan industrial areas these days too.  First the little hill town of Monterchi, for a sight only of the supreme serenity of the Madonna del Parto, Piero’s pregnant Mary in the guise of a 15^th century noble woman standing under her canopy or what remains of it after careful amputations of a 1911 addition during its most recent and long lasting restoration.  This picture has, aside from its compelling beauty, a history of change and movement that mirrors the wars and past traumas that have shaken even so apparently peaceful part of the world.  When I first saw it, it had been returned from sanctuary with a private family to the cemetery chapel for which it was painted.  It was almost impossible to believe such very unsplendid isolation, ignored too and still so one suspects by tourist groups for whom the diversion is not considered ‘vaut le voyage’. On to San Sepolcro, Piero della Francesco’s birthplace, the grim outskirts of the town at least somewhat left behind the great walls of the ancient centre where the Museo Civico is home to the painting many consider Piero’s greatest, his Resurrection.  Christ here is very much a man, solid too to match the Magdalen, only his face, impassive, his thoughts beyond the reach or understanding of the viewer.  The Roman guards, the SP of SPQR just visible on a red tunic, are slumbering peacefully beside the opened tomb as all eyes are drawn to the great live figure above. During World War II the town was saved from destruction by a Royal Artillery officer who stopped the allied firing in order to save this painting.

Here too is the polyptych of the Madonna of the Misericordia, currently somewhat dismantled as it undergoes a major restoration.  Those panels reassembled glow anew, their gold background echoing earlier masters like Duccio, the monumental Virgin Mary with her sheltering cloak,  a precursor to Piero’s less formal, most human, later figures. The Museum is truly a treasure house, the well known fragment of fresco of St Julian here too and an unhappy looking St Ludovico di Tolosa, the 13^th century Bishop Louis of Toulouse, whose family included a remarkable crop of generally royal saints and who seems to have fitted a lot in to a short life, since he died aged 23.  Besides such wonders there are della Robbia’s galore as also in Arezzo. Remarkable works indeed although one can sometimes have too much polychrome terracotta, like too much mozzarella, however delicious, for easy digestion.

We stayed in Florence bang in the centre in the Hotel Calzaiuoli, just by the Duomo and the Piazza della Repubblica, an hotel with all the attributes of far grander establishments aside from cost and including the sort of breakfasts, greed aside, that one could live on all day. The staff too create the hospitable but dignified air of the best old fashioned Italian hotels where the service was always the selling point over and above an understated elegance that might not suit so well the flashy expectations of today’s oligarchic travellers.  As for shopping, little time in truth for more than soap and shoes, a new provider of the former, a different, less well known Farmacia, competing, most successfully in my view with the well known scented heaven of the Farmacia Santa Maria Novella, a church that we also successfully visited after watching the queues disappearing as we ate gnudi, creamy balls of ricotta and spinach, from a comfortable vantage point in a nearby restaurant.