Just this once...

 

In May, I finally had a ride in a gondola on the canals of Venice. Truth is, I'd considered a gondola ride on two previous visits, and backed away feeling embarassed at being 'such a tourist'  and awkward at using a fellow human being as a means of transport (I feel the same about rickshaws and the like.) 

Despite the rich history of the gondola in the city, I felt, watching tourists being lined up and handed like cargo into the delicate rocking craft, that the whole venture felt a bit like donkey rides at the beach.

Gondolas are so photogenic it's difficult not to keep taking photos - reflections on the water, the incomparable background of picturesque architecture and sky, the craft themselves. The traffic jams. And the invitation to drift back in time to an age where this is how one got around town. 

But Mike our obliging tour manager wrangled some gondoliers for a 2pm booking and we floated away in convivial groups. And after the chatting, and photographing and bobbing - and traffic jams - nice memories - today I am drawn to the history. 

First I learn that the plural of gondola is 'gondole' - and plural definitely applies as I learn there were 8 to 10 thousand of them during the 17th and 19th century, down to around 400 for the tourists now. 

They're all black, had you noticed? They've been around since the 11th century. Lots of other stuff in The Gondolas of Venice - the history and traditions, the  regulations, construction, the gondoliers.  Fascinating stuff, so go look.

I'm glad I had a ride in a gondola. But just this once. I prefer walking, striding off down calles, in pursuit of a bit of architecture, getting lost and found again. The canals are crowded, a bit claustrophobic. I did my best to follow Rick Steves' advice, to put down the phone and just let the experience wash over me. But once in a while, that urge to capture a beautiful thing overcame me. Just this once.

It's only a pencil

 

On our way home to Gloucestershire from a family visit in Dorset this summer, my brother in law surprised me with a turn off the A-road near Salisbury, Wiltshire. What's he up to? The track climbed and turned until we entered a parking area at the top of the world, overlooking the chalk downland called the Salisbury Plain. 

We were at Old Sarum, an iron-age hill fort, a man-made defensive mound dating to 400 BC (the age of some of the Greek sites I visited shortly afterwards.)

Seeing a good location, the Romans, Saxons and Normans and the Plantagenets in their turn used and developed the strategic hill. The weight of history, indeed. Today English Heritage protects, manages and interprets the site. 

As we alighted from the car I scanned with sky with excitement. As if the prospect of a history visit wasn't enough, nature was brewing up a dramatic storm.  We crossed a wooded bridge over the imposing mote, climbing up to the ravaged stone walls. Goosebumps - electricity in the air, a history 'first' .

We entered the gate, paid admission at a tiny office and shop, and entered the almost deserted courtyard of the storied castle. 

Within five minutes thunder rumbled, the wind began to pick up and I could feel electricity in the air. A flash and another, and rain began to splatter the hard stones. My companion continued to read information panels but I headed downhill to the tiny building. Within seconds a dramatic storm hit, a hurricane wannabe - torrents of rain, wind blasting it sideways, a disconcerting light and sound show. 

To distract ourselves we gave attention to the warm dry gift shop - well-deserved attention, as it turned out. Some fine craft, intelligent gift items, a good bookshop with several volumes on Eleanor of Aquitaine, as an example. A final rack with school trip bits - some handsome frdige magnets, decals and the like. A container of pencils decorated in an appealing Celtic design drew my attention and I left with a fistful. 

I have given a few pencils away - but several I keep in the kitchen by my notepad, and there is something about the sinuous curves of ancient Celtic artwork that draws me back to this place and that day.

The storm lasted until I'd made my choice of Eleanor of Aquitaine book. The sun came out, and we  resumed our exploration of the site. Did that all happen? The pencils take me there.

English Heritage has produced this fine short video which saves me a lot of writing, and you a bunch of reading, and thanks to a pesky drone, provides views I can't even....

Each time I travel I come come away with homework. I have a pile of fine books collected this year waiting for the winter hiatus - on Croatia, English history and Greek art. Like this visit to Old Sarum, every visit to dear England reveals yet more history I am wobbly at. At some point I'll share my English Civil War discoveries, and hikes with my English 'brother'. A long winter might not be all bad.

A Little Pot

 I don't buy souvenirs. I am decidedly not a shopper. Photos and memories, and some wonderful new friendships are more than enough keepers from any travel. And stories.

With the occasional exception. And that means "something for the house" as mom used to say. I love little bowls and pitchers, so my quick browses through Italian ceramic shops have always yielded a brightly handpainted, useful little container of some sort.

 Then I fell  under the spell of Mostar. In another post I mentioned falling in   love with the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina that we passed   through on our way to the city.

 Once we parked in the Catholic Croat west section of the ancient   city - in the pouring rain - and crossed over the Neretva River to   the predominately Bosniak Muslim east side I was captivated.   We  shuffled on the slippery marble paving stones of the historic Old  Bridge, the Stari Most - and into history. Although our guides   seldom offered much detail on the tragic events of the 'homeland   war' of 1992-1995, I have read that the ethnically rooted war has   left deep scars, about which I am unqualified to comment.

The 'iconic' (for surely this somewhat overused word can be justified here) Mostar bridge has seen a lot of history, and some of it has been difficult. It was first built in the mid-1500s, commissioned by Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent during the Ottoman era, Mostar developing into an Ottoman frontier town during that empire's inexorable move north and westward.  

looking Eastward

The bridge captured world attention, standing amidst the devastation of the 1990s war, until tragically in 1993 it was destroyed. Stari Most was faithfully reconstructed and re-opened in 2004, using as much of the original material as possible.

I have read that most of Old Mostar was badly damaged or destroyed during the war.  The Old Town area was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005 after contributions from the committee enabled restoration or rebuilding of many of the historic structures. The area and the bridge are symbols of reconciliation. 

This YouTube video takes you along the Old Town main pedestrian street, which our guide called Coppersmiths' Street, ending on the approach to the bridge, heading back west.  You can see the marble pavingstones, the ancient shop fronts, the occasional look over the river. But, sadly, you can also see the reality of life in Old Mostar - tourists.

Which is where I come in. Fascinated by a visit to a simple mosque, an historic Turkish home, and a wander through exotic  squares and lanes, I was captivated by the work displayed along the street. There were numerous studios featuring copperwork classes, and showing traditional and modern forms of copper art, largely relief work. 

My heart fell for a tiny turned and incised copper and enamel-work lidded container, reminiscent of the traditional copper Turkish coffee sets I saw along the street.  It was light as a feather, almost within my budget, and wanted to come home with me. It sits on my window ledge, and every day reminds me of this fascinating and heart-breaking place. 

Rhapsody in Blue and White

 It's an absolute cliche, the smooth whitewashed walls of  Mykonos houses, the sparkling blue of the Aegean. It's marketable - on sale at a souvenir shop near you. 

Yet the colour of that place stimulates the senses right now in a way my favourite deep cedar forest cannot. And it definitely calls me on this crazy blustery rainy November day, prevailing colour - grey. So, here's some blue and white. 

Suspended in Air

 Some things defy description. And yet I'm about to try.

I recall a fascinating big old book in my high school library, filled with blue grey illustrations from old paintings or lithographs of the wonders of the ancient world.

 I have looked for this book often on Abe and Thrift booksellers, hoping to experience again the sheer wonder that I felt while browsing its pages, escaping the fractious high school realities just beyond Mrs. Rabnett's library doors. The hanging gardens of Babylon were in those pages, the Pyramids of Egypt, and I expect, the monasteries of Meteora.

A short month or so ago I visited the countryside of eroded sandstone conglomerate pinnacles above Kalambaka in Thessaly, northwestern Greece. Now, that alone would have broken my amateur geologist's heart. The landscape is formed of an ancient seabed, shrugged upward into a high plateau by the uneasy earth, then eroded along vertical fault lines by water and wind - a process covering sixty million years or so. This is a place to stop, to contemplate eternity and one's small moment in it. 

early Meteora cave retreats

This timeless place drew contemplatives to it over centuries. The (relatively) easy to work stone led 5th century monks fleeing the conquering Ottoman's persecution to scale the stone walls (we witnessed modern-day rock climbers, much better equipped, on the rock face) and live hermit lives in caves. In 1340, so the accounts go, a monk started building the first of what eventually became 24 monasteries atop the pinnacles. He named the place Meteora, "suspended in air", closer to God I suppose.

There's so much information online, including video tours - quality uneven. This one is short and close-captioned, sparing wind noise and tourist chatter. 

This post is struggling because I'm trying to share facts - history, geology, Eastern Orthodox spirituality and religious art - magnificent fresco, mosaic, gold-glittering icons. Some of the riches are on display in the basement museum. Of course, the church was off-limits to photos. 

But what I want to tell you about is awe. The utterly transcendent, strange, numinous beauty of the place. And maybe, for this post at least, all I can do is just this, post these glimpses in no particular order, and leave you here:

open to visitors on selected days

195 steps - modest dress code

until the 1920s steps everything and everyone
 was brought up by rope, basket, ladder, trust

museum in former refectory