Vienna Venice Todi

Hi Friends,
We have been in Vienna, Venice and Todi, Italy since we last posted. Finding the time and getting connected in Todi has proven to be quite a challenge, so we’re writing this in Word, hoping to log in somewhere and paste it to our travel blog.

Vienna
Our home exchange in Vienna provided a great internet connection, but we used our spare time at home on the prior Budapest posting. Culling photos and reporting from the field is a lot more time consuming than expected. So for now, we’ll write a briefer narrative, with the plan to provide photos on the blog and Flickr once we get a more than brief connection.

Vienna was amazing. Our home was well located just across the Danube canal from central Vienna and its excellent public transit. We became very fond of our local Underground annd Tram station. Our hosts, Liesl and Ferdinand, have set a new standard for home exchange that will be a challenge to meet. They drove in from their primary home in the Vienna woods to meet our train and serve tea cakes, and orientation on Sunday; provided a full day tour of castles and the wine region along the Danube on Tuesday;















took us out to a favorite restaurant on Thursday; while constantly providing all sorts of useful information and a brief Austrian history at least as far back as Maximillian.

The days were radiantly sunny and pouring rain, to ensure we saw Vienna in all her character. We were dazzled by the vast monumental architecture, all clean and spiffy (there apparently has been a major cleanup over the last five years, so no faded beauties) , classic, gothic or baroque mixed with some Secession and Art Deco. If you are patient and have time to waste, we hope to get way too many posted on Flickr. (Link will be provided later.)

Museums contained an overwhelming bounty of great art, an extensive survey of western painting. Paul became overwhelmed at the Kunsthistorische by the grandeur of so many Reubens (we didn’t have time to see the early Greek, Roman or Egyptian art; Danice’s back starts aching after two-three museum hours and coffee, lunch, or beer

followed by active walking is called for.) Klimpt and his secessionist buddies had a special showing at Belvedere Castle we really enjoyed, another great Van Gogh show at the Albertina -far superior to the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, and we have a new appreciation for Schiele after seeing the collection at the Leopold.
And the modern museum (MUMAK) had a nice Hopper show, with some interesting touches.


On our 5th anniversary we ventured out to what, according to our guide book, was a deco gem of a movie theater which was showing a sneak preview of an Amercan indie movie. Both the theater and the preview were forgetable. The theater had a sconce that may have been considered deco, but otherwise it was quite drab. The movie was a very light G rated romatic comedy. We met the scheduling director in the lobby who said that this wasn't the first time she has had folks come looking for the deco gem; she had no idea how the rumor got started and thinks all the travel writers copy one another. The best part of the evening was getting the brief version of her life story; and hearing she's written a screenplay in English she hopes to get produced. - Ah youth!!!

Venice
After a week in Vienna we took the train to Venice, with our compartment companiions, a friendly Austrian university professor and a young Japanese architecture student/sculptor studying in Vienna, who helped us negotiate a special train-bus-train transfer feature that day only. Venice was beautiful but packed with tourists. We had only 1 ½ days but seemed to walk every tiny street and Vicolo. We checked out the Architecture Biennale in the lovely Giardini way down past St. Marks Square, away from the crowd. The exhibits, by country, were about sustainability, re-use, technology….good stuff. Still time for a long vaporetto ride.


Next day we banged roller suitcases up and down the stairs of those highly elevated bridges (Gondoliers ‘gotta stand up going under to look really tall and slim) to pick up our first rental car of the trip that did get us to Todi, Italy. DO NOT ASK HOW MANY TIMES WE WENT THE WRONG WAY GETTING OUT OF VENICE. DO NOT ASK WHO’S FAULT THAT WAS.

Todi
We are now living on the second floor (four flights up) of a lovely Pallazo in the center of Todi - way up high overlooking Umbrian farmlands and vineyards. I get vertigo when I hang out the laundry - one tiny slip of the clothes pin, and my undies could fall 5 stories down an ancient roman wall. We have been traveling to all sorts of lovely castles in hill towns around southern Umbria, getting lost, never knowing where our next lunch is coming from, basically loving it.

With no TV, English newspaper or easy internet access, we are suffering from a total election and economic news blackout. But we are confident that our friends are taking up the slack and will ensure that everything turns out right.

We found an Enoteca serving fine, creative food; another night Paul produced a delightful Spelt pasta with truffle sauce, luscious green salad, pecorino cheese with juicy bosc pears for desert, with a lovely Montefalco Rosso left for us by our hosts. The CD player previously only played late Bob Dylan, which got old much faster than I’d have expected; so Paul fixed it to only play early Ray Charles, quite an improvement.

Staying for a week was a luxury. We had time to visit all the sites and explore every viale and ruin we could find; visiting the very lovely and tranquil Piazza Del Populo many times daily. (At left is Palazzo de Capitano, below is the Duomo.)
Fortunately, Todi in October has very few of those tourists - like us - cluttering up the scene.
















We motored around the area visiting hill towns, abbies, churches, castles. (Paul brakes for ruins!!).














One of our favorite hill towns was Monte Castello di Vibio. They claim to have the world's smallest theater, a 99 seat gem.
The main part of the castello has been converted into a nice hotel with a very nice restaurant, lots or arches and country elegance, but with a sore thumb of a large screen TV - made no sense to us.

We departed Monday 10/27, to join our hiking group in Lucca for 9 days hiking Maremma’s rolling hills and good times with Mario our loveable leader, Vittorio his able assistant and picnic provider. Looking forward to a great trip, (just saw rain forecast the next 9 days - this can not be true!!), but no time for posting during the hike...so this may be the last for a while.

We’ll be home November 7th, IF Obama is our President Elect; otherwise, don’t count on our coming back. We’ll hide out in some little hill town sampling the wines and truffle sauces til the funds run out…. then perhaps beg inside the local duomo. But we hope that wont be necessary. Vote No on 8 and Yes on Obama and we will return to rejoin a California and a Country looking forward.