{tinza's tiny good things #6}

Today's #tinygoodthings is: plan a trip! 
If you know me well, you'll know I grew up on a boat sailing around the world. If you know me at all, you'll know that I love to travel and can't stay put long. Both those things are making this time hard, but also have provided me with life lessons that I am taking with me during this 'travel ban' time.

{us on Pitcairn island in the '90s. Photo: from my sister Rachel's archive. I'm third from left}

Growing up on a boat meant that we were weeks out at sea: these were the days of no internet and the era of mixed tapes. I learned to keep myself occupied by reading (I read the Hobbit in one day when I was 12), being creative (I wrote stories and drew), and finding new skills (like learning how to play the guitar). I learned to find beauty in nature around me, which on first glance didn't seem like it changed much: horizon, clouds, sun, and waves. But taking note of a small change in the weather, the change in colour of the ocean, the change of wind... these become observable and enjoyable. And you look for the exceptional, such as when dolphins decide to play with the haul and swim beside the boat and do flips.
and I learned to plan for the future: to get excited about what I'd do when we got into port, or when we lived on land for a while. 
So, I'm trying to do the same. I'm planning for future trips and looking back on amazing trips I have taken. Last spring I was away almost every week: Amiens, Barcelona, New York & lots of travel within the UK...and I spent a fellowship in May in Lisbon. Those were good times.
So here are some pics of travel planning, packing, and reflecting on the good times of travels of the past.
x
L

 & some of my faves from my instagram account: 

{I'm in love with this cross stitch façade in Valencia}

{Golconda Fort, India}

{streets of Lisbon}

{celebrating my birthday in Nice}

{the streets of Mumbai}

{quotable thursdays-postcards from Genoa}

{view from the flat I'm staying in!}

Ciao da Genova!!! I got here last night from Milan and am staying in a fabulous charming flat. In a beautiful palazzo, with antique furniture with large windows looking onto a typical Genoese square. Fab!!
Today's quote comes from Henry James, summing up the place perfectly:
Genoa, [...] is the crookedest and most incoherent of
cities; tossed about on the sides and crests of a dozen hills, it
is seamed with gullies and ravines that bristle with those
innumerable palaces for which we have heard from our earliest
years that the place is celebrated. These great structures, with
their mottled and faded complexions, lift their big ornamental
cornices to a tremendous height in the air, where, in a certain
indescribably forlorn and desolate fashion, overtopping each
other, they seem to reflect the twinkle and glitter of the warm
Mediterranean. Down about the basements, in the close crepuscular
alleys, the people are for ever moving to and fro or standing in
their cavernous doorways and their dusky, crowded shops, calling,
chattering, laughing, lamenting, living their lives in the
conversational Italian fashion. 
-Henry James, 'Italy Revisted, 1877, in Portraits of Places, 1883

I have to say, not much has changed since the 19th century. The palazzi still stand tall and proud, many striped black and white, with architectural details that in some ways point to Venetian architecture. Indeed, this city of merchants, also a seapower like Venice, has a resemblance to the Serenissima. But instead of canals, one is jostled hither and thither by tiny winding streets--the vicoli--where shops spill out onto the pavement and above ornate Baroque icons tower down on the observer.

{my flat is above this lovely shop--those windows to the left, with the big green shutters is where I'm staying!}

{the archives!}

As someone who grew up sailing the world on tall ships, I suppose it's no wonder I feel slightly at home here, the birthplace of Christopher Columbus. I'm here on research--spent the day in the beautiful archives (Archivio di Stato di Genova), but am hoping to explore the city a bit more this weekend. I have caught a flu, but hoping that I can quickly overcome it.
Baci!
L

{quotable thursdays-postcards from Milan}

{taken in 2007}

Ciao da Milano!
I arrived late last night and am already immersed in the beauty of the city! So a little something from Henry James on my adopted city for the next week:

Milan, at any rate, if not bristling with the
aesthetic impulse, opens to us frankly enough the thick volume of
her past. Of that volume the Cathedral is the fairest and fullest
page--a structure not supremely interesting, not logical, not
even, to some minds, commandingly beautiful, but grandly curious
and superbly rich. I hope, for my own part, never to grow too
particular to admire it. If it had no other distinction it would
still have that of impressive, immeasurable achievement. As I
strolled beside its vast indented base one evening, and felt it,
above me, rear its grey mysteries into the starlight while the
restless human tide on which I floated rose no higher than the
first few layers of street-soiled marble, I was tempted to
believe that beauty in great architecture is almost a secondary
merit, and that the main point is mass--such mass as may make it
a supreme embodiment of vigorous effort. Viewed in this way a
great building is the greatest conceivable work of art. More than
any other it represents difficulties mastered, resources
combined, labour, courage and patience. 

-Henry James, Italian Hours

When I was a PhD student, many moons ago (actually exactly 10 years ago!), I lived here for a few months. It's an exciting city to be in with all its fashion and style and of course its fascinating history. I'm back again for archival research--here for a week and then off to Genoa next week.

stay tuned for pics etc... and you can keep up to date over on instagram!

baci, 

L

{quotable thursdays-ciao d'Italia!}

{view from the duchess' terrazzo, Castelvecchio, Ferrara}

Hello from Modena, Italy, home of balsamic vinegar and Pavarotti!
Last week I was in Ferrara presenting a paper at a conference. It was amazing--lots of well-known Ferrarese scholars, and we got a private tour of the Palazzo dei Diamanti--a palace once owned by the ruling family of Ferrara, the Este, but now is a museum/gallery. The museum was closed so we had the place to ourselves and we even climbed up into the rafters of the old palazzo. Fantastic!

{views of Ferrara}

{Palazzo dei Diamanti}

{private tour of the collections in the Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara}

{fabulous medieval city, by night!}

{Ferrara is a bicycle city!}

{Vecchia Ferrara}

{old medieval merchant street, Via delle volte, Ferrara}

Then this week I moved on to Modena, where I lived for 6 months as a doctoral student. It feels a bit like coming home. The city is decked out in Christmas lights and it is absolutely lovely.
I'm staying in a hotel, not far from my old flat, which has an interesting history--it was a monastery in the sixteenth century, then converted into a grand palazzo in the eighteenth century, home to a famous singer, and now is a fab hotel, with slightly faded grandeur, but still something grand about it. lovely!

{lovely faded interiors at the Hotel Canalgrande}

So in the town of Pavarotti, I take today's quote from the man himself:

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.
Luciano Pavarotti

You can follow all of my trip through my pics on instagram but I've posted a few of my fave here too!

{stunning Christmas decorations in the arcades in Modena}

ciao,
L

{quotable thursdays}

{Domenico di Michelino, Dante holding the Divine Comedy, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence, 1465}

« Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

ché la diritta via era smarrita. »

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

So begins Dante's Divine Comedy. It is fitting for a number of reasons this week--for one, this weekend, I turn 35. In the time Dante was writing, 35 was considered midlife, and thus his journey begins at 35, in the middle of his life's journey. It reminds us that in life we often have to take arduous journeys to reach our final destination. 

The world seems like a rather dark place right now; with so many unknowns. We must journey through the storms, and here's hoping that light appears soon through this dark tunnel.

I for one, will try to leave the troubles of the world behind me this weekend, and instead, celebrate life.
I read Dante's Divine Comedy in an undergraduate course in my early 20s. Then, I had dreams of being an Art Historian and travelling to and living in Italy regularly. In someways, I fulfilled that dream. But our 30s are often about fulfilliing the dreams we had in our 20s or realising that our paths have taken a different route. I think most importantly, our 30s are realising that 'happily ever after' doesn't really exist. I often hear people telling me that I must be so lucky working in a profession that I love. It's as if somehow, if you do what you love, it's not work. This is a bubble worth popping. First of all, we don't live in a world where we actually do what we love; we live in a world where administration and bureaucracy often takes up most of our time. My job is a lot of hard work. It took a ridiculous amount of years with uncertainty, making very little money, and very little rewards to finally get to this place... and even my dream job is full of stress, moments where I feel like giving up, and too many times when I feel like I'm just not good enough. Whatever dreams we had in our 20s--being a mum, finding a perfect husband, getting that envious successful job, buying a house--our 30s are about coming face to face to reality with those dreams--kids screaming, husband's smelly socks that need washing, the stress and work of being successful, paying a mortgage...
That's just to say, that the next time you look over at someone and think 'hey that person is so lucky' because of their job, their shoes, their house, or their partner, it might be worth thinking about the arduous journey that person probably took to get there.

I am grateful for the lovely people who have accompanied me on my journey-it has not been easy, and it still isn't-but it has been worth it.

xo

L

{Rainy Sunday in Naples}

{the views from Villa Floridiana}

Hello blogland!
It's a very very rainy thundershowery Sunday in Naples. This morning I climbed the 1000s of steps to Villa Floridiana, a beautiful villa with breathtaking views which also houses the ceramics museum.

{walk up to Villa Floridiana}

On the way down I got caught in a torrential downpour! Now I'm holed up in the flat getting caught up on a bit of work and listening to the thunder and rain outside!
So I thought I'd share a few of my favourite pictures from the last few weeks. On Wednesday I fly home and then have a very busy end of the week/weekend with meetings, chairing debriefings and exam board related stuff...

{miniature presepi sold on a bicycle!}

{shoeshine on via Toledo}

{lovely Procida}

{charming marina on Procida}

{views of Vesuvius}

{stunning library at Museo Filangieri}

{Museo Filangieri}

{the museum of medecine}

so many more photos to come though!
ciao,
L

{quotable thursdays}

Hello Thursday!
How is everyone in blogland? Well, I've been working really really hard in the archives--still  haven't come across anything ground-breaking, but I have discovered a few things that will be useful!
This weekend, my cousins arrive! I'm so looking forward to taking the weekend off and showing them around all the sites and sights that I love!

As I'm in Bella Napoli, today, a quote from Boccaccio on the beauty and wonders of the Amalfi coast:

It is believed that the coast from Reggio to Gaeta is nearly the most delightful part of Italy. Fairly close to Salerno there is a coast that looks out over the sea, which the inhabitants call the Amalfi coast, that is full of small towns, gardens, and fountains, and men rich and proficient like no others in the act of mercatantia

-Bocaccio, Decameron, (Gior. 2, Nov. 4)

{the port at Sorrento}

{the beauty of the Amalfi coast, Positano}

a presto,
L

{postcards from italy--first days in Napoli}

Hello Blogland!

I arrived in Naples yesterday morning. After a very early morning rise (230am!) I caught my plane and arrived in the marvellous city of Naples. 8 years ago I lived here for three months and in some ways it feels a bit like coming home. I’ll never feel like I’m a local, but there’s something about returning to a city where you once lived—you know the streets, the shops, the neighbourhoods. It’s fantastic!

This morning I dragged myself to the archive, which I knew was going to be a bit of an ordeal. 

The walk there was lovely-I passed old haunts, such as the church of the Gesu, piazza San Domenico Maggiore, and enjoyed walking in Spaccanapoli. 

{Il Gesu}

{beautiful diamond corrugations}

 I love doing archival research, but I hate the process. I hate asking people for things, and this is what you have to do.  My Italian is really really rusty too (let alone trying to understand thick Neapolitan accents), and trying to explain my academic research in a foreign tongue is also a bit difficult. Even worse is not knowing exactly what you’re trying to find. There hasn’t been much research done on Naples, especially fifteenth-century Naples, because a lot of the archives were blown up in WWII. It means there is much less secondary sources you can rely on, even as a starting point to start looking in the archives. My particular type of research also usually means calling up random account books from merchants in hopes that I might find something useful to my overall project. Every Italian archive is organised differently as well, so it doesn’t help if you’ve worked in one in another city—every archive is a bit different. The procedures are also all different for even getting registered and you usually have to show your passport a number of times, fill out a variety of forms, and in my case, when they ask my name they all look at me and then just ask me to spell it out. You’d think they’d never heard of Clark Kent! The other problem with the Neapolitan archive is that they’ve tried to organise it and the inventories of the archive seem straightforward, but they’re not. Although they now have the list of the inventory online, it’s not very clear from looking at it what’s actually in the different fondi.

{the archives}

{piazzetta del grande archivio}

So I arrived in good time to be able to make the 1130 order (there are select times you can order archival materials), but of course I was told to wait before I could see someone to discuss the inventories of the archives with me, and I waited, and waited, and waited (for about an hour). I was introduced as the ‘ragazza straniera’ the ‘foreign girl’—you’d think I didn’t hold a PhD & was in my teens!  And so I waited and waited and watched the 1130 order time pass before my eyes….

Finally the dottore who was supposed to help me continued to yap to someone much more important than me, and another dottore, who was very helpful and kind came to my rescue. He tried to explain how the various inventories were organised…and pulled out large inventory books that listed what was in the archive. These, however, unfortunately, were all written by hand many moons ago and then photocopied, so even though these are modern inventories, no one has bothered to print them up so that even trying to find what you might want to find in the archive proves difficult. No wonder very few people do research here!

In the end, I didn’t make an 1130 ordering, but had to wait until 1315. I’ve started with accounts of merchant-bankers. There are none surviving from the fifteenth century, but some from the very early sixteenth century, so when I finally got to sit down, I had in front of me a merchant’s account book from 1507. It’s sometimes hard to actually think that it’s THAT old… you have in front of you writing that’s rather illegible, in ink that looks old, in a book that has traces of use over time—water damage, blackened pages, etc… but it’s pretty neat, if you stop to think that you’re looking at something someone wrote over 500 years ago! On paper. And it still exists! It really makes you think what will survive of our correspondence and accounts when the digital version we use today are no longer compatible with the digital literacy of the future.

Naples is much the same, but I would say, it’s a bit more modern—some slicker cafes have opened up, but it is still the chaotic city that I love. It’s also cleaner, as when I was here there were the rubbish wars going on and nothing was being collected!

My flat is absolutely lovely—it’s in a beautiful old 18^th-century palazzo, and it is tastefully renovated. It looks down onto a courtyard where numerous Neapolitan families hang their laundry from their balcony. I can hear mobile phones ring to funny tunes and people answering them with the typical ‘pronto!’…I hear babies crying, floors being washed, food being prepared. It’s lovely!

{shopping for veg}

{view from my room onto typical Neapolitan flats}

{the grand staircase belonging to my building!}

 stay tuned for more!
xo
L
ps: these pics were taken on my iphone so apologies if they're not as good as my normal Canon!