Kakis and the Collection Thereof

Today, I decided, was a day ripe for early afternoon adventures. It was mostly sunny, and pleasantly cool, with a decided scent of fall in the air, and I hadn’t gone on an extended wandering for quite a while. And so, armed with a light sweater, my camera, and a bit of change in my pocket, I headed out to explore.

My first look at the kaki tree.

On the way, I bought one of my favourite chocolates at the chocolatier’s near my house (I’ll be making a post about them sometime soon), and so, happily nibbling, I made my way down towards St. Etienne, my favourite church (another future post). After wandering through the courtyard, I decided I was going to head down to the Grand Rond and the Jardin des Plantes, two large public parks just south of where I live. All was uneventful, save for the occasional photo opportunity, until I arrived in the Jardin des Plantes and was brought up short by the presence of a strange fruit-bearing tree.

These fruits, I thought at first, were peaches, but the longer I stared at them the more convinced I became that this was not quite right. There didn’t seem to be any on the ground, however, and the lowest branch was too high to hoist myself up onto, so at first I thought my curiosity would go unsatisfied. But while I contemplated the tree in perplexed confusion, a little old man, barely five feet tall, arrived with a rather dauntingly long stick, which he immediately began using to attempt to knock these fruits out of the tree. However, his stick was too crooked and too heavy, and he soon gave up, breaking it to pieces and throwing it in the bushes.

After a brief conversation with him, and a woman passing by, I learned that these fruits are called kakis in both French and Italian, but this led me no closer to discovering what they were in English. Determined to get one down, I set off around the park in the direction of what they said was another kaki tree in hopes that I would be able to climb this one and get one of the mysterious fruits down. In his, however, I was unsuccessful – this tree, like the other, had no branches low enough to climb onto. I spent a while balanced on the back of a park bench, shaking one of the lower branches in hopes of freeing one of the kakis, but to no avail. Still not willing to give up, I headed back to the first tree, where I discovered both the woman and the little old man had disappeared.

The construction of the kaki collecting stick.

Undaunted, I went looking in the bushes to find the pieces of the stick the old man had dropped there. I broke them into shorter pieces and amused myself lobbing them at the tree in hopes of knocking down a fruit or two to take home, but in this pursuit I was once again, quite literally, fruitless. However, amidst the amused passers-by, there was a ray of hope. The little old man had returned, this time carrying two shorter, lighter, and mostly straight sticks, which he then proceeded to bind together with three lengths of twine he apparently just happened to have in his pocket. Then, with what can only be described as the ease of long practice, he immediately set to work, using the little fork on the end of the stick to twist several kakis off the stem and down to the ground. I was awarded with two of them.

The kaki collecting stick in action.

I was told not to worry about the bruising on them, and to take them home and put them in my kitchen, sitting them on their stems, where I was to check on them every day. When they were soft, he said, they would be ready to be eaten, and they were not eaten in stews or as a cooked vegetable as I initially guessed – their texture is something like peppers, and the interiors of the few broken pieces I managed to find seemed somewhat pepper-like to me as well. No, I was told, they are fruits, which one eats raw, but only once they become soft, as before then they are not desirable. And so, now armed with two kakis and this newfound knowledge as well as everything else, I thanked him and went on my way, returning home in short order, where I washed the kakis, related the entire story to my mother, and put them on the counter, stems down, as I had been told.

One of the newly harvested kakis.

So did I ever discover what kakis actually are? Yes, in fact. While I finished washing them off, mom went to check the computer, whereupon we discovered that the kaki is a Japanese fruit that has spread across Europe and Asia, related to a fruit that grows right at home, in the northern United States.

What is it?

A persimmon.

When In Rome

Hello again my loves! I am a forgetful, spastic person and once again I forgot to update the blog. I don’t even have Spore as an excuse this time. I just forgot. But it’s all okay because here I am again! On with the show.

We left off in the train station after arriving in Rome. There, we collected our baggage from the baggage compartments and headed out into the city. After a rather amusing incident where we took the wrong road and ended up going in the opposite direction from our apartment, we found the place we were going to and dragged our luggage up five flights of stairs to collapse on the very squishy and comfortable couches.

After resting for a bit, we headed out to see the Colosseum, since it was nearby and we had no other pressing concerns at the time. We wandered down in that direction, observing the differences between Rome and Naples – Rome is very clean, and the streets are overall quite wide and straight. And the drivers are positive saints compared to the Neapolitan drivers. We came up the street to get our first view of the Colosseum – and was it ever magnificent. Seriously, that thing is huge, even with more than half of the outer wall knocked down. We headed down the stairs to ground level, passing numerous cheap tourist junk stands and a group of incredibly talented dancers performing on the street to do a circuit of the Colosseum and check out the Arch of Constantine. Upon finishing our circuit, we went to buy some groceries (pasta again) and returned to the apartment for dinner.

Here, I will pause for a moment to talk about our physical state at the time. After over a week of steady travelling and spending most of our days on our feet, we were quite tired already by this point. On top of that, mom was already somewhat ill, and I seemed to be picking up the edges of her sickness. Adding fuel to the fire, the beds in our Roman apartment, or at least the one I was sleeping on, were quite uncomfortable. It was also at this point that I really started missing Nami and various other people I’m in regular contact with. Altogether, it made for a rather exhausting few days, and for this reason, our adventures in Rome were not quite as energetic as they had been in Naples and Venice.

Once mom and dad had picked up our museum and transport passes, we spent most of the first full day in Rome simply exploring the city. We visited the Spanish Steps, climbing up all of what we think we remember as 176 steps to the church at the top of it. We wandered down to look at various historical buildings, then made our way slowly back towards the Pantheon, which we investigated with great enthusiasm. There, we found Jason, a very enthusiastic tour guide from Louisiana who has been living in Italy for the past nine years, giving tours. He was doing a free tour of the Pantheon, and took us around, explaining the significance of the cross-capped Egyptian obelisk out front (Christ’s triumph over “pagan influence”) and detailing some of the history of the structure. It was from him that we learned that Michelangelo had been so impressed with the Pantheon that, when he designed the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica, he deliberately made it half  a metre shorter than the dome of the Pantheon, in honour of the “perfection” of the ancient structure – a building so stable that the earthquakes that knocked down the outside walls of the Colosseum had no discernible effect on it. Finished with the tour, we wandered back towards home, checking out the Trevi Fountain along the way, then buying groceries (more pasta) and turning in early in preparation for our visit to the Vatican the next day.

The next morning, we were out early (for us) around eleven to visit the Colosseum in the morning. Thanks to our pre-purchased museum cards, we got to skip the lines and go straight in, whereupon we climbed very steep stairs to check out the artifacts they had found (mostly sculptures, bones, and gambling paraphernalia), then went around the inside walls to get a good look at the arena floor, which had been destroyed and showed the underground rooms and corridors where they had kept the slaves and allowed entrance to the warriors and animals who rose up from the floor in the games. Then we caught the metro across the river, arriving promptly in St. Peter’s Square for our 1:30 tour of the Vatican with Jason.

And I must say, he’s both hilarious and a great tour guide. He told us about the history of the building, as well as the belief that St. Peter himself is buried under the basilica – a belief that may have been confirmed by some excavations in the last few decades, when a team discovered what they think are the bones of Peter. We headed around the outside of the square, checking out the wall that saved the Pope’s life when the Protestants sacked the city in the 1500s, as well as the area of housing that had set up to be a safe place for the pilgrims who came to visit the Vatican. Along the way to the museum, Jason told us about Michelangelo’s belief that sculpture was a superior art form to painting, and the sculpture project he was hired for that never got completed, because the architect of the Basilica talked the Pope into employing Michelangelo in the painting of the Sistine Chapel in order to keep “his” Basilica from being dominated by Michelangelo’s sculptures. However, his plan may have backfired, since Michelangelo’s paintings became some of the most famous works of the Renaissance, and his sculpture, Pieta, is still on display in the Basilica.

We headed through the museum relatively quickly, checking out various Renaissance-era and ancient sculptures of Greek Gods and Goddesses, including the rather famous sculpture of Laocoon and His Sons, beset by snakes when he tried to strike the Trojan Horse in suspicion. We also saw various ancient mosaics, a statue of the Artemis of Ephesus, tapestries, paintings, and an entire room of paintings by Raphael, including his famous School of Athens – absolutely incredible, and one of my favourite Renaissance paintings. Its colour is beautiful, the perspective is incredible, and the thing is huge – an entire wall of fresco. From there, we proceeded to the Sistine Chapel itself, where we witnessed the Last Judgement, the Creation of Adam, and all the other paintings on the ceiling and those on the walls.

No visit to the Vatican, however, would be complete without taking a look at St. Peter’s Basilica, so, after the tour finished, we headed inside to see the most magnificent, opulent church in the world. And it truly is incredible – even the “unimportant” sculptures and works of art tucked into corners and around pillars are amazing. And then, off to the side, we saw the Pieta. It was so incredible that I cried.

After that, it turns into a bit of a blur. Small moments stand out – hearing the choir sing as the evening mass started; the sculpture of St. Peter with the foot worn smooth from millions of worshippers over the course of history rubbing or kissing it for luck; the young woman who came in for the mass who crossed herself with tears of joy in her eyes. By the time we left, I had cried myself out. My last memory of the Vatican is looking up at the building where the Pope lives as we left and seeing that two of his lights were on.

The next day was much more relaxed. We wandered around more of the city, checking out a tiny museum of decorative art, a (somewhat out of place) stone pyramid, a monument to the victims of Italy’s fascist regime, and the old bathhouses, which we unfortunately arrived too late at to enter. Then we headed back to the apartment for dinner (pasta!) and one more night. The next day, we packed up for the last time and headed off to the train station, catching our train to the airport and getting on a plane back to Toulouse. We arrived home in the afternoon rain and collapsed in welcome rest, our holiday finally over.

Neapolitan Adventures

Oh hello again internet! I forgot about the promised blog posts because I am a spaz with a short attention span who plays too much Spore. But that is okay and I am back now. So here we go, onto the next leg of the Italian adventure: Naples and Pompeii!

We arrived in Naples late in the evening after leaving for Venice, where we caught a taxi from the airport into town. This was my first introduction to the knowledge that Italian Drivers Are Crazy and Naples Drivers Actually Drive With Their Horns, Not Their Wheels. Everyone beeps their horn constantly – but it’s not because they’re angry (even though, with the way everyone drives, crossing lanes and cutting you off all over the place, they have plenty of reason to be). No, it is in fact because they just want to let know know something – sometimes simply that they are there and you should take that into account, and sometimes that you are a bastard motherfucker with the driving skills of a pig. It’s occasionally hard to tell.

Anyway, after a somewhat terrifying drive through the city, we arrived safely in our apartment, where are very short, adorable landlady who didn’t speak any English tried to explain to us how the appliances worked and get us settled in. Then we headed out to hunt down a restaurant, as it was rather late by this point, and by sheer luck stumbled onto a rather nice place that made wonderful pizza and even better salad. Despite a mixup where dad’s calzone didn’t arrive until substantially after the rest of the food, it was rather enjoyable. My favourite part was probably the wandering guitar-playing musician who sang to us for a while.

That’s another interesting thing about Italy – people sing everywhere. They’re not shy about it at all. You can walk into a grocery store and half the time one of the employees will be singing while putting out the stock. It’s actually rather awesome.

Anyway, the next morning, we got up and headed out to explore the city, investigating a palace and an old church while mom and dad got some tourist information. Then we ran around a bit looking for places to buy our city passes and transport cards. Upon our success, we headed into the historical heart of the city, where we didn’t see much of significance except for the oldest marble statue in Naples, but did have a good time looking at bizarre churches, monuments, and old buildings squished between modern apartment buildings.

Also, deep fried spaghetti. Weird, but strangely delicious.

The next day, we got up early and caught the train out to POMPEII!

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Sorry, I had to pause there to pose dramatically.

Anyway, these trains were a bit more like metro trains than the kind you’d actually want to travel in, but Pompeii was relatively nearby. After a bit of a mixup that saw us waiting at a graffiti-covered station in the middle of the poorer neighbourhood and inspired Shona’s and my next photoshoot, we got on the right train and came out in Pompeii.

And holy shit, it was incredible. If you ever get the chance, GO. There is nothing like it in the world.

We wandered all over the city – to the amphitheatre, the coliseum, the forum, the temples, the houses, the streets, the vineyards, the bathhouses. We hopped across the stepping stones placed at crosswalks to keep the ancient citizens’ feet out of the mud. We investigated ancient Roman fast food joints. We saw pomegranate trees growing in places that haven’t yet been excavated. We saw the bones of people who died in the eruption. We went through the brothel, giggling at the rather well-preserved frescoes of bedroom acts. I swiped a couple lumps of pumice stone for a friend. We crisscrossed the whole city, or at least as much of it as we could without dropping from exhaustion, before finally making it home to collapse.

Our third day in Naples was mostly spent hopping around on the cable cars and the metro to ultimately get us to the archaeological museum. There, we witnessed a vast and rather wonderful collection of statues, mostly of gods, muses, and heroes, a giant gallery of paintings, mosaics and artifacts from Pompeii, and the “secret cabinet” – a room dedicated entirely to the sexual artifacts of the ancient Romans. There, we witnessed several… interesting… frescoes, some rather bizarre statues, many small stone penis charms, a few odd brass sculptures (I kid you not, there was a flying penis with a pair of legs and a penis of its own, and one of a hero fighting against his own penis, which had apparently turned into a vicious monster of some sort), as well as a rather amusing mosaic of the god Priapus, whose erect penis is about the length of one of his own legs and twice as thick.

I could not make this stuff up if I tried.

We had our final dinner in Naples – pasta, again, we ate rather a lot of it and none of us got sick of it because pasta is AWESOME – that night, then once again got everything packed up and ready to leave for the morning. Then we said goodbye to our rather wonderful apartment with its marvellously comfortable beds, and headed off to the train station to get on the train to Rome. The ride was generally uneventful, except for a hustler dragging us and our suitcases onto the train at top speed and demanding money for his service (dad gave him five euros instead of twenty). We pulled into Rome in good time – finally starting the last leg of our adventure.

Hello Venezia!

Hello again, Canada! Here I am, back from Italy, and as promised, I will present to you a full report of my adventures there. This is the first of three parts: Venice! Photos from the first three (and a bit) days of the trip have already been posted on Facebook, so make sure to check them out.

The start of our adventure was early afternoon in Toulouse, when we rolled our suitcases down to Jean Jaures station and caught the airport bus out to Toulouse-Blagnac. Barring a minor setback at security (where they took my craft scissors – seriously, my freaking CRAFT scissors) the trip went smoothly, we caught our connection in Lyon, and arrived safe and sound in the Venice airport that evening. Then we took a waterbus into the lagoon, where we got installed in our apartment (which was super ritzy, by the way – the one we were supposed to get needed repairs so they offered us another apartment at a seriously reduced rate – and it overlooked the Grand Canal!) and then went out to get dinner at a nice pizza place our landlady recommended.

The excitement didn’t really start until the next morning, when we got up (at a decent hour, for us) and headed out to explore the city. I say we, but I really mean me, mom, and the siblings – dad had to go pick up his race kit for the marathon the next day. So we wandered down the main street, checking mask shops and trinket booths all the way, until we eventually came to the Rialto Bridge and, from there, to St. Mark’s Square.

And let me just say, it is absolutely incredible. Venice is possibly the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen, even with all the tacky tourist crap. I got some lovely photos in the square while we wandered around, looking for a place to buy waterbus passes and museum cards.

We were eventually successful in our mission, and so, pausing to get some midafternoon sandwiches on the way, we wandered back to the apartment.

The next morning, dad was out long before any of us, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, for the marathon. The rest of us got up at a more leisurely pace, catching the waterbus down to the finish line, where we cheered him on. Eventually, we met up with him in a park full of nifty statues and big trees, to decide on our plan of attack. It was concluded that he would head home, while the rest of us (despite some whining on the brother’s part) would go to investigate the Correr Museum.

Unfortunately, once inside, I learned that we weren’t supposed to be taking pictures by being yelled at in Italian by a very stern museum curator, but other than that the visit was quite enjoyable. The museum was full of historical artifacts, old books, paintings, maps, statues, sculptures, frescoes, glass chandeliers, and weapons. It really drove home Venice’s unique history as an independent city-state. By the time we had finished wandering through there, we were quite tired of walking, so we caught the bus back to the apartment.

On our third day in Venice, we went out to Murano, the glassmaking island – several centuries ago (I forget exactly when) all the workshops were moved out there to prevent them from setting fire to the city. Our first stop was the glass museum, where we learned about the process of blowing glass – which is awesome, by the way – and looked at various pieces from all stages of Venetian history. Then we wandered down towards the foundries, investigating shops all the way, until we got to an open workshop, where we sat and watched a professional glassmaker and his assistant make parts for a chandelier, as well as a little glass horse sculpture that they knocked off for fun (and tips). On the way home, we tried to stop at the cemetery island, but unfortunately it was closed, so we got back on the boat and headed back to Venice proper, taking the scenic route through the ghetto area – the oldest ghetto in the world. In fact, the word “ghetto” is believed to come from a corruption of geto or “foundry,” as the Jews were forced to live in the area that had been vacated by the glassmakers moving out to Murano. Today, very few Jews actually live in the area, but there are synagogues, a museum, points of historical interest, and many kosher shops.

The next morning, our last in Venice, we went down to St. Mark’s again to visit the Doge’s Palace – the former seat of government from Venice’s days of independence, and the residence of the Doge, or elected duke, who governed the city in its early years and served as a figurehead in the later centuries of the republic. We saw his private quarters, the council rooms and state areas, and the prisons, as well as many paintings by famous Italian paintings of the Renaissance, including the widest canvas painting in the world. There were so many details flying past my face that most of them, at this point, have completely slipped my mind.

After the Doge’s Palace, we headed back to the apartment for the last time, picked up our stuff, and caught the waterbus to the only area of the city with access by car. Then we got on the airport bus and headed across the causeway to the airport. Our last view over the Venetian lagoon was a spectacular sunset as we took off.

Naples and Pompeii are on the agenda for tomorrow, but for now, I will say, ciao, and goodnight to all!