I recently visited to Salt Lake City in Utah.  While I was primarily there to attend the Rootstech conference and do some research in the Family History Library, I did take the opportunity to do a little sightseeing.

First I will make some general comments on Salt Lake City. It is in a valley surrounded by glorious mountains.  When I was there most of them were snow-covered, so there were fantastic views around most corners. It is also very clean.  Unbelievably so.  In fact, there we several places where they had free dispensers of plastic bags to allow people to clean up their dog mess.  But it wasn't just the lack of dog mess that made it so clean.  Only once did I ever see any litter on the streets. Another point is that the streets seemed almost deserted.  There weren't crowds on the footpaths (or sidewalks as they call them there), and I never saw heavy traffic on the roads, all of which make is a pleasant place to walk around.

 

The city was established in 1847, so it does not have any 17th century buildings (or other early structures). The earliest building that is there is a pioneer log home that has been relocated next to the Family History Library. 

 

But the lack of any lengthy history doesn't mean there isn't plenty of interesting and attractive things to see.

 

The heart of Salt Lake City is Temple Square. This is where the Salt Lake Temple is located, and also the Tabernacle (home of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir). The best way to start this is to go to one of the visitors' centres. There is a north visitors' centre and a south visitors' centre.  I went into the north one, and there were some very interesting displays about the building of the temple (bringing the huge blocks of granite in from the mountains to the place where the temple was to be built). I also got a little pamphlet there which gave a map of temple square and information on the buildings there.

 

 

Another interesting building that is outside the temple square precinct is the Joseph Smith Memorial Building. You can go into that building and take the lift up to the 11th floor to see the views of the city.  But the building itself is very beautiful and well worth a look.

 

 

On the Thursday night we were privileged to be able to attend a special concert by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir put on especially for Rootstech.  They get hundreds of requests for special concerts throughout the year and rarely are able to accede to those requests, so we really were privileged.  

 

 

I got there early (along with a couple of other Aussies - Liz and Peter Pidgeon), and we got to hear their rehearsal.  That was very interesting, hearing them keep repeating certain parts of a piece of music until the conductor was happy.  Then the concert started.  It was called "Land that I Love - The Immigration of Irving Berlin".  It was a really wonderful experience in a building with wonderful accoustics.

Then on the Sunday after the conference, when the library was closed, a few of us joined up with Jan Gow's "Hooked on Genealogy" tour group to do some sightseeing outside the main town area. Jan has been to Salt Lake City many times, so she knew where we should go, and could fill us in with what we were seeing. 

We started off with most of us attending the regular Sunday performance of Music and the Spoken Word at the Tabernacle.  What I found most interesting was that some of the pieces that were performed were those that we had heard being rehearsed on the Thursday night.  Great to hear how they finally came out in their entirety.  I have to confess, though, that the piece I enjoyed most was Bach's Fugue in G Major, which was a pure organ piece - no choir involvement
 

Then we got our mini-bus and set off on our sight-seeing tour.  First thing we went and saw was the great salt lake.  It wasn't what I expected. I had thought it was a dry salt like, rather like Lake Eyre. But what we saw was a lake with water. Very salty water, admittedly (it's seven times saltier than the ocean and saltier than the dead sea). The only thing that lives in the lake is the briny shrimp. It turns out that I was thinking of the Bonneville Salt Flats.  They were both originally part of Lake Bonneville, which in the Pleistocene era was nearly as big as Lake Michigan, but are now separate.  

 

Bonneville Salt Flats (left) and the Great Salt Lake (right)

All the driving around took us very close to those glorious mountains,  very spectacular.  We also drove past the copper mine, but couldn't go in as the visitors centre is not open in the winter.

After lunch it was time to visit the outlet shops for some retail therapy. Enough said.

A big thank you to Anthony from the Salt Lake Plaza Hotel who was our driver for the day.

Final days of the trip - Sam Gimignano and Siena

Now I am home I still have to post the details of the last couple of days of our trip, so here they are.

The evening of our “escape” from the horrible accomodation we headed into San Gimignano for dinner.  It is a medieval town situated on a hilltop with 13 towers.  There were originally 72, but only 13 remain.  When seeing it from a distance it is like seeing a modern city centre with skyscrapers, but it’s really old towers.  It’s a really strange sensation.  Inside the town walls it’s all medieval stone buildings and narrow alleyways.  We ate at a restaurant on one of the two squares in the town, the Piazza della Cisterna, so named for the 13^th century well in the centre of the square.  Grooves have been worn in the edges of it from centuries of ropes rubbing against them while pulling up buckets of water.  As the sun slowly went down the colours of the stone buildings kept changing.

Next day it was back to San Gimignano to explore further.  We found some places with breathtaking views of the Tuscan countryside, and then Andy and Tommy went into a torture museum.  That was of no interest to me, so I went to look inside the Cathedral.  All the walls and ceiling were painted with fantastic frescos, although in a couple of places you could see that they were covering up other, older frescos, which was frustrating.  What were those frescos of, and why were they painted over?   Andy and Tommy then decided to climb the tallest of the towers, the Torre Grossa, while I wandered around and browsed in the shops.  They said there was a fantastic view from the top.

The rest of that afternoon was spent driving through the countryside, and then back at the hotel relaxing by the pool.

On our final day of sightseeing we decided to go to Siena.  Before we got there Tommy saw some signs pointing to Montereggio, which was one of the towns in his Xbox game Assasin’s Creed, so he was keen to see how it compared to the representation in the game.  It was another medieval walled town, but very small (only 2 streets) and very unspoiled.  But the town was getting ready for a medieval re-enactment event that was started at 5pm that day.  There was a stall where you could exchange your Euros for “Grossi”, and other stalls all had prices in Grossi.  It was very frustrating, as it looked like it would have been great fun to stay and experience the event, but we had to be back in Florence that night.  I know there are medieval re-enactments in Australia, but not in a real medieval town.

After looking around there (which didn’t take long, because Montereggio is not big) we were back heading to Siena.  We found Siena, but had no idea where we were in relation to the old part of the town, or where we could park.  Over the years I have been to lots of towns and never had so much trouble before.  Eventually we had to ask a policeman where the old town was and where we could park.  We made our way to the Piazza del Campo, the semi-circular town square where twice a year the famous horse race, the Palio, takes place.  The Piazza is completely surrounded by Palazzos.  One is a public building, but all the rest were private residences.

The next thing to see was the Cathedral.  First part to view was the Baptistry, with more lovely frescos.  Then the crypt.  That was incredible.  There had been so many different phases of building that you could see Gothic arches cutting through Norman arches, barrel vaulting cutting through old frescos and so on.  At one place the floor was clear so you could see down, and you were looking at a column going down about 20 or 30 feet to another room below.  It was like a giant archaeological site.

The Cathedral itself was spectacular.  Once again, all the frescos, but black and white stripped marble columns and off the nave a room that they called a library, with the most incredible ceiling, and lots of medieval music manuscripts.  The notes were shown on a stave, but without any indication of their length (i.e., whether they were crochets or quavers etc).

After that it was time to head back to Florence, return our hire car, and check into our hotel for our last night.  The next day we caught a train at 8:22 for Rome to get our flight back to Sydney.

Rome airport was the most chaotic, disorganised and badly equipped airport I have ever been to.  The flight from Rome to Bangkok was long and tedious as there was no individual entertainment systems, and watching a movie on a screen at the front is hard at the best of times (people keep standing in the aisles and blocking your view), but it is virtually impossible for me, as I am too short to see over the heads in front of me.  Luckily the flight from Bangkok to Sydney was better.

And now we are home and back to reality... whatever reality is.

The Chianti Road

We picked up the hire car from Avis and made our way out of Florence.  The experience was for better than that in Naples.  The office was better staffed and the employees had a better attitude.   The cars were parked in a garage next door, not just somewhere on the street.  But we had booked a class C car which is what we usually book in the UK, as is something like a Vauxhall Vectra or a Ford Mondeo, was again going to be a Fiat Punto, which is way too small to fit even one suitcase, far less luggage for three people and the said three people.  Consequently we had to pay a bit more to get a Peugeot 308, which only fitted 2 of the bags in the boot, and one had to sit on the back seat.  But eventually we set off.

We took the back roads, rather than main roads, and headed for a while down the road known as “the Chianti road”.  We didn’t stop at any of the numerous vineyards offering tastings along the way, as Andy would not have been able to try any wines as he was driving, and Tommy wouldn’t because he was underage.  The scenery was fantastic, though, and we found a wonderful place with a marvellous view to stop for a very extended lunch. 

After that we made our way to our accommodation, which was in the countryside near the medieval town of San Gimignano.  The directions were very hard to follow, and Andy had to use the Google maps on his Blackberry to locate the place, otherwise we would never have found it.  The directions assumed that you’d only be coming on an Autostrada from either the north or south.  We walked into reception and it started very badly.  The girl on duty there was on the phone and completely ignored us for at least 10 minutes.  She could have looked up and nodded, or said excuse me to her caller and quickly apologised to us before carrying on her conversionan.  But no.  She reacted as if we were not there.  After a while the postman came in, and he got some attention, although she did not put down the phone, but still we got no acknowledgment.  When she finally got off the phone she issued a terse “Sorry” that was said in the same way and tone as if you’d just brushed against someone as you passed them.  From there it went downhill.  She got into her car to drive to our appointed accommodation in a villa far from reception.  That in itself would not have been a problem, but it turned out that the villa had several “apartments”, and we were pointed to a set of stairs and told to take the door to the left.   The lock was incredibly difficult to open, but finally opened into a kitchen (which we had been told we were not to use), and from that very basic kitchen there were a set of ugly metal stairs leading up.  At the top of the stairs were three locked doors.  Our key did not open any of them.  We finally realised that there was another room downstairs, off the kitchen/living area.  Before I describe the room, let me describe that kitchen/living area.  The kitchen was very basic, with formica benches, and very old appliances.  There was a wooden “dining” table, that looked more like the type of table you find at picnic sites.  On one side were some plain, un-upholstered, wooden chairs.  On the other was a bench.  There was something else in the room which was probably supposed to pass as a sofa.  But the worn orange fabric was actually the back-board of a single bed.  There were no cushions, so it would  not have been a place where you could sit and relax.  A very small TV was located under the ugly metal stairs at right angles to the sofa/bed.

And what about the room?  There was one small window about 4 feet from the ground and about two feet by three feet in size, a tiny bathroom (although perfectly clean) and a double bed with a green floral polyester bedspread, with gathers on the side.  It was straight out of the 1950s or early 1960s.  The other bed for Tommy was a metal framed bed of the type that were used in hospitals in the 1930s.  And this was supposed to be a superior room.  This place bore no resemblance whatsoever to the web site I had looked at.  If I’d seen a room like this on the web site there was no way I would have booked it.  We went back to reception to see what could be done, though to be honest I didn’t want to stay anywhere there by this stage, and there was a second woman there.  This one was obviously more senior, because when we started to complain to the girl, the woman took over.  She refused to acknowledge that the room was anything but fine.  She said the other rooms were all the same.  This really was a superior room, as it allowed space for a third bed (how come they allowed bookings for a triple standard room then?).  Apart from the room being awful, I couldn’t stand the communal “living” area – even if there wouldn’t be anyone else in the “apartment”.  I found a picture in their brochure that I’d seen on the web site.  It showed a nice brass-type bed, with stairs to a mezzanine level where there appeared to be a single bed.  She said they only had one room like that, and it was occupied.  And would you believe we would have had to pay an extra €5 per day for air conditioning, and €3 for each pool towel per day! 

Eventually we left, refusing to stay.  They’d better not charge our credit card.

We did (fairly easily) find somewhere else to stay, although it costs a lot more that I’d planned to pay.  But Andy preferred to pay that rather than spend hours looking for somewhere else.  The room is a fairly standard hotel layout, but has a nice little balcony looking out to San Gimignano.  There is a pool, restaurant, bars (including lovely pool bar) and beautiful gardens.  A lucky escape.

Florence 2

Next day was not quite as hot, but still very hot.  First stop was for Andy and Tommy to climb the bell tower next to the Cathedral before it got too hot.  Meanwhile I went off to look at the street  markets, as I didn’t think I could manage 414 steps to the top.  While looking at the street market I stumbled upon the central food market.  I always like looking at food markets, seeing what there is that I haven’t seen before, or seeing how they display their produce.  This market certainly didn’t disappoint.  As well as fantastic and mouth-watering displays, there was a stall with the biggest mushrooms I have ever seen, lots of stalls with huge amounts of dried porcini mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes (which were NOT in olive oil) and a couple of butchers where the only item I could recognise was tripe. 

When I met up with Andy and Tommy after their climb we had to make a change of plans.  We had intended to go inside the Cathedral, but the queue was so long it stretched around the corner, along the side of the Cathedral and round the back.  We decided that seeing the inside of the Cathedral wasn’t that important to us.  So we went to the Science Museum, which has a huge collection of scientific instruments, mainly collected by the Medicis, and which includes Galileo’s telescope and many of the contraptions he built to prove/demonstrate movement of objects (like a ball rolling down a ramp, getting faster as it went).

Next was a visit to the Baptistry in front of the Cathedral.  Its doors are said to have been the first piece of work of the Renaissance, demonstrating depth, perspective and background.  Inside the octagonal building is a breathtaking mosaic roof on a background of gold tiles.

Final stop that afternoon was a visit to the Medici Chapels, where many members of the Medici family are buried.  Spectacular inside, but unfortunately about half was covered in scaffolding.

Back to the room for a bit of a rest til it cooled down a bit and then out to dinner, which we ate at a restaurant fronting the Piazza della Signorna.  Towards the end of our meal an orchestra started playing in the Loggia opposite where we were eating.  We enjoyed listening to that for a while, then started chatting to a Canadian family who were also listening.  After that we went down to the river so I could see the Ponte Vecchio by night, and then a slow meander back to our hotel.  Florence had really changed now that it was dark.  It was 10:45 and there were hundreds of people out and about, strolling around, and restaurants that had looked very quiet during the day had spilled out onto the roads.

Florence 1

Our hotel in Florence was very nice.  It was located in a quiet old cobbled street.  Part of the old town, but not the noisy crowded touristy part.  That said, it isn’t a long walk to that touristy part.  It was fairly hot when we arrived, and we had a quick drink at the hotel’s terrace bar, and then set off to look for dinner without asking for a map.  As a consequence we walked a long way out of our way before finally finding ourselves in the Piazza next to the Cathedral.  Thus we first laid our eyes on the confection that is the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.  I say confection because it is made of white, green and pink marble, set with statues and a couple of mosaics.

We found a restaurant with Ossobucco on the menu (one of my favourites), so climbed down a narrow set of stairs with medieval (or so they looked) frescos decorating the side of the stairs and found ourselves in a vaulted undercroft.  Unfortunately the Ossobucco wasn’t as nice as the architecture and I think I can make a nicer version.

Next day started with our pre-booked trip to the Uffizi Gallery.  I’m glad we had the tickets pre-booked – the non-booked queue looked awful.  Unfortunately half of the exterior was covered in scaffolding, which has become something of a theme on this trip.  We got audio guides to narrate our way through the gallery.  At first that seemed a very good idea, but after a while Andy and I got very sick of the art analysis (“this painting exhibits the juxtaposition of form versus perpendical shading and shows a flow through the picture, illuminated by the afternoon light…”).  If you were interested in art it would be ok, but I’m just a philistine.  Since they already have multiple languages, they could easily have different versions within each language – one for the art ponce and one for the art philistine (“see that ugly face on the bottom left corner sticking out his tongue in a suggestive manner?  People have said that makes this painting rather perverted”) in the same way they have adult and child versions of the audio guides at Hampton Court Palace in England.  (I’ve only every listened to the childrens’ versions, and they are great and not at all patronising.)  Although I liked a lot of the paintings, the only one I recognised was Botticelli’s Birth of Venus.  Most of them were Biblical, and I have to say that most painters of the Madonna and child can’t paint a baby.  None of them look like a real baby.

It had been feeling hot in the gallery, but that was nothing compared to what it was like when we got outside.  I gather the day got to over 40⁰ and it must have been about 150% humidity.  We had some lunch and then headed to the Palazzo Vecchio.  Very beautiful, but very hot inside (strangely enough there is no air-conditioning in medieval palaces).  Out the front of the Palazzo Vecchio is a copy of Michaelangelo’s David.  This is where the original (now in the Academia) was located.  What is there now is a very good copy, and Tommy preferred to see the copy in its original location, which we were happy about as it saved us having to queue up for another art gallery.  We then treated ourselves to a horse and carriage ride, although it was awfully expensive, but Tommy had never done anything like that before.

Next sight to see was the Ponte Vecchio.  It’s amazing how the back rooms of the shops on the bridge stay up with the wooden supports.  It was very crowded on the bridge, and someone didn’t want me looking in the windows of the jewellery shops.  Funny that.  We then wandered around for a bit trying to decide what to do next and eventually decided to give up for the rest of the afternoon as it was so hot, and Andy was suffering – probably from a mild case of heat exhaustion, despite the fact that we had been drinking water almost non-stop for the day.  In the end we decided not to go out for dinner that evening, and I just went out and got us some bread, cheese, salami, prosciutto etc, which we ate in our room.

Sorrento and trip to Florence

Sunday was our day for relaxing.  Andy and Tommy set off for the hotel pool and I set off to explore the town of Sorrento.  I went into a 13^th century Franciscan church, which had its cloisters next door.  There was another church I wanted to look in, but there was a service going on (as it was Sunday), so I felt I shouldn’t intrude.  I found several places to enjoy the view along the coast and look down at the sun bathers roasting themselves with no shade.  I then went back to the hotel for an afternoon relaxing and swimming.

This morning we stayed relaxing in the hotel grounds until check out time and headed off on the drive back to Naples.  We had spotted that there was an Avis near the station, from where we were catching the train to Florence, and as that was much closer to our destination, not to mention much closer to the end of the Autostrada (motorway) and therefore didn’t require as much driving through the streets of Naples, we had rung up from Sorrento and arranged to return the car there instead of to the office from which we had rented it.  Then it was just a question of waiting for our high-speed train to Florence.

Amalfi Coast

Saturday was the day for our drive around the Amalfi coast.  Our driver arrived bright and early and we set off in his Mercedes.  The views along the coast really justify all the hype that has been written about them.  The roads weren’t as narrow or the corners as sharp as I’d thought from the description.  They were certainly nowhere near as narrow or sharp as the road up Mt Vesuvius.  A few stops were made to admire the view before we got to Positano. 

It’s really unbelievable the way the houses climb up the steep hillsides.  We were dropped near the start of the pedestrian area of Positano to walk down to the waterfront and explore the narrow street lined with shops.  We went into a church famous for its painting of a black Madonna and otherwise just explored until it was time to meet our driver again.  Next was a stop at a ceramic factory where we saw lots of hand painted plates, jugs, bowls, platters, planters, urns and so on.  Unfortunately although they said they would ship anywhere in the world, they were only interested in doing so for the large, expensive pieces.  As an example, the urns ranged between €600 and €1350.  Much as I liked them, I wasn’t paying that much.

Across the road from this ceramic “factory” (more like a shop to me – I never saw any signs of manufacture) was the lift down to the Emerald Grotto.  I was really pleased that we were getting the chance to see the Emerald Grotto, as I was very disappointed that we weren’t going to Capri to see the Blue Grotto there.  When the lift opened down at sea level it was noticeably cooler – at least 15⁰ at my estimate.  We went into the cave and were loaded into a boat with lots of Japanese tourists.  The “guide” then rowed the boat into the middle of the lake telling us about the cave and its lake.  Near an underwater entrance to the cave the water was a very different colour.  I would have described it as an aqua blue.  When he got the boat into a particular point in the middle of the lake he started splashing his oar and the drops of water landing back in the lake were definitely an emerald colour.

Next stop was Amalfi  where we walked into an alley which suddenly opened up into a Piazza with the most incredible church on one side.  There was a campanile (bell tower) with a multi-coloured ceramic tiled roof.  The church itself appeared sort of striped, with a mosaic on the pediment above the entrance.  We had a drink and an ice-cream in a café on the edge of the Piazza so we could sit and enjoy the view of the magnificent church.

Final stop was Ravello, where we opted for a wine tasting.  It wasn’t forced on us, and we could have refused, but thought it would be a good idea.  And it was – until we were told the price of the wines!   Unthinkable by Australian standards.  We did buy one bottle of after-dinner wine.  Very expensive, but very different to anything I have tasted back home.

After all that wine tasting we were noticeably quieter (and tireder) on the return journey to our hotel.