in the shimmer of summer heat, milano

In that summer, I was in Milano, and still remember it was so hot and humid at the time just like today in DC. I was walking on the top of Duomo di Milano, 'cause it was accessible for tourists for just 10 or 15 euro, or walking around an intersection near Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio, looking for the science and technology museum, so-called "Da Vinci" tech-museum. Anyway, anyhow, I  reach the gelatteria, ice cream shop near the tech museum instead, and was drinking a icy diet-coke there at first. Having a creamy,  white-green pistachio-gelato, and sitting one of only two or three small steel chairs, I was just aimlessly looking at people walking outside, all seemed to hate that afternoon heat. 


Basilica was literary in the midst of the shimmer of hot air.  With a bottle of diet-coke still filled around half, I just went outside and walked to the wrong direction, opposite to the museum, just thinking to be in that hot shimmer.


Maybe, in that evening, I went to the pizza restaurant somewhere in the city, which had only a piece of pizza Margherita and beer on its menu. Both are my favorite, but I reluctantly washed down the pizza with beer. I knew that this piece of Margherita was one of the best I've ever had, but still was able to hold my excitement or surprised-good luck at the time. I just looked outside, and knew that still people were walking in the shimmer of summer heat in this evening.


Here's street in Milano, Milan. 

silent amalfi from a ferry

Still the sky in Amalfi is so high that the birds coming from the north seem to also fly high, between blue and blue. The birds are looking down the peninsula, and may easily go beyond the highest cliffs around here. 


I am on a ferry going back to Salerno city,which maybe takes about 20 or 30 minutes. Turning back to the Amalfi, I find that some old, local people at the coast are sitting on the bank and looking at us idly, and some tourists coming from the ferry 10 minutes ago are walking with their carry-on-luggage, maybe, looking for their hotels.


The girl at the window of the five-story old white apartment, is no longer at the window. She may takes lemon gelatos with friends. 


Some teenagers are gathering at the wharf, and some of them are fooling with each other and finally one dives into the sea. The coast line of the Amalfi is actually busy, and when I was there, I  always found some people were walking, talking, eating sea foods, or drinking an espresso. On the other, the scenery I find from the ferry is perfectly silent. Only the breeze I feel here is the one I can hear.


Here is Amalfi, at the early of July.

smells of a lemon and limoncello

The main street of Amalfi is not long, but slightly an uphill road. Along with the street, there are several souvenir shops that make lots of small bottles of limoncello laying on big baskets. Some, which deals with some groceries, also have some large yellow lemons on the shelves inside the store. Under early July sun shining, the reflected sun-light from the bottles is giving the passengers, mostly tourists, irresistible summer spectrum.


Walking through an allay, I just look up the slope and more over, look up the windows of four- or five- story old and white buildings standing crowdedly with each other. A girl with light brown hair comes from one of the windows. She seems to look down the shining sea. The dry wind coming from the far away cliff blows her brown hair lightly.
Maybe, she may think about taking a ferry leaving this la penisola sorrentia (sorrento peninsula) to go to the capital, or just think about hefty homework of her junior high or high school during this summer vacation.


Here is Amalfi, its summer colors are yellow lemon and sea blue. Of course, the sky is high, enough. 

residents of venezia

Waking around the Venezia, I found lots of shops, restaurants, and hotels. Especially, each ancient building definitely had a shop, like sun-glass shops where visitors looked for Gucci, D&G, Giorgio Armani in here. I also went into United Colors of Benetton, looking for a reasonable T shirt, in order to change my shirt 'cause I was in a sweat because of long walking under sun-shinning.

While putting on a shirt, I realized that I had not seen any "real" residents yet. Usually, when waking in a town, soon I encounter town-residents, like kids playing football in a small empty lot or housewives carrying supermarket plastic bags with full of foods. In here, in case I encountered them, it seemed to be a rare occasion. All people I saw seemed to be visitors, tourists, staffs of shops, restaurants, and hotels. At the supermarket, visitors bought dozens of beers and chips for night party.

So, current Venezia is not same as ancient Venezia, where notorious merchants were busy around Pont di Rialto.

Here was Venezia, still I could see the same colors of roofs and sea as what people saw in hundreds years ago.

a narrow sky in venezia

Looking up the Venetian sky from a small alley, I just found the blue and white sky-line over my head. And a moment, the sea gulls were mewing and flying across the line. On the ground, a few people were walking and wandering and going nowhere. Actually, visitors faced a certain difficulty to find a right alley to go. I heard once that if a visitor wanted to get out of here, a dead end of the alley, the best way was to follow a local venetian who knew well where to go.

I was just standing still at the middle of a small bridge over a small canal. Sometimes, some gondolas went through the canal, and I looked down at them while thinking nothing. At the time, I was with my wife and son there, and all three were waiting for the restaurant near the bridge opening in the evening. Actually, the restaurant literally opened at the time, but when looking inside, I could not find any people there. So, we were waiting for people of the restaurant, in shorts, chefs, waiters, maybe an owner, and a bartender coming back soon.

It was about 10 min before the opening hour of the restaurant, 18:00, I remember. Some visitors came and looked inside like us, and then gave up to wait for a while and went away. Finally, restaurant staffs came back on time and we went inside the restaurant. The bartender firstly asked us if we made a reservation. Immediately, I said "No" . He nodded with smile and offered us a table for 3, but said we had to finish our dinner by 19:30, because the reservations were full after the time. No problem, of course. Quite speedy, we had a nice bongole and squid ink spaghetti, which were better than what we've ever had somewhere.

Here was Venezia.