My parents came to visit last week and in spite of the sweltering heat and the mosquitoes we had a good time and visited some interesting places. The pictures in this post were all taken by my father.On the left you can see the front of Certosa di Pavia - a large monastery complex in a small town south of Milan not far from the city of Pavia. The place was built mostly during the 15 century in the Gothic and Renaissance styles and is renowned for its exquisite architecture and art work. The monastery was built on the outskirts of a hunting park owned by the Visconti Family of Milan. In one of the frescos inside the head of the family is giving a model of the complex to the Virgin Mary.
Today, only 8 Cistercian monks live in the huge complex which we thought was a bit sad. But then, being a monk is not a much sought after vocation these days. I've been told that today, it's getting harder and harder to find people willing to give up their worldly lives and become priests, monks and nuns. Apropos, the picture on the right above shows a view towards the area designated for hermits which used to live in the complex. They lived completely secluded and did not talk with anyone. Even today, the monks residing in the Certosa eat silently and spend their evenings studying and praying, again, without talking among themselves. We wondered why anyone would want to become a hermit...
Above are pictures of a loggia - a long roofed open gallery where the monks used to live and a view to one of the bell towers in the monastery. By the way, since the monks were not supposed to talk to other people - they had a special revolving apparatus through which food could be passed into their apartments without seeing the person bringing the food.
I had not heard of the Certosa before, but it is well worth a visit. The entrance is free and there is a monk who takes groups around and explains about the place, its architecture and artwork.
The next day we went to the Parco Nazionale delle Incisioni Rupestri in Capo di Ponte in Val Camonica (about two hours from Milan) to see the rock drawings there which are a UNESCO world heritage site. To quote the description on the UNESCO site: "Valcamonica, situated in the Lombardy plain, has one of the world's greatest collections of prehistoric petroglyphs – more than 140,000 symbols and figures carved in the rock over a period of 8,000 years and depicting themes connected with agriculture, navigation, war and magic". You can see on the left an example of such a carving.
You'd think that since this is a world heritage site of great historical importance it would be clearly signed and easy to find. Guess again. Coming from the south there's no sign at all where you need to turn off. Coming from the north (how did we end up coming to it from the north you want to know?! well, we didn't find it coming from the south, passed by it and had to turn back once we realized we were out of the village....). we followed some other signs and ended up in the main square of this tiny village. Here we got directions from a sweet girl with a pierced lip - which were not exactly correct, but at least we got to the right side of the road in our quest to find the national park. We finally found the place at the end of a small road, again, with hardly any signing (only a sign for those coming with a camper to the park and looking for a place to leave the camper...). Then, at this point walking, we came upon a sign saying that something (we assumed it was the park) is 1.5 hours away.... which it wasn't. Only 10-15 min. on foot from where you park the car (you can see us on the path leading to the park). I was told that this is how the people in this region are - very understated, wondering what makes people come all this way to see the park.The park is beautiful. Relaxing, very green. The carvings are quite unique. We were a bit afraid that we would find these squiggles which look like kids' drawings... But there really is a fascination in them, beyond their obvious simplicity due to the difficulty of carving in stone in general and specifically at that early period when people did not have very sophisticated tools at their disposal.
Below are some more examples of these carvings (you can see the carvings better if you click on the pictures and enlarge them):
Most of the explanations on the carvings and their significance were interesting and made sense. We tended, though, not to agree with the interpretation concerning what looks like a kind of shovel - a square with a straight line (handle?) connected to it (you can see some of these in the top picture on the right). The researchers have all kinds of theories regarding their significance. My mother said at some point, maybe it's just a shovel? What should be said though is that there are A LOT of shovels... and one wonders why shovels of all things and if they do in fact have some special meaning...
There were some other nice things to see over there, such as this strange motorcycle and these pretty flowers:
Getting there and coming back we had adventures with the GPS navigator. I have a Nuvi Garmin. At some point we were driving quite happily on the main road but for some reason the GPS sent us onto a smaller road parallel to the main road. We did as told and went there. At some point the road got narrower and narrower till you could touch the walls of the buildings on both sides of the tiny road (in the meantime it became a tiny road...). and then the road tapered off. There we were at the end of it with very little space to turn around and go back to the main road where we should have been in the first place. Why did the navigator send us down this tiny road when there is a perfectly good main road over there?! Who knows. Then on the way back, instead of taking us through Bergamo it sent us through endless tunnels on the way to Brescia (if you look on the map you'll see that Brescia is east of Bergamo and therefore it doesn't make sense to go through Brescia if you're going west towards Milan. The lesson in this? Always study the route before setting out - so the navigator doesn't send you around just so that it can get you on the highway as fast as possible (which seems to be its default).
On Sat. we also went to the food (mostly fruits and vegetables) street market near my home. It's a very colorful market on Via Pavia and it's worth walking to - the quality of the produce there is superb and a step above what you can find in the supermarket. It operates twice a week - on Wed. and on Sat. It's amazing to see how it's dismantled. One minute it's there in full swing. The next - there's nothing left, but empty boxes and garbage trucks cleaning the place. Here are some pictures from the market:
and to end the post, some ducks (they live in a little canal by my house)....
