Fiesole

After two days in Venice, the Harlaxton tour took us on by coach to Florence. It was a lovely three-hour ride down through Bologna and into Tuscany. We got in to Florence around 1 pm and had most of the rest of the day to ourselves. Once again, I tagged along with Ian and Michaela who suggested visiting Fiesole, a village up on the northern hills overlooking Florence. It was Ian's 46th birthday and he wanted to return to a restaurant there to celebrate. I naturally agreed and we got on the Number 7 bus in the Piazza San Marco and off we went.

Sadly, on our way to the bus, we passed a group of Harlaxton students...all boys, leaving the train station with bags from McDonalds, heading back to the hotel. That said it all. Here we were, our first day in Florence, and the only thing these kids wanted was to eat a Big Mac in their hotel room. One hopes they will grow up to regret that decision! Sigh.

Amazingly, Fiesole was settled but the Etruscans about 4000 years ago. It was their most important city and there are still walls and two tombs there. The Romans also settled the area and built villas, an ampitheatre, and a massive bath house up on the hill side which we spent our time wandering through as the sun slowly set in the west.

While I have seen the ruins of Roman roads in Provence and plenty of Roman antiquities in museums, this was my first encounter with seeing the remains of ampitheatres and villas in situ. We could wander around the old pools, the cauldarium (the hot baths), the tepidarium (the lukewarm rooms), and the frigidarium (the cold rooms. We stood on the stage of the ampitheatre and tried our best to recite bits of Marc Antony's "Friends, Romans, Countrymen" speech.

Over near the villa, there were two old altars. Ian was under the misapprehension that the Romans sacrificed humans so he decided to offer himself on the altar. Michaela and I just shook our heads.

After the ruins, we wandered back to the town square and followed the signs up a steep hill to the Convento di San Francesco, an old convent with a spectacular view down into Florence. Interestingly, the convent was built on an old acropolis, the foundations of which you can see if you visit the convents museum. The museum was quite a surprise. It contained a huge collection of Japanese porcelain from the days one of the Franciscan friars was a missionary. There was a pair of plates with exquisite winter scenes on them that I would have grabbed in a heartbeat! I was beginning to sense how important it was to go off the beaten path and find these kinds of surprises.

By the time we got back to the Piazza, the sun had set and the local ambulance service was having a Christmas fund raiser...roasting chestnuts and selling Christmas breads and cakes. The whole village seemed to have turned out just to spend time chatting over some mulled wine. I am guessing we were the only non-residents in the bunch. When they turned on the Christmas tree and the children all gathered to sing Christmas carols you felt you were in a movie...an Italian one of course.

Dinner at Pegusus was everything Ian promised. We had beautiful antipasti...a pate spread on crusty bread, a pasta course of delicious seafood, and then the main event. Ian wanted bistecca , a thick porterhouse style steak for which this restaurant has a reputation. What came out was a steak that had to be close to 3 pounds. They put it down on a cutting board and artfully carve all the meat off the bones before presenting us with all of it. The steak was rare...they only just show it to the flames according to Ian and there was probably enought meat for 4 or 5 people realistically. I ate as much as I could but there was still at least a 6-8 oz portion left. I could manage it. I knawed one of the bones but that was it. I accepted an expresso but feared having one more bite of food...yes, think Mr. Creosote from Monty Python's Meaning of Life. We rolled out of the restaurant...more than sated and waited in the now cold wind for a bus that we thought would never come. We headed back down the hill into Florence content that we had really found the locals and enjoyed a village's pre-Christmas celebrations up in the Tuscan hills! No McDonalds for us!

Venezia

At long last...I am returning for a few post-script entries to the Harlaxton story. It seems amazing that it is nearly a month since I last wrote here and even looking at these pictures from Venice makes even this short trip to Italy seem to have happened lightyears ago. I apologize for the delay but as you can imagine, by the time I returned to England, the Christmas festivities were upon me and there was no time to get back to story-telling.

So...I pick up our tale from our last conversation beginning with a little drama. The coaches departed on schedule with only one unfortunate incident involving four very intoxicated students who were allowed to board the bus despite being explicitly told that no one would be allowed to do so if they even had the faintest whiffs of alcohol on their breath. One of these students was so out of it that he left his backpack holding his passport, cell phone, wallet, and who knows what else at Harlaxton. This all happened for reasons I will not discuss here but let me say that I am glad I didn't have to endure that coach trip to Heathrow with them. This delinquent's backpack went on our coach which left the manor at 3 am and he was instructed to meet us at the airport or else his pack would return to Harlaxton again. Imagine our surprise when he didn't turn up. As planned, the coach left with his stuff aboard. When he did show up later than he was told to...and now more sober and panicked...he begged us to do something but all that could be done was to call the coach driver who thankfully hadn't gotten far out of London again and have him turn around and bring the student's stuff back to Heathrow. I assume he eventually got his things back and so could leave the UK for home. From then on I had my sights set on my nine days in Italy and our first stop: Venice!

As I hope the opening picture communicates, Venice was one of the most beautiful places and December was clearly the time to be there. Although the weather can be quite rainy, we had a reasonable amount of sun and no rain. Given the time of year, we shared the city with the locals and relatively few tourists.

We got into town on Thursday (Dec. 10) afternoon, were checked into our hotel, and set off to explore. I spent much of my time wandering with Ian, the Harlaxton staff person who was "in charge" (he is in the picture with me here) and his daughter Michaela. We walked the circuitous streets of Venice...over bridges, down alleys, always following the yellow signs that directed one to the Rialto bridge, San Marco, or back to the train station. If you have not been to Venice, it is a small city but you can easily lose your sense of direction (one bridge over a canal looks like all the others) so seeing these signs always provided a sense of comfort that you were going the right way.

Now I was last in Venice 23 years ago on my post-college grand tour of Europe in 1986. I was with two women classmates of mine and we had all of about six hours in Venice...enough time to get on a boat, go down the Grand Canal to San Marco, and then wander the church before heading back up the canal to catch a train to Florence. That was in June. There were mobs of people and pigeons everywhere. Imagine how surprising it was to see the piazza empty! It was wonderful! Walking along in front of the beautiful doors to the church under the Campanila virtually alone in the late afternoon was just spectacular. We decided to go into the Doge's Palace, the old center of political power, to see the beautiful rooms with their grand murals. Once the sun began to set, the temperature dropped so we set our sights on dinner. Of course, after three months of Harlaxton, I was ready to dive in to the cuisine of Italy. We took it slow on the first night: collecting an assortment of things to have a bit of a picnic in the hotel. Lovely prociutto, olives, sun-dried tomatoes, cheeses, and crusty breads washed down with delicious wines from the Veneto (the region around Venice) made a perfect first meal. Of course we topped it off with gelato! Ah how I had forgotten how wonderful it can be. I chose scoops of 70% cocoa-dark chocolate and pistachio for my first round. A combination made in heaven!

Our first full day in Venice started early with a boat ride down the Grand Canal toward the island of Murano, known most as the place where Venice glass is made. There a shops and galleries all over the small island but the further away from the docks you go, the less touristy the shops become and the less expensive the glass gets as well. I only took one picture on Murano it is the one with the bell tower standing behind a blue star sculpture. The star is made entirely out of handblown glass. The shops were full of the most amazing glass pieces...from the sublime and intricate to the tacky and absurd. Everything could be had for a price though and most dealers were happy to haggle with you. I tried my hand at this in the shop where I purchased a small cobalt blue vase with a tracery of grapes and ivy handpainted in gold around the edge and was promptly told that there was no cost reduction in that shop...I at least tried!

We took the vaporetto (one of the water taxis) the long way back around the far edge of the islands to San Marco again. As you can see in the picture, there was just an amazing view of the gondolas in their blue covers that just made a gorgeous view out toward the other islands and San Giorgio Maggiore which is also the view in the last picture...taken just before sunset.

Venice was a wonderful city. In hindsight, I think one of the other things that made Venice special was the lack of automobile traffic. One either walked everywhere or took the vaporetto. Of course the food was also wonderful. The fresh thin-crust pizzas, the seafood dishes, and the regional wines were all stellar. It was a perfect beginning to life after Harlaxton.

Farewell to Hogworts...I mean Harlaxton

Well, the first of the three coaches has come and gone, carrying almost half of the Harlaxton students to their overnight stay at Heathrow before their Thursday departures for the U.S. I took a walk down the lane tonight just to listen to the sounds of the countryside one last time. That is what I will miss the most as I think I wrote last weekend. And so, this is the final installment my saga from Harlaxton Manor. It seems a lifetime ago that I was going to the Burghley Horse Trials and to Ely Cathedral...the Orkneys and Chatsworth House...beagling with the Radley College hounds and to the opening meet of the Belvoir Hunt. It has been a rich experience in so many ways. But then, this is England...what else would one expect?

I'm off in about five hours on a coach of my own. I'm also bound for Heathrow and an 8:45 am flight to Venice to begin the next nine days exploring Italy. I won't be reporting on that adventure until I get back to London on Friday next though. But stay tuned for more. The road goes ever on...Cheers.

Touring the kennels

On my last Sunday at Harlaxton, I was fortunate enough to get a tour of the Belvoir Hunt kennels and a chance to meet the hounds. Despite a torrential rain storm in the morning, the sky cleared and the sun was bright when one of the BH members came to fetch me from the manor.

This was really a special opportunity. Because the BH hunts four days in the week, when Sunday comes, it is truly a day off and no one wants to be around. We asked permission of the Master of the BH to ask the kennel huntsman (the man who cares for the hounds but doesn't hunt) if he might be willing to show me around. As it happened, one of the Whips was going to be there and willing to give the tour despite having work to do around the kennels.

So we entered along the private drive to Belvoir Castle, passing massive pheasants crossing to and fro across the lane. We finally approached the kennels. They were magnificient at 250 years old. Chris, one of the Whips, met us in the courtyard and cordially walked us in. The BH has 38 couple of hounds (so that's 76 individual hounds) at the moment though before the Hunting Ban went into effect in 2004, there were probably closer to 60 couple.

Here they were ready to greet me. They clearly knew I was a friend. The bitches were kept in their own portion of the kennels, as were the males, and the puppies. But they were all every bit as beautiful as these pictures show you. They were climbing over each other to get a sniff of me and then nudging me to reach in and pet them. But as you can see too, these are no small animals. They are built to run across the fields of Lincolnshire for hours at a time. It is also amazing to think that their bloodlines go back further than the kennels themselves. Every hound's pedigree is documented.

Here are a few more pictures of the inside of the kennels and of the hounds themselves.

One of the rooms in the kennels is called the "Duke's Room." Here, one of the old Dukes of Rutland would inspect each and every hounds. But the poor man had gout so he build a seat (you can see it in the second picture...it's the white bench) with a gate around it so that the hounds would be brought in to him, one at a time, but they couldn't jump on him. Then they were moved out and the next hound brought in. Now, the Duke's Room is a museum that was re-opened last spring, full of photos and memorabilia of the Belvoir Hunt, its hounds, and hunt staff. There are pictures of HRH Prince Charles riding with the Belvoir in the 70s and 80s (though he usually rides with the Beaufort) and others too. It is a splendid exhibit of Hunt history.

One of the last pictures I took was looking from the kennels up the hill to Belvoir Castle. It was a lovely view. A little closer to the castle is a field where the Duchess and her daughters keep their horses stabled and closer still is the Dowager Duchess' cottage. Sadly the Duke of Rutland is more interested in shooting than hunting so while the hounds are technically referred to as the Duke of Rutland's Hounds, it is in name only, much to the disappointment of the Hunt staff and members.

But there it is...the Belvoir Hunt and its hounds remains one of the oldest and most renowned of all the Hunts in Britain. It is also one of the last to maintain its historic kennels. May it always be so.

KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING! KEEP HUNTING!

Harlaxton Family Christmas

Father Christmas paid a call to Harlaxton Manor yesterday! As is tradition, the college puts on a holiday lunch for the staff and their extended families. It was a lovely day for them and especially for the children. Each of the 120 of them had a chance to sit on the knee of Father Christmas and pass on special requests for this year. As one might expect from such a generous person as Father Christmas, each child received a special early gift from him. Let's just hope they didn't notice that FC had an American accent, being our own UE engineering professor John Parr under all that regalia.

Later that afternoon, it was time for a replay, but this time for the students, their "meet-a-family" hosts, and the faculty. The night began with a reception complete with punch and Christmas crackers so the students were introduced to the fine tradition of wearing paper crowns, telling awful jokes, and playing with tiny toys. They all got into it after the first waves of disbelief went away.

Dinner followed and for the first time I actually ate in the State Dining Room where I taught all semester. The food was good...mostly turkey, ham, and roast beef, shrimp, a cheese board, and of course lots of sweets, including overly sugared mince tarts. After dinner, we call gathered back in the great hall to enjoy the roaring fire and some carol singing before a small group actually headed out to sing carols in the village. As it had turned into a rather bleak mid-winter evening with rain coming down, I decided to prop myself by the fire and enjoy some port with the other faculty that stayed behind as well.

I include a couple of pictures of my students once again. All having a grand time in the lull before final examinations when all still seems right with the world.

Last walk to Denton

The sun was so beautiful today, I thought I would make my last pilgrimage to the Denton reservoir since I would not have another chance before I leave for Italy. As you can see the early afternoon sun was already casting long shadows across the lane down from the manor. It was a gorgeous day to be out and about wandering.

The footpath signs kept beckoning me onward. Through the horse pastures, across the fields now sown with winter wheat, all the way to the reservoir where the swans, ducks, and geese were all enjoying the quiet of the day. It has been fairly damp here so there were plenty of puddles and mud to muck through but that is half the fun. You can see on the third picture a pale green sheen to the fence posts. The photo doesn't do them justice. To look at them and the trees around and see the moss casting off an almost iridescent light. It was an amazing sight to see.

The bridge crosses a small creek that on the way back across the fields to Harlaxton village. It is all just so picturesque. I'm afraid this is the kind of thing that I will miss most about leaving...just walking out one's door and being able to wander like this in solitude, only crossing paths with the occasional person walking their dog. I suppose it is not entirely accurate to leave you with the idea that all was silence. The guns were busy with the pheasants in the distance. I found out that in addition to paying the fee to attend a shoot and the cost of the guns themselves and the proper shooting tweeds, a shooter pays L40 per bird shot...at least on the Belvoir Castle estate. At 100 birds being average for a days shoot...do the math!

I took the last photo for its dramatic qualities. It is actually just next to the footbridge in the photo above. I thought you might enjoy seeing it too.

Beginning of the end

Just as the manor has been dressed for Christmas, it is nearing the conclusion of our Harlaxton experience. To mark the occassion of the last day of classes, a Valedictory Convocation and dinner were held to give students a chance to reflect and celebrate.

The Convocation took place at the Harlaxton village church, the Church of St. Mary and St. Peter. It was a bit of a mixture of a service of remembrance and graduation. The Prinicpal gave a farewell address to the students, the student choir sang several songs, the Vice Principal and Dean of Students handed out certificates of recognition and Harlaxton pins to each student, and near the end, yours truly was asked to read two poems, "The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke and "Jerusalem" by William Blake (I can hear you already humming the tune as we speak). It was a very nice service on a cold, dark night.

We returned to the manor for a reception, followed by a formal dinner. Once again, the students and faculty were in their smartest clothes and everyone certainly enjoyed themselves. The choir performed on last time, a rendition of "Amazing Grace" (which, despite their excellent performance, as some of you might guess, made me do everything in my power to keep from screaming...no no...not this bloody song again!). Ah well...sipping just a little more wine and one hardly noticed it!

Dr. Edward Bujak took the podium to give out several award for student achievement. And before the evening was done, all the faculty were presented individually to receive boisterous applause from the assembly which was gratifying. Maureen, my student from Marian, is here with two of her classmates, Rebecca and Ashleigh, enjoying the final event of the term.

I'll conclude with Rubert Brooke, though despite it being a reflection on the many British soldiers buried in Flanders in the Great War, it is an interesting farewell:

If I should die, think only this of me:

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England. There shall be

In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;

A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,

Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,

A body of England's, breathing English air,

Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.

And think, this heart, all evil shed away,

A pulse in the eternal mind, no less

Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;

Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;

And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,

In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.