In which Sid and Doris see all the mosaics in Ravenna and go to the seaside.
It takes a few minutes to free Hermann from his green carpet and then it is downhill from our eyrie. In the category of Ingenious do see this room empty switchboard which uses a jack plug on the room key ring to de-activate the room’s electrics. It dates from about 1967.
Also Doris might show you one more picture from Cortona across the plain.
However, we are soon off the plain and up into the hills. This is a big road for bikers. As the road is down to single track because of land slips and falling rocks we find some long waits at traffic lights, we motion the bikers past when we can.
Which gives us more time to look thoughtfully at the rather ripply armco, and muse on the person who had the bright idea that you could build armco from wood because it doesn’t sustain so much damage when people crash into it.
Before we move on we must show you conveyance of the day: a bosom carousel, how jolly (and yes, it was going round).
Today is mostly about going to see the mosaics dating back to the fifth century, a time when Brits were still running around in woad when they could get it and the Americans hadn’t got around to the wheel. The ticket office arranged us a tour that would get us through all the mosaics with minutes to spare as we walked between them or snatched a few minutes for gellati.
The octagonal basilica is one of the most lovely buildings I have been in. Doris’s pictures are good. There is probably something out there in Netflix land with a knowledgeable cove explaining it all.
[The Covid-driven timing rules give us a set amount of time in each building – a generous amount of time and not policed, it means there is loads of space and plenty of opportunity to really get up close and spend time just enjoying looking. I’ll put a separate post about the mosaics so you can enjoy the pictures – D.]
In the Basilica of Sant Appolinara we hear a private tour guide explaining about a schism which tore the Christian world apart in the 300s. It was all about the equality or non-equality of the Trinity, I can offer you a few minutes to read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arianism but you may probably emerge none the wider. Anyway, in a rewriting or more accurately remosaicing of history, the losing group were removed from some of the mosaics and replaced by tasteful curtains. The curtains team didn’t seem to be 100% committed to their task so you can see several hands left over where they were inconveniently in front of the pillars.
We are momentarily diverted by an explanation of the earliest ever when-will-Easter-be-next-year calendar, accompanied, importantly, by an explanation of whose-stupid-idea-was-it-to-keep-moving-Easter. Ingenious, but not kind.
In one of the side chapels of our last visit not in mosaic was an excellent war memorial, showing the sadness of the brothers and sisters, the sadness of parents, the sadness of the grandparents.
From the magnificence of the fifth century mosaics and the twentieth century sadness we are transported, because it has the only hotel room for twenty kilometres, to the Italian Industrial Seaside.
Having had enough of typical Italian food it is time for typical Mexican and for Sid to make the Corona joke. Yes that joke. Sid is probably the last uncle in the world to make it. Sorry.
Doris orders a “Goose IPA” beer and is charmed to have it relayed to the bartender as a “Goozippa”.