Wednesday and Thursday in Mantova

I arrived here on Tuesday, very tired and decided Wednesday was to be a ‘day off’ . The historic centre of Mantova is an interconnected maze of little streets going at different angles, linking a whole series of different size piazzas – impossible on Tuesday to get my head around. On Wednesday I caught up with some emails and posts. This hotel has a wireless network, but the signal is not strong enough on the third floor, like the hotel in Urbino, so I sat in the tiny lobby for part of the day. Several times I ventured out for food or a drink or for more stamps – yes, I’ve actually posted a few postcards. On one occasion I was looking for something for dinner, did not want yet another piece of pizza, nor did I have the energy required to go into a fancy place and found an interesting looking fish shop. They had a range of salads so I asked for a small container of this prawn and calamari stuff - €9.20 – oops. ( a piece of pizza costs between about €1 and €2.50)
I did sit down at a little bar around the corner run by a polite and helpful young man named Daniele and have a spritz and watched the world go past for half an hour or so. Maybe a spritz is well known to some of you, but I am not in the habit of going into bars in Aust for an aperitiv – so I had no clue. I had just watched people the night before ( while I drank my glass of white wine) and many people were drinking this spritz. It is part aperol, part white wine and part soda. Very nice.

The down side of living in a hotel right in the centre is the noise. People sitting around drinking at all hours of the night in little streets – the noise has nowhere to go but up. This morning was different – it was market day and the clang of metal awning posts on cobbled pavements very early in the morning was quite loud! Another noise I have noticed each morning while I have been in Italy is the early morning garbage collection. On many street corners there seem to be communal industrial sized garbage bins. I have seen housewives and office people and café people putting garbage into the same bins. Anyway, the truck seems to come around each morning between about 5 and 6 am.

This morning I went for a 11/2 hour cruise on what is called a lake but is really a small bit of dammed river. The water is a putrid shade of green with lots of stuff growing on it. I had difficulty understanding the commentary, but at 1 point I was sure she was describing all the delicious fish that can be caught in the lake. There were a few locals and a large bus load of elderly Italian tourists and a few stray people like me– about 40 in all – all sitting outside from 11.30. Apart from another ‘stray’ lady of Asian appearance, 2 old men, and 2 local young men , I was the only person wearing a hat. Most of the women had to have been in their late 60’s and most stripped down to their coloured singlet tops. It was very hot.

Earlier in the day I had negotiated the tricky business of buying some fruit at the supermarket ( I could find no fruit stalls at the markets) . You get a glove ( nobody else’s germs on my fruit thank you) , choose your fruit ( excessive poking and prodding seem allowed) , take note of the number attached to the description, go to a central place and weigh the fruit, press the number and attach the sticker which gets printed to the bag. I bought 3 apples advertised as being on special from 13th to 20th ( Today is the 13th) . When the sticker got printed it was a higher price. I found a person and asked why - Dopo , dopo ( after, after) she kept saying in a loud voice ( I should find out the Italian for ‘I’m not deaf’) After what I thought – ah well!

Mantova’s most powerful family , the Gonzagas’ ruled from about 1328 to the early 18th century. They had lots of buildings built and paintings painted. The main building that Mantova is known for is the Palazzo Ducale ( on tomorrow’s list) . Sometime in the 1400’s Frederico Gonzaga had a place, the Palazzo Te, built as a retreat from palace life and to entertain his mistress, a 20 min walk away from his wife in the palace. I went there this afternoon. It’s huge, with lots of rooms with all sorts of frescoes, paintings, etc. Apart from entertaining his mistress, he was interested in horses and astrology. The decorations reflect these interests!
I walked a very long way home past assorted other buildings on the tourist list of things to see. I did pass a church which was apparently the first Renaissance church built on a central Greek cross plan (whatever that might be) . Nobody seemed to like it and some noteworthy person said he was ‘ unsure whether it was meant to be a church, synagogue or mosque’. I smiled on reading that and would have liked to have been able to go in. Needless to say it was deconsecrated long ago.