A Report, More Or Less, On What We’re Up To Here

Tel Aviv and Yafo by night — My wife took this photo from our balcony in Tel Aviv the other night. We could watch multiple games of beach volleyball — some of the players were extremely good — and you can see the promontory of Jaffa (or Joppa) jutting out into the Mediterranean in the distance, with St. Peter’s Church (built near the traditional site of Peter’s vision of the clean and unclean beasts) brightly lit-up out near the tip of the promontory. The book of Jonah says that that Old Testament prophet set sail from the ancient port of Joppa.

After we bade farewell to our Israel tour group, my wife and I spent an extra night in Tel Aviv. We intended to do some sightseeing there — I’ve really never poked around Tel Aviv very much, and it has some very good museums — but . . . well, we relaxed, instead. For one thing, we had to fly out the next afternoon, and we had a really nice room with a great view.

Then we flew to Europe (with some great aerial views of the Alps, Lake Geneva, the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, the Champs-Élysées, La Défense, and the Duomo of Florence along the way), and now we’re in Italy.

Why are we in Italy? Because we have something to do in North Carolina in a few days, and we simply didn’t feel like flying back all the way to Utah and then having to turn around almost immediately for the eastern seaboard of the United States. So we’re in something of a holding pattern here.

Pretty miserable. Tough duty.

We’ve been exploring the beautiful Tuscan countryside. It’s not spectacular in the manner of my beloved Alps, but it’s beautiful in every direction, for many miles.

We spent today in Siena. Neither of us had ever been there before. (We’re opting out of Florence and probably Pisa on this trip, because they’re already familiar.)

Herewith, three photographs of the Cathedral of Siena:

Sienna's Duomo — The magnificent Cattedrale di Siena (Wikimedia Commons)

Interior of the Duomo at Siena — The interior of the Cathedral of Siena is remarkable and unique, and this photo (from Wikimedia CC) doesn’t begin to do it justice. I was particularly taken with the pavement of the Cathedral floor, which features large images of such figures as Socrates, Hermes Trismegistus, and various pagan sibyls (prophetesses or oracles)

Interior of the baptistry in Siena — The baptistry of Siena’s cathedral features sculptures by Donatello and Ghiberti
(Wikimedia Commons)

I’m not mentioning our visit to the church of San Domenico, where I was privileged to see an actual finger of St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), as well as the reliquary containing her head, nor our lunch at the city’s main “square,” Il Campo. A very worthwhile visit.

Posted from Terricciola, Italy

A report, more or less, on what we’re up to here