Yes the ferries go to Zadar from Ancona. No they don't run on Sunday. Ancona, while pretty from the sea, is a fairly uninspiring port town.
'Let's get on a train,' said OT. 'We'll go to Florence.'
An excellent plan – but the next train was leaving for Bologna. 'Bologna,' we cried, consulting our guide books... 'the culinary capital of Italy...'. We got on the train.
Bologna is not a tourist mecca – it doesn't have the artistic reputation and glorious architecture of Florence or Venice, the dirty edge of Naples, the high-fashion glam of Milan, the southern sensuality of Sicily, and it's not Rome. But. We are charmed.
The centre of town leads out from Piazza Maggiore. The buildings are warm red, the streets lined on either side with portico'd walkways. We arrived on Sunday evening, around 5:30. In the dusk, families, groups of young men, couples holding hands were meandering up and down Via Dell' Independenza. The passeggiata – the Italian tradition of taking a walk before dinner - happening right before our barbarian colonial eyes.
We found a central hotel with large clean rooms, viewed the famous and slightly lewd Neptune Fountain, ate (of which more in a subsequent post, no doubt), and noted the wide and enticing variety of shops selling gloriously, stupidly, beautiful items of physical covering and adornment.
Today was devoted to shopping.
[Note: if you are feeling at all puritan, or would prefer to think of me as a serious-minded person, stop reading now. Perhaps a cold shower would be nice instead?]
Shopping, to be perfectly pleasurable, requires a certain set of conditions, enough time and the right mindset.
The correct external conditions:
A match between your budget and your habitat.
It is no fun shopping when either:
* even if you see the one most desireable item of the day, it will cost so much that your card will be declined, or your financial stability for the next six months will be seriously endangered; or
* everything is 'cheap' (whatever your standard of cheap is). This just encourages spur of the moment, less than perfect purchasing. And there is little challenge, and therefore little triumph in buying an average item at an average price. A truly memorable shopping experience stretches and reshapes your budget and your conception of yourself.
Cool, overcast weather.
Too much heat and sun lead to dehydration, frustration and sunburn. You do not want to be constantly flipping your sunglasses up to peer more closely into a window, or having your judgement of items of clothing and their effect on you marred by slightly sweaty hair that's been flattened by a sun hat.
Shops with personality.
Ideally, a shopping district will have a mix of small but perfectly curated shops, each offering a harmonic or counterpoint to the related shops around them, and one or two leviathans, a Harrods that covers all bases, or large shop in which cosmetics, or hosiery, or sweetmeats stretch away from you and reflect back in the distant back mirrors. A great shopping experience never involves a mall.
Solo time
A shopper's pace is personal.
Preparing yourself:
Comfortable, slip on shoes.
Laces, or boots that catch the heel, destroy the ease and pleasure of changing rooms.
A favorite outfit.
This is very important. Like going to the supermarket when you are hungry, shopping for trifles when feeling ugly leads to over-purchasing. A good outfit provides the baseline – do I look better in this as yet un-bought X than I did when I walked into the shop?
A sense of calm.
Shopping is meditative and imaginative. Is this texture deliciously soft, or verging on slimy? Which of these colours steps forward from the shelves of folded jerseys? Will I ever want to cook a whole chicken in this dish, and if so, will the lid be deep enough?
Considered, and real, but not urgent, desires.
A list in your head of the people you love and will wish to give gifts to, now or in the future. A few special items of clothing, something beautiful to sit in a particular corner.
The over-riding rule: thou shalt listen to the item that speaks to you, and thou shalt pass over the item that is silent.
List of items that spoke to me, I bought and have never regretted:
Black knitted wrap, Punakiki
Lance, Kapiti (Peter Ireland)
Small round painting (Ange Lane)
Silver leaf earrings, Nelson
Black Ricochet jacket, Auckland
Trestle table, Finn Robson-Marsden, Wellington
Red coral and brass ring, Invercargill
Tank girl boots, London
Feather duvet, Briscoes
Oak escritoire, Taranaki Street Salvation Army
Silk velvet jacket with cowl, Bologna
List of items that I should never have abandoned:
Peach and green jug with reversed handle, Otaki
Turquoise liquorish allsort ring, Tinakori Rd
List of items purchased with an uneasy heart, that have brought nothing but regret:
Four white soup bowls with lids, Wanganui Op Shop
Several items of 'good work clothing', Auckland, prior to starting my first 'grown up' job
Hydraulically adjustable desk, Wellington
Several esoteric and unreadable texts of post-modern literary criticism, sale bin, Victoria University Bookshop.
Dear readers, it was a wonderful shopping day in Bologna today.
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