Itinerant Strings: Driving to Rome via Spoleto

From Cortina, the roads are very good. We enjoyed an hour or two of mountain scenery before we hit the foothills, and then began to cross the valleys of the large Po River Delta . With many miles to cover, we used the Autostrada a fair bit. It’s a system of fast two and three lane toll roads, and by the time we reached Rome I guess we had spent around 25 Euros ($40). The speed limit is 130 km/hr . We stuck to the right or middle lane and pottered along at about 110. Every now and then the speed crept up to 125 and even then the odd Alpha Romeo or Mercedes would streak by as if we were standing still. Italian roads don’t hug the contours of the land like ours do. If there’s a mountain, they tunnel through it. If there’s a valley, they bridge over it. And all towns are bypassed. Rest areas are every 50k or so, and always include ‘toilette’, gas stations, fast food and a self service resurant of some kind. In these, you go to the cashier and pay your bill, then you go to the counter and hand them the rceipt and the server fills your order.

Scenery is wonderful, including vast fields of sunflowers, all facing the sun, and in Tuscany and Umbria every hillside town is topped with a guard tower and usually a small walled castle.

The drive took most of the day. We made a detour which added an hour or two to our day but we wanted to see Spoleto where Merrie had spent a couple of summers playing in the orchestras of the
“Festival of Two Worlds”, initiated by composer Gian Carlo Menotti. The festivals run annually in both the old (Spoleto, Umbria) and new (Charleston, South Carolina) worlds. We looked around the beautiful town for a half hour and enjoyed a nice dinner in a little restaurant where the owner/hostess made up a few plates of what she had on hand. Delicious.

The Castle (Menotti's home) and church bell tower from the streets of Spoleto

Giant poster for the Spoleto Festival

By the time we reached the Periferico, the 80 km ring road that surrounds the greater Rome area, it was getting dark. Luckily the road on which our hotel lay was a major one and showed up on the exit signs. Also, the traffic at that time of day was light.

These 'Umbrella' pines are everywhere in Rome - an important source of shade.

The next morning we set off to find the studio of Claude Lebet, a well known (in Italy) violin maker. The plan was to rent instruments for the next two weeks. A very different traffic scene - scooter and motorcycles continually zooming by on both sides of us between the lanes of moving traffic. If you left a car length of space ahead, there would instantly appear three scooters abreast in front of your bumper. I quickly learned that there seemed to be a rhythm to the apparent chaos: if you just keep a steady speed and don’t swerve or react to the swirling killer bees, you become a constant to them and they take care of all the swerving and reacting among themselves. Still, it’s amazing that the sides of streets aren’t littered with road kill (drivers) and yard sales (motorcycle parts). Important rule: Don’t hesitate.

Then the parking. The saying is that Romans don’t park their cars, they abandon them. Along some blocks, there were more double parked than single parked vehicles. Suddenly (actually after half an hour) we came upon an empty space. OK, three quarters of our car was covering the sidewalk, but that’s how everybody else was parked so we (I) figured we’d be all right for a half hour.

Thanks to the kindness of Dave in Denmark and Dr. Allan deCaen in Edmonton (a former student and an excellent violist!) we became aware of a fine violin shop near the Roman center, "Atelier (studio) Claude Lebet". What a pleasure it was to enter the workshop of a modern day master luthier. Rather than student instruments, which we were expecting, Rudolfo (number two man) offered us a violin and viola made by maestro Lebet himself. We then learned that they could not be picked up until the next day. And so, disappointed, we headed off to find our car not towed or ticketed and returned it to the rental agency which had an outlet two blocks from our hotel. (more horseshoes) In Europe, it’s fairly common to rent a car in one location and drop it off in another with no drop-off charge. It may have helped that we drove from Trieste (lower demand) to Rome (higher demand).

Our friends from the Port Angeles symphony were due to arrive that afternoon, so Susan went to the hair salon and I cooled off in the room. That evening, we all joined up for the first official group activity, a welcome dinner in a restaurant with a very nice view and bottomless wine bottles included.