I'm off to Ravenna, in my mind a fabled place that in the thirty years of travelling to Italy, I never went to. It's famous for it's mosaics. I arrive on the outskirts of a town that is smaller than I thought it would be. It's grey and miserable and as usual, I panic slightly but the 1600's bed and breakfast is welcoming and shabby but chic.
My room is lovely but for some reason I feel claustrophic, maybe because the only window of the room is high up and I'd have to get on a chair to see out. I decide to brave the sombre grey afternoon and head for the churches. I buy a ticket for all five famous sites. The first is a small Mausoleum di Galla Placidia and it is truly exquisite and dates back to 500 AD. The mosaics are vibrant, glowing, the windows higher up are made of sheets of alabaster in shades of topaz and gold. After that I go to a church where the water is seeping beneath and into the lower rooms. It's eerily beautiful.
The Basilica di San Vitale was built in the 6th century and is mind blowing. It's the only known surviving Christian Byzantine mosaics outside of Constantinople. The mosaics are the colours of gemstones - malachite, lapis lazuli, rub, topaz, gold.
I have an amazing lunch in a cafe, pumpkin mousse served in a froth of pecorino sauce with a parmesan chip and a twist of crunchy prosciutto and after discovering more mosaic churches, I end up walking to try and find a restaurant as it's Friday and everything is booked out. I finally find a noisy place where a band is rehearsing Queen songs in the back room, probably getting ready for a celebration of some sort. I have rabbit with plump green olives and rosemary, crunchy yellow potatoes and a side dish of tiny sweet onions glazed with aged balsamic vinegar as the band launches into I Want to Break Free.
I want to break free of my room, maybe there's a ghost from the 1600's or that high up window is really freaking me out. I don't sleep well and wander down for breakfast. I'm not in the best mood and hoping the coffee will help and whilst I'm waiting an older man starts talking to me (it turns out he's the same age as me). I'm not the best morning person but we start to chat and I find out he's from California and he's on a spiritual journey and on his way to meditate in Assisi. I'm intrigued as a friend of mine meditated in a cave a la Saint Francis of Assisi style. He asks if I'd like to have dinner at a place he discovered. I say yes, which is not my usual style and then I panic, wondering if I can be bothered chatting with someone when I've discovered the easiness of solitude. But I tell myself it could be good for me.
I go off to visit the rest of the mosaic wonders. I find one exhibition of Roman mosaics in a repurposed church. There's an intricate mosaic of a fish head and the remains of a feast that is made out of the tiniest of tiles and then there's a mosaic of a man and an unicorn, the expression of surprise on the unicorn's face makes my day but this is from the medieval times and it is like a child's work compared to the Roman mosaic. What happened? The Dark Ages really were dark, in all aspects.
Dinner with the Californian is interesting. We share a pistachio crepe stuffed with local farm cheese, sticky with balsamic vinegar; a pumpkin risotto with scallops. He has a friend who runs a school in India. He supports a child there and travels there regularly. She was a successful architect in New York and had a seachange and set up the school in India. Both of them have found their purpose. I am on this voyage I realise to find mine.
He's retired and has the time to search for spiritual peace, the need of which arose when he was confronted with his mortality and realised that he was more than halfway through his life. I'm feeling the same, ever since I had my back surgery. A wake up call but have to make my way through the mud of depression first, sifting through anxiety , moulding it like clay into a new form. A cave in Assisi is looking good at this point.
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