Apologizes extended for bloglessness as Carmen's trip to Milan was undertaken sans comp. A fast continuation of the Tour of La Pietra that deserves a small place in the blogosphere follows:1. Harold Actin, who left the priceless estate, the largest parcel of land in Florence, 57 astounding acres, 5 villas, a garden recognized as a National Treasure, home to a Vasari and a Donatello among thousands of sculptures, carvings, frescos, and seven libraries of 19th and 20th century literature, and that's not even scratching the surface of the majesty, priceless in every non-Mastercard-commercial sense of the word, to NYU didn't even go to NYU.
1(a). If that was confusing the previous owner of La Pietra went to Oxford but left the estate to NYU because he thought NYU would honor the tradition of the place more, being a monolithic, consumptive scholastic monster with endless capital and vaguely imperialist policies.
2. Over the years, nearly all of the royal family of England has vacationed at La Pietra. There is a touching pic of Princess Di and gnarly Charles in the gardens.
3. The libraries contain a first-edition copy of James Joyce's Ulysses, a signed first-edition of D.H. Lawerence's Lady Chatterly's Lover, and huge, Carmen imagines signed collection of Graham Greene books, as he was one of Harold Actin's closest friends.
4. In Europe, black people aren't all pissy about all the wrongs of slavery their distant and most-likely forgotten relatives suffered, and La Pietra has little statuettes of all the negroid, Moor servants. The tour guide assured everyone that no one cares, really.
5. The Villa is a straight museum, and one cannot enter with first wrapping his/her shoes with papery, blue ER booties.
6. La Pietra's three story, winding staircased rotunda has a fountain in the middle with Koi fish in it. This only becomes apparent around halfway up the marble staircase and is greeted with a nice round of ooo, would you look at thats.
7. The guards feed the fish.
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