Sunday, May 28, 2017 - Working the System

To lessen the cost of seeing museums, you can buy a "Firenze Card".  This card gets you into nearly every museum in Florence (about 72) for free, and it lets you bypass all the lines and jump straight in the doors.  This is great!!  There is a catch, however.  The card lasts 72 hours, after which it becomes null and void and you must wait in line to buy tickets like the rest of the mere mortals.  We hummed and hawed for a few hours about whether we should buy the card. Would we really go to enough museums and churches to make it pay? If we didn't, was it worth it anyway to skip the lines? How many sites would we visit? Most of the museums run between $8 and $16 bucks.  We would have to visit about 8-10 museums to make it pay.  Would we do this, especially in the 72 hours allotted? This is a lot of museums in just three days. Could our brains handle the input?

If you have been following this blog (bless you!) you can see that we exceeded the 8 to 10 museums, eclipsing 20 in our three days. But, we found a way to extend our site seeing for free to a fourth day by working the system.  To visit the Duomo, climb the Duomo dome, get into the Baptistry and visit the Duomo Museum, you must show your Firenze Card at their ticket booth, and then they give you a paper ticket that is good at all four sites. To climb the dome, you have to get a reservation.  We got ours for Sunday, the day after our cards went extinct, but because we had the paper ticket, we were good to go.  Pretty smart, huh?  Also, on Thursday morning, we held back until entering the first museum until 8:35 am, because we knew the Pitti Palace opened at 8:15 am Sunday morning, 71 hours and 40 minutes into our 72 hours. By arriving at 8:15 am at the Pitti Palace and showing our cards, we got paper tickets to the Pitti Palace ($16) and the Boboli Gardens ($10) and then visited them after our 72 hours were up. Pretty good planning, don't you think?  So, Sunday, the day after our Firenze Cards expired, we visited the Pitti Palace, The Boboli Gardens and climbed to the top of the Duomo Dome, all after our cards expired.  We were feeling pretty smug. We totaled up all the sites we visited and found we had racked up about $132 each on entrance fees, IF we had to pay for them individually. The Firenze Card? It cost us $72 each. It helps that both of us were math teachers.

This brings up a question. Did scurrying to all those museums add up to a meaningful experience, or was it just a contest to see how much money we could save? Truthfully, we knew we were visiting a lot of sites, but we were on our Easter egg hunt, seeking out art pieces we wanted to see. It just happens they are scattered in various museums and churches all over Florence. The Firenze Card was a perfect tool for us in our art quest.

Today, we started at the Pitti Palace at 8:15 am and followed the Rick Steves written tour in his book as it led us to the most important works in the museum.  Even staying to his brief tour, two hours later our heads were ready to explode from seeing Raphaels, Ghirlandaio's, Titians and other famous paintings papering the walls in this precursor to the Versailles palace.

Two hours and we were saturated. You know it is bad when you walk into a room full of exquisite paintings and you just don't care enough to raise your eyes to see them. But, sensory overload can knock the stuffing out of even the most avid art lover.

We turned our attention to the Boboli Gardens and the chance to walk outside and clear our heads.  Unlike the Versailles gardens, these are on a steep hillside, so the geometric patterns so well sculpted there are absent here. Still we walked to the top of the hill and viewed the palace and Florence below, then worked our way down the east side to the exit.  Once on the street, we debated whether to go to an early lunch (10:45 am) or go back to the B&B and wait for our Dome climb. Arriving at the restaurant, we found they didn't open until noon. This made our decision for us, and we wandered back across town to our B&B to eat bread, cheese and apples for lunch while waiting for our scheduled 1:30 pm climb of the Duomo dome.

We left for the dome about 12:45 pm, thinking we might be able to get in the line to see the inside of the church before we climbed the dome.  As we approached the church we saw line to get into the Duomo stretched down the side of the cathedral. We decided we would visit it later when the line diminished. 

We killed a few minutes shopping nearby, then got in line for our dome climb. We were about 20 people back from the front. Right at 1:30 pm our line started to move and we entered the Duomo through a side door. From our vantage point we could see the entire inside of the church. We didn't need to go In the front door to see the inside. After passing through a turnstile triggered to let us through by our ticket, we started climbing spiraling steps in a square vertical tube, 20 steps getting us around once. Soon we were on the narrow balcony above the alter with the dome hovering above. Now the stairs were tight circular spiral staircases. The last sequence was a combination of spirals and then climbing between the two domes (Brunelleschi built an inner and outer dome) on slanting stairs until we reached the top. One section of the dome has only one set of stairs, so people going up and people going down meet on very narrow stairs. One must squeeze against the walls to let the other pass. This slowed our ascent, which was fine by us. It gave us a chance to inspect the construction of this dome of solid rock and to rest. 

Of course, the view from the top is spectacular. We spent half an hour looking over the city. We had met a young couple from Scotland in line at the bottom with a 6 year old girl and a nine year old boy, both as cute as could be. We had a lot of fun talking about roof tops and Mary Poppins so when we saw them again on top Sally did a little "Step in Time" dance with them amongst the crowds on top. Both decided they would prefer Sally as their teacher to the ones they currently had. 

We timed our decent off the dome to hopefully miss the next wave of people coming up. They left the bottom at 2:00 pm. We figured15-20 minutes for them to get to the top. We started down at 2:25 pm, before the 2:30 pm group started up. We nearly had the stairs to ourselves. We only had to stop once to let people pass. 

Once on the ground, we headed out for groceries and a little shopping, then returned home for a bit before heading out for dinner. 

We stilled back to the Santa Sisto Piazza and found the restaurant we had scoped out the night before, the one that had plates of mussels. It was about 6:00 pm on this warm evening, a little early for the dinner crowd.  We were given a table outside on the edge of the piazza. The table next to us had a gigantic plate, 18" in diameter piled with mussels, clams, baby octopus and shrimp. The German couple were groaning under the weight of this "appetizer" while the meals the order to go with it sat getting cold.  That appetizer was to be our dinner. 

For the next two hours we wadded through our own mountain of shellfish while talking with the German couple at the table to our right and the Australian couple to our left, tackling their own shellfish mountain, which they ordered after seeing ours. 

It was dark by the time we wandered back across town to our room. A great last night in Florence. 

Saturday, May 27, 2017 - Make the Most of It

Today we hoped to piece together a few places we had not hit yet, picking up some art we wanted to see, but most nearly all the sites did not open until 10:00, unlike weekdays when they open at 8:15 am. We like the time between 7:30 am and 10:30 am when the air is cool and the crowds have not amassed yet. We figure we can see more between 8:15 am and noon, than we can in the afternoon when the crush of people makes everything happen a little bit slower.

Sally wanted to visit the Mercato, a Pike Place style fruit, vegetable and meat market about 3 blocks from our B&B. It was open at 7:00 am, so we headed there first. We wandered through the street vendors setting up their booths for the day. These hard working souls wheel their mobile stores in from wherever they store them at night, open up the canopies and take hundreds of leather purses, belts, wallets and jackets out of the built in drawers and artfully hang them to catch the passing tourist's eye. They line both sides of the street for blocks, forming a gauntlet one must walk down when going from one spot in the city to another. 

Sally had described the market as "open air" so I was navigating towards what I thought was a piazza with vendors, much like Campo di Fiori in Rome.  I was confused when I found a big building where there should have been a piazza, but we quickly realized the building housed the market. We squeezed between two of the vendors setting up and climbed the stairs to enter the indoor open market. Inside, we found aisles and aisles of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and meats, whole chickens and sides of beef.  We cruised the aisles admiring the artful displays.  I bought an apple to munch on. We exited the opposite side of the building we entered, then headed for the Bapistry on the west end of the Duomo.  It was open at 8:15 am this morning, and we wanted to get a look inside this octagonal building.

Our tickets we had secured yesterday using or "Firenze Cards" got us through the turnstyle at the north doors, the original Ghiberti creations, and into the building. Two words would describe it, ornate and filthy.  The octagonal ceiling was a beautiful mosaic telling the Christian stories and the elements of a church there, but the walls and everything inside had a layer of dirt that even I, one who usually can't see dirt, noticed. I don't want to present it as a uninviting space, it just was noticeable that the walls had not been cleaned for a few hundred years and the soot from a couple million candles was clinging to the white and green marble walls.

We only stayed a few minutes, then exited and headed for the Branacci Chapel to see the frescoes of Masaccio and Masolino. The church didn't open the Branacci Chapel on the side until 10:00 am, so we had about an hour to walk south across the Arno and find the church.  We stopped for an apple pastry in a shop along the way. We arrived at the church a few minutes after nine having enjoyed the walk down the usually crowded streets that were quiet this Saturday morning. While waiting for the chapel to open we entered the church nave and quietly strolled its length. Except for a priest seated at a table next to altar up front, we were the only ones there.

I went out to sit outside the entrance door to the chapel on the right side of the church, in the morning sun.  Sally stayed inside to avoid the heat.  There was an Italian man of about 50 sitting on the steps outside the chapel entrance door.  The two of us made up the line to get inside. Over the next 20 minutes I witnessed a family reunion of sorts. A woman showed up with her two kids and the man greeted them with kisses and much fanfare, discussing something in Italian.  I heard "domani" and "importante " a number of times, so I figured something big was happening in their lives tomorrow. I watched this scene repeat itself with 3 more moms with kids, some including dad as I waited for the doors to open at 10:00am. Sally joined me about 9:55 am and together we entered the chapel when the doors opened right on time.

This was one of those instances where the Italian Renaissance Art class we took made the difference between staring at three walls of paintings that had no meaning to understanding the significance of their history. In short, Masolino was the master, Masaccio the apprentice. Perspective in painting was just being discovered and in this case the apprentice was better at it than the "master". Masolino was given the commission to do the paintings and needed help finishing them on time and asked Masaccio to help. They each took panels of the biblical scenes to paint, and as the work progresses it turned out the apprentice had a better handle on perspective than the master.  The panels are a lesson in the emergence of 3D perspective in painting. Masaccio was friends with Brunelleschi and Donatello and they helped him learn the techniques to create 3D scenes. It was amazing to see. Each painting, as it was created over time, became better at representing a realistic 3D world.  One panel was painted by Filipino Lippi as well.

We finished up at the Branacci Chapel a little after 11:00 am and headed for the Church of Santa Maria Novella, just a block or two from our B&B and right behind the train station. We knew there was some art inside, but until we began touring it, we did not realize the extent of it.  Here was another Masaccio 3D fresco, "The Trinity" expertly rendered on the wall of the nave, a Giotto painting of the Crucifixion, Ghirlandaio frescos of Mary and John the Baptisit, Filippino Lippi, Brunelleschi, Orcagna Brothers and Vasari.  It took as an hour and a half to visit them all in this massive church.

It was now 1:00 pm and lunch was on our minds. We enjoy the Kabab sandwiches, usually splitting one. It makes for a cheap meal, about 2 euro each and we get some protein from the chicken. We walked past one on our way to another one I was navigating to using Google Maps. We are finding restaurant owners in Florence frown on splitting a meal. Universally they have given us the stink eye when we order "uno per due". 

We wandered back to the B&B, only a block away, and rested for a few minutes before walking over to the Duomo to see it from the inside. Being Saturday, the line to get in was nearly as long as the cathedral itself. We bypassed this snake of humanity and headed for the Duomo Museum, also on our list for the day and located right behind the cathedral. There was no line. We breezed right in. 

Here was one one of the major items on our hit parade of things to see, the actual Bronze doors of Ghiberti (the ones currently on the Bapistry are copies) . We spent a while admiring both sets of doors, the original set and the second set. We took pictures, trying to capture a bit of this moment to take home. Somehow, taking a picture makes the experience of seeing something more substantial, more real, as if it didn't really occur unless you view it through a lenses and push a button. I wonder is some psychologist somewhere has done a study on this phenomenon. 

We saw Donatello's wood carving of Mary Magdalene and Michelangelo's Pieta plus the choir boxes made by Donatello and Luca Della Robbia. We saw lots of other stuff that we are sure was impressive and important, but by this time, after four days, we were suffering "Museum Fatigue" and all the art wonders of the world were blurring together, like the view out a train window when another train passes in the opposite direction, an incomprehensible blur. Time to call it a day. 

Sally remembered seeing the oldest renaissance building in existence from our lecture series and found it in the guide book. We were both in the mood for a walk rather than standing. We headed in it's direction. We found the building, the "hospital of the innocents" fronted with a large piazza with two fountains and a statue away from the throngs of site seers. We enjoyed sitting on its steps in the shade and reading about its history. 

Back to the B&B room for a short rest. While laying around, I worked on my blog and Sally read the guidebook. She found a reference to a crucifix that Michelangelo had carved in 1494 at the age of eighteen as a thank you for the prior of the church who let him sneak into the morgue and dissect bodies to learn about their anatomy. The crucifix is hanging in the church Santo Spirito just south of the Arno. Off we went, hoping it would be open and we could see it. 

It is about a mile across town to Santo Spirito. We were pleasantly surprised to find a wonderful piazza fronting the church. The doors of the church were closed, but a group of people were outside one of the doors. We walked up and Sally asked if we could see the inside of the church. 

As has been our experience with every Italian we talk with, they are polite, kind and super helpful. They go far beyond the requirements of politeness, always offering assistance. This group of three women and one man were waiting to perform in a choir concert in the church. The man was the choir director of one of the groups singing. Last night we met the director of the choir singing outside the Signoria. Sally got her picture with him, smiling and laughing about meeting two choir directors in two days. One of the women thought the entrance to the chapel where the crucifix hangs was just around the corner. She lead us over there, talked to the man in the booth and interpreted  what she had learned. 

We paid our three euro each and entered the cloister. We followed the map we were given to a first open room, sat for a minute looking at a crucifix and realized it was not the correct one. We checked the map and moved to the correct chapel. Did I mention that there was no one there. Not just a few people. No one. We stood in the chapel admiring this 515 year old wood sculpture all by ourselves. I snapped a picture as we entered the the room, and then a docent entered and told us no photographs. I put my phone in my pocket, happy to have sanctified the experience by pushing a shutter release. We stayed for 20 minutes or so. We enjoyed sharing the solitude with Michelangelo's crucifix. 

It was now 9:00 pm. We checked out the restaurants and found one that served a monster plate of mussels. We made a mental note to return next night for dinner out. 

We walked back through the well lit streets of Florence, awash with crowds of people. We stopped in a few shops, Sally, fascinated by the new style of shoes with gold and silver highlights window shopped back to the B&B. 

What an amazing day!  Our 14th in Italy.

Monday, May 28, 2017 - Travel Day

 

Our time in Florence has come to an end. It is time to embrace the Italian train system and head for Cinque Terre. Our experience with the Italian trains has been mostly good, if you ignore the fact that none of them have been on time and one did not show up at all, causing us to take a taxi to the next station to find a working train. 

Our first train trip to Elba from Rome required two train rides. The first leg, from Rome to Campiglia Marritina was 20 minutes late picking us up at the Rome station. Of course, this caused us to miss our connection to Piombino, necessitating us to take a later train. Four days later, leaving Piombino, the train never came. We had to take a taxi to another train line to catch a train to Pisa, which was 10 minutes late causing us to miss another connection to Florence. For us, it is not a big deal because we are on vacation and an hour here and an hour there are hardly an inconvenience. If we were relying on the train for work or business where time is important, it would be a different story. But, is it really any different than the morning commute in any major American city?  Traffic can be bad or terrible, causing delays equal to those we experienced here with the trains. 

Our train did not leave Florence until 11:32 am this morning. We slept in a bit before packing up our stuff. We had to check out by 10:00 am, and the host had texted us to say he would be here at 10:00 am to collect the keys and start cleaning the room. I cut up a nectarine, an apple and two bananas, equally distributed them between two of the three plastic storage containers we had purchased and poured unsweetened yogurt over them for breakfast while Sally showered. Next, I ripped up a head of lettuce, added the remains of the shredded  carrots, olives, string beans and cherry tomatoes to make salad for lunch and dinner. After we had eaten breakfast, I washed the containers and stuffed the salad equally between the three containers, taped them shut with first aid tape and stowed them in my pack for later. We searched the room for items we might have left under the beds, behind the curtains or on shelves. Ten o'clock rolled in just as we finished and a knock came on the door, as if the host was hanging on the landing watching his atomic clock, ticking off the seconds. In his defense, I am sure he had another guest arriving soon and needed to change the bedding and clean the room. 

We headed to the train station, five minutes away and arrived to find it a beehive of people. We had an hour and a half to kill but there was no place to sit. We found stairs outside on the west side of the station and took a seat. I blogged, Sally read Rick Steves. Our train finally showed on the computer screens. We made our way to binario due and boarded our waiting train. Precisely at 11:32 am, we rolled away from the station. Wow!  A first!  It was exactly on time!!  Next stop Pisa. 

We arrived a few minutes late in Pisa. It was a bit concerning. We only had 9 minutes before our next train left for La Spezia. We hustled off the train and headed to the stairs that lead to the passageways below the tracks. We needed to read the screens and determine on which of the 13 tracks our next train was leaving. We could not get down the stairs due to the gushing flow of people erupting up to the platform. We attempted to swim against the flow, but there was no room to squeeze between the tightly packed bodies moving upward. Climbing down Old Faithful as it erupted might have been easier.  We ran to the other passageway which had fewer people and worked our way down the stairs as I mentally ticked off the minutes remaining. We still didn't know what platform to try for. Once in the lower passageway, we traveled toward the station, reading screens, looking for our train number. We found it just two platforms away, mounted the stairs and entered the waiting train. As we seated ourselves next to a couple from Australia, the train began moving. Perfect timing. 

We spent the trip talking with this late 60's age couple, comparing traveling notes and lives. We detrained in La Spezia and sauntered to the adjoining platform, our train was nearly on time and we had 20 minutes between trains. 

This next trip was only 8 minutes, to Corniglia, the third town of five on the Cinque Terre (Chink-way Tear-Ray) coast.  Most of the trip is in tunnels. The steep mountains rising directly from the coast cascades rocks and slides often during the winter. Underground was the only way to build. We emerged and stopped at Riomaggiore, then Manarola and finally at Corniglia. It felt hot as we stepped off the train and squeezed with the people along the platform, up a short flight of stair to the bus stop. A crowd of 50 or more gathered on the side of the street closest to the sea. The bus, a vehicle the size of an airport type shuttle bus, lumbered down the hill. It disgorged its hefty load of SRO passengers, many carrying trekking poles as were the ones waiting for the bus. Then, the bus went forward without taking anyone on, turned around 100' further down the road, and came back. Everyone scrambled to the other side of the road as it approached, shuffling the order of who boards when. We squeezed in, taking on about half the people waiting and off we went up the hill, about a five minute ride to Corniglia. 

My Vodafone SIM had stopped working earlier in the day so we were without communication.  Without it, we were unable to contact our host for directions. Because of this, it took us a bit to find our B&B. Between google maps and Sally asking people, we found our host in her gift shop in town and introduced ourselves. She waited until all her customers left the shop, then locked up and walked us back up the main road to a pink, stucco, 4 story house. 

We were expecting a room with a shared bathroom with no kitchen, but she showed us a full apartment with a simple kitchen. It was perfect. The house, perched on the cliff 300' above the water, has an outstanding view, but our rooms were on the backside of the house. Still, there was a nice piazza with a view where we could eat our meals. 

We dropped our gear, logged into the wifi to pickup messages and emails, then walked back to the town square/bus turnaround and then walked up the town's main street, a lane about 6' wide, lined with tiny shops and eateries, until we reached the end of the lane and town. Here we found a piazza about 30 feet in diameter surrounded by a 300' cliff on three sides and a magnificent view of the Mediterranean. Looking off reminded me of the Cliffs of Insanity, except we had a sturdy rock wall railing at the top.

Our first impressions?  This place is a combination of Orcas Island and Yosemite. It has the climate and vegetation of Yosemite and the water front, hills and small town feel of Orcas. And it is crowded like both at high season. Awash in people. Hearty, determined and goal driven Germans, relaxed Italians, retired Americans in ever changing outfits and a surprising number of younger people. The bus is packed tight, the piazza's crowded, the train platforms jam packed, the trails a steady line of marchers. And we are adding to the throng by being here.   Reminds me of that saying, "You are not in traffic, you are the traffic."  Yet, we are glad to be here and to have an opportunity to see it. 

We spent a few minutes talking with the National Park official (ranger?) about hiking the trails and bought a one day trail pass. We planned to get up early tomorrow morning and hike the trail between our town (Corniglia) and the next town north, Vernazza.  If Sally's back is doing well, we will continue on to Monterosso, the northern most town, #5 of the Cinque Terra coast. Each town is separated by about two and a half miles of trail. These are hilly trails, climbing steeply (400-600 vertical feet) out of the seaside towns, traversing, then dropping steeply into the next town. Corniglia is an exception. It is perched 300' above sea level. This means in the morning we will not have a tough initial climb. 

By 5:30 pm the crowds evaporated and the locals slipped out into the public spaces. We  enjoyed the quiet, and took a walk to find the beginning of tomorrow morning's hike. We walked the "roads" of Corniglia; narrow, stone paved walkways that run between the houses, far too narrow for a vehicle. Also, Corniglia, like the other towns are built on incredibly steep hillsides.  Many of these "streets" turn into steps, further excluding wheeled vehicles.

We made our way into one of the two grocery stores for the second time today and met an American from Detroit behind the counter.  We were later to learn her name was Sara. We enjoyed chatting with her and she seemed to reciprocate. The calm of the evening after the frantic pace of the day with the hordes of tourists made everyone relaxed.

We wandered to the west of town and got a wonderful view of the town illuminated by the setting sun, the rich colors of the sun warming the colorful buildings. The whole Cinque Terre area used to be flanked wall to wall with grape arbors clinging to the steep hills on flat terraces constructed with rock walls.  There are 3000 miles of these 4 to 8 foot high walls throughout the Cinque Terre area, constructed by the farmers over the past 700 years. With the advent of the crush of tourists, the crushing of grapes has been abandoned for the easier life of running a tourist trinket shop; a much easier job than climbing up and down steep hills all day tending to fickle grapes. We could see the terraces near town, now overgrown with scrub grasses and brush; in places, the walls in need of repair.

There is a unique device the farmers used to tend their terraces and vines. A single track, made of a 2" by 2" beam of steel is suspended above the ground as little as 2 feet and as much as 10 feet. These tracks run straight up the hill, nearly vertical in places.  On the bottom of the track is a series of teeth. A gas powered "cart" rides this monorail, gripping those teeth to motor its way up and down.  The cart has a load limit of 250 Kg, about 500 pounds. It must be a wild ride, more scary going down than up.

After our stroll, we returned to our amazing B&B and crawled into bed. After sleeping apart the last 9 nights, 4 on Elba in bunks in our tent, and 5 nights in Florence in twin beds it was nice to snuggle in a comfortable queen bed.  We set our alarm for 5:00 am to get an early start on the trail. Two reasons prompted our early morning hike, (1) to avoid the crowds and (2) to avoid the heat of the sun.  The cooing doves had quieted as darkness fell. There was not a sound coming through our open window as we fell asleep.  Another great day!

Friday, May 26, 2017 - Marathon

There must be a balance. The Force has a balance.  The ying has the yang. Up has down. Left has right. 

So how much is too much?  Tonight I collapsed into the chair in our room, body aching and just veg'ed for an hour and a half before falling into a coma in bed at 9:30.  I was dead tired. What brought about this state of exhaustion? Simply put, trying to see everything of interest in Florence before our time here runs out.

Today we started at the Academy to see Michelangelo's David. We were there at 8:00 for the 8:15 am opening.  Due to our Firenze cards, we allowed in before the general masses, and pretty much had David to ourselves for the first 10 minutes before the throngs of people arrived. It is so emotional for me to see him. His look of anticipation and confidence, his body language that says, "I can take this guy", as he sizes up Goliath. Spectacular.  And his double life size magnifies the effect.  Nothing else like it in the world.

From David we went to the San Marco church.  This is the abbey where Fra Lippo worked, creating some of the first renaissance frescos. A monk in the abbey, he painted in the church, on the walls of the monk's rooms . . . Everywhere.  Also of interest, Savanarola, the radical conservative preacher that ground the renaissance to a halt in the late 1400 lived here.  His room and some of his personal belongings are open to the public.  This bozo preached fire and brimstone to the people of Florence and reversed the progress being made through the enlightenment.  Luckily, the Florentines finally saw through him, drug him out of his room in San Marco, tortured him and then burned him to death in the piazza outside the Signoria. Finally the threw his ashes in the Arno. I can think of a current leader that deserves the same fate. Will we wake up as the Florentines did?

After Saint Marco, we went to the Medici Palace and saw the home of this family that ruled Florence behind the elected democracy. In Lorenzo Medici's private study are frescos of amazing content and quality.  After reading about the Medici and their influence and hold on Florence it was amazing to see their place. 

From the Palace we walked the the church kitty corner to the palace, the Church of San Lorenzo. Designed by Brunelleschi with alters by Donatello, it was amazing to see. Cosimo the Elder is buried right in front of the alter.

We then went to Lorenzo's Library, an amazing building of unbelievable grandeur. Below the library, in the basement is the tomb of Donatello and Cosimo the Elder, below the church.

Sally had found a restaurant she wanted to try for lunch, located on the south side of the Arno, about 3/4 of a mile away.  We walked to it and split a 3 course meal.  The waiter/owner was not happy about the two of us only buying one meal, but he served us, although with a petulant attitude.

Lunch over, we headed back across town our B&B for a nap, then off to the Medici Chapel, located on the back side of the San Lorenzo church.  This chapel was totally designed and implemented by Michelangelo. Lots of sculptures and four Medici family members buried there. 

The chapel closed while we were inside, so the attendant let us out.

Off to the Palazzo Vecchio, the old Senoria (the senate building) to tour the museum there.  The in the mid 1500's the Medici family, under Cosimo I moved into the building and formed a dynasty, ruling the city from this former democratic building. We toured the living quarters and the incredible, spacious main meeting room with its massive murals on the walls depicting the victories of Florence over Pisa and Milan. The Medici lived in unbelievable wealth, reminiscent of Versailles.

We finished our tour of the building, stopped outside to fill our water bottles with frizzante water (carbonated water) from the free water dispensers outside the building, then walked (more like staggered for me) back to our B&B.  Here my vegetative state began.

We had salad again for dinner, finishing up all the ingredients from the night before. I wanted to write in the blog, but was too tired to muster up energy to compose anything. At 9:30 pm I crawled into bed and passed out.  Another great day. So much learned. So much we saw. Florence is an amazing place. Wish I had a bit more energy to explore it more.

Thursday, May 25, 2017 - Fulfillment

 

When Sally and I first decided to chase Joel to Italy for his wedding and to extend the trip to 7 weeks, I knew I wanted to know a lot about Italy before I went. My first trip to Europe in 2009 was an eye opener, but I had done no research before going. Much of what I saw had no context. Knowing the background of an art object, a church, a monument or a town gives meaning to it when you experience it when traveling.  I also knew I wanted to have some ability to speak the language of the country we were visiting.  Luckily, Joel and Hailey gave us plenty of lead time to prepare.

The Italian Renaissance Art 36 part lecture series that I gave to Sally 3 years ago gave us an in depth lesson on the progression of art through the renaissance and should prove useful today as we visit the Uffizi Museum, the Bargelo and the Sante Croce Church. Reading books about the Popes ("Absolute Monarchy") and the Medici ("The Medici") and others has me excited to see the places and art they talk about.  Today, we are off to begin seeing the things we have been studying. 

The Uffizi opened at 8:15 am this morning. We were up at 6:30 am, had a breakfast of strawberries and yogurt, packed some bread and cheese for lunch and headed for the Uffizi gallery. We retraced our steps of last night to the entrance, our "Firenze" cards in hand. We arrived just as the doors opened, passed through security and walked the stairs to the top floor to begin our journey through art history. 

It was amazing to see that which we had been studying. We started with pre-renaissance alter pieces that show no perspective and worked our way into Filippo Lippi followed by Botticelli, watching the emergence of depth, perspective, realism and humanism in the art. Michelangelo and Raphael entered the mix as the renaissance reached full bloom. 

It is amazing how tiring it can be to stand and stroll through a museum!  By the time we worked our way past the end of the building overlooking the Arno River and down to the only Michelangelo free standing painting in existence (the only one he ever did), we were feeling it.  We still had two floors to go!  We worked our way down the to Raphael exhibits, then Leonardo and we were done, both with things we wanted to see and energy.  It drains both mentally and physically.

It took us three and a half hours to get through the museum, but what an amazing experience to see that which we had been studying. 

It was noon and time for lunch. Next on our list was the Bargelo Museum, known for its sculptures, but first it was twelve and time for lunch. We found a Kabob place near the church of Santa Croce for lunch and split a sandwich. 

Santa Croce was Michelangelo's church as he was growing up, and there is a lot of art and history associated with this church. We decided to tour it before we headed to the Bargelo. Also on our schedule was the Palazzi Vecchio, all in the same corner of town.

In Santa Croce are the tombs of Galileo, Dante, Machiavelli and Michelangelo along with hundreds of other lesser known souls.  We made sure we visited the four we knew, and we walked on top of scores of others as we strolled the church nave.  We also found frescoes done by Giotto in the Bardi Chapel within the church. Outside the church is the Brunelleschi Chapel, a geometrically perfect chapel, constructed using perfect squares, cubes and circles.

After paying our respects to the Santa Croce, we headed for the Bargelo.  Where Santa Croce was down on our priority list, the Bargelo was way up at the top. Inside, I knew we would see Michelangelo's Bacchus, Madonna and Child with Young Saint John, and bust of Brutus along with two of Donetello's Davids, especially the bronze one, the first free standing male nude since Roman times, over 1000 years.

We were prepared to read Rick Steves guidebook tour of the museum because we did not find an audio version in the podcast store. As we walked in and were getting prepared to mount the stairs to the second floor where we knew Donatello's David was, we met an English lady who was using an audio tour of Rick Steves that we had not found. Her iPhone had just died and she was disappointed.  I was carrying an extra battery and quickly plugged her in and began recharging.  We stood and talked for the next 10-15 minutes while it charged, comparing notes and sharing experiences. Her husband soon arrived and joined the conversation. Eventually, we unplugged and went our separate ways. She only had 15% charge, but she thought it enough to complete his tour.

We walked up the stairs of this old police station, turned right, and entered a room full of statues. There at the far end we spotted Donatello's David, the feminine looking boy poised with his foot on Goliath's head, sword in hand looking like he was ready to enter a gay bar.  Amazingly, no ropes, no plexiglas, no barriers of any kind.  You could walk right up to him on his pedestal and inspect every detail of the bronze statue. We circled and admired this 550 year old statue that had seen so much, financed by Cosimo De Medici, displayed in his interior courtyard and then handed down through history.  He inspired Michelangelo who worked as an apprentice in that courtyard and walked past the statue every day.  Here I was staring at the exact same statue. I wanted to touch the bronze and feel the details of Donatello's work, but that is the one thing you are not to do.  Docents throughout the room descend like hyenas if you do, as I witnessed with another guest. I forgot to mention, none of the other museum goers were taking notice of David.  We had him all to ourselves.

While climbing the stairs and approaching David, I quickly downloaded the audio tour of the Bargello.  When we had spent enough time swooning over David, we plugged in and returned to the entry courtyard to begin our tour.

First place we went was into the first door on the right and there was Michelangelo's Baccus, a life size male nude, drunk on wine and tipsy, with a imp wrapped around one leg munching on grapes.  This was his first full sized sculpture, completed when he was 21. Again, no barriers. You get up close, nose hovering near the marble and see the drill marks, the chisel marks, everything. And there, on the wall behind the Bacchus was his Madonna and Child. And next to that was the bust of Brutus.

Our audio tour took us back up the steps and explained more about David, and then led us to the door panels created by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi as they competed for the contract to make the doors for the Bapistry adjacent to the Duomo. Here they were, the panels each had created, on their own, to win the contract. Ghiberti won, and did such an amazing job that he was commissioned to do another set for the north doors. He spent most of his life creating these two sets of bronze door, both amazing.

How cool is it to see that panels, now 515 years old, that were the birth of the renaissance? No barriers between me and them. I could reach out and touch them as they hung on the wall. Amazing!!

If we were tired after the Uffizi, now we were dragging, although excited with all the cool stuff we had seen.  We worked our way back across the town to our B&B and collapsed in bed for a nap. We drug ourselves out of bed and decided to ride bus 12 to the Michelangelo Piazza on the hill south of town to see the sunset over the city.  I had seen the bus stop across the street from the train station when we entered town. It was only 2 blocks away.  We walked the distance and began sizing up busses.

I stuck my head in a bus that had just pulled up, yet had no number on its reader on the front.  I asked if he was bus 12.  He looked at me a minute, sizing me up, then said in broken English, "You want to go the Piazza Michelangelo?"  I said "Si!".  He said, "Come in. I will take you directly there."  Then he announced to the other 10 passengers on the bus that he was going directly to Piazza Michelangelo and if they did not want to go they needed to get off!! It took about 30 seconds for the astonished riders to realize he was serious and they exited through the open doors.  Now it was just Sally and I on the bus. He pulled out into traffic and roared up the road, dodging in and out of traffic as if he were driving a Ferrari, not a 50' long bus.  True to his word, we went directly to the piazza, and quickly. His foot was either pedal to the metal or on the brake.  Nothing in between.  We laughed and giggled at this preposterous situation as we careened through the streets of Florence, missing pedestrians and cars, parked or moving by fractions of an inch.  In the time I thought we would spend waiting for a bus, we were at the piazza.  I wished him "Gratzie Mille", a thousand thanks as we left the bus.  He smiled and zoomed away.  Wow!! That was unexpected and cool!!

We joined the throngs of hundreds in the piazza  waiting for the sunset and chatted with some kids from Toronto on a 14 day run through Europe.  We snapped our shutters with everyone else as the sun set, then walked the mile and a half back to our B&B across town.  

What a day!! We saw tons of art today, but more importantly, we understood its context, its history; why it is important in the development of the human condition.  What a day.