Europe 2009 Part 4: Florence

26-28 September

I forgot to mention something about Turin: hazelnuts. That's Turin's big crop. Nutella started there. We ate hazelnut gelato and bought hazelnut chocolate to eat back in the States. On our last night in Turin I asked Jack, "If you could sum up Turin in one word what would it be?" He said it couldn't be done but I said, "Hazelnut." I decided, after some deliberation, that Paris' word is "treeless."

Also, Jack pointed out that I've put the Palazzo Vecchio in Turin. It's in Florence. Duh. The museum we saw in Turin was the Egyptian museum, which took us some wandering about to find. As Jack noted at the time, Turin hides its museums well.

OK, so without further ado, onto Florence, where the Palazzo Vecchio really is. With souvenir stalls outside selling miniature replicas of Michelangelo's David. And Pinocchio puppets. Lots of them. And more gelato.

We wheeled our bags down narrow, cobblestone streets to Antonia House, where we were greeted by Antonia, who spoke no English. Much gesturing and many one-word sentences later, during which we found out there was a house cat around, we dropped our stuff off in our room and went in search of lunch.

First I bought a cheap pair of sunglasses. The glare in the city was intense. We were staying about half a mile away from Il Duomo. The plaza around it was teeming with crowds. Among the people wandered a woman dressed as a nun, in white, with her face painted white. She blew kisses, said, "Psssss, pssss!" and held out a tray. Somehow she was making money doing this.

We didn't climb the tower in Il Duomo. We only saw the inside of the cathedral. Jack had been here before in high school; even then he said the ascent was treacherous. With my unpredictable acrophobia (which seems to have started when my hearing loss did, and which seems to be triggered by wind more than heights), and because there was an admission fee, we decided to skip it.

Continuing with our collection of strange English translations, we found this on a wall:

This picture was taken on our first night in Florence. It's pretty typical of the streets in the old part of the city.

Traffic was mostly of the pedestrian and scooter variety, but occasionally a car would manage to squeeze through. One evening I saw a near-collision between a bicycle commuter (with no light) and a motor scooter (also with no light) as they both stopped abruptly, missing each other by a few feet at a corner.

Florence was full of shoe stores and handbag stores. Street carts sold scarves and more handbags. Yawn. An occasional storefront displayed Venetian glass, but we'd be in Venice in a few days anyway. Jack bought some wine. I searched for coffee beans but wound up only with gourmet, vacuum-packed, espresso-strength grounds. (The idea was to try Italian espresso blend coffee in my French press. I drank some a few days after I got back from the trip, about half an hour before giving a presentation at work. Let's just say this: I don't think I'll ever need to try crack.)

We did laundry in the afternoon, using all available hangers and space to dry half a week's worth of clothes. Fortunately there was a fan in the room and the humidity was low. Still, I hoped Antonia wouldn't make any surprise visits until everything dried and was put away.

That night I finally got a chance to make some jewelry. I pulled out beads by Kristina Logan that I bought nearly a year ago. While I made a bracelet, a necklace, and a pair of earrings, I got bitten on my legs a dozen times by mosquitoes. I also thought a lot about my job and how it seemed to be taking over my life. I'd already dreamed about work three times since arriving in London. But as I finished the necklace and put cortisone on my bites, I must have come to a resolution, because I didn't dream about work again for the rest of the trip.

The next morning Antonia brought breakfast to the room (most of the clothes had dried). She saw the beads on the table and the bracelet I was wearing. "Bella! Bella!" What I'd charge for this bracelet would have paid for the room for all three nights. But this one was going to be a keeper. I'd have to make another to sell.

We set off to take a look inside Il Duomo. This door is one of two entrances to an opera house across the plaza:

Here's Il Duomo. Click on the pictures for enlarged views.


Is the screen on the tower to catch jumpers or crap that tourists throw out the windows? Or both?

Here's one of the entrances to the cathedral:

We passed a store that sold lampwork glass beaded jewelry. Phhhhhbbt! Kristina Logan does it better.

The line at the Uffizzi gallery took us an hour to get through. I noticed something again that I'd seen a few times in the past several days: older men, probably in their fifties, with women who looked to be barely out of their teens. My first assumption was, of course, father-daughter. But that was pretty quickly disposed of when I saw the body language. Whatever.

Here are some views of Florence from the gallery windows:


Here's an alleyway somewhere in Florence. Jack liked it so I took its picture.
Both of these towers were leaning a bit:

This is Il Duomo again, taken later in the day when we were on our way back to the hotel:


Hmm... I just looked at my notes. Remember that fancy dinner where we watched the moon? That was in Florence, not Turin. I seem to be giving Turin a lot of undue credit. Anyway, on with the story.

Our room was above an outdoor restaurant. Voices echoed and amplified up the stone walls. While we enjoyed the fresh air, we decided that the noise and mosquitoes were too annoying. We closed the windows.

This is the view from our hotel room the next morning:

Here's the half-completed second Kristina Logan bracelet. Antonia came in while I was working on it. "Bella! Bella!" I decided I should make something for her and her eight-ish year old daughter, and later I did, out of art glass by Patti Cahill (Dyed in the Fire, no website).

Our plan for the day was to find the Boboli Gardens across the Arno River. We crossed the Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge, famous for its buildings along the span. It was so full of tourists and tourist shops that I didn't even try to get a picture. So here's one from Google Images instead, taken from the river, which is better anyway, and here's another, of the tackiness. But hey, here's a really good one. (Thanks to Larry, by the way, for reminding me about the bridge. I'd forgotten all about it until he asked me today if we'd seen it.)

I took pictures of the river from the bridge.



When we finally found the garden we couldn't get in. Silly us. It was the last whatever day it was (we'd sort of lost track at this point; my notes say Wednesday but the photo date says Monday) of the month. The place was closed. So was the museum across the street from where we had lunch back on the city side of the Arno.

We decided instead to climb up the hills on the other side of the river to see the basilica there.

Here's a tower with a strange set of staircases that we saw on our way up:


Here's the view from the tourist-filled plateau. I focused in on Il Duomo.



There was some more climbing from there to reach the Basilica San Mineato al Monte. Here's the view. I focused in on the city wall.



From inside the basilica:

The graveyard:




We walked along sloping parapets among the mausoleums.

I said, "Why do I suddenly feel like a monk in an M.C. Escher print?" He must have been here.

A very green tree:

A Dr. Seuss tree:

A kitty in the graveyard let me take a picture.

At San Mineato the monks sing Gregorian chants at Vespers, at 5:30 every night. We had about an hour to kill, so we went back down the hill to the first plateau, where a bar sold lemon granitas (think Slurpee but without so much sugar). Perfect. We climbed back up and went into the oldest part of the church, built in the 11th century, down some stairs, in the back, dark, and damp.

The alter was behind a wrought-iron gate. The few rows of pews were full by 5:30. The monks filed in and took their seats behind the grate. Their chants echoed in the chamber. Halfway into the service a man behind me stood up and started singing along. We stuck around until it was obvious that communion was about to happen. This was a good time for us to leave. For atheists like me it's all spectacle.

Outside the sun was going down behind the trees.


We descended the hill a different way, coming upon a street that had to be at least a twenty percent grade. And no, I would not like to try climbing this on my bike.


Here's the city wall:

We eventually did meet the Antonia House pussycat, Tomy, who was a big, fluffy tabby fond of munching the dried grass in the hallway vase.

Our second night in the city we decided to try the restaurant under our room. As we were eating we watched the handbag-and-scarf vendors wheel their massive carts, by hand, down the street to a storage area out of our sight. One after another they rumbled past, assisted by small motors that made pulling the carts easier.

Our guide book mentioned where to find the best gelato in the city, so off we went to try it. The book was right. On our way home we passed by the hotel we were supposed to have stayed in. Under it was an outdoor restaurant, housing a crowd of drunken Brits. We could hear them singing all the way to our hotel. Not to stereotype or anything, but if happy Italians are loud, drunken Brits are louder, especially in the narrow, echoing streets of Florence.

We left for Venice the next morning.