MPD

Gemma arrived a little late on Saturday; the trains were still recovering from Friday’s strike… As a result, I ended up standing in McDonald’s (no chairs) with a heavy backpack for a few hours. Needless to say, I was very happy to see her when she finally arrived.

After finding our hotel, and discovering that we had a cute little room on the fourth floor with one bed downstairs and a spiral staircase leading up to another bed, we headed out for the afternoon.

First, we went into San Lorenzo, one of many old churches in Florence. this one was actually the private church of the Medici Family during the Middle Ages. Of course, it was therefore lavishly decorated by their money and was honored by their many popes. In particular, San Lorenzo contained many sculptures by Donatello, including his last works; two pulpits showing Jesus’s descent into Hell, return to Earth, and ascention into Heaven.

By this time, it was already a little late, so we decided to get dinner. Of course, we wanted pasta. Gemma got gnocchi with artichoke and pumpkin sauce, and I got ravioli with cream and walnut sauce. Both were amazing. Even the 4 euro house red wine was superb.

Since it was Saturday night, though, we decided to change our clothes and head out into the city. Of course, the first stop on our itinerary was the Theremin player. Sadly, I must not have communicated well, because she was not there. Since we were so close to the river, and I had not been there on Friday, we decided to head down. Across the river, we found a wine tasting festival! Even though we decided not to get any wine because we couldn’t take the glasses with us, we still enjoyed the atmosphere and the music. We saw an old man playing a Steinway in the street, an accordion duo (Gemma bought a CD), and a few people that I saw before. Before too long, we were exhausted, so we went to bed.

On Sunday, we decided to get up early and see Michelangelo’s David before the crowd arrived. Unfortunately, three hours worth of crowd had the same idea… Still, this was basically our one chance, so we waited and waited, and after two and a half hours, a bird pooped on my shirt and my backpack. We were so close to going in, but it was so gross. I decided to risk it all and run to the hotel, climb four flights of stairs, wash everything, change my shirt, and run back. I was really winded by the end, only to find that Gemma hadn’t moved at all in the meantime.

When eventually we did get into the academic Gallery, we rushed to the David. It really wasn’t too crowded (hence the line), and we were able to admire Michelangelo’s work. Honestly, I think the museum was worth the wait. The David is astounding, but beyond that, we spent the rest of our two to three hours (it was all we could stand before succumbing to hunger) inside examining other amazing paintings, a set of incomplete Michaelangelo statues (great to see the process… Some looked like people struggling to get out of the rock; quite surreal), and the special exhibits on musical instruments. I even saw two hurdy-gurdies, something of which I had never even heard.

After our 3:30 lunch, we rushed to the main cathedral or duomo to see inside and climb to the top of the dome. The dome is an architectural wonder because it was built without scaffolding in a self-supporting pattern based on the Pantheon. The largest in the world at the time, and the first in the middle ages. Sadly, the dome is closed on Sundays, so we climbed the second highest structure instead — the belltower. At 440-some steps, it was a bit of a climb. However, I was happy to have climbed so many towers in Ireland, because compared to those, the stairs in Italy are wide and luxurious. at the top, the view of the city was spectacular, but the most exciting moment was actually on the way down. We were resting in the bell chamber at 5:00, when the bells went off. that close, we were forced to cover our ears, but it was fun to see such gigantic bells swinging wildly.

It was getting late on Sunday, so pretty much all the sights were closed. Therefore, we walked towards the river again. On the way, we found the Uffizi Museum and decided not to pay to only go in for the last half hour. Instead, we continued on and decided to cross the river and check out the campground that we had heard about (by now, we had decided to spend more time in Florence and not go to Venice, so we needed accommodations). We walked and walked, though, and could not find an entrance to the park that wasn’t closed for some reason. Instead, we eventually found ourselves in the residential area of Florence. They have some nice big houses there. However, we couldn’t use houses, so we decided to head back.

While walking around the bridges, we saw many interesting sights, including a neighborhood swimming competition, a number of riverside outdoor restaurants, and a dam onto which people could walk. We bought some snacks from a street vendor and went out into the river to eat them. The vendor was nice, though; he was a young man who knew a little English and was very proud of it. Once we paid, he looked at us with a big smile and said firmly and very loudly, “Thank You and GoodBye!”

That night, we watched the sunset from the only bridge in Florence to survive World War Two. Supposedly, the Nazis only blocked off the bridge because Hitler had visited Florence when he was younger and thought it was too beautiful to destroy.

We ended up reserving our room for Monday night, though it was very difficult. The man at the front desk on Sunday spoke no English, so he didn’t understand when I tried to ask. We almost gave up, but luckily at that moment, another customer was talking to the man, and thanks to Gemma’s high school Spanish, she could figure out that he was trying the same thing. After he was done, Gemma was able to say, “similare,” show the man our key, and get it done. Success!

While we were trying to figure out the room situation, I noticed an advertisement for an 80 Euro day trip through Tuscany. the advertisement claimed that the bus would go to Sienna, San Gimignano, Pisa, and included lunch at a Tuscan farmhouse. 80 Euro is a little too expensive for my budget of 70 Euro a day, but it included a lot, so we wanted to wake up early and see if there were two tickets left.

thus, Monday morning at 7:30, Gemma’s alarm went off, and I convinced myself to groggily roll out of bed, quickly get some toast for breakfast, then we convinced the same Italian-speaking man to call the tour group for us. Surprisingly, the cost had changed to 60 euro, and the still had spots; all Gemma and I had to do was run and make it to the train station in the next 20 minutes. Thankfully, Florence is so small that that wasn’t too much of a problem.

On the bus, we learned that our first stop would be Sienna, the town for which the color is named. Even though Sienna has some of the most expensive real estate in Italy and no unemployment, due to the Bank of Sienna, it is still a fairly traditional town. The color comes from the unique local bricks used in nearly all the buildings.

Many of the towns in Tuscany maintain old sporting events and traditions. Florence just stopped playing Florentine football two years ago when one player was taken to the hospital with a broken arm, but before they could set it, they needed to remove all the teeth from other players that had become lodged in there. Always played on June 24, we instead only saw a road race. However, Sienna still holds twice yearly horse raced between the districts in the main square. These races are so serious that each jocked gets 250,000 Euro ($350,000) for the 90-second race. The horses are assigned by lottery the day before the race, and are kept under lock and guard until the race in case another district tries to poison it. The morning of the race, the horses are taken into the district church, where they are blessed by the priest.

While we weren’t lucky enough to be in Sienna for a race, they were in the process of setting up for one because it was coming up soon. so, we were able to see the wooden bleachers for the crowd and the mattresses at the sharp corners to catch jockeys who fly off their horse (if the horse continues and wins, it still counts).

Well, I’m almost out of time here, so I’m going to post this… there’s a lot more in my journal to come.

This entry was posted on June 25, 2007 at 9:18 am and is filed under travel.