Italy - Greece Vacation 1999 - Florence

14 May 1999

The hotel was only a couple of blocks from the station, Hotel Giotti. For close to $200 a night, the five of us are squeezed into a tiny room. The bathroom *is* the shower, you soap yourself while standing between the toilet and the bidet. Chris and I are sharing a bunk bed which the owners assembled after we arrived.

We had no real plans for the day, so we started walking into town. We hit a street market (several, actually), and visited the Gallerie d'Academie, where we saw Michealangelo's David.

You read about the sculpture, but when you see it in person you realize why it's so admired. I don't know why, but more than any other sculpture you get a real sense of a presence, as if David is just pausing for a moment.

Tamara, Randy, Chris and Forrest in front of the Arno (the Uffizi is behind me).

One of the many stylish people on motorbikes. This lady just stepped off the set of Matrix II.

Then we walked downtown, to the river. Once across the Ponte Vecchio, we stopped at an intersection and just watched the traffic for a while. It was almost like a choreographed dance, chaotic yet fluid, and there were no accidents (not for lack of trying by some of the participants).

After that, we walked up to a tower, further East along the river. We couldn't get in, so we climbed up the hillside to Piazza del Michealangelo.

15 May 1999

Tamara was especially keen to visit that particular piazza, since the guidebook lauded it as "one of the best vistas in Italy."

The view from the Piazza del Michaelangelo.

Chris, Tamara, Randy, Forrest and I at the Piazza del Michaelangelo. Forrest has gone catatonic again, Randy and I are holding him up.

Sure enough, it had striking views. Forrest and Tamara bought a painting from an artist there (his rendition of the view).

Then we walked back down into town, crossing another bridge. We hunted down one of the guidebook's recommended restaurants in the downtown area, and had another excellent meal. Then we wandered back to the hotel and sat on their patio, drinking wine, playing cards, and torturing the hotel cat until midnight.

Yesterday, we headed to the Uffizi right away, to get in line early. We waited in line for over an hour (which at least gave me a chance to write).

The museum was very impressive (sorry, that word pops up a lot in this journal). Perhaps my favorite part was just the main U-shaped corridor, which was lined with busts of the Roman Emperors. Julius Ceasar, Trajan, Hadrian, all in a row staring with blank marble eyes across the hall. Their office had already granted them immortality, the busts were just a contemptuous gesture to posterity: "you already know who I was and what I did, this is what I looked like."

I wondered what it must have been like, grabbing and holding power in Imperial Rome.

I got a taste of antiquity when I went to the restroom. There were no seats on the toilets. Squatting over the dirty bowl, even just for a minute or two, was pretty awkward. The Uffizi is a splendid gallery, but they win no points from me for their restrooms. How hard can it be to add seats? What are they afraid of?

Most of the art was dominated by Catholic themes. I guess you should be prepared for that in Italy.

At my most cynical, I found it hard to be moved by paintings depicting white Europeans in the throes of a religion I don't believe in (nothing against Catholicism particularly, I'm areligious in general). But there were a few paintings (but not Botticelli's Venus) that made me stop and look. And there were more classical sculptures.

From the Uffizi we walked around downtown, looking for lunch. I popped into a small store near the Duomo, dedicated to fine custom-made books and writing supplied. I liked the store as well if not better than the museum. It was the epitome of what an Italian library should look like. There were exquisite leather volumes on the shelves, finely sculpted bookends, beautiful pens and small cases to hold them, intricate wax seals, and many bottles of brightly colored ink. They were playing a Dead Can Dance album in the background, an unusual choice but it added to the atmosphere.

After lunch we had no hard plans, so we split up to do some shopping. I finally bought some comfortable shoes. Randy and Chris ventured back into the open-air markets, and returned with more T-shirts.

Randy, myself and Chris in line at the Duomo in Florence.

I forgot -> after the Uffizi, before lunch, we visited the Duomo, the large church at the center of town. We knew we'd want to go inside, so we all dressed in long pants (otherwise they don't let you in, just like the Duomo in Siena).

It was a beautiful cathedral inside, far less ostentatious than most cathedrals we'd seen. This one looked almost Protestant in its austerity, but I thought it worked. The lack of rich artwork everywhere was probably intentional: it focused your attention on the painted dome.

We went outside again, this time around the side of the Duomo to get in line to climb up the stairs. At this point we were all joking about how our entire trip seemed to consist of travelling to Italian cities and climbing whatever stairs they had to offer. My legs were still burning from the squatting incident at the Uffizi; I felt every one of the 463 steps.

Halfway to the top, the stairs let you out on a balcony just below the painted dome, far above the floor of the cathedral. The painting depicted Jesus sitting at judgement, casting people into Hell or promoting them to Heaven. From the painting, Hell didn't look like a very fun time.

Then it was up to the top of the Duomo, for another look at the red rooftops of Florence.

After lunch, Forrest and I booked our hotel in Venice, then we all crashed at the hotel for a while. In the evening, we walked across the river, far away from the touristy parts of town to yet another recommended restaurant.

On the way to the restaurant in Oltrarno (south-west part of Florence, across the Arno).

They didn't have a menu posted, instead a waitress came by and rattled off the menu in Italian. Every once in a while she'd try to describe a dish in English, get exasperated and turn to nearby tables for help in translating.

We managed to order wine and a first course, so she left us alone for a while. An Italian man at a nearby table, probably about our age, started talking to us in broken English. He had a brother who worked as a chef in San Francisco, and he himself had visited the States several times.

He pointed proudly to his own plate and said "cow guts." The guidebook had mentioned that tripe was a Tuscany specialty, but I had forgotten. It looked pretty much like what you'd expect intestines in tomato sauce to look like.

After an excellent first course, we ordered the second. The waitress said the second course was fish or meat. I said "sono vegetariano," and she described what sounded to us like a vegetable plate with melted cheese, so I ordered that. Randy ordered the tripe.

Randy may have ordered the better meal -- I found myself looking at a bowl of melted cheese with no vegetables or anything else in sight. Yum.

After the meal, we made our way back to the hotel. We looked for a comfortable bar in a piazza along the way, but didn't find anything appealing. So we retired to the hotel patio for another night of cards, wine, and cat-torturing.

This morning we got up early to catch the train to Venice. We splurged and got 1st class tickets. So we've got our own compartment where we've been sleeping, reading, and writing postcards.

Comments