On our sixth day in Italy, we had so much planned out that all we could do was snap a picture of the Santa Maria Novella as we walked by. No time for a proper tour.
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| I'm sure it has many interesting attributes, but I know none of them. |
We had some serious touring to do. First stop:
The Duomo.
There are many fascinating things about this place but most fascinating has got to be its construction. Construction began in
1296 and wasn't completed until nearly one hundred and fifty years later! When construction began, the technology that would go into the completion of the dome itself
hadn't been invented yet! Good goin,
Brunelleschi! The inside, not quite so impressive. It was probably the least adorned interior of a church that we saw the whole trip, with the possible exception of the
Basilica of San Domenico in Siena.
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| Bereft of masterpieces. |
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| There was this nice piece of stained glass, and this clock that keeps only military time. |
The only frescoes in the place are on the interior of the dome itself, and only partially visible from a small portion of the general admission area of the church.
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| You have to pay a separate admission price to see the full dome - what a rip! |
OK. Our travel plans in Florence overlapped with plans of my sister's husband's parents! Michelle and Jay! That's pretty complicated, saying sister's husband's parents or brother-in-law's parents, isn't it? Fortunately, there's a word in Yiddish for just such an occasion:
Machatunim. Machatunim means co-in-laws. There's no word for it in English. Moving on...
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| Machatunim! |
We reunited with our relatives in Florence and headed to the
Medici Chapels. Of course, we used our Florence Cards to get us into the museum. The
Medici family ruled Florence for hundreds of years. As a result, their family crests mark all the major landmarks. Their former palaces have become museums, and all their furniture, jewelry, and artwork is on display throughout the city. The Medici Chapels hold the remains of many of the principal members of the Medici family and many of the family's collections of religious artifacts. An example of such a religious artifact is a
relic. A relic is most often a piece of the body of a Saint, or venerated person. This practice of keeping bones and other body parts is completely alien to us (as both Jews and Americans).
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| With gold and silver, they really try to distract you from the fact that you're looking at a tibia. |
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| Some of these relics, like the ones above, you hardly knew you were looking at relics. Each one incorporates a small glass case with a tiny bone in it. Second from the right it has Mary praying at an altar, that is a small glass case... |
The actual Capella dei Principi is very beautiful. Lots of colored marble and other standard accoutrements.
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| See those coffin-looking things sticking out of the wall? They're coffins! |
That was a good time. Next we walked over to the Mercato di San Lorenzo aka the
Mercato Centrale. There's a large, indoor food market and lining the Via dell'Ariento, there are leather and all sorts of souvenir vendors. I think we may have preferred the food market.
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| Olive? |
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| Meat! |
Along the edge of the indoor market, there are a few vendors that have set up tables to be part market and part restaurant. The food is authentically-local and cheap - way cheaper than any restaurant you're likely to find, so if you're on a tight budget, eat at the market.
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| Give us all the pesto you got! |
Next on our jam-packed agenda was the
Palazzo Medici Ricardi, yet another of the elaborate landmarks and palaces left behind by the Medici family for us enjoy. To be honest, there's nothing overly interesting about this place. A friend of mine put it best: you've seen one magnificent palace in Europe, you've seen them all.
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| Looks like someone is very proud of their achievements. Cough! Couch! Ferdinando is a show-off! Cough! |
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| Is this a masquerade costume, or armor? |
Next we turn South toward the
Piazza della Signoria, the original site of the Statue of David. All they have there now is this crummy replica:
The Palazzo Vecchio dominates this Piazza.
The Palazzo has been the seat of Florence's governance since Florence was a city-state (for many hundreds of years). The palace contains ornate council chambers, as well as a museum of the former residences held within the town hall (the duke lived here until the duke's residence was moved across the Arno river). Mostly it's just a museum now, but the city council meets here, and the Mayor has an office here. The best room in the place is the Salone de Cinquecento, the hall of five hundred, named for the number of people who sat upon the great council.
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| It's large. |
The walls and ceiling are completely covered by depictions of significant events of Florence's history, namely the gigantic paintings of Florence victorious over Siena and Pisa (OK! We get it! Florence is number one in all of Tuscany! Get over yourselves!). The paintings
are very impressive, though...
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| That's the gigantic wall painting I was talking about... |
This room can require a lot of neck-craning, so Jay is inspired to change the way tourists enjoy Florence:
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| He's a genius. |
To see the apartments of the royalty that have lived here, you must climb many many staircases. This lion feels your pain:
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| You mean you're going to climb all those stairs?? |
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| We climbed them all. |
The
Uffizi Gallery was next. It's between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Arno river. Largely it's considered to be the greatest collection of Renaissance/Italian art in the world. The Florence card comes in handy here at avoiding the long lines. Keep in mind, this was really late in our day after many many miles of walking.
So much art in
so little time can desensitize you to the magnificence of... art. In the Uffizi there are seemingly endless halls of masterpiece after masterpiece. They're arranged in a U shape around this courtyard:
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| The Uffizi from the courtile (inner courtyard) |
It
was a thrill to see such famous pieces as Leonardo da Vinci's
Annunciation and Botticelli's
The Birth of Venus and
Primavera, but mostly we went through the motions because it may be our first and last chance to see the Uffizi... We probably found these street performers in the Uffizi's courtile more fascinating:
By this time in the day it was pretty late, but there's so much more to do! Vivoli is touted in all the tourist books as the greatest
gelato in the entire world. Usually, these "greatest places in the entire world" are all a bunch of hype (with the clear exception of my claim of
Alice Pizza in Rome being the greatest pizza of all time). In this case, vivoli
is very good. Probably it was the best gelato we had the entire trip, but it's hard to gauge things like this. Vivoli is East of the Palazzo Vecchio on Via Isole della Stinche (which you can find by going to the key in any map of the city).
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| Yum! |
Walked back to the Duomo of Florence.
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| We're back! |
Someone in our group had heard about the possibility of seeing a classical music concert that night. Tourist information at the Piazza del Duomo pointed the Florence Box Office out to us, near the intersection of Via dell Agnolo and Viale Giovine Italia - not terribly close to where we were. Plus, when we got there, the box office was closed... and had been for many hours. Moral of the story: buy your tickets in advance.
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| We sat for a while on this funky bench near the box office... very tired. |
Earlier in the day, probably around the time we were headed to Vivoli, we passed by a restaurant named Aqua al 2. Yes, it's very strange to incorporate a numeric figure in a title... like se7en, or numb3rs... But this place I had heard about from friends of mine who had been to Florence. It's very popular (and reasonably priced)!
So popular in fact, that restaurateurs saw its potential and opened franchises in both San Diego and Washington, DC. Check out their classy website with its smooth, patronizing jazz
here. We needed to make a reservation to eat there so if it's something you're thinking of doing, call ahead. Because so many of us keep the
kosher, we ordered all vegetarian dishes and shared them all. They have this sampler item on the menu (there's a meat one and a vegetarian one), where it's the chef's choice of I believe five different dishes. Everything was delicious.
Walked around after dinner. A stranger took the best picture of the whole trip:
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