Sunday in Florence. It's quiet. Fewer shops/attractions are open. Church bells are ringing sporadically. We headed south to the Arno from our hotel on Via Palazzuolo, then strolled along toward the Ponte Vecchio (we turned left/east and headed along the north coast).
Couple of guys fishing.
Now that's a view to which Alfred might really enjoy his funky drink.
We had some time on our hands, so we had a little photo shoot along the way.
With all available modesty, I took the most incredible picture of Ilana.
I don't mean to brag but... I should consider working as a photographer .
I showed her the picture and asked her to take a similar one of me:
Not even close.
While we were walking, we noticed more and more padlocks chained to every possible anchor near the river. Love padlocks, if you haven't heard of them, are a relatively recently adopted tradition in Europe and the trend is spreading all over the world. The idea is you go to the river with your sweetie and a padlock. You lock the padlock to something nearby (usually a bridge), and throw the key in the river. Thusly, your love is locked forever. It's a nice sentiment.
I guess the anchor selection is pretty slim at this juncture of the river.
Is that a combination lock in there? Someone didn't fully understand the concept...
Unfortunately, the locks cause a considerable amount of damage to the bridges of Europe. The tradition has sparked a flurry of anti-love-padlock laws, and city workers removing thousands of locks from bridges. I hope the relationships all worked out... In Moscow they even went so far as to install special "trees" as designated anchors for the love padlocks.
Nothing can stop Gemma and Pol's love.
We headed past the Ponte Vecchio (we'll go by it after our first stop). Our destination was the history of science museum (Florence Card accepted). The museum is located just East of where the Ponte Vecchio meets the North bank of the Arno. The building is adjacent to the southern end of the Uffizi Gallery, if that helps.
In the Museo Galileo, which it is formally called, we found an incredible selection of old school science toys. It's our kind of museum.
Globe of the heavens (likely with the earth at the center)
Ultra mega super globe of the heavens.
More different globe of the heavens (stars).
A lot of the museum is dedicated to the works of Galileo, favorite son of Florence. Galileo was the first guy to take a telescope, which was originally designed as a military technology, and point it upward. He basically invented astronomy as we know it. He discovered that the moon had craters, and that Venus had phases, and that Jupiter had moons, and was persecuted for claiming that the Sun, not the Moon is the center of the solar system. He was an all-around astronomical bad-ass.
Galileo drawings of the moon and the shadows created by craters.
Telescopes.
biiiig telescope.
So that did it for all the Galileo stuff. The rest was pretty entertaining as well:
This is apparently how you used to weigh a person.
Had a lot of fun pretending to be apothecaries with this old chemistry set (it was encased in glass).
Stand back! I'm going to try science!!
Gotta just grab that mortar and pestle so I can grind up some sulfur to get rid of the bad spirits in the blood.
And that was the Museo Galileo. Top marks! Up next: The Ponte Vecchio.
The Ponte.
The Ponte Vecchio - which translates to "the old bridge", has been around for a long time. A bridge has existed at this point, the narrowest point of the Arno River, since Roman times. Since the middle ages, the sides of the pedestrian bridge have been lined with shops. Usually butchers, but today it's all overpriced jewelry and souvenirs - we weren't really looking to buy.
We took a in the middle of the bridge.
One fascinating thing about the bridge is the Vasari Corridor. The story goes: those lazy Medicis, not wanting to walk outside between the Pitti Palace and the Palazzo Vecchio, commissioned a second story hallway constructed to connect the two. The corridor runs over an alleyway between the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery, from there it runs over the Ponte Vecchio, and then up the hill to the Pitti Palace. It's a hard life, walking outside is just one of those things the Medicis shouldn't have to do...
We arrived to the Pitti Palace, just a little bit South of the Ponte Vecchio. While we waited to meet back up with our machatunim there, we watched an Italian kid play out an extremely entertaining exercise in futility:
Then, we met back up with our machatunim and entered the Pitti Palace.
The Pitti Palace is sprawlingly gigantic. It was the main residence of the Medicis, and was used as a base for Napoleon. Today, it encompasses about 8 museums under the same roof, not counting the - also sprawling - Boboli Gardens that are attached to the palace. The Florence card is valid at all of these museums. We visited the main ones, and a couple of obscure ones. The draw of these museums is mostly: here's how the Medicis used to live. Murals, moldings, private chapels, and lots and lots of tchotchkes. Those Medicis sure loved their tchotchkes.
Each color on this table is created by another kind of stone fitted perfectly into the table.
This painting is my favorite kind of painting:
Gabinetto di Rubens, by Cornelis de Ballieur II
Some guy named Rubens must've had gabinets full of Renaissance masterpieces... Cornelis de Ballieur II isn't a household name, but maybe it should be. Paintings like these are the stunning to me. The main subjects of the painting are nothing to squawk about, but the setting is nothing but existing masterpieces recreated in miniature and elaborate scientific instruments. I am just blown away by the skill it took to create this painting. Click here for another one.
We finished up at the Pitti Palace having visited many of the museums there (including the costume gallery which, for the record, is worth skipping). Next, we spent about an hour or so strolling through the Boboli Gardens.
Amphitheater in the gardens.
The garden is also also a statuary... so the Medicis would have something nice to look at besides miles and miles of perfectly trimmed hedges and lawns.
We are tourists.
There are also some incredible views of Florence from certain points within the gardens:
The Palazzo Vecchio!
We left the Boboli Gardens and headed back towards our hotel to rest for a couple of hours. This time, we walked along the South side of the Arno. Took a few more pictures along the way:
My parents at the Arno.
A stray love padlock.
We napped in our hotel room for a couple of hours and met up once again with our Machatunim at the Piazza del Duomo for dinner. We ate an early dinner at one of the really touristy places down one of the alleyways directly south of the Duomo itself. Dinner was tasty as usual. Italian food is good, have you heard? After dinner we headed back to Vivoli. Second time in two days going to the small gelato place, but when you've got the chance to eat the best gelato in the entire world - it's worth going back for seconds.
Strolled lazily back to our hotel. Had to prepare to go to Venice bright and early the next morning. Our walk took us through the Piazza della Repubblica - which is very beautiful at night.
The second day in a row of waking up early to take a train found my sister Ilana and I in a grumpy mood.
OK it wasn't so bad.
OK we were excited to go to Florence!
The first thing we did out of the train station in Florence was duck into the tourist information place to purchase our Florence Cards. The Florence Card is a 72 hour pass to all public transportation and most museums throughout the city. They're €50 each, so we wanted to make sure we got our money's worth. The great thing about the cards is that they let you skip the lines at any of the museums that accept them - so there's no need to worry about scheduling a specific entry times. From the tourist stand, we went to our hotel. This hotel was a disappointment compared to the rest. The Hotel Palazzuolo on Via Palazzuolo is a block South of the train station. The people at the desk rarely spoke English, and our room felt inexplicably damp the entire time.
The view down Via Palazzuolo from the hotel entrance. Also Ilana!
Nothing could be done about it so there was no use complaining. We dropped off all our stuff and took the bus (using our Florence Cards) from the train station to the Piazzale Michelangelo. The Piazzale Michelangelo is an elevated look out point on the Southern bank of the Arno River. In the center is a bronze copy of Michelangelo's statue of David.
More important than the copy of David, is the view from the Piazzale. Throngs of tourists are constantly snapping pictures from this vantage. We joined the throng for about a half an hour.
Florence.
Also Flornce - you know what? I'm going to save a lot of time and just say this is all going to be Florence.
We are photogenic.
A little bit afraid of heights here...
Down the Arno River.
So now we're across the river from central Florence, and are not sure exactly what to do next.
Hmmmmmm...
We went for our default - the Jewish attractions. We did get a little lost wandering around trying to find the Synagogue area, but we got to see some parts of Florence we probably otherwise wouldn't have:
Florence happens to be a beautiful place.
The Great Synagogue of Florence is on Via Luigi Carlo Farini which is about a quarter mile East of the Duomo. We tried to visit the Synagogue through the museum and sanctuary entrance, but were disappointed to find that they close in the early afternoon on Fridays to prepare for Shabbat. Next door to the Synagogue, there's a milchig kosher restaurant named Ruth's, so we had lunch.
If you ask me, the food was pretty so-so, but it's good to support a small Jewish Community that relies on tourism.
Yay! I'm supportive!
The very helpful waiter, restaurateur, and shamos of the Synagogue, Thomas Jelinkek, knew we wanted to enter the Synagogue and the museum before Shabbat started. He came to our table while we were waiting for our food to let us know that there was a wedding service going on in the Synagogue, and that they needed people to complete a minyan if we still wanted to go inside. Of course! Why not?
There were Italian armed guards at the entrance to the courtyard of the Synagogue. This is yet another sign that vandalism of Jewish holy places is on the rise, but it was nice to see that the Italian government is doing something to prevent these acts. Once again pictures weren't allowed but we sneaked a couple anyway.
From what we could gather, an Italian-Israeli wanted to have their wedding in the Synagogue of their roots. Pretty cool, huh?
After our mediocre lunch and nice visit to the Synagogue museum, we headed in the direction of the Accademia Gallery (of Florence - there's also one in Venice). The Florence Card got us in front of the line and into the Accademia in about twenty seconds. Go Florence Card!
Seeing the David in person is kind of surreal. It's like seeing the Eiffel Tower, or the Mona Lisa, or any truly famous sight in person. You've seen pictures of something your entire life and then you're actually seeing it! It feels like your eyes are expecting the image to be in two dimensions and then it's not. Eerie...
The statue is of David as he is about to face Goliath. He's got the slingshot draped over his back from his left and he's holding the stone with his right. The detail of things like the veins sticking out of David's arm and stuff like that are so life-like... Michelangelo was a genius. David's head and hands are overlarge. The explanation for this is the statue was originally supposed to be displayed along the roof of the Duomo so details like those would've been hard to make out from ground level. Unexplained is why David decided to fight Goliath in the nude.
There's also a musical instruments section of the Accademia and some other remarkable renaissance and medieval pieces, but the second best reason to visit the Accademia is the collection of the unfinished Michelangelo sculptures. Michelangelo was such a genius, that his unfinished works could pass for masterpieces. Here they are:
Michelangelo would say that he could see the figures inside the marble and all he did when he sculped was chip away at the excess marble... what a guy.
Next we strolled lazily back to our hotel on Palazzuolo taking in Florence.
We spent an hour or two lazing around our hotel. I know that vacation time is very precious, but this was our fifth day in Italy. We needed a break during the day of some sort. The hotel was a nice enough spot to lay around and watch Italian-language television (mostly we watched television claiming that a salve if rubbed on the midsection could remove up to 5 inches from the waistline - crazy Italians...).
For our Friday evening, we took a taxi back to the Great Synagogue. We participated in the Shabbat evening services at the Great Synagogue. Mostly the tunes of the prayers were unfamiliar to me, and the space itself with its extremely high ceiling and extremely small congregation - did not make for the best acoustics. The high ceiling and colorful (but dark) decorations did make for a very beautiful setting. The Synagogue itself has a lot of architecture reminiscent of Turkish Mosques.
After the Kiddush in the courtyard above (provided by our former waiter, Thomas Jelinkek) we were invited to Shabbat dinner at the Chabad of Florence. Anyone familiar with Chabad would expect exactly what we got there: A traditional Shabbat meal (chicken was a bit iffy, but I suppose they must have obstacles in the way of obtaining kosher food on a regular basis), lots of Jewish tourists/students studying abroad, and a spirited sermon delivered from the Rabbi - Rabbi Eli Dovid Berenstein.
When I say spirited I really mean it. He said he gives the same sermon every week, so if you ever find yourself there you're in for a treat. Basically, he more and more excitedly builds up to a point about why you (as a Jew) came to Florence for the sights (at this point which he reaches several times, he will list the sights of Florence in rapid succession - ThePonteVecchio!ThePalazzoVecchio!TheDavid!The...!), but since you came to see the sights, and are celebrating Shabbat here, you are also bringing another place in the world closer to an ideal level of spirituality. It was nothing if not entertaining.
