Day 7: In Treno

No photos today, as much of it was spent either on trains or waiting for them. I left Lucca around noon and went to Rome by way of Pisa. It was a beautiful trip, alternating between misty hills, green fields, and the brilliant turquoise Mediterranean. It was rather late and dark when I arrived in Rome; the station is enormous, and it took me a little while to find my hotel.

Rome is huge. It is a giant city, and something of a shock after coming from tiny Firenze and even smaller Lucca. I\’m somewhat overwhelmed, a feeling not exactly improved by the driving rain and wind, but I think that a night\’s sleep and daylight will help things. My only hope is that I can begin to comprehend the buses!

Day 6: Lucca Bellissima

Before getting to today’s main attraction, I need to indulge myself for just a moment. Today I finally dropped by il Mercato Centrale in Firenze, planning to pick up some tasty treats to bring with me on what I had intended to be a day trip, and oh. This place is a foodie’s ultimate fantasy. It has both an indoor market of all kinds of food and an outdoor set of stalls with fresh vegetables and fruits of all kinds. It is saturated, every inch of it, with the aroma of porcini mushrooms. There are more cuts of meat, more organs and viscera, than I have ever seen in one place in my entire life. There is cheese–so much cheese. There is pasta, fresh and dry, there are cured meats, there are spices, there are oils and vinegars and wines. I could have wandered it for hours, watching the butchers hack at enormous slabs of beef with knives as long as my forearm.

Mercato Centrale

030 mercato centrale

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I bought two big green pears and two tender orange clementines, and then I went to the station to catch the next train to Lucca.

Lucca is two years shy of its 500th anniversary–it was once a Roman outpost, evidenced by the stone and earth walls that still surround the core of the city. Its character is similar to Florence, but more relaxed and intimate. It has a number of churches, and many small piazze with elegant Romanesque statues.

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Near the center of the city core is Torre Guinigi, the tower of the palace belonging to one of the city’s wealthy families of yore. It’s a steep but relatively short climb to the top, from which you can see the entire city and beyond to the surrounding hills.

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I was simply stunned.

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I mean, seriously.

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I was originally only planning on a day trip to Lucca, but it got late and I decided to find a place for the night instead of returning to Florence and trying to do the same. No complaints here! Lucca is simply beautiful.

Tomorrow: departing for Rome!

Day 5: Uffizi e Loggia dei Lanzi

The snow is melting, and the temperature is consistently above freezing at last. The sun tried very hard to peek through the clouds, and there were patches of blue sky for a little while! Looking up and down the Arno on my walk to the Uffizi Gallery, there was a very thin, even fog over the whole city.

Photos were not allowed inside the gallery, but in the enormous Piazza della Signoria, adjacent to the museum and Palazzo Vecchio, there is an alcove with beautiful Roman statues, called Loggia dei Lanzi. It’s essentially an outdoor museum, and contains statues from Antiquity and the Renaissance.

Loggia dei Lanzi

The steps into the alcove are guarded by a pair of lions. I found this interesting because of their similarity to the Chinese guardian lions situated in pairs outside of temples and palaces, which also hold a sphere (or, in the case of the female of the pair, a cub) in the inside paw.

Loggia dei Lanzi

Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus.

Loggia dei Lanzi

Perseus with the head of Medusa.

Loggia dei Lanzi

I loved all of the statues here, even those not pictured. They are kinetic, dynamic, even as they stand still. Many of the statues showed their subjects in motion, as if captured in the midst of a dramatic struggle.

Piazzale degli Uffizi is lined with statues of important figures in Italian (especially Florentine) history. My favorite was of Niccolo Macchiavelli.

Piazzale degli Uffizi

I love it because he looks so crafty.

The Uffizi Gallery was predominantly religious paintings and portraits of aristocracy, but also had a great array of Roman busts and sculptures. Paintings depicting Greek myth are, I think, my favorites, but there was a special exhibit of Artemisia Gentileschi, whose paintings were incredibly powerful and emotional–far more so than most of her male contemporaries.

Day 4: Museo e Cattedrale

I’ve been terribly indecisive about food here, and have gotten into a bad habit of wandering around, block after block, looking into shop and restaurant windows but never actually going into one until my feet and back start to hurt. Part of it is that I’m still intimidated by everything, and part is that there are just so many of them.

Lots of the big museums and things seem to be closed on Mondays, but the Museo del Duomo was open – I must’ve spent a good two hours wandering through it. This museum houses much of the art, sculptures, architectural structures, and relics that are no longer kept in the cathedral for whatever reason, as well as old blueprints and wooden models from the planning of the building itself. The Duomo was in construction for literally six hundred years, through the lifetimes of many architects and through multiple architectural and artistic styles, so it is very interesting to see how the plans for the building changed over time.

After the museum, I went into the Duomo – formally, la Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Cathedral of St. Mary of the Flower) – itself, which was spectacular. Unfortunately, the light was extremely low, so the few photos I have are awfully grainy and uneven.

Il Duomo

The inside of the Duomo itself is this huge, elaborate fresco.

Il Duomo

The Duomo was built on the ruins of a much, much older cathedral, that of Santa Reparata, which dates to the 4th or 5th century CE and was the Christian religious center of Florence up until the Middle Ages. From the Duomo, for a small fee, you can go down into the excavation of Santa Reparata, where some of the columns, mosaics, and stonework remain in situ.

Excavation of Santa Reparata

Out of all of the art and beauty that I witnessed today, this was certainly the most profound.

I thought about going to the top of the Duomo, but decided to wait for a day with clearer skies (and after walking beforehand a lot less). Tomorrow, I plan to hit the Uffizi Gallery and hopefully some others as well.

Day 3: Siena, mi dispiace

Mi dispiace! No photos today. The attempted trip to Siena turned into a slight disaster due to my lack of understanding of Italian bus systems. I had the address of a nun-run hotel that I was planning to stop by, but attempting to follow the provided directions somehow left me at a bus stop on the outskirts of town. After spending hours hiking up and down icy hills and trying to find my way to the city center, I gave up, returned to the train station via street signs and dead reckoning, and caught the next train back to Florence to nurse my wounded ego.

I am exhausted, sore, a little overwhelmed, and sad to have lost an entire day to this, but I am really coming to love Florence–good, because I’ll be spending a lot of time here starting in January–and I think I’ll hang out here until it’s time to head to Rome (hotel reserved starting the 23rd). I’ve found a comfortable youth hostel that I think will do for the next few days, and I’m excited to do some more in-depth sightseeing here.

Listening to Italians chatting on their cell phones can be entertaining, especially as they say their good-byes. They seem to like the word “ciao” as much as I do and will say it repeatedly, all mushed together, as a farewell. Most men stop at two repetitions (and I think this “ciaociao” is mostly reserved for girlfriends), but women may say it five or six times in rapid succession.

It’s currently raining, which will either melt the snow or freeze it overnight into an icy deathtrap. Weather Underground reports rain and (for the most part) temperatures above freezing.

Tomorrow, conditions providing: let’s go to some museums!

Day 2: Firenze Innevata part II

I woke to a brilliantly clear sky and the whole city covered in six or eight inches of snow. I checked out of Hotel Enza and wandered to the Piazza del Duomo for coffee and to see what it looked like covered in snow. Every street and sidewalk was thick with it.

Firenze innevata

The Duomo itself was crowned white, a lovely compliment to the Christmas decorations all around it.

Piazza del Duomo

Incidentally, coffee. COFFEE. Espresso here is so delicious that it is beyond all possible comprehension. A shot of straight espresso goes down like water; a cappuccino is positively ambrosial. I don’t know how I’ll ever drink coffee in America ever again.

Today (December 18th) is my birthday, so I thought I’d walk to Ponte Vecchio and have a little picnic. I didn’t bother with my map and just headed south to the river.

Arno

The Arno is the principal river in Tuscany and one of the largest in Italy, after the Tiber. About two thirds of Florence lies north of the Arno, where the major tourist areas are.

Arno

There are many, many bridges across it, but Ponte Vecchio is easy to spot; I just walked upstream (east) until I reached it.

Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio (lit. “Old Bridge”) is one of the few Florentine bridges not destroyed by the Germans during their retreat in WW2.

Ponte Vecchio

I bought a pizza margherita at a corner shop and walked around the neighborhood south of the bridge, looking in shop windows and watching other people, even locals, as enchanted by the snow as I was, take photos and throw snowballs.

Later, I ate a delicious ossobuco for lunch, followed by a big piece of tiramisu. I went to the station to validate my rail pass and head south to Siena, but the line was long and I missed the train by a few seconds (it pulled away literally as I was running to it). I waited around for the next one, but minutes before it would have arrived, the sign said it had been canceled – along with almost all of the other departures for the next hour! Not wanting to gamble on yet another, even later, train, I went in search of a hostel for the night. I’ll try my luck with Siena tomorrow.