Getting to Florence (and my birthday day trip to Siena) was a great breather from the craziness of the cities. Well, I first had to deal with a slight train nightmare involving a briefcase. A man put a briefcase down next to me as he was settling he and his travelmates into their seats ahead of me, and he shouldn't have left it out of his sight, but being a decent person, I felt the responsibility to at least make sure that it is not stolen. Well, it is crowded on the train from Roma to Firenze and people are crunching into every free bit of space while people put their bags up on the racks and get seated, etc. This woman and her daughter saddle up next to my seat and I tell them that I have a reservation and that there is no room here for two. She gestures that she knows, but she can't get out to move yet. Then she starts playing with the buttons on the briefcase, and I say, "It's not mine, but it is his...not yours." She gestures that she is with him, which I knew definitely not to be true. So I take the bag and hold it up and tell the guy, "Your briefcase is here! Take it!" He says in English, "I know, just leave it there." Stupidly, I put it back down on the seat. For some reason, unclear to me, she puts the briefcase on the floor and her daughter sits in the chair. I'm watching her carefully because it isn't her bag and now it's out of my sightline. The guy who is supposed to sit next to me comes, and the girl gets up and he sits. The mother and the daughter start to move out and the mother "trips" over the bag...so I turned to the guy whose bag it is and says, "Your bag is on the floor and you need to take it now before someone gets hurt." He is still bustling around crazy and just gives me a thumbs up. I turn to get the bag and the woman, her daughter, and the bag are gone. Sigh. I turn back to the man and say, "Your bag is gone. She just took it." He doesn't get it and finally he asks for his bag and I explain to him, but I can't get through to chase her down. He bumbles around thinking that she just put it up on the rack, but I'm telling him to go after her because she stole it! We pull away from the station, and after a search of the train, the conductor deduces that she got off before the train pulled away. All their passports, documents, etc. were in the briefcase. Yes, he was stupid. But it was RIGHT next to me...sigh.
Anyway, when I arrive in Florence and the beautiful churches take my mind off things. I start with S. Maria Novella, a beautiful church whose facade is under renovation, and then I get to the Duomo. Wow. You just come around the corner and THERE IT IS! It's shiny white with a huge dome, a bell tower, and a baptistry...all to die for. Do it all if you go, which you should. I started with the baptistry, well, with the famous Doors of Paradise, which are copies by the way. Don't be fooled like all the tourist groups. Still, they are beautiful, bright gold, and just stunning in every way. But they are just a suggestion of what is to come when you go inside. My mouth dropped to the floor upon entering the baptistry. The dome is covered in gold mosaics and rings of angels, prophets and other bible stories with a huge Jesus Christ on one side. Unbelievable. Definitely work the pain in my neck and the dizziness from turning in circles to see it all! The inside of the Duomo nave, however, was a bit more austere than I had expected, but then you walk to the end and see its dome. Just as amazing as the baptistry, just in frescoes, and with a very detailed scene of devils eating the damned. This place wins for best ceilings in Europe so far. I decided that I was going to climb the dome, so I walked out one door and came first to the campanella, or Giotto's belltower. You can climb that as well. So I said, why not and started up the 441 steps. Wonderful views, but when I got to the top, I said, "Now I have to do the duomo dome too." Took a quick break at the museum which has the real gold panels of the Doors of Paradise. (Why save them in Nitrogen? Why can't we view them in the glory that they were supposed to be viewed in. Also, does anyone know if the Mona Lisa at the Louvre is a copy and the real one is in storage? This I heard and don't believe. I have some issues with conservation at the moment...but I digress. Oh also, the museum only has 7 of the 8 panels on display. When I asked where the 7th was, the lady said, "These are the panels." Yes, but where is the eighth. "Oh, these are all of them." There are only 7. "Um, these are the panels!" OK. The 8th is MIA.) Once my face turned its normal color from bright red, I decided to start up the Duomo dome, another 463 steps. 904 steps in total in one day! YES! I wonder how far up that is. 904x8inches or so...ok, you do the math. Well the views are absolutely stunning! If you do only one, which you should be smart and do, do the Duomo. This country is SO gorgeous!
Celebrated my birthday at midnight with my silent post.
But never fear, I did not spend my entire birthday alone! Thank you to all who sent birthday wishes! Sierra, the girl from Brandeis who is studying in Siena, invited me down to Siena to show me around and accompany me on my birthday! So off to beautiful Siena I went. We started off walking through a huge market to St. Catherine's cathedral that is famous for having the relic of St. Catherine's head, and they did a good job of embalming it too. In fact, it is such a good job that it looks like a woman's head with eyes and skin and everything...as if she was just sticking her head out of a box. I think I have deemed relics freakish. We scampered away to the grocery store for proscuitto, cheese, bread, and apples, basically ingredients for the ideal picnic at the Palazzo del Popolo. We come into the palazzo and I scream, "THIS IS IT!" During my Renaissance in Florence class, I think I was dozing off (the professor is terribly boring) and a slide popped up of Siena's Palazzo del Popolo. I remember it because I thought it was a well designed gathering area with a raked curved brick area for people to sit surrounded by beautiful buildings. For some reason I got it in my head that it was the Duomo in Milan. Got to Milan and it wasn't there. OK, Florence maybe. Nope. OK, where is this place? Siena! Had a wonderful birthday picnic while Sierra told me all about the Palio, the huge horse race around the Palazzo every July (getting excited, Sierra?), the history of Siena, and her amazing Italian love story with a Sicilian boy who is going to move to the US for her. (Wow. Way to go Sierra!) Anyway, we went inside and saw gorgeous frescoes devoted to the Siena Council of Nine, or the governing body. Meandered through the winding streets to come out at the Duomo, an amazing jewel box of a building that I like to call the Zebra or Referee Church. Everything is layered white on black stone, so all the columns and the walls are striped. Apparently Siena's flag is a black and white stripe, so the whole building screams the city. And the floors! Oh my, the floors! Beautiful marble inlay of biblical scenes covered the entire floor plane. And it is all under a ceiling of stars in a dark blue sky. Just stunning. Also, Raphael was "discovered" for his talents in a fresco in the library. Ended the day by overlooking the Siena countryside in the Medici fortress, eating birthday gelatto from the best gelatto store in the world, La Kopa Kabana. Tops anything you've ever had, and they give you your money's worth. I was going to splurge for a large, but Sierra said wait to see her medium. It was huge. Biggest medium I have ever seen. I can't even imagine what the large was, but I decided not to get it because I didn't feel like eating a Vermonster's worth of ice cream for a third time. Bacci, chocolate fondant (Nikki, we need to learn how to make this flavor!), and nutella. Unbelievable. Great birthday! Thank you, Sierra!
The next day was Melissa's treat day. Started off by seeing my favorite David, Varecchio's David, at the Bargello. Mom told me it was a must see and she is right, as always. It's a clothed David, and he is only about 2.5 feet tall, but he is exactly what I would picture a David to be. Absolutely beautiful. Almost got kicked out for taking pictures of it, but anything for you, Mom! Donatello's David was about to be cleaned, so it was down on its side in a cradle. You could see it, but it just wasn't the same. But I give a big thumbs up to the Bargello because it is a fabulous museum of sculpture. Best museum in Florence. Before splurging on my birthday gift, I saw some churches: the Orsan Michelle (wedding was going on...), the Badia (which has a beautiful carved wooden ceiling), and the Santa Croche (which is marvellous, even if the apse is being renovated). It houses the beautiful tombs of Gallileo, Dante, and Michelangelo (even though he isn't buried there, I think). Funerary statues are just so beautiful. OK, then it was shopping on the Ponte Vecchio time. So in junior year of high school, Mrs. Cosgrove, my English teacher, told us, "You WILL go to Florence. And you WILL go to the Pontevecchio. And you WILL buy gold." What she didn't tell us was HOW we WILL pay for said gold. My oh my. I said to myself, "Why not?!" and went into every store and tried on very, very expensive gold jewelry that I could never afford. It was really fun, actually. I walked away for a bit to digest what I had seen to rush to my reservation at the Academia, which was not worth it. Michelangelo's David is the UGLIEST statue I've ever seen! It's too big. It's too ugly. And it's too imposing. And it is too bad that it gets all the attention. Don't waste your money. See the fake one outside the Palazzo Vecchio and move on. To get rid of my hatred, I decided to go back and buy something beautiful and ended up with a gorgeous gold rose charm of yellow and pink gold. Happy birthday to me! (Family, thank you very much!) Ate dinner at a place near Santo Spirito and was put at a table with another single traveller, a woman from Germany. Had a great discussion about art and opera and called it a night.
Sorry, these posts are getting longer and longer. One more day in Florence, and I started out at the Uffizi. It's an amazing museum (make reservations way in advance), and there I solidified my love for Botticelli. An entire room of just his paintings, including the Birth of Venus, and they are all just beautiful. Quickly visited the Palazzo Vecchio and then spent way too much money to get into the Pitti Palace. It's a RIP OFF. To get into both the museum and the Boboli gardens, you have to buy both kinds of tickets, thus adding up to 20.50 euro. $30. Definitely not enough there to make it worth it. Luckily for me, there was a special exhibit on set and costume design which was really fabulous. Pictures of models to prove it coming later. Went to dinner near my hostel with Donna, a 64 year old woman from Wisconsin who was staying in the same room as me. When I first met her, she didn't have her teeth in and she said, "Hi! I'm a hick from WI." Yeah, no kidding. But she turned out to be one of the nicest people I've ever met. She had never been out of the country before, but she saved up all her money to do a 3.5 month trip all around the Mediterranean. Wow.
Overall, loved Florence.
Going to skip over my Venice travels until I get load pictures...but I loved it all well! Many more stories to come!
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