Firenza, the meat and potatoes

Sunday, June 2

In a city like Florence, there is no way that human being can see all the art in a single visit.  One museum is more important and more impressive than the next.  A visit to a single museum like the Uffizi could be an entire semester's art history course at the university.  Luckily we had a couple of advantages on our tour.

1. It was late May / early June and only a million tourists had shown up so far.  Therefore, the crowds in the cathedrals and museums were merely crushing but not suffocating.
2. We bought the various tourist cards, like the FirenzeCard, which affords priority admission to the venues.  What a pleasure to walk up to the special priority entrance while bunches of people wait in line for their turn.

After breakfast this morning we headed to the Galleria dell' Accademia.  This is a small museum with some of the blockbuster sculptures from Renaissance Florence.  Here stands the origianal David by Michelangelo.  It is absolutely humbling to stand before that statue.  As if that weren't enough, the series of unfinished Priggioni (prisoners but usually called the slaves) line the hall leading up to the David.  Michelangelo was able to depict the raw power of the struggle of the priggioni against the marble rock from which they are escaping. 

Then, besides those great works, there were other sculptures that have their own pages and chapters devoted to them in art history tomes.  Early musical instruments, including an Amati Cello and some wind and string instruments that one would never see today, were exhibited in a section of the Accademia.  Finally, entire rooms were devoted to the art of plaster casting -- how plaster copies and originals are made.  No photos are permitted in the Accademia; so we can't prove that we were ever there.  When we came out, the line was down the street and around the corner -- several hundred people waiting to get in.

We took the bus to a stop near the Ponte Vecchio and walked across the Arno River on the old bridge.  During the Renaissance, the bridge was lined with shopkeepers selling their wares.  Still is, but exclusively jewelers.  In the middle of the bridge we came upon a peculiar phenomenon.  The little fence around a monument in the middle of the bridge was festooned with hundreds of padlocks.  What's going on here?

From there we went to the Pitti Palace which was purchased from the Pitti family by the Medicis in the 16th century.  We visited the museums in the palace as well as the living quarters, which remain much as they were at the time of the Medicis -- tapestries, huge carpets, full-wall paintings and frescoes, paintings by Titian and Raphael -- just the usual stuff.  The Giardino Boboli of the palace were enormous, and Yoyi was just too pooped to walk through them.  I almost got lost, but my trusty map program was accurate down to the paths in the garden, showing which ones were dead ends, for example.

We walked back across the Ponte Vecchio and started to unpack our lunch on the steps of the Loggia dei Lanzi.  The guard chased us away; this is a museum, he told us.  We looked around without any luck and asked a strolling policeman where we might find a park or a bench where we could have a "peekneek.  He told us that there is no place like that in the city.  Finally, we ate our lunch sitting on the wall at the edge of the river.

Sitting at the river, we were  100 meters from the entrance to the Uffizi gallery.  We "put on our running shoes," took advantage of our priority admission, and started through the museum.  Think about this image: You open your big fat art history book, and then you take the pages in one hand and flip through them as if you are shuffling a deck of cards, the pages passing at lightning speed.  That's about how we took in the Uffizi. The collection is beyond belief.

By late afternoon we were beat, and we spent an hour in the museum cafe on the roof enjoying a cappuccino and a beautiful clear afternoon with a view of the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.  Yoyi was done by then, but I had recovered enough to spend a little more time in the museum while she went out into the courtyard and amused herself watching the tourists and the mimes.

After a taxi ride back to the hotel, we rested for an hour and went to a little family-run restaurant on the corner near the hotel.  I had ossobuco, as I attempted to sample those Italian dishes that are exotic, but still allowed.  It was delicious.  Of course, we ordered our 1/4 liter of red wine; maybe Yoyi is learning to appreciate wine....  We were back at the hotel by 9:00, before most Italians had sat down to dinner.

Firenze, from the top

Saturday, June 1

Planning the trip,  I had put us in Siena on Friday night and Saturday so that we could attend services for Shabbat in the old synagogue.  It wasn't until later that I found out that the rabbi's tenure was ending in May, and that there would be no services until a new rabbi is engaged.  So much for careful planning.

Instead we enjoyed walking around the town for another morning after another delicious breakfast on the patio.  We bought bread and cheese at a large grocery store inside the stazione and ate lunch on the train to Florence.

When you board the train in Italy, you must have validated your ticket at a machine that stamps the date and time, found on the platform.  If you fail to validate the ticket you will be subject to a fine up to 200€.  Same requirement when you board a bus or a tram.  It's remarkable how easy it is to forget to validate the ticket.

Having forgotten to stamp the ticket, I went car to car on the train trying to find the conductor to attempt to explain my unfamiliarity with the process.  After a lengthy search I ran him down, and with his 100 words of English and my 50 words of Italian, he assured me that having found him I saved myself any penalty.

When I had gotten up from my seat there was a shady looking character in our carriage.  I wondered if he had a ticket.  Just before the conductor came through to check tickets, he had disappeared; gone to the bathroom??  The conductor greeted me as he passed, and smiled at us about our ticket confusion.  After the conductor passed through the carriage, the fellow showed up again.  Just before we debarked, I mentioned to the conductor that he may have missed checking the guy's ticket.  A few minutes later, we saw the fellow being questioned by the transit officials.

From the stazione in Florence, we searched first for the tourist office, since we had purchased a FirenzeCard (similar to the MilanoCard that we had in Milan).  We picked up the card and took a taxi to the hotel.  After negotiating a bunch of one-way streets we reached the hotel for a 9€ taxi ride; the hotel was three long blocks from the stazione.

The Grand Hotel Adriatico was very nice, but had a fraction of the character of the B&B we had left in Siena.  It was a real hotel, with a desk and a lift.  The room was relatively big, and there was no free wi-fi.

The bus stop was a at the corner by the hotel, and bus passage was included in the FirenzeCard, but the bus schedule was erratic, and on at least one day there were detours that caused the bus to by-pass our stop.  But the first day we got on the bus and successfully got to Il Bargello, supposedly the finest collection of Renaissance sculpture in Italy.  We saw Michelangelo, Donatello, Cellini, and other masters' works until we were stumbling tired.  And this was only our first stop for the day.

Our next stop was probably the most important church in Florence -- not the Duomo.  The Basilica de Santa Croce is a mammoth gothic church facing a beautiful piazza, and in the facade of the church is a six-pointed blue star, above the entrance in stained glass.  Didn't learn this until later: A Jewish architect Niccolo Matas from Ancona, designed the church's 19th century neo-Gothic facade, working a prominent Star of David into the composition. Matas had wanted to be buried with his peers but because he was Jewish, he was buried under the porch and not within the walls.

Inside the church are the tombs of many of Italy's great historical figures: Michelangelo, Galileo, Rossini, Machiavelli, Ghiberti, and Dante (actually buried elsewhere), among others.  Besides the tombs, the church is rich in giotto freschi, and the floors are paved with marble tomb covers and mosaics.  Much of the floor was roped off so that people would not tread on the tombs and artwork, but there was no way that all the art could be protected, or there would have been nowhere to step.

In the piazza, where we had our obligatory gelato of the afternoon, we watched people feed the pigeons, play soccer with their children, hold hands, snap photos, and otherwise enjoy a beautiful day.

Our third and final stop of this very full day was to be the Piazza della Signoria, the political and artistic center of the city.  On the piazza is
the Palazzo Vecchio (the old city hall and fortress to protect the ruling class from the hoi palloi), which is still used as a government building.  The tour of the palazzo took us through the Sala de Cinquecento, where there was a ceremony in progress, decorated by enormous frescoes depicting the magnificent history of Florence and by the sculpture Victory by Michelangelo.

The museum of the Palazzo contained numerous paintings, as well as huge illluminated hymnals and ancient maps.

The other highlight of the Piazza della Signoria is the Loggia dei Lanzi, an open-air sculpture gallery facing the piazza in front of the Palazzo.  Only the statues in this Loggia would be enough for a normal city's art collection, including the Medici Lions, Perseus with the Head of Medusa, and the Rape of the Sabine Women -- along with other originals and some copies of famous works.

After dinner we took a taxi back to the hotel, and I left Yoyi to walk around the city.  I walked down to and across the Arno River, and wandered through the neighborhoods.  School was finally over, and the piazzas were crowded with young people, from mid-teens and older.  Crossing the bridge, I could see the Ponte Vecchio was illuminated in the distance and the domes of the many churches as well as the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio were lit up, giving the city a golden glow.

Siena

Friday, May 31

We woke to a beautiful morning in Siena.  Breakfast was brought to our room, and we took it out the door of the room to the terrace, with its gargoyles, fountains, and plantings, and enjoyed our repast al fresco.

I planned to stay in Siena for a day and a half, so that we could enjoy the little town without rushing.  Siena is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and our plan was to take in the flavor of the middle ages and the Renaissance, and not worry too much about attractions.  The important things to see are the Duomo and -- for us -- the ancient synagogue.

The cathedral is striking, built of alternating white and black marble.  Its stripes are echoed in many other later medieval churches in Toscana, but it is the best known and one of the earliest.  The art on the walls, the marble mosaic floors, the stained glass, and the carvings were beyond expectations.  We explored the building with our mouths "hanging open" and eventually went outside, where we ate leftovers from breakfast on the patio of the Duomo.

The synagogue, like most at the time, is in a building effectively indistinguishable from the outside, but beautifully decorated inside.

At the synagogue we made our second contact with someone with whom we had a connection.  The lady that guided us through the building said that she had moved to Siena from Rome to open a winery.  I mentioned that a member of our synagogue married a girl from Rome, and told her only her first name, but she recognized immediately that they had been childhood friends.

In the library of the synagogue a woman was working on some 18th century texts from the archives of the community, some sacred and some business.  She was transcribing the text for historical preservation.  There are only about 50 Jews left in Siena (not families, but individuals).

We finally got a SIM card for our phone; now we were connected.  After resting at the hotel for an hour or so, we went back to the town square --Piazza del Campo -- where we ate a gelato before we went to change some dollars for euros.  We had asked the girl at the B&B where to change money and she recommended the Banco Monte di Paschi.  This is the oldest surviving bank in the world in business continuously, founded in 1472.  Inside it looked like Wells Fargo, but I guess there's something to be said for modernity.  We should have changed more money, since we got the best rate BY FAR compared to other exchanges we made previously or later.

Since we discovered a coin laundry at the corner of the hotel, we did laundry while we shopped for souvenirs.  After we took it back to the hotel, we went out to dinner at the Trattoria Dino, which we had discovered up the street -- a family restaurant that looked inviting.  I managed to order my first meal entirely in Italian, Pollo alla Senese.  Yoyi thinks I just italicized some Spanish words and phrases.  But it's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  I ordered a 1/4 liter of red house wine for 2€; it was delicious; even Yoyi drank some and enjoyed it.

Cinque Terre

Wednesday, May 29

(Pronounce that "chinque terre")

Today we go down to the Mediterranean coast.  The towns of the Cinque Terre are built on cliffs overlooking the sea, originally fishing villages, but now tourist attractions.  We got up early to catch our first train ride from the Stazione Centrale.  We had bought the tickets the prior evening.

It was raining when we left the hotel after breakfast, taking a taxi to the stazione, but it cleared up a few minutes into the trip.  The train had 6-person cabins, like the trains in the past, and we shared the cabin with three other passengers. We would take the train past the little towns and debark in La Spezia, from which we would take a round-trip train back to the coast. 

We walked through a pedestrian street from the train station to find our hotel.  when we got to the address, there was nobody there.  We had promised ourselves to buy a cellphone chip when we arrived in Milan, but we procrastinated.  And now we needed a phone.  The management of many B&Bs might not be on site at all times, and a phone is needed to alert them that you have arrived.  We walked down the street to a small store and asked the proprietress for the favor of calling the landlord to advise him that we need him.  A few minutes later he showed up and registered us into his establishment.

We ate a picnic of bread, cheese, hard-boiled egg, and tomato waiting for the train.  The train through the Cinque Terre goes through several tunnels, as it skirts the cliffs overlooking he Mediterranean.  Monterossa was our first stop.  As we stood on the terrace overlooking the sea, a couple our age asked if we would like them to take our photo.  Since they were speaking with a Spanish accent, we asked where they were from.  Argentina, they responded, and we mentioned that our son-in-law is Argentinian.  What's his name, they asked.  When we told them, they replied, of course they know his family well; their children went to school together.  After a pleasant conversation, we went our separate ways.

There are paths between and among these 5 villages, all set in a national park.  I had hoped to stroll some of the paths, but excessive rain had closed all of them.  But the town was fun to explore, and it was cool enough so that climbing the hills didn't cause us to break a sweat.  We went to a cafe overlooking the sea while we waited to go to the train station for the next train.

We went next to Riomaggiore, another picturesque village, where we climbed up and down hills and long stairways, appreciating the vistas and the ancient buildings and winding alleys.  Caught the train back to La Spezia, arriving at 5:30, in time to rest for a while at the B&B.  When we finally went our to dinner, we were so tired that we shared a small dish of manicotti at a cafe.

Thursday, May 30

Breakfast was at a little cafe at the corner, after which we collected our baggage and prepared for the trip through Pisa to Siena.  A "regionale" train allows you to ride for up to 6 hours, as long as you are proceeding in the same general direction.  So we bought a ticket to Siena and took off.

We got to Pisa at 11:30 and took a bus to the Piazza di Miracoli, where the Duomo, Battistero, and Campanile are located.  After taking the obligatory photo holding up the tower, we visited the buildings.  (Please read the tour books or history books for details)  The piazza and the town were both impressive and charming.

After a gelato, we bought fixings for lunch and caught the 2:30 train.  We had to change trains in Empoli, but I had miscalculated the 6-hours just enough that we had to buy a new ticket from Empoli to Siena.  We had enough time to eat lunch on the platform, waiting for our connection.

In the meantime, we were taken with the amount of graffiti everywhere.  People have no respect for public property.  Some (apparently German) graffiti writer managed the following: "The train is schitt."  His/her Germanic spelling notwithstanding, the irony was that the on-board restrooms were in fact either out of order or locked.

We got to Siena in the late afternoon, and it took forever to find the bus terminal at the stazione.  The B&B had sent instructions to take the #3 bus to the end of the line and walk a few hundred meters to the hotel.  I thought the ride would be a few minutes; in stead, the bus wound around town, eventually leaving the city and driving through the countryside crossing a few autostrade, and eventually -- 45 minutes later -- reaching the end of the line.  It seemed as if we were at the next village, but a fellow passenger confirmed we were at the Porta Tufi.  We asked her if she would call us a taxi.  The taxi took us up and down a few one-way streets until we arrived at the B&B, practically within sight of the city gate (porta) -- and practically walking distance from the train station (without luggage).  We had made a circle around Siena, since almost no motorized traffic is allowed within the city center.

The hotel, Il Casato, was in a renovated renaissance building as charming as you would hope such an accommodation would be.  The narrow stairway was a challenge, but we settled into our room, with vaulted ceiling, and went out to explore the quaint, historic neighborhood, eventually having dinner at a ristorante surrounded by medieval and renaissance buildings in one of the market squares near the hotel.

Italy: Milano

Sunday, May 26

Our business class connecting flight to NY Kennedy was an hour late, and we got to New York just 45 minutes before the plane to Milan was scheduled to leave. We tried to sleep, but with little success. They feed you dinner shortly after you reach cruising altitude, and they feed you breakfast an hour and a half before landing. It doesn't leave you much time to sleep, even if it were possible to do so.

Monday, May 27

We landed at Milan Malpensa airport at about 7:00 AM local time (Central European Time), and searched around for the office where we could pick up our MilanoCards, which I had bought on line prior to leaving. Once we bought the card, we bought 4 trips on the shuttle, since the card afforded us a "buy 3 get 1 free" offer. It was rush hour in Milan, everyone going into the city to work at the same time we were trying to get there; therefore, the bus took somewhat over an hour, dropping us at the Stazione Centrale (pronounce that "statsion chentraleh).

From the stazione, we took a taxi to Hotel Sanpi, about a km distance. This is an actual hotel, although small, with a lift, and with keys on a heavy weight, that one leaves at the front desk when going out. The room was small but comfortable.

The 3-day MilanoCard (they don't have a 2-day card) includes unlimited public transport for two days. In Milan that is a great advantage, since there is a wonderful streetcar network, as well as trolley buses and regular buses. Many of the streetcars in the central area are the older models. In fact, when New Orleans needed cars for their streetcar line, they bought them from Milan. We would seldom have to wait even 5 minutes for a streetcar.

Without much rest we went out to explore the city, taking the streetcars everywhere, and quickly learning the lines. First we went to the Piazza del Duomo and visited the Cathedral after taking in the magnificent square and the impressive facade of the church. The Duomo is the second largest in the world (after St. Peter's in Rome), with a capacity of 40,000.

We spent a few minutes at the Mercato Via San Marco, one of the many open-air markets we visited during our trip. We had lunch at a cafe on the street, across the piazza from the Duomo. We eventually learned about the several types of eating establishments.

• a bar has drinks (including coffee), snacks, possibly pizza, and simple (usually frozen) meals.
• a cafe has coffee (and soft drinks, beer and possibly wine) and baked goods plus panini and pizza
• a trattoria is a restaurant, less formal than a ristorante
• an osteria is a restaurant less formal than a trattoria
• a ristorante is a relatively formal restaurant.

But all three types of restaurant have begun to morph into restaurants.

From lunch we strolled through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, a very upscale shopping gallery in an end-of-the-19th-century arcade. There we saw what appears to be a minyan on the first (that's 2nd) floor. We entered the arcade at the Piazza del Duomo, and exited on the Piazza dela Scala. We bought tickets to visit the Teatro alla Scala Tuesday morning.

On the Piazza San Marco we entered a small old church that was intriguing to us because the rose window has a 6-pointed star in in.

We took the tram to the Navigli district to walk around. This area was the freight center when canals were a major method of transport. Now its just a scenic cityscape, with cafes and restaurants. We bought bread in a bakery, and later bought fruit and cheese in a grocery. When we got back to the hotel, we left our stuff and went to the Giardini Publici to eat our picnic.

It has been a L...O...N...G and tiring day, but we did a lot and began to acclimate ourselves to Italy.

Tuesday, May 28

Our first (included) breakfast was a very pleasant experience: croissants, all sorts of bread, yogurt, cheeses, cereal, fresh fruit, and a fancy self-serve coffee machine that made every kind of delicious Italian coffee you could imagine. And we went back for refills -- available hardly anywhere.

Since we would spend only 2 days in Milano, we figured we should squeeze in as much as we could handle.

We visited the Teatro alla Scala as early as we could get out. The theater is beautiful; a great place to appreciate opera. When we visited the attached museum, we saw historic costumes from productions of Aida, as well as paintings and busts of famous musicians and composers.

At the Mercato Papiniano I left Yoyi to shop. My tablet had stopped working, so I searched for a Lenovo dealer, where I might get service. I had identified one earlier and went there on the tram after making specific plans where and when to meet. When I got to the site, there was no building with the address. A helpful person showed me the building (no address). There was no shop.in the directory, and I worked with the concierge to learn that the store had left 3 years earlier. He mentioned that there was a computer company in one of the suites, so I rang their bell. The fellow that answered went out of his way to try to find a Lenovo-related person that would even talk to us about warranty -- unsuccessfully. A day or so later, I determined that the problem may have been a bad electrical outlet that didn't allow the tablet to charge properly. It worked ever after.

Miraculously we met up back at the mercato, right at the time and location specified. While I had been unsuccessful in my search for computer assistance, Yoyi was very successful in the retail arena. We decided to reward ourselves with gelato; we did that a lot. Whereas we saw gelato stands, stores, and vendors everywhere at all other times, we couldn't find one within a couple of blocks, so we stopped some older passers-by, who asked if we speak French and gave us directions in French to what they said is the best gelato in the neighborhood. It was, in fact, quite satisfying to eat it in the park.

After stashing the loot back at the hotel (thanks to unlimited public transportation) and resting for a few minutes, we went out to the Pinacoteca di Brera. (A pinacoteca is an art gallery; the term is used in Germany and other countries, as well.) Our MilanoCard included admission to several places. Full of Renaissance art, we became tired of figuring out which saint is which, but you have to suffer a little to see the gems. Mantegna's famous Cristo Morto, which everyone probably remembers from Art History 101 in college. It's known for the ground-breaking perspective that it depicts.

After dinner, we collapsed into bed, exhausted.