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.