Florence

Last Night In Florence

Posted on by Laughingnomad

April 24, 2002
On the last day in Florence our room was booked by someone else and we had to move a few doors up the street to the Hotel Abaci. We had the Boticelli Room-pretty fancy compared to what we were used to. Many of the eight rooms in the hotel were right off the small dining area set up in the hall, so during breakfast people were coming out of their rooms in their jammies to cross the dining area to get to the WC around the corner-but they didn’t seem to mind a bit and neither did we-this is Europe.

In Florence I found internet nirvana. The young guys configured my computer so I could connect to their server and cut and paste my travel reports. Funniest experience was in Bayonne France where I asked to do this and they insisted I could just plug my phone wire into the wall and I’d be on the internet! The Senegalese guy at the local computer school really got a laugh out of that one. By the way, one of my readers says that her adult children, who are all computer nerds, contend that the reason the internet is not prominent in France is because the telephone wiring hasn’t been updated (except in the south) since World War I and doesn’t have the capacity.

In the old city near the Duomo where we were staying we passed a small church that was offering a concert with about 12 versions of Ave Maria sung by a young tenor. I thought I’d gone to heaven-for awhile anyway. Except for the American pop music played in most public venues, I realized we weren’t getting much good music, which, as a friend reminded us, is balm for the soul.

Michelangelo’s David

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Bob is going on a walking tour where he will learn how the Renaissance Medici family ruled and held onto their city as an independent state for three centuries in face of pressure from the Papacy and how they commissioned some of the greatest art in the western world. He will learn about the political intrigues of the time and what precipitated Machiavelli’s “The Prince.”

Built on the site of an Etruscan settlement, Florence, the symbol of the Renaissance, rose to economic and cultural pre-eminence under the Medici in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its 600 years of extraordinary artistic activity can be seen above all in the 13th-century cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore), the Church of Santa Croce, the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, the work of great masters such as Giotto, Brunelleschi, Botticelli and Michelangelo. It is an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In Florence in 1965, I have an indelible memory of walking along looking at Michelangelo’s unfinished works in the Galleria dell’ Accademia (Europe’s first school of drawing) lining both sides of a long hallway. Finally, at the end of the hallway I looked up and saw the most beautiful body I had ever seen standing on a four foot pedestal under a lighted dome…David…and reaching out and touching what I could have sworn was flesh…

Bob will have his own experience albeit probably quite a different one! Actually Michelangelo’s unfinished work was just as thrilling…like watching contorted bodies writhing-climbing-free of their prisons. Carved from a gigantic block of marble, David was finished in 1504 when Michelangelo was just 29…his work an inspired miracle!

Serendipity Florence

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Well, we are in Florence, by serendipity, on April 5, 2002. By that I mean that we were on the train from Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera headed to Siena when we realized we would be going through Florence to get there. I had actually been pulling for Assisi where my favorite saint is buried and where son Joshua had spent several months living-studying the language and the food. But I told Bob it was a sin not to see Florence so we decided to jump.

Bob left me in the train station in charge of the baggage and a USA Today and took off looking for a hotel. Actually was touching for an hour observing the old men sitting here and then after a few minutes changing places there-taking up seats, as in every European train station, with no place else they would rather go. Maybe old men need train stations to sit and remember…and dream while they watch…who? I imagined the old women probably home gossiping together about how the youngsters in town were all going to hell.

Last night we ate at a modern hip restaurant-very noisy-with lots of “cool” people in black leather jackets-mostly Italians. We had the pasta sampler-5 different kinds so we are getting our fill of pasta! Today we ate lunch at a small down home Trattoria-pasta for the Primeri course and grilled steak for me and veal with sauce for Bob for Segundi course.

I am left with one single strong impression about these European countries. The people know who they are and they love being who they are. The Italians, especially, may suffer their pain in private but in public they love being with each other, talking laughing eating! Americans imagine everyone in the world wants to be American. Not true.