Firenze

Florence, Italy

(October 31 - November 3)

So Florence, like Rome, was rainy.  The weather apps and websites that we used inevitably lied to us (including a pouring rain that lasted at least an hour during a day that was supposed to be sunny with 0% chance of precipitation) and we realized that most of our shoes are merely water resistant.  No fun.  That said, Florence may be the city I enjoyed the most on this trip (we’re flying to Dublin now, so we’ll see whether that’s changed in the next couple of days).  Part of the reason is certainly that Katie spent many months here studying during college and so knew her way around, could recommend restaurants, etc.  Florence has been the only city where I literally knew nothing of the layout of the city when we left, as she pretty much set our itinerary and navigated the entire time.  Unfortunately, due to the constant rain and a fairly regular “no foto” policy most places we went, we have fewer pictures from Florence than most other places, but we’ll make due.

I have a pretty purse.

We then went out and walked around Florence for a bit as Katie got her bearings again.  We did a “I used to walk down this street on my way to class and turn left here so I could say hi to my favorite Fendi purse” tour which included popping in to a café on Piazza della Republica called Gilli that served the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had by a good margin.  It was thick enough that you could just about stand a spoon up in it.  Nom.

Because it was still raining and we were losing daylight, we decided to put off the sightseeing until the next day and do a little shopping.  I ended up getting a pair of boots at a store called Bata (I think?) where a young German woman went through various stages of grief over realizing that she had lost her wallet.  It wasn’t so much the issue of the wallet itself as the fact that she was travelling tomorrow and apparently had been walking around with her passport (and maybe her tickets?) in her wallet, which she had left in the top of her purse which she left open.  I was unclear whether she actually lost the wallet in the shoe store but at one point (she mentioned previously being at a bar or restaurant) she did suggest that the store was actually liable for the loss (all while ignoring the advice provided by the employees, who were telling her to go to the police and call the airline so she could report the theft and get temporary travel documents made up.  She was utterly convinced that this was a terrible idea).  I counted (certainly not in this order) denial, anger, bargaining, anger-bargaining, blame and ignoring good advice like a four-year-old, so 6 stages of grief*.

*The psychology courses I never took in undergrad are a bit hazy.

That night we had an excellent dinner at Ciro and Sons, one of the better dinners we’ve had so far on the trip.  Katie had been there once while studying in Florence and it turned out to be on the end of the very short street that our hotel was on.

The next day we walked around town and saw a number of the sites.  The most dominant and striking building in Florence has to be the “Duomo”, a domed church in Piazza del Duomo called Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore.  The exterior is done entirely in green and pink marble in very intricate patterns and is unmistakable.

There’s also a similarly decorated baptistery in the same piazza that we checked out.  It has a really beautiful Byzantine-style interior.  Like many other churches of the era, the interior artwork tells various stories from the Bible.  One theme we noticed throughout Europe was that of the Last Judgment.  In one of the more confusing pieces of the trip (my opinion), you have the risen Christ reappearing with the Last Judgment below while saints, angels and, what appears to be another non-crucified/risen Christ, look on.

We also went inside the Duomo which is far plainer inside than most of the other churches we had been to.  Many churches of this size and age in Europe are covered in gold leaf, tapestries, paintings, mosaics, statues and the like.  The inside of the Duomo, however, was quite plain, with the occasional painting or inscription along the walls and few windows.  The rest of the interior made the inside of the Duomo (dome) itself all the more startling, as it is intricately decorated, quite similarly to the Baptistery.

While we were there, we also had the opportunity to light a few candles, so we did.

The Duomo and Baptistery are in one of the largest and most active squares in the city.  This is where I first encountered the “gypsies” that Katie had always spoken so highly of.  Legend has it that gypsies had been known to throw a baby into your arms if you were carrying something valuable and when you dropped whatever it was to catch the baby, someone they were working with would pick it up and run.  Tricksie, indeed.  The gypsies were certainly persistent (though none threw any babies at me), but not nearly so prevalent as the random guys selling umbrellas and ponchos.  These guys are seriously diligent and overwhelmingly optimistic.  In Florence, I was offered an umbrella by no fewer than a dozen of these guys over a 72 hour period.  In only one of those instances was I not already actually using an umbrella.

We then headed over to the Ufizzi museum, but the lines were very long and not actually moving, so we headed toward the Arno, which runs through the city.

And we wandered through some of the residential streets on the other side of the Arno.

We also found the headquarters of the incredibly important and internationally renowned Associazione Culturale Italo-Indiana, or the Italian-Hoosier Cultural Society, as it’s commonly known in the States.

We grabbed a prosciutto, arugula and provolone pizza and a bowl of ribolita in a little café called Baldo Vino off of Piazza Santa Croce, another of the main city squares.  This restaurant was also where I tried my first Italian microbrew of the trip, described by the waiter as a “light lager” that looked, smelled, tasted and felt exactly like a medium-bodied ale (ratebeer.com tells me it’s a Belgian ale).  It was pretty good, nothing you need to start calling Italy to get a hold of, but I’d recommend you give it a try if you happen to see it on the shelves.  It’s called L’olmaia (this one was the “La 5”).

We spent the rest of the day wandering around Florence until we found a laundromat, which was good because we were getting pretty thin on the necessities.  So we brought our clothes, got them started in the washers and popped across the street for a beer and some cribbage.

One of the washers had trouble getting between various stages of the wash cycle, so we had to call the guy that runs them to come fix it.  He’s late (I’ll be there in 15 = wait 30), so I start futzing with the machine and it actually does kind of start working, but not great.  Wouldn’t really be an issue, but we have dinner reservations in a couple of hours.

OK, I told you that because I wanted to give you an idea of why this next scene happened at all.  So there’s a guy who was in there, mid-40s, American from California who practically introduces himself by saying that he grows weed for a living.  He’s pretty drunk at this point (it’s probably 5pm).  The guy who runs the laundromat is also an American from California.  If you ever watch the show Modern Family, he reminds me a bit of Phil Dumfrey.  He rides a moped and spends the entirety of this story (at least 40 minutes) wearing the helmet for it, chinstrap tight.  Both are talkers.  There are also these two girls who look like they’re in college who are awfully quiet this whole time.

So the two guys from California are trying to out-“I’m more an American living abroad than you are” each other.  Weedy McDrunkerson has been complaining about the machines and so Californian no. 2 offers him a beer.  While this is happening, we’ve been getting various restaurant recommendations from Weedy and no. 2, specifically why not to go to the places we’ve already been or currently have reservations for and why we won’t be able to get any other reservations on such short notice because it’s a holiday.  In this back and forth (or back and FORTH I should say, as they were doing most of the talking), Katie mentioned that she studied here in college a few years back.  At this point, one of the two church mice who have been taking this whole scene in silently asks, “kind of a long shot, but where did you go to school?”  “I studied abroad here through JMU.” “That’s what we’re doing!”  “OMG!”  (etc.)

So here’s my favorite part of the story.  Weedy and no. 2 can no longer dominate the conversation, Katie and her new JMU friends are basically completely ignoring them.  So Weedy goes next door for his beer, while no. 2 tries to stick around a bit longer to see if he can swing the conversation back in his direction.  For some reason he decides that I want to talk about James Bond and the new movie that just came out (anyone seen it? Any good?  I’ve got my doubts…).  I’m happy for the distraction from our new Californian friends, so I pretty much stick with Katie’s JMU conversation.  We have to get going to make our dinner reservation, anyway.  Speaking of…

We went to dinner at Il Latini!  It’s a restaurant that Katie had been to a couple of times in Florence before and always had a really good experience with, so I was pretty excited.  Their reservation system isn’t what most Americans are familiar with.  Basically you call ahead and get your reservation for one of two seating times, 7:30 or 9:30.  We had a reservation for 7:30, so we get there around 7:15 and I wander off to find an ATM.  When I get back, Katie has a new friend!  She’s such an extrovert!  Our new friends are Minesh and Tanvi and live in Houston.

So there are probably 150 people crowded around the door when they open at 7:30.  The way it works from here is that people basically push to the front and give their name, then the rest of the party squeezes through the small mob of people and sit down.  This got particularly interesting when taxis tried to drive down that street.

We finally push our way through and end up seated with Katie's new friends!  The dinner goes something like this.

Waiter shows up. "Would you like to do the antipasti tonight?  Yes?  OK."
4 antipasti plates show up, including what must have been at least 1/8 pound of prosciutto PER PERSON.
Waiter shows up. "We have 4 primi dishes, which would you like?"
Primi shows up.

To give you a feel for the portions, here you can see the size of Katie's veal chop (secondi) after she had eaten half of it.

For dessert, we split a panna cota with chocolate, and the waiter brought out a glass of port and a glass of moscati for each person at the table, as well as an enormous basket of biscotti.  KK and Aaron were very happy.

Between the 4 courses, enormous portions, 2L bottle of wine and 4 beers that our table consumed, I was expecting a hefty bill.  Turns out that the bill comes to 90 for the two of us, which is just asinine, so we give the waiter a sizable tip and head out to celebrate our enormous dinner with our new friends.

As it turns out, they'll be heading to Venice in a few days as well, so we set a date to meet up for dinner and drinks again in Venice.  You know Katie, always meeting new people!

So the next day we went to L'accademia, a museum in Florence that houses mostly sculpture, including a number of unfinished pieces by Michelangelo.  The main reason we came, though, was the David.  Unfortunately they have a no photography rule, so I don't have any pictures inside the building, but he is an enormous, beautiful work of art.  The whole no pictures thing was actually kind of nice, because it kind of forces you to really look at it rather than just take pictures.  He's also in remarkably good condition considering his age and that he was kept outside in a public square for about 100 years.

Regardless, you can still get your picture taken in front of a scale replica of the David in one of the city squares, so we did.

Gotta keep this blog PG.

Also, Perseus with Medusa's head.  Because why not?

 So again we waited in line to get into the Ufizzi and again the line was incredibly long and didn't really move, so we hopped out.  Apparently you can buy advance tickets a week out and the line is like 10 minutes.  We'll have to do that next time.

Later we did a bit more shopping.  Katie's giant travel purse is kind of falling apart, so she got a new giant travel purse and did quite the job dickering, might I add.

While we were out, we also stumbled across a wine bar where we learned two things.  First, there's this sport played only in Florence called Calcio Storico (literally historical soccer) or sometimes Calcio Florentino (Florentine Soccer).  It was apparently started in the 1500s .  It's played in an arena about the size of a modern day soccer field, but with sand rather than grass or dirt as the field.  It's a bit like rugby, carry a ball to your opponent's end to score.  27 to a side with 7 referees.  The game is largely unchanged from the original.  There are still only 4 teams, one from each of the historic neighborhoods of Florence.  They still only play once a year, in a 3 match tournament.  The referees still wear period garb.  There's even a parade before each match with horses and banners and whole thing.  The wine bar we were in had one of the recent semifinal games on and we watched a bit of it.

The major difference between Calcio Storico and rugby or soccer/football is that in Calcio soccer, as long as you keep it one-on-one, there aren't really many rules.  It's perfectly legal to punch someone in the face, throw an elbow into their nose, put them in a head lock or choke them.  I'm not kidding.  They've recently started recruiting from people outside of Florence, so-called "professionals".  Some are recruiting from professional rugby teams, but there's a trend toward recruiting people from MMA. Here's a picture of one of the "little guys" mashing a dude in the face while running with the ball: 

p.s. Katie grabbed that photo from guidedtoursofflorence.com

Anyway, while we were there (the night before we leave for Venice), the lady running the wine bar mentions that Venice is flooded right now and shows us this newspaper.

 So Venice has this thing called "acqua alta" which just means that, since it's an island at sea level, if it rains really hard at high tide, the city floods.  We did a bit of research online and it tends to only last for a few hours at a time, so we figured we'd survive.

That night, we caught another excellent dinner, this time at Giglio Rosso.  Florence has had by far the best and most consistently good food so far this trip.  Will definitely be coming back to the Tuscany region.

Next stop, Venice!