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| Visiting Florence |
Friday
10 April. It is a windy, gusty day. Cathy, Thomas and I drive to Florence, this
time taking the "Chianti Highway" through Panzano, rather than the
S-2. We park at the Piazzale
Michelangelo, with its own David, at the top of the hill, and walk into town
after we are unable to get a cab. We
stop first at the Bargelo sculpture gallery, with its Donatellos and
Michelangelos. Afterwards, we walk north
following the river, eat lunch in a small restaurant (our vivacious waitress
sits down to a small card game afterwards with the men) and stop by the hotel
we stayed at in 1981, the Principe.
Following this we stop to buy a print, then stop again for cappuccino
and ice cream across the street from the river, as we head back toward the
center of town. As we are seated at our
table we see Jim and Mary Kaye Cashman from Las Vegas. We chat, including politics (Bush, Jim says,
is a sure winner of the 1992 election).
We leave Firenze at 6:30 and pick up the rest of the group for dinner in
San Donato at La Toppa. It is a
magnificent evening, clear, windy and dry, reminiscent a little of the
desert. We are treated wonderfully by
our host, who orders for us; three pastas, chicken, steak, vegetables and
dessert. The meal is 220,000 lire. Thomas and Mara get locked in the ladies'
toilet. The owner has just been to New
York, likes Americans, not British, feels sorry for us that we are going to
Austria. He gives us a bottle of wine
for the road and the 10,000 bills change to the children.
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| Last Night Dinner in Tuscany |
* * * * *
Letter
home: We had the opportunity to visit
Siena and San Gimignano, both very beautiful and picturesque. (SG is referred
to as the Manhattan of the middle ages, because of its many high towers. The residents built them to outdo each other
and also to throw things down on each other!)
We made three day trips to Firenze (Florence), and planned to visit
Pisa, but ran out of time. By this time
Cathy and Jeffrey had tonsillitis as well, but we found we were able to buy
amoxicillin over the counter, including children's form, and we wrapped up the
infections, though Jeffrey did put us through some trying times getting up the
nerve to swallow the big pill, which he had to chop up.
The children saw Michelangelo's David and were
suitably impressed; they had specific instructions to remember to compare him
to the one at Caesar's Palace when we return.
We also toured the Ufuzzi (Boticelli's Venus and Spring), Santa Croce
(Galileo's and Michelangelo's tombs), the Duomo (the cathedral which the
Florentines decided should outdo Rome, Venice, Siena, etc. and dwarfs
everything in sight), and the sculpture museum with Donatello's David and Love
(now that's an interesting sculpture!), and a few other Michelangelo's. Florence seemed to be much busier and bigger
than I remember it from 1981. Cathy and
I did a fair amount of walking in Florence.
This was after driving in one day, cutting off a bus and becoming
hopelessly lost in a driving rain storm, even though Florence is not that big a
city, and the river helps with directions.
(Milano is the worst. Roma is
bigger with a few direct routes; but I didn't drive until we left, when I
proceeded to get lost looking for the Appian Way and the catacombs.) After my initial fiasco driving in downtown Firenze,
we parked on the hill overlooking the city, Piazzale Michelangelo, which has
its own David and a wonderful view anyway, and took a taxi in). (I counted three or four Davids, all told.) One day we got soaked in a torrential
thunderstorm, despite umbrellas. On
Friday the 10th we had our first chance meeting of the trip with people from
home: Jim and Mary Kaye Cashman from Las Vegas spotted us while we were having
our gelato and cappuccino.
One
of the sights that remains with me is the Italian cypresses standing out on the
tops of the many hills that start around Bologna and continue to Florence. It is a sight that seems familiar, it must be
from the movies; so unusual to see those singular trees standing in groups at
the tops of hills that are almost mountains.
I so tire of Italian cypress at home, but they look so good in
Italy! The towns themselves are never in
the valleys, but on the tops of the hills, with their city walls and towers, above
the terraced fields. (My recollection is
that cities and towns in the US and England are more likely to be in the
valleys.) There is a lot of stone work,
though around Florence there is much stucco as well; everything has tiled
roofs. We speculated that the stone must
be the average owner's lot, with the lovely stucco, in shades of beige,
reserved for the better off. A word
about the color: the colors that dominate Rome (apart from the old stone
churches and buildings) are yellow, brown and rust. Many buildings are painted
in one of those shades, though it seems to be more of an earth wash than actual
paint. Tuscany seemed to be more partial
to beige. The colors are equally lovely,
and can only be described as genuine earth tones. It is Venice, however, that has the real
color. I never saw the reds in Roma or
Firenze that I saw on the stucco buildings in Venezia.
Our
last night in Tuscany was a night to remember at the local restaurant, with the
owner bringing us plate after plate of pasta, then meat dishes and
dessert. Mara and Thomas locked
themselves in the bathroom. Our host
acted as if he were our long lost friend (as of course every good restaurant
host should), even though his English was as bad as my Italian. (I did discover that he didn't like the
English, at least those in England. The
ones, and there are many, who come to Tuscany seem to be OK.) We left with an extra bottle of wine and he
gave the kids the 30,000 lire change ($30) and Cathy a kiss goodbye. We walked out into the night, down a narrow
cobbled stone street, and out into a parking lot on the top of a hill, with a
cold wind blowing that reminded me of the desert in November or December. We left Italy with a fondness for the people,
the attitude, the food, the wine, the sights—just about everything Italian.
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