Day 4: Museo e Cattedrale

I've been terribly indecisive about food here, and have gotten into a bad habit of wandering around, block after block, looking into shop and restaurant windows but never actually going into one until my feet and back start to hurt. Part of it is that I'm still intimidated by everything, and part is that there are just so many of them.

Lots of the big museums and things seem to be closed on Mondays, but the Museo del Duomo was open - I must've spent a good two hours wandering through it. This museum houses much of the art, sculptures, architectural structures, and relics that are no longer kept in the cathedral for whatever reason, as well as old blueprints and wooden models from the planning of the building itself. The Duomo was in construction for literally six hundred years, through the lifetimes of many architects and through multiple architectural and artistic styles, so it is very interesting to see how the plans for the building changed over time.

After the museum, I went into the Duomo - formally, la Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Cathedral of St. Mary of the Flower) - itself, which was spectacular. Unfortunately, the light was extremely low, so the few photos I have are awfully grainy and uneven.



The inside of the Duomo itself is this huge, elaborate fresco.



The Duomo was built on the ruins of a much, much older cathedral, that of Santa Reparata, which dates to the 4th or 5th century CE and was the Christian religious center of Florence up until the Middle Ages. From the Duomo, for a small fee, you can go down into the excavation of Santa Reparata, where some of the columns, mosaics, and stonework remain in situ.



Out of all of the art and beauty that I witnessed today, this was certainly the most profound.

I thought about going to the top of the Duomo, but decided to wait for a day with clearer skies (and after walking beforehand a lot less). Tomorrow, I plan to hit the Uffizi Gallery and hopefully some others as well.

Day 3: Siena, mi 'Spiace

Mi dispiace! No photos today. The attempted trip to Siena turned into a slight disaster due to my lack of understanding of Italian bus systems. I had the address of a nun-run hotel that I was planning to stop by, but attempting to follow the provided directions somehow left me at a bus stop on the outskirts of town. After spending hours hiking up and down icy hills and trying to find my way to the city center, I gave up, returned to the train station via street signs and dead reckoning, and caught the next train back to Florence to nurse my wounded ego.

I am exhausted, sore, a little overwhelmed, and sad to have lost an entire day to this, but I am really coming to love Florence--good, because I'll be spending a lot of time here starting in January--and I think I'll hang out here until it's time to head to Rome (hotel reserved starting the 23rd). I've found a comfortable youth hostel that I think will do for the next few days, and I'm excited to do some more in-depth sightseeing here.

Listening to Italians chatting on their cell phones can be entertaining, especially as they say their good-byes. They seem to like the word "ciao" as much as I do and will say it repeatedly, all mushed together, as a farewell. Most men stop at two repetitions (and I think this "ciaociao" is mostly reserved for girlfriends), but women may say it five or six times in rapid succession.

It's currently raining, which will either melt the snow or freeze it overnight into an icy deathtrap. Weather Underground reports rain and (for the most part) temperatures above freezing.

Tomorrow, conditions providing: let's go to some museums!

Day 2: Firenze Innevata part II

I woke to a brilliantly clear sky and the whole city covered in six or eight inches of snow. I checked out of Hotel Enza and wandered to the Piazza del Duomo for coffee and to see what it looked like covered in snow. Every street and sidewalk was thick with it.



The Duomo itself was crowned white, a lovely compliment to the Christmas decorations all around it.



Incidentally, coffee. COFFEE. Espresso here is so delicious that it is beyond all possible comprehension. A shot of straight espresso goes down like water; a cappuccino is positively ambrosial. I don't know how I'll ever drink coffee in America ever again.

Today (December 18th) is my birthday, so I thought I'd walk to Ponte Vecchio and have a little picnic. I didn't bother with my map and just headed south to the river.



The Arno is the principal river in Tuscany and one of the largest in Italy, after the Tiber. About two thirds of Florence lies north of the Arno, where the major tourist areas are.



There are many, many bridges across it, but Ponte Vecchio is easy to spot; I just walked upstream (east) until I reached it.



Ponte Vecchio (lit. "Old Bridge") is one of the few Florentine bridges not destroyed by the Germans during their retreat in WW2.



I bought a pizza margherita at a corner shop and walked around the neighborhood south of the bridge, looking in shop windows and watching other people, even locals, as enchanted by the snow as I was, take photos and throw snowballs.

Later, I ate a delicious ossobuco for lunch, followed by a big piece of tiramisu. I went to the station to validate my rail pass and head south to Siena, but the line was long and I missed the train by a few seconds (it pulled away literally as I was running to it). I waited around for the next one, but minutes before it would have arrived, the sign said it had been canceled - along with almost all of the other departures for the next hour! Not wanting to gamble on yet another, even later, train, I went in search of a hostel for the night. I'll try my luck with Siena tomorrow.

Day 1: Firenze Innevata

I was jetlagged after the long trip, and when I arrived at my hotel around two on the 16th, I did my best to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime. I drank the best espresso of my life at a rough-edged bar near the hotel, and then took a long walk through the city, counting on the exercise and the cold to keep me awake.

Florence is beautiful. I am not kidding. It is also quite small--the streets are narrow, and the buildings jam together like a well-played game of Tetris. It's possible to walk by a great number of famous, historical sites in a matter of minutes, though that assumes you don't stop to look. There are churches everywhere, as well as restaurants, bars and caffeterie, shops full of clothing and accessories, newsstands, hotels.

A cultural note: the "bar" in Italy is not primarily a liquor-based establishment, though all have rows of bottles of all kinds of alcohol on display. You are as likely to go to a bar for your morning cappuccino as you are for a drink in the afternoon.

I collapsed into bed at around 19:00, slept deeply until about 1:00, and then fitfully again until about 6:00 the next morning. It was cold. My journal entry after my morning walk consisted entirely of: "IT IS FUCKING COLD, WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN". Fortunately it warmed up by a few degrees when I went out in the afternoon to bring my luggage to my school, but that was when the snow really started to come down.





The dark green shutters on beige or saffron walls are a motif throughout the city. When I first arrived at my hotel, I thought, "oh, that's a very distinctive style - it'll be easy to find my way back to this place." I was wrong. Almost every building in Florence has these shutters.

Precipitation was halfhearted throughout the early part of the afternoon, but when I reached Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, the snow began in earnest. In minutes, the streets and sidewalks were white and slippery.





Scooters and motorbikes are ubiquitous. Streets are lined with parked bikes, and packs of them go buzzing with suicidal velocity down every road, cars (and pedestrians) be damned.

Day 0: Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam

I flew into Schiphol from Minneapolis/St. Paul, and what a sight. The whole place is decked out for Christmas--lights, trees, festive decorations. It's positively decadent.





Like any airport, it has its shops.





I promised my friend Rae that I'd find and eat Stroopwafel while I was in Amsterdam. I wandered the terminals and finally found some in a vending machine.



For those who aren't familiar with the magical Stroopwafel, it is a kind of cookie made of wafers with thick, almost caramel-like syrup in between. An inverted waffle, basically. Madness, perhaps, but truly delicious.



Back to the shops. The standard sort - newspapers, bars, junk food - were present, but I have to point out some of the specialty shops:



Bulbs. I can't imagine they'd do all that well on a plane, but... all right!



Yes, this is a buffet of chocolate.

From Schiphol, I boarded a tiny Airbus for the two-hour flight to Florence. Much of Europe was covered with snow, the landscape all white peppered with the black shapes of buildings and patches of forest. It was breathtaking--and then we passed over the Alps.

Technical Difficulties

I have encountered some minor technical difficulties, namely that the plug adapter I bought (For "Europe") does not work here. I will work on finding a correct one and until then, will keep taking photos.

Florence is so beautiful that I could cry - everything is astounding, and I am surrounded by delicious food and decadent shops.

People say that there are no traffic laws in Italy: that is not true. In fact, there are two and they are easily codified. They are:

1. Show no fear.
2. Show no mercy.

It is terribly cold today, but I must get to my school to pay the last of my bills and drop off some luggage.

Ciao!

Le mie valigie

Le mie valigie. Vestiti, troppi libri, un zaino in cui posso mettere la macchina fotografica.

Due giorni!