On Sunday morning, after another breakfast on the terrace (and the aforementioned conversation with our B&B hosts about the building and their family’s story), Elena drove us into Ciano (back down the windy road that we had walked up in the dark the previous night) and dropped us off at the same little bus stop/train station from which her mother had picked us up on Friday night. From there, we took a bus back to Reggio Emilia (same bus driver, but seemingly in a better mood this morning), then a train to Bologna, and then another train to Firenze (that’s Florence, for you English speakers 😁).
Since we had wanted to try to avoid using data on our phones as much as possible (it’s not cheap when you’re in a foreign country), I had printed out Google Maps walking directions before we left home for getting us from train stations to hotels in each of our destinations. However, upon emerging from the train station in Firenze (yes, I’m gonna keep calling it that), it was hard to get our bearings and find the street that the directions started on. I wanted (and still want) to believe that we could (have) do(ne) it, but in the stress of the moment and burdened down by all of our luggage and in the 87 billion degree heat, we gave in to temptation and got directions on Emily’s phone. Actually, I should speak for myself: I was burdened with all of my luggage. Emily’s hadn’t caught up with us yet, so she was less burdened in that sense. Still, this was another stressful element, because she was also trying to coordinate between the delivery service that was bringing her luggage to Florence (it was supposed to arrive today) and the hotel, not being sure if it would get there before or after we did. In the end, though, it all worked out. We found our way to our little hotel (La Porta del Paradiso), where the guy who greeted us and checked us in asked if we were the folks with the missing luggage that was being delivered. The next two important things that happened were a) I located the remote control for our room’s air conditioning unit and got it going, and b) Emily’s luggage duly arrived. Hurray!
I don’t want to make too much of this or sound too negative, but overall, Firenze was my least favorite of the various places in Italy that we visited. We did see awesome things and have fun experiences there, though! (In fact, when I think back on all the specifics of our time there, my overall impression of that time improves.) But… Well, first, it was just so, so hot. True, it had also been really hot at Canossa (and we hadn’t even had air conditioning at our B&B!), but up there in the hills it had been a much drier heat; in Firenze, it was disgustingly humid and sticky. Also, Firenze (or at least the historic part of it, where we spent nearly all our time) felt close and confined and crowded (tall rows of buildings, narrow winding streets, and tourists everywhere), in contrast to the wide open spaces of the Canossa area, and psychologically I think that made the heat feel even more oppressive. My cold was already much better by the time we got here (it lasted a weirdly short time; maybe going to Italy is a cure for what ails one?), but I was still fighting intermittent headaches, and the humidity made my head hurt even more. And then, besides the heat, there was just the paradoxical reality of European cites: quaint historic streets, beautiful old architecture, and the “exotic” charm of things being in a foreign language that you’ve spent time studying, yes, but also, the reek of cigarette smoke everywhere, and cigarette butts littered all over those quaint cobblestone streets. Why is smoking still so prevalent in Europe, as compared to the US? It’s a bit frustrating. To some degree, my main overall impressions of Firenze are of a smelly, dirty place, and that’s not what I would have hoped for! And finally, the visit just kind of felt rushed. We only had two nights and one full day (plus some extra time squeezed in on the final morning) in Firenze, right after spending about the same amount of time in Canossa. Well before the end of our time here, I was really looking forward to getting to a destination that we were planning to stay at for a bit longer. Still, like I said, the visit did include fun and awesome things!
After arriving on Sunday afternoon, we crashed on the bed in the air conditioned bliss of our hotel room for a while (let’s face it—we were probably sill feeling lingering effects of jet lag, plus all the walking that we’d done the previous day on top of that), then later ventured out in search of a place to eat dinner. Emily’s dad had been eager to see a photo of us dining at a “real Italian restaurant,” which we had not yet really done up to this point in the trip (having eaten at the festival the previous evening & all), so it was time to check that box. We ended up at a place called “Bella Italia”; I know/remember the name only because they gave us a little card with a map directing us to their same-named gelateria that was at a different location, and I’m still using that card as a bookmark. 🙂 (We never ended up going to that particular gelateria, but we did visit several others during our time in Italy, of course.)
I had gnocchi with pesto for my “primo” (delicious), and some kind of chicken thing (with lemon and herbs, I think?) for my “secondo” that was also good but (clearly) less memorable. I can’t recall what Emily’s selections were; the one in the picture was stuff (including eggplant, I think?) in a creamy sauce, but I dunno what else she had. The point, though, is that it was tasty. 🙂 (No wine for me with this meal, given the nasty headache that I was hoping to get rid of.) After dinner, with my head still pounding and both of us feeling hot and worn out, we hauled ourselves back to the hotel and crashed for the night.
Another somewhat unfortunate thing about our visit to Firenze was the timing; our full day in town was a Monday, which, alas, is the one day each week when most of the museums are closed. (It just ended up this way, basically because of having arranged to be in Canossa for the reenactment/festival and then slotting Firenze in between that and Rome, since it was more or less on the way between those two places.) This meant that we would not be visiting the Uffizi Gallery, for example, and there had even been a point (while planning the trip) when it seemed like we weren’t going to get to see Michaelangelo’s David (at the Accademia Gallery), either. We ended up rearranging some things to squeeze the latter in on Tuesday morning (I’ll get to that), though. Anyway, what we could do on Monday was see the Duomo (that is, the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore). There’s also a Museo Galileo that is open on Mondays and that we had talked about going to, but (spoiler alert) we didn’t end up getting there. (We hadn’t bought tickets to that in advance, or anything, so it became an easy thing to cut out when the cathedral ended up taking a good chunk of the day and being pretty exhausting.)
So anyway, on Monday morning, we made our way to the Duomo complex. We had a pre-scheduled time slot for climbing up the 463 steps to the top of the dome (which is the largest masonry dome in the world, by the way), so that became the first thing that we did.
The haul up the steps, naturally, was pretty tiring…and if I thought Firenze in general felt close and confined and stuffy, well, this staircase took things to a whole new level (see what I did there?). Also, the endless stream of people wanting their chance to experience it meant that we were shepherded through the whole thing at kind of a relentless pace, and it felt like there wasn’t much time to stop and take things in. But it was still fun, and I’m glad that I got the opportunity to see everything that we saw! (Don’t worry; there are more pictures of the cathedral itself still coming.)
By the time we made our way back down to the ground after the climb to the top, we were starving, so we wandered the streets for a bit in the vicinity of the cathedral in search of lunch. We were just looking for a place where we could grab panini or similar, and soon enough, we found one. My main memory about this meal is that, at this point in the trip, I was starting to feel like it was somewhat hard to find anything (particularly at quick, counter service type places) that featured meats other than prosciutto or salami or similar. Emily doesn’t eat red meat, and although I do, I generally prefer other meats over ham or cured pork type things, and I was already getting a little tired of the latter. So there we were perusing the options in the display at this panini place, and way at one end, next to all the usual pig-based options, I spotted exactly two panini with meat that looked like it might be something else. We asked the person behind the counter what it was, and when the answer proved to be “tacchino,” we were like, “jackpot!” A few minutes later, we walked out of the place with the only two turkey panini they had had available. Even better, my first couple of bites revealed that the bread was fantastic, and in fact that the whole panino was absolutely fabulous. We found ourselves a spot to sit/lean in what little shade there was available just outside the cathedral and gobbled up (again, see what I did there?) our lunch, feeling successful.
Before I go on, here are a bunch of pictures of the outside of the cathedral:
After lunch, we spent some time trying to figure out next moves. There was plenty to see, but it was a little tricky to figure out which line to wait in for what, or even just what our options were and how to prioritize them. There was a (very long) line of people who had just shown up to visit the cathedral without reserving or paying for anything (regular ground-floor entry is, after all, nominally free), and another line (much shorter, but not actually “short”—though it did move reasonably fast) for people who (like us) had bought “skip the line” tickets. Then were also the bell tower, the baptistry, a museum, and the archeological excavations and exhibit below the cathedral. We didn’t visit the museum or the bell tower, but we did eventually see everything else (after figuring out which line to get in and waiting in it for a while, and chatting with some friendly British tourists who were next to us in the said line). We also downloaded a couple of audio guides on our phones, and listened to interesting anecdotes about some of the elements of the cathedral and the art inside it.
Those excavations (and exhibit) that I mentioned, down below the cathedral, were particularly fascinating. They consist of surviving bits of the older cathedral that existed here before the late-13th-century Florentines decided to demolish it construct a bigger and newer one on the same site. The older one, dedicated to Santa Reparata (one of the city’s patron saints), was built in the 5th century. Its at-least-1500-year-old remains were only rediscovered in the 1960s and 1970s.
After exploring the archeological remains, we exited the main cathedral and went over to the baptistry, which is a separate (octangonal) building that faces the main facade of the cathedral itself (we were standing right in front of it when I took the pictures of the cathedral facade that appear earlier int this post). I guess we didn’t get a picture of the building from the outside, but you can surely google an image of it if you want (it’s cool-looking). Here is part of its ceiling, though, as well as a picture of me standing outside its famous eastern (gilded) bronze doors:
That pretty much wraps up our visit to the cathedral. I think we went back to our hotel and rested/napped for a bit afterwards (well, there may have been a stop for some gelato first?), before eventually heading out again to seek some dinner. To briefly digress, though: Our hotel, in common with many places like it in various European cities (including the places where we would stay in both Rome and Naples), did not look anything like what we Americans picture when we hear the word “hotel.” Out on the street, there’s hardly anything to let you know that there’s a hotel there at all. I took no pictures, but here’s an image that I pulled off of Apple Maps just now:
Apparently (just learning this now), the building is actually a “historic Florentine noble palace (Palazzo Corsini) dating back to the late 1500s.” Huh; who knew? Anyway, you went through the door on the street here and up a staircase a few floors, and then into an “apartment” that consisted of a hallway with a handful of rooms off of it. (I’m actually having some trouble remembering exactly how this was laid out now; elements of the places where we would stay in other cities are mixing together with this place in my head.) Our bathroom was separate from our actual room (right across the hall), but it was “ours” alone (not shared); it was kept locked, and we had a key to it.
Until now, we had never gone any further up the street in the direction visible in the image above (which is roughly northwest); we’d initially arrived from the opposite direction (“behind” us, if you imagine that you’re standing where this image must have been taken from), and we’d gone back that way to get to the cathedral as well. But each time we came or went, I had noticed that big structure with the arch just up the street in the other direction (visible in the background above) and wondered what it was. So, this evening, we decided to walk that way and investigate it. Turns out, this was once a gate in the historic (but no longer existing) city wall! It’s called “La Porta Al Prato.” This made some sense to us since the street that our hotel was on was called Via Il Prato, but wanting to know more, we turned to the internet and learned that “Prato” means “meadow,” which is apparently what the gate once led to. Now, it marks an entrance to the city’s historic district and “limited traffic area” (otherwise known as the part of the city that we had been in for the whole of our visit so far).
Deciding to venture out of the historic district (hence the photo above), we walked down the much wider street beyond the gate in search of a place to eat, as well as to just see what there was to see. It was much more “open” and less crowded with tourists over here…but also, of course, there were not nearly as many dining establishments. There were still multiple options to choose from, though, so choose one we did. Here, I partook of a dish (peposo) that the menu described as sort of the mother of all Tuscan beef stews—strictly traditional in a pre-Columbian sense, featuring no tomato sauce but instead “unapologetic amounts” of red wine, pepper, and garlic. Also, with my headache gone (!) and finally feeling really good physically for pretty much the first time since we’d arrived in Italy, I indulged in un quartino of the restaurant’s house vino bianco. Emily, for her part, had a pizza, a salad, and some beer. Everything was delicious!
As I mentioned earlier, we had done some lastish-minute rearranging of our plans (still before leaving home, though) to get around the obstacle of museums being closed on Mondays, as it just didn’t seem right to actually be in Florence and not see David. Basically, this involved changing out our originally booked Tuesday-morning train from Florence to Pisa for a somewhat later-departing one, so that we could squeeze in a visit to the Accademia Gallery that morning before leaving town. This left us with a tight schedule and some tricky logistics on Tuesday morning, though. We had to get up and going nice and early so that we could check out of our hotel and walk (with our luggage) to the vicinity of the train station, where we left our stuff at a luggage storage place that we picked out the previous evening (online). From there, we proceeded onward to the gallery, where we had pre-booked 8:30 am “skip the line” admission. Despite our best efforts, we arrived slightly late, which was stressful…but not, in the end, problematic. For one thing, the person whom we were supposed to meet to get our physical tickets was also late (later than us). Anyway, in the end, we got in. Still on a schedule, we set a timer to ensure that we would leave in time to be able to walk back to the luggage place and collect our bags, and then get to the train station with time to find our platform and whatnot before our train departed. Happily, this all ended up working quite smoothly.
Even though it was short, I enjoyed our visit to the gallery. It was nice to be out of the crazy heat, and the museum just felt a bit more low-key than the crowded and somewhat overwhelming duomo complex/piazza from the previous day. We didn’t take any pictures here other than a couple of David (clearly the centerpiece of the collection; also, the pics above were obviously not taken by me/us, but I did take a couple of my own before these ones happened), but there were many nifty sculptures and paintings, and even a museum of musical instruments that we took a brief stroll through right before we had to leave. It was a nice way to finish off our time in Firenze.
A Pit Stop in Pisa
Upon leaving Firenze, we were ultimately bound for Rome…but we’d planned a quick side trip to Pisa along the way, basically just long enough to see the leaning tower. We arrived in Pisa by train around 10:30 am, and our train from Pisa to Rome was scheduled to depart a little before 3:00 in the afternoon, giving us about four hours to walk from the train station to the cathedral/tower complex, see what there was to see, find some lunch, and then walk back.
Though we can hardly claim to have experienced much of the city, I really liked what we did see in Pisa and ended up being really, really glad that we had decided to add in this stop before proceeding to what, in my mind, was kind of the “main event” (Rome) of the whole trip. A much smaller city than Florence, Pisa looked and felt (to me) much more like what I wanted from an Italian city: charming, pleasant, and different from the boring old USA but only in good ways. Cigarette smoke/butts did not seem so omnipresent, and it just felt way less…claustrophobic. And then, the tower itself was just…awesome. Just like the day before, here we were climbing up a long, narrow staircase to enjoy an awesome view, but here, everything about it just felt orders of magnitude easier to enjoy. Yes, there were still crowds, but it didn’t feel crowded in the same way…and it was still hot, but oppressive heat doesn’t dominate my memory of the experience the way it does for the previous day. Plus, even though we again had a timed entry slot (for which we were slightly late, which almost caused a problem), here we were left alone to explore at our own pace once we were inside, rather than being herded along without a chance to breathe like when we climbed the Duomo. And then, of course, there was the weird quirk of the tower’s principal claim to fame: the sucker just doesn’t stand up straight!
As soon as you get inside the tower, you can absolutely feel the “lean.” It felt weird…a little like being in a carnival funhouse, if carnival funhouses were commonly 900 or so years old, around 180 feet tall, and covered with beautiful marble. I can’t entirely put words to how I felt while visiting the tower, but something about the experience was just…well, fun!
And also at how awesome Emily is!)
After the tower, there was just enough time (if we didn’t dawdle) to grab a sit-down lunch before we had to head back toward the train station. I don’t think we actually ended up eating on that little street with all the red canopies that we’d seen from the top of the tower, but the place where we went was out on the street under an awning; I think the street was a somewhat wider and less crowded one, though (and our spot was a bit farther from the tower, back in the direction of the train station). We both had pizza. Similar to Emily’s dinner the previous evening, these were individual whole pizzas that were served to us un-sliced, which was interesting. I was easily able to resist any urge to throw my not-sliced pizza up onto a nearby roof, Breaking Bad style, though…mostly because it was way too tasty to waste in such a fashion.
Pizza eaten, it was back to the train station with us, where we boarded a train bound for the Eternal City! This was our longest train ride to date, and the route hugged the coastline pretty closely—enough so that we caught several glimpses of ocean along the way, which was cool. We wouldn’t be getting to our hotel in Rome until well into the evening (the train reached Roma Termini, Rome’s main station and central transport hub, around 6:00, and we still had to get ourselves from there to the vicinity of our hotel via the metro after that), and the hotel, again like others of its ilk, is not staffed around the clock like a regular hotel, so we had to make arrangements for an after-hours arrival. Fortunately, this worked out fine; the host guy sent us detailed instructions for how to get in and what to do, and all the doors were unlockable electronically (from our phones) via codes that we were given. But I’ll save further details for my next post!