Someone told me that Florence has the highest density of art per square kilometer of any city or area in the world. That doesn’t surprise me at all considering it was home to the Medici family, one of the greatest patrons of the arts second perhaps only to the Catholic Church.
I checked into the first hotel that looked reasonable, had internet and was close to the station. I didn’t want to spend my time trying to save a few euros. Florence is also small, so location wasn’t of great importance. You can cross the city walking in under 20 minutes.
I set off from the Baglione the morning after my arrival, heading to the Academie. There was a tremendous line. On the way I stopped to see the home of the Medici family, and a massive church like Mausoleum for them as well. I asked about advanced tickets, and discovered that if you walked around the corner you could save a couple hours of waiting by booking an entry time. I booked it for right then, walked back, and went straight into the museum.
From there I worked my way down into the city from museum to museum until all the art started to just melt into one giant piece for me. Florence doesn’t just have art, it has incredible art, works of the Italian renaissance masters.
I started this trip with Velazquez’ Las Meninas, considered by many to be the greatest painting of all time, and a personal favorite of mine. In Florence, it was Pieta, David, Botticelli’s Venus, and the list continues.
The best exhibit I saw however was Michelangelo’s works juxtaposed with the photographs oby Maplethorpe. It was incredibly well done, rivaling even the Matisse Picasso I saw years ago that remains one of my favorite exhibits to this day.
During my second day, I met up with Peta – Shiva and I had met her and her boyfriend in Barcelona while at Champagneria, and then gone out together after for Sangria and cerveza. We went for an appertivo on a lovely rooftop bar, and talked about traveling and life. It was nice to have some conversation after a few days of silence (I don’t speak any Italian, so communication has been at a minimum. Mostly it would be me asking a concierge or receptionist one question, and him or her answering an entirely different question).
She offered to show me some more traditional restaurants, and we met up the following night. My last full day in Florence I went to the Uffizi galleries, the collection was amazing. At that point though, I couldn’t delineate anymore between the art, it was just a mass of color. I focused on seeing the works I wanted to, then took a nap in the afternoon after a long walk.
It rained!
I finally made use of that rain jacket I have been carrying around. Actually, by the time I went out, it had pretty much stopped. Peta took me to a very nice little place in a square, we had some type of meat rolled with a cheese, a sausage with sundried tomatoes and some cheese, and gnocchi. The Gnocchi was so filling, I wasn’t able to get through more than half of it. We also split some wine, and continued talking. Afterwards, we walked for a bit before she caught a cab home, and I meandered slowly back to my lodging.
This morning I went to Pisa!
Actually, it doesn’t really deserve an ‘!’, it’s a town that I imagine wouldn’t even be on the map save for a bad engineering project. There are numerous technical feats throughout Italy, Brunelleschi’s dome for instance, but it’s the failure that gets all the attention. A few photos around it, some water while I sit in the grass, and I decide that enough is enough, and catch a train to Rome.
Now I know what the machine was telling me, there are no reserved seats! I got on the train, and am currently sitting, but someone may take it. Hopefully not, everything else is reserved in the cabin I ended up in, so most likely the last one, if not already filled, will remain as such.
(Someone did take it. It made me very angry because they didn't have a seat either - I was taken advantage of by a group of italians, but I think I wrote about that already in another post).
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