Trip to Florence, no. 1, part one

(pictures from Florence are on flickr under the Duomo set)

I managed to massacre my dinner tonight while trying out a new recipe from my mediterranean cookbook … But hey, really screwing up only once in 5 weeks of feeding myself (although I admittedly haven’t made anything terribly complicated) is not a bad record, right? :) Besides that, today went alright – I spent most of it working on an essay for my Ferrarese literature class, had two classes, and couldn’t find the third. Meh. It happens.

YAY! I just found out from Gardenia that the doctor is actually not going to live here! Turns out it’s too expensive. I am so very relieved, I truly am. There is apparently a 30-ish woman now also looking at room, but not in the immediate future. I’d rather have the little fridge and little bathroom to myself, but as long as it’s not a strange man sharing the space, I can’t really complain at all, especially given the economy and that I know extra money would be useful of course for Gardenia and Giorgio. So… that is a huge relief that that man won't be here. Yay for good luck for me. May he find somewhere else suitable to live - just not with me.

Ok, now onto Florence! As I mentioned in my various “where’s-Emmons-now?” posts a few days ago, I went to Florence for Friday night and Saturday, prompted by the presence there of my grandma and two aunts, who were finishing up their 2 week visit to northern Italy (they’re all Americans, although this is the grandmother who is full-blood Italian, just for the record). Gina didn’t make it this time, but that is understandable, as it would be quite a trip for her; I’m glad to be living somewhere where I can easily get to the disparate locations of Gina’s, Venice, and Florence, among a handful of other smaller but also cool cities which I am planning on visiting eventually, like Padova, Rimini and Ravenna.

I don’t think I’ve talked much at all about the vagaries of the Italian transport system yet, beyond my difficulties on my initial journey into Ferrara. I can now say that yes, the trains here do sometimes run late, but not as often as we are led to believe. I have actually had a train leave early (gasp!), and have several times literally had to chase down buses because they left the stops early (and when I was about one building away…). I have also had buses come 20 minutes late, or have the busride doubled due to traffic leading me to miss my train by no-joke FIVE seconds (the door closed in my face), and a train shut down and sit waiting a tiny bit outside the station for half an hour (all of these last few happened when trying to go see family in the last week. Great timing, eh?) There are sometimes funny things that happen with different kinds of tickets, and some you have to validate and some you don’t, too. It’s been interesting to have to figure out, but it really isn’t too bad. That is, if you have to patience to wait an hour for the next train when the above things go wrong – which I have definitely learned to do by now.

Rising up around Florence are small mountains, which I think are part of the general ridge of the Alpinini that run N-S down the lenth of the penninsula. It is so reassuring for me to see mountains I’ve realized, being in the flood plain of Emilia Romagna and being made much happier when I’ve gone enough to the east or north-west to find any increases in elevation. These particular ones were quite lovely, still very green, and spotted with lots of little villages and graded terraces for agriculture, which is something I remember seeing in Sicily when little. Of course, I couldn’t really see these in the city for the buildings, except when I climbed the Dome and the Belltower, but I’ll get to that in a bit. Regardless, it was a very scenic trainride east.

Beyond a build-up of small transport mishaps on my way to Florence taking away some time with the family members, all went quite smoothly for the rest of the trip, in part because I can thank-God read a map, and was able to navigate my way to where Lynne was, and then the next day get around the city on my own. Getting off the train, I was immediately struck by the immensity of difference in the scale and energy of Florence in comparison with Ferrara. It is one serious city, as well as very much tourist-geared. I of course only got to see the historical/cultural center of the city, so that might be a slightly biased view, but from what I’ve been told much of the city retains that personality – there are several score museums across the city, and every few blocks is a piazza that had something famous or other occur there. I can also see why there can be 130 study-abroad programs situated in Florence, 128 of which do not require knowledge of Italian – there were of course plenty of Italians speaking Italian, and I bet many of whom didn’t know (much) English, but there was also a large enough population of English speakers evident everywhere so that reasonably many signs were in Italian on the top and English on the bottom. Most definitely not Ferrara. This place is way to quiet to be comparable with Florence, but at the same time, I was so incredibly glad to come back here after a busy city like that, and know that I made the right choice in picking Ferrara over Florence.

After meeting up with Lynne, Grandma and Kathy, we made our way over to Santa Croce, which is one of the major churches in Florence. I don’t know how much it’s used for actual services any more, but it is pretty on the outside, encased in a similar style of white, pink and green marble that is the great Duomo. Within, the main attractions are the tombs and monuments of such notable persons as Galileo, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Marconi, Fermi, and many others of whom I had never heard, but I assume were decently important when alive such as nobility. There is also an intended tomb for Dante Alighieri: he was exiled from his native Florence during life for his political views, and his body remains in the city of his banished days. However, sometime after his death, Florence realized how brilliant and historically important Dante was, and has been trying to get him back ever since, even building a tomb for his bones in anticipation. Needless to say, I was amused by the irony.

Also perhaps needless to say, I was somewhat in awe at the idea of being next to the tombs of such great thinkers and creators. For me, living in Italy feels like being a pilgrim, paying homage to a land of history, art and centuries of innovation and wisdom. And so, beginning my visit to Florence, one of the historically greatest cultural centers of Europe, by visiting the tombs of men such as Galileo and Michaelangelo felt very fitting.

Afterwards we wandered down to the Ponte Vecchio not long before it closed. The Ponte Vecchio is the bridge you always see in pictures of Florence, with the layers of shops sticking out the sides and the covered walkway going overhead. The bridge was on the route from the Medici palace on the other side of the Arno river into the city center, but used to be covered in butcher shops, the smell of which apparently displeased the Medicis. And so, they passed a law that only fine jewelry shops could be situated on the bridge, and they also built the long enclosed corridor that extends not only over the bridge but a ways into the neighborhoods on either side, so that the family would not have to associate with the common folk of Florence. What I thought was actually pretty cool about the shops on the bridge was the way they closed up for the night. Of course, several dozen gold shops all lined up must have fantastic appeal for theives, and so not only do the shops remove and lock away all the pieces in their displays, but they also envelop their shop windows and doors in thick wooden walls that can be pulled out of the roof. The result is that they all look like enormous old travelers’ chests or toy boxes, or as it were, heavy-duty jewelry boxes. It was neat to see them all start wrapping themselves up at 7 prompt, as the moon was rising over the Arno and the light all turning purple and gray for the evening.

And this update should have been finished and posted hours ago, but as I got distracted and ended up chatting with someone from Midd instead, and it is now very late, this will have to do for now.

Until tomorrow!