DAY 13
The core hotspots of Florence are all grouped within a very tiny area, about two square miles, making it very easy to see almost everything — from the outside, at least — in a short day. Basically, there’s the Duomo (cathedral), the Palazzo Vecchio (City Hall), the Uffizi Gallery (the premier art museum), the Pitti Palace (Medici palace), the Ponte Vecchio (the old multi-level bridge over the muddy brown Arno River), and the Fortezza Da Basso Fiere (fort). There are, of course, some other stunningly beautiful places to see — mostly churches like Basilica di San Lorenzo, Basilica Saint Croce, Basilica Santo Spirito, and museums like the Galleria dell’ Academia, Bargello National Museum. Throw in a few parks, domes, and fountains and you have pretty much seen the whole place. This is not Rome where it takes at least a week to see everything.
The Duomo is by far the biggest and most popular attraction in Florence. I’m talking thousands and thousands of people every day, rain or shine. And in all honesty, it is truly a one-of-a-kind show stopper with it’s geometric designs and green and white tiles it feels more like the world’s biggest sculpture than a church. And it looks vaguely Arabic to me, though I wouldn’t say that to an Italian for fear of getting punched.
People wait in lines forever to get inside the Duomo. It’s the usual sightseeing drill: guided, skip the line, or great unwashed. We didn’t do any of them and chose instead to just roam freely around the enchanting Medieval city. Inna and I have seen the Duomo several times over the years and I think its true beauty can best be seen from outside. But be sure to check it out at night because it transforms itself completely in the changing ethereal evening light.
The Vecchio Bridge is Florence’s oldest bridge (there are lots of bridges!) and was the built by the Medicis, the most powerful family in Italy, so they could easily get over the Arno River from town to their palace. They were so unimaginably rich and lazy they had a railed track installed underneath the bridge so they could be pulled along in a specially made carriage, rather than walk.
Originally the bridge also was the town’s meat market, so the waste could just be thrown into the river for the fish. But the Medicis soon tired of the smell and had the meat market moved. And in its place they put their favorite shops. These days, it’s nothing but jewelry stores — probably fifty in all — housed in square wooden stalls, dating to the 1500’s, that all look exactly identical and sell the same gold and silver trinkets. It’s a magnet for the tourons.
It took us three hours to see the top attractions in town, tops. It’s like Medieval Bruges, in Belgium, in this respect. Unless you plan to check out the many incredible museums, like the Galileo or the DaVinci, or stroll the back streets, it doesn’t take long to see the places of note.
The Chinese have definitely found Florence and have sent their armies. They travel in long waves, rolling over all that gets in their path. They are not arrogant; they simply do not even notice anyone else. As in Venice, with the very expensive gondola rides that only the Chinese seem to be able to afford, the special horse carriage rides through Florence with a groom dressed like he is carting around nobility, the Chinese are usually the only ones on board. They are the modern day Romans and masters of the universe.
The African bracelet thugs that we encountered in Rome were working the Palace Vecchio plaza like dog packs. “Where you from? Africa?” is how they greet everyone.
After about about the tenth time, getting asked this same ludicrous question, I let loose the hounds and yelled. “Do I look like someone from Africa, you friggin douche bag!”
The crazy fool literally ran away. And I felt like the douche bag for being so harsh. I understand that these poor and desperate immigrants, freshly arrived from a foreign shore, need to feed themselves and their families. And hustling is better than begging. But after awhile, it just gets incredibly annoying.
Florence is probably the loveliest of the Italian cities, but it is so relentlessly mobbed by hordes of tourists during the day and night that it makes it extremely hard to handle.
As our cab driver said , “It’s Disneyland.”
Walking many of the polished stone streets of Florence is like leaving a stadium after a big game. Almost every photo you snap has others in it. And you get pushed and jostled, making it prime time for street thieves. Many tourons carry their bags on their chests like a baby. I kept everything of value in the hotel safe and carried a few items in a hip belt. That seemed to work great and was not noticeable under my shirt.
Inna had someone open the day pack on her back without her even noticing. Luckily they just opened the bottom pocket which was empty and had an inside zipper, so they were stymied. But it wigged her out.
All in all, Florence ain’t fun. Pretty, yes. But the crowds make for a relentlessly stressful experience. At least for me. Inna didn’t seem to be bothered as much by it — at least until she got pick pocketed.
At least they strictly limit vehicular traffic, otherwise it would be beyond crazy and quite dangerous. Most of the city center is pedestrian only.
And speaking of danger, the city center was crawling with cops and soldiers of many different stripes in snappy blue uniforms with white-holstered sidearms and goofy helmets. They looked quite comical as they strolled around the main plazas. And there were two person teams of Italian soldiers in their camo-brown combat uniforms with jaunty maroon berets, carrying machine guns — no smiles and all business — watching everything like armed cameras.
Florence is a money machine that runs on tourons from around the world, and the powers that be work very hard to make it safe. Because without the almighty tourist dollar, Florence would wither away.
I thought the most annoying thing about Florence was the fact that there were no public toilets, other than in the museums and major attractions which you, of course, have to pay at least 15€ to get into, and that’s an expensive piss indeed. And if you go into a cafe, they follow you like hawks to make sure you are eating at their place otherwise they give you the old heave-ho. NO TOILET FOR YOU!
Some of the things I liked the most about Florence were the violin and organ music wafting on the breeze from musicians performing in most of the big plazas; the supersonic swallows, performing a constant aerial ballet in between the Medieval buildings; the dueling church bells ringing on the hour; and the clip-clop of horses hooves echoing off the cobblestones. I also really like the way the Florentines can take a Medieval building and put fancy modern shops like Gucci or Zara inside while still maintaining the outward appearance and historic integrity of the structure.
One of the strangest things we encountered during our travels around Italy were the French, German, and Italian people speaking their mother tongue and then ending a sentence with, “You know?”
As Inna pointed out, every Italian city has its own Times Square, and each is centered around a big ass church. In Rome, it’s St. Peter’s Square, and in Milan and Florence you will find them in the monumental stone plazas that encircle their grand Duomos where concerts, music festivals, and political rallies take place on Friday nights and Saturdays because they can easily hold thousands of people.
Uffizi Museum
We snagged a last minute two hour tour with a local company and met outside the museum at 3:30. The place was a total madhouse. The tour was overpriced at 45€ apiece, but beggars can’t be choosers, and with limited time to spend, sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.
The U-shaped grey granite Uffizi Museum was built in 1555 to house the administrative offices of Florence. The owner started collecting works of art and it soon became the first art museum in Europe. It houses the finest collection of Renaissance art in the world.
It is world famous for many of its works of art, including the Jovian Collection of paintings that runs along the ceiling throughout the main hallways. The 450 portraits on the walls showcase the faces of the most famous people of the Middle Ages, making it a who’s who photo album of a forgotten time. Interestingly, the ceiling frescoes are called “grotesques”, which doesn’t mean something ugly, but rather, “from a cavern”.
The Uffizi is also home to the Medici Family’s extensive collection of Roman antiquities — mostly statues of gods and emperors.
The first thing you see when entering the museum’s second floor galleries is the “Hall of the Virgins”. Three different painters affiliated with three of the biggest churches in the area painted eerily similar large canvases of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus.
One of them was painted by a very famous guy named Jotta who was one of the first painters of the Middle Ages to paint the many figures in his paintings with different faces. Up until that time everybody looked the same in most paintings, depending on who the artist used for their model — usually a family member.
What followed was room after room of Virgin Marys. It was truly mind-numbing.
One of the famous paintings that caught my fancy was the “Battle of San Romero”, a split screen painting with a battle on the bottom and a happy scene of hunting on the top. But most importantly it was one of the first paintings that experimented with “perspective”.
Next up was a very famous portrait painting of the Duke of Urbana and his dead wife, facing each other as if she were still alive. Her face is bleached stone cold white.
The cover painting of the museum’s brochure features another Virgin Mary but the painter used his wife as the model and it has a painted frame around the scene within the framed painting, giving it an odd perspective. The Renaissance is when the sense of different perspective starts to first be experimented with in painting.
One of the museum’s most famous paintings is by Botticelli called “Spring”. It’s all allegory with Venus and Mercury, and a blind Cupid soars above the garden, shooting his arrow of pointed love at one of the lovely contestants.
But the most famous masterpiece in the museum is the familiar painting seen in advertisements, bedspreads, diner plates, and all sorts of modern day media, Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus”. It’s the one with a coy teenage Venus standing demurely in all of her naked glory, hiding her treasure box with her long red hair while emerging from a clam shell.
My particular favorite showed a young, red-robed Jesus kneeling and praying atop a toadstool boulder, being tempted by a little flying angel with a cup of wine while three of the disciples lounge against against the stone, drunk on their asses.
The third very famous painting in the Uffizi is a black and white painting by Leonardo DaVinci, called “The Adoration of the Maggi”. It was not finished and that’s why there are no colors. It looks like sepia photo.
The fourth famous painting we got to see was Leonardo’s “Annunciation” where the Archangel Gabriel is landing in a garden, telling Mary that she is now pregnant with the baby Jesus. This is all silly horseshit, of course, but what’s important is that the face of Mary is the same face that DaVinci used for the Mona Lisa.
Once again, our guide, a foppish young fellow who described himself as a purebred Florentine whose family went back many generations, was selected by the tour company for his fluency in English. His English was laughable. Perhaps the people who set up these tours think having guides speak Italglish adds local flavor and genuine authenticity to the show, but I couldn’t understand half of what the guy said. Providing guides who end every sentence with, “Okay?” is annoying. And adding an “ah” on the end of many words, so it sound like “you knowah” sounds silly after awhile. And hearing words that are neither English or Italian is at best confusing as hell. Today’s word used over and over again by our guide was “pagithan” which took me a while to figure out meant pagan. They should hire British, Aussie, or American expats and I am sure the English-speaking tourists would enjoy the tours much more.
After taking a break back in our nearby apartment to recharge our electronics and tired minds and bodies with electricity and wine, respectively, we ventured out across the north side of town with the goal of seeing the sunset and watch nighttime descend over Florence from the lofty vista of Piazzale Michelangelo where we had been told we would find the most outstanding views of Florence.
Along the way we ran into a men’s a Capella singing group comprised of sixty students from Miami University in Ohio who serenaded us with an impromptu song at a busy intersection beside the Arno River before they boarded their bus for their next show at St Peter’s in Rome. It was a magical encounter that often happens when you travel on the fly.
It was quite the steep switchback climb up weathered stone steps to the Michelangelo overlook. At each level on the way to the top there were trippy, misshapen travertine seep walls framed under stone arches, dripping water like in Havasu Canyon at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
We christened the last switchback “Hostel Hookup” because it was lined from top to bottom with young men and woman drinking beer and wine, smoking weed, and hooking up at the tippy top of Florence. And the crowds at the overlook rivaled the Duomo as people camped along the rails drinking in the panoramic beauty of Medieval Florence and snapping pictures as the lights of the city came on like time lapse photography.
Walked 9 miles
Insider Tip — The Medieval center of Florence where all the cool stuff is grouped together is closed to most vehicles, so taking the Hop-On Hop-Off bus is a total waste of time because it just rides around the perimeter of the city and the traffic is really congested. Ancient Florence is essentially a locked box for bicycles and pedestrians.
Insider Tip — They will definitely not let you into the Duomo if you are wearing shorts or short sleeves. The Catholics have a thing about exposed skin (unless you’re a choir boy), so don’t press your luck. We saw some seriously pissed off people who had waited in line for hours to get in and were turned away at the door by some self-righteous prick who banished them with a scowl and a wag of the finger.
Insider Tip — If you rent a car, don’t even think about driving it into the center of Florence. You need a special pass. There are peak hour and weekend restrictions. The traffic is horrific and dysfunctional. And there is hardly any place to park legally.
Insider Tip — Street thieves are all over the busy spots in the center of Florence. I used a Travel Money Belt with RFID Block – Theft Protection and Global Recovery Tags that lists on Amazon for $17. It is not a hip or fanny pack! It fit invisibly under my shirt and had plenty of room for stuff like money, credit cards, sun block, my phone, and whatever else I needed to bring along. I didn’t even notice that I was wearing it.
