FIRENZE
I got to Firenze around noon, which gave me ample time to locate our apartment in the suburbs (but quite close to the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station, opposite to the direction of the Centro Vecchio), and to make three trips to the grocery store to stock up on the necessities such as food, beer, and wine. The apartment is quite functional, without being “Wow!”. I suspect I will never find another as comfortable and pretty as Giulia’s in Cogoleto. In Firenze we have three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and combined kitchen-dining room- living room, which is ample for a family of four.
The following day I scouted the basics of the Centro Vecchio, and at 1 pm headed with the tram for the airport. I arrived there 5 minutes after the family had collected their luggage, and a few minutes later we were exchanging hugs and kisses. It was but an instant before we were installed in the tram, headed for our apartment, which is quite close to the Belfiore station of the T2 tramline. Everyone of the travelers had a small rolling suitcase and Faby and DJ were carrying backpacks; Faby is a master at this business of packing for a week-long trip, because not only was she super compact, but had brought very chic clothes to make sure she looked as elegant as other Italian women (boots, sweaters, skirts, … the works!). I am so happy to have my beloved daughter with me 😊
That afternoon we made a short walk to the Centro Vecchio to eat gelato, and afterward came back home again for the travelers to sleep their jet lag off (it only worked so so, because they all woke up at 1 am and were unable to fall asleep again).
The next couple of days are all confused in my mind, partly because we wanted to see it all, and partly because the rhythm seem to have been set by how hungry the boys were, and the specific restaurants that they wanted to hit. They had seen a travel documentary and had taken notes of the best place to get a panini, or a pizza, or gelato, so in the middle of walking through a forest of delicate Renaissance statues I would hear the ominous words “I am hungry” followed by Fabiola’s mention of an eatery she wanted to try. After a few twists and turns through the streets of old Firenze we would finally arrive to the chosen place, which I will have to acknowledge was pretty good (the paninis were huge and very well put together, the pizza was OK but nothing extraordinary, and at the trattoria I had an excellent stew of beef stomach that was in par with callos a la madrileňa or menudo).
OK, so what did we see? I am not sure of the order, but we saw the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, with the famous dome designed by Brunelleschi; the Uffizi and its surrounding statues (among them a copy of David that DJ—aka David—wanted to be photographed by); the Basilica de Santa Maria Novella; Ponte Vecchio and its score of super exclusive jewelry stores; the Boboli Gardens and the Palazzo Pitti; the Mercato Centrale; the Fontana del Porcellino, whose nose we rubbed to make sure we will return to Firenze; the Piazzale Michelangelo, with yet another reproduction of David, but this time in bronze; and the Galleria dell’Accademia with the original David. I know, I know, but you only get to go on an ego trip once in a lifetime.
And here I have to make a digression to talk about David. I must have seen this statue, in person, in reproduction, and in photos a hundred times, and I thought about it as a powerful statue of a handsome naked man, albeit with oversized hands. Imagine my surprise when by looking very carefully I noticed that it actually had a strip of cloth (?) draped over his back. Or is it a snake? Yes, I concluded, it must be a snake skin, so I authoritatively brought it to the attention of my family, who nodded in agreement. It was not until we were in the Galleria that I was reminded that this David is supposed to be the biblical David who defeated the giant Goliath. Of course! The smug posture, the smirk, and the slingshot carelessly draped over his back should have been plenty of clues that I must confess I had never before put together.
While in the Galleria dell’Accademia we got to see four unfinished Michelangelo statues, the Priggionere (the prisoners), as massive as David. It was interesting to see how he “uncovered” the muscular bodies out of a block of marble, little by little and clearly working in more than one masterpiece at a time. I have made reference to David’s oversized hands. Leonardo Da Vinci was already a mature man when this Michelangelo upstart got to be the rage in Firenze, and legend has it that Leonardo would criticize Michelangelo to his face for being an ignoramus when it came to human anatomy (a subject to which Leonardo devoted many pages of notes and sketches). The Priggionere, too, are bigger than life, and their knotted arms have a certain notion of bestiality, but I think this was a deliberate choice on the part of the artist, who used variations in the shape of the human body to imbue his creations with different oversized qualities.
I know about Leonardo because one of the best museums we visited was an Interactive Leonardo Da Vinci Museum. At the beginning we were wowed by the reproductions made of some of Leonardo’s inventions, but were put out by the many signs of “No Tocare” that accompanied each mechanical marvel. After all, the whole point was to reward Ronnie for being such a good tourist by letting him “interact” with the displays. Things got better when we got to the basement floor, where there were indeed many manipulatives that he could play with. He built a big pyramid with interlocking elements and solved many puzzles, DJ built a “Y” shaped tower, and Faby reconstructed a stone arch with keystone and all. I tried to build a self-standing bridge, but in the last moment it collapsed and I lost heart.
Three days into our stay we took a day off to go visit Siena, a fantastically well-preserved medieval town that Faby and I had visited 30 years ago under pouring rain. It was a treat to visit it now, under warm sunshine, and with the help of Google Maps to keep us from getting lost (Faby and I got lost, 30 years ago, and had to wander through 180 degrees around the city wall to find our parked VW wagon). Sights worth mentioning are the glorious Tuscan countryside, the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta (by which is my very own museum—the Opa Museum), and the Piazza del Campo, where on July 2 and August 16 the famous horserace of Il Palio takes place, together with a big carnival. The Piazza del Campo is a big “fan” that slopes toward a common point, where all the rainwater is collected and probably stored in cisterns that in medieval times must have been an important source of water supply. To my disappointment we were not able to visit the Museo del’Aqua, which is closed due to renovations.
We had reserved our last day in Florence to visit the Galleria, of which I have already spoken, the Mercato Centrale (ditto), the Trattoria Mario (this is where I had the stew of beef stomach), and for the grand finale, the Museo Galileo of Science. Alas, by the time we got there, at 1:15 pm, we learned that on Tuesdays the museum is only open until 1 pm, and not in the afternoons. Rats!
POMPEII
So far, and against all odds, we had been blessed with fantastic sunny weather. Alas, on the day we took the early train to Pompeii our luck started to turn. We took the Freccia Rossa bullet-train to Salerno, and from there the slow train to Pompeii, and by the time we got there (around 11 am) the sky was definitely threatening. We dropped pour luggage at the hostel, and armed with jackets and umbrellas headed for the Parco Archeologico. Now, Pompeii the modern town is built over the ruins of Pompeii the Roman town, which was buried under the air-fall tuffs of Vesuvius in 79 AD, so the ruins are scattered all over town. The Parco Archeologico is just the largest contiguous portion of the ancient city, covering perhaps 20 blocks (imagine trying to dig 20 blocks of your town from under a cover of 10 feet of volcanic tephra and you will get a pale idea of what the heroic efforts of the archaeologists of the 18th and 19th centuries was! It was a big place, with its own amphitheater/coliseum where gladiators entertained the plebes, surrounding vineyards, a lively middle class that was supported by eateries, hostels, and lupanars, and an aristocratic class that maintained villas, public baths, a beautiful big theater, and a just-as-beautiful small theater. The streets have microwave-size cobblestones that I suspect were covered by sand to make them smooth (but some of the rocks appear deeply rutted by iron-rimmed cart wheels (which may just mean that Public Works was slow on repairing spots where the sand had been washed away), and the distribution of public fountains shows that the city was well supplied by aqueducts that probably tapped the melt waters from Mount Vesuvius.
The following morning it was pouring. However, after getting Covid tests for the three Ashby’s, we bravely defied the elements and went to visit the rest of the ancient town. We started at the Necropolis, which was built around the town, but outside of the city wall, let Ronnie explore every nook and cranny he could find, visited the miller and the brad maker shops, visited a few more of the houses of the elite (*), and ended in the main plaza, where the basilica and the many public monuments that make a big city are located. * Now that I have had two days to see where the mighty lived, I am a bit under awed about the quality of the art and the prevailing taste of the times. I think there is too much red on the walls (no wonder they were on edge when the eruption happened), and I think the artists were “chalk artists”, who after red-washing the wall would just do a chalk drawing of whatever the home-owner wanted, in the same way boardwalk artists would draw your cartoon in 10 minutes. Maybe it was the way for the lady of the house to redecorate every few months?
The museum of the site is totally worth visiting. It is small, but it has the molds that were made during the 18th century excavations of the people and animals that were overwhelmed by the choking rain of lapilli and shards that apparently extended over several days. That is right: Pompeii was not destroyed by a glowing cloud of tephra rolling down the hill, but by the persistent “rain” of dust and small rocks over several days. Traditionally it has been quoted a date of August 24 79 AD for the start of the eruption. Folks fled the city in panic, but a chained dog, a chocked horse, and several people collapsed asphyxiated, and their bodies were buried by the falling dust. The chief archaeologist, Giuseppe Fiorelli, when looking at a skull realized that the cavity behind it was the cast of the body of the person, and he thought that to recover the mold he needed to fill the void with runny plaster; it worked like a charm, and that is the way we get to see the people, the horse, and the dog in remarkable detail.
My other favorite piece in the museum was a marble strip, maybe a meter long and 30 cm tall, that shows a depiction of the February 5, 62 AD earthquake. I am totally using this in my lectures about earthquakes, with the tilting city wall, the leaning temple, the fallen wine amphoras, and the terrified cattle! Cannot ask for anything better to illustrate the effects of a mild earthquake.
I am delighted to have visited Pompeii, and now have to follow up by reading the scholarly literature about what folks have come up with after nearly 300 years of study. Now that I have a chit on the game I will enjoy this exploration so much more!
ROME
That same afternoon we took the train to Rome, for the last full day of the Ashby’s in Italy. We took an early train, which managed to get the train controller out of shape because you are not supposed to do that. Really? This is Italy, where there are no laws but just suggestions! In any case, we had to pay a surcharge of 10 euros each and arrived in Rome at 6 pm (two hours in advance of our scheduled time) to a veritable deluge. Our B&B was only 2 blocks way, which under the pouring rain I managed to extend to 4 blocks, and then we had to stand under the rain for a few minutes while I talked to our remote host about how to open the door (*). But finally we were in, stripped out of our wet clothes, and relaxed to an afternoon of warmth and an iPad movie. * I feel that B&B’s have been multiplying in Europe as younger generations have inherited the flats of grandparents; great way to make money, but they don’t want to become hotel keepers, so they have imagined all sorts of codes and geocaching to get you to your room remotely. This might be fun, but not when it is pouring, and you are in front of an iron gate that won’t budge. In our case we were supposed to ring so the housekeeper would buzz us in, but the housekeeper was having a cup-o-tea with her friend in the kitchen and didn’t hear the bell ring. Fortunately, some gentleman came along, opened the door, and we filed in right behind him into the dry porch.
Rome, the eternal city! Rome in one day? “Impossible”, says you. And we agree, so our plan was to get on the tourist bus and just go along for the ride. We were thinking that in a big city like Rome there would be a couple of circuits, but this is the off season and there is only one. OK, so we will do the one circuit and we will get off the bus at the Colosseum and the Vatican, and that will take care of the day. It was a great plan, and it worked like a charm, but we had to contend with heavy rain and ended soaked to the bone. But we saw Rome, by George!
Ronnie has been a wonderful traveler, but the poor little guy is going through growing pains, so he goes from being happy and chirping like a little bird, to being sullen and mopey like a mole in the blink of an eye.
Opa: “Ronnie, ask me who my favorite boy is?”
Ronnie (with a mopey face): “Who is your favorite boy, Opa?”
Opa: “A little black boy, scrawny, with curly hair, who
loves kisses from his Opa.”
Ronnie: “Good. It is not me.” Note: Ronnie is not the kiss or hug type
But tonight, the last night, I started telling him a story, and he hopped on my bed, and I tickled him, and he laughed, and we fell asleep side by side, and at two o’clock in the morning I had my dream fulfilled and I snuggled with my grandson. It was heavenly.
We woke up at 3 am, took showers, drank coffee (or milk in
the case of Ronnie), and ate the leftovers of a burrito kebab and a panini
kebab from last night’s dinner. At 4:30 am we took off for the neighboring
train station so the Ashby’s could take their 5 am train to Fiumicino Airport,
and from there to Frankfurt and then San Francisco. They are going home!
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