Tuscany Three

We spent 2 days in Florence. We decided to not rush all over trying to cram everything in. Better to see a few things well than a lot of things in a blur. On our first day we gaped at the stunning magnificence of the duomo (but didn’t go inside), went to the Uffizi Gallery (where I melted in front of the Botticellis), walked across the Arno on the Ponte Vecchio (still lined with jewellery shops), and climbed to Piazzale Michaelangelo on a hill above Florence for some wonderful views of the city.

On the way to the Uffizi we met this fellow - who would move for a fee.



And then this one.



And from inside the Uffizi, through double paned windows I took this picture of the Arno River.



Ponte Vecchio - the buildings that are attached to both sides of the bridge house the jewellery shops. It was a complete zoo on the bridge, so crowded you could hardly move.





Florence from the Piazzale Michaelangelo




On our second day in Florence we climbed the campanile, all 414 steps, for some even better views of the city.

On the way up the campanile



And views from the top





We went to the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo, housing some of the works of art from the duomo. In here I really got to slow down and take it all in. I sat and stared at this piece for at least 10 minutes, not wanting to move. It’s not even real, but a (life size?) photograph of some mosaic work that was from (or maybe even still exists in) the duomo. There was a marble statue above it that I hardly noticed.



Completely tickled by this piece



And loved these. I’m not even remotely religious, I just love 13th and 14th Century art, and in those days, as far as I know, religious art was the only art that existed. All artists were men and all were part of the church. I love the form, the design, the colours, the sheer elegance of it.






And then we went to the Baptistry! Absolutely breathtaking. The Baptistry itself is a large round, mainly marble-clad, mainly unremarkable room/dome in front of the duomo. But the ceiling! Completely awestruck! Couldn’t just look at it with my head craned back so I lay down on the floor. It was busy in there of course, so I tried to find a spot where people wouldn’t walk on me. Yikes! I’d have liked to have been able to lie down smack in the middle, but it might have been a bit dangerous, so I found a quiet spot off to the edge and lay there staring in awe.

Side panels





Ceiling






Ruth left us after Florence to return to the Netherlands. We took some time to catch our breath, going nowhere for 3 days except into town to get groceries and for walks around the farm area where we were staying. We'd been out and about seeing and doing so much it was nice to just be at home for a bit.

Our final foray out into Tuscany was a day trip driving through Chianti country. We stopped often along the way to enjoy the beautiful scenery and to take photos, and visited the towns of Castellina and Greve.





Found this on the wall of a house in Castellina. Fun!



Piazza del Mercato in Greve



In Castellina we also went to see the Etruscan ruins. We hadn’t initially thought to stop there, but were really glad we did. It was fascinating, and a bit spooky. Unlike the grand duomos there aren’t crowds of people wanting to look inside underground Etruscan stone houses. We were there alone. It was really dark inside some of them and we used our camera flashes to try to see in a bit before we went inside. There were four separate excavations into Etruscan dwellings in the hillside and we went into all of them. They are probably about 2000 years old. Just the thought that people lived there in those stone houses so long ago was intriguing and kind of eerie. I bet it was pretty cold and uncomfortable. And dark.







It’s actually been two weeks since we left Tuscany, so we’ve been on the road now for 6 weeks. Fairly frequently the thought/reminder arises – this is it, this is our life now. It’s not the same as it would be if we were on holiday and in a week or so it will end and we’d go home. We have to make home wherever we are. There are lots of adjustments, both internal and external. With food for instance we have to find ways to eat what is “normal” for us, because it’s fine to not worry about diet for a few weeks vacation, but when it’s longer term it’s important to pay attention to what and how much we’re eating to make sure we stay healthy. We often buy food to bring back to eat in the hotel room because we just don’t want to eat out every night. Our hotel room becomes home in every way we can make it. Right now we’re taking a day off from sight seeing. I’m sitting on the bed writing this. I have earplugs in, because right now Don is sitting in a chair with his feet up, watching a Formula 1 race on TV. It’s a truly wonderful thing that we get on so well, and communicate so well, so we can make the adjustments that are needed so both of us can have what we want while living together in one small room. Right now what he wants is to watch F1 on TV so I wear earplugs. In Venice I wanted to watch figure skating on TV, late at night. Luckily we had a headphone extension that I could plug into the TV so as to not keep him awake all night. And so it goes. We learn how to be at home wherever we are, we learn how to travel as we go. It’s a big change, but so far we’re both loving it.

Next blog VENICE! It is every bit as magical and enchanting and extraordinary and breathtaking as you could possibly imagine!

Tuscany

On Oct 3rd we travelled by train from Monterosso to Pisa, left our cases at the railway station, raced across town to see the tower, you know the one, the tower, stopping for lunch along the way, then raced back across town to pick up a rental car in the hopes of being able to drive to our villetta on a farm in Tuscany and arrive before dark! Which we did. Just. And with the help of yet another Italian angel in human form.

Pisa








We knew the farm where we were staying was near Poggibonsi, but that was about it. We had some google directions that were just wrong wrong wrong. And to top it all I had a day off as far as organization is concerned. I left my passport locked in my case at the railway station so couldn’t sign on as a second driver when we rented the car, and I’d completely misplaced Matteo’s phone number, the one person at the farm who could speak English and who could help us. So we drove around in increasing anxiety and desperation, driving south to Colle Val D’Elsa because it looked like it might be the right way given the completely indecipherable directions I’d gotten from the farm website. In the meantime Ruth is convinced we should be back in Poggibonsi because the google directions were giving directions of making turns only metres from the highway. Which I knew had to be wrong because I knew the farm was only about 6 km from San Gimignano, and Poggibonsi is about 12 km from San Gim. It didn’t help that the google directions were from leaving the Sienna-Firenze highway, and we’d come from Certaldo! Is this making any sense yet? Anyway finally we stopped at a café/gas station. We sent Ruth (because she’s braver than we are!) to approach a group of men who were sitting outside playing cards, who understood enough to get another guy to help, who decided the delivery guy (who was at the gas pumps with his truck) for sure would know. Anyway in the end thank God for google because at the end of their otherwise completely useless and utterly confusing directions there was a phone number that we called, and one of the men who’d been helping us had a long conversation in Italian (with Franco at the farm, who speaks no English, as we later found out). And then offered to take us there! Wow! So Lucky. We would never have found it otherwise. We followed him in his little red car for about 30 minutes over a very complex route and finally up a dirt road for a long way, until eventually he stopped, conferred with a farmer that our place “Podere Il Pino” was just a kilometer up the road, and then with hand shakes and smiles all round, left us to continue on. We didn’t even have a bottle of wine to give him. A few days later I found Matteo’s phone number buried at the bottom of my case. I also found out, when we finally met Matteo, that if we’d called him from Poggibonsi he would have sent Franco to get us.

Views from around the villetta








Don in the pool with San Gimignano in the distance.


I hardly know where to start with Tuscany, we’ve done and seen so much in the last 10 days. We’ve been to Firenze, Siena, San Gimignano, Volterra, Cecina (on the coast) and Orvieto (in Umbria).

I’m completely dazzled by a culture that produces this:

Orvieto Duomo


And this

Siena Duomo


And this

Firenze Duomo



And now feel as if I have a better understanding of the extravagance of the art in the Temples of Humankind at Damanhur (www.thetemples.org, click on virtual tour). They are the modern equivalent. Italians are raised surrounded by art, most of it glorious and beautiful and ornate and extravagant and wonderfully over the top. I saw some 13th and 14th century religious art in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence that took my breath away with it's beauty. And gladly stood in front of Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Primavera in time out of time finally able to absorb them in a way that's not possible looking at a reproduction in a book. It was so fulfilling to finally see the real thing. And there were crowds around so I had to invent a way to see these paintings without people blocking some or all of it. Why do people look at large paintings from 3 feet away? Don't they realize that large paintings are best seen from a distance where the eye can take it all in?!!!!!!!!! Anyway I went right to the front and squatted down holding on to the railing that was about 3 feet in front of the painting, and just stayed there. For several minutes. Just squatting down, not blocking anyone's view, not moving. And then when I felt the time was right I stood, with my arms wide and moved slowly backwards. Miraculously the crowd had melted away, and in this way I got to see both Botticelli's without anyone blocking my view. Sweet victory.



This is a culture that produced this painting several hundred years ago

(from the Museo Dell'Opera del Duomo in Firenze)

And this one in recent times

(which we saw for sale in a shop in Orvieto)

So much beauty.

Although I learned a lot in school about much of what I’m seeing, Donatello and Ghiberti and Michaelangelo and Brunelleschi and Giotto, and although I did visit Italy briefly in my early thirties, I didn’t, or couldn’t appreciate it then the way I can now. I feel full with the beauty of art, and of the infinite and astonishing creativity of humankind.


But just to make sure I don't get too carried away here, this is also the culture that produced:

this (seen in an artist's studio in Siena)




and this (an artist's studio in the walled medieval town of Volterra)




and this store in the walled medieval town of Orvieto

So much fun! I myself prefer the lamp ladies in the back of the store! :)



And then there is the breathtaking beauty of nature:
The gorgeous Tuscan countryside surrounding the farm

















And on the drive to Volterra




San Gimignano




San Gimignano was our first foray into the hill towns of Tuscany. It was a good place to start being close to “home”, easy to find, and completely fascinating. Like Cinque Terre it too was full of tourists and it was easy to see why. If you come to Tuscany you’d be mad to miss it. It’s a walled medieval hill town and a wonderful example of medieval architecture. We walked around for hours completely enthralled.






Both these sculptures were in niches on the outside wall of a house.


We found the international award winning gelato place. Twice. And had lunch at a lovely restaurant that had pictures of roses covering all the walls. The food was excellent. Don's pizza was great (of course), and I had the best salad since coming to Italy.





San Gimignano is utterly charming, and in spite of the large numbers of tourists, largely unspoiled. I'm just soaking up the sense of history here that all Europeans grow up with. Being Australian/Canadian, where there's nothing much that's really old, I'm completely captivated by it all. And there was a busker, in a garden with trees, high up on top of one part of the walls of the town where you can get a great view of the surrounding countryside. She had the most beautiful rich clear voice and sang beautiful etherial songs so we sat on the grass and listened for a while to this unexpected musical treat. And then Don and Ruth spent a long time deciding on which bottle of local wine to buy for dinner, and we went back to our little villettea on the farm and made a wonderful meal to have with it.


















Next post - Oh I don't know. Maybe I'll have a thing or two more to say about Tuscany, and Florence and Siena, and assorted hill towns :)