Florence

2/10

FLORENCE/FIRENZE

So, we ALL slept in until 0900 and having thoroughly enjoyed breakfast, we schooled and cleaned up Ed before Mum went over to the monstrous COOP to shop.  The kids skated about some more between writing.

Then it was a slow easy music filled drive to Florence where we navigated to a wondrous campground in an old olive grove up on the hill overlooking the old city.  

Tucked into a beautiful quiet park, we put on several loads of stinky washing and Mum made a huge smelly Italian pasta for lunch.  Dad & Wil cleaned out Ed’s garage and tinkered with bikes, the squids then invented farnarckling games, Mum prepared a tour itinerary and then after coffee & biscotti, we strolled up to Piazza Michelangelo to watch the sun go down whilst buskers played soothing folky stuff.  

There we found the very guy who committed crime after crime in the Wilsen household - left the lid off the toothpaste, put the empty milk carton back in the fridge, ruffled the tassels on the rugs............the Green man!

We marveled at gold lined clouds, the massive Duomo, the Fiume Arno colouring up beneath a series of bridges with the Ponte Vecchio taking prime position, and a tantalizing city packed with magnificent architecture that we can’t wait to explore. 

The Synagogue

Kel and Sebastian

3/10   HAPPY BIRTHDAY AUNTY MANDY DICICCO!

10 BX on farnarckling court before the usual colazione & scuola.  We’d decided on a walking tour (rather than a hop on hop off bus) as most things are quite close together.

A magnificent grand Dante Alighieri, one of the 34 ‘Dante landmarks’ in Florence, greeted us outside Santa Croce.  It’s beautiful facade is typical of Florence with multicolored geometrically patterned green, pink, black on white Prato marble.

Santa Croce

Inside was like an art gallery with amazing religious frescos by all sorts of greats &, like Westminster Abbey, it then became a cemetery housing the ornate tombs of hallowed Florentines like Galileo, Michelangelo, Rossini & Machiavelli.  

Dante

Gallileo

Michelangelo

lots of other dead people under foot

There were some really old frescos depicting the story of St Francis of Assisi as well as those dedicated to the wealthy founding Medici family.  Outside the church seemed to go on forever with an attached museum of religious art, an undercover sub-terranian cemetery, cloistered courtyards, a basilica by Donatello and another huge religious medieval & Renaissance art gallery.

boobs galore, but live ladies can't bear knees or shoulders to get in today 

Exhausted, we plonked on the steps outside for lunch of bread, cheese, lettuce & salami. 

Our trek to the bookshop we’d been recommended by the tourist office was not there but just around the corner was the extraordinary Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza della Signoria (where “Bonfire of the Vanities” was set, when an angry monk burnt ‘excesses’ and was promptly exiled) which connects to Plaza Repubblica, full of Di Cambio architecture (on Roman foundations).  

Stacks of history has filled these connected squares and is marked by several enormous open loggias that were initially graineries & fish markets, then oration platforms & public assemblies, then art galleries for sculptors and now hang-outs for photographers and weary picnicking tourists.

Neptune

another David + friends

Ready for refreshments we found a gelateria to rival GROM.  WOW pistachio, hazelnut….

We dawdled homeward via innumerable shops full of leather goods, shoes & very expensive winter fashion. 

shopping goggles

A quick 1^st (of many) look at the Duomo with it’s magnificent Bell Tower and the Baptistry, 

Bell Tower

and then turned for home, crossing the famous Ponte Vecchio.  We crawled at snail’s pace past all the jewelry shoppers and chatted about its history initially as a commercial centre housing textile workers & butchers who conveniently dumped waste into the river before The Medicis ordered the smell be cleaned up and brought in the jewelers!

on the Pont Vecchio

Looking back over it’s quaint design, we considered why it was the only bridge left standing on Hitlers orders after WW2 - was it just too cute or couldn’t one cross with tanks anyways as it is too narrow?? 

next to the Uffizi, under the Gallileo museum: the Rowing Club!

Salad for dinner & passed out in the incredible quiet of our campsite.

4/10

Run with Jeff around esplanades and across bridges, over rowing courses

Watching the beautiful UNESCO city wake up, smelling the coffee & croissants (or cornettos as they call them here.)

Back with our children, we enjoyed a relaxing shower, breakfast and school of maths & Italian intermixed with the kid’s farnarckling championships!

Ready to explore again, we started at our favourite ‘Green Man’ (one of the many, but bronze replicas of Michelangelo’s David) balcony overlooking Florence checking out where we’ve been and where we plan to go.

Down the hill, we took new pretty streets &, as there are so many to choose from, different bridges to Galileo’s Museum where we got lost in the wonderful bookshop for a while. Curiosity mounting, we fueled with cannoli Sicilianis (sweet ricotta stuffed, chocolate lined sweet crunchy crepes that Wil has been talking about since his Italian teacher in grade 4 at Holy Family made them as part of an Italian lesson) and hit the Duomo.  Wil took a photo essay of the church including snaps of the incredible enormous marble statues over the way of the responsible architects, di Cambio & later, Brunelleschi who sits staring up at the Dome.  

Brunelleschi pondering his Dome

He engineered the huge and magnificent dome and di Cambio, the rest.  Sadly diCambio’s facade was demolished by a disapproving Medici who didn’t like it.  His replacement (rushed for the wedding of one of his kids) didn’t last and only in the 1850s did the Tuscan Association finally complete the current beauty.  Inside, the most inspiring part is the INCREDIBLE Vasari & Zuccari dome fresco of The Last Judgement.  

One can really appreciate the Renaissance discovery of perspective drawing here with figures sitting neat the top who almost seem to be on the verge of toppling out of the fresco.

We decided to climb the 500 steps of the adjacent bell tower, one of the most decorated buildings in the world, to snuggle closer to the dome and the ornate Duomo roof as well as to look over Florence with it’s carefully planned river side valley location, tucked beneath a circle of hills.  It is a wonderful vantage point to look at the city’s modification over time with Roman lay out, old grand rectangular buildings around courts that have been filled in with all sorts of little terracotta roofs at different angles, like we used to build our card houses as kids.  One can see the ~150 house towers built by the wealthy to escape invaders and then the numerous sumptuous significant sites on a scale miniaturizing the rest as they soar to the sky. 

Heading for a well researched pizza joint that we promised the kids, we got way laid in the sprawling endless San Lorenzo markets that smell of rich leather shoes, bags, belts & jackets to finally arrive at our destination that was….closed!

Santa Maria Novella

So, in the homeward direction, we parked up at a cute pizzeria and, like everywhere here, paid through the nose to sit down, have water and bread we didn’t ask for, the ubiquitously uninspiring salad and some pizza.  We all decided to continue dining at Cucina Eduardo and whilst out simply enjoy the magnificent coffee & gelato.

Back home, we showered up & read waiting for dark and then, in PJs walked up to our Green Man to enjoy the city lights.

5/10  DAY 4 in Florence

Adulti walk1 hour 20 minutes around the gardens, hills & palaces whilst the warmth creeps into the day and folk scream to work on scooters.  Jeff remembers contemplating his (immature) navel sitting in the gardens when here some 20 years ago with mates.  We snuck in a coffee on our bar balcony before joining the youngsters still tucked up with books.

Today we did things differently, first viewing a wonderful DVD on Florentine history with discussion about the French inspired fleur-de-lys coat of arms, how the dome was built and what characterizes the Renaissance...then lesson 20 of 30 Italian lessons (Wil sounds great, Kel surprises us with her memory, Jen mixes up vowels and Jeff just draws blanks - the rate limiting pupil.)

After a sandwich & fruit lunch, we’d scheduled a Michelangelo session at San Lorenzo.  Again, waylaid snapping the Duomo and the Baptistry doors, incredibly beautifully sculpted by Donatello (we think??)

Unfortunately when got to San Lorenzo we learned there are 3 different tickets, one only open in the morning….. So we viewed the church full of incredible religious art by significant others like Lippi, Donatello’s bronze pulpits, Botticelli, Dicicco (!)... And will have to return tomorrow to see Michelangelo’s stuff.

The rest of the late afternoon & evening were spent in the markets trying to pick up small stuff for family and stuff for Jen.  Jeff enjoyed bargaining a guy down form E1800 to E500 for a soft gorgeous longer leather jacket for Jen....but just not in our budget.  Jen prefers to walk away.  We looked at hand bags for Jen - can’t tell what’s real, a fair bit of poorly made fakes; wonderful Florentine paper (kids were given E5 & both spent it on small leather palm sized diaries) and finally hit on last season’s fashions at “Coin” buying a summer skirt & dress by Desigual as well as some Spanish rubber soled groovy work & play multifunctional shoes.  Jen, the well known shopping addict - not (rather fashion victim!!), could not disguise the jaw-dropping prices compared with Oz (dress E99 vs $400 in Oz - same previously admired dress at Timbuctoo Toowong!)

As the dusk approached we passed the Duomo again, more pics:

We splurged on gelati again for dinner at our favourite shop, and chatted all the way home beneath the golden city lights.  Passing through the Uffizi corridor, we marveled at just how many famous Italians there are, some of whom, including Amerigo Vespucci, Gallileo, Brunelleschi, Dante, Michelangelo, Da Vinci and many, many more, stand tall & larger than life along the corridor’s perimeter.

Florence was certainly worthy of having been new Independent Italy’s capital in the 1860s before the honour shifted to Rome.

6/10 DAY 5 FLORENCE

Us adults were slow to wake given a quiet saturating slumber aided by cooler and darker mornings - the cold is creeping up on us.  Nonetheless, Jen poked Jeff’s ribs at 0730 for the exercise 10 BX ritual, this time under the olive trees.  Without words, creeping around first in the van to the soft kiddy snores as we pull on the lycra giving each other encouraging “has to be done” smiles!

At breakfast Kel curls her long legs up under her chin showing off innumerable irritated mozzie bites.  Thought Oz had mozzies!  Apparently, the new Italy’s famous prime minister, Carvour, died at only 50 with what sounds like malaria in 1863 - not surprised.

The river Arno is quite manky & whilst wide, has little flow.

Having missed Michelangelo’s Laurenziana LIbrary & Cappelli Medici sculptures yesterday, we made for San Lorenzo first thing, along our now well trodden path.  

The kids had writing projects planned, Kel creating a yesteryear scene in the library as a young girl growing up in Renaissance Florence and Wil, doing a Feldmann art analysis of his favourite Michelangelo work in the New Sacristy.  He chose one on Duke Lorenzo’s Sarcophagus which depicts the pensive leader seated with Day & Night at his feet atop his tomb.

The sculptures were OK (his ladies have breasts on men’s torsos & women’s heads - he was known to judge the nude male as a supreme art form & may have been gay) but the library was exquisite with Mich’s elegant staircase,

etched wooden ceilings, an incredibly intricate terracota & white tile floor, exquisite stain glass windows and wooden reading pews each signed with moveable wooden plaques containing the row’s book catalogue. 

Attached to the library was an absolutely wonderful exhibition showing of the Magnifici Tre  - the libri d’ Ore commissioned by Lorenzo di Medici for his 3 daughter’s wedding gifts.

They are magnificent little prayer books adorned & bound with gold, silver, gemstones & enamels on the finest paper.  Famous artists took three years each to assemble the masterpieces.  Wil was spell bound and listed it as easily his favourite thing of the day.  Kel was inspired to write reflective poetry in her teeny E3 pink leather diary.

The New Sacrist adjoins the Cappeli Medici, the truly awesome mauseleum those grand gentlemen and their Papal rellies built for themselves.  The scale of the Chapel is astounding - it’s a monument to finest stone work and the expense must have been truly staggeringly incomprehensible, especially compared with the “average wage” of the time.  And then there’s the dome ceiling fresco……

We snacked on the steps outside when done and then, after buying the J’s a leather market belt each, made for the gelato shop again!

Dad & kids wandered home to complete school work, stopping to admire the detail of the David at Piazza Vecchio and to sit on benches sharing far flung fairy fables.

hand of David

Jen lingered buying a few gifts for family & checking out leather bags.  There are 2 rough groups - cheap & nasty and really expensive & nice.  Just like the leather jackets. She came home predictably empty handed having decided neither of these items are on her list anyway.

Back at base camp, we cooked up a large BBQ salmon parcel each (sun-dried toms, garlic, pesto, red capsicum & nuts on a bed of cous-cous) & then sat about to read.

Jeff ducked out to buy the young blokes birthday present whilst we read and washed up.

Then it was off up the hill to Piazza Michelangelo and the Green Man to skate and watch the sun set, closely followed by a shower, light dinner and a movie for the kids.

Up in the greys of the morning with the small tweeting birds and onto our bikes we explored the greater perimeters of Florence.  Being a Sunday morning the traffic was greatly reduced, tourists were still in bed and scooters were on their day off such that we could get right across to connecting parklands and get up some speed.  Market stalls were busily setting up in the local suburbs and the odd joggers were plodding the river side & parkland walking tracks. At the sprawling poorer suburban edges of the city, we were surprised to see people burning off their household waste generating enormous plumes of stinky smoke that hung heavily over the UNESCO listed city. 

Crossing back over the Arno, we climbed the city’s highest hill to the views from the San Miniato al Monte church which is encircled by the most extensive cemetry. Unattractive enormous mausoleums messily crowd around each other - somewhere in there are many greats including Carlo Lorenzini. 

As well as the usual routine, we did another 2 load of washing, skyped Gren & the Boticas (who coincidentally told us not to miss the town we planned to visit, San Gimignano, where G remembers his finest ever, to date unrivalled, spaghetti marinara!) and stole a great coffee together at the balcony bar between loads whilst the kids finished their writing.