Cars are always an issue in Italy...where to park, how to go around the thousands of new round-abouts (it’s like the transportation department just realized how nifty they are), shifting going up steep switch-backs, fitting everyone into the ¾ sized car, and trying not to get hit by one as a pedestrian. And space is always an issue with luggage. When we left the country Rick and I drove the car into Florence with the luggage while Mary and Deb and Peter took the train!
After the first week of our adventure Peter and I joined Mary and Rick and Deb in their rental car to tour hill towns. They were defiantly tired of driving so Peter and I took over. And once Peter stopped channeling Mario Andretti we were all pretty comfortable driving from Le Boscarecce every day to visit Tuscan towns.
We did have one great car experience riding with Cesare Nadalini in his new Citroen. It’s so great! I want one! The windshield went way up into the roof with a well engineered sunshade that pulled down. There were sunscreens on the back passenger windows and two flip up seats in the luggage area...French design!
Sightseeing…
It’s hard to beat an Alpine Lake ringed with ever changing light on the mountains. And the view from the seminary next to St Peter’s in Rome is astounding... but it didn’t bring my soul peace the way the Alps did. Aaannd... the layer after fading layer of hills and hill-towns in Tuscany are special and calming to me...until I begin to imagine the the armored men riding around fighting for that land for so many years. All of these places settle somewhere in my heart.
I love San Gimignano and can go back and back despite the crowds of tourists. There’s a lot of cheap souvenirs but also SO many artisans doing beautiful work in silver, pottery, linen and wool, olive wood, and now washable paper. Plus...fabulous ice cream! We didn’t eat lunch...just ice cream. Oh, yes, and there are the gorgeous medieval towers and my second favorite duomo with walls filled with Old and New Testament frescoes and a Ghirlandaio chapel. The tall buildings and narrow streets pull your eyes upward so it is possible to ignore the teeming masses.
Siena has my very favorite duomo. Charcoal black and creamy white stripes folding and bending around columns and across apses form a framework for all of the frescoes and the gorgeous gold star studded ceiling. And then after swirling around in the lofty space, you look down at the FLOOR! Usually only one or two marble sections are uncovered at a time but in September it’s all open and the softer marbles are roped off to keep people from walking on them.
The floor is a combination of graffito (incised lines filled with black stucco and mineral pitch) and marble intarsio (colored marble inlay) all surrounded by patchwork marble borders. (Yes, Rick, I looked up the technical info after our conversation.) I’ve been there so many times and have never gotten to see the major floor work in the center crossing. I was so blown away by the delicate lines and beautiful drawings that I took lots of pictures for reference...the books just don’t do it justice. (Thus the giant picture above.) All in all it was a really inspiring visit.
For lunch in Siena we had sandwiches made at a salumeria and sat on the sloping brick campo with groups of tourists from all over, including a curious group of women all dressed in polka dots and red feather boas...maybe they were a dance troop. The campo is the shell shaped center of town where the palios take place twice a year, when each contrada or district sends out a blessed horse and bareback rider to run the very dangerous race.
I have always loved going to Vinci to see the museum collection of Leonardo’s inventions. It’s had a feeling of stepping back into his world...kind of a workshop feeling. But now they’ve modernized the museum and taken away the authenticity without adding any information. I really want to see those machines in action...I really want to understand how all those spirals and screws and strings make something happen. But ...no...they just slicked up the environment. And his house is really pathetic. I want to see how he might have lived, but there’s only a few artifacts and photos of things and a hologram of him floating around ...a ghost of a mediocre actor telling his life story.
I don’t need to take anybody back to Vinci.
But Peter and I DID find a wonderful and meaningful new museum in Florence…the Museo degli Innocenti in Piazza Santissima Annunziata. Outside, in the wall, is a turnstile, hmmm...how to describe it. It’s a wooden round table like a small version of an air-lock glass turnstile to get into a bank lobby… and, for centuries, abandoned babies have been placed there and wheeled around into the arms of the cloistered nuns inside who cared for them...sometimes to adulthood. Now there is a museum in the old “hospital” that celebrates the people inside who have worked and lived there. It’s very touching. Even the parents who had to give up their children are honored. Most of the babies came in with a trinket or something that could be identified later so that a parent could retrieve a child if their circumstances improved. There is a file to look up all the information from the past to try to locate family members and a notice board to write any comment you might have. One person wrote a tearful thank you to the nuns and to her grandmother who had reclaimed her father who had lived there for several years in the 1940’s. Not only is the museum beautifully done, the building interior is a real treat.
Our time in Firenze was short, but even a bit of time is transforming for me. I love the smell of old concrete and stone and the intimacy of the narrow streets. Walking around the duomo and catching glimpses of the dome down an alley never gets old. I can always spend time in my favorite art supply store, Zecchi, right down from Michelangelo’s workshop, now a restoration and replica studio or visit a new favorite… Enoteca Bellini on Via Della Spada across from the Marino Marini Museum (another of my favorites). Camilla Bellini was in our youth group!... and now she’s the smiling proprietor of this great place for an aperitivo and a snack.