So, as usual, it's my last night in a place and rather than being sad, I can't wait to get to a new place. Florence is nice, but I kinda miss Rome. One thing I miss are the fountains, both the drinking kind and the visually pleasing variety. This particular fountain was at the Vatican, which I think is why it looks like three sarcophagi (I'm not sure I spelled this right) stacked on top of eachother. I saved plenty of euros by filling up my water bottle at these little beauties. Plus I felt totally safe in Rome, but here it's a little iffy. You know you're getting old when you're a bit scared of groups of teenagers just standing around. One fellow traveller described them as being like wild animals, which I felt was a pretty accurate description.
Yesterday I spent a few hours in Siena before the rain kicked me out of town. If I had to pick one word to describe Siena, it would be 'medieval'. Everything looks like it's straight out of the middle ages so much that you half expect someone to throw the contents of a chamber pot out of the windows above. Speaking of chamber pots, this little sign in a 'toilette' in Siena made me chuckle...the fact that it's self-sanitizing is pretty cool, but look how jazzed Mr. Stick Figure is that the seat automatically goes up. You can almost hear him saying ''yeeeah'' and then doing a little beat boxing while he moonwalks. Anyway, Siena was lovely and I wish that I could have stayed a bit longer to roam the streets, but I did get to have lunch on Il Campo which was quite nice (as it well should have been, for €28 for some grilled veggies, a pizza and a beer). My Italian is getting almost comprehensible now, I'm able to say ''un tavolo per uno, per favore'' (that's ''a table for one, please'') with the best of 'em, so that with my ''grazie'', ''mi scusi'', and ''per favore'', and my pointer finger (''piccolo per favore'', as I point to the gelato flavor that happens to strike my fancy at that moment), I'm managing to get by here.
Today was my one day to spend in Florence, and I spent it doing non-stop guided tours. The morning was a walking tour, where we learned all about the Medici family and how rich Florentines used architecture to show off their money. This is a picture of an alms door in the wall of a home formerly belonging to a wealthy family. It's a little door about the size of a mailbox that poor people could knock on and someone on the other side would pass food through. Apparently, that's where the phrase ''we ate at a little hole in the wall'' comes from, according to our guide. Though it sounds altruistic, it was actually a statement to the city that the family has so much money that they can just give food away. In the afternoon we did the Uffizi Gallery, which has two of my favorites, Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Botticelli's Primavera, plus tons of other works by Italian artists. We spent the evening in the Accademia gazing the beautiful David and he did not disappoint, even with his freakishly big hands and feet. It's been raining all day, so I'm spending the evening inside doing laundry and reading up on Cinque Terre, where I'm off to tomorrow after a quick stop in Pisa. Maybe I can brave the rain for just one more gelato....
1 comment:
Hi Rhiannon,
I'm glad you're enjoying yourself and that you survived the crazy Vestpa drivers in Florence. Your reflexes are probably a lot quicker than mine, but every time I crossed the street, I was afraid that someone would run into me. Hope you've had your fill of gelato, because you won't find better anywhere outside of Italy. As for pizza, I found Italian pizza very boring. You've done an amazing job on this blog-- I've loved the stories and the pictures. Maybe I'll see if I can do one when Norman and I go on our cruise to Italy and Greece in August. Keep having fun, and take care! Love, DD
Post a Comment