Italy Day 3 - Florence

This morning we woke up early to head to the train station.  We headed out to the vaporetto and realized that our stop didn't open until 10am, which didn't jive with our 9:30 departure. So we headed to another vaporetto station! It wasn't that far. Anyways, we got to the train station an hour early and killed time before our ride. So when I said we woke up early, I meant it. My mom runs on stress just like I do, but my idea of STRESS is several magnitudes above hers, so she stresses out about "what if our 15 minute boat ride takes 45 minutes and our train leaves 30 minutes early" instead of "rebuild this entire robot by tomorrow". I accepted this years ago, but I would have liked a bit more sleep...

Anyways, the train was sweet. Highspeed rail peaking at 299kph (over 180 freedom speeds), shooting through mountains and superlatively comfortable. They did decide to enforce the covid rules about halfway through the ride (evidently covid is still contagious for two days until October starts), but that's more other-people-stress I've learned to accept. Two hours later, we were in Florence! And we are definitely no longer in a historical themepark anymore. There were trucks, taxis, and mopeds waiting to spook you as soon as you step off the curb.  After a 15 minute hike we arrived at our hotel (formerly a nunnery, and still owned by the church). We dropped off our bags which gave us a lot more freedom of movement.

We grabbed some sandwiches at a local shop (side note: local sandwiches are so good. $4 and 30 seconds gets you a hot sandwich with freshly cooked bread and great ingredients. If this were within walking distance of my house/shop it'd be half my diet) and headed down to the river to take in the views. The views were pretty good, but Ethan had heard they were better at the park on the edge of the city-center, just past the old city wall. So we headed out in a light drizzle. Fortunately, the drizzle quit after a few minutes, and left great weather behind it.  The city wall was massively impressive, and featured an enormous tower. (look up stats here: [Porta San Niccolò was built in 1324 and stands 115 feet tall. If you have more history LMK I'm super curious but can't find much online]). It was 4 massive stories, and had [160] stairs the whole way up! (Un?)fortunately, the doors were locked, and we couldn't climb the tower. So we climbed the massive hill behind it instead! It had decorative fountains and waterfalls as we climbed up the face, and ended with an incredible viewing platform up top. It was a very tiring climb, but it was worth it to see the whole city laid out in front of you.

We left through some decorative gardens with lots of hybrid statues (monkey-lizard, cat-fish), ponds, and weird plants. And it was all downhill, which was great!  So we made our way back down and through the city wall, and to the Ponte Vecchio (lit: old bridge), which just like the oldest bridge in Venice was covered with jewelry stores and knickknack buskers, and came with more great views. Italy excels at those.

But this was a lot of walking, and the rain had started again, so we grabbed some gelato and commandeered some chairs under the bridge, at a restaurant that was talking their midday break, where we could recover and regroup.  We decided we'd do either the Uffizi (art gallery) or the Museo Galileo, if the line at Uffizi was as long as we were warned it would be.  The line was not as long as the warnings, and in under 25 minute we were through the line, through security and bag check, and checking out 2000 year old sculptures.

Quick, name that animal!

The museum was a giant U, with the inside lined with sculptures from the Medici collection, and the outside filled with rooms of paintings from the masters. Personally, I loved the sculptures. Ranging from 200 BC to the 1700s, they were amazingly crafted works of art, most with fascinating stories behind them. Sculptures of famous historical figures were constantly pointed out as being definitely not them, or carved hundreds of years later based solely on coins from their reign. The sculptures were also modified constantly back in their day. You'd find a classical Greek torso, with a classical Greek head from another sculpture, reattached by a renaissance sculptor who also added the arms from scratch. It was so wildly different from modern archeology, where one would never modify an artifact, let alone chisel away the second figure for aesthetics sake or reshape a face to be someone else. Particular highlights included the Seahorse (A horses forebody, with fin-hooves, and a dugongs tail), a donkey-manatee (who surely inspired the catbird and monkey-lizard from earlier) and the room of Niobe. Niobe was the queen of a now-lost city in modern Turkey, who bragged to have more children than Leto, elder Olympian and consort of Zeus. Goddesses hate that sort of brag, so Leto sent her children (Artemis and Apollo) to teach Niobe some respect. So the entire room was this grieving terrified mother and like 20 kids all fleeing, warding off blows, dying, and dead. A few even had holes where brass arrows once pierced their sides. It was great.

The outside and lower level were all paintings. Botticelli, Leonardo, Rafael Michelangelo... so many masters. Too many masters. I would wander through and just read the notes on the most interesting painting in each room, making up the time I lost overanalyzing the statuary and catching up with the rest of my family. There was a lot of classic art, but my favorite was the room on light-sourcing, where artists demonstrated their mastery by lighting the entire scene, accurately, from just one or two points of light.

By this point is was near 6pm and we were exhausted. So we headed back across the bridge and back towards the hotel, looking for dinner. Several meh options were passed up, and slightly desperate we went for the first decent place we could find. It was amazing. Between the rest, the beer, the appetizers, the wine, the conversation, the sausage, meatballs, chicken, pasta, roasted potatoes. Possibly the best meal so far, which is saying a lot.  Then again, it may just be the further you walk the better food tastes, and today we're at 19k steps (8.5 miles, two of which we dragged suitcases)... We've upped the ante every day, so I think we've earned that reward.

Tomorrow is looking to be another hard day, hitting the second half of Florence (Duomo, crypts, some tower, etc), the train, and a reception dinner for Lisa's wedding. Wish us luck.

[The consistently yellow walls and muddy water meant is was already monochromatic.
Why fight it if it's worked for millennia?]