BACK TO ITALY PART 2: FLORENCE

Mary Ann: We wanted to spend several more days in Cinque Terre, but since another Italian holiday was coming up (Labor Day), we weren’t able to get a room there through the weekend. After calling around, we got a place to stay in Florence, and decided to head off in that direction. We found a lovely hotel called Hotel Bargellino with a wonderful large patio off our room. It had beautiful roses blooming, a covered gazebo and lounge furniture, and even a couple of canaries to sing us awake in the morning.

We spent most of our time there walking the streets and seeing what there was to see along the way. In other words, we didn’t set out to see the typical tourist sights and didn’t even tour any of the many museums there. However, because Florence is so filled with Renaissance architecture, art and history, even walking the streets was a fascinating and educational experience. Just during casual strolls, we were able to see the huge Duomo with the Gothic façade of white, pink and green Tuscan marble; Giotto’s 270-foot bell tower; the Baptistry with bronze doors designed by Ghiberti; Orsanmichele Church with the magnificent canopy; Palazzo Vecchio, once home to the famous Medicis; and Ponte Vecchio, a bridge lined with shops of gold and silversmiths. (Many of these names and places I only learned about while in Florence, surrounded by all these ancient and influential Renaissance works). It’s awesome to walk down the street and “run into” some 500 year old statue or church. One of the neatest sites I saw was a church called Badia, built in the tenth century and attached to a cloistered area where a community of religious still live. It is only open to the public 2 hours a week and it happened to be on the day we were wandering past its doors. I was amazed at the cloisters in particular, which have walls covered with very well-preserved murals depicting the lives of the early monks.

The other very fun thing we did while there (besides eating gelato), was shopping at the San Lorenzo market. This is an area of the city where the streets are lined with stall after stall of merchandise, especially leather coats and purses, scarves, shoes, and T-shirts. We got some great bargains there, and had a great time talking with some of the merchants. In amongst the stalls, along the street, are unlicensed folks selling sunglasses, cheap handbags and watches. One day while we were strolling through the market, a cry went up and about 40 of these illegal sellers took off running through the alleys with their wares flying every which way. It turns out the polizia were on their way and someone had put out the alert so everyone scattered quick before they could be arrested. Just another ordinary event in Italian life here..