One of the hardest things on this trip is the fact that my suitcase is larger and heavier than everyone else’s. It’s not usually a problem until there’s steps involved. In this case, there were definitely steps involved.
We left the hotel the next morning, and I dragged my behemoth of a suitcase off the one step into the room, up the one step onto the courtyard proper, off the step on the other side, up one step into the hallway, and down two steps into the kitchen before I could rest easy. Thankfully, the area between the hotel and the train station was relatively flat, though the train station has serious steps. At least ten of them. As I was contemplating dragging myself to the opposite side of the steps to the supposed ramp on the other side, a kind man in our group offered to help me. He took my suitcase and dragged it up the staircase as I took his much smaller, much lighter suitcase. I was eternally grateful. And then there were the steps into the train towards Firenze, or what we call Florence. Not only was I to drag my suitcase up a steep, narrow flight, but I had to do it quickly. Oof. I managed to finagle it on somehow. I stored my suitcase and settled down on the train with a book until we got to Florence, whereupon I had to wrangle my suitcase, descend the same steps with the same problems of efficiency, and not lose the group. We walked the short way to the hotel and waited for our illustrious leader to arrange luggage storage for us. The bad news for me was that the elevator started only after the obligatory initial flight of stairs. Seriously?
We stored our luggage in two empty rooms and made our way out into Florence. We walked through the busy market (not giving anyone time to actually shop) to the piazza San Lorenzo where the church of San Lorenzo was. This Lorenzo person was a Medici who was in great power when the church was built. Apparently you can buy a sainthood. The façade of the church was interesting—there was no façade. Then we were let loose for lunch. My small group decided to go to the large marketplace-building off the market we walked through. The inside was noisy with smells and people mingling together into a great cacophony of Italian. We dashed up the steps and decided it was every man for himself for this meal. We walked from booth to booth, looking for some non-alcoholic, non-meaty meal. We found it after circling about three hundred degrees. It featured two charismatic and young Italian chefs tossing pasta and sauces and a quiet man in the back making the pasta. Yes, hand-made and authentic Italian pasta. I got the spaghetti pesto, and despite my reservations it was delicious. Oh I love real Tuscan food. We made our way back to San Lorenzo for the next leg of our Florentine adventure.
Okay, so in Italy Florence is called Firenze. There’s nothing about that name that leads me to Florence, personally, so I was really curious as to how we managed to Anglicize it with an entirely different vowel sound. After much thought and consideration I do believe Florence was called thus in English because of the coins they made, florens.
We made a line after our leader like the ducklings we all really are at heart. He took us back to our hotel to move into our rooms, though he took us a different way this time and it confused some. Some of us found a Laundromat that would prove useful later, so we marked its location in our minds. We found our luggage out of the rooms and into our rooms, finding out who our new roommates were and stuff. We didn’t have long to settle before lining up again outside the hotel and heading towards the great and glorious Duomo, passing the Santa Maria Novella and attached cloister on our way out.
We finally rounded the corner of the piazza and stopped to marvel at the amazing façade of the Duomo, a spectacle of white and green marble. In front of the ginormous church lay an octagonal baptistery with its famous relief-paneled doors. I was near the front of the group, so I had no trouble double-backing and making our way around to the opposite side of the baptistery, but when we turned around the group was gone. There were three of us students with the leader and his wife wondering where the other twenty or so group members had gone. Us younger people stayed put by the doors while the adults tried to find them. It’s a good thing we did stay put: the emissary from the group found us kids first. We told this messenger to bring the rest of the group to the side of the baptistery, and by the time our leader got back we were all gathered again. We oohed and ahhed over the magnificent relief sculptures in the panels of the doors one by one, finally rounding the corners to ogle at the other doors until we made it to the gates of paradise. They are called that because someone (I think it may have been Michelangelo) said they were good enough to be the real gates to heaven. They’re masterfully done, I’ll give him that.
Then we stood in line to enter the Duomo. Again we were under the scrutiny of dress code police. This time there were less problems. The inside is airy and open, the windows and altar beautifully done, and the inside of the massive dome houses a fresco of the last judgment. Last time I was in Florence, I climbed the dome and was able to walk right under that fresco, right under hell. I recommend the climb to anyone—the views are gorgeous. Sadly, it was time to leave the cathedral. There’s not much in there, really, and there’s only so far you can go as a tourist anymore. So I sat outside humming Dona Nobis Pacem with Mom. The good news was that we heard the bells in the large campanile (bell tower) outside the Duomo. That campanile is a spectacle in and of itself, and you can climb it just like the Duomo. Both cost money, however, so it is your call.
Then we walked down the broad streets of Florence where our leader pointed out the Bargello (once a greenery, then a church, now a museum), a highly-recommended gelateria, the Ufizzi (the old offices of the Medici, now a museum), and the world famous bridge with all of the silver- and goldsmiths. There’s a bust of some egotistical past ruler who said that as long as his face was seen, Florence would be safe. Seriously, he said that. They’re doing restoration work (like everywhere we’ve been so far) around it, so there’s plywood surrounding the bust, but the face can still be seen. We’re not taking chances, right?
We were dismissed after we got to the other side of the bridge. Us three musketeers (my two best friends on the trip and myself) wandered around taking pictures and finding cool things to comment on, including reminiscences of the Coca-Cola tour in Georgia and the goofy-looking satyr, I mean, faun in the fountain by the Ufizzi. We ate at the gelateria (which was hand-made and expensive, but so good) and found the adults in their restaurant before reconfiguring our group. There were fireworks that night, on account of it being Saint George’s day, so three people wanted to go and three people didn’t want to stay up late. I wanted to go—c’mon, they’re fireworks! The small parcel of us that wanted to go (two musketeers and one faculty) made our way over to the street by the Arno River and decided three hours was too long to stand in one spot. So we sat and talked until a more reasonable hour, when we sat on the concrete of the rail and talked until the fireworks actually started: 10:00 pm. The fireworks were good, but it was after eleven when we finally squeezed through the crowds and made it back to the hotel.
