We awoke early on day three of our Italian vacation. After breakfast in our hotel room, including a great cup of cappuccino brought to our room by Paolo, one of the hotel staff, we headed for our 8:30 appointment to see David. We had been warned about the lines at the Accademia, and buying our tickets online was a smart move that saved us about an hour of standing in line just to get in the building. The only downside was we had to take the appointment time the website gave us, which was only an hour and a half earlier than the requested time.
David is tremendous.
He is the focal point of the museum that houses many other great works of art equally as beautiful but often overlooked. Many people walk in, look at David, and then walk out missing works like the golden Coronation of the Virgin, by Jacopo di Cione, or the large selection of Florentine Gothic from the 13th and 14th Centuries.
I loved the 19th century Hall of plaster casts by Lorenzo Bartolini and wondered if they came alive at night.
Bronwyn’s response to David was what I think every man dreams a woman’s response would be when she sees his naked body.
“He’s huge! I didn’t realize he would be that big. I thought he would be normal sized, but he is HUGE.”
After seeing many fully naked or nearly naked people in many beautiful works of art, we left the Accademia and made a pit stop for a cappuccino.
I had been warned that restaurants in Florence can be over-priced, and we stopped at one near the Accademia that cost more for a cup of cappuccino and a snack then our dinner last night.
We sat at the table of the over-priced sidewalk café watching the tour groups walk by like herds of cattle. For the most part, they looked miserable and frustrated. I noticed with each group that walked by, the people in the front of the group looked the most stressed, and the people straggling along in the back of the group looked the happiest. Maybe that was the survival trick for tour groups, saunter towards the back of the group, and keep your own pace.
After spending $60 on our snack, we walked a few blocks to the Duomo, the 3rd largest church in the world. There was a line wrapped around the building for the tower. It’s a long climb, so we decided to tour the inside of the building instead of lining up to climb the tower.
I talked my Mom and Bronwyn into letting me buy all of us a taped guided tour, which they listened to for a total of five minutes.
I loved hearing the explanations of the building.
Mom and Bronwyn, not so much.
I stopped to light a prayer candle, after putting money in the collection box, for friends who have left this world.
Bronwyn commented that she could lie down on the ground and stare up at the dome all day. It was an architectural achievement to build a dome of that size.
The exterior of the Duomo had its share of drama (politics/corruption) and wasn’t finished until 1887 by Emilio De Fabris, who began work on the exterior in 1876. Keep in mind, the building of the Duomo began in 1296. Rome wasn’t built in a day, nor was the Florence Duomo.
A thunderstorm began while we were in the Duomo. The sound of the storm was fantastic as it echoed through the building. Tourist sat or stood quietly, or nearly quietly, and listened to the storm. I went down into the crypt to see the tomb of Brunelleschi. Excavations in the crypt from 1965 found the foundation of the original cathedral dedicated to Santa Reparata dating from the 5th century AD. The original church was smaller than the grand Duomo that sits on the site today.
Saint Reparata was a teenage girl (some say she was 12, some say 15) from Palestine who refused to make a sacrifice to the pagan gods in 250 AD. She was tortured and beheaded, and her body was placed in a small boat that ended up in Nice. I wondered if the people wandering around the church above me, listening to the storm, knew that the foundation of the church was dedicated to a brave young girl who died because she stood up for her faith.
My Mom found a place to sit along the wall of the cathedral to wait out the storm.
When the storm was nothing more than a few raindrops here and there, we left the vast cavernous interior of the Duomo and headed back to our hotel.
The dome of the cathedral, built by Filippo Brunelleschi from 1420-1436 is beautiful, but I still think the beauty of the exterior exceeds even that. Standing underneath the dome and looking up, it is hard to appreciate its size because of its great height.
At least 10 street venders tried to sell us umbrellas, but we walked on without buying one. The rain was soft and cool and wasn’t going to kill us.
After changing clothes and eating some yogurt in our room, Bronwyn and I left Mom in the hotel room to rest with Sister Domenica of Paradise and headed out for our next big adventure: the electric bike tour of Florence.
I booked the electric bicycle tour online weeks earlier. We walked to a prearranged meeting place, a corner pub in the Piazza della Signoria. A young man walked up to us and asked us if we were there for the tour and asked us to follow him.
We blindly followed him as he walked us through narrow streets. I was thinking that if he is not legitimate, and we have fallen prey to an attacker, and if he attacks us, what defense moves will I use. So, I am going through kick/punch/block scenarios in my mind while Bronwyn later tells me she was going through when should I start to run as fast as I can scenarios.
Good to know when traveling with someone.
Fight or flight.
I think fight, and my daughter thinks flight. Thank God she is a fast runner just in case she ever needs to use that instinct.
It ended up the fella was not an attacker, but a young and full of zest entrepreneur named Gabriele. He and his girlfriend Alessia had just started their electric bike tour company, and at their young twenty-something age were full of positive energy.
The bike tour was fantastic. I booked the tour through Trip Advisor.
The tour, which consisted of me, Bronwyn, and Alessia, lasted over 4 hours, and we saw many amazing sites including the historic buildings of Florence, the parks, residential areas, and Fiesole, a Tuscan town above Florence.
The bikes themselves were similar to regular mountain bikes with the exception of when I pedaled half a pedal the electric motor propelled my bike two blocks. That part was a little hard to get used to, especially when we had to weave in and out of crowded streets.
We rode on bike paths, cobblestone streets, and city roadways. We rode with Fiats inches to the right and left of us. We rode through rush hour traffic. We passed people out for a stroll with their babies, people walking their dogs, cyclists. I wasn’t afraid that I was going to be injured, but I was terrified I was going to end up running into one of the multitude of people out walking.
Bronwyn and I didn’t hit anyone during the entire time, thankfully.
Driving through the steep Tuscan hills was exhilarating. We stopped at an olive farm. There was a wedding taking place on the beautiful grounds. There was a gift shop near our stop, and we were lucky enough to meet one of the owners of the orchard, Thomaso. He explained the entire process of making olive oil to us and what makes olive oil extra virgin.
It all has to do with the acidity of the oil: the lower the acidity, the better the oil.
His olive oil was an award winner.
You know how some people put lovely glass bottles of olive oil out on their kitchen counter?
Don’t do that.
Any light will degrade the oil and raise the acidity.
Who knew?
It’s best to keep olive oil in the dark.
We rode back down into Florence and then up to Michelangelo’s Piazza and walked up over 400 steps to the most beautiful church we saw during our entire visit in Italy.
San Miniato al Monte sits at the highest point in Florence.
There was something so peaceful about the church when we entered it. The air seemed crisp and clean, and the lighting from the church windows threw tranquility around the sanctuary.
As we walked through the cathedral, Gregorian chants were being sung at the very back of the church in a smaller sanctuary.
It was so beautiful that I told myself we have to come back to this church before we leave Florence. The 1018 AD church was built from an earlier structure that was built in 783 AD and was dedicated to a heroic Armenian soldier named Miniato.
As the story goes, Miniato came to Florence around 250 AD and lived the life of a hermit in a cave. He was a Christian, and the Emperor Decius and his Roman soldiers didn’t like that he was a practicing Christian. So, the Emperor ordered his death.
Miniato would not die, though, no matter what was done to him. Finally, the frustrated soldiers chopped his head off.
And do you know what Miniato did?
He picked his head up, put it back on his shoulders, and walked to the cave he had been living in and later died.
His bones are in San Miniato al Monte. I didn’t see them, but they are there, somewhere.
After listening to the Gregorian chants in one of the most beautiful churches I have ever been in, we rode the bikes down the hill and back to the historic district.
We took a break at an outdoor bar and had Chianti and bruschetta while listening to and watching (now you’re not going to believe this one) 30 Hare Krishnas singing and dancing in the square in front of our table.
Why do they all have tambourines? Bronwyn asked me.
I don’t know, Bronwyn.
Why are they all dancing and singing?
I don’t know, Bronwyn.
What are they doing in Florence, Italy?
I don’t know, Bronwyn.
What I do know is that we experienced Florence on a grander scale by riding the electric bikes.
We got back to the hotel exhilarated from our experience.
Paolo took great care in finding us a restaurant to go to for our second night in Florence.
Trattoria Acquacotta (Via dei Pilastri, 51-red, 50121 Firenze, Italy +39 055 242907) was a few blocks from the hotel and another amazing dining experience. We ordered the goat cheese with honey for an appetizer and then had pasta dishes for our entre. For dessert, we just pointed to a word on the menu. We had no idea what it was, but it was creamy with puff pastry and excellent. The server brought us complimentary glasses of Limoncello. The bill was less than the cappuccino and snack break near the Accademia earlier in the day.
The hotel staff was two for two in making us dinner reservations.
Under Sister Domenica of Paradise’s (and Caesar’s) careful watch, we had no trouble sleeping the third night. We had a slower morning planned for day four with a 10:15 am appointment at The Uffizi, the most visited art museum in all of Italy, and we had to get back to San Miniato al Monte.
Ciao