November 4, 2022 - Florence, Italy

I have found that the longer I’m on this trip, the longer it is taking me to recover from travel days.  Not sure why packing up, getting on a train, transferring to another train (a three hour journey altogether), finding my new accommodations, and settling in takes so much out of me.  But, I seem to get more exhausted doing that then when I climb 72 flights of stairs!  Learning to build in more rest time on travel days.

Anyway, I’m in Florence.  On the train ride here, we passed some mountains that were shrouded in clouds half hidden.  At first glance, the whiteness of the peaks coming down to the valley looked like snow, but then I saw the name of the train stop and realized that it wasn’t snow at all.

Beautiful white marble - some of the best marble in the world.  This is the marble that Michelangelo and all the great sculptors from the Renaissance used and it’s obvious that there is still a lot of it.

Arriving in Florence was like a dream.  It’s been a place that I’ve wanted to visit for a very long time.  At first, when you step off the train, it looks like you’ve arrived at the outskirts of a great city like Philadelphia or Chicago, but then you begin walking and you realize that this is no ordinary city.  

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.  There it is!  The Duomo, the building I’ve read about for decades - where centuries of political, historical, religious, and art intrigue took place.  It is right there in all its wonderful glory.

And even more pictures of it

The Baptistry

The Bell Tower

This is where the Renaissance really began in the late 1300’s/beginning 1400’s and lasted for approximately 200 years.  It was in this time period where politics and religion began to really intertwine in ways that they’d never done before.  And it was the rise of the Medici family who became kings, queens, and popes throughout all Europe!  But, it was also because of them and other business class members that gave rise to the works of Donatello, DaVinci, Michelangelo, etc…. Seriously, without their financial backing the world would never have gotten these great artists’ works.  During the Renaissance, the building that you see in these pictures looked quite a bit different.  It was a rather plain brick building with a beautiful facade covered in niches that had wonderful statuary in them.  It wasn’t until the 1800’s that the building got entirely covered in marble - pink, green, and white.  And the statues were removed and replaced with a more stately facade.  Thankfully, these statues were removed to a museum and kept.

Here are some additional photos of random things I came across in my Renaissance Walk today.  I went into the Palace and walked along the roads that many of the people from the Renaissance walked everyday.  I have about 100 other sculpture pictures, as I’m fascinated by the medium and ill probably take (at least) another 100 by the time I leave Florence.  I promise I’ll only share significant ones.

A few days ago I realized that I wasn’t having the same kind of encounters that I’d had in the beginning of this Sabbatical and I’ve contemplated why.  Were Italy and Greece so very different from the other countries I’d been too?  What changed?   

What I realized is that I’ve changed.  I’m much more confident in traveling alone, finding places, reading schedules in foreign languages, learning what I needed to know, understanding the nuisances of different cultures, etc…and therefore less likely to ask questions of others, which would then often lead to further dialogue.  I’d become somewhat of a lonely observer, without realizing it.  So, as of now, recognizing the problem for what it is, I’m working on how to remedy that.   One thing that helped today was to ask some questions about Italian itself.  Asking someone, “how do you say that in Italian?”  Since, I really don’t know the language this has helped, a lot.  For instance, I had a wonderful conversation with the owner, then also with the chef, at the place I had lunch.  I had the most amazing soup/stew called, pappa al pomodoro.  It is very similar to a dish I had in Spain and I got an opportunity to talk with Christopher, the chef, about it asking some questions about ingredients and how you say them in Italian.  It truly was outstanding.

Then at dinner, I had spaghetti with meat sauce at a restaurant my AirBnB host recommended.  I spoke with my waiter about having been recommended to come and the owner came up to speak with me.  I ordered Tagliatelle with their meat sauce and ordered a wine that was recommended based on what I told them I liked.  I’ll come back to the wine in a moment.  But, first, how do you take something as simple as Spaghetti (in my mind) and make it taste out of this world?!?!  I don’t understand.  It was truly amazing.  The gentleman sitting next to me also began talking about his own plate of food and was remarking on some other dishes coming out of the kitchen.  He is from New York, but comes to Florence on business every few months and has learned to speak, in his words, passable Italian.  We then spoke about the language, cultural and food differences.  OK….now, we’re back on track!

Now, the wine.  I’ve been disappointed in the wine so far.  I haven’t had a really good glass of wine since I got here.  It’s all been mediocre, at best.  For the first few days, I was thinking that Italians simply do everything better.  Everything I’ve seen - Italians just seem to do it better; architecture, pastries, ice cream, cars, coffee, art, food….  But so far, wine hasn’t been one of them, at least not yet for me.

Tomorrow I have a very full day visiting another couple of museums (there are five just around my block!), some churches, and I have a cooking class in the evening.