Moving Day - Florence to Venice

Really sad to leave Florence, it is an amazing place. We also had a great hotel that was right in the middle of the action, so it was easy to walk everywhere. But now on to Venice.

The first mistake I made is booking our ticket to the wrong station in Venice, instead of going to the main station, we got off early and had to get a cab into town. Ironically our hotel is only a ten minute walk from the station we should have gotten off at. Nothing a $25 cab ride couldn't fix. 

The next thing you need to know is that most of Venice is inaccessible by car, so you need to take a water taxi if you have a long way to go. You can get an all day pass for the water taxis for 20 euros, which is worth it if you have several places to go. If you don't have too far to go, walking might be a better idea as the taxis are slow and the lines are long.

To get started you should get on a water taxi bound for San Giorgio Maggiore, an island just east of Giudecca. The landing is right in front of the 16th-century Benedictine church that is beautiful inside and for 6 euros you can take an elevator up the bell tower for some amazing views of all of Venice. There is a very ritzy hotel right below the church which made me a little sad when I saw how the super rich live, but it's hard to stay sad, with such an amazing view.

If you can, take the water taxi through the Grand Canal, it's a great city tour for the price of a taxi ride. There are hundreds of beautiful buildings and you will not be disappointed. 

Day three in Florence

Florence is an amazing place, there is a lot of history, but new art, food and culture is flourishing. I would say this is the difference with Rome, which feels stuck in the past, a town content to coast on it's history. That's not to bash Rome, as it is a must see, I just feel a stark difference.  Rome is like New Orleans pre-Katrina, and Florence is post-Katrina, where new restaurants started to pop up, the movie scene taking off and even Preservation Hall has found a new life.

So back to reality, today was wash day, clothes washing that is.  When you are on the road in hotels, you need to find a good place to wash clothes or you will go bankrupt.  Most hotels charge $3 to wash your socks, so before you know it your looking at a $150 laundry bill.  If you do your homework, chances are you'll find a good laundromat where you can wash and dry clothes in an hour or so for around $10.  The only drawback is that when it's 100 degrees outside the laundromat will be hot, but usually they have free wi-fi, so the time passes quickly.

Once we had clean clothes, we headed over to the Mercato Centrale for a little lunch. This is an amazing building that was refurbished a few years ago and has stalls on the first floor and a food court on the second floor.  Really it's the Florence version of a mall, but instead of Hot Dog on a Stick and Orange Julius, they have great pizza and gelato. If you want to shop, you should know the market is closed on Sunday's, but there are plenty of other places in town selling cheap leather goods.

On the way to the mall, we saw some really cool old cars.

Later that afternoon I  did something I thought would be terrible, but turned out to be fun. We went to Florence Fish Kiss and had these little fish eat the dead skin off our feet. I have no idea why they want to do this for us, but these little fish love human feet. It is super ticklish at first, but after 15 minutes, your feet feel nice and smooth.

Before I left, I made a special trip to John Helmer and spent an hour picking out the perfect hat for the trip, then I lugged it over here, taking special care to make sure it didn't get squashed. Turns out I could have gotten the same hat for half the price and saved the travel hassle. There are hat stalls on every corner.

Tonight's restaurant recommendation comes with a warning, Italian's concept of time is quite different from American's. Most restaurants in Italy don't open before 7 pm, and many open at 8 pm.  If you get there at opening, you will be eating with tourists. You'll get a lot of attention at first, but right as you are getting to desert or are ready for the bill, the place will be rocking and you may be sitting for a while, as waiters rush by you taking care of the locals. That said, Cibrèo ristorante is excellent. We went to their cafe next door for a drink until the restaurant opened, then got ushered in for the first seating. There are no menus, one of the waiters will sit with you and take you through the food offerings.  We thought we were being smart by not ordering too much food, but then they brought out a complementary antipasto plate that by itself was an entire meal. Still, the food was amazing, although it is by far the most expensive meal we have had so far. I would say it was overall a great experience, except for the fact that we had to wait more than half an hour for the check, which is easily forgotten on the walk home, as you think about all the great food you just ate.

Day two in Florence

Today was an amazing foodie day. We woke up a little late and had to hustle over to our tour which included the food, wine and gelato of Florence. Our guide was excellent, he pointed out a lot of interesting architectural and cultural points of interest along the way to the foodie stops. 

We started out in small wine shop called Enoteca, on via Borgo la Croce, where the guide had us taste several different kinds of wine. I think this is the first time I had drank wine before noon since college. Meanwhile people were coming in to fill up their wine bottles from the large metal vats for 3 or 4 Euros a liter, an amazing deal for very drinkable wines. Everyone on the tour was surprised to hear we have the same concept in Oregon - love my growler - so far we have only filled our Hydroflasks with water, but we may soon switch to wine.

Next we went to the Sant’Ambrogio market, which is the smaller and less touristy food market in town. Here we learned the difference between several parmesans, prochutios and pecerenos.  We also went to a small restaurant in the market where they served several typical Italian lunch dishes that were all amazing.

After lunch we got to see how gelato is made, and all I can say is the guy we met, was working his but off mixing up fresh ingredients to create new gelatos every day. I have a new respect for the art form. Another tip I heard is don't eat gelato from a shop that has a big mound of gelato, it should be flat in the container, or it's old and recycled.

Here are some interesting things we learned today:

In Florence in the 1400's homosexuality was rampant, with as many as 2/3 of men in Florence engaging in homosexual relations. To curb this the government encouraged prostitution and respectable citizens like the Medici owned the city's bordellos. A special court known as the onesta (office of decency) moderated disputes between prostitutes and bordello owners. 

In the old days if you were a dishonest merchant, maybe you shorted people on their cloth measurement, you could be reported to the authorities who sat up on top of the market. They would come down with their measuring stick, and if yours was short, you would be de-pantsed and your but would be pounded up and down on a circle tile in the public market.

I love modern art, and it turns out there is some amazing modern art in Florence.  We spent the afternoon in the Novecento Museum which was empty, which is a little sad, but great for two people who are sick of crowds. It is a history of art in the 1900's in Florence, and is a response to the challenge laid down after the 1966 flood, that Florence was coasting on it's artistic history and needed to be more respectful of it's modern artists. The 1966 flood damaged a lot of the classic works in town and as they were being restored, artists started asking why no one was paying any attention the present.

And finally a restaurant recommendation: Il Santo Bevitore restaurante is just across the river and the food is amazing.  It opens at 7:30 pm and there was a long line. Thank goodness we had reservations, as it would have been a long wait for a table. The food portions are big, so sharing is in order.

Day one in Florence

Today was tour day in Florence.

We spent the morning touring the city, with the first stop at the Accademia to see the original David, in a city full of Davids. Things I learned about the David: It is a tribute to David who killed Goliath, and was previously depicted with David resting a foot on Goliath's head, so this one was quite a departure. Michelangelo was not the first sculptor to work on the David, two others started on it and abandoned it, because it was too hard to build it to the scale the commission demanded. The marble had been left for over thirty years when Michelangelo began work on it. It was originally built to be outside the Duomo, but was moved inside after 300 years. One of the arms was broken off and shattered; it was restored many years later, so for a while David was an amputee. Someone attacked the David with a hammer in 1991, because he was ordered to by a painting he saw in the Louvre. He was only able to damage some toes on one foot, so now there is a barrier.

The Duomo is an interesting building in that the technology to build a dome as large as the architect scoped was not available when he designed it, but since it would take almost 150 years to build, he figured it was someone else's problem. Brunelleschi is the man that solved that problem, unfortunately he burned his blue prints after he finished the dome, so people are still not sure to this day how he did it.  Make sure you go inside on your tour as you'll get an interesting lesson in telling time. The clock over the door tells you how long it is until sunset, which was more important to people back then than knowing it's 5 pm. The Duomo Baptistery was under restoration, so we were unable to see it.

After lunch we spent the afternoon in the Uffizi Gallery. It is organized chronologically, so you can see how each period influences the next and learn about the birth of Renaissance art. If you have a good guide they will point out the masterpieces of Raphael, da Vinci, and Boticelli’s ‘Primavera’ and ‘Birth of Venus,’ but hopefully you'll also get some interesting color commentary on the Medici and the amazing soap opera that is the family's history. One of my favorite pieces was a painting by Bronzino, 'Portrait of a Dwarf Morgante.' In response to Varchi's challenge that sculpture was nobler than painting. He painted both sides of the dwarf to prove painting could demonstrate the passage of time and many dimensions.

This is one of the few paintings in the Uffizi painted by a women. She was raped by a fellow apprentice painter when she was young and went on to paint a lot of pictures of women decapitating men. Seems like a model of restraint.

This is a wine hole. In the old days there was a small door here and you passed your wineskin or bota bag in along with some money and you got a full bag back.

Last note for the day. If you come here in July and it's 100 degrees every day, the power is going to go out at some point. Hopefully this doesn't happen while you are trying to sleep in a nice cool room. 

Moving Day - Rome to Florence

Today was moving day number one, as we left Rome and headed to Florence.

We are doing our travel by train for the next few moves, so I bought a Eurorail pass in advance and made train reservations on all the major trains. Just know if you go this route, you should get to the train station at least an hour early for your first trip as you need to go to the information office and get it stamped before you can get on the train. This will take 60 seconds, but inevitably you will get stuck behind a family that bought train tickets a year ago and have no receipt and is now being rebooked on a 10 city tour. It is also very hot in the train station which ups the stress level as you watch your departure time grow ever closer.

One of the great things about Eurorail is that the tickets are for first class, which makes the train a little more bearable, despite the marginal a/c. I think I am making this sound worse than it was, mainly because I thought I lost the tickets as the train was leaving the station and I had a minor melt down. Turns out they were still with me and after some breathing exercises I was back to normal.

The train to Florence was great, left on time and arrived early. The train station in Florence is nicer than the one in Rome, which we began to see was a trend. It was a happy accident, but I am very glad we went to Rome before Florence, it is a lot nicer, cleaner and more fashionable city.

Once we arrived, we took a cab to our hotel, the San Firenze Suites. It is right in the middle of all the action and the room is big with a great bathroom. It is an easy walk to all the attractions, but for the first walk we went across the river to  Piazzale Michelangelo. It is a bit of a hike up several flights of stairs in the heat, but the view is amazing, you can see all of Florence and there is a one of several copies of the famous David statue up there.

One thing I discovered along the way is that artists like to decorate traffic signs in Italy, if I can ever get my pictures to post (having some technical difficulties) I will add the ones I have found so far.

For dinner we went to the restaurante at Cucina Torcicoda; they have three places to eat there and the restaurant is the most high end. It came highly recommended and lived up to the billing. More expensive than the places we ate in Rome, but still very good.

The View of Florence

Day three in Rome

Another hot day in Rome, with temperatures in the high 90's.

We may have taken on a little too much today, but it was pretty amazing. The day began with a subway ride to the Colosseum, which was an adventure in itself. The subway in Rome is not as bad as Tokyo, but it is as crowded as London on a busy summer day. Clearly a lot of people use the subway to get to work, throw in a few hundred thousand extra tourists and you've got a mess.

Today was tour day. I booked a walking tour of Rome a few months ago, and I am glad we did. There is no way you can see everything without a guide. First off, the lines would kill you, they are hundreds of people deep at all the famous sites. Secondly, it's hard to get an appreciation of what you are seeing without a guide.

First stop the Colosseum, a truly amazing place. It is falling apart, but after many years, they are finally fixing it up. It is hard to believe that in the 1970's it was basically just a traffic roundabout. The pollution was so bad it was black, but they have the outside significantly refurbished now and the rehab continues. Things I learned today: the Colosseum has a level below the stage where all the animals were kept. It sounds like a terrible place as dead bodies were stored down there, sometimes for days.  Hunters, not gladiators, fought animals and they did not fare well, with 9 out of 10 dying on the stage. Gladiators only fought gladiators, and they fared a lot better, with only one in ten dying on any given day. They did not however, look like Russel Crowe, most were fat, and missing limbs and noses after many fights. The thumbs up did not mean a gladiator lived, quite the opposite, it meant drive the sword up through his head. If a gladiator was granted another day, he would get a salute-like wave.

After the Colosseum, we walked through town and saw several other significant sights, including the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps and the Pantheon. The guide gave us great color commentary at     each stop.  The most disturbing thing I learned on this part of the trip is that Mussolini did a hell of a lot of damage to the antiquities of Rome in the name of progress. Equally sad or at least strange to think about is the fact that the entire city is an archeological dig, and you could find something amazing underneath every road and house in Rome.

After lunch we went on the Vatican tour. I now know this is not something you want to do on a Wednesday, as this is when 70,000 plus people turn out for a public audience with the Pope and then they want to go on the tour too. Also, the Vatican does not have a lot of air conditioning and even if it did, that many people would overwhelm it. The one good thing is, because we had a guide, we were able to skip the line and join the masses right way. The Vatican is a must see, I just hope the day you go is a little less crowded and hot than today.  The Sistine chapel is smaller than I thought it would, be and it's funny watching the guards try to enforce silence and no picture taking. Turns out the Japanese own the copyright to Michelangelo's works on the ceilings. At the end the reward is St. Peter's Basilica, which is truly breathtaking and worth fighting the crowds to get to. The seems to be the one place they actually enforce the "cover your shoulders and knees" rule, which made me feel a little less like an idiot for wearing long pants all day.

After the Vatican, we learned a good lesson about taxis. Turns out the official white cabs are just as likely to try to rip you off as the unofficial cabs. I highly recommend you use Uber as much as possible.

Finally a restaurant recommendation: we had a very nice dinner at Il Fellini, and yes, it is decorated with lots of pictures of Fellini and his films. The food and wine list were very good, the prices were reasonable, but more than we had paid for our other meals. Also, be careful not to over order, the portions are bigger than advertised, one pasta dish would have been sufficient.

Day two in Rome

Today we managed the heat a lot better.

Day two was largely unplanned except for a dinner reservation. So, I looked up things to do in Rome and the Burghese Gallery came up as one of the top results on trip-advisor that we had not already planned to see tomorrow on our tour. The review said it was usually booked a month in advance, whoops, but I asked the hotel if they would call and see if we could get in and they got us a same day reservation. I began to suspect it wasn't as busy as the website suggested, but when we got there the sign did confirm they were booked all month, so thank you Giorgio for helping us out.

The Gallery is definitely worth your time. The park around the building is beautiful, and is a nice walk by itself. The building is also magnificent, not to mention the art collection. I highly recommend you pay the five Euros for the audio tour, it adds a lot of color and we would have been lost without it. One thing I will say is that the staff at the Gallery are quite rude, they don't have a lot of patience for tourists, but don't let that hold you back. Once you get in the collection is magnificent. There are twenty rooms on two floors and it'll take about two hours to see it all, but on a hot July day, you will be happy to be inside looking at an amazing art collection, that is as long as you like the classics. There is no modern art here, most pieces date from the 1600's and there are a few pieces that are over 2000 years old. There are paintings from Caravaggio and sculptures from Bernini, as well as other Italian masters. When you finish inside, don't forget to check out the sculpture garden.

I don't know if this is a Roman thing, but so far all the bars we have seen are small and part of a place you can eat. I get the impression you can't serve alcohol without serving food. The restaurant we went to for dinner did not open until 8 pm, so we stopped in a "bar" nearby that did not have bourbon or vodka. Once we decided on prosecco they brought out a full tray of food we had to convince them we did not want.

For dinner we took a flyer and tried a restaurant that was in a neighborhood outside the tourist area. L'Osteria di Monteverde is across the river and about a 20 minute cab or Uber ride from the center of the city, but it is well worth the trip. We went with the 37 Euro, seven course tasting menu and let the waiter choose the wine. We were not disappointed, the meal was amazing, but you better bring your appetite as it is quite filling. The smoked duck was the highlight, but we got outside our comfort zone with sweetbreads, octopus, and some sort of clam I had never tasted before. The deserts were amazing as was the reasonably priced and tasty wine.

We'll sleep well after all that, which is good with tomorrow being a long day of coliseum and Vatican tours.