Tuesday/Wednesday, September 10/11
Florence

Tuesday: Woke up ready to take the bus DOWN the hill (mountain) to Florence.  Coffee not so good -- I miss my coffee.  Cappucino takes like coffee-flavored milk & espresso is too little of too much!  Sandy has started to get 2 expressos with hot water.  Don't even order American coffee -- that IS dishwater!  It's getting progressively worse as we move south!

But the view is getting better. I'm getting good at driving through the small winding roads to the little town of Fiesole.  We parked in a lot next to the Roman ruins of an amphitheater. A view of Florence is spread out in small glimpses as we descend rather quickly in the #7 bus.  It took about 20 minutes.  Off the bus, into the BUSY city of Florence.  It didn't take long not to like the city.  We bought a Firenze card at the nearest tourist place--turns out this was a GREAT investment.  It got us into most (not all) of the sights and gave us transportation on city buses which we used going back and forth to our hotel.  The first day we stumbled around a bit trying to find things (great map readers we THOUGHT we were!).  We went into the Academia first.  Ginny told me that turning the corner and seeing Michelangelo's David was an incredible experience, but I still wasn't prepared.  It really took my breath away!  Seeing that made battling the Florence crowds already well worth it.  SO BIG!  I never realized that the sculptors & painters made all the hands much bigger than the norm.  Sandy read it was so they looked proportionate from far away.  It's weird up close.  But, what a beautiful work of art.  Strong but rather feminine face (many of the faces in early art works seem to have what we consider feminine faces and poses), but strong, muscular body and determined expression.  We spent quite a while in awe.

Then off to the cathedral.  The line was long & we decided to go into the Baptistry instead -- incredible gold doors, but they were only replicas of the ones we later saw in the Duomo museum by Ghiberti (Gates of Paradise). Michelangelo's Pieta was also in the museum.  Wow!  To see that in person! Then we wandered off trying to find the Medici palace and bumped into the San Lorenzo church which was older than the cathedral and very plain on the outside -- not so on the inside though.  Lunch back at the cathedral (still long lines) and off to the Lorenzo Medici palace again, finally realizing it was right next to where we bought the Ferenzi card!  How frustrating!  We expected the palace to be very lavish.  It wasn't, except for a few rooms on the 2nd floor (where all the "living" rooms were).  The little Chapel of the Magi was exquisite and what we guessed were the "receiving room" and the "ballroom" were beautifully frescoed and statued.  We had the place practically to ourselves, not even a guard of any kind around.  The outside was very plain, more like a fortress in the city.  The bottom floor where visitors rode in, was surprisingly plain.  I'm sure this was one of many Medici palaces....but, still....?  Before getting to the Palace, we bumped into the San Lorenzo church and was struck by the plainness of it's architecture compared to everything else. The church was designed by Brunelleschi but was left unfinished by (of course) a Medici because of lack of funds.  The inside was gorgeous but the outside was quite ugly!

Back to Fiesole.  We picked up food to have back at the hotel so we could have our Prosecco and not have to drive those roads afterwards! Bad enough when sober!
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Wednesday:  Up, up, up out of bed and down, down, down the mountain on good old (now) #7 bus.  We are pros now!  We went straight to the Cathedral, waited in line for 15 minutes before it opened and went right in.  Actually, when I first saw the cathedral the day before, I thought it was rather ugly on the outside.  Somehow, looking at it at the end of a busy commercial street, it almost looked like a great big cardboard cut-out put up to stop traffic!  I know that's weird, but didn't seem real to me.  But Ginny said don't miss it, so we didn't.  Outside it is striped green and white marble, with pink accents.  I didn't expect that!  Nobody told me the cathedrals in Italy were zebra-striped!  Siena with black and white, Florence with green and white, and (later) Orvieto with dark green (almost black) and white.  The Siena one was striped inside too, but this one wasn't.  It really was magnificent and huger than huge!  The dome was gigantic.  When the cathedral was built, it was built with a big hole at the top, awaiting the technology to build a dome!  Brunelleschi knew how to do it (he studied the Roman dome of the Pantheon) and gradually, over 14 years, the largest dome since Rome's Pantheon was built.  The coolest part though was going underneath the cathedral to the crypt that had excavations from the Romans in the 6th century (and Brunelleschi's tomb).

Next was the Bargello Museum, full of Florentine Renaissance sculptures (I think we didn't get as much out of that as we should have) and off to the Uffizi which I remembered better.  Nearby, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, was a replica of Michaelangelo's David, which showed it off more in the setting it was made for, rather than in the constricts of a museum, which made the proportions more understandable.  Rick Steve said the "Uffizi is small and in a convenient U-shape so it is easily covered in 2 hours".  He neglected to say there were 2 floors of U-shape AND 6 flights of stairs to get to the top before you start.  The rewards were many once we got there.  Botticelli's Birth of Venus and Allegory of Spring were quite surprising to me.  His style was very different on these non-religious paintings -- the colors were very subdued.  There was a wonderful view of the Ponte Vecchio from the window.  This is a very old bridge (14th or 15th century) on which shops were built, originally a lot of butcher shops so their waste could be thrown in the river.  It was cleaned up by the Medici's (of course) and the shops became more elegant. Now (of course) it's tacky tourism but beautiful from afar.  There was a painting by a friend of Michelangelo's (I wish I remembered the name of the artist) that looked very different from others of the time -- almost impressionist in its colors and lack of line definition.

OK, A LOT of wonderful art, big hands, blond Jesus', small penises, strong bodies, and feminine faces.  It's really much more than I can digest in a day.  We limped back to the bus through this dirty and congested city and were very glad we were staying up on the mountain.