Florence

Fewer pictures, but good meals...

I suppose I should write a few lines about our time in Firenza.

Two of the best meals we've had: Arrival night in Fiesole and tonight (Sunday) here in town.

Fiesole is a wonderful hilltop town. Nice views of Florence in the valley below and an excellent meal.

Tonight we tried one of the restaurants recommended by David, our tour guide. Fantastic little place off Piazza San Marco. We tried their appetizer (antipasto) of formaggio miste — four cheeses with honey and other sauces, one was plum and we didn't really try the other one.

I had penne al porcini (fantastic mushrooms) followed by pork ribs and a salad of mixed vegetables. Jen went with rigtoni o visuvio (pasta with tomatoes, mozzerella and basil) followed by a grilled chicken breast with potatoes, both of which were also exellent when sampled. BTW, should have gone with the house white instead of the red based on what we ordered, we think.

As for visits, I hit plenty of art museums finding the Ufizzi more fulilling than the Accademia. David's nice and all, but there really wasn't enough else to consume there. It didn't help that the 19th century sculpture room was closed, as were two of the four upstairs rooms.

But the Ufizzi, which I started with Saturday (walked right in around 9 by the way, no reservation necessary) was marvelous. Plenty of sculptues in the main hallways to consider and lots of rooms to wander into. Seeing Boticelli's Birth of Venus oddly enough reminded me of seeing Sunday in the Park with George in Chicago. Both dominate a wall and have many visitors standing near them, working their way around the room, looking at the great work from many angles.

Later on in another room I ran across a Sacre Familia. Can't remember the artist, but this was a striking interpretation of a fairly common subject (certainly trails the assumption of the virgin, which I'm sure is the most popular topic of all time, possibly rivaled by the pieta.)

While most of the old works especially are muted with only the gold leaf of the halos providing color, this one made use of bright reds and blues and was quite striking. It's possible that it's just newer by several centuries or has recently been restored, but that use of color, especially the white highlights, made that painting stand out.

Sunday, about half the group took the bus to Pisa. I figured I should see the famous tower. The baptistry and catherdral, which were built before the "divine mistake" are also quite impressive, if only because the former provides some interesting photo points of the tower and the latter has a very large Christ as the central figure of its ceiling.

We took the tour, took the funny pictures (I forgot to strike the very casual pose I was going to use for my study in perspective and went with the very basic "hand holding up the tower.) and wandered off for a bit of lunch. Along the shops I did notice some very striking cobalt stoneware, but once again resisted the temptation to buy any such thing.

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