He Said:

So far we've found that in every city we've been in, we have at least one reason to go back . In Florence, we have many. We definitely "saw" Florence, but it is the first place I feel we left stones unturned. That being said, one could probably live in Florence for a lifetime and have places, things, or concepts yet to grasp. It is simply marinated in brilliance.

Any discussion of Florence has to begin with the Renaissance. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Europe plunged into the Dark Ages period of warring tribes and domination from an overbearing and corrupt Catholic church. People, especially the uneducated, were basically slaves. The Renaissance ended this and put the focus back on education, science, the arts, and most important, it empowered individuals to search for answers on their own. Enter humanism.

The central artistic achievement to symbolize this period is Michelangelo's statue of David. It says so many things on so many levels. To satisfy the church, it represents David's struggle against the Goliath, and symbolically, Michelangelo fits David with an oversized hand reminiscent to the hand of God. Politically, many think David stands for Florence's rise against the rival cities of Pisa and Siena. Most, though, see the philosophical statement and view David as a citizen of the Dark Ages standing and glaring at his oppressors - the warlords, the church, and the wealthy royal families - and in fact, the Galleria dell'Accademia has set up the exhibit so that visitors pass by Michelangelo's unfinished "Slaves" (depicting people emerging from their rocky bonds) just before one arrives at The David . This isn't accidental.

The Duomo and its immediate surroundings also represent a Renaissance in engineering and architecture. The walls of the Duomo cathedral were created with a massive hole over its center. Along came Brunelleschi to figure out a way to overlap bricks to create the now famous dome. Across the street at the Baptistry, a contest was held to create its doors. Ghiberti used mathematical formulas and geometric proofs to create a 10-panel door that form an illusion of receding distance. He got the job, and Michelangelo called these doors fit for the gates of heaven itself.

Around the corner from the Duomo is the church of Santa Croce. Besides its amazing façade and interior artwork, here's a summarized list of the people buried there: Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Dante, Rossini, and Galileo, who is probably the figure that best exemplifies the Renaissance to me.

Here's a guy that invented the telescope and used it to figure out that the Earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around . The church hated him for this, not only because they thought he was wrong, but probably more so because he encroached on the power they held over the uneducated. They suddenly had to deal with a person who individually discovered facts that went against what they had always preached - that everything revolves around the Earth. They loathed him so much that it was only until years and years after his death that they changed their minds and allowed him to be buried in the church with his great contemporaries.

It makes me hope for another Renaissance of sorts, especially in our current world of religious fanaticism. How can we prove to terrorist bombers that there aren't virgins waiting for them on the other side? How can we also prove to people that not all people who worship facing Mecca are terrorist bombers? And who is going to truly stand up to the TV preachers who say that September 11th happened because of homosexuality, abortions, and marijuana? This stuff is nonsense, and it helps to push us back into a darker age. Am I supposed to really believe that Mohammad Atta didn't agree with abortion clinics and pot smokers so he blew up the World Trade Center and himself to sleep eternally with virgins?

And oh yeah, there's one more person we learned about in Florence - Leonardo da Vinci. Imagine da Vinci and Michelangelo attending the same high school? The Uffizi museum had a great exhibit on many of da Vinci's artistic and scientific achievements . The man was simply brilliant. He realized that rivers converge in the same way that veins converge as blood returns to the heart. He created a wheel that constantly turns using the force of weights. He discovered anatomical proportions of the human body that were later used by both scientists and artists. And the list goes on.

So now that you're bombarded by all of this information, provided you haven't skipped and gone ahead to Alli's portion of the blog, you can experience Florence as we did - by immersing ourselves in the Renaissance and then stepping back to digest. On two consecutive days, we hit museums and then headed up to the hills to get great views of the city below. For some reason, with elevation comes contemplation:

What would Michelangelo think about millions of tourists visiting his sculptures? What would da Vinci say about businessmen riding motorized scooters to work? How would Botticelli view the artists in Piazza della Republica making images with spray paint? What would Dante say about the gypsy panhandlers and people writing at the internet café? And what would Machiavelli say about the young lovers throwing keys into the Arno River after chaining padlocks to the Ponte Vecchio bridge, where once the Florentine pastime used to be pissing into the water because they knew it eventually flowed through Pisa .

As I said, with immersion also comes digestion, and in Florence, that means gelato. Ice cream was invented in Florence, so you'd think its gelato is the best. Not so fast, my friends. For the best white chocolate gelato in the world, you need look no further than Oscar's. He owns a place on Bleecker Street called Cones. You should really try it if you haven't already. It makes you wonder why you always believed the best gelato is in Italy, and it might make you want to discover - on your own - that it isn't.

She said:

We arrived in Florence, via Pisa, at around 3 p.m. and walked to the first place on our list, Casa Rabatti. This is the home of a woman named Marcella, who rents out four rooms to travelers. We arrived to a lovely woman calling down the stairwell to us ("Buongiorno!") dressed in a floral housedress and a big smile (we've noticed many women in Italy over a certain age wear these brightly colored floral housedresses). She was as sweet as could be and showed us our choice of two different rooms with fans and the bathroom down the hall. She informed us it would be our own private bathroom until the family of five arrived in two days, and if no other people showed up without reservations, of course. We agreed to look at one more place down the street with advertised A/C and private baths, and we would come back if this was a better deal . Marcella smiled as if she knew we would be back and waved goodbye. She was right. The other place was much more expensive, and they turned the A/C off during the day anyway. When we came back, Marcella squeezed my cheeks and called us bambinos. I am pretty sure she didn't believe we were old enough to be married until she saw our rings and I told her how old we were! (Although she still called me piccolo, or small, the whole time we were here!).

As soon as we dropped our stuff off, we hit the town. We did our orientation walk of the new town and had a bite to eat. From there, we went to the first of the three main attractions in Florence, the Duomo and its cathedral. Since it was later in the day, we opted to skip the museum part of it (not terribly disappointed in that choice), and go straight to the top of the bell tower. Four hundred and fourteen stairs later, we were looking directly at the dome and the rest of the Florentine skyline . It was beautiful and the cloud cover created a nice break in the heat so we were able to cool off from the climb.

After we descended, we passed a gelato store called Very Good! Only a handful of you will get why we took a picture and bought gelato there, but true to their word, it was very good! For dinner, Chad had read about a self-service restaurant he wanted to try. It would be easy on the budget, and for some strange reason, he really digs the whole self-service thing. It was pretty good actually and pretty cheap, and Chad was already planning what he would get the following evening. When we got home, Marcella asked us about our day and made us a reservation for the Accademia museum the next day. Just short of her tucking us in, we said goodnight.

The next day, we woke up and received hugs and kisses from Marcella before we left. We invited her to breakfast, but she declined. We're not sure if she ever leaves the house actually. Anyway, after breakfast, we headed to the Galleria dell' Accademia. We noticed the huge line of people waiting to get in and wondered why everyone didn't just make a reservation. For the three extra Euros it costs to reserve an entrance time, you save about 2-3 hours waiting in line. We walked right in and purchased our audioguides. The Accademia isn't very big, and most people come to just see the David (like me the last time I was here), however, when you are with Chad Stamm, there is no such thing as only seeing one statue in a museum . We looked at every religious painting, explored the plaster room, analyzed and stared at the David, and I even got a brief history lesson.

From there, we found an internet place after about a week or so of being offline, so to speak. Consequently, we had three blogs to send (sorry about that) and tons of pictures to get off the camara, as we are quickly running out of space. After about two or three hours, we'd had enough (we tried to respond to as many emails as possible, keep emailing us!). We were glad it was overcast and rainy because it didn't feel like we were missing much.

We had one major museum left to see and needed to make a reservation for the following day, so we proceeded to the Uffizi. Now, I want to give you the scenario of buying tickets verbatim, because only then will you truly appreciate Chad's adorable, yet a bit psychotic, enthusiasm at touring museums.
Alli: "We would like to purchase tickets for the Uffizi tomorrow."
Employee: "What time would you like? I have 10, 10:30, 11..."
Chad: "Anything earlier?" (I glance at Chad, unnoticed).
Employee: "I have 8:15."
Chad: "We'll take it!" (as my mouth fell open and I was about to kill Chad, he realized he forgot to consult with me about touring a huge museum at 8 a.m., that he will surely want to go room-to-room and see each and every corner of the place!).
Alli: "I'm sorry, my husband is crazy, can you give us a later time?"
Employee: "Sorry, I printed the tickets already ."
Chad (smiling): "Just think, we'll be the first ones here!"

Since it was too late in the day for more touring, and too early for dinner or nighttime activities, we decided to take a short excursion to a town called Fiesole. We had heard about this place from a few people, and obviously Rick Steves talks about it as well. Fiesole is a small town, perched on a hill overlooking the Arno valley. It was actually there before Florence, and offers beautiful views, breezy lookout points, and great picnicking spots. It took about a half an hour on the local bus, and a twenty minute walk up a steep hill to get there. It was quite breezy and wonderfully peaceful. We enjoyed the view of Florence from above, and shared some snacks on a bench of our own. We stayed long enough to catch a partial sunset (it was a bit cloudy) and then headed back for, yes, a second night at the self-service Italian restaurant.

When the alarm clock went off at 7:15, I gave Chad one last I-can't-believe-you-made-an-8:15-reservation-to-the-Uffizi look . We went for cappuccinos and began our day. When we arrived, we weren't actually the first ones there, there was a huge line already formed of people without reservations. We seriously began to question the intelligence of our fellow travelers and wondered if any of them had looked at any guidebooks before leaving home. It really is in every book and advertised in the tourist information packets about reserving a time slot, and since we did, we walked right in. We armed ourselves with a handy audioguide and began.

Two and a half hours later, my boredom began to set in. Now, I don't mean to insult anyone here, but I think religious art gets boring and redundant. I get the difference in time periods, and the different styles of art in conjunction with it; however, all of these famous and talented artists are all essentially painting the same thing. Call me secular, call me ignorant re: history of religion, but I got bored. However, these are the things you do when you travel in cities with major works of art by famous artists. And I will say two things about it; I not only found enjoyment at the lack of major crowds that early, but also enjoyed Chad's excitement for all he was seeing and trying to pass it onto me. It wasn't totally wasted either, I really learned a few things (my poor memory of world history and art is really making me wonder how much of high school I was sober for!).

We took a break after the Uffizi, and then proceeded to Santa Croce church. Here, many famous artists, philosophers, astronomers, etc. are buried with elaborate tombs. From there, we walked up to Michelangelo's lookout point and once again enjoyed the breeze and a beautiful view of Florence. We went to a new place for dinner at Marcella's recommendation, had yet another Gelato (good thing we share them), and called it a night for our early train to Verona.