Florencia of the Renaissance

I had never expected to fall in love with Florence. I was never the one to indulge in history though I do find story telling fascinating. Florence turned out to be the place I love the most in all of Italy. The renaissance architecture, the stories of the people in power, the stories behind the art, the marvellous sculptures, the Tuscan countryside and the wine and the music, it all came together to make me enjoy my time in Florence, called as Firenze in Italian.

We went on a walking tour as soon as we touched ground. This helped us get rapidly familiar with the places that we would be visiting over the next 2 days. The next day was so packed that we could not afford to go searching for the meeting points; there wouldn’t be time. This was a free walking tour and as such, the tour guide, even though a Florentino, spoke with a Spanish accent. As such, we had difficulty understanding and had to strain to comprehend him. So, even though we weren’t able to catch everything he said, we had a good understanding of where he was taking us and the best part was that he showed us where we could get the best local food like the Cannoli and cecineria. However, we ended up revisiting most of the places he took us to!

Cannoli

Day 2 started quite smoothly, we were able to easily find our way to 1^st starting point, the academia, thanks to the walking tour we took the previous day. The crowd was massive! On checking with 2-3 groups, we found our group! We realized, on hindsight, that despite booking for the tours in advance, we still got to wait for a while in the queue at the entrance. There were separate groups for the group tours and these moved faster but since there were a lot of group tours, we still had to wait for our turn! But it wasn’t so bad when we saw the other line for the individual tourists. Despite standing in the queue for a while, we still end up saving lots of time comparatively! Academia was mostly about David, although interesting, it was a short tour that got over within a little more than an hour.

Florence was called Florencia, Gallery was called Galleria, and Pizza place was called Pizzeria. That’s how things sort of worked here, I guess. This middle-of-the-day walking tour was so good that we ending up falling further under the Florence spell with this wonderful guide telling us all the stories of Florence. Florencia, former Florence, was named after Flora. We even saw a painting of her in the Uffizi gallery. I’m starting to love these walking tours. The guide was a very good story teller. She told us about the city, the Renaissance period, about Dante, so respected because he translated the Divine Comedy from Latin to Florentine language making to accessible to the locals. Earlier, all of the area was Latin speaking, most of the influential class spoke Latin. People were called barbarians not because their manners were unruly but because they did not know Latin. Latin was for the cultured and the elite. Dante changed that.  We got to know the Medici’s, saw their old palace. The guide gave us her take on how they came into power and eventually ruled Florence. How the bridge come about on the Arno River. The Medici king, Cosimo, was married to a Spanish lady who wasn’t well liked by Florentines because she did not seem at all interested in learning their language. She only spoke Spanish. She was a big fan of gardens and had a new palace built because the palace, when she turned queen, had not enough garden area. The palace houses the famous Boboli gardens. We saw the brilliance of Michelangelo, not only David but also his other masterpieces. How he weaved a story in every one of his works and how he liked to sculpt more than paint. Not that my untrained eyes could ever know that by myself! Who decided a painter was good or not, who made a great painter famous and another great painter not-so-famous? We learnt that it was Vasari who made those judgements. We saw the works of a painter who was superb but was not deemed great by Vasari so he was reduced to painting portraits of the Medici family. We were then introduced to the early life of Leonardo Da Vinci, how he was foretold to be a great artist by Filippo Brunelleschi, who designed the great dome on Florence's Cathedral. We saw in his early works, his passion to create a flying machine. He used incorporate those elements in is paints such as the wings of the angels were amazing like that of a bird with a great amount of detailing. After soaking up all this history, we went on a gourmet tour. This was our most relaxed time of the day. We had a small group of 6 (after being in groups of around 30, this was indeed small) and we ate and drank heartily. We ate Tuscan bread which was made without salt. This was how Florentines ate bread because at some point there was a feud with Pisa and Pisa stopped trading salt with them. We had another speciality called Ribollita which sort of meant reboiled bread. We continued to another place to have crostini and yet another place for cantuccini, which is almond biscuits dipped into the local desert wine. We went back replete with food, sweets and wine! We ended the day on a high note!

DAVID

The painting of Flora

Michealangelo's painting

Arno River Bridge

Next day was a day of travel; into the Tuscan we traversed. First things first, it was Pisa we stopped at!! We had our fill of taking pictures here. We then walked around in San Gimignano city. We did the mandatory, Tuscany wine tasting and lunched at a vineyard. We’ve not had to worry about being vegetarians yet! They served 3 courses and it was all delicious! Salad with cheese was the 1^st course, followed by pasta and finally a milk pudding!! All the pasta I’ve eaten so far has tomato in it. Veg pasta equals tomato pasta; veg pizza is tomato, cheese, sometimes eggplant and zucchini; veg salad is tomato, greens and cheese. What would happen to vegetarians without tomato in this country, I wonder! Our last stop was Siena which was once a competition to Florence to become the Tuscan capital. There still exists a rivalry of sorts. We had a walking tour in Siena and this was lovely as it was in the evening, the best time for a walking tour! We visited the square where they hold the famous Palio horse race. This race is held with much fanfare and is a part of Siena’s culture. We then saw the most beautiful church!! We ended the tour by visiting a local sweet shop to sample some of the stuff that our guide had recommended!

Leaning Tower of Pisa

San Gimignano

Siena Church