Finding Florence / Missing Sienna / Protecting our Pockets in Pisa

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There is a litany of lousy prose that starts “It was a dark and dreary night…” Well, this Saturday started out as a dark and dreary morning. The weather appeared to be catching up with that we had gotten a taste of in Sicily, and were fortunately spared in Rome and Pompeii. We were early to assembly, and again were on the first bus leaving for Florence, which as will be seen, was much better than the later busses which went to Pisa first. We arrived in Florence, and the weather seemed to favor us with cool weather and overcast skies. We walked through a number of streets, and were amazed how few people and little traffic there was, but then, this was Saturday. We went immediately to visit the Church of Santa Coroce and see the Piazza della Signoria that the church faces. This church has many graves: Galileo is buried here and honored by a fitting memorial, though he lived out the final years of his life under house arrest for his heretical views that the earth revolves around the sun. The verse in the Bible that refers to the Sun being stopped (in its revolution around the earth) to allow Joshua to conquer Jericho in a day was the gospel cited at his trial. Michelangelo is also buried here.
We also saw the replica of David and many other fine marble and bronze statues that were outside and along the perimeter of the square. We had an arranged visit to one of the stores facing the piazza and had time to hear about some fine leather products that were available, including the Grace Kelly purse that had several nice features. It evidently was the first purse to offer a change purse (and had two of them) and an easily reconfigurable strap that allowed the purse to transform into one with a shoulder strap (snap-snap). During our free time, John bought a leather wallet, okay, mine is getting a little ragged. And afterwards we walked about the square and found a gelato shop and had some ice cream (is this becoming the theme of this cruise-honeymoon?). We then walked down many narrow streets to the landmark that was the key purpose of our visit in this Tuscan city of Florence: Brunelleschi's masterpiece cathedral in pink, green and white marble, and its adjacent Bell Tower and Baptistry. It is one of the longest, biggest, largest cathedrals in the world… Saint Peter’s in the Vatican is the longest and could contain just under two soccer fields (it comes in at about 192 meters in length), while this cathedral in Florence is about one and one-half soccer fields and has the number 3 spot in the world. Both dwarf Notre Dame.
We then proceeded to the restaurant for lunch. This is the third Italian lunch in a row for Sharon, and she must have been hungry, because the first dish was rigatoni in a watery tomato sauce, and she managed to eat a good deal of this. There was no cheese, which John missed, and felt the dish would have been much better if it had been baked with some ricotta, or mozzarella (or preferable both). I guess, not knowing what the second course might be, Sharon thought it best to at least eat something. The second course must have been a pleasant surprise, being a couple of very nice pork loin slices. As always, the bread served with the meal was wonderful, and we had butter, and there was both red and white table wines for all, as well as bottled water. It’s been impossible to get Coke’s on these lunches, but Sharon was happy with the water (and John was happy with the red wine). And there was a repeat of tiramisu for dessert, different but still very good. John thought that the tiramisu from Venice had been the best tasting, but that portion was just a trifle compared to the ones we’d had for lunch these past two days. Maybe it was the ample use of rum used to flavor that one.

We made our way back to the bus. All this while we had feared all of the walking that this tour had promised, for example two and one-half miles, which we thought was what we were going to have to walk back to the bus. It was probably more likely two and one-half miles round trip. And it was the cobbled streets that had us worried, but these weren’t the rough cobble stones of Pompeii, where it was understandable how one could twist and ankle or break a leg (our guide in Pompeii said he’d broken his leg twice because of the cobble stones, and he’s a native, okay not exactly, he was from Sicily). These cobblestones were meticulously formed/chiseled, and were nearly flat on top, and it was almost like walking on tiled streets. So this walking, though long, was very easy and relaxed. And on all of this walking, John kept waiting to see the impressive piazza and brick tower he had remembered as a boy; alas, I was slow to realize that this image, the first picture I had ever taken with my Brownie flashlight camera, was actually not in Florence but Sienna, which we were not visiting. Back in the day, Sienna was the arch rival of Florence. Sienna was this big bustling industrial and powerful city, Florence this elitist center with many fine artisans/geniuses and home to such contemporaries as Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Raphael as well as Galileo. The statue of David was actually a warning to Sienna not to try and overreach, or they may suffer the same fate as Goliath. Our route took us back towards the port, but we branched off at the exit towards Pisa. And the rains began to fall, but not in earnest.
The leaning tower of Pisa really is the only reason to come to Pisa, it is a tourist trap in the worst sense of the word, and streets are lined with shops and stalls and featuring mostly trinkets or bric-a-brac that might best be suited for collecting dust on a coffee table in some long forgotten room in some rambling house. For fancy glass you go to Venice. For leather goods and jewelry Florence will do. For cameos, Sorrento is worth a visit. But in Pisa, hold on to your wallet. And there are pickpockets in Pisa (well, they are all over, but they are many ways to lose money in Pisa). We saw the mid-Eastern or Romanian ladies bundled appearing to have a baby in arms (these are pickpockets). There are many women squatting by church entrances begging, these are in fact gypsies, part of an organized gang to get your money. A lady from our tour asked about why the church didn’t do more to help these old ladies, and got quite a terse and sharp reply that the church does a lot to help those with true needs, but these people who are out in the open begging are gypsies. The contempt in our guide’s voice was clear, and more than once she warned that these people up ahead were pickpockets and would curse them in Italian to chase them on. The other type of pickpockets are the children (gypsy kids) that we didn’t see on this trip; though, John had seen them when he visited Rome in 1985. They will come at you in a gang making a racket and with a piece of cardboard that they’ll be waving in front or around you… all the while their hands are busy out of sight. There were also many street vendors pushing umbrellas, very appropriate considering the weather. In Rome these vendors would come up to us with silk scarves, sometimes blocking your way. These sellers were black and appeared to be recently arrived from Africa, and also seemed to be working as part of a coop by the way they addressed and carried on with each other. The thing about these vendors is that the Italians have a very unconventional way for you to lose your money when dealing with these illegal and unsanctioned vendors. In many cases these vendors are selling knockoffs (I was offered a Rolex for 75 euros) or the ever popular Gucci and Louis Vuitton bags. No doubt the concern of the local officials is that the city is not getting their cut of the taxes or fees legal vendors pay. So leave it to the Italians to make the law such that it is illegal to buy from such vendors, and those that do are subject to an 850 euro fine plus confiscation of the illegal merchandise. So you really don’t want to deal with these people, especially with the local police enforcing this statute using undercover cops.

Well, we walked past many retail outlets to get closer to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a free-standing bell tower. Our guide said that the tower previously leaned 14 degrees, but after recent renovations the tower now leans just 11 degrees. I checked with Wikipedia and discovered that the tower had previously leaned 5.5 degrees and now leans 3.99 degrees. It’s a problem we’ve encountered before when listening to some of the guides, that the numerical numbers given aren’t always the most reliable (particularly when dealing with the number of steps or distance). I mean, 4 degrees hardly sounds like something worth noting, but 14 degrees, you’d have to drive out of the way to see that. Well, I saw this in the 1960’s when it was 5.5 degrees, and again in 2010 at 3.99, and either way it is impressive. And as we saw in Venice, Pisa is not the only place with a leaning tower. The tower leans because the sub-soil isn’t firm enough to support large buildings. It was repaired by adding support to the one side, while removing soil from the other… not an easy thing to do without bringing the tower down. It is interesting that the original architect only completed the first three layers of the tower, and already realized there was a big problem which he didn’t know how to fix. When he died the local politicians had his body brought back to Pisa and buried him under the tower so he would be there to hold up the tower for eternity (I guess a sort of Purgatory for him). It was over a century before work resumed, and two more before it was finally completed, with the builders trying to make adjustment in the heights of supports to balance things out. It is an impressive engineering mistake and marvel all at the same time.

Sharon took John’s picture with his arms appearing to prop up the tower, and then John did the same for Sharon. This was done at a distance, so we weren’t actually touching the tower, nor had we walked on over the considerable distance to the tower. Nor did we feel compelled to climb up the tower, even had we the time. On the way back to the bus we were confronted with many umbrella salesmen, as the rain was coming down harder, and some were very persistent, and some didn’t want to have Sharon turn on them again and steered clear. We sought shelter for a bit beneath a canopy at a sidewalk café and had, what else, a scoop of ice cream. We made it back to the meeting place, for the final walk back to the bus, and we decided to share a Coke. Walking back to the bus in a drizzle there were more salesman to shoo away. I guess the final straw, was as we boarded the bus, when enterprising salesman felt obliged to offer us one last chance to buy an umbrella, just before we entered the shelter of the bus (and it wasn’t the rain we needed shelter from). As we left Pisa, and turned down a minor country lane, our guide called our attention to one final farewell look at the tower across an open green field. The bus slowed and stopped so we could take pictures, or so we thought, because in actuality, the bus had slowed and stalled. We sat there for some time, with no luck turning the engine over, oncoming traffic prevented those piling up behind us from going around. Our guide was making the call to get help, she needs to notify HAL if were late or broken down because the one big advantage of these HAL-booked tours is the ship won’t leave without us, and it’s something to take comfort in at times like this, because sometimes things go wrong at the last minute. Well, the engine did turn over and we got back on our way.

You’d think that on the way back from Pisa on what was turning into a dark and dreary night, there wouldn’t be any more sightseeing for us to do, and there may not have been, but there was one more bit of local flavor our guide wanted us to see. As we approached an intersection on the side road back to the port she pointed out a couple of figures with black umbrellas: a couple of provocatively dressed women, or as our guide corrected, she-males. Anyway, the black umbrella is the call sign, the nearby automobile the place of business. Sharon got an eyeful at the next intersection with three figures. The tallest one was relieving himself, quite in the open and facing our side of the bus, and was indeed a she-male. The guide said that the guys come here from Brazil, and the ladies from Romania, and business is good on a Saturday night. Now I have to take Sharon’s word for what she saw, because, my glasses in the state of disrepair that they’re in, only saw the blurry figures.

We survived our 3 consecutive 8+ hour days of touring: 8 hours in Sorrento/Pompeii, 12 hours in Rome and now 11 hours in Florence/Pisa. And back on board we had to dress up for our final formal night. Why they do this when we’ve had a full-day tour, I don’t know, but more than one couple planned to skip the formal dining and do the Lido. We however dressed up and were glad we did. Sharon ordered the surf and turf (to be distinguished from her Land and Sea on a previous formal night). This time the seafood part was lobster and John was happy to have that. John started with escargot and wondered if that warning look in Sharon’s eyes was telling saying that lips that touch snails will never touch hers. The escargot were served out of their shells and were buttery and garlicky and nicely crusted with parmesan. John’s second course was seafood chowder and his entre was rack of veal. Both meals were found to be delicious, and were followed by shared deserts of baked Alaska and chocolate torte. Sharon asked for no strawberry iced cream for the baked Alaska, but something must have been lost in the translation because she got mostly strawberry ice cream. We were pretty full anyway.

We were too late for the show, but did stop by the casino. Sharon continued to nickel and dime her way to another successful night at the penny-slots. John saw some exciting and action at the blackjack table but ended the day on a losing note as a couple of doubled-down hands went awry. We finished up with one last night at the piano bar trying to identify songs from the first few notes. If Sharon ever doubted that John is tone deaf, she must know it now.

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Photos

Church of Santa Coroce
Galileo's Grave