Florence - Molto Gelato!

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April 15th 2007

Published: April 15th 2007

Easter weekend, a group of friends and I embarked on a rite of passage that all study abroad students must try before they return home: the roundabout trip. Step one of the roundabout trip occurs when a budget airline’s ridiculously cheap flights draw you to a city no one actually wants to go to. Case in point: fifty dollars round trip from Prague to Milan. Everyone must go through the motions of pretending to be excited about the cheap destination: “I mean… well… there’s a church there… right?” Step two of the roundabout trip occurs when the group comes to the sad realization that the city just does not have enough exciting places to warrant a full trip. Then, the scrambling begins: where can we get to quickly and cheaply from the nightmare destination? As we all looked over train schedules and maps of northern Italy, some of us chose Venice and some (including me) chose Florence. And the roundabout trip was born. My itinerary included flying into Milan on a Thursday night, leaving for Florence at 5:30 a.m. on Friday with a friend, returning to Milan on Easter Sunday, saying goodbye to my friend, spending Easter alone in Milan, meeting up with the Venice faction on Monday morning, and returning home on Tuesday.

Milan has a reputation for being dirty, urban, and overly concerned with high fashion. As such, we arrived with low expectations, and we were not pleasantly surprised, at least on our first leg of the trip. Driving into Milan on the shuttle bus from the Bergamo Airport, we encountered the outskirts of a city that did not look much different from New York or other big American metropolises - dirty pavement, neon signs, busy boulevards, tacky billboards. Where was the charm of Prague? The history of Rome? The cleanliness of Munich? The grandeur of Vienna? I later found out this was all there, but it just took a little more time to find it.

When we first arrived in Milan, we headed straight to the train station. While waiting in line, a really shady character came and stood next to us, inching like a cartoon villain (I picture a raccoon with a trench coat and a fedora) toward my friend’s giant bag. Since we are used to the pickpocket problem from our time in Prague, we kept our eyes glued to him, and he was forced to scurry away without the loot. The woman behind the glass selling us tickets looked up with a worried expression and said in a heavy Italian accent, “You must pay attention and watch out… it is dangerous near the train station.” Welcome to Milan!

All of us went to eat dinner at what turned out to be a Sardinian restaurant. Ironic, considering my newfound obsession with Sardinia and its people. A little free time and a random Wikipedia page can spark any obsession. Alberta, “inherently funny words,” Edith Piaf, Orthodox Christianity, and most recently Sardinia, the home of an archaic Romance language, weird ancient conical structures, throat singing, and a creepy state flag. Anyway, the food was pretty good, although it seemed to be like any other Italian food I have had. After the meal, we paid a 15% tip, as recommended by a website I checked before we went. The waiter, who was quiet and stoic the whole meal, went crazy and said, “For me?!” He actually shook my hand as we were leaving, as if I had given him a car or something. It all felt a little awkward, and we realized maybe that website had lied to us. Maybe it was written by the Guild of Italian Waiters…

That night, Megan and I didn’t get a hostel since our train to Florence was so early in the morning. While we originally intended to just wander the streets all night, we eventually ended up crashing on the floor of our friend’s hotel room, a stark gross room which had a bed, a mirrored wall, a sink, and a bidet. I wonder why it is cool to have the toilet down the hall, but the bidet directly next to the bed? We left at about four, passing the most stereotypical prostitute I have ever seen. Huge high boots, a tiny miniskirt, bad makeup, and an old, gross john. I later read in the guide book, “Although handily placed, some budget hotels in the Stazione Centrale area double quietly (or not so quietly) as brothels.”

Beautiful, artistic, Renaissance-filled Florence was a more than welcome change of pace. It is hard to think of two cities that could be more dissimilar than Florence and Milan. Milan is a Warhol painting: bright, commercialized, self-aware, modern. Florence is like the Renaissance art that fills its every gallery and postcard stand: charming, old-fashioned, reverent. The city is shockingly small for its great position in world history as the heart of the Renaissance. One would think that the hub of medieval trade and commerce and the home of Dante and Machiavelli would have developed into a major metropolis like former world power centers, such as London, Paris, or Rome. Thankfully, in spite of the legions of art-hungry tourists who clog every street and the global stores which dot the windy alleys, Florence has somehow managed to retain most of its Tuscan character without succumbing to the pulls of commercialism and modernization.

One of the first places we visited was unfortunately a part of the city which totally disproves my idea that Florence has fared better than other cities in fighting off the pull of modern globalization: the Ponte Vecchio. The Ponte Vecchio is a medieval bridge which spans the rather small and surprisingly green waters of the Arno River. The bridge is almost fully covered from end to end with shops clinging precariously to the edges. Jewelry stores fill most of the spaces, and crowds of tourists fill every available space, like the hordes that conquer Prague’s Charles Bridge every day from dawn till dusk.

Our time in Florence was basically split between beautiful monuments and churches of the Renaissance and food. As such, our first lunch was an amazing chicken cacciatore with zucchini. Needless to say, it was delicious. It has been my experience that it is hard to find a bad meal in Italy, and I have only been disappointed a few times. After that, we went to a gelato place that was off the beaten path on a tiny side street behind Florence’s grand cathedral, the Duomo. There are tons of the usual flavors, such as chocolate, hazelnut, banana, vanilla, strawberry, berries. I opted for the strangest flavors I could find: rice (it tasted like rice pudding, so obviously ridiculously amazing) and coconut/hazelnut/almond (which also tasted as good as it sounds).

Full of gelato, we went to perhaps Florence’s most famous landmark, the Duomo. The cathedral of Florence is unlike any I have seen before, as its huge exterior is covered in mint green, rose, and white marble. Amazingly, despite what sounds like a gaudy spectacle ends up being beautiful and somehow subdued. The cathedral is the fifth largest church in Europe and was the largest when it was completed. It is topped with an enormous reddish brick dome that seems to serve as a compass for all of Florence - it towers over everything and can always lead you where you are going. The inside is actually surprisingly bland and underwhelming. As I am used to the ostentatious decorations of Baroque churches, the stark open space of the Duomo interior felt more like a barn than a church.

Since I can never get enough of churches, our next stop was the Santa Croce, the main Franciscan church in Florence. The church is most notable for its elaborate funerary monuments, which look in most cases like giant coffins being sat upon by marble allegorical figures and statues of the historic people buried within. I am in love with graves, and anyone who has traveled with me knows that I seek them out like a pig sniffing for truffles. Kierkegaard, Hans Christian Andersen, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, Schubert, Strauss. But this church was my Mecca: Galileo, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Rossini, Fermi, Marconi. The experience is overwhelming. Consider that, if the people buried in that room had not existed, there would be no statue of David, Sistine Chapel, radiotelegraph, “Barber of Seville,” “The Prince,” William Tell Overture, or nuclear reactors. Wow.

That night, the friends we were staying with cooked awesome homemade pizza with dough they bought from a bakery. I think we were more than a little shocked at how unbelievable the pizza turned out. And not to brag or anything, but my garlic-chopping skills are becoming impeccable. Watch out Rachel Ray. After dinner, they inexplicably threw a New Years’ Eve party in the middle of spring, complete with a countdown, champagne, and cake at midnight. My favorite part of the night was introducing the American and Italian students at the party to Becherovka, my favorite Czech liquor. I brought a bottle with me to the host, and it was gone in a flash. The ever-present spiced liqueur gets the same reaction no matter the audience: “Whoa! This tastes like Christmas!”

The next morning we went to the Uffizi Gallery, perhaps the world’s most respected art gallery after the Louvre and definitely one of the best collections of Renaissance paintings. Installed in what used to be offices for the Medici family, the gallery attracts massive numbers of tourists who stretch in a line around the building for hours. We managed to bypass the line totally since we borrowed Megan’s friends’ student cards. Since I have no experience trying to use a fake ID, I was super nervous, considering that the person on the card looked nothing like me! Amazingly, however, we made it through, having waited on line for literally less than three minutes. The collection includes works by Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Durer, and most of the other kings of the art world, as well as more generic Madonnas with Child than you can shake a stick at… although shaking a stick at Mary is probably sacrilegious. The two stars of the Gallery are the Botticelli classics “Primavera” and “The Birth of Venus.” The works are perhaps the most aesthetically-pleasing paintings I have ever seen, filled with frills, flowers, curvy women, and pastel colors.

After hours at the museum, we walked across town to the Accademia, home of the statue of David. We used the fake ID trick again to pass in front of hundreds of tourists. Made me feel dirty… but only just a little. When you walk into the giant room where the statue stand, the first thing you notice is the immense size of David. He is gigantic! The second thing you notice is that Michelangelo was so ridiculously talented that it is almost hard to comprehend. He does not forget one vein, one muscle, one gesture of the lip or ripple in the forearm. The insanity of being able to render such organic curves in the marble is only enhanced by the inclusion of Michelangelo’s unfinished “Slave” statues. These works are still blocks of unpolished marble, essentially huge chunks of rock. The before and after shots represented by these very different works are the final proof that Michelangelo truly may have been one of the greatest people to ever live.

The only weird part of the whole David experience is the way that he is objectified, as absurd as that sounds. I expected people to respect and revere the statue as a masterpiece of the art world. Instead, they treated him like a piece of meat. I literally heard women say, “Wow, his body is really good” or “What a butt!” And the problem only gets worse when you consider the commercialization of a certain part of David’s anatomy… the fig leaf region. It shows up on everything in Florence, from postcards to calendars to aprons to boxer shorts to journals to keychains. It all feels a little too disrespectful to me, like marketing a Pieta cleavage calendar or something.

Looking back on my trip in Florence, the rest of my time was spent almost exclusively eating delicious foods, from Baci McFlurries (yes, chunks of those delicious foil-covered Italian hazelnut truffles) to mango and mandarin orange gelato to pine nut cream pastries to cioccolata calda (Italian hot chocolate that is so thick you need to eat it with a spoon). Standing outside of the pastry shop, I had a typical Nick-moment. An old homeless man walked up to us all with a big smile on his face, speaking to us in rapid-fire Italian. All of a sudden, he reached out and started stroking my face, saying “Moustache e bella, moustache e bella... Euro per favore?” I don’t know if I have ever laughed harder in my life. While my hippy beard was flattered, needless to say, we didn’t give him any Euros.

Our final morning in Florence was Easter Sunday. I woke up to the sound of drums, which we later found out were being played by men in tights parading around the city carrying flags with lilies on them. We left before the main event, but supposedly it involved a donkey, fireworks, and a whole lot of running. I was really sad to leave Florence, a city which is up there with Copenhagen, Munich, and Budapest as my favorite place in the world. All the religious Easter pomp of Florence would change within a few hours as I returned to Milan. As we passed through the scruffy Tuscan landscape on the train, I couldn’t help but wonder what the second half of Easter 2007 had in store in the home of Duomo Number Two and Dolce and Gabbana…

Florence - Molto Gelato!

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