La Dolce Vita in the capital of the Renaissance

The multi-coloured facade of the Duomo
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We have been in Italy for about ten days now and everyday has been a sunny day with blue skies. Apart from a few passing showers in Venice, nothing but sunshine. No wonder Italians leave their windows open and chat with their neighbors across the road. No door bells here, just scream out “Ciao”.

We took a train down from Venice and have been in our comfy hotel in the center of Florence for the past three days. We love it. It certainly is not the prettiest city, it does not really have grand architecture and it is not the cleanest city either but something about Florence makes it alive and vibrant and cosmopolitan. It feels like a condensed version of Paris or London. The streets are full of people dressed in their spiffy suits, buzzing around on their scooters. Bustling street markets, all kinds of designer stores, gelato shops that take ice cream to an art form and friendly, cheerful people all combine to make a fantastic city.

Ponto Vecchio, the only surviving bridge from before WW2
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Though it lacks grand architecture, Florence more than makes up for it with what is inside the museums. As we had smartly pre-booked all our tickets, we glided past the mind numbing queues stewing in the heat. We kicked things off with the magnificent David by Michelangelo. In the same museum they had a section with musical instruments and they have one of the first pianos ever made. It is another one of the numerous Florentine inventions during The Renaissance. It was fascinating to see how the harp evolved into the modern piano.

The big Duomo at the center of it all
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We took in the famous bronze doors and the Duomo. The multicolor marble exterior of churches here is so cheerful compared to the stone churches in most other places. Florence has so much art, they have public squares in the middle of town filled with famous masterpieces. One of our favorites is the ‘Rape of the Sabine Women’ by Giambolona. This marvelous statue just sits in a public square in front of a museum.

The Uffizi Gallery was an education. With Rick Steve guiding us, it was the perfect way to understand Florence during the 1400s and how art evolved from painting serious looking Madonna’s in the middle ages to humanistic forms. There was no dearth of smart people in this city…. Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dante, Machiavelli, Donatello, Raphael, Galileo… to name just a few. Comparing this to the Impressionist Art at the Musee D’Orsay, shows how revolutionary all these artist types were, both during the Renaissance and later in Paris a couple of hundred years later.

Savouring the view from the top of the tower
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We chilled out sampling gelato after gelato. Robin was serenaded with ‘Ciao Bella’, and ‘Your waist is tiny, you need a small jacket’ everywhere we went. Man, these Italians are slick. Bargain hunting in the endless street markets was a lot of fun, though I am not sure they have any true bargains.

The heat did take a toll on us. After a well earned siesta we continued on our renaissance theme by going to the opera at a local English church with English narration. La Traviata in four acts. Now I know how the Italians learnt to be so dramatic when they talk. The opera was all melodrama but fun to watch. At times I thought some of the lights in the church were going to crack from the high notes. Walking back from to our hotel at midnight we were surprised at how alive the whole place was.

Oh yeah! it is leaning
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Today we took a little day trip to the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Climbing up the tilting tower was a little disconcerting. When Rob found out it had been built nine hundred years she was not so sure about going up. There is not a lot else going on in Pisa.

Florence is one of the few places where we wish we had another day. It would be nice to tour the Tuscan countryside and see a few Chianti making vineyards but there are only four more days left and we will be in Rome tomorrow.