Italian highlights: Florence: a live version of my art history book.

Of all the places we went to in Italy, Florence was the one that really excited me. I knew I wanted to see things like the Gates of Paradise and the duomo, but I never expected to see the Brancacci Chapel. I loved Rome, but for Rome I had planed a bit more and figured out what I wanted to see ahead of time. Florence was full of surprises for me.

One of the first things we saw that we had not expected was the Ponte Vecchio. The term means old bridge and I figured it was just that: a bridge. Wrong. It was a bridge, but it was lined with little shops selling jewelry, which, at night, were closed by old-fashioned wooden doors.



The Gates of Paradise was something I had studied in art history class in high school. They are a set of gold doors, by Ghilberti, on the baptistery in Florence. Michelangelo, when he saw them, gave them that name. However, the real doors have been dismantled and are in a museum behind the cathedral (which we didn’t bother going to because we realized that the gates are in pieces). Even so, the doors are really interesting to see because they factor so prominently in the Renaissance movement. The cathedral and bell tower were also interesting because of the colors used in their exteriors.

Also in Florence, we saw the David. I knew we were going to see it, but that didn’t stop me for being surprised by it as we rounded the corner and there, at the end of the corridor, it stood. It’s huge: 15 feet from head to toe (plus it stand on a platform about eight feet off the ground).

Our tour group decided to go to the Uffizi gallery also. Here, we saw more things I had studied in my classes: Madonnas by Giotto and Fra Anglico, some works by Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo, as well as the Botticelli room. An entire room dedicated to him. I saw Birth of Venus which has been one of my favorite paintings for a long time. Mom said she liked Springtime (Prentemps) more. The guide then took us downstairs to see some boring Caravaggio’s (honestly, the ones we found in Rome were 100 times better). She almost let us leave the room without mentioning Judith Slaying Holofernes (!!), but then she did, so it’s ok. I stayed at the museum for another hour and a half after the rest of the group left to go back to the hotel. Walking around, I found a bunch of Durer paintings and other really cool pieces. I wasn’t expecting to see Durer’s work there because I thought the stuff would be mostly Italian art.

On our free day in Florence, mom and I walked around quite a bit. Our tour guide had told us to check out a church called the Santa Maria del Carmine. I couldn’t find anything about it in the guidebook, but decided to search for it anyway. It wasn’t on the map, so we went to the area we thought it was in and I asked a garbage man (in Spanish) who told me where to go (in Italian). Our tour guide the previous day had told us that it was located two blocks from a palace. Well, we actually had to turn two blocks after the palace and then walk six more blocks before coming to a nondescript building with a bunch of cars parked right in front (practically on top of the building). It didn’t look at all suited for tourist visits. The inside of the church was nice, but not spectacular, although I really did like the perspective on the ceiling frescoes. When I approached the altar I could see half of it was roped off and dark. In the middle of the darkness, people were standing in the one tourist site I wanted to see: the Brancacci Chapel. I didn’t think we would be able to see it because you are supposed to make reservations (many of Italy’s sites function this way), but we were able to get tickets to enter because there weren’t many tourists there. It was incredible. The colors on the frescoes were absolutely amazing. I took a million pictures. I now love Masaccio.



The view from the main part of the church.



The chapel actually had a separate entrance.

After the chapel, mom and I had the best meal of the trip (at least up until this point). When we entered the restaurant, they looked nervous when we said that we did not have a reservation (we took this as a good sign). They found room for us in the back, under an alcove, next to a coat rack. We had grilled vegetables to start which included a warm tomato with cheese and bread crumbs. Then I ordered pear ravioli in a cream sauce with asparagus. I don’t like pears. I don’t really like cream sauces. However, what arrived to the table was absolutely amazing. The homemade ravioli were shaped like flowers almost. They were like little dumplings, filled with pear compote and then sealed with pieces of pasta which fell like flower petals from the cinched center. The cream and asparagus worked well with the pear flavor and the pasta was absolutely fresh. Mom ordered spinach and ricotta “lasagna.” It was finely chopped spinach with ricotta cheese inside tubes of fresh pasta. Like mine, the pasta melted in our mouths. It was unlike any lasagna we’d ever eaten before. We left the meal feeling completely satisfied.



Our hotel in Florence was located in an old convent, which could be seen in the entrance way and lobby (the rooms were complete crap).

Italian highlights: Pisa

Christmas day we had the most touristy stop on our trip: Pisa. Even with the holiday, it was still open. Tourists were still all over the tower, duomo, baptistery complex. Mom and I decided not to climb the tower. She was nauseous from just looking at it and I didn’t feel like leaving her on the ground while I ran up the thing.

Instead we checked out the duomo (cathedral), which was really cool. The outside was made of mostly recycled marble bits, meaning some parts had words carved into them and all the walls were actually different colors. Inside, the dome was extremely high and there were flights of stairs at the top where someone (not the public and certainly not my mother) could climb up to what I’m guessing is access to the roof or the top of the dome.





We snapped a couple of pictures, but didn’t stay that long before wandering back to the bus. It was starting to drizzle and there wasn’t much to do besides look at the tower, which is still leaning.

Italian highlights: Venice

I wasn’t really prepared for how awesome Venice was. We arrived at night time and took water taxis to our hotel. These were midsized boats (compared to the bus-sized vaporetti and much smaller gondolas and traghetti). I sat outside while mom and the rest of our group sat inside. I wanted to see Venice and take some pictures.



Our hotel was located on the Gran Canal, right across from the Santa Maria de la Salud church. It was also the nicest hotel we stayed at during the trip. Our room was large and had a huge flat screen TV which turned on as we entered the room. The bathroom was the most bizarre because the shower and mirror/sink formed an L-shape, meaning you could see yourself while you showered (one of the best weight-loss tools).



We had one full day in Venice. We visited the Doge’s palace, where we saw the former government rooms and the jail and bridge of sighs and we took a tour of Saint Mark’s Basilica. At the Doge’s palace, the ceilings were made of gold leaf and frescoes. One room had an enormous ceiling which was held up by chains above the room. Because Venice was built on small islands, the ground is not very sturdy. It was difficult for engineers to construct the Doge’s palace because they wanted to make it opulent, but it had to be structurally sound as well. St. Mark’s was really pretty inside. Built in the gold-rich Byzantine style, it’s numerous domes wer covered with gold mosaics. We also hopped another water taxi and went to Murano, an island famous for its glassmakers.



After separating from the group, mom and I walked across the gigantic Rialto Bridge and took a traghetto (gondola) across the Grand Canal. The ride didn’t even last 30 seconds, but it was fun. We got to ride a gondola and didn’t have to pay €70 (and mom didn’t get seasick!!). We then wound our way through the street markets and maze of bridges to get to the Jewish ghetto. The word ghetto actually originated in Venice. The island where the ghetto is located used to be a foundry (a factory producing metal castings) and in Italian, the word for a foundry is ghetto. There, we visited some baroque synagogues which was weird for me because I’m so used to Priego’s baroque churches. To see the artist style in a synagogue just seemed out of place and overly opulent for Judaism.

On our way to and from the ghetto we explored some store in Venice. We went to a food store and noticed that they had horsemeat for sale. The also sold pre-made Butonni ravioli, so I felt right at home (A&P in Old Tappan carries them) because I grew up eating them. We noticed that deserts and foods had changed a bit and many places carried green cookies with pistachios in them.



Christmas Eve we went to midnight mass at St. Mark’s. We sat in the first row, over to one side of the church (so we couldn’t actually see anything). People flocked the church and filled the aisles. We left early (a little before 1 a.m.) and stopped at the local church near our hotel, which was having a nice, much smaller service. At St. Mark’s we had booklets translating the service into English, German and French. Different readings were done in these languages as well as in Italian and Latin. At the parish church they sung Silent Night in Italian, which was much more powerful than the entire service at St. Mark’s.


The ceiling at St. Mark's.

Christmas morning we woke up and took another water taxi out of Venice. Again, I sat outside to take photographs.

Italian highlights: Padua

Our next quick stop was to visit Padua. We couldn’t really see the town because it was covered in a blanket of fog. We went to St. Anthony’s Basilica where we looked at his teeth and voice box, which are considered relics. They’re behind glass in a chapel at the rear of the church. We formed a line and filed by them (they were gross). We walked around the church, looking at frescoes, sculptures and mosaics.




This statue represents the notion that death is the great equalizer: no matter how much good a person does during his lifetime, he is still going to die.



St. Anthony's teeth were in this case.



Mom and I walked around the cloister a little and then went to try to walk around Padua, which proved impossible. It was just too foggy outside. Instead, we went and got cornmeal (polenta) cookies. Mine had chocolate chips and mom’s had almonds. We ate them later on the bus as we approached Venice.

Italian highlights: Verona

We spent a few hours in the fictional setting for Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare never set foot in Verona, but tourists flock there to see Juliet’s balcony, which is in a courtyard. To enter, you first pass through a covered archway where people have written messages of love all over the walls.



Verona, much like Lugano and Como, was a maze of narrow streets filled with stores and decorated for Christmas. We went to a market in a plaza where I got a belt. We also ate lunch and then tried to walk around a little, but we ran out of time. The city was built along a river and the bridges are really picturesque, as were the hills off in the distance.

Italian highlights: Milan

I was really excited to see the Duomo in Milan. It’s the largest gothic church in Italy. Some of the stained-glass windows inside were blown out during WWII, but the it’s easy to see the old ones which remain and how they are different from the new replacement windows. The Milan duomo was really large and the outside was full of sculptures all around the building.



Mom and I actually went to the Duomo twice: once at night with some other women from the tour and again in the morning with the entire group. At night, we also went to the shopping neighborhood and window-shopped a bit. The streets were narrow and decorated for Christmas. Because Milan is such the fashion capital of Italy, we walked by places like Roberto Cavalli’s press office, which was cool to see. We could peek inside and actually see the clothing hanging on racks.




While the women we were with were much more interested in clothing. This was one of mom and my favorite windows. This Santa Claus is a cake!

The next morning, we returned to the Duomo and then went to the first mall in Italy which is open to the air, but covered by a glass domed ceiling. As we passed through we saw mosaics on the ceiling representing the continents and other ones on the floor representing Milan and Italy. Our last stop in Milan was the Teatro alla Scala, the opera house. We got to go into some boxes and see what it would look like if we were there watching a show. We also visited the museum in the opera house, which contained paintings of famous opera singers and program booklets from shows which opened at the theater.



In Milan, mom and I had one of our best meals in Italy: green gnocchi. Huge green (from spinach) potato dumplings with tomato sauce, capers and olives were delivered to our table on a large parmesan cracker. We also had a salad and some local wine.



Throughout Milan I noticed signs with speech-bubbles that said "peace" in different languages. They were stuck to billboards and advertisements. The first one I noticed was in Hebrew. It was like a public art project or mass-tagging effort. Actually you can go to this website (which was on the sticker). It's for a project on advertising causes like human rights and water scarcity. http://good50x70.org/2008/

Italian highlights: Como

Our next stop was Lake Como and the town of the same name. Here, we found another Christmas market. This time mom and I bought dried cranberries (!!!!), melon, kiwi and ginger. We also got some turrone (almond candy) for mom.



For lunch we had our first pizza in Itally. It had eggplant and zucchini on top and the crust was really thin.



We walked the narrow streets of Como stopping in a book store where mom looked at a knitting book. Then we spent some time looking at the lake and the surrounding mountains.