17th September: Cortona to Pompei

Sadly our time in Tuscany has come to an end, and that means the entire holiday is getting close to the end! We’re pretty tired, I have to admit, and so it’s been good to have a week of some downtime in Tuscany. The hot baths have gone a long way towards reenergizing us. We have five nights in Sicily coming up and Pompei is about the halfway mark, so we have decided to spend two nights there, which gives us the whole day tomorrow to explore the ruins.

The drive there was close to five hours long and was pretty uneventful. Pompei itself was interesting to drive through – I’d describe it as rather run down, but I don’t mean to be insulting in any way. Like the whole of Italy, it is full of very, very old buildings, and so not everything will be well maintained. There were very few modern buildings at all, and so it all looked a little worn in. Our hotel was simple but clean, but with the smallest shower stall I have ever seen. You put your elbows up when washing your hair and you hit the sides of the stall, constantly. The best thing about the hotel though was that it was family run – very family run, and so it was very homely and welcoming.

It was pretty late by the time we made it to the hotel, and so after some showers and settling in, we headed out for dinner. The hotel recommended a restaurant, and when we got there, there were two parts to it; the restaurant itself, and a buffet section. We wrongly chose the restaurant part and in the middle of a terrible main course, looked over to see the buffet totally filled with locals. We should have guessed it was going to be an ordinary meal when the house red came out as a fizzy lambrusco.

Dinner over with – after the cook came and played piano for a while and then spent her time greeting and talking to friends – we headed off for a little walk. We came to the piazza where the Cathedral is, and discovered the whole of Pompei, out on a Saturday night, strutting their stuff. There were whole families, people of all ages, all dressed up and either walking around and around looking at each other, or sitting back on park benches watching everyone walking around. There were teenagers making out everywhere, on the edges of the fountain, on any spare benches, and up against every tree or building that had a dark nook.

We sat on a little wall for a while and watched the parade, and then headed off to grab a gelati for the walk home. It was quite an interesting end to the night, it was as if we had seen a side of the Italian social scene that we hadn’t seen before. I had read everywhere how the ruins at Pompei had lots of phallic symbols, and it was as if fertility and hooking up was still an important part of the culture here. All done under the watchful eye of Mama and Papa though of course!

~ There is no photo album for this one!

16th September: Cortona (Siena and hot baths)

Mark says: Today is our last whole day in Tuscany and we want to make the most of it. Of everything we have seen and done in Tuscany we enjoyed the hot baths the most. We decided to visit Siena for a while and then visit the nearby baths at Rapolano again.

Siena is a classical medieval town and rivaled Florence at its peak (1260 - 1348). The maze of alleys was interesting, old palaces on most, and pretty much all of them leading in the direction of either Piazza del Campo or the Duomo.

The Duomo of Siena was built from the 12^th to 14^th centuries and remains incomplete to this day. As with most Duomo’s the façade is resplendent with sculptures and ornately constructed columns. The inlaid marble floors within the Duomo were fantastic and included The Massacre of the Innocents, which we now seen on a number of occasions (I still have no idea what it is all about). The floors are usually covered all year except for September – how fortunate for us! The Duomo also contains sculptures by Michelangelo, a Baptismal Font by Donatello, and intricate pulpit panels and frescoes. A room to the left side of the Duomo contains the Piccolomini Library in which is displayed very large old hand painted books, it was really marvelous. There are also fine frescoes within the library depicting the life of Pope Pius II.

I tried to get to the top of the nave in the uncompleted section of the Duomo, however the wait was more than half an hour and we were hungry and wanting to go to the hot baths, so I gave this a miss. The views of Siena are meant to be spectacular though. (Michelle: The unfinished nave gives you a really good idea of how big they were hoping to make this Duomo. If it had been completed, I am pretty certain it would have been right up there with the biggest in Italy).

We had a look in the Baptistry on the way to Piazza del Campo but this proved to be quite disappointing compared to the Duomo and the Baptistry in Florence.

We made our way down to the Piazza del Campo, surely one of the nicest in Italy. It apparently occupies the site of an old Roman forum, and its nine segments of red brick paving (begun in 1327) was designed to reflect the authority of the city’s Council of Nine. The piazza slopes down towards the town hall, Palazzo Publico with its tower. The little Fonte Gaia on one edge of the piazza was originally installed in 1409 (it’s now a copy) and whose water is still supplied by a 500 year old aqueduct. The pigeons seemed to love it as well, there were as many pigeons as there were tourists!

We proceeded to buy a plate, have lunch at a restaurant highly rated on Trip Advisor and which turned out to be quite plain, and then went to the wonderfully relaxing hot baths at Rapolano for the rest of the afternoon.

Michelle: The plates, wow, I am so glad we have decided to replace our mismatched sets at home with mismatched sets from all over Europe! The plates at Siena though made for some hard decisions. There are 17 contrada in Siena, they are like localities or parishes. Loyalty to your contrada (where you were born) is quite fierce, which is shown in the twice-yearly ‘Palio’. The palio is a reenactment of ancient rivalries and is a bareback horserace around the Piazza del Campo. They take it very seriously, and the festivities last for days. Anyway, each contrade has its own animal symbol which is shown on flags, signs, and most importantly (for me at least) on hand drawn plates. These designs are under strict quality control, so there are no cheap reproductions for tourists – you have to buy the ridgey didge thing. There were plates with unicorns, hedgehogs, elephants –all sorts of animals! Of course, we (and I DO mean WE, not just me) wanted to buy them all. Alas, between the cost of hand painted plates, and baggage allowances, and the weight of the bloody things anyway, we had to decide on just one. So, while there are symbols for each contrade, there is also a symbol especially for Siena, which was a black goat, not unlike the goat in the Capricorn zodiac sign. We saw this symbol everywhere, including the borders of the marble floor in the Duomo, and so we decided to get a plate with that design.

That night we had some drinks with our co-inhabitants of Novole (Frank and Francois from Amsterdam). They were there for a week as well, just them and their two dogs. Nice guys too, and it was lovely to sit around and have a yak with some other people. Frank runs an art gallery and has decided to specialize in bowls. Maybe one day we will get to Amsterdam and take a look at some bowls!

~ Siena piccies here!

15th September: Cortona (Spoleto and Assisi)

Another big day trip today, to Spoleto…. and Assisi, land of the famed Saint Francis. Spoleto was founded by the Umbrians and the Lombards made it the capital of one of their three Italian dukedoms in the 7^th century. The main attractions though, are a 1^st century AD Roman arch and the 14^th century Ponte delle Torre. The Ponte delle Torre is an acqueduct which stands 80m (262ft) high – its easily spotted on the main road into town. We found a very convenient park, and wandered out to it, and then across it. The views of the surrounding woodlands were just lovely, and halfway across was an arch, so you could see back over the town itself. Bloody impressive things these acqueducts, and they make for nice landscapes as well.

It was our intent to visit the Duomo – built  in 1198 with a tower constructed from Roman remains. We wandered down a lovely wide plaza and it was incredibly quiet. We wondered where all the tours were, but saw no people walking before the herds with umbrellas and water bottles held high. In fact, there were probably only six people all up in the piazza. The facade of the Duomo was impressive with a lovely early 13^th century mosaic and ornate round windows. All around the piazza were buildings that had the remnants of frescoes, and the houses around had the now familiar window boxes with brightly coloured flowers. We checked everything out and wandered closer to the church, only to find a sign on the door saying it had closed for a three hour lunch, not fifteen minutes earlier!

Well, what can you do hey? So we went and had lunch instead! Spoleto is known for its abundant use of truffles in cooking, so we found a nice little restaurant which had a special ‘truffle’ menu and we tucked into that. Mark mentioned before that he can’t get enough of truffles – well, I am right there with him. I wonder if we can grow them in Brisbane and train Zander (our cat) to be a truffle pig? Anyway, we had truffle bread for starters, truffle pasta for mains, and there was no truffle dessert, but that was ok as we were pretty truffled out by then. It was truly delicious though, and the truffles have such a unique and earthy flavour.

We made our way back to the car, with totally full bellies and me a little giggly after two glasses of wine. The hill up to the car quickly stopped my giggles though! We found our way out of the narrow streets and back onto the highway, headed for Assisi. We had been told that Assisi was pretty, and I would have to agree that it is one of the prettiest towns we have seen so far. It is well set up to handle the amazingly large amount of tourists it gets every year and we found a very modern, and very large, car park station not far from the Basilica. We were quite some way from home, and so we decided to have a quick look at the streets on the way to the Basilica rather than wander the whole town. If we could do it again though, we would spend a night in Assisi as it really was lovely and quite quaint.

There were monks everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Assisi is one of the leading sites for Christian pilgrimage in Italy, and it shows. The Basilica is the burial place of Saint Francis, and his crypt is beneath the altar. The Basilica itself was lovely, full of gorgeous frescoes that were very colourful. Building began in 1228 just after St Francis’ death and over the next century, both upper and lower churches were decorated by the foremost artists of the day, including Cimabue, Pietro Lorenzetti and Giotti. This was another of the ‘no photos’ Duomo, and so you’ll just have to take my word about how fabulous it was. 

~ Check out the photos here....

14th September: Cortona (Monteriggioni, Volterra, San Gimignano)

Mark says: We decided overnight that we wanted to go back to the hot baths before we left Tuscany. So today turned into another driving day with a longer visit to San Gimignano. Heading west past Siena we drove to Monterigggioni, a garrison town completely encircled by high walls with 14 towers. The walls were built to guard Siena’s northern borders from invasion by Florentine armies. We drove around Monteriggioni to have a good look at the walls, but it wasn’t until later in the day when we were returning from San Gimignano that we got the best views of Monteriggioni and its walls.

We then passed through Colle di Val d’Elsa on the way to Volterra. This turned out to be lovely looking town with an upper and lower portion separated by a river (we would call it a creek). There were some impressive old city gates and lovely old residential living that we observed on the way through.

The drive to Volterra proved to be very charming as we drove along the top of a Tuscan ridge and were able to get views of fertile valleys on either side of the road. Not far from Volterra, we stopped at a roadside restaurant for lunch. We both had truffle inspired dishes and these were yet again fantastic. I just can’t get enough of the truffle based foods! We spent a bit too long lingering over the food in the restaurant so decided we would literally drive by Volterra and get to San Gimignano as quickly as possible.

San Gimignano was a gem of a town. We spotted the towers from a long way out so stopped in someone’s vineyard to take photos. San Gimignano is famous for its 13 towers built by noble families in the 12^th and 13^th centuries. 

Parking proved to be very easy and we were able to quickly wander in through the main entrance (arch) of the walls into the old town. The main street (ha!), Via San Giovanni, wound its way up hill and was typically lined with an assortment of tourist shops, including a number of torture museums.  Down every alley was a view of either distant hills or balconies covered with colorful flowers.

We arrived at the Piazza della Cisterna, the heart of the old town and home of the elaborate town well from which the piazza gets its name, along with bus loads of tour groups, all with their tour guide holding up their folded umbrella or water bottle for the followers to follow! This makes taking photos pretty difficult but we think we got a few good ones.

Around the corner was the Piazza del Duomo including the town hall, now a museum. The view of the towers was good from everywhere. We followed a tourist group up a small alley into a courtyard behind the museum that was full of wonderful old worn frescoes and large fragments of a broken bell.

We wandered further up the hill to the public gardens. These gardens look to be in the ruins of a castle or walled fort. The views of the Tuscan valleys were marvelous in every direction, as was the view looking from the top of the rampart to the towers of the town.

Michelle’s turn: The steps up to the rampart went on and on…. but yes, the views were amazing. It’s quite lovely looking out over a Tuscan valley. There was a guy playing classical guitar down in the park, and so that floated up to us as well, and just made the scene perfect. We went back down the stairs to a little ‘wine museum’ which sadly was all in Italian and so we couldn’t understand any of the videos or displays. We were hoping on a little wine tasting there, but it was a ‘buy by the bottle’ affair and so we decided not to.

We wandered back down into the Piazza della Cisterna, and it wasn’t as crowded this time, so we really did get some great photos! Back down the hill through the windy streets, and past a ceramic shop, so we bought another plate. The old guy serving us was as slow as a wet week, but hey, he loved his work (we think, it was hard to tell).

We were welcomed back to Novole at sunset, by the menagerie of animals. Viola had scored herself a large stick and was running off with it,but Pepito decided he wanted to play with it as well, so they had a bit of a tug-of-war thing happening.  It’s nice to be welcomed home by pets!

~ Photos are here!

13th September: Terme Antica Querciolaia

Hot springs day! Terme means hot springs, or something close to it, so we decided we needed to go and visit one today. Tuscany is famous for them (so we have been told) and it didn’t take too much looking before we found one. Many have been grabbed by big, fancy (ie expensive) hotels, but a book said to try and find one of the smaller local ones, and it would be a lot cheaper, and not timed.

We found a couple on the road to Siena, so we headed off in that direction. We decided we’d stop at the first one we found, and that looked to be a town called Rapolano. About 40 minutes later, we were on the Rapolano turn off. We followed signs, and then the signs disappeared, so we had a little tour of the town itself, before we found another sign, which led us a little out of town, but (eventually) straight to the terme.

We found a car park and then headed to what we thought was the entrance – but we’re still not sure what it was. It was just a building I guess – but on the way, we crossed a little stream that was obviously coming from the pools. It was that bright aqua colour, the colour of the sulphur filled water – and there were deposits all over the side of the ‘creek’. I got pretty excited about that, smell aside, I have heard that sulphur baths are fabulous.

We found the main entrance, and headed over to the cashier – who didn’t speak English. The most conversation we could understand between us all was ‘hot’ and ‘€12.00’. They had fabulous glossy brochures explaining all the different massage treatments, but none were in English, so we just went for the baths bit.

Change rooms over and done with, we walked into what could almost be described as a local swimming pool - although the smell was of rotten eggs rather than chlorine. There were deck chairs everywhere, umbrellas over them all, and four different shaped pools, most with little waterfall thingys. Each pool was a slightly different temperature, with big tubes that spewed out water at a great rate, so you could stand under them to get a massage from the water. The first pool we went to, was quite hot indeed, and it was a sunny day and the pools were open air, so we both ended up a little sunburnt by the end of the day. I can’t tell you the temperature of the pool we were in, but I can tell you that they ranged from 23 degrees (celcius) to 40 degrees. The first one we went to was long and rectangular, and had a ledge thing across about 1/8 of the pool. We later discovered that this sectioned off an even hotter area.

Getting into the pool was a little weird though – hot pool, hot day, direct sunlight – not anything we are used to at all. And the smell was a little iffy… The floor of the pool was covered in something not unlike talcum powder, although it was not sticky, nor did it dissolve, but I got a great kick out of sliding my feet through it. It was like a soft mud that moved all around my feet as I moved through it. I am pretty sure it was all the sulphur sitting on the bottom of the pool, but I can’t say for certain. There were lots of ‘bubbling-up-water’ bits and so I followed everyone else’s lead and sat myself down on one of the jets. This was jacuzzi heaven. Mark wandered over to the sectioned off bit and called me over once he realized how much hotter it was. It really was like being in a ginormous hot bath (with a lot of people around). This section had a big pipe raised up in the air dumping water, which we took turns standing under while it massaged our backs.

We hopped out of there and went and looked at the other pools. There was one that was oval shaped, with steps at either end of the short sections, and a walkway type thing on the long parts. People were just walking around in a clockwise direction, and then up the steps, and then back down into the water, and then continuing to walk around. We decided it was the ‘walk-around’ pool (ingenious hey)? So we joined the walk around, first down the steps and that was a nice warmish pool, much cooler than the one we had been in though, and was around hip-high. Up the steps at the other end and then down again, this time into quite cold water. Around and around we went, and it made my legs feel like the warm into freezing cold hammam baths at Cordoba. I was all tingly, and so obviously it’s good for the circulation. We went around about half a dozen times, and then moved onto another pool.

This next pool became my favourite, and I think I stayed in it for at least an hour, without really moving. It was hot, but not too hot, there was a shady bit which I hightailed it over to, and then found a big bubbly thing and just sat with my back up against it. It was FABULOUS. There was a guy in a very see-through pair of white boardies, doing something untoward to the fountain thingy, so we just avoided them (and him).  Mark went and laid on one of the deck chairs in the sun for a while, I just stayed on the Jacuzzi jet and looked out over the olive trees and the hills of Tuscany. This is the life, I reckon!

It was getting close to time for us to leave, but there were two pools indoors that we just had to test out before we left.  I think they were probably just the winter version of the outdoor pools – they were around the same temperature, but didn’t have any of the bubbly jets or fountainy waterfall things. But that was ok, we floated around in them for a little while so we could say we had been in every pool.

We went and washed off – you stay somewhat smelly once you hop out of the pools – and then hit the road back home, all mellow and stressfree. We had planned on cooking dinner for the night (because although there are restaurants in Cortona, neither one of us were keen to battle the driveway at Novole in the pitch dark of night) but decided to pull into a pizza place we kept passing on the way home.

The pizza was SO good, it made an excellent day that bit more excellent (excellenter?).  We ordered the very big ‘Quattro Stagioni’ which had ¼ olives, ¼ mushrooms, ¼ prosciutto, and ¼ artichoke. This was seriously the best pizza either one of us have ever had.  Thin crispy base, light tomato (sweet) sauce, and just the right amount of toppings. It was so good, we almost made it through the entire pizza (it was around a 40cm diameter) but kept one slice for lunch the next day.

~ There aren’t actually any photos for this day, but you'll find a photo of the pizza in tomorrow's album!

12th September: Cortona (Lake Trasimeno, Panicale, Orvieto, Todi)

After a lazy morning, (one where we actually figured out where to turn the hot water on, so it will be a good hot water shower tomorrow!), we headed off on one of our ‘planned’ day trips. There is a lake nearby, so we decided to visit that, and also some old towns that gave great views of Umbria. Yes, we crossed the regional line and left Tuscany for Umbria.

We drove into Castiglione del Lago to take a look at Lake Trasimeno. I said how big the lake was, and Mark made a true enough statement that if we had a lake that big in Australia, we probably would have just dammed it and by now emptied the lake.

Mark says: It’s a funny thing, it is a very pretty lake and the town which juts out onto a promontory also looks great, but I think we’ve been spoiled by the beauty of Lake Como as Lake Trasimeno really just doesn’t compare. So we drove on to Panicale which sits high on a hill to the south of the lake in order to get some better views and photos of it.

Our next stop was Orvieto which sits about 300 metres up a hill and has magnificent views of the surrounding countryside. Like of many of the towns throughout Umbria and Tuscany it is heavily fortified. Orvieto’s distinguishing feature is the more than 1200 tunnels or catacombs that the locals have dug underneath town since the time the Etruscans first settled (long before the Romans).   We only discovered this once we arrived in Orvieto so were not able to get on to a guided tour, which is the only way you can visit them. We walked around the town for a while and eventually found its Duomo. The travel guide says it is ‘among the greatest of Italy’s Romanesque-Gothic cathedrals’ due to its façade. So we took lots of photos but decided not to go in, we’ve seen many duomo’s on this tour!

Michelle says: On the way up to Orvieto, we stopped for lunch at ‘The Igloo: Happy Food Café’  which sounded like a good plan to me. We had yet another Panini (I am a little over paninis) and I ordered what I thought was an iced chocolate. Turns out ‘calda’ means hot, not cold at all. So I had a hot chocolate. This is a new obsession now, I needed to ‘drink’ my hot chocolate with a spoon! It was divine! Orvieto itself was a great walk through – the streets were like walking back in time – very medieval to say the least with old buildings and narrow windy streets.

Back to Mark: We headed east, this time to find Todi, another town on a hill looking down over the Tiber valley. Like Orvieto, this town is of Etruscan origin. We stopped at a Renaissance church, the Santa Maria della Consolazione, which was built in the 16^th century, to capture the views of the valley before finally heading home for the night.

Michelle says: Yep, I don’t have much more to add than that. I’m still fixated on the hot chocolate!

~ Photos are here!

11th September: Cortona

We did nothing. Well, practically nothing, all day! Mark played iPhone games and I read a book – a whole book! (Philippa Gregory ‘The Other Queen’).

It was so lovely to do nothing. Just relax, and have some down time!

Mark says: We met Lucio today, and among other things asked him about the scorpions. He said that they were harmless, and their bite was not painful or dangerous. Whilst a relief, I wasn’t going to test his hypothesis about their bite!

~ There are no photos, we really did do nothing at all!

10th September: Florence to Cortona (Novole)

(Mark is doing most of the blogging these days as I am being lazy!)

As with part of our time in Barcelona and Bellagio, I ended our stay in Florence with a visit to the Laundromat this morning, one must have clean clothes! The people in the little café next door couldn’t speak a word of English but understood my awful Italian well enough to produce a fine espresso coffee to get me through the washing!

Tip – how to get a good cheap coffee in Italy – (1) don’t sit, go stand at the bar, and (2) act like you know what you’re doing! After all, doesn’t everyone do this?

Washing done, we packed up and headed for Cortona, the nearest town to our Agriturismo accommodation at Convent di Novole. It’s about 10 km from Cortona and was once a convent (duh). Our ‘chapel’ accommodation was quite literally a very small old chapel, with a small loft built into to act as the bedroom, and kitchen off to the side. Novole quite literally feels like it is in the middle of nowhere – there’s no tv, very intermittent iPhone reception, and a long winding dirt road into it. Our small front‑wheel drive Peugot really struggled to get down the hill to Novole, I’m sure going up will be loads of fun.

Knowing we would be going off the map (literally, the sat nav has no idea where we are) we visited a supermercato (yes that’s the correct spelling!) in a little village called Camucia at the bottom of the hill that Cortona is on. Whilst this wasn’t the first supermercato we had been into, it was probably the biggest. Good fish, huge meat range (they cut it off the bone for you), and any type of alcohol you might want.  So salmon and red wine for dinner sounded pretty good to us!

We were welcomed at Novole by Giro, the son of Lucio the owner. It was all pretty easy and it turned out to be a simple evening. The only twist on the night was a small black scorpion which turned up in the bathroom. It sat there for a while and there disappeared, probably into the walls.

Michelle says: And we were greeted by two dogs and two pussycats – so we got to cuddle with some animals for the afternoon, which was pretty cool indeed. Pepito and Viola are the two dogs, seemingly Pepito is being trained to scrounge out truffles, and Viola is a big white boxer type dog with one of those butt ugly but loveable faces. Emelia the cat, a very sooky tortoiseshell, and Buddha, a grey cat who makes a LOT of noise also came to say hi. 

~ Photo album for our first day in the chapel is here!

9th September: Florence III

After the mammoth effort with the Uffizi yesterday we slept in a bit today before making ourselves yummy eggs on toast for breakfast, with no sight of burnt water.

Mark says: We decided to head for San Lorenzo’s church with an attached library designed by Michelangelo and the Medici baptistry. San Lorenzo was the Medici parish church, so had a lot of money poured into it, however it’s façade is incomplete making it look like a very run down little church. As it turns out we arrived at a bad time, whilst we had a look in the church, the other places there that we wanted to see were closed – we weren’t sure if that was because it was lunchtime or a Friday afternoon, the attendants were particularly unhelpful. We were pretty disappointed at missing out on these as they are meant to be great and we had consumed so much time in the process.

As we walked back to the river, we passed through a number of markets and I picked up two leather belts for €18. We headed towards Ponte Santa Trinita to take photos of Ponte Vecchio. On the way we passed yet another church with an appealing façade. We have no idea what it was called (maybe San Michel), however it turned out to be a delightful little church with many frescoes, side chapels and dome.

We eventually arrived at Capella Bracacci within the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine. This chapel contains very well preserved frescoes on The Life of St Peter by Masolino, Masaccio, and Filippino Lippi. Masolino started the frescoes in 1425 and Lippi completed them in 1480. These frescoes are not well known, however the quality of them is evident given Michelangelo and Leonardo both studied them. Suffice to say they were very intriguing and we have many good photos.

(Michelle says: This place was fabulous. The colours of the frescoes were breathtaking and we spent quite a bit of time getting up close and personal with them. You can walk right up to them and look closely at all the intricacies of the painting. St Peter has been painted in an orange robe in each scene (very Buddhist!) and little cards tell you the name of, and what’s happening, in each scene. There were some characters faces that stood out, and it was as if you were standing in the scene itself, and they had turned around to look at you. Most impressive indeed).

We continued our walk, this time to Palazzo Pitti in the hope of being able to get into the Boboli Gardens for some rest.  Our timing wasn’t right though so we skipped these in favour of Piazzale Michelangelo which offers magnificent panorama’s of the city. Set on a hill overlooking the city, it offers fantastic sunset viewing of the bridges and all of the amazing buildings spread throughout the city.

(Michelle says: We got up there a couple of hours before sunset and uhmmed and ahhed about whether to stick around or not. We sat around for a while under a copy of the ‘David’ statue and kept going back to take more photos of the bridges and city vista. As the sun slowly started to sink, the ever changing colours in the sky, and across the city, held us there. Then I got stung by a bee, at least we think it was a bee. So much for my “just ignore them and they’ll go away when they realize there is no pollen here” theory. Anyway, we stayed for sunset and saw some magnificent colours. There was a lot of artificial lighting around us though which through our little digital camera into a spin and so our photos just don’t show the amazing pinks and oranges that we got to see)!

We’d had another huge day in Florence and were exhausted so we took a taxi back to the hotel. When we arrived we decided to go straight across the road for dinner to what we thought was a restaurant. It turned out to be a little take away shop with roast chickens, chicken and sausage kebabs, plenty of grilled vegetables and quite reasonable red wine. This was the first roast chicken on our trip and it tasted fantastic! 

~ Our last day in Florence photos are here!

8th September: Florence – The Uffizi

Mark says: We had booked out Uffizi tickets months in advance and so getting into the Uffizi proved to be very easy and quick. After walking up 3 flights of stairs we entered a long hallway – busts and sculptures, and many paintings of the Medici’s and Popes lined each side, while frescoes adorned the ceiling. It was quite an amazing start to the Uffiizi. A number of doors in the hallway led off to a variety of different rooms that each housed their own pieces of art history. If you wanted to see 12^th Century art, or the start of the Renaissance, or Leonardo da Vinci’s work, you just had to locate the room it was in.

Tour guides rushed their groups past us, pausing for seconds to look at the highlight in each room before moving on. Thankfully we could take our time and look at every piece of art, and pause for long periods in front of those that we really enjoyed, including Botticelli’s “Primavera” and ”The Birth of Venus”.

We finally came to the end of the hall, thinking that this was near to the end of our Uffizi experience, but no, we turned right to find another short hall and then right again to find another very long hallway set out the same as the first. So off we went again and this time discovered “Venus, Satyr and Two Cupids” by Carracci and Leonardo’s “Annunciation”.

We took a quick lunch break in the Uffizi café before continuing downstairs. Again we thought this was near the end, this time we found a history of the Uffizi all laid out before us. Admittedly it was very interesting and we learnt a lot about the building, Vasari the architect and Cosimo the head of the ruling Medici family.

About 6 hours after we began our Uffizi journey we finished, however it was probably the most compelling 6 hours of our European tour so far.

Michelle says:  I’m buggered!

~ Check out the very small Uffizi album here!

7th September: Florence

OK, so fried eggs on toast can be a complicated thing! You really just have to adjust though – the tea was very nice! The bread is very heavy, (very, very heavy actually) and everything has a lot of sugar in it, the bread is sweet, the butter is sweet – but the eggs themselves were very yummy. And I didn’t burn the water!

We headed down to the bus stop and caught the little mini-bus into town. I didn’t think the bus would be able to pick up any more people than were already crammed onto it, but I think it’s a ‘if-the-doors-can-shut-it’s-ok” kind of thing. We jumped off just across from the Florence Cathedral. The Cathedral, Baptistry, and Campanile are all in a large plaza – and there were masses of people, everywhere. We joined the throngs of people with cameras pointed up, and took a heap of photos of the black and white buildings that make up the square.  We wandered over to the Loggia del Bigallo (1358) which is where abandoned children were once left and then sent to foster homes if they remained unclaimed.  We then joined the queues to get inside the Cathedral - Santa Maria Delle Fiore (Europe’s 4^th largest church). So, some history first. The Cathedrals’ dome was finished in 1463 and the frescoes inside it of the Last Judgment were painted by Vasari (who did the paintings in Palazzo Vecchio) around 1572. The Campanile is clad in white, green, and pink Tuscan marble and was completed in 1359. You could go up the top of the Campanile here as well, but I really didn’t like the thought of the 300-odd stairs.

After about a 40 minute wait, we walked in through the main doors of the Cathedral, which was the first one that seemed to enforce the ‘no bare shoulders’ rule. The first thing I paid attention to was the floor – it was filled with fantastic mosaics with some very well worn tiles. The Cathedral itself was somewhat plain. The inside of the dome was fabulous, I think I like Vasari paintings. The only other thing that was noteworthy was a 1465 painting by Michelino over on one wall. It’s called “Dante explaining divine comedy’,and it  shows the poet outside Florence against a backdrop of Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise. On the greater scheme of things though, it was a pretty small painting and it had a very plain frame – we were getting used to the huge, heavy, elaborate frames that most paintings had in other cathedrals and churches.

We left the cathedral and headed over to the Baptisty. The bronze eastern doors were commissioned in 1401 to mark the city’s deliverance from the plague and they were labeled by Michelangelo as the “gate of paradise”. They show various biblical scenes/scriptural subjects including; Adam & Eve, The Drunkeness of Noah, Joseph sold into slavery, and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. They are incredibly intricate and very beautiful, and attracted quite the crowd. Our travel book tells us that the doors are “often regarded as the first works of the renaissance”. The Baptista itself may date back to the 4^th century, which would make it one of Florence’s oldest buildings, and many famous Florentines (like Dante) had been baptized there. This was a spectacular building – if you go to Florence, pass on the inside of the Cathedral and marvel at the ceiling of the Baptistry instead. A small round room, with an incredible dome, filled with 13^th century mosaics telling the stories of the Last Judgment, with an enormous figure of Christ overlooking it all. It had a gold base, with all the mosaic pictures on top of that, so it gleamed and was totally captivating.

After getting sore necks from spending such a long time looking up, we decided it was time for a drink, and so we headed into Piazza Della Repubblica. This piazza is built on the site of the old Roman forum and has a huge triumphal arch that was added in the 1860s (not sure what it is celebrating though, sorry).  The piazza was alive with people and cafes, and there was a carousel on one side, and a guy playing beautiful classical guitar on the other. (We walked past the carousel on our way back from somewhere later on, and I had to giggle at the paintings in the centre of it – can’t say I’ve seen a carousel with half naked women paintings anywhere in Australia). We found a little café and had a (bad) slice of pizza and a cold drink each.  Mark got his daily espresso hit and so then we headed back out into the street with a little more energy.

We passed some artists doing chalk paintings on a street (the Mona Lisa and a Vermeer) and wandered into what has been a marketplace for hundreds of years. The goods were all a bit dodgy and nasty though, very tourist oriented, so we hightailed it out of there pretty quickly. We passed a big bronze statue of a boar, and like the church in… uhm... somewhere… the bronze was highly polished on parts due to people rubbing it as they passed. So the boars’ snout was very golden compared to the rest of him! We spent the next hour just wandering around the streets, looking at all the fabulous buildings – past the Palazzo Strozzi and all the wonderful designer stores.

Next up was Piazza Della Signoria. This square has been the heart of political and social life in Florence for centuries. Palazzo Vecchio is here (now the Town Hall) as well as some fabulous sculptures. It is the original place that Michelangelo’s ‘David’ stood (created as a symbol of triumph over tyranny) but it is now a copy that stands in its place. There is also Cellini’s ‘Perseus’, Giambologna’s ‘The Rape of the Sabine Women’ and a fabulous fountain ‘Fontana di Nettuno’ which commemorates Tuscan naval victories. We wandered around the statues admiring them all and then headed into the Palazzo. We had to wait a moment though as a bride and groom wandered out having just been married inside the Town Hall. I have a vague recollection of reading somewhere that people get married in the Town Hall first as that is the civil side of things, and then they go on to the church wedding (or vise versa).

Up the stairs and into the Town Hall, and we entered a lovely airy courtyard that had a copy of Verrocchio’s ‘Putto’ fountain in the centre. The original was inside a small room in the Palace, and so we got to see that about an hour later. The courtyard was surrounded by arches, inside of which was covered in frescoes.

Beyond the courtyard were the rooms of Palazzo Vecchio. The palace was finished in 1322, but was heavily remodeled by Vasari around 1540 on the orders of the Medici Duke Cosimo I. If you like frescoes, this is the place to be! The palace is two stories high and it has been designed to reflect heaven and earth (in some manner). It is full of small rooms, which have been ‘dedicated’ to a Medici family member on the bottom floor, with the room directly above it on the top floor, ‘dedicated’ to a celestial being. All of Vasari’s paintings symbolize the qualities of the person/being the room is dedicated to. There is meant to be a connection between the two floors, so the qualities of the God’s and the mythology on the top floor, is meant to reflect the best qualities of the Medici room below it – a true connection between the Gods of the heavens and the Gods of the earth. Some of the frescoes, particularly on the top floor, were just breathtaking. It has made me want to buy a book to read the stories of the Roman Gods – looking at paintings of Hercules fighting the serpents makes me just want to know the associated stories.

I have jumped ahead a little by explaining the concept of the two floors of the palace, but before we entered the ‘apartments’, we walked through the Salone dei Cinquecento, the ‘Town Hall’ part of the building. This was an enormous room, lined with huge paintings depicting Florentine victories, with a paneled ceiling with brilliantly rich and detailed oil painted frescoes. There were also lots of sculptures in the room, including Michelangelo’s ‘Victory’ (1525). It was very easy to imagine the citizens of Florence in this huge room, debating the most important issues of the day.

All in all, it took us a good couple of hours to wander around all the rooms here – each one more elaborate than the last. It was a fabulous building, one very much worth taking the time to explore. Like the Salone dei Cinquecento, it was very easy to imagine the Medici using, and living in, these rooms. There was even a little balcony on the top floor which looked out over Florence. I can imagine one of the Medici women standing out there listening to the sounds of Florence below, kind of wanting to get amongst it all, but then remembering that it was not good to mix with the smelly plebs!

Enough wandering for the day, and so we headed to a little restaurant around the corner and sat down to tagliatelle and lasagne, followed by the now familiar tiramisu and crème brulee. We obviously did well with wanting all the ‘local’ and ‘house specialty’ stuff, because the little old man who was our waiter (who I impressed no end with being able to say ‘how are you’ in Italian) decided that we should have the on-the-house limoncello again. Sheesh, there are some things that you just have to love, and being given that nod of approval for trying, via the limoncello, is always enjoyable.

Taxi back to the apartment time saw us head to the spot we got one from the day before. We came around the corner at the Ponte Vecchio to the most gorgeous sunset. Oranges and pinks that made everything look so romantic. We joined the other tourists taking a hundred photos – and it has made for one of the most memorable sunsets ever, I think!

~ Enormous photo album here

6th September: Pisa to Florence

Mark says: The next morning we headed off to Pisa after another disappointing breakfast, not even bread or toast to apply our Vegemite to.

The drive to Pisa was along a nice country road, we could tell when we arrived in Pisa though because all of sudden there was a traffic jam. We crawled along for a few hundred metres and found a car park. As it turned out Pisa is the leaning tower and the leaning tower is Pisa.

It is co-located with a cathedral and baptistry in a rectangular ‘green’ space enclosed by an old (roman?) wall, and more religious / museum facilities. All of the space around the buildings has been devoted to well manicured green grass, but you’re not really allowed to walk on it – just look at it instead. It was a lovely setting, the green grass helped highlight the white of the buildings.

However it’s the leaning tower that really does it for us tourists. Stylistically it’s a pretty innocuous tower compared to other monuments we have seen in Italy, even in Lucca the day before. If it weren’t for the lean, I’m sure we would not have even visited Pisa.

Anyway, like every other tourist there, we practiced holding the tower up and then pushing it over for our photos. We did this from a range of different perspectives whilst trying to find the best location to push the tower over.

It was good to get up really close to the tower to see the entire (paved) area around the tower leaning with it. It really drove home the weight of these objects, how fragile they can be, and how ‘precious’ they are to humans.

After wandering around photographing the area for a while and buying Michelle’s obligatory fridge magnet we took off for Florence. We had been looking forward to Florence from the moment we left Spain, so we were keen to get there and settle in. The drive took a little over an hour and fortunately the sat nav took us to our accommodation via an easy route, now that’s rare and appreciated!

Michelle says: The drive into Florence itself could be described as either exhilarating, or downright bloody scary. I lean towards the latter but kept trying to tell myself it was the former. Three lanes become one, without any warning at all, and every car has the right of way, all at once. And then half a dozen bikes weave their way through the whol e mess, just because they can. But, we made it to Florence, and we’re both very excited about that.

Our hotel is an apartment really, so that we can cook a little. So while Mark headed off downstairs to the laundry room, I put a saucepan of water on to make a cup of tea. I turned on my computer, started to write, did some facebook stuff, looked up this, looked up that, blah blah. Time passed… and I wondered what the peculiar smell was… this is the first thing I have cooked since we left in July and I burnt the water!!! I completely boiled the saucepan dry. How embarrassing!

An hour or so later, laundry done and cup of tea made while carefully watching the stove, we walked down the road and hit the supermarket for things to cook for breakfast. It’s kind of fun being in a supermarket in a foreign country – we’ve learnt that you put on plastic gloves to choose your fruit, and that you have to weigh and tag it yourself before taking it to the checkout. We’ve also learnt that supermarkets are a great way to pick up cheap red wine! Some bread, some eggs, butter (which tastes very strange here and is almost white in colour) and sugar – and we were all set for the morning.

We headed out into Florence for a little walk and the search for dinner (I was traumatized by the boiling water, so we decided we weren’t cooking that night)! We caught a bus into the city, again after much map pointing and smiling and nodding with a bus driver who spoke no English – and we jumped off just near Ponte Vecchio, on the side of the river opposite the Uffizi (so the really old side of Florence). We spent a little time gazing at the bridge and watching Florence pass by on the other side. Some strange guy with Tourrettes syndrome passed us by, and we decided that may be the sign to get moving again.

We wandered the streets of Oltrarno: narrow streets with small homes, quiet squares and shops selling antiques and artisan crafts. We came across a very cool little fountain, which obviously used to (and probably still does) supply the community with water. Our book tells us it was designed by Buontalenti in the 16^th century. We walked past lots of three story buildings that were all obviously very old – and because it was nighttime and still warm, people had their windows open and when you looked up, you could see fabulously painted ceilings inside the apartments. We walked past the Palazzo Pitti with its enormous forecourt, and did lots of window shopping, gawking at all the leather bags and shoes.

We wandered into the centre of some buildings and found a little restaurant for dinner – spag bol and veal cutlets were downed with gusto, as was some local red wine. We wandered across the Ponte Vecchio and admired the river from halfway across – all the stores were closed, and covered in little wooden shutters, it was quite different to the bustling Ponte Vechhio of a few hours earlier. We found a taxi rank and caught a cab back to the apartment, and crashed out – dreaming of getting the task of boiling water right in the morning.

~ Piccies here!

5th September: Lucca

We left Bologna and our lovely hotel behind and made the drive to Lucca. We checked in and then headed into the old city, behind its massive and still-intact city walls. Lucca is a former Roman colony founded in 180BC and the ramparts were built in the 16^th-17^th century. The walkway on top of the walls/ramparts (about 10-12 metres wide) had been turned into parklands, and you could stroll or ride a bike along, while looking down either side. We walked along the top for a way, and then headed into the old city proper.

We wandered around the 11^th century San Martino Duomo, but we had decided we weren’t going to go inside any of the duomos and churches of Lucca. We’d seen inside some very impressive ones, and we were on a time limit, so a walk around certain points of interest was on the cards for us instead. Lucca is the city of Puccini, and so everywhere we went, there were posters for concerts of his music. I must admit, it would have been lovely being inside one of these old churches listening to some classical music concerts.

We wandered through the Piazza Napoleone – his sister, Elisa Baciocchi, ruled Lucca from 1805-1815 and so this plaza has a big statue of her in it (with some lady, but it doesn’t say who her companion is). We made our way from there to San Michele in Foro, which is a church that stands on the site of the old Roman Forum in the city square. The front of the church has many twisted and carved columns, each one different to the rest, and it has a statue of the Archangel Michael on the top. ‘Its decoration is overwhelmingly pagan’ says our travel book, ‘except for the statue of Michael’.

We were starving, but it was that in-between time of 4pm(ish) and so we made our way to a little open bar, that just so happened to have snackies on the counter. A beer and a lemonade later, we had our fill of finger sandwiches, olives, and sausage thingys, so we moved on to Palazzo Pfanner. Herr Pfanner was the German guy who was elected (self-elected) beer maker for Lucca from the late 1600s, and this was his house. The entrance fee included a walk around the house, which was lined with (falling-apart) frescoes and furnished in period pieces. His son was a doctor, and very well regarded by the community, and so there were also lots of display cabinets with very early, and somewhat barbaric looking, surgical instruments. The garden was lovely though, and was lined with baroque statues of the Gods and Goddesses of Roman Mythology. We had come to see the garden really, the house was a mini-almost-bonus.

There was one more stop left on our walking tour of the old city – and that was the old roman amphitheatre, the Piazza del Anfiteatro. Slum housing clogged the piazza until 1830 when the ruler of the time ordered it to be cleared. It was then that the original shape was revealed. Many of the stones from the amphitheatre have been ransacked over the centuries, leaving only a handful of the original fragments in the buildings which surround it. They are all in a circular shape, and it’s a little bizarre standing in the centre of it all. Low archways at the piazza’s cardinal points mark where the beasts and gladiators would have entered the arena. These days, it’s all shops and restaurants, and so we had a cold drink and people watched for a little while, and then found a taxi back to the hotel.

We went looking for a restaurant recommended on Trip Advisor that was meant to be around the corner from our hotel, but when we found it, it turned out to be a dodgy looking place that the local teens were hanging around. We decided the restaurant at the hotel looked nice, so we went back there instead. This was probably one of the wisest food decisions we have made on our trip so far! The food was AMAZING. I know I have said ‘amazing food’ before, but this was really out of this world and not what we were expecting at all. Incredibly fresh seafood, done in imaginative ways – but the absolute best of the best were the desserts. Mark had chocolate soufflé – there are no words to describe it, so I won’t – look at the photos instead! I had crème brulee (see a pattern emerging in our eating habits?) but they didn’t just bring me one brulee, they brought me three different types! Again, see the photos!

So we have decided that we liked Lucca, particularly based on soufflés and brulees!

~ Lucca piccies here

4th September: Venice to Bologna

Mark says, “After two whirlwind nights in Venice, this morning we departed for Bologna. We again consumed a very poor breakfast before heading down to the docks near San Marco square to catch a water bus back to the airport and our car. It was another pleasant water-based trip, this time past the island of Murano, where they make the glass. While the water bus is much slower than a normal bus, it’s probably the simplest way to enter and exit Venice. We found the car as we had left it and headed to Bologna.

We arrived at our hotel (the Savoy Country House) on the outskirts of Bologna early in the afternoon. It was a very nice hotel, much better than Venice and half the price! After a short break we drove into Bologna hoping to locate a Laundromat we had found on-line. Of course this proved to be impossible due to a combination of one-way streets, road works and a dumb-ass sat nav – no it was not the driver! We gave up and decided instead to park somewhere and have a look around the main square.

So the sat nav says ‘drive 1.4km, then turn left, then turn right, etc’ when we are 2 blocks to the right from the square and its parking lot, unbelievable. So, we finally park and walk into the piazza (Michelle: We walked right into the middle of a music concert with a few questionably talented musicians playing on a huge stage in the centre of the plaza. It was a ‘festival for fitness’ to encourage the Bolognians to get out and be more active – no offence to my smoking friends, but it would have seemed to me to be more worthwhile to run the occasional ‘dangers of smoking’ campaign instead as it seems that almost everyone in Europe smokes. Bologna is a university town, so it was full of young Uni students who all seemed pretty fit and energetic to me – at least around the stage they did!)

As it was Sunday and most of Bologna was closed we headed back to the hotel to have dinner there. As it turned out, this was the best decision we made in Bologna. The meal was excellent despite there being no Spaghetti Bolognese on the menu”. (Michelle: we had tagliatelle with rabbit and golden truffles for an entrée and it was amazing). 

~ Bologna piccies in this album here!