9/19 Florence
This is the first day at Florence. We were both very happy that Yulin woke
up feeling much better. We decided that since she is not up to hiking in
Cinque Terre and that we can't find another hotel in Levanto anyway, we
may as well move on to Florence a day early. On the train from La Spezia
to Florence, we met this guy who pointed out the Apuane Mountains where
most of the Italian marble was produced and the slabs of marbles outside
the factories.
We got to Florence a little bit earlier than expected. At the train
station, some guy was trying to talk us into renting a room from his one-star
hotel in Piazza San Marco and even offered one-way taxi fare to get there.
Thanks but no thanks. What if we don't like it. How are we going to find
our way back? Instead of fighting the crowd at the hotel booking office,
we decided to walk down via Nazionale to look around ourselves. Most of
them were full and we finally found Hotel Mario's on via Faenza. It was
quite hard to find because of the Red and Black numbering system.
At least we did not wasted our time all together. There is one room
at Mario's, but only for one night. We decided to take it anyway so we
can at least get some rest before we continue our hotel hunt. We walked
up and down the neighborhood along via Nazionale, via Ghalfa, via Faenza
asking any 2-star or 3-star hotels if they have rooms for the next day.
There are some 3-star for L.220,000 to L.280,000. At least there are rooms
available if we are willing to pay.
While walking along via Faenza, some guy stopped us and asked if we
needed a room. Good Salesman! Knows how to read potential customers. We
followed him upstairs to check out the room. For only L.80,000 (cash) per
day, it is a very decent and clean place. See photo of room (probably to
the left of this text). Since this felt too good to be true and we debated
between ourselves for a long time before we decided to take it. It turned
out alright in the end. Signor Burchi, the owner, did not speak any English.
We communicated in my broken Italian. This has to be the best part of the
experience.
9/20 Florence
After
we got done with all the housing stuff, we walked over to the Duomo. We
were amazed at the colors of the marble on the outside. It is so clean
compared to Notre Dame in Paris. Now I know that the Italians spent a lot
more on perserving the churches while the French spent more on the Museums.
Priorities, priorities.
At the Duomo, there are two possible ways to exercise your thigh muscles.
You can climb to the top of the Duomo, or the top of the campanile, or
both. We opted for the Campanile. The view from the top is nice. It is
the second tallest structure in Florence and we can see all the red roof
in the entire city.
The rest of the day is walking around Florence following one of the
recommended walking tour. We walked by Dante's (famous Italian poet) museum
and the church where he met his wife, Perche No! for ice cream, Piazza
de la Signoria (outside of Palazzo Vecchio and where you can find a replica
of the statue David) and the Uffizi museum. Our overall feeling is that
Italian museums are not very tourist friendly. While the paintings on the
walls and ceiling are pretty, we really don't get much behind the scene
understanding of the significance of the drawings.
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Piazza de la Signoria has lots of pigeons and they will gladly
take your food if you offer them.
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There was a free concert that evening at Piazza de la Signoria
and it was great to be able to listen to Italian opera in Italy and for
free.
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9/21 Florence
Suckers.
That's us. We had breakfast at a bar and took a seat instead of eating
at the bar. For the same thing, cappucino and croissant, we paid three
times as much that if we had ate at the bar standing up.
Suckers again. That's us again. The bus ticket machines don't give change
and we paid L.2,000 for a L.1,500 ticket. We finally went inside the train
station and got bus tickets from the tobacco (Tabacchi) stand instead.
Our destination is Fiesole. Roman ruins. San Francesco Church. Ancient
Chinese collection.
Then Ponte Vecchio. Ice cream. Restaurants closed on Sundays. Ripping
off the bus for a change.
9/22 Pisa
Cheap breakfast. No rip-offs.
Ticket machine crashed at the train station. Engineer debugging the
ticket machine (really a Pentium 75Mhz running OS2/Warp with 24MB RAM)
while we were all looking.
Monday is when most of the museums in Firenze are closed, so we chose
today to go to Pisa. The books all said that the train ride takes only
55 minutes, but for reasons beyond us, we always ended up taking the slow
train that took 1.5 hours. We arrived at Pisa Centrale station at 12:30pm.
The bus ride to Duomo (#1) cost only L 1,300 and is filled with mostly
tourists. It dropped us off on the west side of the "Miracle Square" where
you met the street vendors first before you even see any sights.
Pisa is not just the leaning tower. There's the huge Duomo, Baptistry,
Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (great view of the leaning tower), and Camposanto
are all great places worth visiting and spending time. You can get
individual tickets for each place, or you can get a package good for all
of the above. If you can spend the time, get the package since all
of them are very good. For example, the Museo has drawings of the square
explaining the placement of the baptistry, duomo and the leaning tower.
Many original sculptures outside the duomo are now inside the museum. From
the museum, you get a very good and uncrowded view of the leaning tower.
The Camposanto is a cementery next to the Baptistry. It used to have lots
of frescos painted along the walls, but much of it were destroyed during
WWII. Only a small portion have been restored. One of the famouse one on
display shows souls burning in Hell with various gruesome tortures used.
Many of these tortures coincides with those imagined by old Chinese legends.
This was done during the Black Death and people had a really grim view
of life then. Other than this one fresco, others were not that exciting.
After the Miracle Square, we decided to walk back to the train station
and save the bus fare. The walk took us along many shops and we also went
past the Tower of Hungar which supposedly was where Ugolin was locked up
with his sons and starved to death. Too bad it was under renovation and
all we get to see was the scaffolding.
Bisteca alla Fiorentina for dinner at Enzo e Piero in Florence. This
is Florence's signature dish. A whole kilogram of semi-raw beef. Real food
for real people. Beef...it's what you want. Brunello Chianti Classico.
Yum. Vin Santo, biscotti and Tiramisu after dinner. Yum. Yum. Entire dinner
is only L.101,000 which is only US$60. What a deal.
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