Florence -- We take a break from the Medieval to Trace the Birth of the Renaissance

"To see the sun sink down, drowned on his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams, is a sight to stir the coldest nature." - Mark Twain

Heading to Florence from an Italian railway station was like a different world from our Spanish experience. Spain treats their train stations like airports, with X-ray machines, security checks, boarding passes. In Venice, we walked straight onto our train with confusion about who to show our tickets to or where to stow our luggage. We wandered around looking for someone official, and finally gave up and sat down. Three cities later, someone finally came around to check our tickets. We thought the European Union would be more uniform in how it manages things and have been fascinated by how very foreign each country still is to its neighbors.

When we arrived in Florence it was hot and we were discouraged to find the air conditioner in our apartment wasn't working. We sent messages to the host who assured us it would be taken care of as soon as she could reach her handyman. We wandered out for pizza for dinner. I don't think we'll every get tired of the fire-roasted pizza in Italy! Delizioso! Our apartment was located at the base of the entry to a climb to Piazzele Michelangelo...a plaza that overlooks all of Florence. We climbed to the top with scores of other tourists and basked in the golden glow of the city at sunset. Such a romantic spot, we even witnessed 2 marriage proposals.

We went back home via gelato. Anna has already said she's going to really miss gelato. There's an artist named Clet Abraham who has "defaced" traffic signs in some major cities including Florence in clever funny ways. He adds decals to signs so that it turns the traffic symbols into pictures of other things. You see them all over town and we loved looking for them. We discovered our first one on the way back from gelato.

A hot night in our apartment meant little sleep and a late start. As we walked to our first Florentine museum, we passed a crazy parade of people dressed up in Renaissance costumes, beating drums, blowing trumpets, and waving flags while wearing tights. We bemusedly stopped to watch it pass. My plan to get to the L'Accademia early to beat the line was foiled and we ended up waiting a little over an hour to get in. Michelangelo's "David" is totally worth the wait. Having seen pictures of the colossal sculpture doesn't really prepare you for how enormous and finely detailed and powerful it is in person. The rest of the museum is small, but we really enjoyed Michelangelo's "prisoners" display as well. He believed that sculpture was an act of taking away everything that wasn't the sculpture, and did most of his work "freehand." This series of unfinished sculptures show his process of "releasing the prisoner" held within the stone. In addition to this display we peeked at the work of students in one hall...this museum continues to be an "Accademia" of art. We looked at the display of early instruments as well. There were familiar looking stringed instruments along with some kooky, Dr. Seuss-like horns, and what they believe is the very first upright pianoforte.

We followed the museum with a tour through "Renaissance Old Florence." This is where the beginning of that great movement in art, literature, architecture, and science all started. Some highlights were the statues displayed in the outdoor niches of the Orsanmichele Church. Walking around the building is like a counter-clockwise progression of the spark and evolution of Renaissance sculpture. By now we'd seen lots of Michelangelo and Donatello...only 2 more Ninja Turtles and we could call it a day. The sculpture in this city is unreal. We walked through the Uffizi Courtyard to see the "Renaissance Hall of Fame." All the greats of the city and the era are paraded in sculpture along the walk including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Amerigo Vespucci and Galileo. We finished the tour at Ponte Vecchio (literally "ancient bridge"). This bridge has been standing since the time of the Roman Empire. During World War II, Nazis were ordered to blow it up, but an art-loving Nazi consul intervened to save it. They destroyed the buildings on each end to make it impassable, but kept the bridge itself intact.

We took a break for lunch and to cool down (haha, just kidding, broken air conditioner) at the apartment before our afternoon tour of Uffizi Gallery. Once the offices of the famous de Medici family, it's now one of the greatest art museums of Europe. Highlights include Boticelli's "Venus," Giotto's early pioneering techniques that inspired Renaissance style, Leonardo Da Vinci's early works "The Anunciation" and "The Adoration of the Magi," the sculpture hall, a rare finished painting by Michelangelo, "The Holy Family," and Raphael's self-portrait -- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, completed!

For dinner we had gelato and the famous "Gusta Pizza" before heading in for an early-ish bedtime. Around 10:30 we heard what sounded like a bomb exploding. It was followed by more explosions and what we realized were fireworks. We left our apartment and walked to the corner to watch with other neighborhood onlookers a huge 30-minute fireworks display. It was being shot off from the piazzele we'd gone up to the night before so pretty much our backyard. I've never seen such a huge display, it was spectacular and deafening. When we got back to the apartment, a little internet research taught us that we were in town for an important Florentine holiday, "St. John the Baptist's Feast Day." Suddenly the morning parade made more sense.

On Sunday we took a bus to what lds.org told us was where the 9:30 meeting took place. We arrived to find about a dozen other American tourists milling around. One of them was a man who served his mission to Rome 12 years ago. He had spoken to someone and discovered the ward doesn't actually meet until 3! Luckily, there was a group of single adults who had spent the week having a conference and were coming at 10 to have a culminating Sacrament Meeting. We crashed their conference, and the returned missionary translated the meeting for us while we wore headsets. It was much too hot to hang out at our apartment (still no a/c) so in the late afternoon we visited the Santa Croce church. Many eminent men of the Renaissance are buried here, including Galileo, Michelangelo, Dante, Machiavelli among others. Fermi of "Fermi's Paradox" is here as well.

Monday most museums in the city are closed so we made it "Duomo Day." The Duomo is the enormous domed cathedral at the heart of the city. First thing in the morning, we made the 463 stair climb to the top of the dome. So cool! We learned a little about the engineering feat of the Renaissance architect, Bruneschelli. The cathedral was built with a big hole left in the middle with the belief that eventually someone would come along with the technological know-how to erect the dome. His design is brilliant and it's dramatic to get to climb up and get an inside view.

We followed the climb with a tour of the baptistery directly in front of the church. Small in comparison, it's actually amazing to walk inside and see how huge the vaults are. The baptistery is home to Ghiberti's famous "bronze doors." The doors on the baptistery are now replicas and the originals are protected inside the museum. We next climbed the campanile (bell tower), a sweaty, dizzying, crowded climb made worth it by another spectacular view. The facade of the Duomo and its related buildings in decorated in a distinctive white, green, and pink. Although the interior is much like many of the other gothic cathedrals we have seen, the outside is one-of-a-kind. We finished our day with the Duomo by touring the Duomo Museum. Here you get to see Ghiberti's doors up close and in person. The original doors he created depict in brass-work panels that tell the story of the life of Christ. He won a competition sponsored by the church to be the one to sculpt and design the doors. After winning that contest, he was then commissioned to do the East doors. Here you can see how far his abilities had progressed from the first set of doors. He depicts different Bible stories in each panel that are far more sophisticated and artistic than the south doors. In addition to the doors, some highlights were Donatello's statues (especially his "Mary Magdalene,") Pisano's hexagonal church-decorating stones telling the story of creation. First God created Man, then women, then man began his own work of creation. 

The best sculpture in the museum is Michelangelo's last pieta. He intended this sculpture to be his epitaph, but became frustrated with the stone, with his age, with the work and actually destroyed parts of it in anger. His students restored it, and it's magnificent...the Nicodemus in the group is Michelangelo's own face. One of Michelangelo's own sonnets is written on the wall near the statue:

"The course of my life has brought me now
Through a stormy sea, in a frail ship,
To the common port where, landing
We account for every deed, wretched or holy.

So that finally I see
How wrong the fond illusion was
That made art my idol and my King,
Leading me to want what harmed me.

My amorous fancies, once foolish and happy
What sense have they now that I approach two deaths
The first of which I know is sure, the second threatening.

Let neither painting nor carving any longer calm
My soul turned to that divine Love
Who to embrace us opened His arms upon the cross."

Outside the museums, we got Isaac's picture taken with a street performer dressed as a statue, and he was terrified. To fuel the many, many stairs we climbed and to combat the heat (still no a/c) we found we had to have gelato ... twice.

Our last day in Florence we hit 3 last stops. In the morning, the Galileo Science Museum. I LOVED this stop and wore out the rest of my family, spending more than an hour reading and learning about Galileo's great Scientific discoveries and inventions and the hundreds of years of scientific understanding that developed from his spark of genius. Reading and learning about geniuses always makes me feel pretty dumb. Not only can I not imagine coming up with the answers and solutions that Galileo did without any of the modern education that I enjoy, I wouldn't even know how to ask the questions he was asking. Coming away from the museum, I felt like every modern convenience, technology, and scientific knowledge we have now can be drawn back to this Renaissance Man in more or less a straight line.

Our second museum stop was The Bargello -- a sculpture museum. Highlights included several Michelangelos...his "Brutus" tells a story that is so much more than just another stone statue. We also saw 3 different "Davids" done by Donatello that show his transformation as an artist from the young man following the traditional themes and poses that came before him, to shocking the art world with revolutionary designs and controversial style. The original "mad genius," Donatello lived like a pauper interested only in his work. Famously anti-social, he was known to yell at his sculptures to "speak" to him.

We finished the day in the "Boboli Gardens" of the Pitti Palace. The home and grounds of the powerful Medici family, we headed outdoors for some air and shade to get away from...that's right, our apartment with no air-conditioning. I fully understand that the lack of a/c is the very definition of a "first-world problem." But with 6 days of 90+ temperatures, we were all relieved to pack up that night and look forward to Rome and its apartment with not one, not two, but three working air conditioners!

Venice -- A spectacular, living, decaying history

"I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A palace and a prison on each hand." -Lord Byron

We left sunny Spain and landed in a much greener but still hot and muggy Italy. As our bus pulled into the vaporetto stop at the end of the Grand Canal, it felt like a dream. We rode the vaporetto (water bus) to our destination and it was more than I could imagine, more spectacular and majestic ruin than I could take in on every side. We got off one stop late which resulted in a hilarious episode of "5 Americans drag 200 pounds of luggage up and over the Rialto Bridge." It's a tourist favorite. Finally, we navigated the maze of narrow streets to our hotel. They gave us keys to our apartment which required one more small-bridge-versus-luggage adventure and we were settled in a back alley right out of a story-book. Pastel and peeling wooden doors, window baskets full of flowers, cobblestone passageways. We spent the evening riding the slow vaporetto from start to St. Mark's Square. As we bumped slowly along the Grand Canal, we learned a little about the magnificent and decaying ca's (houses) along this route...the economic center of the 1300-1500s. Though each a castle in its own right, only the Doge's Palace -- home of the elected nobleman -- could have that name and distinction. As a center of commerce, Ancient Venice was home to every faith, nationality, culture, and people which is reflected in the architecture and decorative flourishes along the canal. Finally, landing in St. Mark's Square -- the political and religious center of Venice -- we got off and took in the "palazzo," the "Doge's Palace," the "Campanile" (bell tower), and the Basilica. We walked through a maze to find a delicious restaurant for a late dinner. After sufficient carb-loading, we wandered back out to the square to hear the competing musicians and orchestras at the various restaurants in the square. Stars above and reflected in the water, it was pure magic.

Up early the next morning to beat the crowds, we toured the Doge's Palace. Ancient Venice was unique for its day since it was ruled not by a King or a Bishop but a medieval version of "self-rule." The noblemen of the city elected senators and councils, and at the head of them all the "Doge." Something like the executive branch, the Doge's responsibility was to enact the laws and regulations created by the Senators. We learned that this system of government worked better under some Doges than others, and like all good governments, was susceptible to corruption. However, it's fascinating to see how at least the rudimentary Greek ideas of democracy held on through so many thousands of years in a variety of cultures and places. Inside the palace we saw great artworks done by Venetian Masters Titian, Veronese, and Tintoretto. The palace is connected to the prison by "the bridge of sighs." (A term coined by Lord Byron.) The Doge and his henchman could charge, interrogate, and convict whom they chose and walk them right over the bridge to be tortured, imprisoned, or executed. We walked through the network of cells and read inscriptions carved into their walls hundreds of years ago; we climbed up and over the bridge. Lord Byron romanticized and named the bridge as a place where the condemned walked over to take one last look at the beauty of Venice and sigh on their way to prison...or worse.

We followed the palace with an audio tour of St. Mark's square. We learned about flooding measures, the pointed bell tower, the variety of periods and architecture styles represented on every side of the square from Byzantine through Napolean's neo-Gothic effort to close the square in a natural way that was not entirely successful. 

We had timed-entry tickets to tour the Basilica -- thank goodness because the line wrapped around the square. The church is classic Venetian -- a mishmash of competing styles that somehow works. We found out the difference between a Cathedral and Basilica (Basilicas are designated by popes and are the "highest" form of religious structure in the Catholic Church. They're generally designated after some kind of sacred event has occurred there. In the case of St. Mark's Basilica, the sacred event was the re-discovery by a Priest of the Apostle Mark's remains which had been lost in the construction of the church. Cathedrals are the "seat" of a Bishop. A basilica can also be a cathedral and a church at the same time. Clear? Yeah, we're a little confused too.) Inside, the church has a very Eastern Orthodox style unlike the other churches we have seen. Its footprint is the Orthodox plus-shaped cross and the decoration is icon-driven and very Byzantine. We toured the nave and the transepts, but they really nickel and dime you, charging additional entrance fees to see anything else once you're inside. They're very strict about not allowing shorts or sleeveless shirts, but are happy to rent you a shawl to cover if you come unprepared. 

After such a busy first half of the day touring, we rested up in the afternoon. Then we took a walking loop tour between Rialto Bridge to St. Mark's. To fuel our walk, we picked up slices of pizza to eat as we walked. We bought some souvenirs, window-shopped beautiful Venetian lace, Murano glass, and Italian stilettos (gorgeous shoes that cost more than my entire wardrobe). Then we fueled again at the end of the loop with more pizza and gelato. (Walking so many miles every day hasn't seemed to result in my clothes getting any looser -- might have something to do with the fact that there's always food in my hand while we walk, weird.)

We started our last full day in Venice with a run. Such a great way to get acquainted with a foreign place, we ran from our apartment to the end of the island and had only gone 2.5 miles! We intended to do 5, but got so lost on the way back, that it ended up being closer to 7. We took the kids on a walk to the Frari Church, stopping in to mask shops and bakeries on the way. The church is a little out of the way but is also designated a Basilica. It was built by the Franciscans, an order of monks who believed  churches should be accessible to their patrons which is reflected in the style of art and structure of their buildings. Inside we saw some stunning artwork by Titian, Canova, and Bellini. What is so cool about these masterpieces is that they are actually still hanging in the church in the places where they were first commissioned to be displayed. The 3-D mastery of Bellini's altarpiece was for me a highlight that my photographs just can't convey. Both Titian's and Canova's tombs are located in this church and the sculpture on both is extravagant.

We found a home-made pasta place for lunch. Noah and I ate delicious squid-ink pasta. It looks pretty gross, but boy was it tasty. The rest of the family stuck with more familiar bolognese. And of course, no walk is complete without a stop for gelato. So far our favorite flavors are cocco, limone, melone, Nutella, bacio, and cioccolate, but to be sure, we'll keep sampling until we find the very best flavor.

The evening was spent running errands...we had to buy more ties (the street vendors sell gorgeous ties for really cheap, so we ended buying 6!), pay our hotel bill, pick up some street art (we like to collect local art on our vacations), eat dinner, and search for pastries. Sometimes this vacation is just work, work, work! We also stopped into the Correr Museum, a kind of ho-hum collection of Venetian art. I figure none of it can be very significant since the museum is barely climate-controlled. The interesting part of the tour for me was the wing that was Baroness Elisabet's Venice home. Known affectionately as "Cissi" to her people, this discovery was like coming full circle to my trip to her Austrian homeland three years ago.

In the morning, we went on one last short run...3 miles intended, 5 miles of getting lost, packed up (we're getting pretty good at this), bought tickets to the vaporetto, and wedged ourselves into the boat to the train station. Arrivaderci, Venezia! You were a dream come true!