Florence to Roma Churching It Up

Following the relaxed Italian Riviera, our sights were set on Florence.  Florence is the hub for Renascence art with many famous painters and sculptors all having works on display in such places as the Uffizi, Galleria Academia, etc.  Being the cultured Australian I am, this seemed like the logical place to be.  So it was all stations go and back on the road again.  Along the way we made a brief detour to a well known town called Pisa.  Joining the masses of people we made our way through the Africans selling their street goods and on to the leaning tower.   I was surprised upon arrival to see that the tower was in such a pristine state, other than it leaning at a 4.5 degree angle.  I soon found that in these parts of the world, ordinary stone was for the villagers, if you wanted to make something cool, well then it was off to the marble market.  As is customary, we managed to take the recommended dose of photos including all those funny little ones making use of the towers lean.  If you couldn’t figure out how to make these just scan the crowd and you’ll pick it up pretty quickly.  I think I invented a new one though :)

From Pisa, Florence was just a stones throw away, but necessity mandated one more detour to a supermarket for the old important belly fuel.  I just have to say, Italians do supermarkets way better than Australians.  Firstly, there is sooooo much fresh food on display and it is CHEAP!  Premium beer is about 3 Euros (about $4 AUD) for a six pack.   The most expensive meat I could find was 18 Euros (about $24.50 AUD) for a choice cut of beef.  They have separate bread, cured meat, cheese, fish and red meat delis, nibbles by the gazillion and pasta enough to eat differently every day of the year.  Both Dids and I were maxed out with excitement at this and needless to say, we shopped more than we needed too.  The only down side was fitting it all into the car, poor old Fiesta.

Finally in Florence, we pulled in to a rather large campsite called Camping Michelangelo just on the edge of the city, probably a poor choice in retrospect.  Though it was a simple bus ride from the campsite into town to visit all there was to see, the whole experience seemed quite impersonal and the night club on the adjacent hill which pumped its tunes until 4 in the morning could just go get stuffed.  Even the fire flies kept their distance, we only saw one the whole time we stayed.  

Visiting the sights the next day we made our way around the usuals such as the Uffizi, Galleria Academia and all the different cathedrals.  The amount of beggars, street merchants and tourists were all quite overwhelming and you had to take solace in the fact that it wasn’t anywhere near the peak season yet.  The free public displays were amazing with the sculptures being my favourite.  Past the freebies, well you better like waiting in line otherwise you are in the wrong place.  I was definitely in the wrong place.  I did the old stuff it and paid extra to reserve an entry time that saw us into each attraction with far less fuss, although it would not be Italy if it was totally stress free.  Note to the wise, Italians really do signs poorly, so expect confusion and with confusion there is usually a whole heap of Americans around…..Awesome.  

The statue of David outside the Uffizi

This was pretty usual around Florence.  I guess that makes me crowd equipped.

 Awesome fountain at the piazza outside the Uffizi

Basilica De Santa Maria, Florence

Not having dabbled much in Renaissance art I found myself looking at the mother load all for the first time barring a few exceptions.  Dids studied it all at school and had a good understanding of what was what so there was some knowledge to impart on that front.  To summarise what I learnt:  

Firstly, Jesus is great……  Almost all the paintings are biblical and not many are of scenes depicting reality.  There are tonnes of cherubs, angles etc all crammed into the one painting.  Not being a man of much Christian religion, I maxed out on my limit of this kind of stuff by the end of the day.  

Secondly……Artists used to paint on plaster with pigments mixed into egg yolk.  This was hard work because the mixture used to dry quickly so you had to be fast.  This kind of painting was called a fresco and is not renowned for standing up to the tests of time due to the short lifespan of the media.  It was later that artists started painting on wood and then canvas using oil paints as devised by the other great artistic power house Flanders (I was told the Netherlands until I gave Dids a bit of ah ha! In your face go Netherlands, then it became Flanders to be exact). 

 

Back to the tent cave for some beer cleansing.  I had left the fridge running off the car battery to cool all the food we had collected earlier in preparation for our big cook up to come that night.  Well all the smart readers will know at this point in time that the car battery was flat.  And all the smart ladies will know that Dids had warned me so.  The good thing about a little car though is that it is easy to push start….. apparently.  Steps to push starting shall we:  

• Tell your girlfriend to put the car in reverse (the only direction I could push it), keep the clutch in and release the park brake.
• Get an uber lad to push the car up to speed (that would be me).
• Get your girlfriend to release the clutch and turn the ignition key……. not hit the brake instead.
• Attempt 1 failed.  On to attempt 2 and like all good second attempts, do it yourself.

Well now the only way to go was down.  Pointing the car down a rather steep hill, I put it in 4^th and got Dids to kick a tire to send me on my way.  She did this with an amazing amount of glee…..  Dodging tents and with a fair bit of speed up I thought hmmm, I should hit the brakes a little to ease the shock of this big ditch I’m coming to.  Obviously this didn’t happen because Dids had hit the brakes earlier and I had no power to recharge the brake cylinder, ahh well, I hit that ditch good.  With my speed hitting something ridiculous, I released the clutch, turned the ignition and shazam, one running car and the adoration of the crowd (one guy looking on laughing).  Definitely felt like one of those olden day movies with a car hurtling through the countryside out of control just before running into a barn or hedge.  Luckily there were no barns or hedges for me to hit, just tents and people.

Now with that fixed and my safety finally back in hand it was on to the manly duty of the barbeque.  There were no fires allowed on site because of it being so close to the city and a little matter of world heritage listing.  So to shorten this section and limit my incrimination, I didn’t have a fire and it did not kick up tonnes of smoke and sausages with loads of fat in them do not perpetuate the smoking of a barbeque…..Oh man……

The following day we managed to usher ourselves down a few freeways and on to Sienna which is a lovely town with big pizzas, an awesome fortified old section and one hell of a cathedral.  So far this was the most decadent of the cathedrals we had seen but I am sure the Vatican has something special in store.  Have a look at some of the photos to understand the amount of wealth poured into these places.

With the parking meter expiring we had to move on with one destination in mind, the beach.  Both Dids and I are water babies and we need to be around it from time to time to keep our sanity.  Unfortunately the beaches we found all had black sand which makes the water a little less inviting, especially to the Aussie crowd who knows how to do beaches.  So a compromise was reached; a camp site with a massive resort style pool and slippery slide, haha!  The campsite catered for 500 tents and 100 villas which was amazingly ridiculous, but lucky for us it is the low season now and the place was nearly a ghost town. 

Well, with relaxing in mind, we found ourselves with a good amount of time at our finger tips.  Dids had been telling me over numerous occasions that she was awesome at cutting hair, so what the hey I thought, let’s give it a go because I needed a bit of a trim.  Well, as I found out halfway through the hair cut, in Dids mind being awesome at something apparently does not translate to past experience and I don’t count dogs, my little pony nor dolls hair!  I was not prepared for this revelation at all; there was a distinct lack of beer circulation through my mouth and veins for my anxiety to be dulled.  In the end though, I exercised the necessary amount of faith and it all panned out well.  On a totally unrelated topic though, apparently as I approach 30 I have begun suffering from a very localized form of balding on one side of the head, very unfortunate…..Hope I can still make friends.

For now it is all roads lead to Rome (Roma for the Italian crowd).  Arrivedecci.