When I last posted, we were heading to Lucca, and it was incredibly slow going over the mountains. We didn’t quite beat the snow, and when we stopped for a quick bathroom break, there was already an inch and a half on the ground after only 30 minutes. We made it over the mountains eventually, and soon the only white mountains we saw were near Carrera, where most of the white marble in Italy is mined. (When Caesar Augustus transformed Rome from a city of brick to a city of marble, he was primarily using Carrera marble.)
We arrived in Lucca with enough time to take our customary walk through town before dark and eat dinner. This stop was pretty uneventful aside from two things. First, my hotel room was covered from floor to ceiling in floral wallpaper, curtains, and bed linens. It felt like I was sleeping in someone’s grandmother’s house, or maybe Wonka Land. Second, I had fried chicken and vegetables (the house specialty) for dinner. The vegetables were tempura fried, but the chicken, aside from the lack of salt, was pretty dang close to home. I didn’t know the Luccese had it in them.
After Lucca, we headed to Pisa for a brief stop. When I visited five years ago, I was actually surprised to learn that in addition to the leaning tower, there was actually a cathedral, baptistery, cemetery, and a whole town, in fact. Since we made the long walk across town from the train station last time, I was relieved when we skipped the town and drove straight for the edge where the cathedral is located. I couldn’t quite think of the words to describe it last time—the green grass, the sparkling white marble of the buildings, the blue cloudless sky, and the location on the very edge of town in an open area overlooking the mountains beyond—but one of the benefits of going to a Catholic university is that they can give you the religious significance of everything. The Pisans were literally trying to create a City of God on the earth when they isolated the sacred precinct at the edge of the city and gave it a strong connection to nature, much in the way the Athenians did with the acropolis (although not literally elevated above the city). The Florentines may have the biggest cathedral, but in my opinion, the Pisans have the grandest in Tuscany.
Speaking of Florence, that was our next stop, and it was fortunately a longer one. Our hotel was literally in the center of town, located on the old Roman Decumanus (the primary east-west street) and about a block from the Forum, now the Piazza della Repubblica, so we were basically surrounded by all of the important buildings and spaces we visited. We were mostly left to explore on our own during the two days, so Claire and I tried to make the most out of our time, visiting the Uffizi Gallery (formerly the offices of the Medici family who ruled Florence during the Renaissance, now an art gallery), Santa Croce (uncertain) and the Pazzi Chapel (Brunelleschi), San Lorenzo (Brunelleschi) and the Lauretian Library (Michelangelo), and doing our individual sketching assignments before and after lunch.
At two, we met up with the group to drive to nearby Settignano to see the gardens of the Villa Gamberaia. This was a nice change to get off into the rural landscape where there are olive groves and vineyards and incredible countryside all within sight of the city. The view from the terrace off the front of the house had an incredible view of Florence (even more so once the sun peeked out for a moment as it was setting), and the gardens were very elaborate, with a formal garden off the side of the house, a long grass “bowling green,” as the called it, running the full length of the property, several grottos, two “boschetta,” or oak groves, and an orange/lemon grove and orangerie where the trees are moved during the winter (and as we’ve seen, yes it does snow in Tuscany, even in March).
If you’re going to spend money on food in Italy, I highly suggest doing it in small towns off the beaten path (Spello, for instance) or in Tuscany, because first, it’s already much cheaper than say Rome or Venice anyway, and second, it’s just better than anywhere else I’ve been (Neapolitan pizza aside). In Florence, I had spaghetti with tomato, cream, and butter sauce (just cover all the bases), really good grilled swordfish, jumping ahead a bit, I also had a really good fat spaghetti called pici with wild boar sauce, which, following a common theme, had tiny little bones that I had to pick out of my mouth. After dinner, Claire and I were walking around and as we approached our hotel, we heard organ music that at first was a bit unnerving, but as we rounded the corner, we realized it was coming from the church across the street. Supposedly Dante’s church (before he was given the boot from Florence) was having a free, and quite incredible for the 40 minutes we sat there listening, organ recital with donations going to restore the bell tower. Only in Italy.
The next morning it was drizzling and cold—again—so we decided to forgo paying to climb the Duomo and instead hiked to San Miniato al Monte, a church by Alberti high on the hills overlooking the city. What would have been a fantastic view was limited only to the city between us and the center of town because of the clouds, so we missed seeing the hills and surrounding landscape. Afterwards, we quickly walked by the Palazzo Pitti and Santo Spirito on the same side of the river before meeting the group to depart for San Gimignano.
One of my favorite places we visited last semester, San Gimignano is a tiny hill town south of Florence that has been nearly perfectly preserved from the Middle Ages, and it is therefore a pretty big tourist attraction now. The town has one of my favorite sequences of piazzas that we’ve visited (based on my memory from last time), but unfortunately we had several factors working against us—the cold (nothing new), the rain that prevented us from seeing stuff, like the famous towers, above us (nothing new), and the market stalls and tents that were temporarily set up in all of the piazzas. It was more or less productive, but very difficult to get a sense of space when there are tents in your way.
To be continued in Part IV...
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