4th day, spent in Florence, home of "the" David

Tuesday, February 23, 1999 - Our wakeup call did not come but we woke up at 6:10 anyway. Had breakfast at the buffet (still tasted good!) and were ready for the bus at 7 am. The bus was nice and the staff was friendly; the bus driver's name was Salvadori and our guide's name was Kiara. Salvadori stopped to pick up several more people at other locations before leaving Rome. As we left the city of Rome, Kiara pointed out the old Roman walls as we passed them, and the olive trees and vineyards along the way.  Salvadori played some cassette tapes for us, mostly of good Italian tenors. The ride was 3 hours, with a stop at a service station that had a restaurant and sold groceries and souvenirs. The countryside had a lot of those tall, thin trees that seem so Italian to me, and Spanish-looking houses (well, they looked Spanish to me because of the 7 months we spent in Spain!). At the outskirts of Florence we stopped at a place called Michelangelo's Square, overlooking the town. It's called that because they have a copper version of Michelangelo's David there. And the view of Florence was great!  

The bus is not allowed to be on the main streets of Florence, but Salvadori was able to drop us off in town. Kiara introduced us to Rosalind, a British tour guide who we all nicknamed "Sergeant Rosalind" because she tended to bark orders at us.  The Sergeant, not Kiara, was our tour guide for this part of the tour. She took us to the Accademia Museum first. The first room we stopped in had six of Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures, and she gave us a brief history about them. Only Michelangelo could make an unfinished sculpture say so much.   

Then we went to see the David, which was just as impressive as we imagined. After awhile the rest of the group moved on to a couple of rooms with paintings, but I missed most of that because I went back to see David again. I knew what I was here for, and it wasn't paintings.

Eventually we had to leave the museum for our next stop, which was a nearby church. It was very ornate outside but much simpler on the inside because apparently the merchants who built it ran out of money.  It included an old clock that kept time according to the method used before we switched to the Julian calendar. The clock only had about 11 hours on it because, according to the old system, time was only kept from daylight to dusk.  

Next we crossed the street to see another church, the Cathedral of Florence. This unusual building looks very different from each side. From one side we could see the beautiful dome, with its typical red tiles.

And from another side, all we could see was the complicated, beautiful, gaudy facade. I couldn't get it all in one picture so I settled for one picture of the door.

and another picture of the intricate details above the door.

In spite of this amazing outside, it is best known for its doors. The doors have panels that depict various Biblical scenes and the doors on the east side, created by Lorenzo Ghiberti, are especially nice. They have full bronze panels and were nicknamed "The Doors of Paradise" by Michelangelo. It's easy to see why; the scenes are not specific to Paradise, but the workmanship is exquisite.

Randy and I talked with another tour member, a young lady who had visited Italy as a teenager and was back with her mother and sister. Then we all walked to the restaurant for lunch.  Along the way some gypsies picked the pockets of one of our group, but he noticed them doing it and drove them away, and they dropped his money as they ran. I lost track of exactly where we were, but at some point during the day we could see the Tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.

For lunch we had two kinds of pasta, bow tie and round, slices of pork, peas and bread, water and a bottle of Chianti. We sat with a couple we met on the bus. Salvador and Marie were from New York but were born in Sicily and spoke Italian. The restaurant almost forgot to give us our dessert, but Maria asked for it; ice cream cups with finely ground coffee sprinkled on top. After lunch we went to a leather shop and met up with Kiara again. The salesman demonstrated how they emboss gold onto leather and showed us their leather coats. The coats looked like they were very good quality and the price was reasonable, but I couldn't find any I really wanted. 

Next Kiara took us another piazza with another big church and a lot of sculptures; I loved this lion!

We had a little free time to see the church, which is called the Basilica of Santa Croce. Michelangelo is buried there but his memorial was covered by plywood for some kind of work, so we couldn't really see much of it. One of our group had left to see another museum but couldn't because the line was too long, so we waited until she met up with us again at this church. Then we all walked back together to our bus and took the long ride back to Rome. For dinner we stopped at another pizzeria.  

What an amazing day!