Days 34-37: Florence!

So my flight took me from Valencia to Bologna, and I was welcomed to Italy by this incredible view:

Bologna was covered in snow as you can tell, but I was surprised to find that it wasn’t actually that cold on the ground, and that I was I fine with my jeans and jacket and very warm wool socks...

At the airport, I made my way outside and found a row of buses parked on the curb.  I knocked on the door of one of them who’s driver was eating a sandwich, and he opened it and I asked him, in English, “How do I get to the Bologna train station?”  Without a word he pointed to the bus in front of him and I said thanks and got in line behind the other people with the same idea.  I paid my six euros and found a seat at the very back and sat with my bag on my lap.

The ride was thirty minutes long and full of interesting, snow-covered things to see: lots of people, lots of parks, lots of pizza places.  The snow on the road was dirty and ugly and the weather was about the same.  The locals were all bundled up and wearing some kind of hat and shoes for sloshing around in the snow.  I don’t have much else to say about Bologna other than the snow was nice to see and it looked colder than it was.  My first glimpse of Italy was nothing much, but I knew there would be much more to come…

So I made it to the train station and got off with everyone else and bumped and bruised my way inside, where I joined the rest of the crowd in staring up at the big “Arrivals/Departures” board listing all the trains and where to find them in the station.  On my second pass through, I found what I was looking for—Prato, the small-town station where I would change trains halfway through—and walked outside to try to find my platform.  “1 East” was what I was looking for, but the signs all around me said “# Central” or “# Grand.”  I looked at my ticket again then glanced at my watch: Seven minutes ‘til my train leaves and I have no idea where it is!

I hurried back into the chaotic Arrivals/Departures room and found an information desk and interrupted the girl scribbling furiously in her notebook:

“Do you speak English? Can you tell me where ‘1 East” is?

“Through the doors and out to the central platform, turn right and go 200 meters.  Right after the bridge is 1 East.”

I said thank you and hurried away…and sure enough, 200 meters to the right was platform East, and there waiting at the first loading station was the train that would take me half way to Florence.  I double-checked with the station worker standing out front, then stepped on board and sat in the first seat I came to…and I kid you not, it wasn’t even 2 minutes that the doors slammed shut behind me and the train rolled out of the station!  A close call but I made it, and now I could relax a bit and let the beautiful snow-kissed Italian landscape pass me by.  This is the one picture I took as we were pulling away from the station:

This first train ride was an hour long and I listened to my iPod and stared out the window the whole time.  It was cool to watch the mass of snow in Bologna shrink little by little over the course of the ride until eventually disappearing completely...

In the Prato train station, 30 minutes from Florence, I had 7 minutes to get off and find my next train, and knowing this, I was a bit uneasy as we pulled in.  Fortunately, the station was much smaller than Bologna's and the task was much easier; still, though, I couldn’t help but feel like I had narrowly evaded disaster as the train pulled away almost immediately after I sat down!  It's really not a good feeling thinking you almost missed a train that would have left you stranded in a strange city where you don’t speak the language!  But anyhow, I made it safe and sound and now had just a short half hour until reaching my final destination…

When we finally arrived at Santa Maria Novella, the train station there in Florence, I was the first one up from my seat and standing by the door with my bag, overcome with excitement.  Carolyn and I hadn’t seen each other since I left for Spain back at the beginning of January, so it had been over a month apart, which for us is a long time!  Off the train, I immediately started looking for her, searching through the mass of people like a real life “Where’s Waldo?”  I figured she would be wearing her green pea coat, so I tuned my eyes to that and blocked everything else out.  I weaved in and out of the crowd and found myself at the Arrivals/Departures area, where I guessed she’d be waiting.  Against the grain of the crowd, I glanced across the rows of up-turned faces, but none of them were hers.  I wandered away from the crowd and found a bench with a good view of the whole station and sat there for a while, continuing my search.  A minute passed.  Then two.  Then five.  Maybe she’s outside.  I stood up and crossed the station to what looked to be the exit, and low and behold, walking in at that exact moment was my Carolyn!  I spotted her first and got to watch in amusement as it took her two looks to recognize me, then it was all smiles and a short run and a big, big hug. 

The walk across town to her apartment was great: the sun was setting and the sky was glowing and there was lots to see.  Carolyn pointed out a few landmarks along the way: “My favorite church…my favorite statue…the best lasagna in the city…the best gelato I’ve ever had...”  It was a lot of fun catching up with her and getting my first glance at her new home and her new life.  The sidewalks were bustling and the fountains were flowing and the city really felt alive!  And then all of a sudden, the road we were on just opened up into this magical view and Florence won me over forever:

Doesn’t get much more perfect than that!  Breathtaking beauty, it really is and it really was.  But it would only get better when we finally got to her apartment and I saw this from her balcony (taken the next day for greater effect):

Unbelievable.  Yes—that bridge there to the right is the bridge in Florence, the Ponte Vecchio.  And it’s really right there—she wakes up everyday and looks at it over her breakfast and walks across it on her way to school.  Now that’s what I call livin’ the dream!

Anyway, so I dropped off my bag at her apartment and she showed me around the place and I got to meet her four roommates.  The whole place was very nice and the girls very friendly, and I couldn’t help but feel a little bit jealous of them all.

Carolyn wanted to show me around her side of town while we still had some daylight, so we left and wandered around the cobblestone streets for a while.  By the time it was fully dark, we were both pretty hungry and decided to get dinner while we were out.  I told her I wanted something authentic—something “really Italian”—and she said she knew exactly what to get….PIZZA!  How perfect!  I hadn’t had pizza in almost two months, and what better time to break that awful streak than now, in Italy!

The place was called GustaPizza and Carolyn said that she had been there before and knew exactly how and what to order.  We each got our own “Margherita” pizza topped with tomato, basil, and lots of cheese, and best of all it only cost us 5 euros!  We sat down at our table (an old wine barrel with a sheet of glass laid on top) and Carolyn told me stories from her first few weeks of Florentine life.  The pizza was up and ready at the counter faster than expected, and Carolyn grabbed them for us and brought them back to the table.  They looked and smelled GREAT thanks to the fresh ingredients, but right away Carolyn explained that though it may look and smell like the pizza we know back home, the way of eating it is much different thanks to all those fresh ingredients that make it so good: instead of picking it up slice by slice and eating it with your hands, you have to use a fork and knife because the sauce is runny and makes the cheese slide off.  So I grabbed my fork and knife and cut away bite by bite, and let me tell you…it was beyond delicious!  Best pizza I’ve ever had!  And what made the difference, I decided at the end, was not the fresh tomatoes and basil and mozzarella cheese, as great as they were, but the dough that brought it all together, making every…single...bite that much better than anything I’d ever had before.  It was hands down the best pizza experience I’ve ever had, and afterwards Carolyn laughed and told me it wasn’t even the best she’d had in the past week!  What a snob!

After dinner we walked around the area by the restaurant and decided to find some dessert.  Once again, Carolyn knew exactly where to go and took us to the gelato shop right by her apartment.  Having never tried gelato before, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.  “Like thicker, better ice cream” she said.  “Much better.”  Intrigued, I ordered a scoop each of mixed berry and black cherry, and I have to say, it was indeed thicker and better than any ice cream I've had!  Carolyn got her favorites from the few times she’s been there already--hazelnut and caramel sweet cream--and rich would be a dramatic understatement in describing them both.  All four flavors were positively delicious, but the berry was my favorite, and on the whole I have to agree with her that ice cream pales in comparison.

From the gelato shop, we walked the short ways back to Carolyn’s apartment and put two of her dining room chairs in front of the window with the great view of the bridge and had a bit of wine while looking out over the river.  We spent a good hour sitting there, talking about our experiences so far in our new cities, just enjoying each other’s company and the incredible opportunity before us—with us—right there in the moment.  “Look at us!” I remember saying.  “Just drinking some wine in your apartment in Florence with the best view in the whole city.  Is this real?!”  And we agreed that it wasn't...

The next day we got up nice and early (by college kid standards, remember) and got ready for the day and ate this amazing breakfast:

Eggs, bread and nutella, and the absolute freshest kiwi and strawberries I’ve ever had.  Such a great way to start the day!

After breakfast we grabbed our coats and headed out into the city and Carolyn took me to this really cool park where we climbed a little mountain that opened up into this incredible view on top:

The best view of the whole city!  So awesome!  We wandered around the maze of little tourists shops and souvenir stands in the plaza at the top and took lots of pictures, then continued on in the park until we came to this vacant outcrop that we decided was missing a couple statues:

Lots of fun.

From there we took an old set of stairs even higher up the mountain and found a really beautiful monastery at the top.  Check it out:

Apparently, the author of Pinocchio is buried there in one of the many grave sites, but we didn’t have the time nor the patience to go along and read every single worn down headstone to find him.  Cool to know, though.  Here's what the cemetery looked like:

So after the monastery we meandered back down to the mountain-top plaza with the awesome view of the city and the little souvenir stands and I took this picture of the replica of The David right in the middle of it all:

After that we climbed back down to street level and walked a little ways through the city to a pastry shop where we met up with Carolyn’s roommates and enjoyed a couple nutella-filled donuts!  Talk about delicious!  The place looked and smelled so good, I wanted to try it all!  Check out the mouthwatering selection:

Our stomachs held over for a while longer, we decided to continue our sightseeing and head to the must-see attraction in the whole city: The Duomo, a 13^th century cathedral known for its impressive dome.  The fact that Carolyn lives five minutes away from this thing and walks past it everyday on her way to school is amazing by itself, but not until I saw it in person did I fully understand how amazing.  See for yourself:

The building in the front is the Babtistry, and the tower to the right has a bell at the top that goes off every hour, and there in back is the Duomo itself, situated on top of the main part of the cathedral.

Just like I experienced with La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, the intense, miniscule detail is what makes this a true masterpiece of architecture.  Every square foot must’ve taken the artists and sculptors weeks or months to craft and create, and the final product of all of that time and energy and artistic genius compiled together into one incredible structure is just amazing.  I stood in front of the main door for a solid 10 minutes and couldn’t possibly have seen everything it was trying to tell me!  The marble front around the whole thing is what made it really special and unique from all of the other cathedrals I’ve seen on my trip so far: instead of just a stone surface, the architects used green, white, and rose-colored marble to cover it up and add more detail.  Very beautiful stuff.  Here are the rest of the pictures:

Picture of the poster out front

Oh yeah and the inside was pretty nice too:

Inside of the Dome

Another epic cathedral to check off the list...

From the Duomo, Carolyn took me to the next plaza over where we found a whole bunch of super old, really awesome statues from the Renaissance period.  All of the statues that you see are the originals from that time period, but the real David was taken away to the museum down the street for obvious reasons.  The fact that the rest, though, are still the originals from hundreds and hundreds of years ago is just crazy to me!  That’s so old, and they’re so out there and in the open for people to look at and touch and do whatever they want!  Kinda crazy but very cool.  Check it out:

Chillin' with Neptune

Me and Dave

Just ripped off Medusa's head

This dude can't keep the ladies off him!

"Anyone else have a problem with my beard?"

sweet hat

"Uncle! Uncle!"

Women: always causing drama...

"My ball!"

From the statue plaza, we walked over to the Uffizi, the famous Florencian art museum, and looked at even more incredible statues.  We didn’t actually go into the museum since it costs a good bit of money, but there’s a sort of outdoor corridor you can walk through without going in that's filled with statues of all the famous artists and writers and inventors from Florence, and it was cool to see all of them in marble form.  Here they are:

Leonardo Da Vinci

Dante Allighieri

Niccolo Macchiavelli

Amerigo Vespucci

Galileo Galilei

There were a bunch more, too--probably 20 or so--I just didn't recognize any of the other names...

After that we stopped by the market on the way home and picked up some pasta and veggies to make this awesome lunch:

Then we took a nap to recharge a bit, and when we woke up, we walked around the city for a while as the sun went down. When it got dark we started our search for somewhere nice to grab dinner, but all of the good-looking “ristorantes” with menus posted out front were just a bit out of our price range.  Just when we were getting ready to call it quits and head home and eat nutella and bread, we passed by this little alley and the blue neon sign called us in:

The menu was decently priced and we spent a solid 10 minutes staring at it on the little easel out front before finally committing to it and walking in.  Carolyn did the talking of course and we were seated at a table on a little platform in the middle of the whole place.  The ambiance was perfect: lots of stereotypical accordion music; the walls were decorated with pictures of Italian architecture and artwork; delicious smells of bread and wine and tomatoes filled the air.  Carolyn told me how to order in Italian and I opted for a dish of homemade pasta in a meat sauce mixed with the most flavorful cherry tomatoes I’ve ever had, while she got a super thick tomato/bean/something soup that was absolutely to die for.  We both ate every bite and scraped our bowls clean, then just sat there and talked and enjoyed the great setting for as long as we could:

We finally left around 10:30 and took the long, scenic way home, and when we got there we pulled our chairs up to the window again and had our wine with this magical view:

After our extremely busy day, we went to bed early (by college kid standards) and slept in the next morning.  Carolyn whipped up yet another awesome breakfast, shown here:

Ready for the day, we set out on another art-oriented excursion and started off at La Opera di Santa Croce, which has absolutely nothing to do with singing, but instead is the…wait for it…burial site of all the BIG BIG BIG Florencian artists.  Inside the building’s sacred halls, we were awed by the following tombs:

MICHELANGELO

DANTE

Inscribed on the tomb: "Here lies the highest poet"

MACCHIAVELLI

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Amidst the quiet reverence, Carolyn commented to me that each tomb gave her a different feeling when she looked into the eyes of each artist’s bust on top of their monument.  I tried it myself and it was true—you could really feel their presence inside you: Michelangelo’s was positive and by far the most powerful; Machiavelli made you kind of feel numb and neutral; Dante’s was dark and uncomfortable; and even though Leonardo’s actual tomb wasn’t there—just a plaque in his memory since he did so much for the city of Florence—you could definitely still feel him there, hovering around his mark.  It was a very powerful experience being in the presence of these great, epic artists, and one that I will take with me and remember for the rest of my life.  I just can’t believe they were all in the same place!  So cool!  And those four weren’t the only ones either—there were about fifteen others whose names I didn't recognize.  Check 'em out:

Once the spirit invasion got a little too creepy for us, we moved on to the rest of the church, which included an art museum, a leather school, and a beautiful courtyard.  Here are the pictures:

unbelievably expensive

Letter from Ronald Reagan: "Thanks for the handbag."
???

We spent a good two or three hours there, then left and made our way back to Carolyn’s side of town and stopped by a really cool leather market set up in a little plaza.  There were tons and tons of purses and wallets and belts and bags and everything you can imagine being made out of leather.  The whole place smelled SO good and finally we couldn’t resist anymore and decided to buy each other bracelets.  Here’s mine:

And then right next door to the leather market was a CHOCOLATE FESTIVAL, so we went from one great smell to an even better one!  We didn’t buy anything because it was WAY over priced, but we went from tent to tent and scooped up the free samples and loved every little bite.  This is what it looked like:

chocolate scissors?

It all looked so good!

From there, Carolyn walked me over to another Florence must-see: a statue of a wild boar whose nose you're supposed to rub for good luck.  Check it out:

At this point in the day we were pretty hungry, so we went back to her apartment and finished off yesterday’s leftovers, then went down to the market across the street and picked out lots of good, super fresh food to cook for our belated Valentine’s dinner that night.  We decided to go with a recipe from a cooking class that she took the first week she was there: mozzarella-covered eggplant to start off, then a tomato, spinach and carrot meat sauce over pasta with parmesan zuchinni and garlic bread for the main course.  We ran up quite a bill there at the market, but it was well worth it because we had a lot of fun cooking it all and nibbling along the way, and the final product was absolutely phenomenal!  I was just the veggie-chopping assistant, though, so I can’t take much credit for the taste, but if I can say one thing, it’s that what you put into a recipe is exactly what you get out!  The vegetables we used, the meat we picked, the olive oil we cooked with—the ingredients were as fresh as can be and it truly made all the difference.  Here’s what it looked like:

Our delicious apple-lemon cake for dessert!

After dinner we relaxed for a bit with our fat bellies, then decided to go out to a bar for drinks with her roommates.  We stayed out for maybe an hour, then came back kind of early so that we could get some sleep and seize as much of our last day together as we could…

We woke up Sunday morning and had YET ANOTHER awesome breakfast, seen here:

Spinach and onion eggs with bread and cake = Breakfast of Champions

The sky was dark and a grey fog clouded our view of the river, but we decided to grab an umbrella and head out into the city anyway since I only had a few hours left in this amazing.  We wandered around a couple street markets and stopped by a few jewelry shops and mingled here and there for a while, not really with any purpose in mind.  Carolyn took me to a really cool Bohemian-style coffee shop and we got the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had—“brownie batter in a cup” she called it—and that made the dreary day just a little better:

After hanging out there for a while, we walked back to her apartment and ate the delicious leftovers from the night before, then finished off the last of our wine in front of the window again.

At 6:15 I packed up my things and we started the walk to the train station.  It was a sad goodbye, but the weekend had been too perfect to be too upset…

On the whole, my first taste of Italy was fantastic and Florence especially impressed me very much.  The contrast of the Italian culture and architecture and food to everything else I’ve seen and experienced these past few weeks in Spain was extremely interesting and made me appreciate even more the tremendous opportunity I have here before me.  Spain will always have a special place in my heart, of course, but Italy was awesome in it’s own way and I’m extremely happy for Carolyn that her experience is so similar to mine in its greatness, but different at the same time.  I still have a hard time believing any of it's real, though: Valentine’s weekend in Florence? Are you kidding me?! It was a dream come true for both of us.

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Sorry for the delay in getting this up, but I've had a bit of school work this week and was pressed for time.    I'm in Weekend Mode now, though, so I can finally relax, and it looks like it's going to be BEAUTIFUL weather here this weekend (70 and sunny) so I might try to hit the beach.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Until then...

Much love to all.

C