[INSIGHT TRAVEL - EUROPEAN GRANDEUR] - Nice, to Florence/Firenze

DAY 14/15 - SEPTEMBER 13-14, 2003
FLORENCE, ITALY - HOTEL MEDITERRANEO
ROOM 207 (2120H)

Florence in review, with a recap of the trip from Nice to Firenze via Pisa. Was recipient of the usual banter in French from Dmitri, asking if I slept well, and was able to reply "Oui, avec bon reves!" wtih a straight face.

First stop after being bustled out of the hotel was Fragonard -- the factory in Eze, the second after Grasse. A sweet little place, quite modern, and filled with all manner of scented stuff. Not just perfumes, but also soaps, bath salts and oils, lotions, facial care products and sachets. a truly incredible place. Mom and I bought ourselves sampler packs of perfume -- of course Mom got the biggest bottles she could get her hands on, while I settled for the next largest size -- mostly oriental scents and two florals.

From Fragonard, it was a brief stop at the French border -- where we encountered infrared flush sensors -- then off into Italy, just in a matter of seconds. Joe was prevailed upon to give us a lesson in Italian pronounciation, and then Lisa instituted a tunnel-counting contest. More than a hundred tunnels from the border to Firenze -- 151 until Pisa, and then one after Pisa. All quiet until the lunch stop, which was a good chance to stretch our legs. Thank heavens for all those eating sessions in Italianni's -- it was so nice to recognize what the food was! Got a lot of half-smiles from the folks with all the grazies, per favores, and whatever Italian vocabulary I could muster.

By some miracle I managed to stay awake counting tunnels from the lunch stop to Pisa. It was our longest drive yet -- we left the stop at about 1340H and pulled into Pisa at 1630H or something. Nearly three hours, non-stop : I could really relate to Dmitri's grimace as he flexed his accelerator pedal leg. The mere thought of doing what he did just boggles the mind.

Pisa was more crowded than I remembered. All the buses had to pull up into a central parking lot about five minutes' walk away from the square where the church compound is located. The site is just packed with hawker stalls now. Noisy, crowded with tourists. Rather a lot like Divisoria.

The church, baptistry and tower are cleaner now, though. In the afternoon light the buildings were positively glowing white, and it was lovely to look at. the tower doesn't tilt as much as it used to -- there is now an ingenious system in place to correct the tilt to about 1.3m off the vertical -- rather safer than its previous 4m offset. A series of cables and a sort of strap runs about the lower levels of the tower. Picture a girdle control top -- it works on the same principle. The cables are attached to a six-thousand pound counterweight, which then balances the tilt of the tower.

We bought a cover for our wing chair -- a map representing the entire region of Toscana or Tuscany, where Pisa and Firenze are located. with that in hand, we were all shepherded on the bus by a watchful LisaH, and then it was a nearly two-hour drive to the hotel.

The long day had certainly taken a lot out of the group. There seems to be a bug running around the Ozzie gang that appears to want to spread itself around the bus. Starting with Sharon in Paris, any number of people have been getting sick in one form or another. At any rate, the sight of dinner tonight didn't do much to improve our dispositions -- a weird vegetable and totally uninspiring viands. Ugh.

The room, however, was a comfort. Space-challenged, but I have a real bed again, separated from Mom and Dad's by a partition which is now doing double-duty as a shelf for all my stuff. As LisaH warned us, strange things started to happen when we tried to get settled in : first the key chain disassembled (the huge wooden piece with the room number fell on the floor while we were trying to get in), then something flaked off the aircon switch when Dad tried to adjust it. the shower divert doesn't work. Otherwise, it's a nice room.

(Side note : when going through Monaco, we noted that the royal flag was flying above the castle, meaning the Prince and his family were in residence. While on the shopping spree that got me a new golf cap and Dad a new shirt, the curtains moved and LisaH had us all waving at it. A hand waved back, but I wouldn't swear it was Prince Albert.)

This morning we were supposed to have our group photo -- but with three people unwell, we decided to defer it until the Lion Monument in Lucerne. So we took our own pictures, and then those taking the optional tour to the Accademia of Fine Arts got down to meet our city guide named Paola.

I have seen Michelangelo's David, and even if I never see another original sculpture again, I can rest content. The thing is just too awesome for words! If not for all the tourists, one could really get lost in contemplation of this masterpiece. Such careful attention to detail wrung out from a block of Carrara marble! And one that had already been worked on, mind you. This is one piece where you can really say that the stone lives.

From the Accdemia, we walked over to the piazza of the Duomo -- home of Sta. Maria della Fiore. There we reunited with the rest of the group and we got to enter the church -- with a breathtaking fresco decorating the dome, or rather, the inner dome. There's an outer dome which forms the roof, and in-between the inner and outer dome is a stairwell leading to the very top, for a literally breath-taking view of the city, assuming you have any breath left after climbing 460 steps to get there in the first place.

From the interior of the church we then scrutinized the Gates of Paradise, a magnificent hand-worked pair of bronze doors showing famous scenes out of the Old Testament in 12 hand-wrought panels. Among those I remember were the Creation and Fall, Abel and Cain, Noah's Ark, David killing Goliath, and Solomon and Sheba. Michelangelo decided to put in a little self-portrait on the door, together with one of his son. Snapped a close-up of that little details and then we were trotting off to the next piazza. The one with all those marvelous statues of Perseus beheading Medusa, by Cellini; the Rape of Persephone, the Rape of the Sabine Women, Hercules (one that Michelangelo said was good only for the pigeons to sit on -- he may have had a point, but then anything stood up next to the David would pale by comparison).

The Santa Croce church is undergoing heavy restoration at the moment, so the place was rather crowded. the church went partially underwater during the great flood of 1966 and even now some of the paintings are still in line for restoration work. Everyone who is someone appears to have either a tomb or a memorial or a plaque in this church! Galileo and Michelangelo stare at each other just inside the church doors. Saw the names of Enrico Fermi and Marconi, Machiavelli, Rossini, and Medicis everywhere.

Having soaked up our day's ration of culture, it was time for the very serious business of shopping. I can now, as of this writing, proudly state that I bought a whole new set of jewelry -- necklace, earrings, ring and bracelet -- for under USD 300.00. Naturally, Ma spent a lot of our money on her jewelry, which means we'll not be doing any more heavy-duty shopping until Lucerne, I suppose. We actually found ourselves in the shop that she always manages to visit whenever she's on a European tour that goes through Florence; the staff remember her, how awesome is that?

I also prevailed on Ma to buy me a new carry-on bag -- one that's got proper wheels and a proper handle for maneuvering through hotel corridors. Managed to find a decent one for USD 50 and brought it back to the hotel in triumph. It was one very happy repacking session that followed! So all is now in order, and my little world is content.