Like Summer in Tuscany

Above the hill overlooking the city of Florence.

Riding a train from Roma to Florence was easy.  Except that we were left behind by our train. Like in a movie scene where one was running tens of meters behind an accelerating train, sprinting hard to catch its rail… In real life and in our case – we ran as fast as we could but we failed to catch the train!

Booking the next train seemed painful but there was a simple lesson there.  Don’t buy a ticket 10 minutes before departure!

After an hour, we boarded our more patient train. The ride was easy, the train clean and fast and the country-side view compensated for my ‘pain’.   It was not long before we arrived in the station. 

Disembarking with my 20-kg bag, I started navi-guessing and this time, given relatively smaller city– I found it so much easier to navigate around.  Our yet-another-mysterious hostel, do not have signage but a mere building number. We buzzed in an old building when we saw a floor that bore the hostel’s name ‘Leonard’.  It seemed like, few of the rooms and floors of the old building were rented as hostel.  Probably a common practice in Europe.  Why build a hotel when you can rent a building floor, right?

The room was old but wasn’t bad.  Its toilet has a vintage mechanical flush which was functional and looks cool. We settled down, changed clothes and prepared for a stroll-out.  It seemed for me that Italian in general, and specially in Firenze – people make an extra effort to dress up unlike a typical New Yorker.

Near our hotel was an old cathedral (Santa Maria Novella?)

And this city would not fail a tourist in a shopping tour, a restaurant tour or what it offered best – ‘visita Iglesia’!  There were several big cathedrals to visit and admire.  The oldest one sits very near our hostel and so we checked out that one first.  We went around the city for the remaining of the afternoon, and visiting the bigger Duomo was not optional in our list.

Majestic Duomo - Cathedral of Florence.

I find the Duomo really impressive both in size and architecture. The glory days of Florence are easily seen by a flaunt of such magnificent creation.  Not getting enough of it, we went back at night time and took fantastic photos of this cathedral.

Next day’s affair would be a trip to one of the popular accidental-wonder in architecture and engineering.

From the train station, we took a ride to Pisa.  Not surprisingly, visiting the leaning tower was one of the primary reasons of many tourists to stop by Florence – as evidenced by the hundreds of people riding the train.  And later, the same people blocking a what-could-have-been-a-picture-perfect shot of the tower.

Disembarking the train, navigating to the site was easy by simply following the flow of the crowd.  One just hoped that the first group didn’t get low grades in their map reading course.  The site was easily reached by walking from the train.  After buying the tickets, we entered the old park which apparently housed several structures and the tower being just one of them.  The smallest in size, in fact.  We first toured the other structures to hopefully thin out the tower’s crowd.  Which did not.  I noticed that another dome structure seemed to also lean on one side, but nothing significant unlike a vertically-oriented tower.

Leaning on the leaning tower of Pisa.

Walking to the leaning tower, I first immersed myself with its intriguing story.  Its accidental misfortune to ‘lean’ on one side made it famous.  Not architecturally ingenuous nor functionally sound – just the fact that it survived its own demise by clinging on…  Of course, after a few strengthening intervention to keep it from falling further. There are grand structures in the world that made them special or great wonders.  While the tower was an intrigue and an entertainment, it was not one of those that carried magic.  Just ‘something different’.

I also found it visually small than expected.  Perhaps echoing the feeling that it was not really as grand as it should be.  But nevertheless, it was good fun.

Fun to take a leaning photo with the leaning tower.  You could see people all around taking various stupid shots of themselves in various poses.  And not wanting to be left behind, we did our own leaning versions…  From pretending to push the ‘falling tower’, to leaning backward to mimic reclining on a wall, among other things.

By afternoon, we were back in Firenze.  A quick rest in our old room and then back in downtown to cherish the city light at night. 

Next day, our last day in the city - scored higher in terms of wow moment.  Not that we were not wowed enough, but just pleasantly more. After breakfast, we walked towards the river passing by Museo Galileo and crossed one of the bridges. The bridges were usually busy with souvenir stalls selling jewelries and all kind of souvenirs.  Why waste precious space, right?

On the other side was the Forte di Belvedere.  We walked the gentle uphill section under under a nice bright sunny day.  Late winter in the Tuscan region may be cool, but not uncomfortably cold.  With layers, we sweated a tiny bit before halting for a quick rest.  Just the right time when this street performer was making giant balloons from his long double stick apparatus.  While it has nothing to do with the place’s history or Italy for that matter, it didn’t fail to impress us.  Balloons of different shapes and sizes filled the air reminding one that life could sometimes be bubbly, relaxed or just suddenly easily beautiful- gliding through life in a perfect weather and gentle wind…

Resuming our walk, we passed by a small ruin – a tower of some sort.  I guess that the cue that we were entering the old fort.   We walked even more uphill reaching the top with sweaty underarm and faster heartbeat.  The hill-top structure, although modern-looking was the old fort – and it offered a spacious restaurant and souvenir shops behind it.  We chose the highest open area to sit down, and to drink a nice Italian coffee.

The highlight was the view!  From our vantage point, the entire city of Florence – in a bright sunny sky, offered itself for a spectacular ‘show’.  Tall structures mostly cathedral domes or towers treaded above the city skyline making their presence known – like some over-active grade schoolers raising their hands on every question asked by a picky teacher.

In my whole Italian episode, this was the best city view that I’ve witnessed.  Although Rome and Venice have their own set of allure, or more so the romantic appeal of Venice – getting a proper hill-top view brought Florence on top of the list.  Seeing Florence and its structures up-close was one thing, but admiring her beauty from a distance was something else.  It might have helped that a river flowed on its edge, or the right set of clouds hovered in the horizon, or perhaps its monumental structures dominated the cityscape – making it look picture-perfect.

Peeling away from a perfect view was hard.  Even the coffee didn’t taste as good as it was.  But we have a tour to do and a view to be left behind.  One can’t simply freeze time and admire a beautiful thing forever.

We walked around and down the hill towards the Boboli Gardens.  Plants and flowers of different kinds decorated the huge garden.  Being in a new world where taking pictures became a necessity – we stopped by every nice-looking nook to smell the flowers and take pictures.

It was a good stroll, although not the highlight of the day. It was also a convenient pass-through back to town so we didn’t have to retrace our steps to the hill top.

A good day’s walk deserved a reward.  Back in town, we stopped by a gelato shop.  Seated, still wearing thin smile on our lips – we licked and savored our creamy ice cream reminiscing the very recent hill-top experience…  Remembering that spectacular scenery while feeling grateful for the luck, the opportunity or for the blessing of being in such a pretty place.

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