Forget San Francisco, My Heart's Florentine

I remember now why when I was last here I chose this as my favorite city. Florence is wonderful. Its old city is enchanting, and blessedly modernized in its own creative ways. There really is no line between old and new like you find in most cities. Florence lives now, just like it lived 1000 years ago, just on a bigger scale.
A lot has changed since I was last here. Major restorations are being done all over the city, including the Pilazzo Vecchio and Dante’s house. They’re both wrapped up in construction, the Pilazzo covered in a precise grid of scaffolding. The David’s been fully restored, along with dozens of new-to-me Michelangelo paintings and 6 uncompleted sculptures.
Since it’s the low season, Tiff and I have been able to move at a more comfortable pace. We’re staying at the Ostella Santa Monaca (a youth hostel), which is a nice mix of rooms in an oddly-shaped building built in 1817. It’s quiet, which is surprising since there are so many beds here and most guests are under the age of 25. I think most of them are still out, though. They have two more hours before they’re not let back in.
I’m tempted to join them, but it’s cold and I’m tired. Besides, we leave on a night train at 11PM tomorrow, and somehow I don’t think I’ll be getting my required amount of sleep then.
Tomorrow’s a Monday, so like I told you already we had to fit a lot into today. We did a good job of it. When we arrived we came straight here and got our beds, then dashed back across the bridge and up to the Gallerie Del Accademia. Along the way we passed the beginnings of a Pinocchio festival, but it was still setting up and we wanted to make sure we got in to the Galleria. As it turns out, we had no trouble. There was no line whatsoever. Quite a change from my summer visit.
Since the Galleria was relatively crowd-free, we took our time and saw all the paintings. Michelangelo’s paintings were beautifully restored, with incredibly fine details like flower petals and silken veils visible for the first time. The unfinished statues guard the hall to the David like men pulling themselves free from marble coffins. The David, of course, stands in all his glory, naked as a jay bird. Seriously, though, it’s quite a feat of sculpture. Not only is it perfectly done (the scale is intentionally skewed, Michelangelo was big on that), it’s massive. Pictures don’t really give you an idea of the sheer height and mass of this slab of marble. The nice people at Stanford designed a “virtual David” during the restorations in 2003. It consists of a fully movable scan of the David with adjustable lights and 360 degree rotation. Details of the face, hands, arm, and leg are also part of the program, accessible by a series of buttons above the two billiard-sized balls that control the light and rotation. It’s pretty neat.
We contemplated David for about 20 minutes, the rest of the gallery totaled up around an hour, and then we set to seeing various outdoor sights, including a couple of the churches. We wanted to take today at a fairly leisurely pace since we found out most of what we’re really interested in will still be open tomorrow. The Uffuzi Gallery, which houses works by just about every Renaissance master you can name, won’t be, but we couldn’t have possibly dashed through it in our remaining hour anyway. So we shopped, reserved train tickets, and generally soaked in the city. Dinner was a tasty Marinara pizza from a little stop out of the Europe on a Shoestring book. That thing must be a best seller, by the way. I walked in to my 16 room bunk and saw no less than five guys sprawled out on their beds reading it. One Canadian sitting out on the steps discussed what a frustrating pile of useless information it was, and how that made it all the more miserable to depend on it through the journey. Such a companion is good for a paper weight and heavy weapon, anyway. The maps are terribly small, but the food guides are ok if you’re in a hurry. The 1-3 page treatment of major cities is rather frustrating and incredibly vague, but it’s not as glib a gloss-over as Rick Steves can be.
I think I still prefer Rick Steves if a book must be used, but if you don’t agree with him than his books are of no use whatsoever, since the hand-drawn maps are a joke and the content is as much opinion as fact. Sometimes he works in some rather amusing tales, though, which helps a little.
Anyway, I prefer a local guide or no guide, but guidebooks are a frustrating medium to rely on.
Back to Pinocchio. After we left the train station we wandered up toward the plaza it was on, just to see what it was all about. Low and behold, it was a Pinocchio modern ballet! It was a production of the one that seems to have swept all over Europe and left cute little souvenir Pinocchios in its stead. Anyway, it was really a fun musical, and the “stage” was great for pictures, so I took quite a few while enjoying the show.
We wandered through some more shops and down to the alleged best view of Florence. It was a great view, but the hike will kill anyone who’s tired ahead of time. It’s a few minutes out of town and zig-zag stairs all the way up. But, as you can see by more of my pictures, it’s worth the hike. The entire city is spread out below you, the wall wraps it up like a present, and the river glitters a reflection of it like a darkly glimmering ribbon. If it weren’t cold out, I could stay there all day.
Of course, I can’t tell you about Florence without mentioning the great Duomo. It’s hard to find the words for it, though. I was here before, so conjuring an original image isn’t as easy. They restored some of it in 2003 also (busy year!), and are still cleaning the north face of the church. It’s still beautiful, and it’s still amazing to think of how much marble is on that façade. Yes, it’s not solid marble, but that’s purely an engineering problem. You just can’t use solid marble for everything. The façade’s impressive enough anyway. 3 main colors of marble (red, white, & green) with variations in every piece. The Dome is Michelangelo’s prize work, one which became an ongoing project for most of his life. I don’t think we’ll be climbing it, we didn’t last time I was here either, but really I don’t see it being worth 3 Euros. Anyway, it’s meant to be admired, not climbed on.
The whole city is worth it, really. I love Florence, and now I know it’s not just my sparkling eyes speaking. I’ve been across a good bit of Europe, seen a good number of cities, and still love this one. Clean streets, nice people, beautiful architecture, and still a large enough city for a couple of dozen theatres and other arts to be available. There’s enough English to get by without Italian, but not so much English that it seems to have taken over. Yet.
Yes, I still sound star-struck, but I assure you it’s the honest-to-God truth. This is Florence. Come here, challenge my opinion. I promise you’ll leave just as in love with it, and feel just as torn as Dante and all the others at leaving it behind.