Ponte Vecchio

At the Ponte Vecchio we admired the quiet Arno under the surprisingly warm February sun. It was time to partake in nutella gelati, another Italian specialty along with sculpture whose human form serves a paragon for modern-day beauty, ribollita that can covert the staunchest vegetarian, and churches that humble the most cynical and critical of non-believers. For nine euros we indulged in gelati as we made our way back to the Duomo, the site which injects the city with life.

Piazza della Signoria

In San Lorenzo we visited the Piazzo del Mercato Centrale, church of San Lorenzo and Cappelle Medici as we made our way to San Marco to see Michelangelo’s “David” at the Galleria dell’ Arcademia.  With age comes a degree, one would hope, of sophistication and greater appreciation for the finer things in life; indeed, I was overwhelmed by David’s “largeness”… his five-meter-long frame chiseled from one massive piece of marble.  In the corridor leading to his form are sculptures in varying stages of completeness, informative for a dim viewer of the challenge in shaping a single piece of marble into a shape that would make Olympic athletes seethe with envy. 

From the Palazzo del Bargello in Santa Croce, we made our way to what I described to M as Florence’s open-air museum, the Piazza della Signoria.  The Palazzo Vecchio looms over the plaza, but the sculpture collection is the highlight of the piazza.  Having just seen “David,” it was amusing to see his twin, a fake replica, beside the Neptune fountain.

Santa Maria del Fiore

Just as the Leaning Tower seems to lean closer to the earth than it did ten years ago, the Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence’s Duomo) is even grander than I remembered.  After visiting sleepy Pisa, we were struck by the energy of Florence even in February.  Nowhere in our travels did we hear so many American accents, many of whom belonged to study-abroad students. Every street, church, sculpture, museum we came across there were herds of American study-abroad students nearby usually smoking or drinking but sometimes studiously drawing and reading.  Only a few hours after arriving in Florence we met two American study abroad students from my undergraduate alma mater studying in Florence. Go figure.

“We paid twelve euros for the pleasure of climbing four-hundred-and-fourteen steps to the top of the Campanile (Giotto’s bell tower at the Duomo)… don’t you think they should be paying us?” was how M psyched himself up before we climbed the Campanile.  From inside the Campanile, we viewed all of Florence: the San Lorenzo to the north and the Boboli Gardens to the south with the city sprawling east and west.