Flo-Ro

 

  My father once jumped off the bell tower in Florence. Actually it was a reproduction of the bell tower and it was in Boston, not Florence. He landed in a net held by his fellow fire department trainees. He had been made to jump so he would empathize with people in burning buildings he might be asking to jump.

  Ever since my father showed me the tower, I've wanted to see the original in Florence which I got to do on our recent Venice-Florence-Rome tour.  After our stay in Venice, our tour group of 17 and our director Sabra boarded a bus for the two hour drive to Florence. 

   Our bus was too big to unload on the narrow street in front of our hotel, so we walked a few minutes from a plaza to check in to our hotel while our bags were shuttled over in a van. After checking our room's bathroom facilities, we immediately hiked 15 minutes downtown, passing the museum where Michelangelo’s statue David is on display. We saw an exact copy of the statue downtown so we were able to skip the museum.

  Sabra suggested we have lunch before our tour of the old city center began. I was amused to watch a waitress sweeping pigeons off the outdoor tables the way we sweep crumbs off a tablecloth. In fact the pigeons were there for the crumbs.

  The central plaza is dominated by the Duomo cathedral. Elena, our lively Florence guide, told us this massive church was built in the Middle Ages to impress Florence’s enemies. I’d grown ho-hum about these gigantic Italian churches but this one was special. Maybe it was the beautiful pink, green, and white facade or the huge dome, the largest dome ever made of brick.

  We moved on to the statues of mighty men vanquishing with swords or clubs other mighty men. Elena said the message of these statues to visitors back in the day was, don’t even think of messing with Florence. We continued our walk along the Arno River, past the Uffizi Museum, ending at San Croce Church where Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli are buried. There's a large statue of Dante out front, but just as he was exiled from his beloved Florence in his lifetime, so he is buried up the road in Ravenna.

  Actually, the tour ended not at San Croce but at a leather store. Florence is famous for leather. We were taught how to tell great leather from not so great. The price tag can lie. Teresa was given the opportunity to model a jacket. The group approved, but Teresa is too practical to drop €500 on a jacket with limited options for wearing it. Now if she had found the jacket in a thrift store...

Christmas is coming 

  That evening the group walked to a restaurant near the hotel for a typical Florentine meal. Another tour group was sitting nearby. They were loud and rowdy and one them was making out with their waiter. Our group was primed to hoot and holler too, but we were all sitting at smaller tables while the rowdy group was at a long communal table. That was an interesting insight.

  Next day most of the group went off to the hill town of San Gimignano. Since we were only going to be in Florence for one full day Teresa and I opted to stay in town. We walked back down to the Duomo. We inspected all the classical statues under the large open portico. There was a sign to tell us who was who.

  We wandered through the leather market, past the pig you rubbed for luck, and across the Ponte Vecchio, the Old Bridge. The bridge has always had shops along its sides, butchers, bakers, and such. But nowadays the shops sell mostly souvenirs and jewelry.

  After a late lunch we returned to the hotel to relax. Later I went out and bought sandwiches for supper in the room. We just needed enough to make it to the great continental breakfast at the hotel. After breakfast  we walked to the plaza where our bus waited. It was a sunny morning and we walked along with kids being escorted to school by their parents.

  It was a three hour ride to Rome. As we got closer to the center, Sabre pointed out the various iconic sites of ancient and medieval Rome. And then the greatest icon of them all came into view, the Colosseum. The bus dropped us off then drove off to some distant bus lot. Sabra gave us an hour for lunch before our tour of the Colosseum. "Don't all go to the same restaurant," she said. "Pay your bill when your food comes." Service in Italy is efficient except when it comes to getting the bill.

  We headed up a side street and found a place making their pasta in-house. We knew we had chosen well when Sabra showed up to have her lunch here too. After lunch we met our guide Michele. Michele was great. He had a colorful book and every so often would say "Look at me." He'd point out the current sad state of the Colosseum then show us a picture of what the place looked like in its glory days.

  Michele had all the interesting facts about the place. The Colosseum held 80,000 spectators. It had giant awnings for shade. These sail-like shades were managed by sailors who kept them from flying off in the wind. The main forms of entertainment were gladiator fights, executions of criminals by starved lions, tigers and bears, and execution of animals by gladiators. No Christians were killed in the Colosseum. They were killed in a different place. 

  Admission to the Colosseum was free but you had to have a ticket. Good idea for crowd control. Before the movie Gladiator, tourists like us could get into the Colosseum for free. But the movie attracted the mobs and now there's an entry fee. Modern crowd control. The real gladiators were not all criminals. It was a career choice for many. The fights were more like in World Wrestling Entertainment than fights to the death, though an occasional gladiator might be killed. Probably the guy nobody liked.

No introduction needed 

  After the Colosseum Michele led us to the Forum, a maze of ruins and intact buildings. Many of these old temples and even parts of the Colosseum had been dismantled for use in other buildings in the centuries after the fall of Rome. The temples that survived were those that had been repurposed as churches when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 A.D. Talk about repurposing a message of peace and love.

  The following morning, a Friday, we got up early for our 8:00 tour of the Vatican. This was really the highlight of the tour for me. Sadly I forget the name of our guide. I'll call her Maria for now. She had black curly hair and she did an excellent job. Like Michele, she had a little flag on a pole so we could always find her if we strayed. We assembled in the drizzle alongside the tall sloping walls of Vatican City. We were surrounded by crowds of fellow tourists and pilgrims.

  Vatican City at 120 acres is the smallest nation in the world. My friend Steve's tree farm is just as big. Through much of its history, this place was a big deal. The pope could bend the kings of Europe to his will. Some popes led armies on campaign. Some popes sent other armies to Jerusalem to wreak havoc on Muslims and Jews. Nowadays, the pope's power is more of the spiritual kind, which may prove most important after all.

  I'm a do-it-yourself kind of tourist, but having a guide in the Vatican to get us through the convolutions of entry was a wise idea. We kept having to pass through security checkpoints, showing our admission QR code while following Maria's flag  I'm surprised they didn't ask to see my St Joseph tattoo.

  We moved into another world when we passed from the admissions area into the actual museum. The museum was started by the pope in the 1500s and is now the second most visited art museum in the world after the Louvre. The first hall we passed was lined with statues and shelves loaded with parts of statues. We continued through halls filled with paintings and tapestries and more sculptures, sometimes crossing through gardens with more sculptures until we finally ended in the Sistine Chapel which is in its own building.

Vatican rule: Throw nothing away

  The Sistine is the pope's private chapel though I don't know when he would have any privacy there. The place is dimly lit and is supposed to be silent but there's a constant murmer which the guards try to tamp down. And no photos of course. Who needs photos of paintings imprinted in the brain of everyone with the least interest in art. There are no tourists during the days when the world's cardinals gather in the Chapel to elect a new pope.

  The crowds are drawn to the chapel by Michelangelo's frescos on the ceiling and walls. My cousin who was a design teacher in Chicago and who has been to Rome many times warned me about fresco neck, so I concentrated on the Last Judgement on the wall. There I found another good warning. We could have stayed as long as we wanted but when our group left after 20 minutes we were ready to go with them.

  Next stop was St Peters Square, the open area that leads to the Basilica of St Peter. People think St Peter's is the main church of the Catholic Church. St Peter's is rather the main church of Vatican City. The nearby Basilica of St John Lateran is Catholicism's ecumenical mother church. I used to wonder what the feast of St John Lateran every November was all about. I learned just a few years ago that it's to celebrate the dedication of the church way back in 324 A.D. I think I stick with the church because I appreciate its sense of tradition.

  We entered Peter's Basilica. Its size alone would give it five stars. A lack of pews increases the sense of vastness. There's a red carpet down the center running to the altar that only the pope can walk on. This must be annoying for workers trying to get from one side of the church to the other. Maria pointed out Michelangelo's Pieta. You're lucky, she said. It was under wraps until a couple of days ago. Then she pointed out an ugly chair on the altar. You're really lucky today. That's the pope's ivory chair. The Holy Roman Emperor gave it to him in the eleventh century. It's usually hidden from view but the area they hide it in is being worked on so they put the chair on the altar.

  The tour was finally over a little before noon. Time to hit the Vatican coffee shop. The place was surprisingly uncrowded. We sipped coffee and recovered our 21st century bearings. Sabra announced the bus was ready to take us back to the hotel. The hotel was only three miles away and the sun was out so Teresa and I opted to walk back. 

  There's extra construction in Rome now because next year is a Jubilee year. Every 25 years the church celebrates a year for forgiveness. Pilgrims come from all over the world so the city needs to be spiffed up. We wanted to walk to the Castel San Angelo next to the Vatican, but the bridge was covered in scaffolding. No worries. The Romans try to make a place at least partly accessible even as workmen clean the statues on the bridge.

  The Pantheon was next along our route. This is an ancient Roman building with an enormous dome that became a church. Just then a heavy rain began. We ducked into a cafe for a bowl of hot spaghetti bolognese. The shower soon passed and we continued on to the Trevi Fountain. Now we were in full tourist mode. The fountain was turned off for repairs, but there was a bridge across the fountain for our inspection. But the line for the bridge stretched a couple of blocks so we continued out of the tourist zone.

  It was now gelato time. Sabra had told us to avoid shops offering puffy mounds of gelato. It's mostly air she said. We found a shop where the server was digging deep to bring up the good stuff. Very tasty. We were only a mile from our hotel. I plugged the hotel name into Google maps and after a mile we were at a hotel with a name similar to our hotel's, but not exactly the same. Teresa was a good sport about it. After all, what's another mile after you've already gone six.

  That night the group boarded the bus and we traveled across the river to an old style restaurant. This was our farewell dinner and we were sitting at a long table like we wished we had in Florence. There was plenty of wine and good food and several musicians serenaded us.  It was a good chance to chat with some of the group we hadn't really gotten to know. Tomorrow everyone would head for the airport and home. Buon viaggio amici!!

Happy Birthday to our token Canadian!!