２００８年 ３月８日 Florence!
we should go to Florence on a day trip.
(My husband was away for a Film Festival up north so I guess
we felt sort of left behind.)
We rushed to the station and took the first Eurostar available.
The train was packed with tourists from the States and Japan.
Our travel companions on the train
were two very nice art students from the States.
We set off immediately to the Duomo, skimming through the flow of tourists.
Grey, white and light ochre buildings with brown or dark green shutters
lined the streets.
The colors were so different compared to Rome!
The Duomo greeted us with its white, pink and green marbles.
My son was quite impressed by its beauty and
wanted to continue to walk around it.
At a certain point we interrupted our circling of the Duomo
attacted by the narrow streets to the right.
We followed a nice smell of good things to eat
and found ourselves at the entrance of a vaulted alley.
The wall had a small opening with a wooden ledge.
We discovered it was a small kitchen that sells
sandwiches with trippa!
Right next to the trippa sandwich vendor we found the entrance to
the church where Dante's beloved, Beatrice lays...
and then we ended up in front of the medieval house supposedly Dante Alighieri's.
My son, who is actually named Dante, seemed quite ok with this Dante thing
all around town, he seemed quite satisfied to know that this poet is really important.
The Bargello Museum which I wanted to see was already closed.
(My son was happy about that, he still gets bored in museums...)
The building looked like a smaller Palazzo Vecchio and very medieval.
The crumbly dark medievalness of the walls, the crusty red roof tiles,
the narrow alleys and small churches is something you start to crave for after years in Rome,
where everything in the city center is so sumptuously Baroque.
After a short tour of the Science Museum
where an interesting temporary exhibit on Galieo's telescopes was held,
we visited Palazzo Vecchio, which seemd to be the only museum open after six.
Being the eighth of March, Women's Day in Italy, I got in for free.
Computers were placed strategically in the halls
so that you could browse the interesting cd-roms that
explained the history of the palace.
They were easy to understand and graphically well-made.
We learned what sort of ideological program influenced
the selection of the statues that adorn the main plaza,
how they transported the gigantic statue of David, etc.
The view of the Santa Croce quarters in the early evening twilight was breath-taking.
At about six-thirty we hurried back to the alley near Dante's house
to get our trippa sandwiches.
There was no trippa left so tried the lampredotto, which is another part
of the cow's stomach.
We asked the vendor not to soak the bread too much in the gravy
since we had to eat it on the train.
At seven we were back at the station, both happy at how the day turned out.
The lampredotto sandwich was really tasty!
We wondered how the sandwich would have been with the bread
completely soaked in that wonderful gravy.
