We checked out of Olga’s House in Florence on Saturday morning. The train to Venice was not leaving for a few hours, so we checked our bags at the Santa Maria Novella train station. With our loads lightened, we headed for a quick tour of the Bargello - originally built as a police station, made into a prison, and now a quiet museum containing works by Donatello, Verrocchio, and Michelangelo. The entrance opens up to a nice open-air courtyard:
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No photos allowed inside, and although small by comparison, the museum contains two rooms of important works. One room contains one of the first Davids of the Renaissance - by Donatello. This version originally stood in the Medici palace when Michelangelo came to live there. This room also contains a David by Verrocchio. Both versions are smaller in stature and depict David as a young boy. The other room contains a David by Michelangelo that seems unfinished. Hard to describe in words, it's amazing how these earlier versions pale in comparison to the one in the Accademia.
Leaving the Bargello, we crossed the Ponte Vecchio for a walk on the other side of the Arno River (Oltrarno part of Florence). As we approached the Ponte Vecchio, we spotted a couple taking their wedding pictures along the bank of the river:
The Ponte Vecchio is lined with shops, so we peeked in a few.
Near the Pitti Palace, we found a plaque that indicated Dostoevsky lived in an apartment nearby while writing The Idiot. I was extremely excited, as I read this book a couple years ago during my Russian author phase.
After a morning of walking and shopping, we stopped at a restaurant called 4 Leoni (or 4 Lions) on Via Vellutini in the small Piazza della Passera. It filled up quickly with locals. The best experiences are those that have a more genuine, less touristy feel. A cute young waitress who spoke some English served us. On a side note, it seems everyone in Italy under the age of 50 is thin and beautiful.
For antipasti, we ordered prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella. The fresh buffalo mozzarella in Italy is delicious, and we indulged in it several times on the trip. Reed ordered rigatoni pomodoro basilica, which is a tomato/basil pasta dish. I had tagliato, which was a delicious marinated sirloin steak served medium rare.
Once sufficiently stuffed, we walked around Oltrano a bit more. The time for our Venice train was quickly approaching. Reed wanted to go up a large hill to take pictures. I agreed to spend 10 minutes on this endeavor, insisting we go to the train station immediately after. The 10 minutes turned into 20, because we discovered the part of Florence that includes the Boboli Gardens. Unfortunately, we had no time to walk in the gardens, but they looked beautiful from the outside. We will definitely go to this part of Florence when we make it back to Italy someday.
The race was on to get back to the Santa Maria Novella train station. We still had to claim our checked bags before we could catch our train to Venice. Racing to the counter, we were pleased to find no line. Bags in hand, racing to find our platform we see our train is running late. All that running and nagging Reed to rush was for naught.
We arrived in Santa Lucia train station in Venice without incident. After stopping at the Bancomat for some Euro, we bought 3-day passes to the vaporretti. A vaporetto is a boat that takes you on the canals of Venice, like a bus or small metro train would in any other city. We rode the #82 vaporetto to the Valleresso stop to go to Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square). Without our guidebook we would never have known which stop to get off at, as none of the signs indicated that Valleresso was the San Marco stop.
Venice is not quite the place I envisioned; I expected the very beautiful images I saw in movies like “Dangerous Beauty.” Most of the buildings have dirty or peeling facades and many are uninhabitable due to flooding. The canals are busy with several types of boats (vaporetti, traghetti, and water taxis.) Upon arriving in Piazza San Marco, it was obvious that Venice is a tourist town. The square was extremely crowded.
We made our way to our room, which was only a block off the square at the Hotel ai do Mori.
We were buzzed into the building and ascended a narrow marble stairway followed by a narrow carpeted stairway. We reached a small office and waited behind a mother/daughter duo of backpackers. Then we were helped by an Italian man with a large, fresh bandage over his left ear…impossible not to wonder what the story was. He checked us in slowly, as he clearly needed reading glasses which his pride would not permit. Instructed to do so, we climbed two more flights of carpeted stairs to our room. In case you are unaware, Italy is essentially a long series of stairs with fantastic art and history along the walls.
Our room was small, but clean. The wooden furniture was a light aqua color that reminded me of dollhouse furniture.
After showers, we decide to have a nice dinner at a restaurant with a high Zagat rating called, Antica Pignone.
At Antica Pignone we are seated in a large dining room alone. From our vantage point we can see a small private room filled with a party of Japanese businessmen ordering lots of wine. The wine list is 30+ pages, with easily ¾ of the selections costing more than 300 Euro and several of them as much at 10,000 (for real). Reed said the restaurant is considered by Wine Spectator to have one of the best wine lists in the world. We share a caprese salad for antipasti and tagliatelle for primi. We settled on a Villa Novare Valpolicella Classico Supreme Ripasso 2004 – which was considerably less than 10,000 Euro! My dinner of sea bream and Reed’s of prawns were decent, but not great. The meal becomes our running joke after we pay 216 Euro for completely average food and insufficient service. After dinner and short walk in the square, we turned in.
Day 2 Venice, Sunday, May 13 and Festa de Mama (Mother’s Day)
We woke up early to attend the 10am Gregorian mass at St. Giorgio’s across the water. An ancient, slightly deaf friar named Guiseppe was talking to an extremely excited American teenager about the church. We planned on taking a picture with Giuseppe, but the conversation between him and the nice girl from Washington State went on seemingly forever.
The mass was a fairly normal Catholic mass, just in Italian and with a few Latin parts. Being touted as a Gregorian mass, we expected hear beautiful chanting in singing. It turns out that not all those in the Gregorian order have beautiful voices. Minus the language difference, the mass was just like those we attend in Atlanta.
After mass, we went to the Accademia museum which I LOVED. Many of the paintings by some of the greatest Renaissance artists were hanging on the walls with no case or other protection from the public. I put my face right up to a Titian and examined the brushstrokes. If you like Renaissance art, this museum is for you.
Outside the Accademia, we had pizza:
On the Accademia Bridge outside the museum, Reed and I called our moms to wish them a Happy Mothers Day. We had to wait until it was late enough, as we were 6 hours ahead in Italy.
We decided to walk back to the hotel, and on the way, we came across a puppeteer performing a show:
And a video:
And another video:
And witnessed a gondola traffic jam:
and a prime gathering point:
We made it back to the busy St. Mark's Square:
And decided to sit at one of the outdoor cafes - where we knew the prices would be steep, but the view and people watching unmatched. Candice ordered a berry drink and Reed a beer - which came with olives and chips on a silver platter and included an 8 Euro cover charge for the band playing behind us. Here's our 32 Euro order:
Yes - that's totally outrageous - but it was really nice to be able to sit there in the courtyard after walking around all morning and be able to watch all the people and listen to the music.
We got some good pictures of the tower:
and each other:
So, as we're sitting there, we're watching various people feeding the pigeons with feed sold by vendors on the square. The pigeons are EVERYWHERE and are very aggressive with anyone who looks like they have anything they can eat. After thinking about it for a while, Reed decided that we couldn't leave Venice and not feed the pigeons. Here are some pics:
And a video:
To bring down our cost of dinner average after last nights wallet-buster, we just had sandwiches at a nearby place - nothing special. We ended the day just walking around the many sidewalks and canals looking into windows and watching the people.
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