Chapter 25: Round Two

So today we went back to Florence. It was actually much improved the second time. We started with just wandering through some streets as Lisi excitedly relived (out loud) her class trip (“Oh yeah! So then we went down this street where we found…”) and I much more mellowly eyed the designer outfits that people who know me often think I don’t eye, but let me break it to you once and for all—I’m a sucker for those designer outfits. Ah, Italia. Love the boots. But anyway. Back to Florence.

We stopped in a little café across the river where I got the best caffe macchiato I’ve had yet. Remember, this is Italy. And I’ve been having like three macchiatos a day (sshhh…). So that’s really saying something. It was PERFECT.

From there we found the church of Santo Spirito. It looked like a cardboard cutout. A do-it-yourself, glue-by-number church kit that the Florentines picked up at the local Hobby Lobby (which there isn’t one, by the way). Behind the cardboard church was a crazy homeless guy who started belting out an Italian song at the top of his lungs the first time I walked by. Not to me, I might clarify, just to the world in general, which, in that part of Florence, mostly consists of a bunch of back walls. The second time we walked by he began yelling things in indiscernible English. Again, not to us, but more to the pavement.

On the way back towards familiarity we stopped in a little art supply store which wasn’t too different from an American one, but it’s art supplies, so of course I got really excited for about twenty minutes and then purchased a lovely portable watercolor box which left me in a state of glee for the rest of the day. In fact I’m still really excited about it now. I hope to test it tomorrow. Lugging around TUBES of paint while on the international go just doesn’t cut it, man. And those silly little Prang boxes make me want to hurl a boulder at them thanks to the colors they produce. But again I digress rather far from the topic at hand, uh… Florence.

We next decided to shell out the €6 to climb to the tope of the tower by the Duomo. 414 steps and worth every one of them. Florence is amazing from above. Weather-wise it was a splotchy day, which actually makes for the most beautiful views. The mottled sunlight hits the rusty hues of the town at random, indiscriminately shining the spotlight on some, leaving others softly under shadow. All of Florence is colored in oranges and yellows, beiges and reds with red tiles roofs sprinkled over everything as though they were stacked dishes waiting for sorting. The surrounding hills were almost glowing in the rainy sunlight. A sea of luminous green cradling an orange city.

My favorite thing about the Italian countryside is the randomly organized variety. Over here is a clump of olive trees, over there a tangle of some other bush, there a neat row of cypress, here an orderly orchard grid, the trees perched in well behaved lines like fat balls lined up across the hill, there the wild untamed forest. The seamless interplay between the cultivated and the rogue, the thoughtfully-placed and the random, is what makes the country so beautiful here.

Well sheesh, that was poetic. Back to my more casual tone.

From the tower we made our way over to the church of Santa Croce, which had been recommended to us and is a popular tourist spot because several pretty cool dead guys are buried there and thus it’s a convenient way to kill eight birds with one stone, so to speak. Yeah, I just made up the number eight. Don’t read too much into it. Nor into killing birds with stones for that matter. Anyway. Unfortunately winter time is restoration time, and every single place we’ve been has been undergoing repairs. This was no exception. Today was “Dismantling the Scaffolding” day at Santa Croce church. Thus you walk in, and between the hammering and the crashing and the dust and the tarps and the ropes and workers, you feel more like you’re in a downtown construction zone than a stately tomb-filled church. But we saw Dante, we saw Michelangelo (yay!), we saw Leo da Vinci (well we think, but various placards confused us).

Next we walked to Lisi’s favorite place in Florence, a church up at the top of a hill above the Piazza di Michelangelo. The view from up there was phenomenal. Do I really have to keep clarifying that? I mean has there been a single time when I’ve gone, “Yeah, we looked out over the whole valley and thought ‘meh, I’ve seen better…’? Has there? My point exactly.­

The church was really neat too. Not your typical set up. (An interjection from the omnipotent voice of the future: It was to be the last church I was really able to appreciate. I think it sent me over the edge. After that I was basically like, “Alright, show me one more cathedral and I may pass out from an overdose of stately and awe-inspiring.”)

We watched some Italian guys posing in front of the church for a picture and managed to sneak a picture of our own. Man, they were hilarious. I have never in my life seen anyone who thinks more of themselves or takes themselves more seriously. Ahahaha. Oh, we also wondered about the fact that we saw about four different guys who all looked almost identical. Actually it was more like me wondering about the fact that the same guy kept popping up everywhere we looked. He was omnipresent or something. Took me a while to figure out what on earth was going on. Finally it dawned on us. Ooooh, it’s a group of Dutch kids who all look exactly the same, not a glitch in the Matrix, I get it.

And after that it was about time for us to head back to the train station. I wanted to make a detour to see if I could find that pasticceria where I had gone with Vanya so I could get some torrone to bring back with me. Funnily enough I did find it. Wow. Didn’t realize I had a sense of direction.

We went home from there. Had a terrifying moment in which we were convinced that we were on entirely the wrong train and had been for the past hour, then suddenly found ourselves in Arezzo where we met the Sada Sats, got a gelato on the way home, and managed to make it a late night before a rainy morning.