A short walk toward the Ponte Vecchio, where K&D split off from us older folk. Admired the shops on the bridge, mostly selling fine jewelry. Lots of tour groups, but not really overcrowded. Tour guides must get awfully tired arms from holding their signs up in the air all day long. Everybody in one group was equipped with an identical short-range walkie-talkie or perhaps it was a cell phone. We suspect these were for making panic calls to the guide when lost. (We learned later from Bruce’s cousin Joan that such devices are also employed on tours to permit the hearing-challenged participants to tune into the guide’s descriptions.)
Stop for Euros at an ATM. Bruce's credit union card was refused, but the one from our bank in NH worked fine, and we had made sure that there were adequate funds in both before we left. Nice lunch at a cafeteria style place on the square opposite the famous bell tower and the outdoor replica of Michaelangelo's statue of David. Lasagna, pasta, beer, wine, and delicious fruit salad.
Then to the Duomo. Huge, very ornate and colorful on the outside. They don't make lenses wide enough to capture it in one shot, but you can get the picture from the video. Scaffolding around the back as part of what we took to be a continuous process of keeping the walls cleaned. Quite plain on the inside, especially after Siena, though with very ornate paintings in the dome. Hell, fire, upside-down people in torment around the bottom, rising to much better things as one moved toward the top.
Across the square from the Duomo were the 15th century gilded bronze doors to the baptistery. During the 20 foot flood of 1966 the bronze panels became dislodged and floated away, all to be subsequently recovered from the mud a year or so later, cleaned, repaired, and reinstalled
[Breaking News! The November issue of Smithsonian just arrived, with a major update regarding the door panels. The original panels were indeed reinstalled after the 1966 flood, but it was later determined that they needed major restoration. Degradation had gone down to the molecular level. They were removed, put through various processes of conservation, and sent off for display. Some are traveling in the US at the moment, while others are apparently in museums in Italy. They are all destined to be reunited at a museum in Florence upon completion of the tour, and reassembled for display. The doors which we saw are copies, installed in 1990. Unfortunately the Smithsonian article doesn’t say much of anything about the process by which the copies were created. That would have been interesting in its own right. But the article is well worth reading. Click the link above.]
Impressions since our time here 40 years ago are that there were many fewer vendors now than there were back then. None were selling sweaters, which used to be a big thing. (Some of Bruce's from back then are still serviceable.) The only leather being sold on the streets was offered by Africans (as in Venice), spread out on sheets for easy transport and fast getaway if necessary, as street vending is apparently illegal and carries a €1000 fine to the buyer if the authorities choose to enforce it. A police car was parked right down the street from these guys, but nobody seemed to mind. Maybe it's like in China, where everything goes till the authorities decide that it's time for a nationwide crackdown, and then everybody makes a few token arrests. But there were indeed many fine leather shops, and we also encountered a leatherwork school, open to the public.
Wander through some back streets, window shop leather goods, gelati, pass Dante's home and the church where (according to the translation, roughly quoted) he "may have married his wife and first clapped his eyes on the [other] woman he loved." Quick stop at an Internet shop. It didn't like our flash drive and kept trying to do Microsoft things to us, but we did manage to check e-mail and say hi to Sarah and the bunch.
Yes, these are mounds of gelati.
Then to another church, the Santa Croce. While the Duomo was free, this one cost five Euros to get in. And it had lots of rules against stuff like flash photography, eating, and skimpy clothing, whereas the Duomo had none (apparent). Though smaller than the Duomo, it was still a very large structure and quite a bit more ornate inside. Many interesting chapels along the sides. Sue Anne remembered a number of facts about it from her art history classes. The paintings inside are representative of the period when artists were beginning to portray emotion on the part of the various saints and other subjects of their work rather than simply depicting them as stone-faced. Lots of famous people are buried there, including Michaelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Rossini, though we didn't know it at the time and hence didn't get to meet any of them. Here's a video of the square.
Back to meet K&D at the car. GPS got us nicely out of town and back to our villa in Radda.
Splurge dinner at a restaurant in nearby Castellina that K&D discovered the other day. B had veal with mushrooms and sauce, followed by chocolate soufflé. SA's meal was linguini with steamed fresh vegetables all cooked together in foil and artistically presented, followed by biscotti and sherry. All delicious! There were Americans seated behind us, one of whom sent her meal back twice and was still unhappy when it came back the third time. Sigh ... .
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