I already like train travel. It is really not that hard to figure out once you know the basics. The trains are pretty much on time and can get you around Italy quickly and efficiently. I would much rather spend time on a train in Italy than on an airplane. Public transportation in Italy is much more convenient than it is in the United States. There is a website for all the train travel in Italy, www.trenitalia.com. We will usually buy regionale tickets, which are some of the cheapest. In the future, I will buy a ticket in the station or in advance and then stamp it in order to validate it just before I get on the train. The train we took from Arezzo arrived in Florence in about an hour. Upon arrival we went to our hotel, a former monastery. It was really nice.
We had to head off in a rush when we arrived because we had found a museum pass that we wanted to get that afternoon. Thanks to some of Emily’s research, we found a pass to all the City of Firenze museums. It included almost every museum we wanted to go to and had a student rate. We figured that it was going to be well worth our money to buy the pass. Florence has some of the world’s finest museums, and they have lines that are several hours long. This pass worked like a reserved ticket, so we felt like VIPs as we walked right in past other tourists who had waited for hours. It was well worth it and saved us a lot of time.
We were able to see the Pitti Palace on Friday night, September 17th. The Pitti Palace is one of the Palaces of the Medici family, who ruled Florence during the Renaissance. It is now an art museum. The next morning, Saturday September 18th, we woke up at the crack of dawn to get a start on our day. The Uffizi museum is at the top of the list for every visitor to Florence, and we wanted to get there early to avoid the crowds. The Ufizzi is the other Palace of the Medici family. This is where some of the world’s most famous art is located. I read in my Italy Today textbook that Italy is home to about two thirds of the World’s art. The Uffizi is home to works by Botticelli, da Vinci, and Piero della Francesa. We saw the “Birth of Venus” and “Primavera”, two very famous pieces of art from the Renaissance painted as long ago as the 1480s. It was edcuational to see the originals of some very famous paintings, and I could tell that Emily and Meredith, who are both majors in the art department, were really glad we had gone to the Uffizi.
After a stroll through the leather market, we headed to the Duomo. Climbing the Duomo was my personal favorite part of the weekend. The Duomo is the cathedralof Florence. Its construction was started in 1296. It is a Tuscan gothic cathedral. The outside is made up of pink, green, and white marble, while the inside feels relatively empty in comparison to the ornate exterior. The Campanile, the bell tower, was added. Filippo Brunelleschi lost a contest to make the doors to the baptistery, but as a result he was free to be able to construct the dome. The dome is called a double-masonry dome because it was made by constructing a thicker inner dome and a thinner outer dome. By choosing this design, the outside of the dome could have a better shape and the inside, which provided the structural support, was protected. This also allowed the dome to be inspected by going in the space between the two domes. The inner dome is seven feet thick at the base.
The only way up the Duomo is by stairs. It takes four hundred and sixty three stairs to get to the top. Climbing up the narrow stairs, I could clearly see how the Duomo had been built as a dome inside a dome. Our staircase went between the two domes. Part of the way through, we could walk around the cathedral at the base of the dome and get a close up view of the fresco on the inside of the dome. It was a lot of hard work to get to the top, but it was well worth it. The view from up there was great and it was like being on top of the world. The Duomo is the highest point in central Florence and I could see the whole city from up there.
My other favorite part of the trip (ok, I guess I have two favorites) was going to the Piazzale Michelangelo at dusk on Saturday night. We took the bus to the park, which is up on a hill on overlooking Florence. We could see the twinkling lights all over the city. The Duomo and other important buildings in town were lit up.
We needed to get back to the hotel within ninety minutes because of the validity of our bus tickets. We each bought a card that had 4 tickets on it when we arrived in Florence. Each ticket was good for ninety consecutive minutes. When we get on the bus, we stamp our ticket with the time. We each had one 90 minute ticket remaining when we left for the Piazzale Michelangelo. We figured out which bus to take back in order to do all this within 90 minutes and not have to buy another ticket. It started raining, so we stood at the bus stop and waited and waited and waited. Our bus didn’t come on time.This meant that our tickets were no longer valid and if an inspector got on the bus, we would be in trouble. So there we were, really far from our hotel, in the dark and pouring rain. Meredith and I decided eventually that the bus wasn’t coming and that we would just wait for the next one, so we went to a little shop to buy new tickets since ours expired. The next bus was not for about twenty minutes. While we were at the shop, the bus arrived. We ran as fast as we could to the bus stop, and miraculously we made it before the bus pulled away.
It was an adventure. Typically though, the city bus runs right on schedule and is easy to use. All I had to do was buy a ticket from just about any store, find a bus stop, read where the route went, get on, and stamp my ticket. You have to remember to stamp your ticket though, because there are inspectors. It is kind of hard to figure out when you are at your stop since there isn’t anyone who speaks English, but if you ask the driver when you get on if the bus goes to your stop and stay at the front, he will kindly tell you when to get off. One driver even gave us walking directions from the stop! Of course, we only partly understoond what he was saying!
Our independent trip back to Sansepolcro on Sunday went smoothly. We were at the train station on time and got on the correct train. Somehow, we had the wrong times written down for the bus back to Sansepolcro though. We ended up having three and a half hours to kill in Arezzo, and most everything was closed because it was Sunday. We ended up eating dinner at a Chinese place. We were Americans in Italy trying to order Chinese food in Italian! The menu included everything from duck to French fries to ravioli to sesame chicken! It was a lot of fun. We finally got back to Sansepolcro late Sunday and are still trying to recover from a fantastic weekend.
The trip to Firenze gave me the confidence I needed to be able to plan the upcoming travel breaks. I am looking forward to seeing where else I end up this semester. Check back in next Friday for more!
Ci vediamo,
Meredith
No comments:
Post a Comment