Admiring Michelangelo’s David and Walking around Florence (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
We started our day out following my carefully planned agenda of visiting the Florentine Academy which houses Michelangelo’s towering statue of David.
I
told Laurent that the Florentine’s identified David. They liked how he utilized his intelligence
to overcome a formidable adversary much like the Florentines had done
throughout their history.
I
wanted to see the David and della Robbia’s colorful wreaths of cherubs in blues
and yellows throughout the museum.
The
next place I wanted to visit was the Uffizi Galleries. A long line snaked its way under the museum
and out into the street. So, I had to
make a Plan B.
I
was soon to discover that Italy is a country that requires lots of Plan
Bs. You learn to go with the flow that
it provides. You can always drink a
coffee at a sidewalk café while considering what to do next.
Plan
B involved walking around the sculptures (or rather the copies of them) that
line the Palazzo Vecchio. We saw
Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabine Women, which featured lots of twisting and
turning.
The
Sabine women were physically and smarter than the descendants of the
women of Troy (Aeneas’s companions) and were replaced to become the matrons of
Ancient Rome.
Cellini’s
Judith and Holofernes reminded me never to get so drunk or drugged on poppy
flower derivatives that my head could be cut off while I was passed out in bed
or on the floor. (Poppy flower
derivatives = heroin from Afghanistan = ecstasy in its modern club form = no
exit strategy for the Afghanistan War? Ecstasy is very expensive despite being cheap to produce.)
The
Judith and Holofernes story is not in the Protestant Bible, but is one of the
major lessons of the Catholic Church.
I
also like Verocchio’s little puttos holding dolphins and smiling.
Outside
we drank Aranciattas (sour lemon sodas) at a café before eating noodles at a
Chinese restaurant for lunch.
After
our lunch, we walked up the hills surrounding Florence to the Piazzale
Michelangelo, which we discovered was the local hangout for young people.
There
was an outdoor skating rink full of virtuosos on wheels, who could skate
backwards on all curves. I liked all the table-top soccer games, tons of Vespa
motorbikes lying about, girls in miniskirts, young studs sitting on the
railroads, video games featuring fast-driving Ferrari cars, and here and there
people smooching in their cars or in the bushes.
As
they say in the backwoods of Wisconsin, the Piazzale Michelangelo was a real
happening. We stayed people watching
until the wee hours of the morning.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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