Touring Hilly Fiesole outside Florence (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring Hilly Fiesole Outside Florence (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I read that the Italians were formal dressers, so I brought knee-length skirts with me as well as short-sleeved blouses. 

I did not want to be turned away from visiting churches due to skimpy and inappropriate attire.  All the churches have signs outside them that tell visitors to cover up shoulders and not wear shorts and mini skirts in them.    

There are security guards and church ladies in the churches who will make you leave for trying to enter a church dressed inappropriately.  If you protest, they will tell you to file a police report.  (That could take two days out of your tourism.)

This formal attire was making me lose pounds in water-weight loss, though, as we walked around sweating in lines at museums.

After visiting Santa Croce that morning and admiring the Giotto Frescoes, which reminded me of Greek Byzantine painting from Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) in its composition style, I went back to the hotel, showered, and took a siesta.

Laurent was still sleeping when I woke up, so I made some notes about Florence in my journal that I would verify later:

Florentines like music and the arts.  Even when we were in non-touristy areas, I saw workshops where crafts were being made.  Magazines for young people seem to have a few articles about the arts, too.

Vespa scooters and cars without mufflers seem to be the favorite mode of transportation.  Old and young alike ride on and in them.

Vespas are more practical in the center of town, because the streets are pretty narrow.

We took the bus up the hills around Florence to Fiesole, where it was cooler.  There were gardens full of sculpture on the way up the hills and homes with ochre-colored walls and orange-crescent tiles on roofs.

The homes in Fiesole have panoramic views over the city of Florence below, which we could also see from the bus windows.

We visited the Roman ruins in Fiesole.  I wondered if there were any famous Romans lived there.  The Roman museum, we visited held Etruscan as well as Roman artifacts.

I wanted to learn more about the mysterious Etruscans, who were Tuscany’s original inhabitants.

The Roman circular theatre in Fiesole has been used since antiquity.  We saw a poster that was advertising a performance of A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.  I wanted to see Shakespeare performed in the language of Dante.

“Too expensive,” Laurent said.

The church in Fiesole was closed for the siesta.  We ordered a pizza with prosciutto and drank a bottle of fizzy San Pellegrino water.  We drizzled olive oil on our pizza and savored each salty bite.

I took out our map of Florence and tried to pick out the monuments that we could see from our pizza parlor garden dining spot.

Brunelleschi’s dome on the Duomo was the landmark for identifying other landmarks.

We did aerial tourism from the pizza place until the bus came to take us back to Florence, giggling about our cheap tourism to a ritzy ‘burb of Florence.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting the Uffizi Galleries and the Bargello Museum in Florence (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Uffizi Galleries and the Bargello Museum in Florence (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The next day, we were the first people in line at the Uffizi Galleries.  The Uffizi were definitely going to figure into all of my Plan As until I visited them.

The Museum contains a microcosm of Renaissance paintings, but the room that struck me the most was the one with the monumental paintings of the Madonna and Child by Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto.

These mothers holding their sons were massive, upright, and powerful.  They derived their strength from motherhood and taking care of their children.

Later in life, I would see Egyptian sculptures and realized that the mother goddess tradition never really died out in the Mediterranean.  I wanted to be like those Madonnas someday.  I liked children, despite working in a consulting firm.

Those Madonnas were my favorite paintings in the Uffizi.

I love painting, but I preferred sculpture, so we ran off to see the Bargello Museum.  Plan A actually worked that day, so we entered the museum without a hitch.

Michelangelo’s paunch-bellied Bacchus (the Roman version of the Greek Dionysius) looked like a sophisticated John Belushi from the Animal House movie as he spilled wine for the generations.

I remembered sitting in the art history library at the University of Chicago with photographic plates memorizing artists, dates, and unique aspects of various works for exams.  I knew I was planning future vacation itineraries at the time.

Memorizing art works that way is hard, but I recognize even minor works now thanks to all the hard work that I put into studying those black-and-white plates.

I asked Laurent to take my photograph next to Donatello’s frail-looking David, who made the exploit of vanquishing Goliath seem even more amazing.   Verocchio’s sweet David looked like he was wearing a dress and a fashionable one at that decorated with flowers.

The Bargello Museum used to be a prison, and the frescoes around the top of the rooms showed various forms of torture.  I do not think the Renaissance Florentines believed in reform, parole, or release.

By Ruth Paget - author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Admiring Michelangelo's David in Florence (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

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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Eating a Florentine Lunch in Italy with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Eating a Florentine Lunch with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

Standing in front of the Trattoria da Giorgio, we saw that there were many Italians inside.  For 10,000 lira we were going to have a great meal.

For our first course, Laurent and I both had fettucine with tomato sauce.  I liked how the waiter corrected our Italian pronunciation and told us that Italian was not Spanish.

I wanted Italian to roll off my tongue and vowed to learn it one day after I got done learning French and Spanish.

I loved the flavor of oregano in this dish made with a sauce of chopped onion, green peppers, garlic, tomatoes, and red wine.

Laurent ate an equally appetizing veal scallopine.  The coating of breadcrumbs and cheese on the veal made me think it would be a little heavy in the heat, though.

Both meals came with access to a communal bottle of red wine and mineral water.  We did not have to pour wine for ourselves.  One of our tablemates did the honors of pouring the wine.

He asked Laurent where he was from in Italian.  Laurent responded in French, which delighted our tablemate.  He told Laurent in French that he had worked in the vineyards of Burgundy at one time.

They chattered away while I ate.  My French was still not good enough for chattering.

My shirt stuck to my back on the way to the hotel.  I knew Italy would be hot in July.  However, I had no idea it would be so humid in Florence.  The lobby of our building was cool, but we could not take our siesta there unfortunately.

I asked Laurent why we could not go sightseeing.  He said the tourist spots close for the siesta as well.

Our room felt like an oven that had just been opened when we walked inside it.  I left the terrace door shutter slats open thinking that cool, fresh air would blow into the room.

The air coming through the room was hotter than the air in the room, so I closed the shutter slats and the door to the terrace.

Despite the heat, I was sleepy from eating.  As we lay down to sleep, we started to get dive-bombed by mosquitoes.  I made a few futile swats at them, but I was drooping with fatigue.

My first experience with living without air-conditioning in extreme heat was making me limp as a noodle.

Three hours later my cool skin made me wake up.  The room was still warm, but not as hot as before. I immediately began scratching my arms, which had been the afternoon feast for a pet mosquito.

Laurent was still sleeping, but my moving around the room woke him up.

We ventured outside to do some grocery shopping.  We wanted to economize on food, which meant we were going to eat like the locals.  We bought mineral water, bread with raisins, pecorino and Swiss cheese, and yogurt.

I insisted that we eat the yogurt for dinner, since it would spoil in the heat.  We planned an itinerary for the next day and then would walk through the cool, humid air that felt like a storm was coming to look at Santa Croce Church and walk to the Ponte Vecchio and the Palazzo Pitti Gardens.

I dropped into bed, looking forward to our next day of touring.  I hoped to visit the Florentine Academy, which houses the original David statue by Michelangelo.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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