Visiting Pisa (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Pisa (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Plan A the next day involved a train ride to Pisa.  All of the city’s most famous monuments are conveniently located together for tourists.

Laurent had to climb the Leaning Tower of Pisa to get a panoramic view of the town.  (It was still open to tourists at that time.)  I did not want to huff and puff up the narrow, Medieval stairways in the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

I spent my time watching tourists taking pictures with the Leaning Tower of Pisa behind them.  I do not think they knew they could go up in the Tower, because they could not read Italian.

When Laurent reappeared, we visited the Duomo (Cathedral).  I was happy to see the little Hercules on the Baptistery Font that heralded the Renaissance due to its use of ancient Greek ideals of beauty to sculpt it.  This little Hercules was sculpted by Nicola Pisano ushered in the Renaissance in the 13^th century.

Small pieces of fresco paintings lay in orderly piles on the floor.  Bombs from World War II had shattered the frescoes that were lying on the floor.

The love and devotion that went into tedious work like that amazes me, but preserving the patrimony must have been a real motivator for the restorers I thought and maybe good pay or job perks.

The cemetery was full of Roman sarcophogae that were reused during the Renaissance.  Many professors from the University of Pisa had graves there.  I wondered if the tradition in Italy was the same as that in France where graves were recycled every 30 years unless the family keeps up a grave payment.

Even though Pisa lies to the west of Florence, we still had to enter Florence on the east side using the train.  There were gardens everywhere, but the east side of town was poorer than the west side.

There was a large area of small houses made of corrugated siding that did not make it into the tourist guides to visit.  Poor people in Italy seemed much poorer than those in the United States; they had gardens and ramshackle homes, but were borderline homeless.

I was beginning to become somewhat acclimated to the heat and had good things to say about the food, particularly my lunch that day.  My appetite was returning.

I tried a menu item called ribollita.  This item is a Tuscan soup made with bread, beans, vegetables, and whatever vegetable leftovers may be in the house.

It is served hot and comes topped off with a generous helping of olive oil.  I loved it, but almost melted in the heat like a chocolate bar when I ate it for lunch.

Another food item that Laurent and I liked was the bread with the dried fruit in it and the lush Tuscan peaches.  I even developed a liking for fizzy water.

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

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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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