Europe: Italy, Part 2

Italy, Part 1
Milan --> Lake Como --> Verona --> Venice --> Cinque Terre --> Pisa --> Florence --> Rome

CINQUE TERRE

Tay: After Venice, we went to Cinque Terre. As you may guess from the name, it means "five lands" and is a stretch of five small towns on the west coast of northern Italy. Many of our friends had recommended the stop, and it was enjoyable. The town we stayed in was called Riomaggiore. It was more of a relaxing, lounging place for laying on the beach, dining out, and admiring the views. The five towns are cute and picturesque, nestled into little inlets along the coast, and we used a ferry to travel between them. I thought we would hike between the towns, but the best hike was closed for construction, and by the time we ferried to the others we decided the other hikes didn't look as enticing or relaxing. The five towns weren't my favorite compared to the larger cities we visited, but I can see why people like it. In my mind, this trip has been more for seeing famous art, cities, and landmarks, so I probably just wasn't prepared for a lethargic day-and-a-half on the coast.

We enjoyed eating out, walking around, and slurping gelato. I tried a cone of fried seafood one night because we were told the seafood was the best food here. It was tasty, but I kind of had to avoid thinking about what I was eating after a while. There were some interesting textures. I wouldn't order it twice. I like lobster, crab, shrimp, fish and other seafood, but this was fried calamari (octopus?) and I didn't enjoy it after the first few rings. Fried, it looks basically like an onion ring. But it was just a little too rubbery for my palate.

Last, but not least, Cinque Terre is where I finally shaved. I thought I'd just avoid shaving for the trip, but after 10 days, my face was super itchy and still felt too prickly. After 14 days I was ready to shave. Also, I couldn't tell exactly what the comments were on the hangout call with the family last week, but I got the impression facial hair didn't look too good on me. Since it wasn't feeling good either, I decided to grab a cheap razor at the grocery store. The first day I just trimmed it so see if that helped, but the next night I just shaved it all off because it was still bugging me.

Becca: Cinque Terre was so beautiful. The first evening when we arrive, we hiked up through the town to find our hotel. I was surprised to see so many older people on this tourist stop, because it really was quite a steep location with a lot of stairs. Anyway, after we hiked up to the top of the town where our hotel was (Riomaggiore only took like 5 minutes to walk up, it's a pretty small city), dropped off our luggage, and headed back down to find food and scout out the best place to watch the sunset. We knew we were too late to travel to any of the other lands that night, so that was basically all we could do. Especially because we had forgotten we booked a hotel without wifi. :) 
We ended up grabbing some take-away pasta and then found a fun little place on the edge of the water where we relaxed, talked, and watched the sunset. It was beautiful. We also enjoyed people watching. 

The next day we took the ferry to visit the other lands. I loved the ferry ride! It was so fun to see all the lands from the water. We stopped at the last one, Monterosso, as I had learned this was the biggest & most popular destination. Turns out it was mostly just people at the beach. We walked around the town and enjoyed the view, but the town seemed the same as Riomaggiore. We grabbed gelato, of course (lemon is their specialty, and it was soooo good)! We wondered if we should just buy swimsuits and towels and relax on the beach for the rest of the day (we hadn't packed any--we knew this was more of a beach area, but we thought there would be more of other things to do and didn't want to pack swimsuits in our small bags to only use them 1 day), but decided against it as neither of us really felt like laying on the beach. To be honest, we felt a little restless. While I normally would have loved to have laid out at the beach all day, this trip had been so busy already, and we felt like we didn't want to spend anymore time relaxing--we just wanted to move on and go explore more of Italy.

It was a great stop, but we had already spent a few days before this at more relaxing stops, and weren't prepared to have it this relaxing. :) We went and visited another of the lands, Vernazza, but found that it was again very similar. So we decided to fill our day with gelato. :) 

Funny, gaudy little cathedral in Monterosso

Yes that is my finger. My bad. 

PISA

Tay: We were really glad that Brady and Corrine had suggested only a few hours in Pisa. The leaning tower and the cathedral sit on the same plot of grass (the best-tended, largest plot of grass I think we saw in all of Europe) right next to each other, so it was easy to enjoy all at once. I was taken aback by just how leaning the tower was. For anyone else who, like me, needs a quick history lesson, the tower started leaning after it was like 50 feet built because the foundation settled, but they kept building anyway--another 50 feet at least. The cathedral was prettier than the insides of most cathedrals we've seen, although part of it was covered in construction. Many of the buildings we've seen have had scaffold covering parts. I don't know if it's always that way or if all the cities are just gearing up for prime tourist season. We've seen scaffolding covering everything from the Louvre to the Duomo.

Becca: The Leaning Tower of Pisa was crazy! I'd seen it in pictures, but seeing it in real life was such a fun experience. It looked unreal! None of the pictures made it seem to lean as much as it looks like it does in real life. 

We loved the cathedral here--I thought it did the best job at being beautiful inside & out. The marble inside was amazing because they had done it in black & white stripes! The best part? The ceiling. It was killer. It looked like it should have been from Versailles or the Louvre. 

FLORENCE

Tay: Speaking of Duomo, I thought there was only one--the one in Milan. Turns out Florence has a Duomo too. We had talked to Brady and Corinne about suggestions and they didn't leave us with high expectations for Florence. We actually really liked it, so that was a bonus. Our Airbnb was really close to the train station and also only a 20-minute walk to the main Florentine attractions. Our favorite attraction there was Michelangelo's David, but we also loved the exterior of the Duomo (or, Cathedral of Mary of the Flower) and all tall bell tower that stands next to it.

As a quick side note, when I wrote about the tower, I thought about the towers in London. We thought it was amusing how many buildings and towers had clocks on them in London. Every street seemed to have clocks sticking out from the buildings. Even next to Big Ben, Westminster Abbey had its own big clock. We wondered if Londoners are just more concerned about always knowing the time. 

The outside of the Duomo in Florence was really beautiful and colorful marble with a magnificent brick dome on the top. I think Bernini did the dome, but I'm not positive. I don't normally like pinks and greens together, but for this cathedral, it worked magnificently. As I mentioned, the cathedral is right next to a tower, and there is also an octagonal baptistry (basically a smaller church building with more of a dome-shaped roof, about 50 feet in front of the cathedral. All three buildings match nicely. The marble facade was actually done recently, in the 1900s I believe. After we learned that, it seemed a little less cool. But still beautiful. Who are we to judge, right? 

Becca: The Duomo in Florence was one of my favorites! It was white, pink, and green. So beautiful, and I loved that it matched the baptistry and bell tower. The baptistry has famous doors called "The Gates of Paradise," by Lorenzo Ghiberti. These were the first bronze casted doors that had dimension (pillars in the background, etc., to show distance). The doors had panels from the Old Testament. 

Tay: We enjoyed strolling through the city window shopping, visiting the Palazzo Vecchio, the city hall where the Medicis ran the city for many years after taking power, and the Pont de Vecchio, a pretty bridge with shops built inside. The Medicis had a special catwalk built between the palace, through the Uffizi art gallery, and along the top of the bridge all the way to their palace so that they could avoid the crowds. Seemed like a pompous sort of setup. I recognize many people, like BYU and Temple Square, have tunnels underneath buildings for the same reason--safety, ease of access--but having it above ground seemed sort of vain. I can't imagine it was at all a secret that they had their own special passage apart from the rest of the world.

The David was more impressive than we expected. We have been tremendously grateful for the advice of friends to download some sightseeing podcasts. The podcasts have helped us appreciate and understand more about all the neat art we are seeing. With the David, the podcast helped us look at some of the other early, unfinished sculptures of Michelangelo that flank the hall on both sides leading to the David. If we had examined these unfinished statutes ourselves without the context provided by the podcast, I don't think we would have appreciated the David as much as we did. But the podcast guide helped us look closely at the unfinished Michelangelos and think about how difficult it would be to make the finished product as smooth and perfect as that great sculptor did. We also learned that Michelangelo sculpted freehand from the front of the marble through to the back of it. Other sculptors mark the marble as they go, drawing and noting on it where they needed to cut to make it all turn out right. I can't imagine the difficulty in visualizing what needed to happen as you went.

Becca: My favorite part of florence was the Galleria dell'Accademie, which holds Michelangelo's David. The hall leading up to the David has other works by Michelangelo--his "prisoners." While listening to a podcast by Rick Steves (he's the best--we listened to him everywhere we could!), we learned that these "prisoners" show how Michelangelo worked. He started from the front of the block of marble and worked to the back, revealing God's design that was inside. Thus, he was freeing the prisoners inside the marble. Each prisoner progresses in how much of the figure is shown. It was incredible to see each progressive work all leading up to the David. I love Michelangelo. 

We loved walking down the pedestrian only street, full of shops and gelaterias. Florence had the best gelato & sorbet, hands down. Apparently gelato was invented in Florence. 

Check it: the popped, double collar

The Uffizi Gallery

Main square, Palazzo Vecchio: Fountain of Neptune in all its construction glory, the fake David (but in the original spot)

Church along the road

Tay: The only thing we didn't like about Florence was waiting in the lines. It was a hot day-and-a-half. The line to both their art museum, the Uffizi Gallery, and the Galleria dell'Accademie, a museum where the David stands, had outside lines. We were in the David line during the heat of the day without any shade protection. And the staff running the lines seems like they have a pretty lousy system for keeping tracking of line turns. We watched as other lines were virtually emptied time and again before we moved forward at all. I realize the other lines were for reserve tickets, but it seemed even more lopsided than it should have been.

The Uffizi Gallery was cool, but after the Louvre, none of the art galleries have been as exciting. They did have a Rafael, a couple Leonardos, and even a Michelangelo painting and sculpture. Those were all really cool. But they also had a lot of stuff that seemed relatively uninteresting to our untrained eyes. You had to wade through a lot of that to see the great stuff. The city is smaller and the tourist stops are pretty close together. One thing we liked a lot about both Florence, Rome, and Verona is the way Italy uses piazzas, open areas between buildings. Both Florence and, especially, Rome, have several piazzas, which are basically town squares where lots of tourists and locals gather.

More than once, by the time we got to Florence, we were a little confused as to whether some sculptures were copies or originals. We saw several that we thought we also saw in previous museums. Even in Florence, there are statues, like the David, outside and then originals inside a museum nearby. That was fairly manageable. But for others, the original might be in the Louvre or a museum in London, and we couldn't remember which was which. Not a big deal, but a little confusing. For the most part, we just enjoyed seeing a famous statute again.

Becca: I really enjoyed walking down from the Uffizi Gallery along the river to the Ponte Vecchio. Florence was really beautiful, and it had such a fun feel to it because all the attractions were so close. You could walk from the Duomo down to the Ponte Vecchio and see almost everything important in between. The  only thing we didn't have time for was to see the Medici's palace across the river. I think we wished we would have spent a day less in Cinque Terre and one more day in Florence. Looks like we'll just have to go back! :)