Things are just different here.

I’m continually amazed at how different Italy is from home. Not that I want it to be the same, the contrary!! But some of the things that we take for granted at home, you just don’t see here. And I’m not talking about ice in drinks or stuff like that. It’s the fundamental things, things that you just don’t run into everyday.

Take for example the fan that we bought just recently. It’s getting warmer and night and that mean that our neighbors are staying up later and later. Montecarlo, the club down the street, has people out until 5AM sometimes. When I sleep, I am really sensitive to noise. Jim likes to have air moving so the fan was an inspired purchase.

The fan came in a big rectangular box and you had to put it together. Not a problem. I think they do the same thing back home, but check out the bottom of the fan:

Looks like the wires are pretty accessible, no? How’s about a close up of that:

I don’t think I’ve ever see the guts of ANY electrical appliance like that. Do Europeans just have more common sense than we do? Is that why they don’t have to encase everything in childproof housings and label everything within an inch of its life?

An other note, if you are ever in Italy and have to do business at a bank, choose Banca Toscana. They were the nicest people and worked with us to set up an account, when other banks said that we wouldn’t be able to open an account. We recently closed out our account (because we’re leaving soon!!) and while we were waiting in the lobby, I saw one of their electrical outlets:

I’m pretty sure that’s the plug for the ATM. The cord ran to the back of it and I didn’t see any other power source. I can’t tell you how many times it ran through my head that I could reach over there and unplug it. But I’d probably go to bank jail, and that wouldn’t be good. The security guards at some of the banks carry great big guns.

Rounding up Siena pics

**Before I finish up the pictures from Siena, I need to make a clarification. Jim was the one that thought that the illuminated manuscript looked like the guy was flying a Jesus Kite. I apologise if you thought that I was the sacreligious one, that’s Jim. (BTW - if you google “Jesus Kite”, you get 347 hits. My blog isn’t even in the top 5)**

As part of the Museo dell’Opera in Siena, you could climb to the top of… some building. I’m really not sure where we were actually. Somewhere near the church because you climb out on top of the wall to nowhere:

Not to the very tippy top, but to the top archway. I’m all bummed because no one was down below while I was up top to take my picture. I met some really nice British people out there and their friends happened to walk by on the street at the same time they were up there. They got their picture taken! It doesn’t seem like you would be all that high up from that view. But if you look down the other side of the wall, it is pretty stinkin’ high.

We did get some great shots of the city up there. Amanda voguing in front of the Torre de Mangia:

The Torre de Mangia is the tower on the Campo (main square).

Jim in front of the beautiful countryside.

Me starting to get really nervous being that high:

It was really scary up there! You can’t tell, but the walkway is very narrow; only about 1.5 meters or so. The railings aren’t the high up and I would swear that I could feel the tower starting to sway. I’m holding on to the railing that lead to the stairway down. That was a trip too. It was a tiny little narrow spiral staircase. On the outside of the stairs, the risers were about 6 inches wide and on the inside of the spiral, I would say that they were about 2 or 3 inches. (Don’t you love how I am switching between metric and inches?) If you met someone coming the opposite way, someone had to stop and hug the walls. There was no concept of personal space in that stairwell.

**Note added later - Jim informs me that we were actually at the very top of that damn wall. I think I must have blocked that part out. Apparently there were TWO spiral staircases. I really don’t remember the second one…**

I quickly went down the stairs (which weren’t scary because I was surrounded by 6 inch thick stone walls) while Jim and Amanda took in the sights.

The rest of the museum was pretty typical; except for the relic room. They had some of the fanciest reliquaries that I have seen in Italy. They had the entire skeleton of some holy woman in a gilded box. It had glass sides and was arranged in a compact, decorative manner. It had gold bows and lace to pretty it up. It was odd, but strangely compelling.

As part of the “My Name is Duccio” combo ticket, we got into the baptistry too. It was a baptistry:

Fancy painted ceilings, big dunking pond in the middle. What I did think was funny was the collection box:

Of course, so a**holes thought it would be funny to drop their trash in there, but there is a pretty wide range of money in there. Did the American tourists just get tired of carrying the extra dollars around so they decided to drop them in there? There were Pounds in there too. Do you think that the church gets a good exchange rate from the bank?

Lunch was a small place just off the Campo recommended by my friend Rick (Steves). Very small, only room for about 25 people. There was no menu. Just the owner. He came by the table and rattled off the specials of the day. Had to listen quick because there was no going back. Jim mentioned that he wanted the mixed tagliatelle with the bolognese sauce. The owner said “per alle” and walked away. Good thing that neither Amanda nor I are vegetarians.

The food was very good. Everything was made in-house. We had a great view of the kitchen. The chef (I can’t remember her name …) was a busy woman! We all thought that the owner looked like a friend named Harry Gray. Amanda and I thought it was so funny and made Jim pose with the owner as we were paying:

If you know Harry, what do you think?

Every year on the Campo in Siena, there is a huge horse race. The different neighborhoods in Siena compete for bragging rights during the next year. They were starting to lay down the dirt around the outside of the Campo for the horse race (which isn’t until July or August - there are two dates listed and I can’t tell the difference) and I wanted a picture of Jim and Amanda.

I love this picture! Amanda riding her horse, Jim’s expression and the looks that the two guys to the left are giving Amanda. Priceless!!

No trip would be complete without a trip to the wine tasting place in town. One of the biggest in Siena is in the fortress. We hiked over there and tasted some wine. From the description in the book, it seemed like it would be a lot more exciting. No. They had three levels you could taste from and the same five or six varietals in each level. Amanda got a sample from a bottle that was corked. Ewww… We got her another taste.

Downstairs, they had a wine exhibition. Jim was all excited and could hardly wait for us to go down:

It turned out to be a dud. It was just a display of wine and grappa bottles from around Italy. It was roughly arranged in geographical order but there was no information about what was going on. Boring!

But I did see some interesting things. Do you notice anything different between the bottles? Besides labels of course!!

That’s right. One bottle is empty. Which do you think is the more expensive bottle? (Answers at the end of the post because I can’t find out how to type upside down.)

Well, with all of that fun, it was time to go home. We were lucky it hadn’t rained on us all day until we were waiting for the bus. We were the first ones on the bus and so were in the front seat home. Amanda got a great experience with the Italian bus drivers. SCARY!!

But there was another great sign that we were not in America any more. There was a very cute girl in the car in front of the bus. She was having a great time playing with the bus driver and watching us. I would guess about 6 years old? (Remember, my kids have tails so I am really bad at estimating age.) She wasn’t sure about having her picture taken though and squirmed up to the front seat right after this photo.

That’s right, no car seat! Maybe she’s old enough that she doesn’t need one but I don’t think so.

Coming soon - pictures from Montalcino!!

(The more expensive bottle is the Tignanello, the EMPTY one on the right.)

Driving in Italy isn’t that bad…

Hi all! Made it safe and sound to Montalcino yesterday. No problems picking up the car or getting out of Florence. The car is kind of cute, in a small hatchback sort of way. Jim wanted a compact car and was a little nervous that Hertz would “upgrade” him to a minivan or something like that.

The only scary part was actually driving in Montalcino. You are driving on these streets that in any other sane world would be pedestrian access only. We didn’t die, kill any one (or dogs) or get a ticket, so we consider the experiment a success!

Will have lots of photos to upload soon!

Everyone’s favorite city - except for me.

We visited Siena about a week ago. All the guide books rave about how beautiful the city is and how everyone loves it so much. It was nice. But I don’t see what the fuss is. I’ve enjoyed some of the smaller towns that we’ve visited (Lucca for example) far more than Siena. I guess I’m just getting jaded. But that didn’t stop me from taking photos!!

It was kind of a grey day when we visited Siena. It was much cooler than it had been for some time. The main square in Siena is Piazza del Campo (Field Plaza? Sounds redundant to me!). It is ringed by cafes that are way too expensive. We did the touristy thing and paid about eleventy billion dollars for a few cappuccinos and a slide of cake when we first got there.

As in most of these towns, there are a few things to see, including a great big church:

I can tell than I’m getting tired of seeing so many churches. When I start looking at the photos, they aren’t the beautiful interiors or the amazing paintings anymore. They tend to be stuff like this:

No cheeseburgers allowed in the church. Or bowlers hats. Would a sub and a baseball cap be allowed? And what is up with the middle right thing? No skinny women? As you can tell, I’m not that good at following the rules all of the time. I took lots of photos. But I wasn’t the only one. It is a losing battle that the museums are playing. Instead of yelling at people when they are taking photos, they are now just yelling “NO FLASH!!”. But I’ve never used flash in churches and museums anyway. I’ve seen what too much light can do to paintings and colors.

It can cause the floor to crack. He he. Just kidding. But they were doing some restoration work on the floor. (See what I mean about the photos that I am starting to take?)

The floors in this cathedral were some of the coolest that I have seen in a church, I will give you that. They had the marble inlay floors that are the same as in all of the other churches, but they also had some beautiful mosaics too:

The marble floors in some areas looked more like paintings than mosaics.

I’m not sure how they do this, but it was quite beautiful. It made for a maze when you were walking around the inside of the church though. There were fairly large areas that we roped off so you didn’t walk on the floors and ruin them.

One thing that was different in this cathedral is that there was an area reserved for the modern offerings to the Madonna. People give offerings of silver medallions and hearts and the helmets from non-fatal accidents. It was an interesting addition to such an ancient place.

The ceilings in the cathedral were pretty cool, but they didn’t hold a candle to those of the Piccolomini Library, just off the main cathedral. It was used as a … library. Duh. It now holds an exhibition of old illuminated musical scores. The room is bright and colorful, in stark contrast to the interior of the cathedral:

Rick Steves says that the frescos haven’t been restored and that they are just as bright now as they were when they were painted. I find that kind of hard to believe but who I am to say otherwise? There were windows in the room so the lighting was natural and not from candles. I guess that could be the reason why.

It was a beautiful room, resounding with the cries of “NO FLASH” from the museum docent. I think that I could make a decent living by setting up a booth outside this cathedral and for only a couple of euros show people how to turn off the flash on their camera.

We went to the Museo dell’Opera next, which is just the museum where they store all of the really important pieces of art and statues from the cathedral that they don’t want on display in the elements. Pretty typical place, with no photography allowed. I trusted them on this one, but I did sneak the camera out for one photo in the rare books room. There was some old manuscripts on display with fabulously illuminated texts. Jim found this one:

Sorry for the quality, but I was sneaking the photo here. Doesn’t it look like that monk is flying a Jesus Kite (TM)? “MOM!! Timmy won’t let me play with the Jesus Kite!!” (Just warning you, don’t stand too close to me the next time we are in a church because I am SO going to be struck by lightning.)

What amazes me about sightseeing in Italy is the history of these places. The United States is so young!! The Europeans didn’t even discover the continent until sometime in the 15th century. But walking through towns in Italy, you’ll come across something like this set in the floor:

That’s 1486, folks. Six years before Columbus left Spain to find a new route to India.

I still have more photos from Siena to post, but won’t get them up until Wednesday or Thursday. Jim and I are heading out today to Montalcino. We’ll be gone for three days. Wish us luck, we’re renting a car and driving. OH MY GOD. WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE.

Wait, did I say that out loud?

More gardens!

Back to photos! I’m behind on my picture posting, so these are from a couple of weeks ago, when Amanda visited. Sunday (as you might remember), we went to lots of gardens. We did the great big Boboli gardens in the morning, then lunch, wine and gelato and then off to the Bardini Gardens in the latish afternoon.

The Bardini gardens are right behind our apartment. You can see some of the terraced spaces if you walk on the north side of the river and look south. Jim and I had seen them for quite some time but never knew what they were. They aren’t on any of the tourist maps and the great big granite sign on the other side of the street from our door didn’t give it away.

It’s a lot of up and down walking in the Bardini gardens. (Look close! You can see our building. It’s the one with the orange roof.)

At the end of each of the little stone pathways are fountains set in the walls. They didn’t have the water running in any of them, but they were pretty cool anyway. This was my favorite:

This garden was more what we expected when we heard “garden”. There are nice planters filled with blooming flowers and the lawn was nice and even.

Husband really isn’t that much into flowers and he kept exploring ahead.

You can see him waiting up there on the terrace, making sure that we hadn’t gotten lost or abandoned him. The signs for the toilets made me laugh, because of all of the barbed wire behind them. You have to make sure that no one sneaks in and uses the toilets!! (Amanda is on the left, taking a picture of the toilets. He he.)

There were little tucked away nooks with statues that would have been perfect for a romantic rendezvous, if there hadn’t been a million tourists around and there hadn’t been big gates and chairs barring you from getting in:

We had only been there about 30 minutes when the intercom came on and started badgering us to leave in three or four different languages. “The gardens are closing in ten minutes. Please find your way to the exit.” These announcements went on for about 15 minutes, so I’m not really sure when the gardens did close. We didn’t let that pushy person stop us from taking pictures though:

Proof that I was in Florence! I also got another really nice shot of the Duomo, Campanile and the clock tower on the Palazzo Vecchio.

We got out of the gardens with no problems and without the flower police having to track us down, thank goodness!

On a different note, we’re starting the one month countdown. I leave in one month and one day, but really just one month because my flight is at some ass early time. (6:30AM!! Can you believe it! I’ll have to leave the apartment at 4:30AM. Sick, just sick.) Only 2.5 more weeks in the lab, and next week we’re taking off to do a wine tour of Montalcino and Montepulciano. And the last week that we are in Italy, we’ll be in Sicily. Jim doing conferency things and me hanging out on the beach. HA. I wish. Actually, I’ll be writing a grant proposal and working on class notes for the fall.

We have a list of the things that we still want to do in Florence, but it isn’t that long. There are a few more churches on the list, but those have pretty low priority. I’ve seen about a billion churches and/or cathedrals and every single one of them has “The Annunciation of Mary” somewhere in there. I’m thinking I don’t need to see another one.

So far, it’s been a net plus, but man am I ready to come home!!