Well, my day started at 2:30 waiting in the cold. I thought an Uber would be my best bet to get to the airport on time. I was wrong. Three separate drivers canceled on me. The fourth picked me up. As I shut the door, he must have known I was heading to Italy as he channeled Mario Andretti. A ride that should have taken 25 minutes only took 11. I got out, thanked him, and mentally kissed the ground. I entered the futuristic and beautiful Tallinn Airport after quite the Baltic adventure. I checked in and made my way to my gate. I was amazed at this airport’s hospitality. They had a lending library, ping pong tables (which seemed to be pretty popular in Estonia,) sleeping cabins, and nice, calming colors of blue and white. I boarded my plane and 35 minutes later I was in Riga. I got my brother-in-law some more little bottles including Black Balsam and some Estonian rum. I went to my next plane and promptly fell asleep. Less than three hours later, I was in Milan.
I got my bag, got my bus, then got to the main train station. Unfortunately, tickets for the train I wanted were unavailable, so I needed to buy a new ticket and wait for an additional hour and a half. As the time got close, the arrival time was pushed back another 40 minutes. It reminded me of the last time I was in Milan before where the train I was taking to Rome continued adding minutes to its delay until it finally ended at 320 or over 5 hours. What would train travel in Italy be without delays? I got myself a Coke and miraculously, the delay was lowered to 20 minutes. The train pulled in, I got on and found my seat.
As I traveled to through the Italian countryside, I felt very good that I was keeping a promise. In 2013, I made a pact with myself that I would return to Italy and spend exactly one month in the town of Firenze, soaking up all the history and art I could. I realized the importance of goal setting and visualization a long time ago and here was my vision manifesting before me.
I arrived at the Florence train station and checked my Google map. Apparently, my hostel was right down the street from where I stayed before with my friend for our bromantic vacation. I say bromantic because he had planned a nice vacation with his girlfriend (that would soon be his wife) leading up to the wedding of another friend I mentioned before. Unfortunately, the girlfriend had to work, so I was invited to take her place as it was already paid for.
I continued down the street, enamored by all the sights and sounds, remembering everything I had seen before. A few minutes later, I got to the hostel. It was like a large hotel filled with people. Or a mental hospital, but we will get to that as my story unfolds. I walked to the front desk and waited in line to check-in. The receptionist gave me a heart attack when she told me I had only booked one night. I implored her that I did not, that in fact, I had booked and paid for 30. She fiddled with the computer, realized her error, and checked me in.
My room was on the third floor and it was a 7 topper, in that it was three bunk beds and one small twin in the corner. There was an ensuite toilet with a shower and sink located in another room. It would do. I asked for some extra sheets so I could make a new Fort Awesome, locked away my things, then went to the closest supermarket to find some food. I got a box of pasta from an entire wall of types, which was surprising as the market was the size of a large bodega. I then headed back to the hostel kitchen. It was incredibly strange that the only cooking devices were microwaves. This would mean I would need to get creative with my food while I was here. After dinner, I went for a quick walk around Florence. Since it was a long day of travel, I headed back to my room, put on Katyn, and fell asleep.
The next day I got up and grabbed some breakfast at the grocery store I went to the night before. Since I was going to be in Florence for a month, it was a nice change of pace. Instead of running around to see everything, I could take my time, relax and soak it all in. I ate in the kitchen and struck up a conversation with a young lady from Colombia. I went back to my room and did a little work then headed down the pool.
Since outside alcohol was officially verboten from being consumed by the pool (as hostel bars hate competition) I filled my liter water bottle with beer as I lounged and read. I went back to my room to meet my new roommates, two Argentine sisters whose names I promptly forgot, and a German young lady named Bianca. There were also two Israeli guys, but they did not speak much English.
I tried making dinner by microwaving spaghetti, much to the chagrin of every Italian person I know (including myself) but somehow it worked. I poured myself a tall glass of Croatian Sangria and decided to walk around Florence to see what I remembered. My first stop was the iconic Duomo.
Built over three centuries starting in 1296 and finishing in 1436, the Duomo is the most recognizable building in Florence. Originally called the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, not only did its style bridge the Middle Ages with the Renaissance, but the town also sprung up around where it lays now. Honestly, standing in its shadow once again was a spectacular feeling. As lovely as it was, I was still very tired from my journey. I went back to my room, read some, and fell asleep.
The next day I got up and decided to digitize my journal entries. Since I started my trip, I had kept a journal entry every night of what I had done the previous day. Rather astutely, I realized that should anything happen to that journal, all the work I had been doing would be lost. If it were up in the cloud, it would be safe. So, I sat there typed for six hours all notes I had made. Again, I headed out to buy dinner and wine.
I decided that I was going to try my hand at drawing while I was here in Florence. I had painted, good at both mixed media and digital work, but drawing, like my handwriting, is that of a three-year-old. So, I was going to take my time and allow Florence to inspire me. I bought some pencils from a Euro 99 Cent Store and had my first lesson via YouTube on the roof of the hostel overlooking Florence. I felt a strange kinship with the many artists that came to this place before me. Although my drawings were still terrible. I had some more wine and some more beer and eventually called it a night. The next day was for my tours of which I was very much looking forward to.
I got up, had brekie, then headed out for my walking tour. The first was to be specifically about Florence and took us around showing us the nooks and crannies of this beautiful city. The tour guide emphasized that when one thought of Florence or the Renaissance, one should also think about one name in particular: Medici.
The Medici family started as wool and leather merchants but quickly rose to power when they began lending out their money with interest to banks all over Europe. This interest compounded very quickly from the mere fact that usury was considered a sin and Catholocism still had a very strong hold on the hearts and minds of those in Europe at the time. The Medicis were not nobles, so they quickly strategized to marry off their sons and daughters to the nobility that needed their banking services. They began fighting battles, gaining territory, and eventually became the bankers to the Vatican itself. Counting for inflation and exchange rates, in modern terms, the Medici family was worth around $130 Billion at their height. Since they had more money than God, or at least his representatives on Earth, they were able to finance little pet projects like the Italian Renaissance. Artists at this time depended on the patronage of the rich and powerful and allowed them to be able to administer their craft.
Moving from our meeting point to the Piazza della Signoria we were shown many parts of the square. Our guide shared with us the fact that Michelangelo (the artist not the ninja turtle) was a very angry man. He lost his mother while he was young and had to work his whole life to support his family. Like most men of genius, he was difficult and worked alone. His masterwork sculpture of David was completed in 1504 as there was a copy outside the Palazzo Vecchio. David was naked, which was a nod to the classical style. This was so detailed that even though David appears to be relaxed, there is tension in his right hand as if he were holding rocks. Initially, David’s place was supposed to be on top of the Duomo and was even designed to be viewed from that perspective. However, it was too beautiful a work to be left up there away from the adoration of the crowds.
In the Loggia, what can best be described as a sculpture gallery right next to the Palazzo Vecchio, was quite a stirring rendition of the myth of Perseus and his severing the head of Medusa, the Medici’s answer to David. Placed in 1554, it was made of bronze as it was 10x more expensive than marble at the time. Benevenito Celini was the artist and took the liberty of working his face into the back of Persus’s head as a kind of signature. Cosimo, the Medici that took the family from wool to banking, did not like that detail. He paid Celini, but never hired him again, and thusly, he never worked. Celini was a degenerate gambler and sold parts of the bronze off designated for the statue so that he could gamble. When he lost it, he ended up having to use bronze things around his house to make up the difference for the statue.
As we continued on, I noticed something that anyone who has spent any time in Louisiana would recognize, the fleur de lis. It was all over the city. I learned that it was a symbol for the city and had been so since it was founded as a retirement community for Roman soldiers in 59 BC. Although it was originally called Florencia, over the centuries and the changing of the language, the Tuscan dialect changed it to Fierenza, then finally Firenzi in Italian.
Another thing we were shown was incredibly interesting. When times of plague hit the city and people were quarantined (a word that came from the Venitian dialect meaning a period of isolation 40 days for incoming ships) people still needed to go about their lives. One of them was, of course, drinking. We were shown a Medieval walk up portico specifically to buy wine without having to go inside.
Another thing of note that absolutely blew my mind was that embedded in the side of the Palazzo Vecchio was not only a still water fountain but a sparkling one as well. However, we were warned that the bubbles we finer and more easily agitated. Many a tourist popped a recently filled water bottle after walking around a bit in the sun. I made a note of that too.
We continued on to the Duomo. As mentioned before this building was a marvel in more ways than one. It would take centuries until Filippo Brunelleschi was the architect in charge of the Renaissance portion of the dome. Legend is that the person that would win the prize of being the architect of this building was charged with balancing an egg on its end. Many tried, many failed. However, Brunelleschi deftly took the egg, slammed it down on the surface of the table, flattening one end and securing his place as the architect. Pretty impressive for a man that had never designed or even built a house before. The dome was done in a spiral brick herringbone pattern, but Brunelleschi being Brunellecshi burnt the plans when it was done. Mankind still has no idea how he did it and remains the largest brick dome in the world.
We then continued to the church of Santa Croce where all the greats of Florence and Italy were buried, except one that had a statue out front. Dante Alighieri, the firebrand poet, was exiled from his hometown of Florence for writing about the powers that were in his Divine Comedy, all in Hell. However, he singlehandedly sparked mass literacy in the country as people wanted to read about the people in his story. Unlike other works at the time that were written in Latin, this was written in the vulgar tongue. When Italy united, it was decided that the Florentine dialect would become the official one of the new country; Dante’s legacy. I would come back to Santa Croce later.
With my two tours over, I headed back to the hostel making sure to get some wine and beer along the way. I headed up to the roof and sat down. I made my acquaintance with two young English lads that had just graduated their equivalent of high school and were taking a holiday before university. I shared with them some beer and they joined me at my table. We then made acquaintance with a late 20’s quad-lingual Belgian young man and an early 20’s lovely, buxom Hungarian redhead. And it was here a learned the strange, fascinating, and beautiful thing about travel: You share your secrets with people you would never tell your longtime friends or family. A few drinks in, I learned how many men the bisexual Belgian had slept with. I learned the Hungarian listened to her baby’s heartbeat, as was the law in her country before she decided to abort her. And they learned of my car accident, my ennui, and my slowly growing self-destruction before my voyage.
After a few rounds at the table, my new friends and I headed out into the night and decided to stop at an Irish pub where they were serving Lagunitas on special with swag included with every purchase. We each got a bottle opener and a pint glass then sat to play Never Have I Ever. Halfway through the game, the Belgian quietly remarked to me that based on their questions and answers, the young men from England were incredibly innocent. I felt good that we could give them a little wisdom from life that they would not learn from books.
We called it a night as the bar shut down and we drunkenly went back to the hostel. Unfortunately, for some reason, the bathroom in my room was occupied for what seemed like an hour. Having to pee, I did what anyone from New Orleans would do and used the sink, making sure to clean it thoroughly for my roommates. I am not a savage. Drunk and happy, I blissfully fell asleep.
The next day was kind of a lazy day. I talked with a client about a project which he seemed to like. I then headed down to the pool and started listening to a wonderful book entitled, The House of Medici: Its Rise and Fall. As I was listening to it, I remembered a line from the film The Third Man in which Orson Wells stated,
“You know what the fellow said – in Italy, for thirty years… they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.“
I wanted to go to Pisa at some point while I was in Florence, so I walked down to the train station to figure out the schedules. One of the good things about Italy and Europe, in general, is that things are so close together; they are a train or bus ride away.
I headed back to the hostel, met my new friends on the roof, and introduced them to my drink of choice, Havana Club. As our imbibed merriment increased, we brought more fellow travelers to our table. We then headed out to see where the night would take us. Our Hungarian friend wanted to go back to the Irish pub, but the rest of us thought it too expensive. We stopped at a kiosk to buy some beer in a piazza and just enjoyed the scenery on a cool Florentine night. At that point, a familiar pass time occurred; standing guard while a female friend publically urinated. It reminded me of college. And Bosnia. We then headed to McDonald’s, but I had had enough and decided to head home to my warm bed.
The next day was even lazier than the day before. I tried to find a quiet place to do some work, but the echoes of unchaperoned 20-year-olds were cacophonous. I put on my headphones and was able to get the majority of my project completed. I then headed back to the roof to see my friends and finished up the day talking to my eldest nephew and godson as it was his birthday.
The next morning, I awoke to shrieks. Pulling back my curtain and jumping to my feet, I saw the ceiling was caving in two beds over. We had rain the night before and apparently, one of the pipes was dripping water on the ceiling tile and it fell on someone. Thankfully, no one was seriously hurt.
I watched some more of the Medici series on Netflix then headed down to get my breakfast. I decided that I would be a bit more productive and headed to the north side of the hostel and looked around. There wasn’t much except a Russian orthodox church, a few parks, and a cool dragon sculpture fountain.
I went back to the hostel to say goodbye to the Belgian as he was leaving, thus starting the fracture in my new group of friends. I guess that is the thing with traveling: all human activities are intensified. You make great friends in a few minutes or days, and then with everyone’s differing schedules, they become a memory.
I headed across the Arno River that divides Florence via the Ponte Vecchio, walked to the top of a hill to the Piazzale Michelangelo for what was to become my weekly ritual. Sitting outside on the terrace of La Loggia, a fantastic restaurant, I looked from my perch over the rim of my Fernet Branca at all of Florence. I knew of this place from the exceptional film The Dark Knight Rises. This was the very spot where Alfred had his fantasy regarding his ward having a happy life. It was very emotional; this would be an adventure I would remember for the rest of my life. From my covered perch, I watched Florence become enveloped in a rainstorm. It was exceedingly beautiful; there was just something magical here that just made everything fantastic. I’ve been to enough places to understand the tourist wonder versus the truly sublime, and this is the latter.
I then went and had dinner at a famed pizza restaurant. I was told that this was the best pizza in Florence. I should have known better than trusting a place with Guy Fierri’s smiling mug on the side; it was an unenthusiastic handjob of a pizza. It was like someone dumped watery tomato soup on some bread and covered it with the wax paper that once contained cheese. Thoroughly disappointed, I headed back to the hostel.
I ran into the English boys in the kitchen and taught them my pasta trick. They were amazed it worked. We then headed up to the roof after cleaning up their dinner. They “forgot” to buy beer for the night, but I had more than enough to share with them as we talked about politics, education, the EU, the US and the UK. It was late and I had a trip planned the next day, so I bid them adieu.
I woke up early and headed to the train station. I ran into the boys that were on their way to a walking tour I suggested. I bid them adieu. I got my ticket, got my train, but had to stand for the hour ride as it was packed. It did not really matter though.
An hour later, I arrived where I wanted to go. I utilized my white privilege and made my way to a hotel bathroom, no questions asked. Refreshed, I headed back out and followed the massive crowd down one of the small streets. I stopped at a subterranean tourist office and got pointed in the right direction, just to make sure. Less than ten minutes later, I came face to face with the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was much bigger and lean-ier than I imagined. I sat there for a bit, watching the tourists of hundreds of nations take their selfies, of which I was unashamedly one.
I was hungry, so I sat down at one of the many restaurants I passed and was served four-cheese gnocchi by a lovely older Italian woman. I walked back to take one more look at the tower, then headed to the station. The ticket machines were broken, so I had to wait in line for a ticket on the next train to Firenzi.
Walking back to the hostel, I picked up some pens and some postcards to send to my friends and family. I finished the rest of my wine and apricots, then headed to the roof after a dinner of focaccia. I sat in one of the hammocks, drinking a beer with the Duomo at my feet as the sunset over my shoulder. Honestly, life could not get better than this.
