Shadows of the Renaissance

I understand now.  Florence is so much more than a city.  The past of this small community on the banks of the Arno is forever intertwined with the invention and advancement of all mankind.  The Medici were essentially the world's first modern traders and bankers.  The Renaissance began here, which advanced all forms of intellectual inquiry and creation.  It is the birthplace of so much, and yet it now just simply exists as this quiet town in the Tuscan hills.  It forges on ahead with shops full of artisans, with architecture that yanks at your interest with each chisel, and with art that will never be eclipsed, ever.  It has gracefully come down from its apogee unapologetic and ready to just be.  Placing itself firmly and deeply into my heart as one of the most beautiful places that I have ever fallen in love with was no task at all for this stunner.  It simply is what Florence does.

 Early in the AM, we headed out for the Galleria delgi Uffizi, which houses 

the largest collection of Renaissance art.  This is in the plaza outside.

 Also outside the Uffizi

 Pavement still damp from evening showers.

 The Arno

 Taking the stairs up to the Uffizi

 You are not allowed to take pics in the Uffizi, and as much as I wanted to man up and snap a shot

of The Birth of Venus, I had yet to grow a pair in this environment.  This was my first forbidden 

picture of the day, included only because it was a big step in the right direction of my new photography mantra of "shoot now, deal with the screaming Italian later"

 Another Shot of inside the Uffizi, All of the ceilings are full with ornate paintings.  Kristin looks

PISSED.

 I wish I could have produced a better picture, but this lady flipped out on me right as I raised my camera.

 Tower on Piazza della Signoria

 A fountain on the roof of the Uffizi

 A quiet Florence street

 A meat shop that we stopped by on our way to Brunelleschi's Duomo

 Street

 A lot FULL of mopeds

 For a sense of scale, check out that guy.  The duomo is immense.  It took 150 years to 

complete, and was started in the 13th(!) century 

 The Campanile, which is the cathedral's bell tower

 Inside the Duomo

 We had to climb 463 steps to the top and 463 back down.  This was a wide stretch.  The 

spiraling stretches were to cramped to photo.

 Inside the Duomo at the top, took balls to paint this high

 The final stretch of stairs 

 View from the top, definitely worth the struggle

 Florence 

 A nice picture of the Campanile 

 Hills of Tuscany in the distance

 No making fun of my camera bag

 hey boo

 Just a few more, I swear.  We stayed up at the top of the dome for about 30 minutes.  It was seriously 

just absolutely breathtaking.

 A road grows smaller

 Moments before the descent

 Social statues

 The duomo ground floor.  It was surprisingly quite empty, except for the occasional Japanese tour group.

 The original entrance

 Top of dome

 Close-up.  

 Bye duomo

 So, how crazy are we?  After climbing to the top of the duomo, we decided 

to punish ourselves further and climbed to the top of the Campanile, all 420

odd steps.

 It gave up a great view

 Florence is so small that you can see where all you have been.  We were standing up here tracking our path.

 I never get tired of these Florentine panoramas, but you might so..

 I realized around this point that I lost my walking stick.  Trying to ask the duomo

guards for help was like begging for a hundred from a homeless man, just not happening.

The Baptistry

The duomo's facade, we almost missed it, but luckily just turned a corner and wham

 Fresh Mozz, lettuce, tomato (MLT)

This pizza blew us away 

 A beast of some kind

 A mustachioed knocker

 Next on our agenda was to travel by foot to the Galleria dell'Accademia, which houses...

 The most perfect piece of art ever created

David

Photographs were prohibited in this area, and I definitely snuck off these shots very carefully.  It is incredible how large this statue is.  And perfect.  We stared at it for 15 minutes, and it looked like at any given second it would break free of the pedestal and take off down the hall

 

 After David, we headed off to see my favorite work of art in the world

 But first, drinks at a Ben and Jerry's...

 Republica

 I loved this carousel, it was very Renaissance-ish 

 The headband kept my ears warm

 Kristin at a market 

 Now this was awesome, we found a little glove shop full of gloves of every color and design.  They looked at our hands and eyeballed our sizes perfectly, and than taught us how to properly put gloves on.  It was a lot cooler than it sounds.  We both bought cashmere lined gloves that are softer than the slightest whisper.

 New gloves

 Ponte Vecchio

 The other side of the Arno

 We were taking the long way to Santa Maria 

 Just some random door

 We gad to check a map for this one, middle road it is

 Basilica di Santa Maria Novella

 There it is. My favorite painting in the world.  I once wrote a 10 page paper about this exact painting, painted on this exact wall, almost 600 years ago.  If this thing was portable and could be bought and sold at auction, then it would be one of those top 5 art pieces in the world. Since monetary value really 

determines how ubiquitous a painting seems in the art world, and this particular masterpiece cannot be sold, it just lives out a quiet life here in Florence.  Masaccio painted it, and it basically was the first incidence of Renaissance art.

 

 Pictures in here, also not allowed, and my shutter seemed really loud.

 One more, crazy seeing this thing in person.  The only other painting that made my heart speed up like this was Picasso's Guernica in Madrid.

 Basilica di Santa Maria Novella

 I look ridiculous

 We stopped for Gelato 

 She will be pissed when she finds out I took this sneak shot 

 Small car

 Cool bar.  We are generally only eating at bars because it is good, quick, and cheap.

Bars are different here.

 Another gorgeous building

 5pm

 Bike Commuter

 Ferragamo Flagship

 Ponte Santa Trinita

 A fountain

 A corner store

 Florence

 Green

 A tasty shop

 Bust 

 Love locks

 Getting late

 Bookmakers

 Lasagna

Totally running out of internet in a few minutes.  I had to make haste.

 

And so it begins

To tell the complete tale of how we got to this point would be an ambitious attempt at crude storytelling.  To picture myself eating breakfast in Connecticut when I awoke this morning takes within my act of imaging a great deal of mental strain.  I feel as though I ate this "breakfast" meal somewhere between my high school graduation and the Australian Olympics, though in reality it has probably been just a scant day or so ago in real time.  Needless to say, when we arrived at the bustling Rome airport this morning, the night was very old yet the day quite young.

Our flight was a calm, simple jaunt overseas, but my eating habits had taken a turn towards the peculiar.  I had eaten 4 sandwiches by noon of my Italian day:  the focaccia cheese sandwich on rosemary at 5:30am on our transatlantic, a genoa salami on baguette around 8am, a prosciutto and cheese on poppy croissant at 11am, and lastly, a mozzarella and fresh tomato on a challah type roll before taking a nap at noon.  It is no wonder that with this intense regimen, a nap was in order.  No man should ever have to subject himself to that much chewing without appropriate sleep.  After arriving in Florence, Kristin began making stereotypical Italian food requests.  Spaghetti she demanded.  She was met with failure, and worse, a cold pizza settlement that smelled more like cigarettes than tomato sauce.  Around this point in the day, I consumed sandwiches 3 and 4.

We slept until about 3:30.  Kristin was slow to rise, so I got up to roam the streets until dusk.  I did so very poorly.  Strangely, I saw another person get hit by a car.  This makes it two in three days.  I returned to our hotel, San Gallo Palace Hotel, which is located just outside of the historic center of Florence.  We are located in a very local area, so prices are good and tourists are nonexistent.  Kristin and I prefer this arrangement for a number of reasons.  First, when you stay outside of the bustling tourist center, you are not subjected to the tourist price.  Also, you are able to see people living their customary lives.  It is more enlightening than staying in the tourist section, where offerings are taken down to a bland compromise between the authentic and the convenient.  Of course, the downside, in this case especially, is that I went out with my camera expecting to photograph sweeping renaissance skylines and crumbling history, all I got was apartment buildings and commuters.

When I returned to Kristin, she was dressed and ready to go.  Where you ask?  The Duomo?  A Basilica of some kind?  Maybe the Boboli gardens that the Medici built?  Nope.  She demanded we find the local gym.  We had our concierge arrange a free week pass to a gym.  We walked about 15 minutes and finally found this very swank and crowded gym.  The equipment was all brand new, and some of the machines, like the treadmill were even designed by Pininfarina, which was totally awesome looking compared to the garbage aesthete that I am accustomed to at LA fitness.   The gym was full of Italians obviously, but we were taken aback by the complete lack of meatheads.  Not a single one.  No balding monsters grunting and groaning like Mordor Orcs.  It was a very pleasant workout except for a very odd interruption.  I was using an inclined bench and a young Italian man intervened to give me a stern talking to in Italian.  At first, I had no idea what I had done, but then I slowly started to piece together his message.  He was criticizing my poor weight lifting form, something about my back not being straight enough.  Kristin's gym experience was very enjoyable, though she said the women's locker rooms was among the nuder that she had ever experienced.

So we worked out where the locals work out, and then we decided to eat where the locals eat.  On our way back from the gym, we noticed a very crowded restaurant with huge slabs of meat hanging from the ceiling.  Kristin suggested that we eat there, since it looked very busy and was probably therefore good. We returned to our hotel, changed, and set back for this very special restaurant, Perseus.  I had died and gone to bread heaven.  Loafs, slices, circular pieces, unbelievably fresh olive oil, and balsamic.  You have probably never heard of legendary Bistecca.  I am about to hammer this name into your brains.  It is a type of steak, made from a very special breed of cow.  It is a very Florentine food, and is essentially a T-bone steak, about 3 or 4 inches thick, bloody rare, and crusty on the outside with seasonings and olive oil.  Kristin and I split one of these, all three lbs of it.  It was by far, like really really far, the best steak of my life.  And while I am at it, I also consumed the best salad of my life at this meal.  It was so fresh, that it was if if the damn thing had grown directly out of my plate.  The tomatoes were so fresh and delicious, Kristin was eating whole tomatoes, and she hate tomatoes.  This was the best meal of my life, and Kristin felt the same way.  I am prone to exaggeration, and I have no shortage of "bests" for no shortage of categories, but this one was for real.  The service was also ridiculously perfect, and they even slipped us all sorts of free stuff.  I felt perfectly at home, and we were the only native english speakers in the building.

Kristin finishing packing in CT

Bo, a very lively character

Walking around the square immediately surrounding our hotel

A random street

Rush Hour?  We are staying outside the historic center of Florence 

Tell me those Bistecca cuts do not look delicious 

Looking for interesting things to photograph and trying to acclimate to 

the time change

Hope she is okay, saw this lady get hit

Some Graffiti 

Cemetery at dusk

An open door on a quiet side street

Night traffic

Piazza della Liberta, across from our hotel

Entrance to our hotel

The restaurant that we ate at, Perseus, had fresh offering everywhere

Preparing a dessert

Vegetable garden that comes gratis at beginning of meal with breads

some bruschetta

Peppers and onion

Kristin eating a grapefruit

After putting back a few lbs of meat

Some really hot fresh crusty bread

our unbelievably fresh salad

Cutting our Bistecca

This guy was the best

2 servers enjoying serving

The size of the steak was about 3 or 4 inches thick and 4 cuts.  The outside was burnt to a crisp,

inside was red and perfect

More

Noods in restroom

Bistecca and Peppers

Tiramisu 

Sweet wine

Biscotti and sweet wine - unbelievable 

Reting my large nog on my hands, that red thing is my wallet

One last shot of Perseus

A Birthday Cake and Neu Travels outlined

I recently had my birthday on October 31, and Kristin, with the cooperation of The Mansion on Turtle Creek Pastry Chefs, went out of their way to create an amazing cake for the occasion.  I was very surprised and felt incredibly guilty about sliding a sharp knife through the delicious globe.  The clouds were made out of a cotton candy type substance and the goboogo plane was shaped white chocolate.  The chefs included white chocolate signposts detailing past journeys and future expeditions.  They used a vanilla and chocolate butter cream filling.

Our next foray into the world beyond our own will lead us through Italy and Egypt.  The trip is a Birthday/Valentines Day/Dating Anniversary gift for Kristin.  We will begin the trip in Tuscany, where we will act like young travel cognoscenti speeding through medieval towns on Vespas or  perhaps we will just laze the days away on a hillside in Chianti, imbibing fantastic wines and naming clouds.  Either way, we are really excited about Tuscany.

We will leave Florence and depart for Cairo from Rome.  After a connection in Cairo, we will land in Sharm el-Sheikh on the Sinai peninsula.  In this area, we will be staying in Dahab, which is a very laid back town on the Red Sea across from Saudi Arabia.

After Dahab, we have a 3 night stay on the Giza plateau in southwestern Cairo, right at the doorstep of the Great Pyramids.  While here, we will celebrate Kristin's birthday in the shadows of the world's most epic ancient monument, The Great Pyramid,

From Cairo we fly to Venice, and we will spend Valentine's Day in this old romantic city.   Hopefully it will compensate for the inevitable string of Valentine's disappointments that will most likely follow a zenith of this magnitude.

After a couple days in Rome, we head back to New York, and eventually Dallas.  Naturally, I will keep a log of the entire trip on these pages, so stay tuned.  We leave in early February.

Home for a spell

We are home, and it looks like it will stay that way until late October.  As much as we want to set sail again, even immediately at times, home has an irreplaceable quality, and we intend to savor it deeply for the coming months.

Kristin is off to school for her teaching masters, nervous and excited.  She will be finished in about a year or two, and since her classes are online, we are free to move about as we please.

I will be trading and helping my grandfather's french glass company, while tending to the dream.

A whole world is out there just beyond your front door. It is great to live in a country where, at any given moment, you are just a choice, a handful of actions, and a day of travel from the other side of the globe.  Of course, it is not that simple.  We also unfortunately live in a country where the conventional career plan tends to strangle would be adventurers with 2 weeks of vacation a year, student debts, and unrealistic living standards.  I think it is absolute rubbish, and as a result, am probably more likely to end up on a street corner than in an office cubicle.  Hopefully, neither fate is ever realized.  Being creative with one's career is a necessity to sate an insatiable travel appetite in the U.S., as it does not come easily along the paved roads of our conventions.  I hope that in my lifetime, our standards change, and more Americans will be able to take time off and travel freely. I think at least 4 weeks of vacation time a year is a reasonable standard.  As a result, people would probably be generally happier and more productive when they do work.

I feel very privileged to have seen such gleaming pockets of wonder during our adventures this summer.  Before our trip to the far East, a lot of people asked Kristin and I, "Why Asia?"  I do not believe that anyone that read of our exploits will pose that same question to us again.

There is no why and never was, as far as I am concerned.  Luckily, I met a girl that feels the same way, and we are just getting started.  More to come.

Delayed in Denver

Tired at Denver airport, we set up shop in this cozy little nook that we named Toenail Alley, after the sliver of yellowing toenail that we found in the carpet. It is modest home, smells like stale farts, and is thankfully only for the time being.