We are just starting to know the back ways and have been trying to go to just one landmark a day...could do that every day for six months and not hit everything. We can look out the window and see the face of Santa Croce church and take a very short stroll down Via Greci to get right into Piazza Signoria where Palazzo Vecchio is with all those statues out on the loggia...we found the marker in the square in front of Giambologna's Neptune statue where the the monk Savonarola (remember bonfire of the vanities?) was burned, dismembered, and ultimately thrown into the Arno. Have been into Santa Croce once but it's so massive you can only take in bits at a time. Yesterday we went to the Bardini gardens (just on the south side of the Arno about a quarter mile from here) and found there was a back way into the Boboli gardens behind the Pitti palace... no one was in there and the garden, though not listed in our tour guides, is huge with stunning views of the city and terraced gardens with espaliered fruit trees!
We are in this very old district Santa Croce and there is a wonderful outdoor market very closeby, Sant Ambrose, that goes from 9-1 weekdays with fresh fruit, veggies, cheese (Fred bought over a kilo chunk of parmeggiano for about 15 euros that is taking up half the little refrigerator!), clothing, etc. etc.
Another thing we've found here is that the churches have "relics" of the saints...pieces of bones, etc...the Medicis even had pieces of Saint Francis' intestines (his tunic is in the Santa Croce). Fred just finished reading Hibbert's "The The House of the Medici" and we've done a preliminary visit to the Medici Chapel and San Lorenzo but will need to go back to take this all in.
Our building, Palazzo Antellesi, has all these amazing frescoes on the front (20 painters took 12 days to do these) and every time a tour comes through approximately seventy times a day, people are looking up and pointing at the front of the building! I am really intrigued by the "sinopia" which are the crude sketches done on plaster before the frescoes are actually made...there many of these inside the Museo dell Opera of the Santa Croce.
We are also learning the bus routes...and the phones...and the little markets...and, of course, the best gelato places...
The boys start school on Monday so we've done a few dry runs on the bus to the International School.
One other funny thing: on the Epiphany, there was a street flea market just down the way and Evan bought a gas mask worn by an Italian in WWII along with some other weird things including a copy of the Godfather movie...he just asked for "il padrone" and the guy, who spoke no English, knew exactly what he meant....that's the biggest challenge, trying to understand this beautiful language that is spoken at the speed of light...
Florence viewed from Bardini Gardens
