A sudden whim on Friday evening to do something over the weekend resulted in the almost impromptu trip to Florence. I had originally planned to take a train from Pisa at 5:30am and reach Florence at 6:30am. Being a Sunday, my brain just kept switching the alarm off and by the time I reached Pisa Centrale, it was well past ten. That was when I should have looked at the sun outside, the crowd on the platform and reflected on the total lack of planning that I had done and gone back home to chill out with a bottle of wine. But, instead I purchased the ticket, reasoning that it was only 5.8 euro and hour away and got on to the train.
The train was filled to the gills with mostly the tourist types - middle aged American couples with the unmistakable Texan drawl, young Italian couples and the conspicuous Indian family - father in shorts, t-shirt and aviators, mother in t-shirt, capris, sneakers with sunglasses pushed up on the head and two kids wearing newly acquired and matching InterMilan jerseys. While the Italian couples canoodled and I caught a short nap to offset the lack of sleep (I was up till the wee hours of dawn watching 'Abhiyum Naanum' - a movie that I highly recommend).
For someone coming from India or the Indian-subcontinent, trains in Europe are hard to get used to initially. I still haven't gotten over the feeling of getting into a train and ten minutes later wondering whether I have gotten into the first-class compartment with my second-class ticket. I spend a good part of the sleeping on the train worrying/dreaming about being pulled up by ticket-checker and getting a hefty-fine slapped upon me. Sometimes, the dream goes to the extent of being deported.
The typical second-class that I grew up with and spent most of my life traveling in is crowded hot compartments with luggage stuffed pell-mell into every little nook and corner that is there. The smell of a hundred different tiffin-boxes being opened with a strong background smell from either end of the coaches and the ever-present train smell. The train smell is equal parts the smell of rust and sweat that sticks to every inch of your skin and clothes after a long train travel. The sound of the wheels going over the little gaps in the tracks and the constant drone of the 'Kailash' fans on the ceilings coated with the dust and grime of a few million kilometers of travel has put me to sleep on the sticky rexine seat of the Indian Railways. Third-AC is only a little better - the smell of sweat is not so obvious, but God save you if the family in the compartment next to you decided to pack some strong home-made pickle to go with their food.
Trains in Italy are extremely comfortable (at least the ones that I have been in so far, and I buy the cheapest ticket that is there) and I have been told that the other trains like the Eurostar, TGV etc. are better still - even in second class. The seats are comfortable, the air-conditioning is quite comfortable, the ride is smooth, the coaches are clean and the women ticket-checkers are very pretty (four train journeys and all four times the ticket checker could have made it to the cover of Vogue). They do actually look like the trains that you saw in 'Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge' or 'Before Sunrise' (for all you Shahrukh-haters). And, the trains are fast and punctual. Ten-hours on a train in Europe will probably take you halfway across the continent.
I got off the train at Firenze Santa Maria Novella at exactly the time the schedule claimed the train would arrive. The station was again sea of shorts, haversacks, baseball caps and sunglasses screaming in face to go home. The daft idiot that I am, I had completely forgotten to stock up on Lonely Planet guide books back in India - the ones that you get here are either in Italian or too expensive (I still convert everything to rupees, and constantly crib about paying close to 200INR of kilo of onions - the most I paid was 90INR about eight months ago). The only information I had managed to get hold of in between work the previous evening was what was on wikitravel and a couple of other sites. I had more or less decided to keep this trip to a simple walk-around-and-get-to-know-the-place exercise and then come back some other time to actually see around. I made my way to the tourist information office to pick up a free map of Florence with all the streets and important places marked on it. The tourist information office is right outside the station - on the way to the famed Duomo. Being a Sunday, there were just waves and waves and waves of people - the only place that is crowded in Pisa is the Tower, but then again, that is the only place worth seeing in Pisa.
It was a little past noon when I started and the sun was bright, harsh and hot. I already knew the photos were going to be terrible. For the first hour or so, I just followed the crowds and found myself first at the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. This is probably the most seen picture on the covers of books that have anything to do with Florentine or Italian history alongside the Leaning Tower and the Colosseum. In comparison to the Chapel-Tower-Baptistery of Pisa which is set in its own spacious Piazza dei Miracoli with lots of space to move around, the Santa Maria del Fiore almost pushes everything aside. Walking out into the piazza from a not-so-wide street with buildings tall on both sides right into the face of the huge marble structure is quite a feeling. It's just impossible to be on the street anywhere near it and attempt to guess the size of it - you just cannot see enough of it without the buildings around it blocking your view.
My next stop was Piazza della Republica. The 'Notte Blu' festival (much like the Bangalore Habba, but on a larger scale) is on till the 9th of May and as part of that there were several street performances happening and a stage for live music and a carousel had been crammed into the square. I moved on ahead.
I felt like getting away and I ducked into one of may small little streets that spike off the big ones. I kept taking turns at random places, till I found myself in a relatively quieter part of center outside the Orsanmichele - a church that was once a trading market and served as office space. On the outer walls are sculptures of patron saints of the various guilds that operated out of the place (these are replicas). The heat outside was quite terrible by European standards and the inside of the church looked welcoming. Not spotting a ticket counter or barricades (I had resolved to skip all places that charged an entry fee this time), I walked in and settled on one of the many pews. After the noise outside, for a few seconds I could actually hear the silence inside the church occasionally broken by a muted whisper. It isn't really spectacular inside - it's just another small Italian church - except for some of the sculptures on the outside that are quite imposing - especially since you get to stand right near them and look up, while the sculpture stares right back down at you.
I then took a slightly convoluted route through the side streets to reach Piazza della Signoria - house to the most famous of sculptures ever - the statue of David. But, the statue that you see on the outside at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio is a copy - the original is inside, which you have to pay an entry fee to get into. Right next to the entrance of the Palazzo is another hall - the Loggia di Lanzi - that has another bunch of replicas of famous sculptures. The palazzo has been described 'as a magnificent fortress-palace', but quite honestly, it looked a little too boxy to me. A stone's throw away is the Uffizi gallery - one of the most-famous galleries in Europe and the most famous one in Florence. Understandably, it was also the one that had the longest queue outside it.
A couple of minutes of walk down the street will bring you to the banks of the Arno. I was quite curious to see Ponte Vecchio (meaning 'Old Bridge'; ponte = brigde, vecchio = old) since I'd read that it was one of the few bridges that survived the bombing during the World War II and was lined with shops that sold jewelery. And, it looks nothing like you would expect a bridge to look like - it is as if the shops just spilled over the banks on either side and then just kind of joined up at the middle of the Arno. There is walkway that runs along the top which was built by one of the Medicis to connect the Palazzo Vecchio to Palazzo Pitti. There are several interesting stories about the bridge - but the two that interest me the most are the alleged origins of the word 'bankruptcy' from the merchants who used to run their business on tables in the bygone eras and then ran out of money, and the story of the locks on the railings on and around the bridges that were put there by couples in love - they would lock the padlock and then throw the key into the river signifying eternal bondage.
The crowds again freaked me out and I decided to make a walk up the hill to Piazzale Michelangelo which is an excellent spot to take in the beauty of Florence. I skipped Ponte Vecchio and walked along Arno towards Ponte alla Grazie. On the left is the Museo Galileo dedicated to the works of Galileo - I was quite tempted to walk in, but I stuck to the resolve of leaving the museums for the next trip. The southern bank was a lot quieter just as every source on the internet had said it would be. Walking the streets on that side is a pleasure - cool, musty smelling streets lined with buildings of brick and stone on either sides. The streets are cobbled with the occasional car or bike rattling over them. The piazzale has a large replica of David which has turned greenish - I presume it is actually marble that has been at the mercy of the elements. The view from there is simply breathtaking - you can see and spot most of the famous Florentine landmarks. I can only imagine how much more picturesque it would have been at night - a sight that is top on the list of things to do on the next trip.
The sun started taking its toll on me while hunger gnawed irritatingly at my insides. Wikitravel recommended a small shop called 'Il due Frataneli' (The Two Brothers) which sold panino and wine. This shop is small - for Bangaloreans this is the equivalent of Veena stores - with just about enough place for the three people who ran it (I guess the brothers hired another). The shop is on a little side street which branches off the street that leads to Piazza della Republica. The fare is simple and the wine is nice - you stand/sit outside on the sidewalk and eat and there are a couple of shelves on the wall outside to keep your wine glass. The paninos are rustic - cheese with meat and vegetables. No fancy salsa or fries - wrapped in paper and handed to you warm and crusty. I polished off two of them and then just sat in that quiet street on cool stone watching a girl sit on her boyfriend's lap and painstakingly shape his eyebrows.
Happily fed and watered, the next I wanted to do was sleep. That was when I decided I'd had enough of the madness that filled Florence. It just wasn't doing justice to the town to come unprepared to see all that was there. I struck out to the station a full four hours before the last train to Pisa. I got my ticket, validated it and plopped into a comfortable seat on the lower deck of the Regionale Veloce to Grossetto and fell asleep. Twenty minutes later noisy American mother and noisier kid turned up next to me and killed all hopes of peace on the remainder of the journey.
PS: Blogger doesnt seem to be able understand or I don't seem to be able to understand how to place pictures properly - kindly be adjust.
