Monday, May 29, 2006

Arrivederci, Florence

(Originally written offline on May 27 at 10:22am Italy time, on the train from Florence to Rome)

Dinner last night was lovely. We made reservations at a place next to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is on top of a hill across the Arno, overlooking the city. It's a beautiful place to see a sunset, with the fading light reflecting off the river, and we took the opportunity to walk around and soak in the view:

sunset-view-from-piazza-michaelangelo

castle-at-sunset

sunset-tower

david-inspires-romance

Yes, that's yet another replica of the David there in the Piazzele, this one I think in bronze. Apparently Mike got a lot of mileage out of that one.

Earlier I mentioned Italian traffic. It's a little nuts. Cars and especially motorcycles turn at intersections and go through crosswalks without seeming to pay much heed to the pedestrians who are trying to cross. In fact, crosswalks have only a loose relationship to where people actually cross; the safety gap between the crosswalks and other parts of the street is smaller than in the US. Streets are often narrow, but cars still squeeze by each other with little margin for error. Worse, the sidewalks are often narrow, sometimes dwindling to as small as about two feet, leaving pedestrians in a very tight space when, say, a bus goes by. In some crowded areas, people just sort of spill into the street, or maybe rather cars and trucks just decide to drive through town squares—I can't always tell which. Somehow the cars slow down a little and the people disperse a little and the vehicles make it through and no one gets injured. The drivers don't even honk their horns; it's just accepted as the norm.

In general, Italians seem nice and friendly, but perhaps a little disorganized. It was difficult to find our way around the museums, for instance. At the Uffizi, the recorded audio tour didn't do a good job of telling you where to find the paintings it was talking about, and we got further confused about what room we were in and where to go next—some of the rooms didn't have commentary, and some of the commentary didn't match up with any rooms we could find. At the science museum, some of the exhibit signs were translated, but not all of them; there was a book you could carry around with you with some English translations, but they didn't have enough for everyone, so you had to share; and what commentary we could find was along the lines of "this thing was made by this guy in that year," as opposed to "see, here is how the progression of these things illustrates the progression of man's knowledge."

Also, I think the whole country needs to read Managing Expectations, or something on the same subject. I mentioned earlier the lack of announcement about the delayed flight on our first day. Another example: my mother emailed the hotel in Florence to ask them to make reservations for us at the Academy and Uffizi, which they did, but neglected to confirm with us—she never got any response at all—so she went ahead and made reservations herself, and we ended up with two sets. We didn't find out until we got to the hotel.

But all these are minor complaints. We're having a great time. Today we are on our way to Rome, where we will visit the Colosseum, Forum, and Pantheon; the Vatican, including St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel; and the Borghese gallery. In addition, I'm going to shop for a pair of shoes, and Dave and I are going to try to find a place to go swing dancing. It will be the last leg of our trip, and, I expect, the most intense.

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