Florence, Italy

A truly great city will seem like a different place on the second day than it was on the first, and each day after that will hold new and interesting experiences. We stayed in Florence for three days, and it was a completely new city each day. This fact is not just due to its abundant art and ancient streets, it's also because of its citizens who will remind you of your Italian friends and relatives, engaging in lively debates over outdoor dinners that don't begin until 9pm. They will also engage you and your children in bursts of Italian you don't understand, but lively enough gestures to communicate that they want your kids to open the trash can so they can throw away their garbage. Once done, they'll pat your kids on the head and walk away. After the first day in Florence, my son proclaimed, "I thought the Italians were mean at first because they're always yelling, but they're actually very nice." As hard as it is to believe, the Italian people outclass their art. They are in fact it's main attraction.

We drove into Italy the day after we saw Venice which seems bizarre, but I recommend you arrive in Venice by boat even if it makes you feel foolish when you drive by the "Venezia" signs a day later. This is especially important since someone went through a lot of trouble to make the northeastern Italian highways confusing and ugly.

If you missed Jersey Barriers, lane drifters, left lane sleepers, tailgaters, or people passing on the right, you'll be right at home on the highways of northeastern Italy. Also, if you've misplaced your inhaler since leaving the US, now is the time to find it since the northeast has an industry, and they'll show it to you from the highway. I don't want to sound superior here. The East Coast has a similar problem, I just held out higher hopes for the home of my maternal great-grandparents. Now that I think about it though, it's probably as well that they're dead because I can imagine the fight upon arriving home and proclaiming that the highways, air and water of the Austro-Hungarian grandparents are cleaner/better than the highways, air and water of the Italian grandparents. After all, we had to have two sets of birthday parties as it was.

In any event, if you need some perspective, the worst parts of the highway looked like a two lane version of the Jersey Turnpike near Newark and the nicest parts looked like the drive between DePere and Appleton, Wisconsin--without the billboards. I'm not disparaging New Jersey or Wisconsin here. Even people from these areas would say that those strips of highway aren't the prettiest parts of their state. On a positive note, next summer when we don't have the money to go to Europe, we can drive on the Jersey Turnpike or on HWY 41 and say, "Ah, Italy."

If you drive into Florence, be careful not to drive into the restricted historical center because Florence photographs and fines each and every car that doesn't have a special Zona Traffico Limitato (ZTL) sticker, and the fine will be charged every time you pass a camera. This can cost anywhere from 80 to 100 Euros each time. The restriction may only apply during certain hours (7am - 7pm) and certain days (summer and weekends have different times), and your hotel may be able to call the authorities for you to reduce or remove the fine, but the hotel could charge you a substantial fee for this service.

So, it's better to stay away from the ZTL entirely, but the stress of avoiding it seems like the last thing you need given that Vespas are swarming around you like the wasps they're named for, and the lanes are as porous as an EU border. But if you have a vague sense of the ZTL location, your husband and children can act as lookouts for the restricted area while you point your car toward the Piazzale Michelangelo parking area on the south side of the river. Not only does the Piazzale Michelangelo provide some of the best sites overlooking Florence (and it really is breathtaking), but it also provides free 24 hour parking (unless there is a special event). For this information, we need to thank Rick Steves because parking in Florence for three nights easily saved us 100 Euros and his book only cost us 18.

You may be wondering how this much stress could be worth the trouble of staying in the historical center of Florence, but I promise it is. It is also worth the trouble of emptying the contents of your car into the parking lot in order to consolidating three nights of clothes, toiletries, food, and items you don't want stolen from an unprotected car into two rolling suitcases. Once organized, you can either walk down the hill (which includes about 50 stairs) leading to the river and your hotel on the other side, or you could take a cab. Now, either I'm too frugal to take a cab, or my husband is, or neither of us are but we don't mention it for fear of looking wimpy and spend thrifty to one another. In any event, we just walked.

If you go to Florence in the summer, pack a sun dress and wedge high heels or you will feel out of place (this comment is mostly directed toward women), but don't wear them on the first day because the walk from the parking lot to the hotel will leave you sweaty, dusty, and overexposed when the wind captures your dress on the bridge and your hands are too full of luggage to put it back down quickly. This didn't happen to me, I'm just warning you that it could.

If you forget to bring your dress, there is a large outdoor market near San Lorenzo that sells sun dresses for 15 Euro. They also sell leather belts for 10-20 Euro, t-shirts for 10 Euro and just about any leather or fabric product in just about any configuration. When you get your sun dress, don't wear it inside a church without a scarf large enough to cover your shoulders and knees because the Italians don't appreciate naked shoulders and knees in their churches even though their women regularly strip on TV. If you don't have a scarf, church security will give you what the kids and I like to call "the paper shawl of shame" (pictured below) to cover up your offending parts. Since I decided to dress more like a mom than a woman on this trip, I had no trouble with the decency police, but that didn't stop me from wondering if one could wear long pants with the knees cut out and still get into the Duomo. One also wonders if wearing a shirt that covers more shoulder than cleavage is allowed and exactly how much of both must be covered to be in accordance with the decency policy. I'm not saying I wouldn't respect the Church's right to dictate modest apparel, I'm just saying that there is a lot of offending skin between the shoulders and knees that may have been missed in the fine print of this policy.

As you walk down the streets of Florence, you may wonder why this place feels so comfortable and familiar. It may be the many shops and pizza parlors or the buildings and art you have heretofore only seen in books. More likely, it's because nearly 50% of the people you pass are speaking English--and this is both a good and bad thing. I will keep most of my criticism of other American tourists to myself so as not to be deemed a traitor, but just let me say that we may not be putting our best foot forward in Europe. One example was a middle-aged American man yelling to a young newly married couple that he hoped the guy had a pre-nup, and his friends laughing like this was the first time they heard a rude comment. Now, I completely get why this guy's wife left him, and why he needs to get drunk in a foreign country with his best friends to drown the pain, but does he need to yell his baggage to a lovely couple getting their picture taken on their wedding day? Additionally, does he need to pretend that he didn't know his wife was only interested in him for his money? A mirror would have given him all the information he needed. That said, can we agree as Americans that the passports of guys like this should be revoked? I actually have more egregious examples of bad American behavior, but this just gives you an example of the joy some of us are spreading abroad.

If you're worried that you have a college kid in Florence and his/her bad behavior could be what I'm referencing above, rest assured that the college kids are not the problem. They weren't up to no good and they had no plans to be--I know this because I could hear them talking from about a block away. I also heard a young woman speaking baby talk to her boyfriend back home at a pay phone near Ponte Vecchio. She said that all her friends were going out, but she missed him too much to go along. I wanted to call "BS" on this, but I fear she was in earnest and it was all I could do to not shake her by the shoulders and say, "You're in Florence, Italy. Hang up the phone and go out with your friends!"

All in all, we had a great time in Florence, and my only real criticism is that you have to pull out your camera to take another picture ten seconds after putting it away. Really. It's exhausting to see so many beautiful things within such a small area. Actually, a real criticism of Florence would be that many of the street musicians sound like screaming cats, but I'd like to spin this to the positive by saying there is a real opportunity for the street musicians of Salzburg to travel to Florence and make some money.

(Above): Our first view of Tuscany

(Below): The kids were too tired to get back into the car. There is really no excuse for this given that the distance between Padua and Florence was only three hours. If you're thinking that you didn't see a post for Padua, your right. I'm still trying to think of something nice to say.

(Above and Below): A view of Florence from the Piazzale Michelangelo parking lot.

(Right:) The Ponte Vecchio The oldest bridge over the Arno River (built in 1345) and the only one to survive WWII. The top structure was built so the Medici did not need to mix with the average man.

(Above): The girl admiring the river outside our hotel which we found on Expedia the day we arrived for $125/night including breakfast.

(Below): The Piazza della Signoria well after midnight.

(Above and Below): The Duomo after dark.

(Above): A niche of the Duomo.

(Below): The doors of the Baptistry are credited with the birth of the Renaissance movement.

(Above): Inside the Duomo. Light blue Paper Shawls of Shame in background

(Above): The city from the top of the Duomo.

(Below): Between the outer and inner skin of the Duomo.

(Above): Proof that the Salzburg love lock has spread to Florence. (We also found them in Venice and Llubljana.)

(Below): Proof that the Italians don't care about the rules, even in the Duomo.

(Above and Below): The interior of the Duomo Dome.

(Above and Below): Basilica di Santa Croce

(Above): The Robe of Saint Francis of Assisi inside the Basilica di Santa Croce

(Above): Tomb of Michelangelo inside the Basilica di Santa Croce

(Above): Tomb of Machiavelli inside the Basilica di Santa Croce

(Below): Tomb of Galileo inside the Basilica di Santa Croce

NOTE: There is a tomb decorated and available for Dante Alighieri in the Basilica di Santa Croce, however, it is empty. After running afoul of the Florentine authorities, Dante (father of the Italian vernacular and poet) fled to Ravenna where he died. If you want to start a fight in Florence, tell someone that you heard people from Ravenna talking trash about how Dante would never consent to be buried in a town as dirty as Florence.