We arrive at the Paris train station for our trip to our next destination: Florence, Italy. Our loading dock for the train is oddly packed with a large battalion of about 100 commando-like soldiers, who boarded our train in full uniform.

We depart Paris on a high-speed "sleeper train" to Florence, hoping we are not heading for the Russian front. Foolishly, I did not think, earlier in the day, to buy much in the way of food for the train trip-passing up all those delicious, open markets in Paris. As a result, I went a full day with nothing more than salad, bread and a small amount of cheese. Involuntary fasting in this land of ancient Catholic piety...

The train ride was quite smooth and quiet, which allow us to get a good few hours of sleep in our cramped, bunk-bed quarters. We awake to a rising sun over the snow-capped Swiss Alps on the horizon. Our first stop is Lusanne, Switzerland. We notice no hand-to-hand combat at the station, and are relieved. The commandos will apparently not be pressing us into bloody battle.

With no food to be had on the train, I desperately and hungrily hope for nourishment at the Lusanne station. But we find no restaurants or vending machines. Euro dollars are not taken, nor are credit cards. One shop is found, but it had just closed two minutes earlier. Without food or water for nearly a day, I began hallucinating. I have cheese, but my knife was confiscated at JFK. In a panic, I start breaking off pieces of cheese with my fingers, and eat voraciously and ravenously. Keeping in the spirit of canine-friendly Paris, we notice there is a poodle and German Shepard being kept in the berth next to ours on the train. Perhaps I should end my vegetarian diet...

Florence is a city that seems to have been constructed as a work of Renaissance art. The city is full of masterpiece sculptures and buildings with highly-detailed ornamentation.

Upon arrival at the Florence train station, we strap on our backpacks and set out for our list of most-desired lodging (it was only in Paris that we had advance lodging reservations). The "must-do" recommendation (it was almost a command) was that we stay at a place called La Scaletta. The friend back in Gainesville has stayed there on his previous trip to Florence, and became convinced that it was unmatched in quality. Our guidebooks agreed.

But how could a place widely recognized as being amongst the most impressive, moderately-priced lodging in Florence have any vacancy? I was silently pessimistic. We had not, after all, made reservations 9 months in advance, and assumed the staff would laugh at us when we asked about vacancy.

Somehow, miraculously, they have one room left, and it was large enough for the 3 of us. An extremely large room, and again moderately priced. The hotel had a feature that we were now well-versed in: a long, winding marble staircase of 101 steps leading to our room. We usually opt, however, to use the tiny elevator up to our 3^rd floor room (an elevator so tiny that it barely fit one, yet we sometimes squeezed two and even three into it).

What makes La Scaletta so rewarding? The reason it is THE place to stay in Florence? The hotel possesses a wonderous rooftop garden. During our stay in Florence, we were to frequent this place, as it gave us sunshine and a eye-popping, panoramic view of the Florence skyline. And kept on this rooftop was a tortoise-apparently the hotel pet.

Day One in Florence. We walk to Santa Croce, a Gothic church with very tall ceilings, indescribable stained glass, and containing a number of famous tombs: Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, Machiavelli. The church also contains the most impressive collection of paintings and sculpture of any church in Florence (photo at right).

Fronting the church is the stupendous Piazza Santa Croce. Overall, the piazzas in Florence, such as Santa Croce, are colossal, monumental expanses.

We were to immediately realize that Florence is apparently the capitol of the world in leather goods. (And the Santa Croce environs seemed to be the leather epicenter, as the piazza was surrounded by countless leather venders.) Knowing this, my fiancé had given me explicit instructions: "If you see a leather jacket for about $50, buy it for me." We stop at a few vending booths. At one, we spot what appears to be quality jackets that fit the description of what my fiancé is looking for. I let the vendor know what I'm looking for. "I know exactly what your fiancé looks like," he says, "and I know the jacket that is perfect for her. She will look spectacular in this! Here! Feel the buttery softness of this lambskin jacket." I tell him my price instructions. We haggle down the price. It is marked at $395. He eventually says he can give it to me for $150 euro dollars. He whips out his calculator. "$120 American dollars! Tell your fiancé that such a jacket could not be found anywhere for $50." I'm helpless in the face of this rapid-fire salesmanship, and pull out my credit card-realizing that I've exceeded my $50 limit.

The next day, by the way, we return to this vendor as one of my travel companions would like to buy a full-length leather jacket. Just for fun, I try on a black leather "bomber" jacket, just to see my look in such a jacket. Mistake. There are now two vendors, and they are all over me like machine-gunning dive bombers. I loudly shout that I have ZERO need for a jacket, since I own a similar one at home, and I therefore have ZERO intention of buying one today. Besides, I've already exceeded my $50 limit for my fiances' jacket!! It does no good. By putting on the jacket, I am doomed. I WILL buy the jacket. "You look absolutely GORGEOUS in that jacket!! GORGEOUS!! It fits you perfectly!! You're GORGEOUS! Your fiancé will love you!" I have no defense against what is the most impressive display of salesmanship I have ever been subjected to. He whips out his calculator again. The $400 jacket is marked down. "Both this and your fiances' jacket for $250, which is a great deal that I am giving you only because you were kind enough to buy a jacket from me yesterday!" Suddenly, shockingly, my credit card is out again, and I'm now paying for TWO jackets and my $50 limit is now a distant, forgotten memory, as I ascent to a $250 price for the two.

The most important sales pitch did not come from the salesman, however. While there, another woman was there to buy two jackets. She told me that her friend works at a leather shop. The friend saw the quality and price of the jackets being sold by the vendor, and she was extremely impressed. That was it. I was sold...

Later, I end up buying a lambskin tri-fold wallet I actually needed.

We find ourselves ready to climb the tower next to the Duomo of Florence. Again, the endless, narrow marble stairs. But again, the view from the top is amazingly worth the drudgery of the climb (photo at left). Throughout my stay in Florence, both at the top of the tower and on the streets, I was unable to stop taking photos. Everywhere I looked, I saw things that were urban design gems. Picturesque, human-scaled, quaint, breathtaking.

Our first museum in Florence was Palazzo Vecchio. Contained within are fabulous, immense paintings and sculptures. Also contained within was the Florence city commission auditorium, so large, grand, and filled with sculpture and paintings that it made my Gainesville city commission auditorium back home, by comparison, look like a tiny outhouse.

We visit the center of artistic expression in Florence: The stunning, magnificent Piazza della Signoria is the most astounding piazza in all of Florence. The piazza is lined with a number of quite dramatic sculptures and presents a grandiose view of the surrounding building facades (photo at right). In 1497, it was the venue of the famous "bonfire of the vanities," at which followers of a fanatical monk heeded his call to toss their worldly goods into the flames (later, this same monk was to be hanged and burned in this piazza, accused of being a heretic...).

Ponte Vecchio ("Old Bridge") is an elegant bridge over the Arno River. It is packed with shops, and was built in 1345 to replace a bridge swept away by a flood. In 1593, the Medici Grand Duke Ferdinando I, decided to evict what he believed were unpleasant retailers on the bridge-blacksmiths and butchers. He replaced them with goldsmiths, silversmiths and jewelers. Ever since then, the bridge has been devoted to such retail commerce. The bridge is world-renown for its commerce, which became apparent to us as it was jammed with wall-to-wall tourists and endless display cases of what appeared to be very fine jewelry, not to mention food and leather (photo at left).

Florence has noticeably more food markets downtown, more wine shops, more leather, and more small retailers, overall, than Paris.

First thing next morning, we are off to Gallery Academia, a curiously plain, modest building given what it holds-the David statue by Michelangelo. David is all that he is billed to be. A stupendous sculpture. The Gallery also contains a number of fascinating, unfinished sculptures by Michelangelo.

The Duomo cathedral in Florence. Completed in 1436, it took 14 years to complete just the dome (which stands 292 feet high), and today, it symbolizes Florence in the same way that the Eiffel Tower symbolizes Paris (photo above left). We find it to be an enormous spectacle inside.

Beside the Duomo is the Baptistery. Most notable are the bronze-paneled doors. Inside, we found Byzantine art on the ceilings, including scenes depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, their expulsion, Hades, the 12 apostles, coffins with the dead descending to hell or ascending to heaven, the final judgment, and the arch angels.

The weather in Florence when we were there in late April, was nearly perfect.

Florence was noticeably more dirty, grimy and noisy than Paris. Enormous platoons of wild-eyed, maniac Italians on scooters and motorcycles-the Florence equivalent to the obnoxious air boats in Florida-form ear-shattering packs that race up and down the Florence streets 24 hours a day.

The streetlife in Florence is nearly 24 hours a day. Even after 10 pm, the streets were alive with fun-loving, sociable people enjoying the evening. And both night and day, the streets are filled with the most sumptuous smells of food imaginable.

There are very few street trees in Florence, unlike Paris.

Sadly, we fail to see the Uffizi Palace. Even though we arrived first thing in the morning to beat the long lines, we failed to realize that on May 1^st, the Palace would be closed.

Instead, we walk the beautiful streets. Florence is a city that seems to have been constructed as a work of Renaissance art. The city is full of masterpiece sculptures and buildings with highly-detailed ornamentation.

We rent a Fiat Punto to drive from Florence to towns to our west. Our average speed on the autostrada was 90 mph in order to keep up with the flow of Italian traffic. (Rather harrowing due to the rain and narrow lanes, but when Dom "Mario Andretti" Nozzi took the wheel, he insisted that he should toss out his rear view mirror because "what is behind me...is not important.") We discover that the highway signage is much clearer about directions than are the signs on American highways-perhaps out of necessity, given the relatively high speeds (and, therefore, the abbreviated reaction time) of Italian drivers.

First stop: Pisa. Perfect weather for shooting photos of the marble bell tower, better known as the Leaning Tower of... Unfortunately, we did not have the time or patience to wait in the long line at the tower for the opportunity to climb the tower, which has recently been opened again to those wishing to ascend to the top of it (and the courage to do so). The tower stands 179 feet tall. It is now 15 feet out of perpendicular due to its leaning history.

We drive to Lucca. Built as a defensive rampart almost 500 years ago, Lucca was a medieval city built over more ancient Etruscan and Roman settlements. The town turns out to be surprisingly delightful. Medieval in design with a gridded, connected, walkable, compact, Renaissance street layout and character. The entire town is surrounded by a very tall medieval fortification wall built to repel the marauding Florentine hordes of that age. I tell one of my travel companions-a county commissioner-that we need to build such a wall ("A wall to fight against sprawl!"), instead of what is now proposed, which is a "urban service line" on a map. The wall, after all, would be so obvious that even a schoolchild could understand that the city should not sprawl beyond it.

46 miles west of Florence, Lucca is a very quaint, charming town.

Lucca's surrounding fortification wall is topped by a very romantic paved greenway trail, canopied with a tunnel of trees and filled with community residents out for a stroll, a jog or a bicycle ride. It is a "social condenser" on which the citizens socialize and interact as neighbors with their fellow residents. An extremely rich sense of community is found on this wall. The trail serves as a "serendipity conduit." It is a perfectly safe, enchanting place for lovers to walk hand-in-hand (photo at right).

Lucca is a city to walk and explore. Surprise awaits at each intersection as you walk down its narrow, medieval streets. With buildings hugging the sidewalks, there is an extremely comfortable sense of enclosure that makes walking the streets delightful-unlike American streets, which are so wide with big parking lots and big setbacks that the rare pedestrian feels unsafe and over-exposed.

Piazza Napoleone in the middle of town is the most perfectly designed square I have ever experienced.

We dine at the Da Leo dei Filli Buralli restaurant. It is superb, authentic, vibrant. The ambience is outstanding. Inside, the authenticity creates problems, as the menu contains no English translations of the menu items. Only able to understand a few of the appetizers on the menu, I mistakenly order a "rigatoni" dish as my 1^st course, and a "pasta" dish as my 2^nd course. Our waiter laughs and asks, "due"? "Si", I said. "Due." He laughs because as it turns out, I had unknowingly ordered two rigatoni dishes. But the basil rigatoni they served me was, by far, the best rigatoni dish I had ever tasted. "I'll have tre rigatoni!!"

Lucca was, in my opinion, the best city we experienced in Italy.

From Lucca and La Spezia, we train to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre is five isolated, nearly unreachable coastal villages perched on sea cliffs. Their almost inaccessible location probably explains why they remain so cute, quaint, and walkable. In such a setting, they have been able to largely escape the degradation of being designed for cars and tourists.

The villages were originally built higher up on the cliffs to protect against marauding pirates. In total, the five villages today contain approximately 6,500 residents.

By far, it is best to travel to Cinque Terre by train, which we did.

We arrive in Riomaggiore. Unfortunately, we are greeted by a chilly rain, which must be common for a seaside region. In hopes of waiting out the rain, we have lunch in a tiny town café. We order the pesto pizza and pesto gnocchi's. They are both outstanding. It is, by far, my biggest lunch meal ever. I gobble down two servings of gnocchi's and one and a half pizzas.

By the end of lunch, the relentless rain continues, but we refuse to be denied an exploration of Cinque Terre. We set out on the now cobblestoned "Via dell'Amore"path (Walkway of Love) that links the five villages. Looking back toward Riomaggiore as we reach the first bend in the path, the scene is of a dramatically placed little town spilling down from the steep cliff above the sea (photo at left).

Our progression along the path is stopped after Manarola, the second village. A gate blocks the way, suggesting disrepair ahead on the path. Reluctantly, we turn back to seek out lodging for the night.

Both Riomaggiore and Manarola contain vast areas of terraced vineyards and citrus on their steep farm fields, just outside of the pastel-colored buildings of the villages. In a Riomaggiore vineyard, we spot whitewashed wooden figurines built to look like workers in the field. Italian scarecrows?

It is in Riomaggiore that we find a hotel room (the Locanda Hotel) after a great deal of searching and being told that there was no vacancy. But again, our room is very modestly priced at $90 for the 3 of us, and have a third floor window facing the bay, which gives us superb views of the village and the sea. Which means, of course, lots of stairs to climb again. But, oh, what awaits us at the top makes it all worthwhile (photo at right).

We lay in bed in the early evening with our windows flung open-listening to the pleasant sounds of a small Italian village. Wafting up to us is the sound of happy, animated villagers enjoying life on their cute little streets. No sirens. No leaf blowers. No cars. No helicopters. We are not in Kansas anymore.

For dinner, we sample "fruit of the sea" and "fruit of the vine" at Trattoria Lalampara-excellent village ambience with a grand view of the sea.

The next morning, villagers laugh as they look up to our hotel room and see me dangling my feet from the window. Craftsmen below are laying in new cobblestone on a streetside stairway as I watch the locals walking to work.

Soon, I am at an outdoor café enjoying fresh foccacia pizza with tomatoes and oregano.

We are back on the road. This time, it is the rural roads of Tuscany, an extremely picturesque region of central Italy. The hills and farms of Tuscany are covered with rolling fields of wheat, vineyards, and olive trees.

First stop is the well-preserved medieval town of San Gimignano. Lots of strikingly beautiful towers (originally 72, now 14). Lots of cobblestone streets. Lots of brick archways. And lots of tourists. Indeed, it does not seem like a real town where people live, but more like a theme park. Still, it is worth the visit. At our restaurant, I accidentally order a "Tuscany pate sampler." Not a dish to order if, like me, you are a vegetarian. Have my first taste-in years (no, wait...ever!!)-of ground goose liver, goat kidneys, sheep intestines...

Siena

Siena. City of the Virgin. Founded by Augustus. Another extremely impressive medieval town. Lots of narrow, cobblestoned streets. Stunning vista terminations. Handsome buildings. Countless outdoor cafes. Gigantic churches.

Shockingly, in the summer of 1348, 65,000 residents of Siena died of the plague (The Black Death).

The Siena Duomo is very dramatic, yet inside, is quite dreary with its dark colors. Started in 1200, it was completed in the 1400s. Over 200 busts of popes and Roman Emperors are found inside.

For dinner, we are serenaded by street performers playing Italian songs on an accordion and flute.

Siena, I'm told, has a fantastic, human-scaled street system. Sure enough, the next morning, I am walking the labyrinth of streets in Siena-so narrow at times that I needed to stand sideways to let a car pass. I walk to the edge of the city. Looking out at outlying, sprawling Siena through an archway at the fortification wall of the medieval city, I feel as if I am looking through the gates of hell. The car orientation outside the city is so depressing and America-like outside its walls.

Lit up at night, the Piazza dell Campo-the main piazza of Siena-is magnificent (photo at right). In the morning, I again ascend countless steps (400, actually) to reach the top of the tower (Torre del Mangia) standing over this piazza (364 feet high). The views from here of the terra cotta rooftops of Siena and the outlying Tuscany hills are breathtaking. As I look down into the piazza, I try to imagine the bi-annual spectacle that takes place there. Twice each summer, the "Palio Race" is held there (first held in 1283). It is a mad, wild-eyed, bareback horserace featuring representatives from the 17 neighborhoods of Siena. Each neighborhood has its own trademark flag, and these are paraded before the race. The race is three times around the piazza-which has been covered with dirt for the madness-and lasts approximately 90 seconds. A palio is an embroidered banner, which is the prize for winning the race. That, and the pride of winning the race for the victorious neighborhood. Vast numbers of spectators watch from every imaginable vantage point surrounding the piazza. Someday, before I die, I must go back to observe the spectacle.

We drive like maniacs to return the Fiat in Florence. We catch the train to Venice, and just in the nick of time, as the train pulled out 30 seconds after we boarded. Whew!

Relieved to be on the train, we settle in and start sipping the Riomaggiore Locale Rosso wine we had smuggled aboard (restaurants in Italy tend to serve their "locale" wine as their house wine-and usually for the very affordable price of about $5.

 Paris

Venice

Rome

Summary of Our Trip

Back to Dom's Voyages and Adventures page.