Florence for a Day

I asked my daughter today, “Do people in Orlando go to Disney world?” She replied in Italian so that her hosts in Orlando would not hear her,” Si, 2 or 3 all’anno.”  2 or 3 times a year, but it is no big deal for them.

I often wondered the same for our beautiful Florence; the sumptuous Chianti that surrounds her, and the hidden jewels tucked about our land, if we could look at our home with the child-like eyes of a tourist.

Enter my son. Benji. 

He is here in Italy with me, born in Florence 23 years ago and lived here half his life.

“Come to Florence with me,” I say as I hand him a helmet for the motocycle. “I want you to see it through my eyes.”

We bundle up and ride out of the Greve Vally onto the Strada del Chianti, pass the Certosa up high on the hill.

 

After descending into Galluzzo from the crest of the Certosa, we stop at our friends popular lunch stand for a Panino di Lampredotto and glass of ruby red, Chianti wine.

 

There was a time when the idea of eating a crusty, hollow dinner roll stuffed with cow innards would have sent a shudder down my spine and that of any “Straniere”(Foreigner) coming to Florence once being faced with the sandwich selection the first time. Opening your mind and palette to the delights of the “poor table,” which is typical in Tuscan cuisine, is merely a right of passage. In embracing “Trippa alle Fiorentina”( Tripe with peas and tomato sauce) or eating Panini di Lampredotto ( Boiled innards on crisp, buttery hard rolls) closes the chasm between your “strangeness” and that of being “at home” in Florence.

 

Greedily, my son and I munch on our sandwiches as broth drips down our forearms and into our leather jackets. I have lipstick on my greasy chin, not something an Italian woman would do. I look at my son who clearly loves this “taste of home” and he laughs at “clown Mom” and I cross my eyes. I look around at the 20 or so customers standing at the lunch counter, we all are enjoying the sandwiches and dripping and slurping the salsa verde( parsley and garlic sauce) from the wax paper.

 

I notice the police officer also enjoying his wine and sandwich. He too, is on a motorcycle. I wonder if there is something magical about eating and drinking in Tuscany that forgives the act of then driving after wine and Lampredotto?  The officer smiles and gets on his bike and we do the same- no drama, no balloons or taped lines, just a civilized dispatch and wave off to our way to Florence.

 

As we get closer to San Gaggio, I tap Benji on the shoulder and gesture to go up towards Piazziale Michelangelo: one of the best vistas of the city and one of the most recognizable scenes that is synonymous with the renaissance city. The roots of the secular paper Birches are rebelling with the asphalt and I am thankful that Benji is an experienced driver, as we bump and swerve along.

 

Our eyes fill with the lens of a Fellini cameraman with the view implied of an Italian sports car. I wish my hair were in the wind and not the helmet, like many years before when I did this route with my husband. I hear the horns honking and the sing-songy trumpeting of the tour buses letting us know the city is not far.

 

We see Brunelleschi’s Cupola, red and heady in the sunlight. I felt myself choke up as I look at the tiny city, so colorful, like petit fours in a pastry case, the memories flooding back to me. I point out the green dome of the Synagogue, I was once told by one of my father’s Jewish customers that it was the most beautiful synagogue in the world. I share this with Ben and snap a picture of a mandolin player in a green tee-shirt almost as if on purpose, in front of the temple. One by one, I point out the places so familiar to me as if one would point out constellations.

I point out Santa Croce and tell him it is like the Westminster Abbey in London and name some of the famous buried there. I point out the route we will take when we descend Monte Minato and the route that we will do by foot once we park at the station. My son is impressed it is as if he is seeing Florence for the first time.

We park at the station and walk through the underground tunnel that has been remodeled and cleaned up since I last walked through it. We begin inside the old city center, built atop the Roman claustrum. From the train station walking towards the Duomo we see S. Maria Novella and the fortress.

The streets in this neighborhood are still laid out along the lines of the ancient roads of that city. Some of the earliest churches were built using the foundations of the Roman temples, and we’ll see the modern city border, once protected by a great ring of walls.
We trot past the Hotel Bagniloni and I point out the terrace that we would use to entertain  the press after important collections at Pitti Donna  This was before the important fashion houses out grew Florence and went to Milan. We turn down a tiny via that has the Medici chapel peeking from the end of it. I walk Benji towards the “Mercato San Lorenzo”, one he is not familiar with, as it is rumored for tourist only. I know in my hybrid state, as foreigner and local, that for some things the competition is so fierce in San Lorenzo, one can get really good quality and value. When he purchases some Armani knock-off Sunglasses for five Euros, he is convinced that I am right.

 

We continue to walk the market and up to the Borgo di San Lorenzo and to the bronze doors, the baptistery and il Duomo. I point out the door that has not been cleaned and then, the shiny one that has been restored. He remembered walking past this church a 100 times as a kid and said he never noticed the doors or the story panes filled with intricate details of each section.

 

 We walked inside the Duomo, again he was looking at it as if it were the first time: not as a place to pray with half crossed lids in the presence of nuns but as a coffer of art. We look up and I point out the catwalk around the cupola and tell a story of “why” I ended up in Florence.

 

“You see before there was no bullet proof glass over the marble banister. I was in Florence with my family and we were walking around the catwalk and looking down when my mother lost one of her charms on her bracelet.

 

The charms were one of each of the children, silhouettes of three girl heads and one boy head with our birthdays engraved on each. My mom noticed she had only two girl heads and the one boy but could not make out who the missing daughter was.It was when we returned that a guard approached my mother and said that he believed she had lost what he had in his hand: Nancy Ann 4-12-1960.

 

She said that with me coming off the bracelet in Florence and being found symbolized to her that I would come back and live here.”

 

Benji had heard the story before. Now he could not only hear it, he could see it and feel the play of fate that my mother must of felt, in the vastness of the church and the miracle of “finding me” in Florence.

 

We looked around for the line that would wind around to the ticket stand to pay our passage to the 468 tourist – worn marble steps to the top of the Duomo. We found it on the south west side of the church, bought our tickets and started the climb.

 

My claustrophobia was creeping as I hurried to the first, tiny portal. My son was amazed at how narrow the passage was and how some people would fit or even get out if they felt ill. His wondering aloud was confirming my very thoughts, as I struggled to breathe and go up the stairs as fast as humanely possible with such a limited air supply. The first 100 steps I think are truly the most tragic. I decided to stop counting and take a few pictures so that I could catch my breath and grab a small glimpse of the outside from one of the pigeon holes.

 

At the catwalk that we had seen from below, we stop and gaze upward at the intricate and ironic artwork often commissioned by the church, yet executed by those very much against it. I point out how some of the artists were making political manifesto in the discreet fresco of a celestial scene. We try to pick out caricatures of popes and statesmen of the time. An eastern European woman is moaning that we have to stop talking pictures and keep moving not realizing that the two-way traffic has started a bit ahead of us and that  there are people stuck in the walls leading to the roof. Benji and I address her in every language we know, hoping she will understand. She is not convinced and continues to be rude.

 

Finally, we climb the metal ladders that follow the curvature of the dome and see the light of the roof. The tourist line has now become two-way in the tight passage. I press up against a sign that says in four languages to not write on the walls and a large black graffiti that says “ PBR”. Ben and I laugh and take a picture imagining that it is for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

 

On the roof, we gingerly skirt the central steeple before we venture to the banister. The hour or more inside the confined space has made us dizzy upon having a view and air. The eastern European woman is moaning again, this time she wants to get down faster she says in broken Italian. Ben and I start to giggle, as we both imagine how she can do that with just a little push. We make a mental note not to venture down at the same time or she will be unbearable- now visibly sweaty, irritated and probably a little frightened and stinky.

 

After our trip down we take the “Via degli Artisti’ and venture into an artisan’s workshop as he carves marble columns and epitaphs. It is a scene from another time. It seems impossible that Benji has an iPhone and I will be talking to my friends on Skype in the same breath that this man carves his days work. We stop to see the wine shop and fruit vendor, I try to find the candy shop that I was commissioned to make Gingerbread houses for Christmas when the children were small.

 

We pop out in Piazza della Signoria and I show Benji when the 1993 bombing in Florence claimed the lives of five people. I show him Neptune and tell him how his Father and I danced in the fountain with half of Florence one night, when the Italians won the world cup in Madrid. I point out the state building and tell him how Kikka went to translate for the justice of the peace when she was barely Eleven for an English Couple that was getting married and having the reception at the restaurant.

 

We walk towards the courthouse and then on to Santa Croce, pointing out a property on Via Venegia that I had shown in the early years of the Agency. We start to walk along Lung’Arno and under the Portico of the Uffizi leaving change in the boxes in front of the Mimes that seem to have less life than the statues themselves.