We (me and my siblings) were hoping we would be able to sleep in today because we weren't leaving for Florence until 8:30, but sadly we had to wake up early to put our luggage out in the hallway for the porters to collect and transport to the bus by 6:45AM. Needless to say, that kind of sucked - but after doing that we trooped down for an early breakfast and then me and my sister crawled by upstairs for another short nap before we had to meet up with the tour group.
The drive was largely uneventful, mostly because I was sleeping. We stopped at a little rest stop along the way where me and my brother started fist-fighting, and thus we started a tradition throughout the whole trip of just randomly breaking out in to fights and trying to surprise punch each other whenever possible. We are adults guy - we are. Adults. My brother graduated from university last Spring and I'm graduating this year. Adults.
But anyway - before reaching Florence, we actually ended up stopping at the town of Assisi around 11AM. Assisi is a cute little medieval town, a UNESCO world heritage site, and home to the famous Basilica San Franceso (Basilica of Saint Francis). We were told his story on the bus, and by our amazing tour guide who I sadly forgot the name of. He was a cute looking old man, kind of Santa-looking, but his beard wasn't as thick, but definitely very passionate and you could see he clearly loved the place he was guiding us through. So. Saint Francis was originally supposed to be a soldier, but he gave that all up and his family name to help lepers and the poor and ended up starting his own order - the Francescans. When he died, he didn't ask for the basilica to be built. He actually wanted to be like Jesus and just be buried among the poor and the criminals, just like Jesus was, but the Church ended up building the basilica in dedication to him (not for him) and his followers moved his body there a couple years later. A mini history lesson - I was paying attention guys!
The basilica itself is actually incredibly fascinating. I've seen a lot of churches and basilicas in my travels, mostly because my dad likes going to them, but this one was particularly interesting. Why? The architecture and the art - it was a hodge-podge of everything. It was clearly Gothic in style (I believe one of the few, if not the only Italian church to be gothic?) because they called in architects from Britain and northern Europe and a majority of the paintings were done by a famous artist named Giotto. The thing about this church was they spent a lot of money on it, particularly on the colour blue and gold. Around the church, on all the paintings, the blue lapis lazuli pigment used for the paint was super clear as well as the gold and absolutely gorgeous. Not only this but you can actually see an interesting transition from the simplistic 2D style of painting in to a more modern 3D style. The floor also had many patterns and mosaics remnant of the muslims and you could also spot a Star of David in one of the areas - which we later learned was actually a symbol for Mary Magdalen. All fascinating stuff.
It was funny because at one point our guide was telling us about how crosses, in the past, where actually more of a capitalized T-shape rather than the cross shape we imagine now, and members of our tour group got super nit-picky about that commenting on why the paintings didn't show that etc. etc. and eventually our tour guide got a little fed up and was like "INTERPRETATION GUYS, ART IS NOT FACT". Poor tour guide.
It really was a beautiful church. Nice and small too. Places like the Saint Peter's Basilica are amazing, and Notre Dame as well, but they're so big that it's kind of hard to appreciate the history behind here whereas here the church was a lot smaller and thus you could actually learn a lot more of the intimate details about it. Of course - a large part of this was due to our awesome tour guide.
Moving on, after the tour ended we had about 40min - 1hr to get a quick bite to eat so we just went to a nearby cafe up the street from the entrance of the main chapel and got some sandwiches. The amazing thing about Italy is you can get some very nice and cheap sandwiches wherever you go and by cheap I mean like.. 3 euros cheap ($4.50 CAD roughly). For a legit sandwich. Also $1.50 CAD espressos, except these are real Italian ones that literally come in a shot. But anyway, moving on. Lunch, then quick walk down the hill and back to the bus. It's true, we didn't get to walk around the town much, but just seeing it was very picturesque. It literally seemed to come out of a storybook. Something you would find out a movie. A representation of a thousand years ago, barely changed - pretty cool stuff!
After getting back on the bus, we arrived in Florence at around 4:00 and we had to meet back up with the tour group again for dinner at 5:45 at a, supposedly, Michelin restaurant. Before that though, after getting our luggage and what-not, me and my siblings went out walking for a bit, mostly to buy water, but also just to explore the area. We stayed in a hotel right across from the train station and there was an underground mall there as well, so we walked through there and found this really nice bookstore where everything was on sale for really cheap, and it had a great collection of design and architecture books, nature books, those sort of things. Normally these types of books would be really expensive, but this store was selling them for almost dirt cheap - I forgot the exact amount, but damn, I wish we had more things like that in Canada. It's nice when you stumble across these things overseas. Anyway - so, walked through the mall and on to the street. We found out we actually lived quite close to the Duomo and the square and what not, but we didn't actually make it there and turned back after reaching the end of the mall and finding a place to buy some water - then back to the hotel for us.
Dinner was at a restaurant called "I Tre Pini" and it was impressive. As soon as we entered we were served a blue-coloured cocktail that I wasn't paying attention to what it was, but despite being starving I tried a bit and it was delicious and very light. Then we moved to where we were seated and the restaurant started us off with a buffet of antipasti and boy was I pleased. One of the things that always worries me when I travel is whether I'll get enough vegetables (last time I traveled to Eastern Europe, veggies were definitely hard to come by), but this buffet had a bunch. I got two plates of salami, broccoli, tomatoes, olives, and... a bunch of other things I'm honestly not sure what they were. I'm not that knowledgeable on veggies to be honest, but it tasted good and I was happy. Next we moved on to the pastas, where we got a tomato-based rigottoni (I think) and then truffle ravioli, both were delicious. The main course of the night was smoked ribs with potatoes. I was able to finish the meat, not the potatoes, but it was good. I should mention that throughout our dinner they had a live musician playing a guitar and a singer and when they brought out the meat it was on fire and the guitarist played... - ugh, I forgot the name of the song but my brother played it all the time on guitar hero. It definitely had fire in it's name, or something with dragons I believe. I'm sorry - I'm not knowledgeable about music either as you have probably guessed! But that part was pretty cool. Finally, for dessert, we were served two things, a nice light strawberry cake and an absolutely delicious pana cotta.
Another thing to mention - for dinner we also got a ton of wine. Red wine, white wine, and a nice light strawberry wine that I thought tasted alright. I'm not much of alcohol drinker - and am particularly not fond of wine, nor beer. I like to try though and they weren't bad.
Then, dinner ended, back to the hotel by 9:30 and there goes my first day in Tuscany. Not a bad way to introduce me to the area, makes me want to go rewatch the movie "Under the Tuscan Sun" (which my tour director would not stop mentioning).
No comments:
Post a Comment