Honeymoon Recap, Part 3 - Florence/Siena
Friday, May 5, 2006
The Eurostar trip from Venice to Florence took around three hours, so we arrived at the Florence Santa Maria Novella train station around 1 PM. We exited the station and headed straight for our hotel, the Hotel Centrale, which turned out to be very nice. We dumped our bags and headed out for some sightseeing.
First up was some lunch in the touristy shopping district in central Florence. Next we headed over to the Duomo (santa Maria del Fiore), which is the central cathedral in Florence. It has an interesting red-colored roof, and apparently was the first dome built in Italy since ancient Roman times. Next up, we headed over to the Accademia musem. Lucky for us we went late in the day on a Friday, so there was no line to get in. It houses a bunch of Renaissance-era paintings and sculpture, including Michaelangelo’s David and Prisonsers scupltures. Much of the art was very nice, but clearly the most impressive piece was the David scuplture. This is without a doubt the best sculpture Chu and I have ever seen, and every other piece of sculpture we saw in Italy was an order of magnitude inferior to this work of art.
For the rest of the day, Chu and I explored the touristy areas around the Duomo and the Uffizi gallery, including many of the (chain) shops and restaurants. We ended up eating dinner at a place in the Piazza della Repubblica that had good (but greasy) pizza. After strolling some more, we went back to the hotel room and got some rest.
Saturday, May 6, 2006
Today the plan was the check out the rest of the tourist sights in Florence, so we headed out first to the Piazza della Signoria, near the Palazzo Vecchio, and viewed a number of the statues there. Then we walked down along the Uffizi Gallery to see some street performers, but weren’t able to get in (no reservations and the line was LONG). We kept walking down to the Arno river, then took a left turn and walked across the Ponte Vecchio, with Chu window shopping for jewelry. We then continued on and walked up the hill towards the Palazzo Pitti.
In the afternoon we headed over to the Science Museum, which displayed scientific instruments developed around the time of the Renaissance. Chu wasn’t too into the instruments, but it proved to be interesting for me. For some reason they had Galileo’s index finger on display in a jar, which is strange for a science musem, but was Chu’s favorite part. Next, we headed over to the Piazza di Santa Croce to see the Santa Croce Church. The line was long so we didn’t go in, but the piazza was a nice place to sit and people watch.
By now we had grown tired of Italian food, so we found the only Japanese sushi place we could find. We went a 7PM, and were the only people in the place for almost an hour. The food was decent, and it was interesting to see a sushi menu in Italian and Japanese people that spoke Japanese, English, and Italian. It was also really nice to eat something other than pasta.
Sunday, May 7, 2006
We had seen enough of Florence by now, so Chu and I decided to take a train trip to Siena for the afternoon. We grabbed a train late in the AM and got to Siena around 11 AM. Siena is an old medieval town in Tuscany about an hour from Florence that sits atop a hill, and was once a fairly powerful city-state in Italy. Once we arrived, we decided to walk up the hill to the center of the old city. 45 minutes later we were walking through very old city streets…it looked like it hadn’t changed much in a long, long time. Siena is known for its famous city center “Il Campo”, so that’s where we headed first. It turned out to be a pretty nice open space, but also very touristy. We had lunch at a place right on the campo, and for some reason there was some big motorcycle rally that day, because the next thing we know around 500 motorcycles converged on the campo (very strange). Next, the men of one of the city’s neighborhoods dressed up in some kind of traiditional outfit and paraded around playing drums and waving big flags. Again…very strange.
Next, we headed out and explored the city streets some more, and ended up at the Catedrale di Santa Maria, also known as the Duomo. This was a very interesting church, primary for how colorful it is. The floor, ceiling, and walls were all very brightly colored. Even the outside walls appeared to have green horizontal stripes. Next was more exploring , and we ended up at another church, this one the Church of San Domenico, dedicated to St. Catherine of Siena. Overall, this church was very plain. However, one of the chapels inside the church had the actual skull of St. Catherine in a nun’s habit hanging on the wall for people to pray to. Very interesting yet very gruesome at the same time.
By now we had seen enough, so we headed back to the train station. I almost got us lost on the way back (which I would never hear the end of from Chu), but luckily we made it to the station just as a major downpour started. An hour later we were back in Florence and eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Again, very strange seeing “Kung Pao Chicken” translated into Italian, but all of the food tasted exactly the same as it does here in the US.
Monday, May 8, 2006
This is the day Chu had been waiting for the whole trip: a trip to a designer outlet mall! 20 miles south of Florence there is a factory outlet mall that houses stores from major designers like Gucci and Prada. Chu had been waiting all week to buy a lower-priced Gucci purse, so she ready to go when the mall shuttle picked us up. However, once we arrived, she was very disappointed in the selection. Unfortunately, Chu wasn’t able to find anything she liked at any of the stores, so the whole side trip turned out to be a waste of time. Fortunately Florence had two Gucci stores, so once we returned to the city we went straight to Gucci so that Chu could buy a purse each for she and her mom. Since the mission for the day was accomplished, we headed over to the train station in the early afternoon and caught the Eurostar to Rome.
Next up: Part 4 - Rome
Links: Florence Map, Italy Map, Florence Pictures, Florence & Siena Videos, Siena Pictures
