San Lorenzo

On Tuesday we walked to the Church of San Lorenzo not far from us.  No pictures could be taken inside the church.  The massive paintings were exquisite and the works of  Donatello very much in evidence.  Almost every painting was from the Renaissance except one we especially liked from the 1900s.  It was the only modern one in the bunch and depicted St. Joseph teaching Jesus the child about carpentry.  In the background was the slight image of a cross.  It's by Pietro Annigoni.who was born in 1910.

 

No, we didn't break the rule of "NO PHOTOS!"  The picture above and the next two are post cards that we photographed.  

 

The altar in this church was all inlaid marble.  While the picture doesn't due it justice, you can still see some of the detail of this incredible piece of art.

Below is the aisle that goes down the center of San Lorenzo.  It's surprisingly bright inside,much moreso than the Duomo, and much more decorated with art.  This is because San Lorenzo was the home church of the Medici's and they wanted to be sure everyone knew it!  The church was rebuilt under the direction of Brunelleschi (more famous for the Duomo's dome) in the 1400's and Michelangelo did several projects here later.

 

 There are all sorts of works done by Donatello such as carvings above doorways and two large boxes that are now used as pulpits.  Since Donatello died before he told them what they were for, no one has a clue as to how he wanted them used.  They could have been tombs, choir stalls, who knows what.  The guard told us that it was Donatello's wish to sleep for the rest of eternity.  From the looks of it, he got his wish.  Cosmo di Medici, probably the most famous benefactor of Florentine art, is buried in an important looking gravesite in the transept of the church while Donatello is in the basement of what is now the Tesoro di San Lorenzo (Treasures of St. Laurence.) next door to the church in a very unassuming gravesite.  The Tesoro housed all sorts of supposed relics of saints.  If you've never seen one, they are usually large gilded and silver pieces often a foot or two high that  have a tiny piece of bone embedded in it.  If all the relics were real artifacts of the particular saint, the saint would have to be about 10 feet tall and made mostly of bone. 

The courtyard (cloisters) of the Tesoro had a lovely bitter orange tree with lots of fruit and a beautiful view of the Duomo and bell tower. 

Oddly, the outside of San Lorenzo never received a finished facade so it has a rather humble ragged stone exterior that conceals the beauty inside.  There is also the very famous Medici Chapel attached to San Lorenzo where many of the Medici are buried in elegant tombs, but it has a separate entrance fee (of course!) and we didn't have time to go there that day.

 

 

 

Some observations on electricity in Florence  - 

For a while we thought we were giving up electricity for Lent!  The apartment is quite underpowered by American standards, and while it has a reasonable number of electrical sockets scattered around, it apparently wasn't intended that more than about 2 of them be used at one time. This is especially true for the high powered devices - the stove top and the hot water heater (both electrical).  We had several nights of darkness at the moment of cooking dinner and other unpleasant shocks (literally) until the landlady, Maria Chiara, explained to us that we had to turn off the hot water heater while we were using the stove.  Since then, things have been much better.  I must say, to her credit, she has really been trying hard to keep us happy and electrified.  She's had electricians out here three times since we've been here.  I was talking to another American woman who claimed it took at least three weeks for anything to happen here!  And the task of electrifying a centuries-old stone and tile building must not be an easy one.  I am surprised that the wires are all buried in the walls and not just running along the floors or ceilings. 

Nevertheless we do have some questionable feats of wiring, such as the bathroom ceiling fixture:

  Here the wires themselves are the hanging support for the lamp!

The other interesting electrical feature is that there are two types of sockets in Italy:

 

The first is for regular. lower powered devices (lamps, TV,computer) while the second is for higher powered stuff - washing machine (yes, we have one - it's quite a machine!), iron, toaster, pot heater for tea, etc.

Of course, Italian (like all European) power is different than the US - twice the voltage and slightly lower frequency - but the only appliance we brought with us is the laptop and its adapter is built to handle that (so far!) so that hasn't been an issue for us.

Ahhh.....a day at the market.  Outside in a plastic tent are most of the fruit and veggie vendors.  As we mentioned before, the produce is exceptionally fresh and things like oranges and clementines often still have tree leaves attached.  The customer never handles the produce.  You tell the vendor what you want and how much and they take from the bunch of stuff that's there.  The customer has the right to say, "Not that, but that." and point, but even this isn't usually done. 

Here's a typical meat counter inside the Supermarcato.  So far we haven't given you a picture of the two most famous Florentine dishes....Tripe and a 1 kilo (2.2 pounds) rib eye steak.  The latter is huge.  The 2" thick steak  not really cooked, but seared on either side, drizzled with oil and sprinkled with salt.  It is raw in the middle and usually eaten by one person although it can be ordered for 2.  Nothing is ordered with it.  Lamperdotto is very popular right now.  It's tripe that comes from the fourth stomach of the cow and is dark like a lamprey eel.  (Who knew a lamprey eel was dark?) Since tripe is chewy, the cook usually slices it several times and puts it in a soup bowl with some of its juices.  Believe it or not, we have not ordered either of these delicacies. 

Meat cases are quite different from American meat counters.  I haven't seen lamb or goat yet, but there are mounds of tripe sitting there for the taking.  On Saturday we saw someone buy what we think is a goose neck and head.  There are also a lot of rabbits that bite the dust here.  As in the picture, you can always find some variety of Italian sausage.  The fish counters seem to have the varieties we have in the states.  Shrimp have their heads and you can have them cleaned for you if you want.  Of course there is eel, squid and octopus.  We'll try and get a picture for you.

On Saturday we took a bus sightseeing trip around Florence.  At 22E each it was quite a rip-off.  But we did get to stop at Pitti Palace, one of the homes of the DeMedici's. 

Palazzo Pitti

It was enormous and rather grim and is now a museum.  Since we only had a little over an hour and a half to spend there, we saw some of the art works from around the 17th century.  After going up 8 enormous flights of stairs to the Costume Gallery, we were surprised to see that it was mostly haute couture fashion most of it from the 1950s to 1970s.  There were some bits and pieces from the DeMedicis', (their burial outfits, as a result of a major restoration) but precious little.  Since their clothing was from the 1500s, we guess this was no surprise.  Some of the later fashions were a bit ridiculous and some very elegant.  We saw Pucci, Scapparelli and loads of others.  No pictures were allowed, so we can't show you what we saw inside the palace.  The palace has a beautiful garden, but we didn't get out there, so that will have to wait for another day (hopefully a more cheery one).

Here Ken is outside the palace with one of the many lions on the facade, all with different expressions on their faces.  One even looked confused.  We even have a sculptured lion on the way up to our apartment.  We pat Leo daily in the hopes that he will keep our electricity flowing. 

Leo, our stairway guardian

Ken's Birthday

On March 7th we celebrated Ken's 65th birthday with a cake bought at a local bakery.  Since we don't have an oven in our apartment we had to leave the baking to someone else. The cake was a traditional Florentine cake with cream filling and a Fleur de lis design for Mardi Gras.  Since it was far too much cake for us to eat, we celebrated with our classmates at Instituto Italiano.  They seem to enjoy the cake with great gusto.  Too bad we didn't have espresso to go with it.

(half of) Ken's birthday cake

Our first (grammar) class

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are 5 of our classmates......Anestazia (Greek), Stella (a teacher for prisoners in California), Jessica (British doing her Gap Year), Marti (The Hague doing his Gap Year) and Nazareth (Spanish studying law).  Not pictured is Bose (a 32 year old female bank officer in Britain with roots in Nigeria) and Ferdinand (a  man from Canada who tours the world as an economist with roots in Italy)

Ken's birthday dinner at our apartment

First course was Spaghetti al Tonno (Spaghetti with tuna sauce).  Then we had maiale (pork chops with rosemary and savory) with patata picolo (little potatoes) and fagiolini verde e carota.  (Green Italian beans with carrots).  Our landlady, Maria Chaira gave Ken a great bottle of red wine which, of course, we enjoyed with dinner. 

The next few days are somewhat of a blur.  Between Theresa's gout flare-up and Ken fighting a cold, it was all we could do to attend school and keep body and soul together.  In order to get a prescription for colchicine for Theresa we had to go to a "Doc In The Box".  For 34E he wrote out a prescription without ever asking one medical question.  The prescription was filled at a pharmacy that gave no directions on how to take it and gave back the prescription after filling it.  Our wonderful doctor back in the states emailed us the directions for taking the meds.  We also bought 60 Vitamin C pills for Ken and they were 14E (about $20).  He doesn't have a cold today (March 11), so we guess they were pretty good pills.

Our electricity has been sporadic and the electricians almost know us by our first names.  They did finally get our lights to work and, if we turn off the water heater while we cook, the fuse box is a lot happier.  The apartment will get more power in about 19 more days after the government okays our request to up the current supply.  Then we will not have to choose between appliances. 

The weather has been mostly overcast with a few sunny days.  We did get out to see an American movie, "True Grit", and found ourselves looking at the Italian subtitles.  The theater was absolutely grand.  Plush seats, huge screen and very ornate.  We also found an Episcopal church with masses in English.  On Ash Wednesday we got ourselves to an evening service for the dispensing of ashes.  Amazingly enough we did not see one other person with ashes on Ash Wednesday.  Either the Catholics here don't do it anymore or people don't go to church during the day, or they just don't go to church.  Who knows?

Carnevale at Via Reggio

Sunday we spent the day at the (fantastic) carnevale celebration at Via Reggio, a city on the coast about 1-1/2 - 3 hr away by train (depending on which train you took!).  It was a very long day for us, and we were exhausted when we got home, but it was worth it!  We took a bunch of pictures and even some video with sound, which hopefully will play on this site, since it gives you a much better feeling of the experience than stills do.

The parade was right down near the beach on a wide street that paralleled the coast.  They barricaded off a long section along it and charged admission (of course!)

Most kids and many adults were dressed in costumes.  Some, like in the photo below, were performers in the parade or on the floats.  We saw whole families dressed up.  There was the dragon family, The Super Mario Brothers, men dressed as women, women dressed as men, lots of rabbits, lots of Indians but very few cowboys, many in old Egyptian dress and a personal favorite, a couple dressed as fungi (mushrooms) in incredibly well done costumes. 

All were just dressed up to have a good time!  And so they did.  While the atmosphere was party-like and people weren't at all orderly, we saw no sign of drunkenness or belligerent behavior.

One of the pharohs....

Here's one of the floats.  We don't have a clue as to its meaning.

Italy is actually celebrating for the first time Unity Day on March 17.  (2011 is the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy.)  That surprised us as the Italians don't seem any too excited about being unified.  The whole country is supposed to shut down that day and we will have a day off from school.  Above is the float commemorating Unity Day - it was one of the themes of the festival.

The very first float after Unity Day which also was the general welcoming float was the Obama float.  It was not too flattering, but none of the floats in this parade ever are.  They are expected to make fun of notable people.  So far from what we have gathered Obama is pretty well respected over here.  The guy up in Obama's top hat is supposed to be bin Laden!

As you can see, these floats were quite wide, taking up almost the whole street.  People danced and milled everywhere in the streets, so it was sometime a tight squeeze.  The "Float Police" would come along and push people back really crunching bodies together.  It's hard to imagine anyone doing crowd control with Italians - its rather like herding cats!  Sometimes I would be so close to the floats I could touch them.  As soon as the float passed, people would go back out into the street until the next one came. 

The music played for the "Jaws" float was "We will, We Will Rock You".  This one was supposed to have an ecological them.  Music was often in English although there were a lot of well-known songs in Italian.  The crowd often sang and danced along.

We were told that the man pictured as holding the controls on this "monster of technology" is Vespa.  Every part of almost every float moved and that movement was created by someone pulling on pulleyed ropes or just mechanically moving it.  They were not computer controlled.

Here justice moves slowly  like a snail and isn't always dealt out evenly (the scales).

 

This float (Africa) was amazing as in all of Italy they couldn't seem to find Afro-Italians to play Africans!  The women dancing on the front of the float wore brown leotards to make them look black.  The float actually had a theme of Africa being both a land of plenty and a land of famine.  In the front is a mother holding a starving child.   

 

One of the most unusual floats.  The Avatar (or spaceman) had piercing eyes that glowed and looked very life-like.  It was called "The Voyagers of Space....Where Is The End Of It All."

See Below

The two pictures above chose an easy target.....Berlisconi. - as a dinosur skeleton.  It showed his face that would divide and show a skeleton underneath. 

Again, the president of Italy, but not as Berlisconi , but "Burlesque-coni" written on his back.

Now in Italy sexuality is more out in the open.  But there was only one float that we thought might not be great to forward on to you because of it's sensuous nature and we don't know if any children are reading this.  In the front of the float was Ganeesh, the  Indian Elephant god.  On the back of the float were all sorts of mechanical figures doing the horizontal hokey-pokey.  Not sure of why or how, but it was definitely one to remember. 

All of the floats had a lot of people in costumes on them dancing and singing and much of the music was live singing.  In many of them there were dancers, too.  This particular parade will happen at least 4 times this season in Via Reggio and seems to be a town money maker.  The floats are all created by different regions of the town.  We have never seen the likes of it and probably won't again.

Meanwhile one of our classmates, an older man from Canada who flies around the world as an economist, stayed in town and managed to catch several people dressed up in Renaissance costumes.  They were celebrating the birthday of Michalangelo and went to his tomb in Santa Croce for a service of celebration. Wish we could have seen that, too.

This morning the street cleaners were still cleaning up the confetti-strewn streets around Florence.  Tons of it were dropped on ViaReggio and we even found some in our underwear.  It's still a mystery how it got there.

Ciao!

Saturday March 5 - Sabato is truly a sabbath!

We spent the day mostly resting up.  Slept later than we have in years.  It felt so good!  So today's blog will be bits and pieces.

Here are a couple of pictures of our nifty ceiling in the main room of our apartment (22' x22' ft, larger than expected).  Who knows how long along these were done; the landlady believes that they were done between the 1500s and 1700s.  The family has owned the building for over 200 years.

overall view with our chandelier

 

 

 

 

 

the ends of the main center panel (three panels total)

detail of one end - each one is slightly different

This is far and away the grandest feature of the apartment, but it does add class!

Although the past week has been quite cold and windy, the weather here overall seems to be a bit milder than in Hampton.  For example, today I saw an early cherry tree in bloom:

and cyclomen are everywhere outdoors.  People don't seem to be bothered by the cold weather - they go out walking as usual and eat out in outdoor restaurant areas (many have enclosed tents with heaters, but they aint warm by any stretch).  All the women wear scarfs and you rarely see grey hair.  A lot of hair dye gets sold in Italy.

 Here is some of the produce Ken bought at the market.  The little zucchini and their flowers make a wonderful omelet.  We had one for lunch. He also got artichokes which seem to be in abundance right now.

Egg yolks are a dark yellow.  Eggs are not refrigerated in the markets.  They seem really fresh, though, and taste great.  I don't know if they are radiated or just incredibly fresh. 



Yesterday I (Theresa) went back to school to see an Italian movie.  I had asked if the film would be subtitled and was told yes.  The movie started and it was subtitled all right........only the subtitles were in Italian.  This made no sense to me at all.  Yet everyone who works at the school thinks that this is perfectly normal.  Maybe I'll catch Verdone's "Borotalco" back in the states where Netflix will provide me with English.  My Italian is still so poor I wouldn't have a clue what was going on.

Tomorrow we hope to go to the Carnivale in Viareggio.  It's supposed to be a real treat.  Viareggio is about an hour's bus ride away from here.  Hopefully Ken will take lots of pictures.

As I am signing off for today I hear the street cleaning vehicle.  It comes around every single night.  Since there are no outdoor trash bins and Italians love their dogs and walk them frequently but don't always clean up after them, street cleaning is a good thing.

One school week over!

From the first minute of the first day of our "total immersion language school" we have not heard more than 20 words of English in 4 hours per day.  Ken hears less than I do.  Despite this I am still woefully illiterate in the Italian dialogue.  While Ken feels even more challenged than I do, he is far ahead of me.  We have 2 hours of grammar in the morning and 2 hours of conversation in the afternoon.  Ken is now in my morning class making the total of 4 old fogies (3 Americans and 1 Canadian) and 4 kids (Greek, Dutch, Spanish and English), two of whom are doing their "gap" year and a British young woman in her early 30s.  If you haven't heard the term "gap year" it means taking a break between high school and college.  Talk about a polyglot!

Today I walked back to school to see a film.  I was told it was by a famous director, Carlo Verdone, and I wasn't familiar with his work.  I  asked if the film would be subtitled and was told yes.  Stupido!!!!! It was subtitled all right, in Italiano!  Italian movie with Italian subtitles???? Go figure.  Forgot, this is Italy and there is no rhyme or reason.

Ken and I get up every morning about 7:15 (enough of a shock since we are normally are late sleepers) and make the 5 minute walk to school by 9.  The school is 4 long flights up.  Most days we walk it, but there is an aging elevator.  After school we either come home for lunch, have it out in one of the numerous shops or go shopping at the supermarcato.  Ahhhhhhh....the supermarcato.  It reminds me of the outdoor markets I've seen in many larger towns in both America and Europe.  Only this market is indoors.  At least all the meat, cheese, oil, fish, pasta, and bread counters are.  There are several stalls and it's huge.  You can also grab lunch inside, too.  The upstairs used to be open for fruits and vegetable vendors.  I think the upstairs is being renovated because it's closed off.  Instead the fruit and veggie vendors are outside in a large plastic heated tent.  

We were at the marcato yesterday and made sure not to leave by one of the doors because there were 3 women "zingary" known to you as gypsies waiting there and we are always told to avoid them for obvious reasons.   I haven't seen the male gypsies yet, but they may be incognito.  Who knows. 

Ken is going to the market tomorrow for me and, hopefully, will take some pictures.  It's quite a sight.

Every night starting around 7 we hear large vendor carts being pushed somewhere for the night.  The vendors on the street around Piazza San Lorenzo sell absolutely every kind of clothing, pocketbook, scarf, trinket, cards, paper, you-name-it.   It all disappears at night only to come out around 8 the next morning.  There's a large sign in the middle of this that says it's a crime to buy counterfeit.  I remember years ago that tourists would buy a pocketbook and the counterfeiter would stamp it Gucci while they waited.  This wasn't a problem for me as I didn't even want to pay the counterfeit price!

So it's the weekend and we hope to recuperate.  Our brains and ( in my case, stomach) are fried.  I hope to feel better by Sunday and go to Viareggio for what were are told is a true Carnevale adventure.  If not I may send Ken with his camera and at least get a second hand glimpse of it. 

Enjoy your weekend!

Wed Mar 2

Well, here it is the third day of language school and we seem to have weathered a number of crises since our last post:  Monday the power went off right in the middle of cooking dinner in the apartment, so we had to bail out and eat out at a nearby restaurant.  We thought the internet connection had crashed on us, too, and were offline until last night (it was a problem within our laptop, not the network).  Then Tre got an electric shock from the metal sink drainer.  Maria Chiara, our landlord, tried to  help us with the net and is working on the shock.  She tries to be on top of things.  On Wednesday Ken came home while I was taking a nap and sat on my glasses.  Fortunately there’s an optometrist a short walking distance away.  He went out a few minutes before 7 and by 7:15 glasses were perched on my head and I was able to complete dinner………..large ravioli type pasta that looked like pope’s hats, mild sausage, a mesculin salad with oil and vinegar.  Of course chianti, too.  The weird thing is both of us seemed to have a problem with wine in the states.  Here we just slug it back.

Yesterday evening our language school organized a dinner for 16 Euro to a trattoria over by the Arno.   

Ponte Vecchio over the Arno

They hadn’t told us where we were going and we just followed the leader.  It was actually a beautiful walk on a very chilly night.  The trattoria was  in a basement cellar and the meal, while not the best we have had, certainly made up for it in quantity and good fellowship.  It started with three kinds of what else???  Ham and some greens.   Then came a soup of beans and bread.  There are a lot of soups In Florence with bread as part of the soup.  The pasta dish had a light tomato sauce with a hint of anchovy.  Next came veal covered in shaved  parmesan and chunks of grilled potatoes.  All this was followed by my favorite dessert, panna cotta.  If you’ve never had panna cotta, it’s a custard-like dessert that is congealed with gelatin, not eggs. 

Today in language class we were asked to write about someone who was either a famous actor, singer, politician or writer.  To my surprise I was the only one to choose a non-American.  I am also the only American in my class.  That won't be for long since Ken will be joining me for the grammar section.  He took the entrance exam on Monday, and got placed in the second level class, to his amazement and horror.  However, he’s had enough of the ”imperfetto” verb tense by now.  Doesn’t even know how to do it in English, let alone Italian, and suspects that ordinary people won't be offended if his grammar is less than perfect.  The Portuguese (there are at least 4 from Brazil), Spanish and French students definitely have an edge since their languages are so similar to Italian. There’s one really brave women from Japan who’s also taking the course. 

Our school (Istituto Italiano) is on the fourth floor of the building shown in the photo.  It does have an elevator, but it’s small and slow, so we usually get our workout climbing the stairs.

Istituto Italiano

Our apartment is only a couple of minutes walk from the school, near Piazza San Lorenzo.  (You can look it up for homework!)  Streets are narrow and cobblestoned here, so you have to walk carefully and alway be on the lookout for careening cars, motorcycles or bikes and the occasional dog poop.  You can get an idea of the isses of driving in Florence by looking at the sreet our apartment looks out on.  This unhappy truck driver had to go find the owner of the car so he could get by!

Traffic on a typical street in our neighborhood

Either tomorrow or Saturday it’s back to the supermarcato for some fresh meats, veggies, fruits and bread.  Maybe a little dolce (sweets), too.  Having been a newly crowned diabetic I was really afraid that I would be unable to eat all that Florence and Italy in general had to offer.  In fact it’s pretty easy to eat a fairly healthy diet with so many great offerings.  I think Ken will take some pictures at the marcato so you can see for yourselves the incredible array of food.  It’s easy to see why Italians are rarely fat.  1.) They walk to everything and 2.) There’s wonderful food when they get there.