David, the Duomo, and a Drag Queen

We arrived in Cannes this morning, and while we wait for our tender from the ship to shore, I thought I’d take the opportunity to catch you up on yesterday’s adventures in Florence.

A friend of mine had lots of recommendations for muesums and sites in Florence and even lent me a book with his favorites marked. We didn’t do any of it. (Not that I didn’t appreciate the gesture!) Instead, Mark booked us a climb to the top of the Duomo so that we could see the city, after which we intended to wander, get a bite to eat, maybe try to get last minute tickets to see the original David in L’Accademia.

The day started off fine and ended well, but it went a little bit awry in the middle. Our tour bus was running just a tad late, so when Monica, our diminutive guide, announced that we would first make a stop at a gold artisan shop, Mark and I  begged off. Our tickets for the Duomo were for 11 a.m., and it was already 10:30 when we stepped off the bus. Even Monica looked a little worried that we wouldn’t make it there in time, but she gave us directions and sent us on our way. We immediately got lost.

Maybe that’s a little melodramatic. We knew the general direction we were heading, but we probably could have chosen a more direct route. As you can imagine, the streets in the old city are far from straight. It’s impossible to see more than a couple blocks ahead. They are also very narrow (though not as narrow as old Barcelona’s streets), and the buildings along them are three or four or five stories tall. The overall effect of this is that even though the Duomo is quite tall compared to everything around it, you could see the dome from almost no point along the way. We did, however eventually make it to our meeting site, but our guide for the Duomo tour, however, is another story.

We were told to meet outside Aromi Firenze at 10:45 a.m. By 11:05, we were starting to get nervous. Mark flagged down another tour guide who kindly called our tour company to find out what was wrong.

“We canceled that tour yesterday. Didn’t you get our email?”

“Of course we didn’t get your email! We we’ve been on a ship with barely tenable internet access for a week!”

“We’ll send someone over right away.”

So they sent a representative to talk to us about the mix-up. They had no one available to take us on the tour, but he made arrangements with the tour guide who had so kindly called our tour company to take us on if she had any no-shows. Her tour was not quite the same as what we had planned, but it would still climb to the top of the Duomo. Just before she was about to welcome us in, though, her last two stragglers showed. Damn.

The next-best compensation that our original tour guide could offer was two tickets to climb the bell tower and enter the baptistery and the crypt. The bell tower has the same view as the Duomo, he assured us, and is the same height. The height is less important to Mark than the engineering and architecture of Brunelleschi’s dome that is so ingeniously supported, but at least we’d get to see the view. When we entered the baptistery, though, an attendant told us that our tickets were expired.

We never got into the cathedral at all, and we’d wasted more than 90 minutes of our five hours in Florence. I was so disappointed for Mark, but like the optimist he is, he decided that it was a sign that he wasn’t in good enough shape to climb the several hundred stairs and that we should just move on and do the other things we’d wanted to do in Florence. A little dejected, we wandered through the city from plaza to plaza just taking in what we could.

Figuring that we would not be able to get tickets to see the real David, we went to see the replica in Piazza della Signoria, at the Palazzo Vecchio. Monica had assured us that it is identical to the original, although we know that subtle differences in the marble likely made the original even more beautiful. Nearly perfect replica or not, it was incredible. All of my friends who have seen the statue tell me that pictures just don’t do it justice, and they’re right. (I’m going to show some anyway.) It’s enormous, of course, but for me, seeing it in person gave me a much better sense of the youth Michelangelo was trying to capture. In all of the pictures I’ve seen, the David of the statue seems older to me—a late adolescent. Presented with the actual statue, however (well, not actual statue, but you know what I mean), he seems more like a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old.

Many other sculptures, including Rape of the Sabines, Hercules and Cacus, Nettuno, Perseo, populate the square, and I’ve included some of those, too.

We didn’t go in the Uffizi Gallery, but we enjoyed the statuary outside of it and then wandered along the Arno River (for which one of my favorite typefaces is named). We stopped at a little cafe to get pizzas; we expected a slice or perhaps two for the price. Instead, we each got a 13-inch pie! Their crusts were super thin, though, so Mark ate all of his. I probably could have eaten all of mine, but it had more cheese than I wanted, so left about a third of it.

We did more walking after lunch and stumbled on a small gallery/art studio. The paintings weren’t anything earth-shattering, but they were nice and not terribly expensive, so Mark bought a couple. The artists didn’t speak much English, so communication was a little difficult. I’m always amused to watch Mark speaking English to non-English speakers. It’s almost like he expects them to understand anyway. I just go dumb. Mark must be doing something right, though, because he usually gets his point across somehow.

Here are a few more pictures of the city from our wanderings.

Both of us tired and with aching backs—walking on cobblestones for four hours takes a toll—we limped back to Piazza Santa Croce to meet our group and return to the ship. We grabbed a bite at the steakhouse on board and then killed a little time until the ship’s production of the Broadway musical, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert began. I can’t say it was the best show I’ve ever seen, but I laughed a few times, and it was a nice enough way to spend the evening. At 11:30, which is well past our bedtimes, we turned in and slept through until the alarm this morning.

We don’t arrive in Palma, Mallorca until tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll post about Cannes in the morning.