Tag Archives: Italy

Volterra and San Gimignano

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Our travels today took us to Volterra and San Gimignano. These two communities are small towns in the Tuscan countryside that were perched up on hills for defensive purposes. Being that they are hill towns, the views of the surrounding countryside are truly beautiful, but getting this view takes some work. From my perspective, the work is worth it.

They both are historic little towns with a rustic feel, though they in many ways survive on the tourism trade these days. Narrow brick streets wind through centuries old buildings, many of them containing artisan shops, tratorias, and gelatarias.

Volterra is famous for Etruscans and alabaster. The Etruscans were an ancient civilizations dating back to BC times and there have been some significant archeological discoveries near the town. You can also look down from the city walls at the ruins of an ancient Roman theater just outside the city. Cris quickly fell in love with the alabaster shops, especially when they had the alabaster lit up and glowing. Volterran artisans are famous for working the often white stone into vases, bowls and a variety of other items. As a memento of our visit we bought a small alabaster vase to remind us of our time there.

San Gimignano, also known as the “medieval Manhattan,” is more well known for the centuries old towers that make up its skyline. At one point it had over 70 towers and now fourteen still stand. One is still available to go up to the top to get an amazing view of the surrounding countryside. I also really enjoyed the two central squares in the town where a lot of the visitors mill about. One of the more, we’ll say, interesting parts of the trip was the torture museum. Neither Cris or I can figure out why she wanted to visit this museum except for some strange holdover from law school and confronting questions on the legalities of torture.

Possibly, one of my favorite parts about our visit there is the main church, which dates from the 11th century and most of the artwork dates from the 1400s. The artwork was my favorite part of the church. On the top section of one wall it told the story of the birth of Christ from the time the angels came to Mary to the adoration of the kings and shepherds. On the bottom section of the same wall, with the panels ordered in the opposite chronology, the story of the crucifixion was told from the last supper to the resurrection.

On the day I collected a significant number of photos and Cris made some serious progress in the postcard department.

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Our Days in Florence

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So today was our last day in Florence and we drove down to our hotel in Tuscany. My thoughts on Florence.

Unfortunately, both Cris and I agree that Florence was a little underwhelming. From my perspective, I feel like I’m comparing everything we see to Amsterdam, which may be my favorite city we’ve ever visited. Florence is definitely a beautiful city with a great deal of history to appreciate. One thing that stuck out in my mind were the extremely old streets “paved” with large stones fit together, which trumped the cobblestone streets of the old towns in the US. Very, very old world.

In a weird sort of way, Florence is most beautiful when viewed from a distance. The times when we were able to stand at a higher point in the city and look at it with a landscape view is when it really shown. The walk up 463 steps to the top of the Duomo dome was completely worth it as that might have been the best view that we saw while we were there. There were a couple of other places where the vistas were truly impressive, like when we went to the Boboli Gardens and looked back at the Duomo from there.

The problem with Florence comes when you look at it a little closer. For a city that old with as much history, you would think that its citizens would have much more consideration and pride for it. The city is kind of dirty with graffiti everywhere. And when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere; even on some of the oldest, most beautiful churches I’ve ever seen. It was really quite sad to see. There was also a serious dog feces problem there. Before we went to Amsterdam we heard from multiple people that there was dog pooh everywhere, but never saw any. Don’t hear anything about it in Florence, and it was everywhere to the point where you have to constantly look down while you walk, and take care not to get hit by a car or scooter when you step off the sidewalk to dodge it.

I also didn’t have the best vibe from the people there. I always felt like someone was trying to sell me something or get me to come into their restaurant to buy their food. And it wasn’t as if they were saying, “come in here so you can eat good food.” They were simply saying “come eat in here so I can make a buck.” No warmth or welcome, but just buy crap from us. Its sort of funny because I felt like the Italians in Florence had the sort of arrogance that the French are always stereotyped as having. It also sat a little poorly with me that every single Italian guy we passed looked Cris up and down in a completely obvious way. I’m usually not very territorial when it comes to her, but when you’re trying to have a nice romantic honeymoon in Italy and every Italian dude you pass is trying to undress your new wife with his eyes, it makes it a little difficult. Cris thinks I’m overreacting, but she wasn’t paying attention.

Other random bits I didn’t like about Florence. All of the museums charged a decent sum (18 eruo or almost $25 dollars per person) and none of them took credit cards, which is annoying. The Galleria Academia, which is where Michealangelo’s David is, is way overrated and exists solely for the purpose of displaying the David, which really is impressive by the way. The Uffizi, which is the premier museum in Florence, was disappointing in comparison to the National Gallery in London or the Muse de Orsay in Paris. If you’re a premier museum, you shouldn’t have your paintings arranged so that people have a hard time viewing them because of glare from the lights on the paintings. That’s just amateur crap.

Some positives from our time in Florence. I really did like the David and I was much more impressed with it than the Mona Lisa. As Lewis Black says, Jesus is real big in Italy and the most beautiful example of this adoration is the Chiesa Santo Spirito. Completely unassuming from the outside, the inside is truly beautiful with a lot of religious paintings around the walls and an incredibly ornate alter area. The Palazzo Pitti, where the Medici, family used to live, is really an incredible place. We lucked into and loved the private free tour of the royal apartments and the royal bathrooms. They also had a costume museum that had Italian clothes from the Medici family on, that Cris really dug. And lastly, Cris was thoroughly pleased with her find of a gelateria that had 71 different flavors of geleto. For Cris, gelato is happiness in a cup…or cone.

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Confederations Cup: Italy 3-1 US

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Okay, so I’m several days late on this one so I’m going to make it really quick.

First match of the Confederations Cup against Italy was sort of painful to watch.  We started out better than I expected us to play.  My hopes were sort of dashed when Ricardo Clark got a red card.  My hopes were given back when we got a PK and I thought we might be able to steal a point.  Then they were dashed again when we sort of fell apart in the second half, at least partly from exhaustion.

Here’s my quick thoughts:

  • Clark’s red card was harsh.  It was a dumb tackle, but it was his first foul of the game.  It completely changed the tone and dynamic of the game.  Not saying we would have won, but the game would have gone differently.
  • Jonathan Spector is one of my outside back picks until he screws up bad or someone really good comes along and displaces him.  He may not be the biggest offensive threat, but he positions himself really well on defense and is much stronger there than some of our other options.
  • The most disappointing thing about the game is that the first two goals would have been very easy to at least make more difficult.  No one knows for sure if they could have been prevented, but if someone had stepped forward to pressure the goal scorer in both instances, they don’t get a clean look at goal and we have a better chance of shutting them down.
  • We still aren’t finishing from the run of play.  Donovan set up two perfect opportunities for goals for us and Bradley and Altidore choked it, pure and simple.  I’m a big fan of both of those players, but we can’t afford for get those chances and not put them away.

We play Brazil tomorrow in our second game of the Confederations Cup.  They had much more trouble with Egypt than anyone expected, but I’m not sure if that means Egypt is better than anyone thought or if Brazil is playing worse than they usually do.

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