Italy - Florence, Venice, Rome, San Gimiano

Florence

• Go online and buy tickets for the Uffitzi Gallery first thing in the morning. At this writing they open at ;8:30, Tuesday through Sunday. Get on the line outside the Uffizi at least a half-hour before it opens. While waiting, buy an English guidebook to the museum and decide what it is you want to see most in the museum.  Then when the doors open go immediately to that room while everybody else starts trudging from room one to room two, and so on.  If for example you like Boticelli, you can go directly to that room and luxuriate in the paintings without anybody else around.  The Uffizi is open.

• Go online to buy tickets to L’ Academia when it first opens in the morning to see Michelangelo’s David.  Don’t be fooled by the copy that is in a piazza about ½ mile away.  The real thing is the most astounding sculpture you will ever see.  Michelangelo seems to have actually made the marble come to life. At this writing they too are open Tuesday through Sunday, 8:30 - 6:30.

• Don’t forget the Medici chapel.  In it are several Michelangelo sculptures, which even though they are not complete since Mikey spent so much time at the Sistine Chapel that he couldn’t finish the work in Florence, they are still better than what nearly anybody else has ever sculpted.  It’s open 9:00 – 2:00

• Baptistery in Piazza San Giovanni (open 9:30 – 12:30 and 2:30 – 5:30) is in front of Il Duomo.  Inside is neat, and on the doors is what Michelangelo called the “Gates of Paradise.”

• At Il Duomo pay to go up to its dome for a lovely view of the city.  Open 10:00 – 5:30.

• Il Capanile (Giotto’s Bell Tower) is right there, too.

• In a separate part of town, across and down the Arno is the Pitti Palace (9:00 – 2:00), and the free, attached Boboli Gardens behind it.

• When we were last there Da Noi was a super little, expensive ,avant garde restaurant.

Venice

• The Palazzo Ducale (Doge’s Palace) is definitely worth visiting, open 8:30 - &:00, at one end of Piazza San Marco.

• The Guggenheim collection is open daily from 11:00 to 6:00 and shows that Peggy Guggenheim was close to (slept with?) virtually every important artist of the first half of this century.  My all-time favorite Rodin and Magritte are there.

• Go to Santa Maria Della Salute (7:00 – 12:00 and 3:00 – 7:00).

• Just off Piazza San Marco (opposite end than the Doge’s Palace) is L’ Academia, but it’s not of the same level as the art museums in Florence.

• Naturally, you’ve got to walk across the Rialto Bridge and perhaps ride under the Bridge of Sighs.

• If you take a gondola ride, be certain to negotiate for the lesser canals.  They are incredibly lovely (at least off-season they are).  The gondoliers will negotiate.

• In Santa Maria Frari is a lovely Titian.  Open 9-12 and 2:30 – 5.

• I forget which church has my all-time favorite altar piece by Belini.  Ask around.

• Consider riding to Murano (an island in Venice’s lagoon) to see the glass blowing factory (they’ll pitch you at the end).

• Consider riding to Burano (another island in the lagoon) to see the lace making factory.  On the corner just before it is a large restaurant in which we had one of the most idyllic meals of our lives, lazily putting down incredible sea food, pasti and biscotti to die for, while watching nuns bring their school children out to play and watching tourists and island folk.  Sit outside at the edge of their property if you can do it.

• Bring cash along for the lace making factory.

• On the Lido (another island, this one with an ocean beach on its away-from-Venice side – consider bringing swimsuits and towels if seasonal), right by the vaporetto stop (the water bus) is a restaurant called the Belvediere.  That’s where I had the best fillet of sole in my life.  And it’s neat seeing the waiters expertly fillet the fish with two spoons in a very few seconds.

Rome

We found Rome to be a remarkably rudest city.  After three days of continually jumping into the street to avoid collision with pedestrians coming the other way I got fed up and refused to move.  Italians began jumping into the street to avoid me.  The general drill in Rome is all bluff.  This was very useful when we drove throughout Tuscany.

The best of Rome is the antiquity, which is often mind-blowing.  Here is re a list of stops to make, some with commentary:

• St. Peter’s Basilica.  This is astoundingly huge.  Get there just before it opens at 7:30 and you’ll be able to go in to view Michelangelo’s Pieta without anybody obstructing your view.  Consider going up into the dome.  The view of the church and of the city is quite nice from above.

• The highlight of the fabulous riches of the Vatican Museum (attached to St. Pete’s, outside and around the corner) is the Sistine Chapel, which initially looks as though why did you bother.  Then you go to one of the walls, sit down on a bench, lean your head back, and look through your binoculars (BRING SMALL BINOCULARS) at the incredible details of the ceiling.  If you do nothing else in Rome, bring binoculars to the Sistine Chapel.

• The Forum (not far from the Coliseum).  You’ll find many stray cats here, most showing evidence that Romans don’t like cats.  In Greece, everybody likes cats.

• The Coliseum.

• The Villa Borghesi gardens and museums within (including a fine contemporary art museum).

San Gimiano

This medieval walled city is called the “Manhattan of Tuscany” since it has 22 towers – a skyline of its own.  If you go there, eat at La Cisterna (In Italian a “c” followed by an “i or "e"” is pronounced as “ch").  The name is not quite right – It’s an inn with a restaurant up one floor, above the city wall’s top, giving a splendid view of the Tuscan countryside.  The food is wonderful.

• Don’t dress like Americans or you will be the target of pickpockets and other low-lifes (Americans and West Germans, both rich, are indistinguishable from one another until they speak).  That means very comfortable leather shoes instead of big sport shoes, not tee-shirts/shorts, perhaps not jeans, no fanny pack.  Okay are slacks, collared shirts (polo style is fine).  Consider getting pants or skirts with multi-pockets, including hidden zippered ones inside other pockets.

• Go into churches virtually anywhere in Italy and you will find fine works of art by old masters (Belini, Rafael, Donatello, Lipi, Titian, and all four of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, etc.) in paintings and altar pieces.

• It seems as though there is only one waiter who is allowed to present a check for every 100,000 people in a city.  Leisurely meals can become incredibly long.  However, if you stand up to go, the official waiter who handles il conto (the check) will arrive on-the-spot.

• Wherever you are select restaurants that cater to locals instead of tourists.  One sign of that is how many languages the displayed menus have on them.

• Wherever you are, eat the local specialty (in Venice it’s sea food, in Tuscany it’s grilled meats, including game, such as cinghialle [ching’-ee-al-ay], which is wild boar).

• Don’t make my mistake of confusing il cabinetto (men’s room) with il carabinierro (state policeman).  It gets the policeman very angry.

• The most important phrase to know is, “Dove la gelateria?”