Florence & Siena

The next installment of our adventure began with a sea voyage

Thankfully, not quite in this style

We went to Split to head back over to Italy by boat. We still needed to see Rome! Internet information was unreliable about when boats left and where they went to exactly, so we had find this out when we arrived in Split. It turned out that there were only 3 ferries a week to Italy, and one was leaving that night at 9pm and arrived in Italy at 7am the next morning. However, it went to a port town north of Rome called Ancona. This ended up being closer to Florence and we could swing by there on our way to Rome. So we booked our journey not really knowing if we would go straight to Rome or Florence. (We had already previously decided we would be missing Florence on this trip and had shed those pages from our guidebook)

We killed our afternoon in Split with some general wanderings and eating, then headed over to the Croatia customs office at 7pm and boarded our vessel, the Marco Polo.

The penthouse suite

View of Split from the boat

Our boat leaving the harbor in Split

After a fairly sleepless night (shocker!), with rattles and vibrations from the engine all night long, we arrived bright and early in Italy.

We wandered down the port and found a little train that would take us directly to the main train station. As we sat on the train, we decided that we would go to Florence and Siena. So off we went!  We arrived in Florence and got a list of hostels nearby. So we chose one, and ended up on the busiest street going toward the train station. Earplugs came in handy, but at least we were close to the old town.

The main attractions in Florence are the art. Michelangelo's David statue (which Brannan had not actually seen despite his previous trips to Florence) was AMAZING! The museum workers were camera Nazis and publicly humiliated anyone trying to sneak a picture. They would clap loudly and point at the person trying to take a picture and yell NO PICTURE and point at them so everyone turned to look at the offender. There was even one girl who was standing very clandestinely behind a pillar to take a picture, but the camera Nazi found her. Needless to say, we didn't get any pictures of the David. But it was truly one of the most amazing pieces of art I have ever seen; it made our mouths drop. It is HUGE, for one thing, 17 feet tall! And just the detail and the work that went into something like that was astounding. We probably sat and looked at it for an hour. There were other sculptures in the museum as well, including some unfinished "Giants" by Michelangelo that looked like men trying to get out of the stone. Incredible stuff.

The next day we went to the Duomo, or cathedral of Florence.

Brannan posing in front of the Duomo as The David since we didn't get a picture of the real one.

What a crazy looking building! All in busy black and white marble and very huge. After all the pretty white marble churches and cathedrals we had been seeing, this one was a bit of an assault on the senses.  But the inside was very bright and beautiful.

View from the front door

The dome was pretty neat because it was a dome inside a dome. The outer one architectural, the inner one for looks. But you can go up and climb between the two, which we did.

However, the painting on the inside of the dome was frightening! Obviously painted so that you would be good, and to avoid the terrible hell that awaits you if you were bad.  There were monsters eating people, devils mutilating other people... and we got to have a close up view of this on our way up to the top. Yikes!

View from the dome

Walking along the dome up to the top

You can't tell graffiti artists what to do, everybody knows that

Walking up the staircase between the two domes. So cool!

When we got to the top, we had the best view of Florence. Beautiful!

You can see the shadow of the dome we are standing on

Contrary to what you may believe, we did not plan our outfits for the day. It must have felt like a "stripey" kind of day.

That night we went to Piazza Signoria, one of the main plazas, and Ponto Vecchio, the bridge over the Arno River in Florence.

Piazza Signoria. This building holds government offices and there are plenty of sculptures and fountains around the square, including a copy of the David.

Arno River

The bridge has shops and housing built on top of it

The following day we had a choice between more art, or the Galileo science museum. Science won and we were not disappointed. It's amazing how many things we take for granted when back in the day they had to use complicated instruments to figure time and dates and distances at sea. Crazy that people had to come up with all of that on their own.

This was called a Noon Cannon. At noon the sun would shine through the magnifying glass and light the fuse on the cannon. Way better than a cuckoo clock!

Various measuring instruments

Enormous telescopes

This is called an Armillary Sphere. It shows the earth in the middle, with the rings representing each moon, planet, constellation, etc rotating around it

You can see from my face how crazy this thing was.

 After this museum, we were totally scienced out.

Florence is a busy, lively city. The main pedestrian streets are full of high-end shopping, as opposed to the tourist stands selling key chains. Those were there too, but not as prominent, so it was a nice change. It felt like an actual city where people lived. We really loved it!

Next was Siena, which was like Florence but better. It had a more relaxed feel to it and not nearly as much hustle-bustle.

Siena has it's own Duomo, also made out of the black and white marble, but they put a bazillion statues around the outside of it so that it wasn't so in-your-face. It was beautiful.

 One of the coolest discoveries we had about Siena was that it is broken up into different neighborhoods, each with their own symbol like a lion, bear or horse. We had actually stumbled upon some of them randomly, and found out later that we had been in one of the neighborhoods. We came upon a unicorn fountain in the neighborhood with the unicorn mascot, and we came across a sculpture of some elephants next to the Elephant Bar in another one. Fun to have your own mascot and neighborhood pride. It's also useful to cheer on your horse during the yearly horse race in the main plaza, where each neighborhood has a horse entered.

Mosaic in the Duomo floor representing some of the neighborhood mascots; and Remus and Romulus in the center, the symbol of Rome

Inside the Duomo there was a library which looked very unassuming from the doorway. But we walked in and were hit with some bright, vibrant paintings! Apparently they were so vivid because they were off of the main chapel where incense and smoke from the candles didn't harm them. Amazing to see something so old looking so brand-new.

 Another cool thing about this Duomo is that they started construction to make it bigger and never finished. It's built on the topside of a hill, and they wanted to extend two wings off to either side, but couldn't quite figure out how to do that without running out of land. Also, the plague came through and killed more than 1/3 of the population, so they never got any further. It's neat to still see it today half constructed.

These two archways were the beginning pillars of one of the wings. Now the museum occupies the brick building constructed at the end of the pillars.

This was going to be the main altar wall

Looking down from the top of the would-be altar wall. You can see alongside the parked cars the 3 marble foundations for the other pillars that were never built

 From the top of the wall, we got some great views of the Duomo and Siena

Another of Siena's main sights is Il Campo, the main town square. It's sloped downward and people sit on the brick pavers like they were on the beach. Great for just hanging out and people watching. Also the sight of the yearly horse race, where 60,000 people are jam packed into the square.

The Beasleys make an appearance at Il Campo

Fountain at the top of the square.

City offices and Campianelle bell tower behind us

We climbed to the top of the Campanielle bell tower to get a look of Siena and the Tuscan countryside.

Why do we keep going up stairs that look like this?? You'd think we'd learn.

For all your Crayola enthusiasts: the color burnt sienna comes from this town because of the color of the buildings

Looking down at Il Campo

You can see the Duomo tower in the distance

Tuscany

We were right underneath the bell on top of the tower - and were grateful it didn't ring while we were up there

We loved our few days in Siena! Such a beautiful city in a beautiful place. And the weather was great for late October - we ended our long-running streak and didn't get rained on once during our days in Florence or Siena.

Next up: Rome!