Thunderstorms and Sun

It’s been pretty much overcast here all day (Tuesday) until the lightning and thunder started a few minutes ago (it’s 3:37). But hey its been raining pretty much for the last couple of days. Last night we had quite a thunderstorm that woke us up –but not enough to keep us up.(photo: Reto on the Piazza Santa Croce.)

In fact all last week was pretty quiet. Susan took the written portion of her final exams last week and this week is the practical portion (can you imagine having to bake pastries for your final exam?) and then the term is over – at least this phase at any rate.

We have no idea what will happen next.

Originally Sue had hoped to do the advanced portion of the program as an intensive summer course but the school axed that last month.

Moreover, the school has been vague about whether the advanced baking session will happen even in the fall. But you wouldn’t get that impression if you were to go to their website – the fall schedule for the advanced session is right there in black and white (pixels). Of course in the fine print you can find the caveat that there must be a minimum number of students for the course to be offered but that is a bit misleading. The online calendar claims that the minimum number must be eight; Susan was told by school administrators it was only four and that if there were at least two students she could do the course as an independent study with a reduced number of class hours (of course since there would be far fewer contact class hours). And yet there is no guarantee that she will even be offered this so-called independent study.

Today (Tuesday) she was told they were waiting to hear from the 5th (!) student who has expressed “interest” in the advanced program for the fall session. Whoa! Confusion, uncertainty, ambiguity, rather the watchwords here it seems.

Susan has always wanted a comprehensive, serious pastry program in Italy – but we are coming to find out that such programs are rare indeed. What do exist for the professional or the professionally minded baker are usually of the short, intensive course variety, say a 3-day long weekend in Venice learning how to carve ice, for example, or how to decorate cakes. Very specific and very short, and not what Susan had in mind at all.

What happens next is still unknown. Rather like life I would say – not that such philosophizing helps when it comes to making a decision about where to live or what to do with the rest of your life. It is a bracing challenge indeed, for us at any rate, and we sometimes envy those people who simply decide, and then move on to the next stage. We too are learning, though, and hope to find our way soon.

In the meantime we eat good food, drink the wine and savor being alive, healthy and by-and-large happy in Italy.

Indeed, we enjoyed this past weekend immensely.

Friday we stayed in Florence and met our friends Warren and Gladys for lunch; yes we went to the Golden View again. And yes the food was great as usual. We caught up on each other’s lives and shared stories about the past week. After a couple of hours we said arrivederci and parted company – they headed east for the bridge across the Arno and we headed west.

As we were strolling back to the apartment we were hit by the sudden realization that we had not had gelato for some time. We considered this epiphany a stroke of good luck since it would have been a shame to have gone all the way home just to realize that we had to go out again for gelato. But since we were still out on this wonderful afternoon stroll it was that much easier to off to the Gelateria dei Neri (on Via dei Neri).

And who should we run into entering the same shop – that’s right, Warren and Gladys! As we waited to order we talked about gelato, and after ordering stepped outside and stood around like everyone else, eating and talking gelato – my favorites have come to be riso as well as the various chocolates of course. In fact, this particular gelateria has a chocolate that is “senza latte”, that is without milk! It’s all chocolate and believe me you can taste it!

The next day I left Susan at the apartment while she did a few chores and walked over to the bus terminal across from the train station to meet our friend Reto who was coming up from Siena. We met Reto, who is Swiss, last year when we were all studying at Dante Alighieri language school in Siena, and have stayed in touch ever since. Anyway, a while back he emailed me to say that he was coming back for another four-week course in Siena and that he had never been to Florence and since I’m such a big know-it-all here would I show him around? Actually Reto is too kind to say that but he’s right – I wonder sometimes what do I really know about this place?

So I met his bus at about 10:30 and we headed off to meet up with Sue. Since he had not had his coffee or morning dolci I suggested we head toward our neighborhood and we would sit outside – it was a beautiful day – and have our breakfast (“prima collazione”) at the OK Bar, across the street from our apartment.

I called Sue and told her our plan. Reto and I then left the bus and train stations and headed up Via Nazionale. Since Reto is an avid photographer I thought he might like to see where the Alinari photographic studio and showroom is located – they have most of the 19th century photo collections of Florence, Siena and many other Tuscan towns. We then walked over to the Central Market where I showed him the butcher shops on the ground floor and the fruit and vegetable stalls on the first floor. I’m still impressed by this place (and in fact now have my favorite butcher and my favorite fruit and vegetable vendors).

We continued our stroll to meet Sue. Sure enough a few minutes later we ran into her as she was coming down Via degli Alfani and the three of us walked to the OK Bar. We ordered our coffee, picked out our morning dolci and then sat outside, taking in the fresh air and sunshine, securely placed under the awning out of the rising sun.

Although Reto’s English is quite good the three of us ended up speaking a curiously effective combination of English and Italian – although at point in the day I asked him about the word Doner (with the umlaut over the “o”) which I see on nearly every Turkish kebab joint in the city. I thought that because of the two dots over the “o” that it was a German word but he informed me that it was in fact a Turkish word! Man I just love this “learn something new every day” idea! I especially like when I have this idea fixed in my head – you know the thing seems so obvious – and then something or someone comes along and in a flash bursts the proverbial balloon – but what a shot of light that is!


So we left the OK bar and strolled over to Santa Croce. We paid our €5 entrance fee and walked inside. Much of the nave end of the church has massive scaffolding in place but you can still get to the other end of the church which, to Sue and I, is the most awesome: the final resting places for Machiavelli, Galileo and Michelangelo – oh and Marconi is somewhere there too. What conversations they must have after the tourists have left for the day.


We strolled out through the courtyard of Santa Croce, and like hundreds of others enjoyed the quiet (yes really) and of the small cloister. Amazing that one can find that much solitude surrounded by so many people.

From Santa Croce we headed to the Arno, and crossed the river at the Ponte alle Grazie. Our objective was Piazzale Michelangelo and the cemetery of Porte Sante and San Miniato church.


We walked along the Arno and left the river at the Piazza Demidoff, taking the back streets to the Porta San Miniato. We left the old walls behind and began the steep ascent up the street and then climbed up the even steeper steps toward the Piazzale. But we didn’t go all the way up since this time the little garden on our left was now open, so we walked in and were greeted by a wonderful view of the city, beautiful flowers and a small wedding party taking photos in the small clearing below us. (In fact we would come across another wedding party on the Piazzale itself.)

We walked through the gardens – and saw more flowers in one hectare of space than in the enormous Boboli Gardens. There was a beautiful terraced arbor of roses, nicely marked with the many and various variants of that particular bloom. And there was a secret garden that we had to explore as well – not much there at first glance but a beautiful view and a small bench – then occupied by a young couple – from which to enjoy it. From there we found our way to the Piazzale Michelangelo, and were face to face with another photo shoot of a wedding couple also underway there as well. Love is in the air here in Florence.

We strolled around the Piazzale, taking in the impressive views of the city. As we completed our circuit around the piazzale we came across a large display tent for triumph motorcycles. And they were allowing anyone to test drive several of the new Triumph motorcycles. Reto, being an avid sportbiker, and I swapped motorcycle stories – Susan clearly not too excited about this line of conversation – but I soon said a tearful farewell to the dream of owning one of those gorgeous motorcycles. After we crossed the street from the piazzale we came across a Ducati 999, a heavy duty sportbike which, I was duly informed by Reto, was very fast and very expensive: something in the $25k range and up. It’s that “and up” part that always throw me.

So we walked on and over to the church of San Miniato, and stepped inside, out of the warm sun and into the cool darkness of the church. And dark it was since apparently someone had failed to turn the lights on – although they had left the big front doors open which helped some but by the time you got to the rear of the church, down in the crypt or up in the presbytery it was pretty spooky. But kind of cool too, in both senses of the term.

We left the church and then walked through the cemetery, Reto being a great sport, letting me show him my favorite tombs (‘favorite tombs”?). Both he and Susan humored me greatly and let me ramble on about some of the stories I have culled from these stones over the months we’ve been here. The once famous princely Ruspolis who are today quietly forgotten, whose enormous chapel and crypt have fallen into a sad state of ruin ((whose villas are now hotel buildings in Florence and Rome), the demure young Marta, the young wife forever pining for her husband, Emilio Koppel, the Marchesini sisters who are forever young and with each other, Maria and Mario Mazzone, Pinocchio’s creator Collodi, Mr. Watanabe the Japanese diplomat who died in Baghdad in 1983 but is buried here, all the heroes of wars past who made the ultimate sacrifice, indeed all the men and women who lived, loved, died and are here and who are honored or at least remembered. Some, like the Porre family are quietly forgotten, their small crypt and chapel door broken, the stone leading to the crypt below gone and the lower chamber filled with debris. Bits of sadness, lots of memories; I shared what bits and pieces I know and we moved along.

After leaving the cemetery we discovered that we all really quite hungry – I wonder if being in the cemetery does that to you. So we stopped at the nearby Ristorante Bar Michelangelo, located just off the Piazzale where we sat and ate a delicious lunch, just talking about what we had seen, about life, about everything and anything.

We then strolled back toward the city, took Reto across the Ponte Vecchio and crossed the Piazza Signoria, showed him where Savonarola was burned (pretty thrilling) and of course headed off to our favorite gelateria on Via dei Neri. (That’s two days in a row! Yeah!)

Afterwards we strolled through the Piazza della Repubblica. We talked a little about this particular spot – the foundations of the ancient Roman city began here and until the 19th century it was the home of much of the old market as well as the Jewish ghetto. But with the unification of Italy, the ghettos were eliminated and the Jews could lie anywhere they chose. The results of such “urban renewal” are here for all to see today.


From the Piazza della Repubblica we walked up Via Cavour to Piazza San Marco and then over to Piazza Annunziata. As we approached the piazza, just a block up from our apartment, we heard the unmistakable sounds of a military brass band and sure enough when we walked into the piazza there was the “croce rossa italiana” (Italian Red Cross) military unit with their band playing martial music amidst a display of some of their latest hardware, including snowmobiles, ambulances, triage stations, and decontamination units. We hung around for a bit listening to the music and watching the people.

But the day was slipping away so we walked with Reto back to the bus stop. We said arrivederci and hoped to get back to Siena before he left for Switzerland. Anyway, we waited around until he was on board the 7:10 pm “rapida” for Siena.

It had been a truly grand day. It’s hard to find anything better in life than being with a friend, sharing good food and the experience of being alive in Italy – and in Florence to boot!

Wish you were here,

Steve