Honeymoon in Italy: Highlights of Florence, Part I

 

Our adorable room in the Casa del Garbo

After Rome, we took a train back to Florence to stay there for real this time. We stayed at the Casa del Garbo, which had a much different feel from our hotel in Rome. The building was originally built in the 1300's, and now it's a cute hotel with suites named after famous people (we stayed in the "Lorenzo il Magnifico" room). We liked the quaint feel of it, with older art on the walls, actual wooden shutters across the windows, and a little nook where we could enjoy our breakfast every morning, delivered right to our door!

The hotel looks RIGHT onto the Piazza della Signoria, and we could see the Palazzo Vecchio, a statue of the leader Cosimo of the Medici family, and the Fountain of Neptune from our window. Such a great location! And there is a fountain right across the square, so we could fill up our water bottles to take on our wanderings. We were so close to the Uffizi Gallery and the Ponte Vecchio, so doing all the touristy things was easy!

This is the Palazzo Vecchio with the full moon behind it.

Speaking of those touristy things, we had to check them out! Our travel agent booked us tickets for the Uffizi Gallery and the Galleria dell'Accademia, so we did those back-to-back. 

At the Uffizi, I was mostly overwhelmed by the ornately decorated ceilings. I couldn't help but look up the whole time!

But everything was lavishly decked-out, even the floors!

This was the view from the rooftop of the Ufizzi. You can see the Duomo right there!

When we left the Uffizi, we walked about 15 minutes to the Accademia to see more art, but mainly to see Michelangelo's David:

Pictures don't do him justice, but the David is enormous. He is 14 feet tall, and the space where he stands now was built specifically for the statue to be admired under a skylight. He really is absolutely beautiful. Even though Michelangelo was only 26 when he started carving the statue, he was already well-known for his skill and admiration of the male human body.

There was a room where we could see models and the final products. There were also videos showing the process of creating the cast to making the finished statue. You could see dots, even nails, on each version for the artists to keep the correct proportions.

There is also a musical instrument museum within the Accademia. I didn't even know upright pianos were a thing!

We walked across the Ponte Vecchio numerous times during our trip. It's the oldest bridge in Italy, and it was the last remaining bridge across the Arno River in World War II. It used to connect the Palazzo Pitti, the palace of the Medicis (more on that in a future post) and the administrative offices of the Uffizi (which means "office"); the Medicis and other important people would walk in an elevated tunnel that was on top of the bridge, and there were butchers on the bridge itself. But once the higher-ups thought the meat smelled bad, jewelers replaced the butchers, and there are lots of jewelry stores on the bridge to this day. I didn't buy anything, but there were many pretty things to look at!

The Ponte Vecchio looks very different from day to night! (These photos are taken on opposite sides of the river, mind you.)

Next up: All our food adventures in Florence!

Honeymoon in Italy: Highlights of Rome, Part 3

 

My favorite day in Rome was when we got to visit the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. I learned about ancient Rome in middle school when I took Latin classes, and I have been fascinated by the history ever since. So when we decided to go to Italy for our honeymoon, I knew we had to visit these places that were so important to the Romans nearly 2,000 years ago. 

We started off at the Forum, which was the main square of the city, which used to have a firewall around it for protection. All of the ruins were actually underground until about 150 years ago when they were excavated. People could actually touch the roofs of the buildings since they were that far buried! There were roads going across the area, but after the ruins were found, the streets were removed.

Inside the forum was a basilica (the word did not originally mean church; back then it was "King's Hall" in Greek), a law court, pagan temples (including those to Jupiter and Juno), and a shrine to Caesar commissioned by his son, future leader Octavius. Around the area you could see olive trees, fig trees, and grape vines, which were considered the three trees of life. And we really did see these plants everywhere, and lemons, too! (more on the lemons in another post!)

After the Forum, we walked over to the Colosseum. It is the largest (or at least tallest) standing amphitheater in the world, and is built of concrete, which the Romans invented. It took eight years to build, and there actually used to be a huge sail covering the top, like a circus tent, to provide shade to spectators. There were 80 entrances and capacity was somewhere between 50,000-70,000 people. Events were free, but patrons used reusable terracotta "tickets" to attend.

The reason part of the structure is missing is that it's built on sand, and during an earthquake in 443 AD, part of it gave way. In 1750, the Colosseum was named a religious shrine to protect it from being torn down; thank goodness someone had the foresight to preserve this magnificent building!

As we explored, we immediately started thinking of the movie Gladiator. (Did you know the word gladiator comes from the word "gladius," meaning sword in Latin?) There are two stories of basement, and that is where there were markets, slaves, animals, and more. There was actually a gladiator school nearby where the men would train. While we could look into the stories below, originally the floor was made of wood, and below were the pulleys, elevators, and hidden doors. The fights ended in 404 AD after Christianity banned them when a monk jumped into the arena and was killed. But wouldn't it have been quite the site to see a gladiator fight back then!

And Rome was only the first THIRD of our trip! Up next: Florence!

Honeymoon in Italy: Highlights of Rome, Part 2

Along the wall surrounding the entrance, stones are laid along the sidewalk to mark the border of the kingdom of the Vatican.

On one of our days in Rome, we had a jump-packed day with a visit to the Vatican in the morning and then tours of the Capuchin crypts and catacombs outside of the city. When you aren't sure the next time you'll be in Italy, you try to do everything you can all at once!

This is the highly decorative ceiling inside the hallway leading to the Sistine Chapel. The biggest pictures portray important parts of the Pope's life (well, the Pope at the time). 

The Vatican was one of the main things Steve wanted to do in Rome. Neither of us are Catholic, but he had friends tell him we had to do it. Plus, it IS a big deal, and I wanted to see the Sistine Chapel! We took the metro there, which is very easy, but the machines make it tricky to buy just one pass per person (the screen automatically encourages you to buy two passes per ticket, which must be used within 90 minutes of each other), so we ended up wasting a few bucks learning this the hard way. But no matter! After just a few metro stops, we easily met the tour guide and spent the next few hours in the Museo de Vatican.

This huge building is just the Pope's country house!

The Vatican is its own kingdom with its own police force, post office, and more. They use the Euro, but they do have a mint for special coins, and they have their own stamps, too. So that’s pretty cool! We briefly saw artwork from other countries that were given as gifts to the Pope or brought back from missionaries, but we walked by so quickly that we really didn’t get to see any of that. We also raced through the country house of the Pope, which features a long hallway lined with sculptures and busts from ancient Rome. They are not organized in any real fashion; it’s more just to show off all the stuff the Pope has. And he has A LOT!

Along the hallway leading to the Sistine Chapel are maps from around the world. But all of the countries are upside down, because they are all from the perspective of the Pope looking towards those nations from the Vatican. 

We did get a long introduction to the Sistine Chapel while waiting outside in the garden, which was very pleasant on such a sunny day. There are several large posters featuring images from the ceiling so that the guides could talk about the piece and the hidden secrets in the painting. Did you know that Michelangelo preferred to sculpt rather than paint? Even though this is one of his best-known projects, it was not his favorite, but at least he got to pick what he painted. I am really glad our guide gave us the long introduction before we got into the Chapel, because once you’re in there, everything is hard to see! It’s a high ceiling, so you’re far away and everything looks so small, plus you’re craning your neck to even look at it. You were not allowed to take photos (so the pictures below are all from the internet), and you weren’t even supposed to talk, because the water vapor from your breath could damage the ancient paint. The paintings have been restored, but there was one part left that was dark and dirty and from all the soot from when the chapel was actually used for real services. Here are some fun facts about the paintings in the Sistine Chapel:

Image found here

•  When you look at the garments behind God when he is reaching for Adam's hand, the shape of the red robe is like a brain or the atria of the heart. This is God giving Adam both intelligence and emotions.
• On one of the walls, there depicts the life of Moses, and on the other, it shows the life of Jesus. It was interesting to pick out parts of the paintings that showed familiar stories (e.g. Moses speaking to God as a burning bush). 

• 

  Image found here

• Within the Last Judgement painting (on the wall rather than the ceiling), there is a man in the lower righthand corner (which is Hell), and a snake is wrapped around him and biting his genitals. This man was a leader in the church who had abused a young boy so badly that the boy died, so Michelangelo painted him in as living in Purgatory. 
• Many think that Michelangelo was gay. He was clearly enamored with the male human form, and even some of the women in the painting have quite muscular bodies. There are actually several sets of men kissing in the painting (and that's in the Heaven part!). 

St. Peter's Basilica is HUGE, and every inch is covered with some ornate decoration!

The floor had amazing marble designs.

This was a mosaic front of a tomb inside the church.

We also went into St. Peter's Basilica, which is also overwhelming. Everywhere you look there is marble, gold, sculptures, mosaics, a lot of everything! There were existing tombs there, and you could even see one of the very old, embalmed bodies. I think my favorite part of this building is that, on the floor, the names of other large catholic cathedrals are listed, and the idea is to show just how BIG this one is (It claims to be the biggest, but there is actually one in Brazil that is bigger.). The whole space is so ornate and highly decorative; sometimes you didn't know where to look first!

Yes, those are human skulls piled up along the wall and then different bones decorating the ceiling!

Our travel agent booked us a tour of the Capuchin Crypts, which is something I never would have thought of myself, but it was so cool! And it’s right downtown, so it’s super-easy to get to. Since we went in October, it felt like the perfect place to visit during Halloween-time. We learned about the Capuchin friars. Capuchin means “small hood” like the outfits the friars wore (the “garment of trial,” because even in bad weather they could not wear hats or closed toed shoes). The word cappuccino comes from these friars because one of them had a coffee with frothed milk like that in Vienna and brought it back to Rome (also, capuchin monkeys share the name because they look like they are wearing little hoods around their faces). So these crypts were essentially where Capuchin friars were buried (along with other people, ~3,700 people total!). In the seventeenth century, Cardinal Barberini took the bones to decorate the crypts, and there are bones EVERYWHERE. Each crypt is named after a kind of bone, like pelvises, femurs, skulls, etc., but all kinds of bones were featured in all of them. There were some full bodies still laying in place, but the main focus are the bones that are arranged very distinctly and decoratively across the walls and ceilings, even as chandeliers. Beautiful but morbid! I really didn’t know what to expect, but I have NEVER seen anything like it before. It was very cool and different, so I highly recommend it. It’s not very big, so don’t bother with the audio-tour; you can whiz through it pretty quickly or linger to take it all in!

Along with the Capuchin Crypts we visited the Christian Catacombs of Rome. Those are about a 30-minute bus ride away, so I’m not sure I can recommend it. But it was kind of cool to see this place that had housed mausoleums for the Romans, then was used for catacombs by Christians (pilgrims would go there to worship saints, even in secret during times of persecution), and then had a church built on top of ALL of that. The halls are full of holes where bodies had been buried, but most of them are empty now because of grave robbers (talk about bad juju!). We were following a guide, but there were many more hallways and rooms we could have explored; Steve said it would be a great set for a horror movie! We couldn't take pictures inside the catacombs, but we did take a few inside the church that still stands there today.

These were the coolest parts of the catacombs (IMHO):

·       Saint Callixtus is buried there, and he was a martyr: he was a bodyguard for the Roman emperor and was a Christian, and when he would not renounce his Christianity even for the emperor, he was shot with an arrow, tied to a tree, and beaten to death. He is understandably the patron saint of police, soldiers, and people like that.

·       There are Christian symbols on some of the grave coverings (either terracotta or marble) including doves (peace), fish (Icthys is “fish” in Greek but also stands for "Ἰησοῦς Χρῑστός Θεοῦ Υἱός Σωτήρ", which translates into English as 'Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior'.), a man standing with his arms raised in prayer, and the letters XP are the first two letters of Cristo.

·       We also saw three Roman pagan mausoleums that were open air before everything was buried with the nearby quarry and then turned into the catacombs. They look like miniature houses to fit whole families, and even had second stories. There were paintings of birds and flowers, images of Medusa to watch over them, vessels of offerings, and urns for people who were cremated instead of buried. These were probably my favorite!

This is a sculpture of the saint who was killed with an arrow. He is buried in the catacombs.

I wasn't sure what to expect from any of these tours, but they were all pretty interesting, and I learned a lot. 

Next up: our visit to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum!

Honeymoon in Italy: Highlights of Rome, Part I

While this wasn't our exact room in Rome, ours did look similar. We loved it! Image found here.

Since we had our one-night stay in Florence first, we had to take a train BACK to Rome to really start our vacation. But that was rather fast and quite comfortable. Roma Termini (the main train station) was very close to the Dharma Hotel where we were staying, and this was our favorite hotel of the entire trip. It was very modern with a good size shower and a queen-sized bed (both very important to Steve, who is 6’3”). The location was great, and we could walk to everything from there or easily grab the metro from the Republicca station. The Dharma offered free breakfast, which included both continental options as well as eggs and bacon, and free happy hour in the afternoon, during which we lounged on outdoor couches and enjoyed prosecco and little slices of pizza. We took advantage of both of these meals every day we were there!

The Spanish Steps

While in Rome, of course we had to see some of the famous monuments that everyone talks about. We walked up the Spanish Steps, stopped by the Trevi Fountain (it was under construction and no water was flowing, so this was a big let-down and not worth it), and took some photos of the Pantheon (we didn’t get tickets to go in, since online it says it only takes about 20 minutes to see everything inside). We were walking nearly everywhere we went, so we definitely got our steps in! I think we averaged at least ten miles a day, so exploring the city and all it had to offer was our exercise (I was definitely missing my Pure Barre!).

The Pantheon, originally a temple for worshipping pagan gods, is one of the best preserved buildings from ancient Rome.

We really enjoyed the food in Rome, not surprisingly; everyone talks about how you eat so much in Italy but don't gain any weight! I loved the spaghetti cacio e pepe, which is simple but delicious, and it might be my new favorite pasta dish. We went out to several nice restaurants for dinner, including Nerone, and they always served us limoncello afterward (like we couldn’t get enough of it from all the free tastings in the shops and marketplace!). Of course the food was pretty expensive, but you have to think about it as if you were eating out for lunch and dinner every day in New York City; when you’re in a metropolitan area like that, two people can easily spend $100 a day just on food alone.

None of us had matching dish sets, but they were all beautiful!

One meal we had was definitely memorable. One our first night in Rome, we took a cab across the Tiber River to a woman’s home for a semi-private dinner party. There were about 20 people there, mostly from the States, and the hostess Barbara and her helpers would bring around courses of food (and wine, of course) throughout the evening. The home was very eclectic, with random photographs, antiques, rugs, art, mirrors, and more covering every inch of the room, even the ceiling! There was a real Bohemian vibe about it, and the homemade food only added to the coziness. We were greeted with prosecco and a vegetable pastry (which was quite large and delicious), and next up was a squash and cheese lasagna which was DELICIOUS (even Steve loved it, and he doesn’t like pumpkin!). The main course was a turkey dish (which had too much peppercorn for my taste), and dessert was walnut gelato and whipped cream inside a pastry shell. I’d never had walnut gelato before, but if you can have pistachio gelato, why not other kinds of nuts, too?

On this light fixture, she had notes and gifts from previous guests from around the world!

It was fun mingling with everyone, and the group was very nice. But it felt strange spending several hours with these people knowing you’d never see them again (ALTHOUGH we did see two young girls from the dinner the next day at the Roman Forum, so you never know!). The evening turned into a karaoke night, with Barbara starting it and then one of the guests stealing the show with her beautiful voice! We didn’t sing, but we clapped and laughed along. How fun!

Unfortunately, the glow of the evening abruptly ended when we could not find a ride home. There were no Ubers in the area, and taxis were few and far between; I really thought we’d either have to walk the whole way to the hotel (which would take an hour) or sleep outside. We walked for 20-30 minutes and then Steve finally saw a cab with its light on and flagged it down. It was not a great way to end the evening when you're already tired and it’s late. Despite the stressful ending to the evening, both Steve and I really did like this dinner experience. She only hosts through word of mouth, so if you want to learn more, just leave a comment below. Just be warned that you should probably get a private car for this adventure, because the location is nowhere near the center of the city!

And that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Rome! Stay tuned for future posts about our visits to the Vatican, the Colosseum, and more!

Honeymoon in Italy: Travel Day(s) to Europe

 

This floral display is in the Miami Airport. Even though we were leaving before the hurricane, we felt "together" with fellow Floridians now that we live in the Sunshine State!

We left for our trip the day before Hurricane Milton was scheduled to hit the west coast of Florida. While we had no idea this would be the case when we booked our flights, this was certainly serendipitous! But it also meant that we hit a lot of traffic going to Miami because so many people were trying to escape the storm. We ended up on a one-lane road (the GPS suggested not taking 75 because of a crash), and it was pretty dicey there; we thought we weren’t going to make it on time. It didn’t help that when we got to the hotel where we would leave the car, there were NO parking spots left (even though I reserved a SpotHero pass). We finally found one, but then the shuttle left without us and we had to wait even longer. I thought for sure we’d miss the flight. But we were very lucky: once at the Miami International Airport, the lines for checking bags and going through security were surprisingly short, and we made it to the gate with plenty of time. Still, I needed Steve to bring me a gin and tonic to calm my nerves; I was still so wound up!

I have only traveled across the Atlantic twice before (once with my grandma to France when I was thirteen, and once for my Birthright trip to Israel). Since I’m used to local flights on Southwest, I was happy as a clam with ITA Airways to be sitting in economy plus with plenty of leg room (first row!), a big TV screen with lots of movies to choose from, and a full dinner of pasta, salad, and a yummy tiramisu-like dessert. We took the red eye, so we slept most of the time, and when we arrived in Italy, it was already well into the morning the next day.

Quite the feast on an airplane, with wine, too!

We worked with a travel agent for this trip (I hate planning vacations, and Steve didn’t want to plan it while we were preparing for our move to Florida), and when we switched our dates on her, she forgot to mention that one of the hotels she already booked was non-refundable. Because of this snafu, after we landed at the Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome, we had to take another flight to Florence and spend half a day there (and stay in a tiny, rather crappy hotel) just to go back to Rome the next day. NOT the best planning, especially when we had to wait several hours on our layover at the Rome airport; it felt like a lot of wasted time. BUT we didn’t want to waste any more of it, so once we cleaned up at the hotel, we walked around Florence and had dinner outside. Even though it was breezy and a bit chilly, it was so nice to eat “al fresco” when we had been stuck in an airplane and airport all day long!

Here are a few photos from that first night in Florence:

Our hotel was very close to the Duomo. This building is magnificent! At the time it was built, this was the biggest dome in the world.

The detail is just amazing! The tiny statues, cut-outs, the use of the pink and green marble... Just incredible.

The address of the hotel was 11, and our room number was 11, and both Steve and I have an affinity for that number! He was born on November 11, and I graduated from college in 2011. Kismet!

Stay tuned for my next post: Highlights of Rome!