Escape to the Continent: The Sacred and the Mundane - not necessarily in that order…

7/23 Got up at five o'clock to shower pack and catch a six thirty bus back to Foggia and the train that would take us to Florence, only problem was the bus REALLY left at 6:05 and we needed to make the train because we had a connection to make in Rome.

A half hour later we were in a hired cab (the hotel had trouble finding a cabbie that was awake at this hour) rushing down the winding road from San Giovanni to the highway, the cabbie nonchalantly polishing his glasses and steering with one hand…

But we made it with time to spare, boarded the train and we were off…only it started to rain a bit and whether that was the reason or not, we were late puling into Rome with only five minutes to discover which platform our connecting train was on and to get aboard. Nothing says travel so much as racing through a terminal with bags in tow…

Needless to say we made the connection and a couple hours later after a comfortable train ride, and our second cab ride of the day - this one through an absolute maze of NARROW cobble stone streets FULL of tourists, we were checked into our hotel and ready to begin exploring Florence, otherwise known officially as 'Firenze' by Italians..

A word about our hotel, the Degli Orafi. We had been informed that it was a converted abbey - which inspired images of arched walkways and tiny converted cells….HA! Our 'cell' turned out to be a two-floor suite with master bedroom and bath upstairs, a second bedroom down (Serge was ecstatic) with kitchen, dining and living room areas beneath a high wood beam ceiling (the only aspect that somewhat match our preconceptions). Breakfast is served in what had perhaps been a dining hall - and whose high arched ceiling is adorned with decorative art. Conveniently located nearly in the heart of the old city, it was a quick jaunt out the door to our immersion into the wonders of this medieval city.

Rome had offered wide boulevards and ancient ruins punctuated with basilica. San Giovanni had given us a peak at a 'modern' Italian community. Monte Sant' Angelo had offered a 'chronic landscape' bridging post Roman times, through the 'dark ages' and ending on the doorstep of the Renaissance. Florence picks up the story, overlapping the end of the medieval with the explosion of the Renaissance. Everywhere we wandered along the narrow streets - typically a single lane with side walks no wider than a hand span, between buildings five or six stories high - we came upon plazas with statuary, medieval compounds adorned with family crests, churches small, medium and large - some converted to museums, some not, adorned with artwork by the likes of Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli and Michelangelo. In fact the city is so dense with so much art and history that the city itself has been designated a historic treasure for all humanity by UNESCO.

After hours of free exploration and letting the cityscape have its way with us, we attended Saturday mass at the Santa Croce (The burial place of Galileo, Michelangelo, Machievelli and Rossini and decorated with frescoes by Giotto) and we stopped at one of the ubiquitous sidewalk 'ristorantes' for a light dinner, after which we chose a somewhat oblique path to our hotel. Along the way a small sign, not much larger than a license plate, attached to the corner of a building caught Serge's eye: "Casa di Dante". Sidetracked again…. Turns out it was Dante Aligheri's townhouse, author of the The Divine Comedy, another small 'museo' (museum), and the TINY chapel across the street housed the remains of his wife AND his muse, Beatrice on opposite sides. We turned for home once again, walking back through some of the large piazzas and along alley-like passageways now lit up against the dark…