Rociada East - Trip to Austria 2011: Six days in Florence: The Ponte Vecchio

Austria 2011

Useful things learned . . .
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Austria 2011 - or, Two Americans with Very Little German Between Them Move to Innsbruck for Four Months

Six days in Florence: The Ponte Vecchio

We spent ten days in Italy in 2007, and we always wanted to go back. Especially, we have wanted to go back to Florence, where two days had not been nearly enough. We had spent the first day in the Uffizi, which is not the sort of decision one ever regrets, and the second day wandering around led by serendip, which was also lovely, but we left not having seen the Pitti Palace or the Boboli Gardens, and I remember looking wistfully across the Arno and hoping we'd get to return.

So when we learned we'd be living in Austria, we decided to take a vacation to Florence. The week after Easter, with the Institute closed for the holidays, we got on a train and headed south.

From the train, travelling through South Tirol.

We love travelling by train in Europe. It generally takes longer than flying, but it's actually more comfortable, and you generally get to see a lot more of the countryside.

Going south from the Brenner pass and down into Italy, one passes dozens of castles. We're going to put up an entire page of them, and do our best to identify them. Later note: Oh, no, we're not. Surprisingly, we can find no authoritative guide to the castles of the Tirol. Someone needs to write a book.

Lovely little valleys open on either side of the road south from Innsbruck.

As we got farther south, vineyards sprouted everywhere.

We changed trains three times on the way down -- in Trento, Verona, and Bologna -- and, to our disappointment, the new tunnel system between Bologna and Florence meant that we saw very little of Tuscany. (On the bright side, the tickets were incredibly cheap: €180 roundtrip, each.) After an eight hour journey, we arrived in Florence.

The first Florentine we met on this trip: Dante, the Dachshund. As Julian remarked, that's the expression of a dachshund who is about to jump up and lick the photographer.

Walking among the fortified homes of Renaissance Florence has shed a lot of light for me on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I mean, I knew that important families in Italy had their own small armies and so on, but it's really brought home to you when you see where they lived.

On our way to our hotel, we passed this carousel in a nearby piazza.

On our last trip, we had just barely set foot on the Ponte Vecchio (the Old Bridge), the only bridge across the Arno that was not destroyed by Hitler or the Allies during World War II). This act of cultural clemency, supposedly ordered by Hitler himself, has resulted in the Ponte Vecchio being the oldest segmental arch bridge in Europe.

The Ponte Vecchio is also known locally as the Bridge of the Goldsmiths, but it has not always been so. Originally, butcher shops occupied the bridge. The story goes that Lorenzo de Medici (the Magnificent -- as opposed to his son, Piero the Unfortunate; I love the Italians) tired of the stink from the butcher shops as he walked every day from his offices to his home and back, and ordered the butchers off the bridge. I would personally like to thank him for that.

We headed to bed early on our first evening, then got up the next morning and walked the short distance to the Bridge of the Goldsmiths.

Goldsmiths' shops on the Ponte Vecchio.

It's like several dozen Tiffany's in a row, except that many of the creations are one-of-a-kind.

Another shop window.

The price of gold is way up, which was reflected in the prices of the jewelry on display, but they were certainly no worse than the prices on gold jewelry anywhere else. We spotted a couple of items within the price range we had in mind for a couple of gifts (not, alas, that fabulous ruby and diamond necklace in the top picture), and made a note of the shops so we could come back and look more closely later.

Then we walked on over the bridge and past the Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens to explore the hills beyond.

Looking back at the Ponte Vecchio.

One of the old city gates beyond the Boboli Gardens.

We had no real object in mind on this walk, beyond a vague desire to find a high point and see what Florence looked like from that side of the river. Aimless wandering is always one of our favorite activities when touristing. We try always to allow an equal time for serendipity and more deliberate sightseeing. Serendipity led us to Dante's house on our last trip to Florence. On this day, it led us through the sumptuous and luxurious part of Florence where many of the foreign consulates and some of the finer hotels are situated.

We suspect this hotel was out of our price range.

A public garden.

We found it amusing that the consulates were located on the Via Machiavelli.

We loved this crossing sign. It's so . . . honest. If you're crossing a street anywhere in Italy, you'd better run.

Wisteria in a private garden.

Useful things learned:

When making train reservations at the station in Innsbruck, make sure the agent understands how many people are travelling. Don't ask me how I know this.
When reserving a room in a hotel in Florence, don't take the last room available in the hotel -- or, if you do, check the size. The last room available may be the size of a broom closet.
They have mosquitos in Florence. And the windows usually do not have screens. However, a Nikon LED flashlight will cause the little suckers to freeze, and then you can whap them with a Nivea Skin Cream box.
Check the directions for getting from the train station to the hotel before you depart. Unlike the police in, say, Salzburg, the police in Florence may not know (and do not care) where the street you are looking for is.
As anyone who has traveled in Italy will tell you, you will need your money belt and your purse with the anti-snatching devices. This isn't Innsbruck, after all.

email: rudulph@comporium.net