Florence 3

TRAVELS IN FLORENCE

DAY 3 -- SARAH AND THE BOBOLI GARDENS

So, once again we woke at seven to the merry beeping of the alarm. Once again I walked out to the Central Market for bread and cheese, salami and fruit (got an orange instead of strawberries this time. Orange was not as good as strawberries) and got back in time for breakfast.

Now, today was most definitely my day for the Boboli Gardens. These are the gardens attached to one of the greatest of the Medici palaces, the Palazzo Pitti (originally built by a rival family to outdo the Medici grandeur, and then bought by the Medici when that other family went bankrupt. Don't try to outdo the Medici. It don't pay.) You get a combination ticket, with the gardens you get to see the Medici apartments, the Silver Museum and the Porceline museum which house various Medici treasures. Most definitely the thing for me.
So, finished up breakfast and hit the streets. Now, it looked like, according to my map, that there were two ways to get to the Pitti, the fun way and the direct way. I'd done the fun way yesterday (Pitti's on the other side of the Ponte Vecchio), so today I'd do the direct way. Aaaaannnnndddd...

You guessed it. I got lost.

Note to the Florentine traveller: Do NOT try to navigate around the Piazza de Santa Maria Novella. It is a big, irregularly shaped space around an old church where several very large roads intersect in the most complicated traffic geometry I've ever encountered (I will not dignify it with the term traffic circle. This was a traffic dodecahedron), and crossinng the streets is next to impossible. And THEN because of the irregularity of the street angles, and the fact that not all of them have SIGNS, it's next to impossible to figure out if you've got a street going even vaguely in the direction you want. I scrambled about for a bit, then hit the tourist info booth, where they set me on a street that would get me started in the right direction, and it did, sort of, in a rambling kind of way. Then I made a wrong turn and this was all getting very old. Wound up in the Florence fashion district. Made for some very interesting window glimpses as I raced by.

Finally made it to Ponte Vecchio. Finally made it to the Pitti. Now, to find the garden entrance. No sign on the Pitti. No clear indication on the map.   $#@%! The tickets for the major attractions in Florence are "timed entry" meaning you have to show up at a certain time, in fact, they recommend you show up fifteen minutes early. Mine was for 10:00. It was now exactly 10:00 and I had no idea where I should be going. So, I asked the mail carrier I spotted as she was hopping on her scooter. She had enough English to understand and pointed me toward the Pitti itself. Okay.

Now, the Pitti is huge. It is at they very least a city block long, with wings on either end. The main entrance is in the middle, the ticket office is at the end. I went to the main entrance. There was a sign, with an arrow pointing to the right that said Boboli Gardens. So, I headed to the right wing (only time you're ever going to find me doing that). But all I find there is the ticket office, and the queue. 10:05. I ask the one ticket person where the entrance to the gardens is. "Main Entrance" I'm told. Shit. Okay, back to the main entrance. And I show my printout to the guard, which is what the advance ticket website said would get me into the various galleries, and I am told that's not a ticket and I have to go to the ticket office.

And here I had a mental meltdown and did something that I had sworn never, ever to do in a foreign country. I started arguing. "I was told this is my ticket.   This is paid for." And it had as little effect as you might expect, and I had to go back to the ticket office, and join the queue, which of course was now longer than when I left, and it was not 10:15 and I had no idea if I had missed my chance to get in and would have to buy a new ticket. There was no one manning the "reservations" window either, BTW.

Anyway, all ended well. They accepted my printout, which turned out only to be a voucher, not an actual ticket, gave me a ticket and this time I went in without a problem. I paused to use the facilities and get something to drink so I could calm down, and having determined that I could come and go all day on the ticket I had, I entered the gardens.

You have to go UP to get into the Boboli Gardens. They climb the hill behind the Palazzo Pitti. So, first you have to climb a kind of ramp with little speedbumps and you come out into an ampitheater with a huge, beautiful fountain, and the rest of the gardens rising before you, and you look up, and up, and yet more up.
And over Florence the skies were turning dark black, and I heard the thunder.  And I thinks to myself, self thinks I, you are contemplating climbing a tall hill while a thunderstorm is moving in. This is perhaps not the best idea.  
So, I changed plans and decided to do the galleries first. Being on my quest for All Things Medici, I decided to go for the Silver Museum which was housed in the Medici private apartments. The name of the first room you walk into is the Grand Salon, or The Room to Impress the Bejeezus Out of People.

What this room is is the absolute epitome of trompe d'oeil. You've seen trompe d'oeil. You go into an Italian restauraunt and one wall is painted with a fake balcony railing looking out over a seascape. I've always thought it was tacky more than anything else. That's because I've never seen it done right.
First of all, the room is huge and the ceiling was at least twenty feet high.  The walls were done in gorgeous allegorical murals depicting the death of the Old Learning and the Birth of the New with Lorenzo the Magnificent sitting square in the middle (this is why you become a great patron of the arts, 'cause the artists paint great pictures of you and the poets call you "the Magnificent").   But then you start looking up at the wall at all the beautiful detail reliefs, and no, wait, that's not a relief, that's painting with the shadows executed to perfection and far enough away that your eye doesn't pick it up right away. Now that one, that's a relief, no, wait, that's another painting. Okay, over there, that's a pillar...no, wait, that's a false pillar that starts at the bottom and blends perfectly into a painting of a pillar about half way up. But that one...no, same trick, except the false pillar is at the top and the painting is at the bottom...
And I sat on the bench in the middle and I stared, and I stared and the more I stared the more my eye was fooled. It was possibly the greatest photo-realistic painting I had ever seen, and I was sitting in the center of it.
The other rooms were also beautifully and elaborately frescoed with those wonderful, totally over the top, magnificently expressive Rennaisance murals, but they'd clearly poured their greatest skill (and probably the most money) into this salon. Absolutely amazing.

The treasures were a great deal of fun. Luxurious beyond decription, incredible tributes to the art of the gold and silver smiths, to the jewelers, the carvers, the engravers, the ones who worked in enamel and bronze. The guidebook actually makes light of the contents of the museum, preferring to dwell on some of the more...over the top reliquaries than on the beauties. I found it all well worth the price of admission, especially when you included those murals.

After that, I was hungry, so I bought water and coffee from the museum cafe and sat and ate the lunch I'd brought, prepared to move if anyone said anything. No one did. Then, observing the weather had cleared, I went back out into the gardens. This wasn't the ideal timing. I would be climbing that hill during the hottest part of the day. Oh, well. I had all afternoon. I'd take it slow.

Note to Travelers: Do not plan to do anything else the day you do the gardens.   Bring your lunch and just take the day. They are absolutely huge, and a world of fun. You remember those gardens in Branaugh's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? These are bigger. These are the result of the Medici family showing off their wealth across several generations. These are gardens within gardens, each with its own theme. There are countless wooded rambles and groves and grottos. There are endless statues, some grand, some humorous, some worn away to tombstones of art. These gardens are epics. They are for plotting intrigue and assignation.  
And yes, I got lost. Again. Didn't mind too much though. I've now smelled cypress and lemon mixed together on the breeze and if you can make it to the top of the gardens the view across the roofs of Florence is unparalleled, even when the hills opposite are turned soft blue by the rain. Or perhaps especially so.

It was, however, a whole heck of a lot of walking. I was actually limping by the time I made it back to the B&B. When Tim came back, we went no further than Nerone for dinner and both had the "beef cutlet." Cutlet? Who's translating this menu? This was a steak, and it was a very, very good steak. I also had zoupa de pomodoro. This is a traditional Tuscan tomato soup thickened with bread. Extremely simple and extremely good, especially when you start sprinkling the locally made parmasagne cheese over it. It was, in fact, too much food. But oh, it was such GOOD food. And yes, there was more of that bread. And coffee afterwards. I was utterly exhausted, but really, really happy.

For my photos of the Boboli Gardens (although I warn you these didn’t turn out real well); click here.

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