Venice has its charms and they did quite a number on me. But for all the tangible romance and allure of the canals and bridges I actually enjoyed Florence more. Venice, despite being more accessible than Milan, seemed almost too serene to be real. This otherworldly quality that Venice has makes it an easy city to fall in love with, but it is too fragile live in. You find yourself walking around a dream, not a city. Florence has its own magic too, but it is magic that is grounded. Venice is a liquid dream flowing from the Grand Canal to the back of your mind, Florence has roots that run deep, and take hold with more permanence. They did with me.
Tuscany is gorgeous. The Arno is green and alive. The Ponte Veccio is as romantic as any gondola. The city is easy to learn. Brandon had skipped Venice and forged ahead and when I met up with him in Florence he had made himself quite cozy at a humble hostel. We arranged my move in and established a home base. The days were easy and filled with sun, small restaurants with cheap sandwiches and attempts to soak in the Florentine art. The thing about Florence is yes, there is the Uffizi with incredible Renaissance works (including my personal favorite, Titian's "Venus of Urbino" which I had trouble pulling myself away from) and the Academia with the David (which I actually didn't get to see) and monuments and statues around seemingly every corner, but the real gem is the city itself. It's not one piece, or one work, or one building, it's the composition of the city. Even the clouds in Florence have a kind of grandeur and presence that impress.
It is important that I come back to the Uffizi though, it really is a remarkable museum. I love Renaissance art. I love the perfection of it, the beauty of the human form. Yet the depictions of men and women and their impossible beauty has dual effect. In their nudity you can find yourself and relate to the anatomy and to the emotion, but in their perfection you feel as if they are as strange as they are familiar. No real man has looked like Michelangelo's David and no real woman has looked like Titian's Venus. I mused over humanity's glory while standing in front of the beautiful bodies portrayed on the canvasses I thought that humanity was indeed wonderful...until I had to fight my way through the hoards of flesh into the next room. The museum was packed, mostly with Asians, which was convenient for me since I could see over the top of all them.
My love affair with Florence came to head on my last day there. I thought that getting some pictures from the top Brunelleschi's dome at sunset would be a worthwhile endeavor. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I can't be sure how many steps I had to climb up and I haven't been that claustrophobic since I was a kid (15th century Italians, apparently, were much smaller than 21st century Americans) but when I emerged onto the roof I was breathless from neither stair nor tight space. The sun was setting over Tuscany, storm clouds were churning over the mountains, and the city shimmered under the sun, first yellow, then gold, then red.
It took me awhile to find my feet; once I did I took my photos in vain. I knew there was no way to capture what I was seeing and what I was feeling. That sun, that city, those clouds, the whole scene was unlike anything I had every seen. I lived in the shadows of the Rocky Mountains for more than a decade, I've been to Big Sur and driven some of Highway 1 along California's West coast, I've felt the end of the world effect at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland, and then I saw the sun set over Florence. I never got tired of looking at the city and stayed until the sun had bled out. It was a remarkable view and there was a bit of comic relief as everyone who emerged from the staircase, be they English, Australian, French, American, Chinese or otherwise had the universal response when they saw the scene in front of them, "wow."
That night Brandon and I had a bottle of wine and bought one for the road. We stopped on the Ponte Veccio and talked about the locks. It is a tradition that when you love someone you take a lock and attach it somewhere on the Ponte Veccio and throw the key into the Arno. There are actually fewer locks there than one might think, but enough for you to feel the significance of the gesture. I didn't add to the collection.
We crossed the bridge and walked up a bit of a hill. The wine was doing its job and to disguise that we were American tourists we spoke in Spanish (and Brandon in French from time to time) as we crossed paths with others. We were drunk and loud and the conversation hinged on how old we thought our host mother back in Madrid was. We made it to the top of the hill and admired Florence from the other side of the Arno. There were some other people there, Spaniards too if I recall correctly, and we chatted with them for a while, mostly about the gorgeous city winking back at us. The next day we left for Rome.
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