Florence the Second

"I think I broke myself between Vernazza and Corniglia"

- Marco, in the Boboli Gardens

Believe it or not, we are still recovering from our second day in Cinque Terre (even if you do believe it, pretend you don't. It doesn't make us feel so pathetic that way.) As a result, we decided, uncharacteristically, to take it relatively easy today.

We headed to the Boboli Gardens. These were laid out for the Medici after they brought the Palazzo Pitti (where the gardens are) in 1549. The gardens are an excellent example of Renaissance gardening and were opened to the public in 1766. Renaissance gardening, you say! How delightful and relaxing and easy on the feet!

The first thing we saw here was the Bacchus Fountain. This is a copy of the original by Valerio Cioli. It shows Pietro Barbino, Cosimo I's court dwarf, as Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, astride a turtle.


Court dwarf? Naked? Astride a turtle? Where to begin. So far, if learnings in Italy are to be believed, we should rub hunchbacks for luck and make naked statues of little people we hire to entertain us. I'm not sure but there may be an equity issue in there, somewhere.

The next thing we saw was the Grotto Grande.

As you can see, it is both grotto-like and big. Our pronouncement: it is aptly named.


The gardens also had a Neptune fountain...
...and an oversize heed. In real life this heed was so massive it had its own weather system. It was about 3 m high (spherical but quite pointy in parts).

Heed! Camera! Now!

We walked along a lot of these delightful, plant-covered paths...

...to arrive at L'Isolotto (Little Island). It was closed for no apparent reason (like a lot of things in Italy). It sports pictures of dancing peasants who surround the moated garden. Don't be too sad it was closed - this was another reproduction.


Now, because we were "close" to it, we decided to visit the Piazzle Michelangelo. The piazzale was laid out in the 1860s by Giuseppe Poggi. It was supposedly "dotted with copies of Michaelangelo's famous statues." We really enjoyed the Pieta so we thought this would be worth it. First we faced this:


We were still smarting from the Cinque Terre Death March but we figured this looked somewhat gradual and rather short so we'd bravely soldier on. At the top of these stairs, we were met with this:
It was hot. We were tired. It was longer to turn back than to continue so on we went. The only thing that kept us going was the promise of sculpture, which we have found we greatly enjoy (more so than paintings, little silver cups, things made out of shells, things made out of ivory, bits of pottery, masks, bones/dessicated tongues, ruins, historic squares, modern art (ick), church interiors, marble inlay, columns, monks on cell phones and things made out of stones, all of which we have seen on this trip.)

Unfortunately, the piazzale turned out to be a major bust. Flush with souvenir stands and very low on actual sculptures. But don't despair! My photographic geniusslashcompulsiveness turned lemons into lemonade: the only thing we have enjoyed more than sculpture is mosaics. I give you Mosaici Adriana I, of the Florence skyline (click to embiggen. Trust me, you want to do this. Even if you don't, humour me again. It's composed of 13 separate photos that I painstakingly "glued" together in photoshop.)


This evening, we went out for dinner with Giuseppe and Marina, friends of Marco's uncle. We had a great time and before dinner, we drove to Fiesole where we had another view of Florence, this time exactly opposite to the direction we were looking earlier. I give you, Mosaici Adriana II.

Breathe deep and you can really taste the smog in this picture.

Tomorrow we're off to see Big D and Santa Croce (and possibly more if our legs don't literally fall off or go on sciopero.)

Until then, I leave you with Florence's response to Ottawa's Parliament Hill cat rescue.