Tedgale Italy Trip Report, Part II: Florence, Lucca and their environs
 

I have decided to break up my trip report into parts -- my initial thread ("Tedgale Trip Report: Rome, Florence, Lucca, Cremona, Milan") contains some overall info on the trip and all my posts/ info/ advice on Rome.

For our trip to Florence (4 days) and Lucca (3 days), I am creating this separate thread.

The remainder of the trip -- 2 nights in Cremona and a final day in Milan -- will likely go in a third thread. There was just so much information -- also not everyone wants info about all 5 destinations.

Here is the link to an album of photos of places we stayed. The Florence apartment and Lucca-area hotel are in the middle of the album.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?ai...5&l=ab3d0aeb14

The Florence apartment is one where we have stayed 3 times now: Residenza Il Carmine, on the Oltrarno, close to the Ponte alla Carraia and thus near neighbours with the Church of the Carmine, home to the Brancacci Chapel (Masaccio/ Masolino frescoes).

We got a great deal on our huge 900 square foot apartment: an off-season rate of 75 E/ night. I cannot recommend this place too highly! They also have a 1 bedroom unit in the main building -- I have never seen it.

There are 3 smaller studio apartments, each with a private door, reached from the garden. These are quite adequate for 2 people -- kitchen with table, seating area, separate bed area and a sparkling-clean modern bath.

The Albergo Villa Marta is a four-star hotel 5-10 minutes from the walls of Lucca. It is renowned for its service, which is peerless. Can you imagine a place where your pillow-cases are replaced in the evening, if you have mussed them with an afternoon nap, after the maid's morning visit? I would SWEAR our pillow-cases were changed like that one evening when we were at dinner... Off-season and mid-week, we paid an incredibly low 69 E/ night including buffet breakfast for two.

OK, I've done the tombstone stuff and now will describe the highlights of our trip, on which detailed info will then follow.

In Florence, the best things I/ we did were:
San Miniato al Monte
A climb up Bellosguardo
Santo Spirito and the adjacent Fondazione Romano
the Ognissanti Church
Palazzo Davanzati
Church of the Carmine
Ferragamo Museum

You notice... no Uffizi, no Accademia. I don't do crowds and I do not want to line up. Fine for those who wish to -- I'm just saying I don't.

I don't think my trip to Florence suffered. I must have seen the Uffizi about a dozen times, anyway, when I lived briefly in Florence, years and years ago....

In Lucca and area:

Villa Medicea, Poggio a Caiano
Lucca's San Frediano, San Michele and the Duomo
Bicycling the walls of Lucca
Renaissance villas N of Lucca -- an exercise in frustration for us but definitely star attractions
Barga, in the Garfagnana region N of Lucca
A lightning visit to Pisa -- a couple of hours is plenty for me in that place
The Strada del Vino e dell' olio around Lucca
A drive-only visit to the Cinque Terre

Now I'll start filling in the details.

Friday March 12, 2010:

We arrive by train from Rome, around noon.

At Florence, we head off on foot to the Oltrarno, a 15 minute walk with our rolling luggage. At via Ardiglione, we are met by the friendly Signora, who wins my heart by complimenting my Italian. It is, she says, “a pleasure to listen to (me) speak“. I need no encouragement to talk but still this comment warms me.

Our apartment at the Residenza del Carmine is immaculate, welcoming, loaded with atmosphere, supremely comfortable, despite being filled with huge furniture and decorative bits. We are paying a laughably low price for all this space and comfort.

In the afternoon, R is feeling chills from an oncoming cold and wants to crawl under a coverlet. I decide this will be my afternoon for a bracing climb. First I climb to the Fortezza Belvedere. Then, when I can discover no road to the Piazzale Michelangelo, I descend to Arno-level and, by a different route, climb the identical height to Piazzale Michelangelo and San Miniato al Monte.

S. Miniato, close up, looks small. It is a little jewel box, a Faberge confection in white and green marble. The handsome exterior is Florentine Renaissance. The austere interior, brightened only by 12th to 14th C. frescoes, is pure Byzantium. After 30 years I had forgotten how exquisite it looks and how holy it feels.

In the early evening, I explore the workshops and boutiques of the Oltrarno. Florence is a mine of creativity. We see copperplate engravers, jewellery designers, shoemakers, carpet merchants, framers and gilders.

Tonight, R wants to dine out We choose a Fodors recommendation, Il Cantinone in via Santo Spirito. We end up speaking to the folks at nearby tables -- the Aberdeen engineer and his wife, the Concord MA lad who is lodging in Perugia before returning to his college in New Orleans. With coperto (cover) and sparkling water, our bill is a puny 57 E.

Saturday, March 13, 2010:
Today we will immerse ourselves in Florence’s patrimony -- but not with the usual sights.

Instead, we will visit some obscure and relatively unknown sights. First, Brunelleschi’s church of Santo Spirito, just down the street. Classically severe…magnificent …yet with no tinge of the grandiose. Its many niche chapels commemorate some of the greatest Florentine families. It is almost empty when we visit.

Next door is the original Augustinian cenacolo (refectory), now the museum of the Fondazione Romano. Sig. Romano was a collector of Italian sculptural remnants, mostly medieval but some from the true “Dark Ages”. His donation to Florence is housed in one vast room, which also holds the remains of medieval wall frescoes.

I am entranced and delighted with these quirky bits, all of which are interesting and some of which are exquisite -- bits of capitals, free-standing sculptures, caryatids. The collection is open only a few hours a week, on Saturdays. Here again, we are almost alone.

The Ognissanti church has a cloister entirely frescoed with scenes of the life of St Francis. Interspersed between the scenes are remarkably modern-looking fresco portraits of church notables. The cloister leads to the refectory that holds Ghirlandaio’s fresco of the Last Supper.

From there, we rush to the Palazzo Davanzati, a 15th C palazzo restored a hundred years ago by the painter and art merchant Volpi as his home and showplace. Today, this city museum houses paintings, ceramics and furniture, arranged to evoke (with abundant liberties) the life of a great city house in the early Renaissance period.

On the upper floor, you can see two painted rooms, the Room of the parrots and the Room of the peacocks. Each is painted in imitation of wall tapestries, with a corbelled cornice above, in trompe l`oeil perspective.

In principle, you can also visit the third floor in the company of an employee. We are told that this is not possible today…``per mancanza di personale``. So the hungry `70s, when half the museum space in Italy was closed, have not left us after all.

As all is now warm sunshine, we have lunch at a table in the garden of the Residenza: Ciabatta with slices of cheese, prosciutto and marinated zucchini, plus a glass of humble Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.

Next door I have seen a marble plaque announcing that Filippo Lippi was born there. Just over our garden wall is a side chapel of the Carmine church. If we fired a cannon-ball, it would hit Masaccio’s fresco of Adam and Eve in the church’s Brancacci chapel. It is for such moments and such associations that we come to Italy.

After lunch, R is going to shop for dinner and I want to climb up to San Miniato again, to photograph it.

On the via Sant`Agostino I am seduced by a clothing shop called Giofre`. The clothes are very youthful and hip. It turns out that these clothes, for both men and women, are designed and made on-site.

I try a couple of things but the sizes are wrong. The saleswoman assures me that they can run up a model in the right size and colour before we leave on Tuesday. I don’t buy clothes I have not tried on (or been measured for).

In the end, I settle for a knitted cotton sweater, basic black. It is sure to sag, as cotton knits always do. But for the moment it looks really sharp. End of winter sale, 35 E. Incredible. I have been scanning the new arrivals in the high-end chains we have passed here -- Zegna, Ferragamo, Missoni, Etro. The going rate for a sweater is about 8 times what I paid, for “name” merchandise with no more style and likely made in Romania, not Italy.

I am frustrated when I reach San Miniato.

The exterior light is splendid -- the gold of the last minutes of direct sun. Crowds have gathered at Piazzale Michelangelo to watch the sunset. But the church’s interior is murky and, even using the flash, the pictures are a mess. I delete almost all of them.

The sung mass in the crypt area -- chanted by monks in floor-length white habits -- restores my mood.

The cemetery behind the church, a riot of kitsch and pathos, is unexpectedly closed. I discover that they close at 5 pm in winter and it is now 6. I will likely never get that shot of two full-size 1940s funerary statues -- a young couple, he in military uniform, she in a long dinner dress. He is asking her to dance, it seems. A Fred and Ginger moment. It is grotesque but also touching.

To maintain some control over calorie intake, we will dine in tonight. R offers smoked herring -- a surprising choice, for Tuscany -- as a starter. Next come meat-filled tortellini, with artichokes and slices of salsiccia toscana in a tomato sauce. Then a salad of mixed greens and pomidoro ciliegiani -- cherry tomatoes, to us.

(I have been carefully schooled to pluralize pomodoro as pomidoro, not pomodori. That makes me one of 11 people in Italy who follow this rule)

Sunday, March 14, 2010:
We must leave Florence in a couple of days, yet we have done little more than scratch the surface of one tiny corner of town. Today, I begin to appreciate in the abstract, if not to fathom in its substance, the overpowering richness and bewildering variety of Florentine culture.

It hits us when we are trying to decide what to do today. We dismiss peremptorily the Uffizi and the Accademia -- too crowded; too hard to get into, anyway. We have seen the Palazzo Vecchio and the Bargello as recently as March 2009. Yet we are still swamped with choices: Orsanmichele, the Carmine church, Santa Croce, Michelangelo’s Nuova Sagrestia, the Opere del Duomo…

The richness is not confined to Florentine artists nor to the distant past. Here is a sample:
 The Palazzo Strozzi currently features a major show of Surrealist painters -- De Chirico, Magritte and Balthus
 At the Horne Museum, they are featuring watercolours by Constable, from their own collection
 Tonight and tomorrow, pianist Andras Schiff and a violinist are performing in a Beethoven program at Teatro della Pergola
 For 4 nights this weekend, a festival called Fuori di Taste is offering special dinner menus, wine and food tastings and theme-based cocktail receptions across the city`s restaurants and public venues.

These are just a few of the events I have happened upon. With research, I could likely uncover much more. We collapse, faced with too much choice. Domani.

Instead -- after we check out the flea market at Santo Spirito, visit the church of the Santissima Annunziata, join the noon-time passeggiata from the Duomo to the Arno and have lunch in the garden -- R goes to rest and I climb Bellosguardo.

I go for the view but also for the associations with the gifted people of so many lands, for whom Florence was a cultural and artistic mecca.

A plaque in Bellosguardo declares that the adjacent villa has welcomed, in its time Galileo, Ugo Foscolo, James Fennimore Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Elizabeth and Robert Browning, Henry James and Franz Brentano, among others. (I have abbreviated the list, which includes Violet Trefusis, the great-aunt of Camilla Parker Bowles and onetime Lesbian lover of author Vita Sackville West).

Bellosguardo was once pleasantly remote from Florence. Now it is remote only through deliberate acts of isolation -- the installation of high walls, electric gates, video-surveillance cameras and warnings of mordici -- dogs that bite. It once housed the literary and artistic elite; now it houses another elite. They may be charming, civilized people -- in fact, they almost certainly are. Their predecessors came here to steep themselves in the city; current residents appear determined to do the opposite -- to keep as far as possible from the contagion of Florence, its tourist hordes and the gritty realities of workaday Florentine life.

We have a dinner of left-overs -- very superior left-overs -- and discuss our itinerary in NW Tuscany. R has been doing some research and proposes a number of stops and detours on our way to Lucca, normally a drive of just over an hour. Good: I need distractions.

I have foresworn shopping at the Tuscany outlet malls. I briefly contemplate a visit to Levanelle (Prada) and Incisa (Gucci, Armani, etc) “just to look”. I then realize I would have to be forcibly restrained, like Odysseus -- lashed to the mast to resist the singing of the Sirens. “There be dragons.” We will visit villas and charming medieval towns instead.

Monday, March 15, 2010:
A busy day, which I will summarize crisply.

Our first stop was the Chiesa del Carmine, our near neighbour. I have had little appetite to revisit the Brancacci chapel: My recollection of the famous Masaccio and Masolino frescoes was of mouldy, murky images -- dark and lifeless scenes of the life of St Peter.

R has happened upon a book that indicates they have been restored (almost 20 years ago). Though the guide books indicate that reservations are required, we decide to chance it.

Entrance to the chapel is through a beautiful frescoed cloister. These Carmelites had style. We climb stairs to the chapel. I am amazed: the images are warm, living. Poor Masolino is utterly outshone by his pupil Masaccio. Every face that Masaccio paints is memorable. He is a natural documentarist: through him, you can visualize exactly how people looked and dressed in the 1440s.

I am also seduced by Filippino Lippi’s much later (1480s) frescoes, which complete the cycle. Lippi’s modern, photographic images -- full of apt psychological observation -- ought to blow away Masaccio’s rather primitive figures but somehow, strangely, do not.

After this, we make an abortive visit to the Leather School of Florence, to look for gloves for the wife of David B. I quickly discover that the Leather School does not offer gloves. Indeed, it seems to sell only 3 kinds of leather goods:
1. Outerwear
2. Ladies’ handbags (a bewildering array, all large and scary)
3. Stationers’ supplies -- desk sets, writing materials, daybooks and the like: “Genteel” wares from the generation before mine.

We repair instead to a glove shop near the Ponte Vecchio. Here, a pretty, slender, bobbed and hoydenish young woman from Croatia smoothly sells me a pair of cashmere-lined gloves in darkish red.

Then R buys a pair of winter gloves -- slightly more expensive -- and, finally, I treat myself to a pair of even more expensive black dress-gloves.

We are delighted to part with our money (and David B’s). We admire a good salesman or -woman.

Next stop is R’s choice: The Ferragamo Museum on P.za Santa Trinita’. I am a bit of a sceptic. I don’t “get” women’s obsession with shoes, nor do I “get” the obsession with feet that some men have.

This museum, in the cellars of the palazzo where Ferragamo had his workshops and salesrooms from the 1930s, slowly chips away at your resistance.

I am intrigued by the shoe lasts for great screen stars (Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Marilyn Monroe, among others). The photos of star-clients go back to 1923, when Ferragamo established his first retail outlet in Hollywood. Joan Crawford as a 20s flapper!

I am even more intrigued by the bills for the stars’ orders. Can you believe hand-made shoes, custom ordered, cost only $39.95 a pair, 50 years ago?

Then we get to the shoes themselves. What an innovator Ferragamo was, even if, over the years, the designs got more tame. If you go back to the 20s or 30s they are outrageous. Always the newest materials -- mica, plastic, raffia, iguana skin, tavernelle lace.

No concessions to practicality -- some of the shoes are like gossamer, others must have been a torture to the foot. But always great style, minute attention to detail and consummate workmanship. I admire genius, whatever direction it takes and whatever outlet it finds.

In the afternoon, we bond with our hosts at the Residenza Il Carmine. I show them what I have posted about their operation on Fodors.com; I show them photos of the apartment from my FB albums. They are charmed and delighted. Later, when we ask where to get good tortellini, the Signora presents me with a package of tortellini and also with a package of “the best spaghetti you can get” -- produced just outside Naples. The latter goes into our luggage for transport to Canada.

The rest of the afternoon is consumed by the preparations for our dinner with Douglas and Susie. Here is what R served:
 As antipasto, prosciutto crudo over thinly-slivered fennel and sliced blood oranges, with extra-virgin olive oil and the juice of a lemon from the owners’ garden
 Stuffed tortellini with Tuscan sausage, arugula, fennel and artichokes, in a tomato sugo
 A salad of mixed greens and arugula with cherry tomatoes
 Douglas’ almond biscotti with a bottle of Tuscan ice-wine

We have a great evening in fine and distinguished company. Feeling that life is perfect (for the moment, anyway), I fall asleep just before midnight, with cleaning and packing complete and with plans well in order for departure on the morrow.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010:
At 10:30 am, after a fond farewell to our hosts, we pick up our Renault Clio at the Hertz dealership in via Finiguerra, an easy 15 minute walk from the apartment.

We have brought our bags with us: To drive to the apartment would have meant registering the car’s licence number with the police in advance, since vehicle access to this zone is strictly rationed -- backed up by unremitting “videosorveglianza”.

R has chosen tiny, hard-to-reach Poggio a Caiano as our first stop today. There is a Medici villa, subsequently occupied by Napoleon’s sister and by the King of Italy. You can visit both the villa and the (top-floor) museum of still-life painting. Both are free to visitors -- unheard-of in Italy.

We arrive just before noon. The villa, in the midst of town, is magnificent -- huge and plain-fronted in its original Medicean incarnation, it has been gussied up only slightly in the Napoleonic period and after.

At 12 noon, we are admitted to the property by a solemn, indeed funereal, older gent, who dons a plastic glove before pressing the elevator button that will take us to the top floor. We are alone in the museum with the 180 still life paintings.

The gent follows us from room to room. He has Tourette’s Syndrome! He approaches, bends, shakes his shoulders, retreats. He approaches again, bends, shakes his shoulders, retreats. The plastic-gloved hand extends behind at an awkward angle.

I find 30 minutes quite enough to view these lovely but near-identical works. The obsession of generations of Medicis, through the 17th and 18th centuries, with flower and animal paintings merely puzzles me.

We proceed to visit the villa. Soon we realize that this 16th C gem has been totally refinished for Napoleonic tastes, then further desecrated for the lowbrow House of Savoy: The very same pair of villains who corrupted the Palazzo Pitti in Florence! Only the great salone remains untouched: glorious Mannerist frescoes of the 1540s (Andrea del Sarto) and 1580s decorate its double-height walls.

Leaving Poggio a Caiano, the next couple of hours are spent in an injudicious effort to find interesting paths across this plain, without resort to the Autostrada.

We see some fine hill-country, also some lush plains and even some marshy wetlands. But the driving -- through areas of light industry and encroaching suburbs -- is not tranquil. Finally, we give up and do the last 20 km by motorway. Immediately, my stress-level lifts.

The Villa Marta, just south of Lucca, is a God-send, when we reach it.

It is on a quiet road in the narrow strip of plain between two opposing lines of high, conical hills. The air is full of birdsong. The grounds are beautifully groomed, the buildings are supremely well kept.

It is a tightly run ship.

Someone appears from nowhere to take our bags to the room. Our room and bath are spotless, with every amenity (except an iron -- one is not supposed to fend for oneself).

A chambermaid knocks around 7 pm, to ask if we need anything. When we go out to dinner at nearby La Cecca, for which the hotel has phoned in a reservation, someone provides us (unasked) with a flashlight, to ensure we get to our car safely in the dark. Someone also comes in after 8 pm, to turn down the bed, leave some sweets and change towels.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010:
Another sunny day. Breakfast is a cold buffet with everything I could want to eat and much that I should not.

The other guests slope in, in jeans and running shoes, half the men unshaven. They are a motley lot. Though all are dressed in the familiar uniform of the suburban mall, not one of them is North American.

We drive north of Lucca -- admiring the extraordinary ring of brick walls around the city -- toward the mountains. Our destination is the hill-town of Barga, in the Garfagnana region. It is a destination we share, apparently, with every truck driver in northern Tuscany.

Barga’s great feature, apart from 360 degree views of jagged peaks and dramatic valleys, is its Romanesque church, perched at the top of the town. The earliest mention of the church dates from 988 AD. For most of our visit, we have the place to ourselves. Its broad stone terrace is a perfect vantage-point from which to admire the Alps.

The church’s façade is flat and austere -- Lombard Romanesque. The interior is sombre, except for a fanciful altar in coloured stone, with lions on the base. One of the lions is about to maul a man, the other wrestles with a snake.

In a chapel are beautiful early Renaissance terra cotta works: a large panel of saints and a couple of smaller polychrome pieces.

From Barga we turn southward to Bagni di Lucca. Once patronized by royalty and le beau monde, this spa is now decidedly dingy.

With some difficulty (this is my toughest day of navigating yet, by a long chalk) we find the small twisty road that will take us over the crest of the mountains and bring us out on the Pisan plain. In almost an hour of driving, we meet only 3 cars.

We reach Collodi but I cannot locate the Villa Garzoni, whose Baroque garden I hoped to see. Instead, we decide to follow the well-signposted Strada del Vino dei Colli Lucchesi. This wine road keeps us well above the industrial plain, in verdant hill-country.

We soon find ourselves at the Villa Torrigiani, a grand 16th C villa whose gardens were originally based on French models (Le Notre may have had a hand in their design).

Sometime around the end of the 18th C, someone decided to tear out the parterres nearest the house and convert the garden into an English parkland. Much of the original design remains, however, including a dramatic Nympheum.

Unfortunately for us and despite a sign indicating the park is open “7/7”, the place is closed up and padlocked. We wait around for a bit, hoping someone will show up -- the view of the statue-laden façade of the house is most enticing -- then finally slink off.

Continuing on signposted "wine roads" -- there appear to be two, the Vino/ olio and the Vino/ Colle Lucchesi -- we make a short stop at pretty, hill-top Montecarlo, a centre of gastronomy and oenoculture. We admire its red brick fortress, town walls and handsome gateways.

We take the A-11 back to Lucca, vowing to stick closer to home tomorrow, our last day in the region. At least half our time will be devoted to Lucca itself.

Dinner is at nearby La Quercia, an unprepossessing place in Santa Maria del Giudice, on the SS 12, the main Pisa-Lucca Road. Dinner turns out to be a triumphant success.

Yes, there are some anomalous qualities -- the Queen soundtrack, for example. We are won over, however, by the fresh ingredients, the robust cooking and the eagerness and friendliness of the owner and his wife.

Thursday, March 18, 2010:
Today is our day for visiting Lucca. I have been fearful of driving, finding parking and making our way around this walled town. Florence -- and the mad traffic in rush hours on the SS 12 -- have spooked me. In fact, it is an easy 10 minute drive from the Villa Marta to the ring road around Lucca’s walls; thereafter, we quickly find free parking just off the ring road. We have a bit of a hike to the Porta San Donato.

Once inside the walls, however, we are struck by the relative silence of the town. We are often alone in the small streets. The exception is the Via Fillungo, the smart shopping street where people go to see and be seen.

Lucca has much the same feel as Siena: chic yet parochial; absorbed with itself and its mystique; a place where everyone knows everyone and where local affairs are rated much more important than national ones.

The church of San Frediano’s façade is of cool, white marble; its interior is of a much warmer brown stone. The mosaics on the façade are 13th C; the font is Romanesque; there are fine additions from every century of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. I like the way the disparate elements co-exist harmoniously.

This is one of the best churches I have seen on this trip. I am quite turning against anything Baroque or later: too florid, too stylish, altogether too perfect. In fact, I’m becoming a pre-Raphaelite.

After its staggeringly beautiful exterior, the interior of the Duomo is a disappointment, by contrast. The florid, arcaded white/green/black façade and the (earlier) campanile are both splendid. The interior has been completely overhauled in the 16th or 17th C; all the mystery is gone.

The same is true, we read, of San Michele, which is closed when we visit. Its over-the-top white and black façade extends high above the actual building, like the false front of a Wild West saloon. Delightful. But the interior has been “restored” to the point that it has (reportedly) lost all interest.

We decide we like Lucca very much. For one thing, the Lucchesi seem politer than other people we have met.

It is also a very liveable, walkable city, in which even very well-dressed people travel by bicycle. R. wants to rent a bicycle and ride around the magnificent red brick walls that encircle Lucca. It costs 2,50 E for an hour. R. completes the lap in 15 minutes, then I do a lap in 15 minutes. The final 30 minutes R. spends cycling through the historic district, revisiting favourite spots from our morning walk.

Back on the road, we drive 30 minutes to Pisa. I have not seen the Campo dei Miracoli since the 1970s, when we first travelled together to Italy. Since that time, the Leaning Tower has been straightened-up by 14 inches and the whole complex has been cleaned. Emerging from the tunnel on the SS 12, we look straight across the broad Pisan plain, where the whole complex, a few miles off, is dramatically silhouetted.

Yes, the tower is leaning. It really is leaning a lot.

What an irony that this marble building, begun in the 12th C, whose subsidence was noticeable before they completed the 4th level of 7+, should still be standing today when the World Trade Center is not.

There is nothing else in Pisa I want to see. This will be a quick one-hour trip. It is surprisingly easy to enter the city from the North and to find pay-parking in a public lot near the centre.

The Campo dei Miracoli is overrun, on this sunny day, with young people and with elderly Japanese tourists. No one seems very interested in the gorgeous, glistening exteriors of the Duomo, baptistery and cemetery. Only the tower counts, and that for freakish reasons. Near the entrance to the tower I spot beautiful low-relief carvings of animals and of sailing ships (the key to Pisa’s wealth, before bad times set in, in the late 13th C). No one is photographing them -- but everyone is photographed “holding up” the tower.

Dinner is at the Cantine Bernardine, in the cellars of the huge and opulent Palazzo Bernardine. This restaurant and wine bar is universally praised on Tripadvisor, for the warmth of the welcome and the excellence of the food. We agree.

The refined menu is built around 100% local products and home-preparation (the cook even cures his own beef for the carpaccio). With a great local wine chosen by the sommelier and a litre of sparkling water, this cost 62,50E plus tip. We float away afterward, through Lucca‘s silent, shuttered streets.

Friday, March 19, 2010:
The day started out promisingly. Our breakfast at Villa Marta was opulent as always: a selection of fruit juices; fresh fruit; fruit compotes; dry cereals; boiled eggs, cheese and ham; croissants, buns and bread, to toast; homemade jams, yogourt.

We bade farewell to the staff at the Villa Marta and took the Autostrada to La Spezia. After a false start at Portovenere -- “Nice but no cigar” -- we headed to the Cinque Terre, a favourite destination of Fodorites.

The road from La Spezia climbs high among the Ligurian cliffs, above the 5 towns.

The views are dramatic; equally dramatic are the small local details. All along the coast, there are little funiculars, miniature railways for the transport of goods to the isolated farms and villages below. Below us we can see the tourist crowds walking from one town to another, along the precipitous cliff walk. I am happy, up here above the crowd. The 5 towns are super-picturesque, even if unremarkable architecturally.

We return to La Spezia, then take the A 15 to cut across the spine of the Appennines, in the direction of Parma. For nearly an hour we drive through jagged mountains, rarely broken by small towns and villages. We emerge onto the plain just west of Parma.

Here, we start to notice a certain falling-off in the atmosphere, to put it mildly. Many of the agricultural buildings are in a state of collapse -- abandoned, as haphazard industrial and commercial development encroaches. There is no centre to anything -- just random building and, along the main roads, long strips of commercial outlets.

Today, I formulate a new rule:

In Italy, never stay where it is flat. It is all industry, urban sprawl, visual dullness, smelly agriculture. We stayed last year in the Brenta region of the Veneto -- it was precisely the same and an even greater shame to Italy, because it has ruined the nation’s heritage of Palladian villas.

On to Cremona and a very difference experience, on the endless, treeless plains of agricultural Lombardy.

ttt for TDudette, who asked to see this....

Thanks Ted! We too were daunted by the lines at Uffizi but the clerk at our hotel called and made reservations for us and we walked right in. Mentally thumbing our noses at the poor slobs in line! How long did you live in Florence? And how do you guys find such great places to stay?

Again, very enjoyable report. Your visit to Poggio a Caiano was intriguing. Imagine those few families who owned it all...

We stayed in Pisa overnight one time and found that once one got away from the tower, it's a pretty great place. We then made it our base and had a great time.

ttt for later

I lived in Florence only 4 months but it was a real immersion and I was very young, so it had a great impact. As it happens, I lived 1 block from the apartment we rented -- my fondness for the Oltrarno goes way back.

WE have found some really great places to stay and the only explanation I can give is intuition + a fair bit of Internet research -- though far less than many Fodorites seem to do.

I bookmark everything I notice that looks interesting.

I actually did think of re-visiting the Uffizi and went online to get a timed ticket. The Uffizi website is TOTALLY wonky and full of glitches. After all the glitches, it then rejected 2 credit cards -- and told me the transaction had been cancelled at my request.

I took this as a portent + struck the Uffizi from my list.

BTW: there are several websites that LOOK like the official Uffizi website and that sell reserved tkts, with a surcharge or mark-up of up to 100%. I am surprised they are tolerated. (The official one is the website of the "polo museale fiorentino", if I have the title right.)

The poseur websites probably work brilliantly, since they are for-profit enterprises, but pride and avarice wd not let me use them.

Perfect suggestions about Florence--- thank you, Tedgale!. Did you walk up that steep switchback to reach Piazzale Michelangelo or is there another route? Like you, I lived in the Oltrarno many years ago.Once agai, I explore the area outside the Porta Romana. Last year I followed the Viale Niccolo Machiavelli to Via San Lorenzo where I turned down to get back to the Arno, stopping at a public garden finer than Boboli. It seems from the Google map that I could continue further on Viale NM and finally reach Piazzale Michelangelo; is that the walk you took?

Rather than reserve tickets for the Uffizi last year, I just walked in during the last hour before closing and revisited all my favorite Florentine and Sienese paintings at a leisurely pace with almost no other tourists around. Probably not possible in the summer, but this was mid-May.

I did not go that far out -- ie to Porta Romana and Viale NM. From near the Ponte Vecchio I climbed the Costa S. Giorgio to the Belvedere. I then came down on a small road (name unknown to me) that runs roughly N-S on the outside of the old walls. That brought me down to a tower/gate very near the Arno.
Then I climbed up to Piazzale Michelangelo and San Miniato. Once I did this by the series of switchback roads + once by a very long inclined stone walkway and staircase that led directly to the entrance of S Miniato.

Thanks for the report. Some parts interest me greatly as they are on my list for a June trip.

This trip will be different from all other we've taken to Europe. In the past we've stayed in a location for 2-5 days and then moved to the next. We've never rented a car and try to avoid buses as much as possible (wife motion sickness). So we travel by train almost exclusively.

As we get older we decided for this trip to base in Florence for 10 days (no pack and lug stuff), do day trips (with two overnighters carrying a minumum is a small backpack and keeping our base hotel).

I have a day planned that will start with us going to Castello right outside of Florence to see Medici Villa Petraia and the Villa Castello grounds (villa is private and closed to the public). Then we'll go to Prato and bus to Poggio a Caiano. Return to Prato to wander around and if time permits go to Pistoia to wander.

On another day we'll make a quicky stop in Pisa to see the Tower area and continue on to Lucca to spend the rest of the afternoon/early evening before training to La Spezia (only our hotel location) for the next day's walking in Cinque Terre.

I was very interested in the Lucca bike rides (where did you rent them) and how was it when you tried to ride in the town after the wall? We rented bikes in Brugges and it was a bit of a challenge though doable on the cobble-stones until we got to the rim road(path) surrounding the little city and passing the windmills.

While we'll be going to the Academmia (were there many years ago and really want to see the unfinished sculptures (vaguely remember them) as well) and passing on the Ufizzi. Some other places you mention are on my list:
Fortezza Belvedere
Piazzale Michelangelo at least once (sunset - I'm into photography). I think you can get between the two without going down to the river.
Wandering Oltrarno
Palazzo Davanzati
Climb the Duomo (I did this many, many years ago when a lot younger - not only the view but to prove that neither age nor surgery can stop me - or maybe they will)
Synagogue
Palazzo Strozzi

Could you describe: "climb up Bellosguardo"

During our 10 days four will be spent in Florence with one a Sunday (Accademia and possibly late afteroon/evening in Feisole).

Thanks for the report and I will surly read it several more times.

Hi! Tedgale:

Planning a second trip to Florence. This time a little less 'structured'. So, your highlights give us ideas of other places to visit/explore/experience!

Do you think I will get my husband to go to the Ferragamo Museum?!?

RE Ferragamo museum: It helps if you like Hollywood and/or shoes.

If he doesn't want to go, you can certainly enjoy it solo. It is very absorbing.

(I don't like to stereotype guys but ...there is so much "fun" stuff in life that they don't enjoy!)

RE climbing up Bellosguardo:

I walked over to the Piazza Torquato Tasso, where there is an opening in the old city wall. A ring-road runs parallel with the walls. At right angles to the wall and ring-road is a short street called via di San Francesco di Paola. Take this road and, where it forks or splits, take via di Bellosguardo.

This will take you, betwen high stone walls, all the way to the top. I took a few little detours, on short spurs, to get the benefit of the various views.

From the Piazza di Bellosguardo in the "village" -- well, it is scarcely a village, just a hotel and a cluster of big houses -- I took the via Piana, then the via Ugo Foscolo, to bring me down near the Porta Romana.

From there, I walked up via de' Serragli, which took me home.

Re bicycles: We rented in the Piazza Santa Maria, which is inside the city walls, at one of the main gates in the walls. The open space OUTSIDE the walls is called Piazzale Martiri della Liberta'.

There are a couple of bike rental places there, plus a tourism office.

Via Fillungo, the main shopping street, starts nearby.

The road surface in town is fine for cycling.

FOUR DOZEN PHOTOS OF FLORENCE, LUCCA AND ENVIRONS (INCLUDING CINQUE TERRE) -- Here is the link to a Facebook album I assembled this morning:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?ai...5&l=d21189b9f6