shuttle to the nearest train station and catch an early train to Florence, where we had a marathon day ahead of us. I was glad we didn’t have to drive into the city, at least on behalf of the drivers.
All right, I was looking forward to it, and Cynthia’s scoffing the night before had made me see that. Sure, I’d done the museum thing in my distant academic youth, but I was looking forward to seeing some things again, with forty years’ worth of experience and wisdom to temper my views. What I wasn’t looking forward to was wading through crowds of tourists, and June was prime time for them. But as I remembered it, one could escape the masses by taking small side streets—the ones with no museums or historic monuments lurking on every corner. Florence oozed history in every alleyway, so peace and calm were hard to find.
The queue at the coffeepots wasn’t as long today since people had figured out that there was plenty to go around, and they arrived at different times. Nor did the servers mind if we showed up early, bless them. No croissants, though. People were a bit more subdued today, as though saving their strength to tackle the city. Or absorbing as much caffeine as possible in a short time.
The weather looked unpromising, spitting rain, but I chose to believe that it would be better in Florence, which lay … somewhere. Inland, I was pretty sure. Maybe south? After breakfast we caravanned to the train station, where Jane and Jean handed out individual tickets. We filed onto a train car and grabbed seats, taking up most of a train car and no doubt terrifying the local population (well, not the teenagers, who regarded us mainly as an impediment to plugging in their cell phones and music players). We emerged into the San Lorenzo station in Florence after a fairly short ride and huddled together like a flock of sheep, getting our bearings, until Jean and Jane gathered us up and marched us toward an exit. Then we survived crossing several streets while dodging cars and buses and trooped to our first stop, the monastery of San Marco. The rain had almost, sort of stopped, which was a good omen.
This stop was the one I had most looked forward to, since the one time I had visited Florence, long, long ago, San Marco had been closed for renovations, so I had never experienced the Fra Angelico frescos firsthand. As somebody in the group muttered as we roamed through the monastic hallways, it was like viewing every religious holiday card you’d ever seen, all in one place. I happily admitted that a lot of the images looked familiar, but that was fine with me. What I hadn’t realized was that each monk’s cell had its own small fresco, either by the hand of the master or overseen by him. I wondered if there had been any competition among novices for the “best” pictures—and then I wondered which one I would have schemed for. It was a pleasant way to pass the time, and luckily the place was not too crowded early in the day. It was beginning to fill with groups of students by the time we were ready to leave.
Then on to the Bargello, which housed a lot of sculptures by Big Names like Michelangelo. It was nice because the place wasn’t too huge—which I knew the next stop, the Uffizi, was. In the Bargello one could enjoy the artworks up close and personal: no Plexiglas or velvet ropes, and the guards didn’t appear terribly concerned that we were breathing on their precious marbles and bronzes. And breathe on them we could have, but we were appropriately respectful, as befit Wellesley Women. It was intriguing to learn that on one famous Michelangelo tondo the man himself had finished the face of the Virgin, leaving the surface so creamy that I wanted to reach out and touch it, while only roughing out the rest. That kind of detail never showed up in textbooks on art history. You had to be standing in front of it, at eye level, to grasp the nuances. When I’d been here all those years ago, had I done no more than
All right, I was looking forward to it, and Cynthia’s scoffing the night before had made me see that. Sure, I’d done the museum thing in my distant academic youth, but I was looking forward to seeing some things again, with forty years’ worth of experience and wisdom to temper my views. What I wasn’t looking forward to was wading through crowds of tourists, and June was prime time for them. But as I remembered it, one could escape the masses by taking small side streets—the ones with no museums or historic monuments lurking on every corner. Florence oozed history in every alleyway, so peace and calm were hard to find.
The queue at the coffeepots wasn’t as long today since people had figured out that there was plenty to go around, and they arrived at different times. Nor did the servers mind if we showed up early, bless them. No croissants, though. People were a bit more subdued today, as though saving their strength to tackle the city. Or absorbing as much caffeine as possible in a short time.
The weather looked unpromising, spitting rain, but I chose to believe that it would be better in Florence, which lay … somewhere. Inland, I was pretty sure. Maybe south? After breakfast we caravanned to the train station, where Jane and Jean handed out individual tickets. We filed onto a train car and grabbed seats, taking up most of a train car and no doubt terrifying the local population (well, not the teenagers, who regarded us mainly as an impediment to plugging in their cell phones and music players). We emerged into the San Lorenzo station in Florence after a fairly short ride and huddled together like a flock of sheep, getting our bearings, until Jean and Jane gathered us up and marched us toward an exit. Then we survived crossing several streets while dodging cars and buses and trooped to our first stop, the monastery of San Marco. The rain had almost, sort of stopped, which was a good omen.
This stop was the one I had most looked forward to, since the one time I had visited Florence, long, long ago, San Marco had been closed for renovations, so I had never experienced the Fra Angelico frescos firsthand. As somebody in the group muttered as we roamed through the monastic hallways, it was like viewing every religious holiday card you’d ever seen, all in one place. I happily admitted that a lot of the images looked familiar, but that was fine with me. What I hadn’t realized was that each monk’s cell had its own small fresco, either by the hand of the master or overseen by him. I wondered if there had been any competition among novices for the “best” pictures—and then I wondered which one I would have schemed for. It was a pleasant way to pass the time, and luckily the place was not too crowded early in the day. It was beginning to fill with groups of students by the time we were ready to leave.
Then on to the Bargello, which housed a lot of sculptures by Big Names like Michelangelo. It was nice because the place wasn’t too huge—which I knew the next stop, the Uffizi, was. In the Bargello one could enjoy the artworks up close and personal: no Plexiglas or velvet ropes, and the guards didn’t appear terribly concerned that we were breathing on their precious marbles and bronzes. And breathe on them we could have, but we were appropriately respectful, as befit Wellesley Women. It was intriguing to learn that on one famous Michelangelo tondo the man himself had finished the face of the Virgin, leaving the surface so creamy that I wanted to reach out and touch it, while only roughing out the rest. That kind of detail never showed up in textbooks on art history. You had to be standing in front of it, at eye level, to grasp the nuances. When I’d been here all those years ago, had I done no more than
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