Florence Noel--Pitti Palace--Vinci

On Friday, November 30, my friend Meg and I went to the Florence Christmas Market, Florence Noel. Like all new things in Florence, this proved to be something of an adventure. Firstly, as it was held in an old train station, Stazione Leopolda, located in an area with which we were not familiar, we had decided to take a bus. We met at a stop a little past the Duomo and off the main street. According to the schedule, a bus was due every seven minutes. However, unbeknownst to us, there was a transportation strike that night affecting the buses. We waited for forty minutes until our line finally made an appearance. Next, at a later stop, quite a number of people got on and two extremely unattractive women sat next to Meg and me. One was talking on a cellphone and I decided she had a rather abrasive voice. But when she hung up and began talking to her friend, her voice took a drastic drop on the note scale. They were transvestites! How was it possible that the jean sizes they were wearing were smaller than both Meg’s and mine? In any case, after being certain that they were staring at us, we got off at what we assumed was our stop and walked in the direction of a quantity of Christmas lights I had spotted.
We had chosen correctly and were soon walking up to the ticket booth. There was a very humorous touch to the left of the entrance: a snow machine with children making the tiniest snow balls imaginable. I’m sure it seemed like a lot of snow to them, judging by their excitement. And no, I did not take any pictures of them as it considered illegal to take a photograph of a child without the parents’ prior permission.
With our tickets we also purchased two “assagi,” or “tastes” that would allow us to try two different little chocolate items in the back of the market. The station was hung with lights everywhere and there some little carnival-type rides for kids. To the right, in rather open rooms, was set up an area for children to write letters to “Babbo Natale” and then watch them be sent via a rather badly-functioning ribbon elevator into his study/bedroom. On this side there was also an entire stand devoted to polenta. In the middle and to the left were numerous crafts and baked goods. Towards the back was the Chocolate Village. After walking around and looking at everything, buying some cookies (pizzicotti al pistachio) and ornaments (a set of Nativity figures), we headed back to the Chocolate Village. For both of my assagi I chose to have a little cup of what was basically really good melted chocolate with a very tiny amount of milk. You were just expected to drink it. It was pretty fantastic.
When we decided to go home we found a bus stop a bit closer to the old stazione and checked the routes to see if any went near the Duomo. Line 22 did so we waited until it made an appearance. Just to be certain, I asked the driver if his bus went to the Duomo to which he replied that I needed to take 22A, not 22B. Slightly confused, we got off and looked at the schedule. There were no 22As for the rest of the night (strike or no). We should have stayed on 22B and waited for it to make its full circuit. We then headed to the stop we had gotten off at, looking for a line 6 bus. It came…and drove right past the stop. We realized then that though we had no idea where we really were (I know, we should have had a map), we were going to have to walk home. We started down the most likely-looking road (after dodging quite a lot of traffic) and I eventually spotted the tower of Palazzo Vecchio. We kept walking, keeping it in sight until I had a premonition that we ought to turn left. While we did not end up being where I had that we were, we did come out into the piazza of Santa Maria Novella, very near school, and were thus easily able to get back to our apartments.
A few quick notes:
I spent the weekend (Lesley, too) writing a long paper for my art history class over the Entombment by Pontormo we had gone to see in Santa Felicità. Though I had only planned eight pages, it rapidly grew into twelve.
On Tuesday, as I was in an uncreative mood, I went for a walk, locating the Palazzo Pitti where my art history class was to meet the following day. En route, I stopped at Santa Felicità, inserted a euro into a timed light and looked at the Capponni Chapel until the time was up. I then walked back over Ponte Vecchio and headed towards Piazza Signoria. Once there, I ducked into Rivoire, a very nice café, where I had been meaning for several weeks to try their famous hot chocolate with whipped cream. It was unbelievable, like drinking hot, rich pudding. You had to have the whipped cream to dilute it! And of course, I had to add sugar as hot chocolate in Italy comes unsweetened.
Wednesday morning found me with my class at the Palatine Gallery of Palazzo Pitti. Among other things, we saw big altarpieces by Andrea del Sarto and Rosso Fiorentino. I got to see a small, later work by Pontormo, which was quite interesting given the rather large amount of research I had just done on his life and work. More famous were early and mature works by Raphael such as the Doni portraits, Donna Velata, Madonna of the Chair, and clergy portraits. We also saw Titian’s Mary Magdalene.
On the way back to my apartment, I stopped again at Santa Felicità, this time accompanied by two other students who had written papers over the same topic. However, the light machine did not function this time. The custodian took pity on us and turned the non-timed light on so we were able to look a considerable amount of time. I was glad that we had come for a class, however, as we had had the opportunity at that point to actually enter the chapel. I doubt I will be able to do that again, as it is locked off and visible only through bars. By way of a thank-you, we purchased some postcards before leaving
On Thursday, I decided that I had been delaying my make-up trip to Vinci for far too long. After lithography and lunch I went to the train station and bought a ticket to Empoli. I had done some internet research on how to get to Vinci and the museums I was required to visit (I had to turn in all of my tickets with a 5-page typed paper discussing a theme from a book called Leonardo da Vinci’s Machines by Marco Cianchi, who appears to be a local) and knew that I needed to take a COPIT bus from Empoli to Vinci, the station for which was to the left of the Empoli stazione. However, when I arrived and walked out of the stazione, I didn’t see anything answering this description anywhere. I walked back inside and asked the cashier at the biglietti window about it and he gave me a vague wave to the right. I went back outside but still saw nothing. Returning, I decided to ask the vendors at the newsstand if they knew where I could purchase tickets. This was apparently what the cashier had been indicating because they were actually able to provide them.
Feeling immensely grateful for whatever command of the Italian language I had, I walked back outside to find the stop. I soon realized, however, that none of the lines ran to Vinci. Still more frustrated, I went back to the newsstand to ask about the line number and stop. The vendors, however, were without this information. So I looked at all the routes again. Eventually, I asked a girl who looked my age if she could help me and told her that I was looking for the bus to Vinci. She was unfamiliar with it, but pointed out a little, really ugly, unmarked pink building to the left of the train station. It was the stupid bus station. I thanked her and walked to it in disgust. However, the cashier there was able to tell me that my bus was right in front of the building and would be leaving in 14-17 minutes. I got on and read a chapter about Gianlorenzo Bernini.
We started up and I began looking for Vinci. I had looked at pictures and maps of it so that I would better know at which stop to get off and where to find the museums. I finally saw the towers of its lone castle and knew that as we were circling the walls that I should get off soon. I hit the button to let the driver know and was soon walking across the street to the Museo Ideale where I purchased a biglietto ridotto (being a studentessa, and all) and looked around.
It was mainly populated with little models of Leonardo’s more famous codex drawings (most of which I had seen at an exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago) and any sort of Leonardo memorabilia imaginable including paintings by members of his workshop, engravings after his paintings and drawings, and reproductions of his originals. There was even stuff there about people who had just known Leonardo at some point. It was a little silly and I was pretty annoyed that I had been required to visit it. However, they did sell an English version of the book I needed to read for my paper. But as they didn’t take credit cards I got to see a little more of the town on my quest to find an ATM. On my way back to the museum and up a steep hill, I saw on old woman staring at me. In her defense, as Vinci is incredibly tiny, everyone had been staring at me, but I felt is if she were being ruder still. I said “Buongiorno” to her and she answered, “BuonaSERA” in the most awful witch’s voice and with a look of arch superiority. Honestly, it was before 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Apparently only Italians could think of that as evening.
I bought the little book and talked with the cashier for a while. Before leaving, she had me pick out a postcard for a souvenir. I then headed up the hill to the castle where I knew the Museo Leonardiano was located. After trying to deal with ambivalent signs, I finally made it to the castle tower’s entrance only to be told that the ticket office was in the “new section” as was a chunk of the museum’s exhibits. I walked back down and across a really strange piazza with modern mosaics and inexplicable concrete nothing-shapes to this “new section.” Another biglietto ridotto later and I was learning about Leonardo’s innovations in the area of cloth-making, the major source of Florence’s income during his lifetime. This was quite interesting to me as I had been in a weaving class all semester, and I looked around in that area for quite some time.
I headed back over to the tower and was allowed entry there. There were more machine models and again, I had seen versions of many of them. To be honest, my favorite part of the museum was getting to go on the second level where I could go out onto a walkway and get some really very wonderful views of Vinci and the countryside. I also noticed a door and staircase to a third level and started going up them. It was the scariest set of stairs I had ever encountered. They were obviously not original as they wound up the inside of the tower with an immense amount of wasted space below in the form of a pitch-black abyss. However, they were also not modern as they seemed in very poor disrepair with the occasional small hole. I went up them anyway (they weren’t roped-off, afterall) and was disappointed that they led only to a media room, probably for larger school groups to receive some sort of informative video. I went back down and out of the tower. As the sun was beginning to set, I decided to go ahead and wait at the stop.
I got back to Empoli fairly easily but as we went on the section of the circuit I had not yet traversed, I found myself hoping that I had boarded the right bus. The driver made sure I got off at the train station (there was some other similar building I had mistaken for it earlier), where I went back to the biglietti window and got my ticket. I emerged from the sottopassaggio at my platform but couldn’t find anywhere to validate my ticket (you must stamp it before getting on or face a fine if they check tickets during the ride). A lady directed me to the station entrance and this, thankfully, concluded back-tracking. I arrived in Florence with plenty of time to get some reading done over Leonardo’s machines before I inadvertently fell asleep.