If It's Saturday, It Must be Italy

With apologies to Willie Nelson, we're "on the road again." On Saturday, June 6th, we rented a car and began our drive to Florence, Italy, where Henry was scheduled to give a talk and to meet with colleagues he spent time with in early 2003. Actually, Henry did the driving; I did the riding. He did a fine job, and succeeded in keeping to his mantra for successful driving in Italy--no eye contact with other drivers. On the Autostrada, where the maximum speed is usually 130 km/hr (78 mph) even on some curvy, mountain roads, Henry kept to the maximum while others passed him. In Florence, driving is a free-for-all--just move quickly into the tiny space the driver ahead leaves in his/her wake or someone else will move in before you (see photo). Although there appeared to be fewer bicycle riders than in Munich, there was significant road competition from motorcyclists (see photo). Henry offered the car to me during the time he was busy with his work, but I wisely and sanely declined the offer.

Driving directly from Munich to Florence takes a little over six hours. Instead, we stopped overnight on the way there and on the way back. The first night, we stopped at Gardone Riviera, a small resort town on the western shore of Lake Garda (see photo). The lake is a bit west of Verona, in northern Italy, and is the largest lake in Italy. Resort towns dot the shore around the lake, except where cliffs reach down to the water's edge. In those spots, tunnels, open to the lake, wind through the cliffs. We stayed at a small hotel (Hotel Sofia) on the hillside above the town and enjoyed a view of the lake from the balcony of our room. On the hotel staff's recommendation, we had a lovely dinner at Agli Angeli, a restaurant in a quiet square a few hundred meters above the hotel. Guess what, we ate Italian food for a change!

As we continued our drive south along Lake Garda, on our way to Florence, we stopped at Sirmione, a town that sits at the end of a narrow peninsula jutting into the lake. Although the area has a stylish old town, it suffers from way too many tourists in a limited amount of space. We were rather pleased with ourselves that we chose the hotel in Gardone Riviera rather than a hotel we had considered reserving in Sirmione.

In Florence, we stayed at an out of the mainstream pension (Annalena), the same place we stayed when we were in Florence in 2003. It's south of the Ponte Vecchio, near the Pitti Palace and across from the Boboli Garden. The Annalena delivers what it offers, a very dated, but clean and friendly place to spend the night. Although from the street, the place looks like a dump, it is amazing what one discovers when looking out the windows facing away from the street--gardens and greenhouses and balconies and terraces. Now that it's June, instead of early February, when Henry and I were last in Florence together, tourists teemed the streets and squares and the usual Florence museum attractions. Having previously had eight days in 2003 to go through most of the museums, churches, and usual tourist sights, I decided to limit myself to two small exhibits. One was an exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, paying tribute to Galileo's discoveries regarding the universe (despite his being forced to recant his views following a trial by the Inquisition in the 1630's) and displaying images, models, scientific instruments, and artwork portraying cosmological views of the universe from antiquity through the development of the telescope. On a bizarre note, the exhibition also included a gilded bone from one of Galileo's fingers, an item normally displayed in Florence's Museum of the History of Science (currently undergoing renovations). In 1737, about 100 years after Galileo died, he was reburied in the main body of the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. At that time, someone took it upon himself to cut one of Galileo's fingers and preserve it elsewhere.

The second exhibit was one I had seen before, but found it interesting then and now. Models of many of Leonardo da Vinci's inventions, mechanical studies, and anatomy studies have been constructed based on his personal codices. He not only made improvements on older inventions, but was ahead of his time in developing new ways to deal with issues of the day (e.g., speedier ships, lifting heavy objects, reducing friction in machines with moving parts (using ball bearings)). Da Vinci's studies of lift and displacement of air, in an attempt to develop a way for people to fly, are extremely impressive, at least to someone like me, non-scientist that I am. Here is a photo of a mechanism that incorporates theories that led to the modern helicopter. People who know of da Vinci as just a painter are in for a huge surprise when they see this exhibit.

Aside from these two exhibits, I spent most of my day and half in Florence wandering through the huge markets for which the city is famous. The Mercato Centrale is alleged to be the largest covered food hall in Europe (I think the Boqueria in Barcelona is its equal, if one doesn't account for the fact that the Mercato Centrale has two floors). After meandering through aisle upon aisle of food stalls, I settled on a corner spot for a satisfying lunch. It is impossible to miss the outdoor stalls surrounding the Mercato Centrale and lining the streets around Piazza San Lorenzo. Covered with a somewhat protective plastic, most of the stalls are open daily, rain or shine. This is a great place to shop, and because there are so many sellers of the same categories of items, it is easy to comparison shop and negotiate a deal with one's preferred purveyor. The goods for sale range from wool and cashmere products (mostly scarves and sweaters) and leather products (shoes, pocket books, brief cases, wallets, jackets, belts, gloves) to jewelry, Florentine paper products, shirts, ties, glassware, pottery, and the usual array of souvenir kitsch. It was a good thing I had a limited amount of cash with me as I checked out the stalls. I knew it was time to head back to the hotel when my cash supply reached less than one euro!

The following morning, I headed to the once a week market in the Parco del Cascine, one of the outdoor markets I missed out on in 2003. I am told it's the largest of Florence's markets. Although I did not walk the entire length of the market, stalls continued along the bank of the Arno River as far as I (and my eyes) could see. This market was the "whole" package--food, clothes, shoes, pocket books, textiles, kitchenware, lamps and lampshades, hardware, and second-hand almost everything (especially clothes and DVD's). I passed a number of stalls selling anything and everything for 1 euro or .99 euro. If one looked carefully, one could find some great deals for second-hand clothes, including blue jeans, at that price. Also, for all of you clothes horses, if the clothes offered for sale were any indication, then purple is this season's color! Or, if the clothes are showing up here, then maybe it was last season's color?!

Kudos to the two restaurants at which we ate dinner in Florence. One of them, Quattro Leoni, was a restaurant we ate at twice in 2003. We were not disappointed upon our return--solid, quality Italian food, and not far from our hotel. The other, Il Latini, was more of an "experience" than a culinary treat. The place is always packed, and strangers are often seated together at the same table. In the middle of our meal, another couple was seated with us, but they soon either moved or left after Henry ordered lamb and I ordered rabbit (aka Thumper). Maybe it was something we said?! House wine is served from an oversized, beaker-shaped wine bottle (with the "bowl" at the bottom of the bottle covered with typically Italian woven straw). The server immediately manages to foist the appetizer sampler on just about everyone, and continues to serve subsequent courses unless customers ask to look at a menu first. Just when we thought we were done, the server brings out biscotti and port wine, and just when we thought we really were done, the owner brings out muscato wine. Somehow, the check still came out to no more than what we ordered! As we were leaving, we noticed that the two separate couples who were seated at the table next to us were chatting away as if they had planned their meal together.

On our drive back from Florence, we stopped in Telfes, a small town near Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. The area offers winter sports and summer hiking, biking, and hang gliding for the more adventuresome. I'll pass on the latter, thank you. Although it was pouring rain as we made our way into the mountains, the skies cleared the following day, as we took our time driving back to Munich. we passed by the Walchensee (see photo) and Kochelsee, and stopped for a delicious lunch in the biergarten of a guesthouse (Jagerwirt) in Kirchbichl, a village near Bad Tolz. Yes, this was another Michelin Red Guide find! The countryside could have been straight out of The Sound of Music, but for the real thing, we will have to wait until next week, when we travel to Salzburg!