Sunday, September 19^th, 1999

The beautiful city of Florence that we see today was largely the creation of one family. It was build by the Medici’s. The golden age of Florence started with Cosimo Medici, the elder. It more or less ended with his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent. As you go through the Uffizi museaum, it strikes you that painters created all those hundreds of pictures during the same hundred and fifty years that marked this golden age.

The first question that occurs to me is to wonder how the Medici’s made their money. I suspect that they were bankers, but you don’t get the money to become a banker unless you first get the money some other way. Venice was build by merchants, really shipping captains who traded with the Moslem countries during the middle ages. These merchants later became the lords of the city, but first they were simple traders and shipping captains.

We here a lot about the European rulers from Alexander the Great to Napoleon who were conquerors, but most of the wealth and beauty of the world wasn’t created by conquerors. Conquerors may have accumulated a bunch of art in one place by pillaging it from an area, but the real patrons of art and architecture were people who made their money in less dramatic ways. My personal belief is that small business people have always been the backbone of the state. A few go onto become extremely rich and powerful like the Medici’s, but most slowly build up the city from their much smaller successes. We still see this today. Big business and government get all the press, but the world is being build up by small, independent business people working more or less anonymously all around us.

This brings me to plumbing. Sunday was a free day. So we took advantage of it to do all our laundry. Before the trip, Rebecca and I had purchased travel clothes that could be easily washed and quickly dry. The only downside to this, of course, it that after buying these clothes, you are committed to actually washing them.

Rebecca brought this miracle powder for washing. You only have to soak your clothes in a pinch of it for a few minutes. Then your rinse them twice and they come out fresh smelling and clean.

Of course, the hardest part of the laundry is having to wring everything out so that it will dry in a reasonable amount of time. We were going to be leaving the next morning so we have to get everything dry. I personally enjoy using the muscles it takes to wring the laundry out well. Wringing out cloths is a kind of quasi-violent act that I find fun. It’s hard to describe. I want to say it is like wringing the neck of a chicken, but that sounds sick, so I think I’ll just let it go.

Rebecca was amazed because, on this trip, I had resolved to do all my own laundy. Over our years of travelling, Rebecca has done the lion’s share of this work. I am always trying to reform the multitude of flaws in my character, so this time I had resolved to at least was my own clothes. I also did a few pieces for Rebecca. I figured that at this rate, in a million years I might catch up to all the pieces of clothing she’s washed for me over the years.

Oh, I was going to praise the plumbing in the hotels we staying in Europe. So far, all the hotels had all been among the best I’ve ever staying in in Eurpoe simply because they had such good water pressure and plumbing.

Strange that so many places in Europe have poor plumbing. I think that plumbing is the foundation of civilization. It improves not only your comfort, but your health. Good plumbing on some level is necessary for people to live together in cities. We can walk around in crowded areas without carrying nosegays. Nosegays were the perfumed bouquets people used to hold up to their noses in previous centuries so that they could walk through the streets without gagging. Even the richest of the Medici’s had to put up with poor plumping, but even the cheapest apartment or motel in the U.S. has pretty good plumbing. We’ve found that this isn’t always true in Europe, but maybe it is getting better.

The rooms we’ve gotten on the tour have been surprisingly good in many ways. The room were had all had good plumping—even if the bathroom in Venice was microscopic. They’ve had hairdryers, refrigerators, and many other amenities—like shampoo and shower caps— that we are not used to seeing in Europe. However, every hotel is also a little flawed. In Milan, the Grand Hotel Brun was way out of town. In Venice, the rooms at the Splendid were tiny. In Florence, our room at the Londra has a nice rug and nice décor. It’s roomy. It has prety wall paper. There is a bit of a problem was the neighborhood, but you can still walk to where you want to go and I haven’t heard of anyone being mugged, at least not yet. The real problem is the beds. I’ve mentioned that the mattresses were like slings. The pillows were like logs of wood. After two nights, it was beginning to get to me. Enzo said that no bed was a good as the one at home, but most beds should be somewhat better than sleeping on the street.

As we got cleaned up, American wresting was playing on Italian television. They dubbed actors, I mean, wrestlers, into Italian yelling their threats at each other. It was very convincing. I notice that they have imported only the best of American television. You can see the World Wrestling Federation and reruns of Happy Days, but you aren’t going to have to watch Crossfire or Bill Moyer.

The CNN that they have in Europe is different from what we see in the States. It is more international in view.

For example, currency fluctuations are a big part of the European version of the financial news. At home, the stock market is practically the sole focus of market news. Over in you, I didn’t hear that much about the market, the U.S. market or the European markets. I would hear if they were up or down, but no real detail about the various stocks and what they were doing. Instead, the announcers spent their time on currency fluctuations. The big news while we were there was the strength of the yen against the dollar. These aren’t even European currencies.

No doubt that the Medici’s would be proud of the common people’s interest in such subtle aspects of money.

Actually, there isn’t any real fluctuation in the major European currencies any more. Because of the Euro, the common European currency, all the major countries, except for Great Brittain, have a fixed rate of exchange for their currencies. This is why they are listening to news about U.S. and Japanese currencies. They miss all the currency fluctuations that they used to have on the continent.

This fascination with currency is all over, not just on television. Talking with our guides, they watch currency like we watch the market or interest rates. Enzo told me a story about going to the store two days in a row to buy green beans. In one day, the prices when up 50%. Who was the culprit that the grocer blamed? The exchange rates.

The Europeans judge the government of a country largely by how strong their currency is. This is probably especially true in Italy where they have had a weak currency for generations. They have also had a very unstable government because of it. The people in a country hate it when they have a weak currency. It decreases their buying power. So much of Europe depends on trade, that fluctuation in currency strength directly affects buying power. It’s not like the U.S. where, despite our huge amount of imports, most of our stuff comes from within the country.

No wonder the European governments are going to the Euro. It really gets them off the hook with their people. If I were in the Italian government, I wouldn’t want to deal with the weak lira. I’d be glad to let the Germans manage the money for me. Of course, since the single currency puts severe limits on what the separate governments can co, especially in terms of deficit spending, we’ll see how long it last.

That morning at breakfast, we noticed that Enzo was chewing out Red at breakfast. They were off at a table by themselves. She was saying that she would consider herself warned and that she wouldn’t do it again. We didn’t know what she had done, but we all guessed that it had something to do with her boyfriend. Rebecca’s guess was that she had brought her boyfriend to breakfast, which wasn’t right, since he wasn’t technically staying in the hotel. My guess was that Silvano had caught them having sex on the parked bus.

Since Sunday was a free day, our little family was on its own. The only excursions that we had planned for the day is a trip to one of the outdoor markets and then to the Medici Chapels. They weren’t that far from the Londra so we decided to walk. On the way, we pass a small grocery store. We’d been looking for one so that we could buy more cheese. We’d eaten through the supply Mom had bought in Lugano. We decided that we didn’t want to carry the groceries with us all day, so we made a note of where the store was and went on to the outdoor market.

The market was disappointing. There were hundreds of little stalls, but the didn’t seem to have anything interesting in them. One of the hot items in Florence is the leather. Good Florentine leather is thin and as soft as cotton. There were lots of stalls at the outdoor market selling leather, but it didn’t look like this creamy delicious stuff that the tour guides described. Of course, no one was in the market for leather. It was hot.

Actually, the whole trip was hot. Temperatures were always in the low eighties and it was muggy, humid. We were showering every morning when we got up because we were sticky from sleeping. We also took a shower most afternoons before dinner because we were always sticky after touring all day. Even though is was still morning as we walked around the market, we were already hot.

We walked around some most of the market, but no one was in a real mood for shopping. I have begun to notice a pattern. Michele’s theory was that women aren’t in the mood for shopping when their estrogen is low. I’ve since noticed that no serious shopping gets done in the morning. My theory is that female estrogen peaks after a nice luncheon out..

We wanted to see the Medici Chapel. Inside the chapel are four of the few statutes that Michelangelo actually almost finished. I was leading our little group toward the nearby Medici palace, where I thought the chapel was. We got the there and wandered into the courtyard, but didn’t see any sign of the Chapel. The palace was pretty interesting too, however. It was built in layers, like a cake. Every story was a different and more refined style. The bottom story was built of crude stone looking like a medieval fort. The building gets more and more refined each level up. The stone gets smoother. The details more finished. It looks like it was built over time and that over time, the Medici’s got a lot richer.

An interesting feature of the outside of this building, and many others from the same period, are the metal torch stands outside. These caste-iron torch stands cover most of the face of the building, standing on both sides of each window, all the way up the side. During the renaissance, the palace must have been lit up like a birthday cake at night. They should put some gas torches outside in these brackets so that they can light them up like they used to be. It would be dramatic.

We didn’t find the Medici Chapel at the Palace. One of the other tourists there pointed us back to a nearby church. The chapel is attached, like an appendage, to a nearby church. The tourist that pointed us in the right direction said that she thought that the church had closed at noon. I checked by map that had museum times on it. It said that the Chapel was open until one. It turns out that the helpful tourist and my made were both right. The church did closed at noon, but we were lucky. The chapel itself was open for another hour.

Though we’d come to see Michelangelo’s sculptures in the tomb, but the chapel itself was worth the trip. The entire inside of the building is one, huge marble mosaic. While we were there, the chapel contained a display of large pictures showing the marriage of one of the Medicis to a princess of the time. None of the pictures even came close to the beauty of the chapel itself. The walls, the floors, and the ceiling are all part of it. The large interior space is resplendent in pink, green, blue, and ivory marble. Within the large mosaic of the chapel itself, there are smaller, more detailed mosaics. The mosaic on the front of the altar is a detailed as a painting. It was like being inside some fantastic music box.

After spending some time admiring the chapel, we headed down to the tomb. Michelangelo designed the tomb, but the real stars are his four sculpture: Dawn, Dust, Day and Night. Michelangelo finished three famous sculptures: David, the Pieta in St. Peter’s, and Moses: These four sculptures aren’t all that well known but they are the only other sculptures I know of that he almost completed. I say almost because none of them look as polished as the three famous ones. However, they are extremely interesting and striking. After all, Dawn and Night are the only female nudes he ever sculpted. Looking at them, I seriously doubted the homosexual community’s claims that Michelangelo was gay. Need I say more?

We headed back toward the hotel past all the shops that had closed for the afternoon break. The grocery store that we’d planned to shop at was, of course, closed. We just weren’t in the habit of thinking ahead and remembering that stores close in the middle of the day.

Restaurants were open. We found a cute café outside in the middle of a small plaza just off the Duomo. We had foccia bread sandwiches. Foccia break is a thick bread, more like the pizza crust we have in the U.S. They served the sandwich open-faced , but we folded it in half like a big taco. With wine to wash it down, yum!

After lunch, we walked back to the Londra. By the time we’d gotten back, we’d felt that we’d gotten out exercise for the day. I took a nap.

That night, we made one of the best discoveries of the trip. We were walking around in an area behind the hotel. It was early. The stores had reopened. We were still looking for a grocery store so that we coul buy some more cheese for the road trip the next day. Instead we found a small restaurant, Il Monstino. There was nothing impressive about the outside. Since it was so early, it wasn’t busy, but for some reason, it called to us, beckoning us in. There were only maybe a dozen or so tables. They gave us a nice table in the back by the kitchen. It was hot inside. They could have used air conditioning. We decided to stay because of the menu.

After a week in Italy, all the menus were beginning to look the same. This was different. It was authentic Tuscan food. Tuscany is the region of Italy where Florence is located. This was the food from the country-side. It was different. There was still pasta, but we didn’t recognize any of the sauces. Strangely enough, there were many different kinds of salads on the menu, including salads as the first course and other salads as the main course. Instead of the common veal and chicken scaloppini, the meats were sausage and steak, lots of steak. We hadn’t anything like this before.

Mom had a cold meat salad. Michele had a Katrina Salad, which was greens with lots of cheese, capers and anchovies. Rebecca had sausage and beans. I had a pasta, actually, this might have been my first pasta of the trip. It was covered in a meat-cream sauce that was a bright yellow that was like nothing else I’ve ever tasted. I don’t think it was yellow from saffron or anything delicate. Actually, I think it was yellow from meat fat. Mom didn’t have a second course because her meat salad had filled up, but Michele had gnocchi, Rebecca had fettuccini in a Porcine mushroom sauce, and I had a steak on a bed of arrugola salad.

While we were eating, we noticed that most other people got the streak. They weren’t the normal, thin looking steaks like the one I’d order. These were big, fat, thick hunks of meat that looked like they had just been sawed from a beef carcass in the kitchen. They didn’t serve this meat as cute cutlets on separate plates, but as big lumps of red meat with heavy bones in the middle of the table. A vegetarian would have fainted. Heck, a surgeon might have fainted. I found myself wishing we were staying in Florence another night so we could come back and all order the serious steak. The one I had was tasty, but I felt like I was missing the true, Tuscan country dining experience by not cutting into a mound of red, flesh.

By the time we were finished, not only was the restaurant full, but there was a line waiting outside. We had to press through the crowd at the door to get out. As we left, people were asking, "Is it as great was we’ve heard?" We agreed that it was. We had apparently stumbled on some famous prized restaurant. Of course, they didn’t give away a free plate with the house specialty, but still a place we plan to go back to the next time we are in Florence.