Florence the eleventh - Lucca

I'd heard of Lucca but didn't really know what its deal was, then last night I was zooming around Tuscany on Google Maps wondering if another day trip was in order when it caught my eye, so this morning away I trained. As it turns out, kudos on my spur-of-the-moment decision.

It turns out that Lucca is one of the few places whose city walls are intact, meaning the entire historic centre is walled in. You have no idea whether you're going to find a city or a sewage treatment plant on the other side.

As you get closer it gets even more ominous.

Then even ominouser as the path leads you right through the wall.

Then you're out and on the wall and its magic. The whole way around the top of the wall is a lovely wide avenue. And seconds later, I totally clotheslined that kid.

I took a stroll right around the top of the wall before plunging to the city. Apparently its about four or five kilometres around, but it all felt like a watercolour haze to me. Seriously, I don't know how everyone in Lucca hasn't dropped dead from serenity.

View over the top of the wall. At least Lucca's enemies have a nice park down there to be frustrated in.

Duomo di San Martino. This is the architectural equivalent of when your handwriting becomes smaller and smaller trying to fit everything in before the end of the line.

From the facade of the Duomo, this is Saint Martin cutting his cloak in half to share with a beggar. Just give him the whole thing, you stinge! And I'm just reading that Lucca does have a reputation for being stingy - the reason none of those columns match is that they held a competition to choose a design, then didn't bother to declare a winner and just used all of the entries in the actual construction. Heh.

Artist's impression of Lucca. Tee hee.

Piazza Napoleone. Back in the days when Nap was the jumped up little emperor of all he surveyed, he gave Lucca to his sister to rule. Sweet gig.

San Michele in Foro. While I was taking this a woman came up to me and asked if I would take a picture of her and her husband in front of the church, then started giving me really specific instructions about how I should frame it. So I just zoomed in on some guy's man-boobs and pretended to be taking the photo she wanted.

Close-up of the front of San Frediano. I was thinking at the time how cartoonish the mosaic looks, and now that I'm reading about Lucca I see that the city hosts Italy's largest comic book convention. Weird!

There are trees! Growing on the top of that tower! How do they even?

Oh, bonus round! This is actually back in Florence, in Piazza della Republica. Last week it was flag tossing, today it's sword fighting! And also some extremely close-up ears. Sorry about that.

Florence the tenth

I was pretty much off the radar today. Florence is in the grip of another public festival and I was cruising around enjoying the free music and so on, but ended up kind of maxed out on crowds. And today is barely even exceptional - the streets are always awash with saunterers, which you tend to have less patience with when you're alone. Florence is turning me into an angry New Yorker - or would be if I knew how to say "I'm walking here!" in Italian.

The only truly remarkable occurrence is that a pigeon flew into me. Not full-on splat like the Pisa fresco, but it kind of misjudged and brushed me as it cut across my path. Usually urban birds are more savvy than that. A sad day for pigeonkind.

I also saw this. In Siena it would have made perfect sense, but in Florence I say "What the hell?"

Florence the ninth - Siena

Siena is brilliant. It's in the hills and it's all up-and-down with sudden views and roads that wind around the slopes. The historic centre is an amazing maze of medieval streets. I'm surprised David Bowie wasn't wandering around in tights, telling people that they remind him of the babe.

I took this through a gate. It's just someone's front yard. Bastard.

Romulus and Remus on a pole match. There are Romulii and Remii on poles all over the place because legend says that Remus's son founded Siena. Good thing the wolf didn't get hungry like the wolf or we'd have had no Rome or Siena.

Facade of the Siena Cathedral.

I didn't hang around too long at the cathedral because there was a noisy trade union protest going on. It says something like "WE pay, THEY enjoy the crisis", and "Italians without money...?" Perhaps something to do with Berlusconi's trial?

The back of the cathedral. The wall up the steps is part of an unfinished extension to the cathedral where they were planning to make the existing nave (aisle axis) into the transepts (across axis) and build a massive new nave, but the plague came and the money ran out and TV was invented and now all that's there is two walls and no roof. And a buttload of trade unionists.

The inner courtyard of Palazzo Chigi-Saracini, which used to be a private house and is now a music school. Some most pleasant harping or fluting or whatever was wafting down.

View down to the Piazza del Campo.

Piazza del Campo. It's hard to photograph, but rather than being the usual square it's fan-shaped. This is where Siena holds its famous bareback horse race, the Palio.

Fountain at the top of the campo. I seem to have developed a disorder where water features make me thirsty.

The tower is called Torre del Mangia, Tower of the Eater, because its first bell-ringer usually spent all his money on food.

Piazza del Campo from in front of the tower.

View from the market square. Gorgeous!

More gorgeous! Aside from the bins, I guess, but anything that ensures I'm not shin-deep in garbage is alright with me.

Sienese alleyway *pant*

Siena is also the home of Italian Pokemon, not because there's actual Pokemon, but because it's divided up into districts, each one represented by an animal or symbol that decorates the area, and you gotta catch 'em all. Or at least I gotta - most people just looked at me weird for taking photos of walls. But I caught:

Unicorn

Little owl

Dragon

Forest

Eagle

Wave

Tower

Porcupine

Giraffe

These are the flags of all the districts. In the Palio each rider belongs to a district, so the whole thing's about local rivalry, with each district having its ally and enemy districts. I once read a novel set in Siena during the Palio that explained that winning was not necessarily such a great thing because then there were bribes to be paid and parties to be thrown - but apparently the real shame is coming second, heh.

Florence the eighth

I had quite the ramble today, out of the historic centre and into the less-storic periphery, some of which is alright, and some of which is long, straight dual carriageway lined with retail on the ground floor and office space above. And then every so often squozen in amongst the sprawl is a wee church.

Actually, the buildings were probably squozen in around the church.

Or a medieval gate on a traffic island. Inside was a two man band - accordion and tambourine. Not as annoying as you'd expect.

Oh my Gog! I'm so bummed at how this turned out, and also bummed that the synagogue has to be so completely fenced in, while Catholic churches just run wild in the street, like monkeys in Brazil. For the record, the synagogue is open to the public, but still.

Also on a traffic island, the quite lovely English Cemetery. From what I understand it's really a non-Catholic cemetery, but evidently pushy English expats forced their influence in. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is buried here, as well as some other people I've vaguely heard of.

What's petrol back home these days? Because that there is $2.96 NZ dollars per litre. Yikes.

Porta San Gallo. There seemed to be loveliness beyond, but between me and it was several lanes of unforgiving traffic.

Fountain in the gardens of Fortezza da Basso. I stared at it until it made me thirsty and I had to go in search of iced tea. And looking at it is making me thirsty again, but I drank all the iced tea. NOOOO!

Florence the seventh

I went up to the markets this morning. I didn't have any patience for the outside bit, where stallholders try to force things and stuff upon you and the products repeat every four stalls, but the inside bit, the food market, is amazing. So much cooler than the supermarket I've been going to, where pretty much everything is branded CONAD, which I sometimes misread as GONAD and sometimes as CONAN.

This afternoon I went to the Boboli Gardens, because you know how I love things that are bobbily. You had to pay to get in, which seemed odd for a public park, and kind of mean in a city where green spaces are extremely scarce, but it was worth it, and I guess they have a lot of expenses, and in a country where the government changes so often you have to be proactive in case the next administration cuts your funding in favour of massive subsidies for shrimp farmers or excessive expenditure on underage prostitutes.

The first thing I saw upon entering. How delightful!

That building is the tool shed. I'm not even kidding - inside were hoes and potting trays and stuff

Shady lane. The place was pleasingly wild in places, after the landscaped-to-within-an inch-of-their-lives gardens in France.

Doomed to stand guard forever. That's a bit ruff.

Waah, scary Snow White tree!

These guys mock everyone who passes by. They're my new best friends.

The Palazzo Pitti, of which the gardens are the back yard. This was the seat of the Medici family back in...Medici times. It's actually a fairly ugly building. I'm sure it's the business inside, but I wasn't in the mood to be looking at draperies.

Aww, his doggy fetched him the newspaper, because he was too lazy to get dressed and go out to get it himself. See, the Medicis were no different to you or me.

So, this is in my neighbourhood, like four blocks away from my apartment, and the streets are so narrow and closed in that I had no idea there was such a high hill right there until I was suddenly climbing it.

No, your face!

The rose garden, and the porcelain museum. I hit my twee limit.

Wheat! Mightiest of the grains!

Pfft, you think you've killed a man with a trident.

Ugh, I hated this. It's a dank cave containing sculptures, made on purpose to look like it's covered in guano. There used to be some Michelangelos in there until they were replaced with copies after it was realised that Michelangelos are not displayed to their best advantage in a structure dripping with Mannerist feces.