Firenze

[Palazzo Vecchio -- and the crowds]


[Duomo with Campanile on the right.]


[Ponte Vecchio]


We spent the last three-and-a-half days in Florence. We had the best meals of the trip (although pizza in Naples will always have a special place in my heart) and saw some incredible art and palaces.

[Gelato is supposed to be especially good in Florence. This place was good but we went to another place that was better.]


Our last time in Florence (1999), we were here for free museum week, which was a nightmare, because all of the Italians came out to go to their expensive museums. This time, we got a Firenze Art card, which allowed us to walk into most of the museums as if we had a reservation – very nice! Most of the museums didn’t let you take pictures, so I don’t have as much to share from this part of the trip (one reason I am doing just one post).

[Donatello]

[Originally on the Campanile]

[Michelangelo]

[Palazzo Vecchio -- outside above, inside below.]


Florence is a pretty town, with lots of nice streets, but unlike Naples it feels taken over by tourists. You are at least as likely to hear an American as an Italian. So I think you come here for the art – although the Tuscan food was great (and we did a better job researching restaurants). A lot of local specialties use stale bread. Some of the best dishes we had were tomato and bread soup, where the tomatoes and bread are pureed with garlic and herbs – really delicious.




We stayed in another really nice apartment outside of the central tourist area -- with another lovely rooftop deck:



Yesterday we arrived in Rome – for the last stop on our trip, before going to Berlin for a month.

[One section of Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise]

Capri: one of the most beautiful places on earth

Yesterday we took a 40-minute ferry out to Capri, which is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.

First, the whole family went up a chair lift to the top of the island. The island is only around 2 miles by 4, but has steep cliffs, making it feel mountainous. From the top you can see almost the whole island.

[Bus ride to Anacapri, where you take the chair lift to the top.]

After lunch, Stephen and I took a three-hour hike along the western coast of the Island, which is the least developed. The hike ended at the blue grotto and we could have dived into the cave to see the famous blue light, but we had no swimming suite and the bus was about the leave, so we didn’t.

We saw a couple of goat near end of the trip.

When we arrived back in Naples, it was sunset and Vesuvius was fully clear for the first time.

Naples and Pompeii

We've been with my parents and brother in Naples for a few days now.






Naples is such a great place to wander. It is so teaming with life -- people everywhere, soccer balls, teenagers throwing water at each other, people making out on mopeds. Everywhere the narrow streets are just full of people. It is a little hard to capture on film, since I don't like taking a picture right in front of someone without asking them.


[Booksellers row.]


[Our lunch-time pizza on the first day. The white pizza was amazing -- probably the best I've ever had.]


[Neapolitans are serious about their espresso.]

On the first day, we spent a while wandering the streets of the old town, had our first wonderful pizza at a recommended pizzeria, and then went to the amazing archeological museum -- perhaps my favorite on this month-long trip. There is a garbage strike going on -- has been for months. Garbage is everywhere on the streets:



The Naples Archeological museum has a great collection of sculpture and an amazing collection of mosaics, which would make it a wonderful trip on its own. But what is really special about it is that it has a huge collection of ancient paintings from Pompei's walls. The paintings are amazingly good and let you see a progression of Roman painting from a simple decorative style, into a sort of modern Renaissance style, with good use of perspective and lots of architectural elements, and on to a sort of baroque style. There's no collection anything like it elsewhere -- because there is nothing like Pompeii elsewhere.


[Tiled column and niche.]
[Detail from famous tiled battle scene of Alexander the Great against Darius. It is thought to reproduce a 3rd or 4th Century BC painting, which otherwise we do not know much about.]
[Hard to tell in the picture, but the central woman has painted on her torso a sheer gauze.]
[Decorative wall painting.]
[Portrait of an upper class but not filthy rich couple.]

After dinner we went to an okay restaurant near our apartment. A few wandering musicians came, playing for tips. Our waiter (far right) joined them -- he was a great singer.




[View from our apartment balcony at sunset -- Vesuvius in the background.]

Yesterday we went to Heraculaneum and Pompeii -- two cities covered and preserved when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. There is no better place to get a sense of what everyday life was like in the Roman empire. Whereas elsewhere you get wonderful civic works -- temples, theaters, gates -- here you get full city blocks, with ordinary houses and buildings preserved, along with mansions, and a few temples. Pompeii is bigger and has some theaters, but I actually like Heraculaneum better, since it is better preserved. It was covered in mud instead of ash, and even the wood is preserved in places, and many buildings still have their second story. We went to Heraculaneum first:

[Ancient seashore -- now many miles from the sea -- and more than 50 feet below the modern city.]
[Narrow street.]


[Ancient snack-restaurant/bar. The Romans normally went out for lunch.]

[Alison on landing of a two-story building.]
[Some paintings that weren't hauled back to Naples.]

Moving now to Pompeii...


[Forum -- the marketplace, religious center, town center -- with Vesuvius in the background.]
[Tools for milling wheat in the foreground. Ancient wood-burning oven in the background.]


[Ancient beware of dog mosaic!]

[The baths were probably the most spectacular part of Pompeii. Just beautiful mosaics, statues, reliefs, marble in a cool and calm environment. Really spectacular.]

[Pompeii was a city of 20,000, and wanderings the streets is a lot of fun. Notice the ancient wheel ruts.]


After a long day out at the ancient sites, we came back and went to a special pizzeria for Alison and I. We visited it back in 1999, when we were undergrads -- junior year abroad -- and it made a huge impact on us. Probably our most memorable meal from a one month trip. We went back and it is still fantastic. Of course, we've had a lot more pizza since then, but it is still a wonderful place. Only serves two pizzas: Margharita and Marinara. Both were great, but somehow they brought most of our Margharitas with extra cheese, which we did not want. Oh well -- fun with language barriers.