In which Sid and Doris travel to the capital of the renaissance.
At breakfast our host at Hotel Eden (sounds like a choir of angels, though they were not known to smoke at breakfast) makes clear we should see Lucca on our way to Florence. So many of our happy outcomes have come from chatting with hoteliers that we go right to it, once we have braved the narrow road back to Rapallo. No bus or stone parapet is injured in the making of this trip.
The Lucca city walls swarm with hired bicycles, but at least that keeps them out of San Michele and Saint Martin’s cathedral. With Florence coming up we may be in danger of overdosing on Renaissance art. In San Michele the architecture is Romanesque. Not only Romanesque in style but in 795 actually built over the Roman forum, with no concern about building over historic sites. We are sure to see Filippino Lipi’s Four Saints.
Busy, busy and on to the cathedral which is a bit of a late-comer, not started until the eleventh century but rendered Gothic in a 14th century upgrade. The town is full of wonderful things that we do not make the time to see. It is not only that we are in a mild hurry but mostly because we can take in only so much before moving into a state that might be ‘no more now, I haven’t processed the last lot’.
Fascinations include a church with a facade oddly tacked onto the old building…
…a pasta machine making the stuff live in a shop window…
…and a church painting which for some reason brings to mind Flashheart in Black Adder 4 saying “Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast”.On to Florence where we ignore all prohibitions and drive to Piazza San Firenze in the middle of the old City where our apartment is supposed to be. The owners have failed to reply to Doris’s calls, emails and SMS and do not answer the bell.
Instead we book into the rather lovely San Firenze suites next door, not least because a local parking garage will come and take Hermann away. He is old, and I would claim after all the work we have had done that he is a Renaissance car but the City will still not have him in parked in the square for two days.
By the Duomo we get to look into a workshop where the statuary is maintained and plan to go to the museum that shows how the fabric is looked after. As we walk we calculate the food and drink price relationship with proximity to famous thing. For instance, a gellato bought on the Ponte Vecchio is twice one bought 20 metres away on the other side of the Arno.
It takes a while to find a dinner that involves cooking without pomposity or tourist pizza promotions. The balance is struck and we eat poached egg in truffle sauce and Tuscan cheese and meats until there is no room for pudding.