Vespas! We've got Vespas! We've got lots and lots of Vespas!
Noise, smog, and the Boticelli room at the Uffizi are all prime sensory
experiences in Firenze, which no longer allows 
cars
in the historic center of town, a blessing and a curse in the form of
the ubiquitous motorbike. Ancient and urbane, Florence is bound to turn
anyone with the merest sniff of historic and artistic sensibility into
emotional blubber. This is indeed the city that best defines Stendahl's
Syndrome, that curious phenomenon observed in the late 19th century
of numb, depressed travelers wandering the streets of the city, stumbling
across the Ponte Vecchio, eyes glazed and spirits dazed from an overload
of Renaissance splendor.
The Uffizi, many rooms still closed from the terrorist bomb blast a
few years ago 
(no
long-necked Parmigianino, no Venus of Urbino who caused Samuel Clemens
a.k.a. Mark Twain such grief--he thought her a tad obscene), is indeed
splendid if you are able to ignore the hordes that cluster before each
painting of note. "And here we have Raphael's famous 'Madonna of the
Goldfinch', next move quickly to Botticelli's 'Birth of Venus' and the
Primavera, stopping briefly to enjoy the Doni Tondo on our way to some
lovely Caravaggio's." But the high point (even though our U-FEETSIES
were killing us) was the morning ramble in the fog over the Ponte Santa
Trinita to Santa Maria del Carmine where, in a smallish side room (the
Brancacci Chapel), we discovered the frescoes of Masaccio and Masolino,
stalwart survivors of remodeling over the centuries, not to mention
World War II.
Some of us at CurrentRutledge 
really
like this stuff and could go on and on about the Donatello Magdalen,
the Michelangelo Pieta with the master's own face sculpted as Nicodemus
and the broken arm that he (Mike) smashed in a rage when the sculpting
wasn't going well and which an assistant later repaired, the tragic
Slaves in the Accademia, the oh so dramatic Dawn and Dusk in the Cappelle
Medici, not to mention the glorious Gozzoli fresco at the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi,
and the very spot in the Piazza della Signoria where that boorish Savonarola
(the Jesse Helms of his time?) was burnt to a crisp.
The
number 7 bus from the Stazione Santa Maria Novella took us where we wanted
to be all along but didn't know: the hills above Florence near Fiesole--a
modest Italian villa cluttered gloriously with books and paintings and sitting
rooms, quiet, with a delectable Tuscan dinner, good wine, a huge breakfast,
and possibly the very room with a view mentioned so frequently in literary
works and the recent cinema. Next trip, it will be Florence for art and culture
by day, Fiesole for conversation, good food, and peaceful retirement in the
evening. Keep those doges from barking. -AMR
Listen to our audio montage of the lively cacophony of the city, complete with political demonstration. (MP3)