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Previously: May 5: Travel to Firenze

May 6: Firenze

Today’s goal was a trip up to Fiesole, a mountain town above Firenze. It’s mostly about beautiful views and an archeological site.

It's possible to walk, but it's an hour and a half, mostly uphill, so we chose to bus. Our bus was about a 10-minute walk from the hotel, followed by a 30-minute ride up the hill. The bus was packed to the rafters with people, so we stood the whole way. Bus drivers are the same everywhere, with pedal-to-the-metal acceleration followed by abrupt braking, so we had to hold on tight. We probably wouldn’t have fallen far because of the people density, but we might also have toppled the whole crowd like dominoes.

We started with a hike up to Monte Ceceri, which rises above Fiesole, through pleasant and shady forest. Lots of birds tweeting (the singing kind; they don't have Twitter so far as I know) and swallows darting about. The hike has a significant rise in elevation, so it turned out to be a surprisingly vigorous walk. Or possibly our legs are still recovering from the Amalfi hiking, which took a lot out of us. Beautiful views downslope to Firenze, including this one, which shows how the duomo and its tower dominate the skyline:

On the way back down, we did our now-familiar skulking about down side streets and back alleys, which provides a pleasant view of the non-touristed areas. For insance:

At the top of our climb, stopped for a breather at Piazzale Leonardo Da Vinci, a small open rest area where a plaque commemorates the location where Leonardo tested one of his designs for a manned flying machine back in 1506. There’s a good reason why Leonardo is the Renaissance’s poster boy, the way Einstein is the poster boy for 20th century physics.

The museum and archeological site at Fiesole are a pleasant way to spend a few hours, though they’re remarkably untroubled by interpretive signs and posters. (There are a few in Italian, accompanied by braille equivalents, and there’s actually wheelchair access to most of the site, both of which are pleasant surpises.) The ruins are surrounded by lovely countryside, much more lush than most of the Amalfi coast, and a few nicely restored parts of the ruins, including the roman amphitheater:

The museum itself has the usual collection of pottery shards and fragments, and the traditionally remarkably bad translation. (The problem is that most museums rely on researchers who thoroughly understand their subject but not their second language. For what it’s worth, I see the same problems in Montreal.) As always, surprisingly many pieces survived the long time (here, more than a millennium) until they were excavated. For example, there were some impressive if tiny bronze sculptures and some completely intact ceramic sculptures, such as this dancer and this bunny:

Returned home midafternoon by bus because we were tired from the heat and sun and wanted to be well rested before meeting my client/colleague, Fabio Zagonari, and his wife Elena for dinner. We’ll spend part of tomorrow with them seeing the city before they head home. Thus, I probably won’t have time for more bloggery before tomorrow night.

May 7: Firenze

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