Aspects of Italy - TRAVEL LOG

June 09, 2020

Aspects of Italy - TRAVEL LOG

One of the motivations behind starting this blog was wanting to catalogue and record the things in my head. I’ve never been very good at this. Each diary I started as a teenager was promptly binned a year or so later, after I had back read the words I had written and cringed at who I once was.

In recent years, I have started to photograph more, capturing snippets of mundane and storing them in folders on my laptop, categorised by the era in my life. Sometimes, it is the details of my life that I want to remember the most.

This morning, I found the hundreds of photos I took on a trip to Tuscany in 2018, sat in a folder on my laptop. I decided I wanted to do something with the photos. I have already forgotten so much of the trip, and so I wanted to store the little memories I have left.

Here goes...

Aspects of Italy:

Two summers ago, I flew to Italy with one of my best friends from school. I had been to Rome with my family once for a weekend, and I was desperate to go back and explore other parts. We stayed in Florence, Siena and Pisa. It was one of the best holidays I've ever been on.

Journey: Bus to Airport - Plane to Pisa - Train to Florence- We arrived in the middle of Florence, walking with back packs through the heat. No one seemed to know where the bus stops were, and no one left us without a distinct feeling of being 'other' (being tourists, that is). Finally, we navigated the temporary bus stops and - Bus to our small home.

We stayed in a campsite just outside of Florence. We did it to save money - it was cheaper to get the bus in everyday, but I think it ended up being a much better decision than staying in the city. We got to see the country side as well as the city, and at night, we could escape the exhausting urban heat.

I took this on our walk to the bus stop.

For three days, we got the bus into Florence and explored the city. One night, we stayed out later and missed the bus home (it wasn't entirely out fault - the bus times the campsite had given us were out of date), and so we took another bus half way home and then walked the rest. It was at this point completely dark - there were no pavements on any of the roads, and cars came tearing around corners without warning. As two young teenage girls in the middle of absolutely no where, I couldn't at this point decide if we were going to die in a car-crash before we were murdered. My friend walked at the front with her torch light on and I walked at the back spraying insect repellent at our ankles every 30 seconds. Proudly, we reached our campsite and only a little bit bitten.

When we finally walked over the Ponte Veccchio, it started to rain so hard we had to run across.

Outside a building near the Mercanto Centrale, I found these posters, pasted to the walls every twenty feet or so. I have no idea what the message behind them was, but they looked beautiful. It was weirdly freeing to have no idea of the intent behind art, and have no way of finding out. I'm usually so fast to google artists, read interviews, look straight for the signs in an exhibition. This time, I was able to appreciate them entirely without context.

I'd read about the Mercato Centrale online somewhere, and was so excited. We'd been told by a local to get pasta from a stand downstairs, which was amazing. There was so many different stalls (and places to eat upstairs) that we went back twice so we could try as much as possible. It was super expensive, but cheaper than some of the more touristy places. We even ended up getting ready for a night out on the floor of one of the toilets, switching clothes and french plaiting our hair.

These are hurdy gurdies. No context needed.

The swimming pool at our campsite was kind of eerie. It was deserted when we went inside, and it had a specific vibe that I can't really describe. I took literally hundreds of photos.

We found this weird garden/building situation on our walk into Florence one morning. It was Stumbling Upon A Beautiful Place.

Even the toilets were beautiful

In one afternoon, we walked to the Gardiano Bardini and visited the Uffizzi Gallery. Btween the two places, my mind felt saturated with beauty. The garden is about 10 minutes from the city centre, up a hill and looks out across Florence. The one photo I have here - on the left - is terrible (all these shots are unedited), but the views irl were completely stunning. The garden's design was romantic and spiralling - filled with sculptures and balconies and tiny grottos.

I obviously couldn't take any photos inside the Uffizzi, but in my memories the paintings were dazzling. I felt overwhelmed by how much history and artistry was on display in one buildings. I was also stunned by the bright colours - in Britain, I'm used to seeing dingy medieval paintings, but in the Uffizzi, the paintings were restored to their original state. I'm sure the National Trust would have wept, but it allowed me to see the art how it was intended by the artists. It allowed me to imagine the world that existed at the time of painting. The photo on the right was of the queue for the Ufizzi - I loved this guys outfit with the purple monochrome.

The Piazza del Duomo (which literally just means "Cathedral Square") was around the corner from our bus stop. The Cathedral stands in the middle, astonishingly beautiful, with Brunelleschi’s cupola atop. We walked through the square dozens of time during our time in Florence, learning to navigate through the flocks of tourists with our heavy rucksacks.

Churches that are this expensive and extravagant always present a kind of morale dilemma for me. Throughout its history, the kind of money spent on this building could have literally transformed the lives of poor locals. I can only imagine how attending this church would have felt when it was first built. On the other hand, as an artist and engineer, I have to appreciate the building for its incredible demonstration of talent and craftsmanship. The Cathedral demonstrates the very best that the people of this time could create, unrestricted by the normal constrains of construction, in order to express their passion for the church/religion. At the Cathedral museum, I learnt about the dome design and how a roof of this kind wasn't believed to be possible literally until it was created. Churches like these propelled art and architecture forwards immeasurably, and provided inspiration and enlightenment for so many.

One our last day, we climbed to the top of the Cathedral (up literally hundreds of squares), walking behind the most aesthetically perfect couple, and spent half an hour walking around the top, aghast at the view.

These shoes say I'm beautiful and could also spring like a fairy if needed and also am very rich because I buy Dior.

After Florence, we took a train to Siena, where we stayed for the next few days. The town was pretty and had an interesting history, but after Florence, Siena felt like a anti-climax. I wish we'd had a car, to explore the surroundings more or drive to the springs.

We visited the Piazza del Campo, which is essentially the main square, with the Torre del Mangia, where the horse races in Siena take place.

I took these photos in the Civic Museum, just off the main square.

We found a restaurant to eat at on our first night in Siena, and ordered ‘pici’, just to be tourists. It was essentially just fat spaghetti with lots of pepper and cheese, which is never a bad thing.

I'd read about All'Orto de'Pecci online - its esentailly a huge beautiful garden, just downhill of the centre of Siena, and visiting it was one of the nicest things we did. Walking around for an hour or so was the nicest break in the middle of our more-city-focused break.

After Siena, we travelled to Pisa. Without realising it, we had booked our first night in Pisa on the night of a festival. We were told it only happened once a year, but other than that had literally no idea what was going on. It seemed to literally just be fireworks.

The next day, we visited Lucca, which ended up being one of the most beautiful towns I've ever seen. It was surrounded by city walls, which we walked along for hours and almost missed our train.

Lucca had so many beautiful market stalls, it was so aesthetic and wonderful to walk around and photograph. I bought an book of illustrations which I carried carefully home in my rucksack. Its at my parent's house right now, but I wish I had it - I stuck our ticket stubs and postcards from the trip into pages of the book, so I could remember it better.

On our last night in Pisa, we walked to the tower with some friends we'd made from the hostel. It was a beautiful evening and a bizarre feeling to see something that had seemed so mythical. Also - and I know this is dumb - it really was leaning. Like a weird amount. I couldn't really get over how bad they had messed up.