Tuscany, Bern and Zurich
Tuscan hills and history
The last blog was posted the night before we were due to
take a balloon ride with Tuscany Ballooning, run by Pascale and Kirsty and their
business partners, plus a small army of highly professional ground and support
staff including Pascale and Kirsty’s son Oliver (piloting one of 4 balloons
that went up that morning) and daughter Anna running the office back on terra
firma. They are super-busy, so we were indeed very privileged to snare two
slots on a glorious still and sunny morning.
We flew for well over an hour, from near where Kirsty and
Pascale live, close to San Casciano, as the sun started to touch upon the
amazing landscape of small villages/towns, vineyards interspersed with olive
groves, valleys and ridges of the Tuscan Hills, and the occasional open field
for landing on! It was spectacular! So quiet, with perfectly clear sky and
excellent visibility.
Pilot Pascale
At one stage we saw see the distinctive dome of the Duomo
(Cathedral) of Florence off in one direction, the historic hill-top town of San
Gimingnano (famous for its towers, very touristy) in the opposite direction,
and the Apennines (mountain range) dead ahead in short sequence.
Hard to describe in words, and even in the limited photos that we took from our phones. You had to be there really – sorry you weren’t able to join us! Suffice to say, the experience will stay close to front-of-mind for us hereon.
That afternoon we went across to San Gimingnano late in the
day (it’s about 25 km from San Casciano), when there should be fewer people filling
the streets – but there were still plenty, damned tourists! This is a
beautifully preserved medieval town, renowned for it’s crazy-distinctive towers
built in the 13th and 14th centuries. The story goes that
the wealthy families (and there was unimaginable wealth in Tuscany back in the
day – as we shall see when considering Florence) of the town sought to flaunt
their wealth above all others by building the tallest tower (only be to be
out-towered by the next wealthy family) which was their housing as well as
their warehouses etc. Fourteen towers survive, and at least two can be climbed
to the top. I did one, a view from which you see below.
San Gimingnano
Next day was Florence. Well, many of you will have visited this magnificent city, the seat of the Renaissance in arts and the sciences, featuring such towering figures as Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Galileo, Dante and Machiavelli living here more-or-less at the same time or certainly in what became the same era of change for global arts, sciences and politics. So we hardly need attempt to paint the picture (bad pun) again.
View of Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo
It was a spell-binding ~ 10 hours of exploring, listening, learning and trying to soak up all the history. We took a guided walking tour of the old city first (excellent – our guide spoke slowly and clearly and knowledgeably), followed by a guided tour through the Uffizi and the stunning collection of Renaissance art, and finally a ‘jump-the-queue’ pass into Basilica Santa Croce, one of the finest examples of cathedral architecture and decorative art in the city if not the world. Santa Croce is also where the great heroes of Florence are buried, including those listed above. All of these things you have to book in advance, such is the demand.
The Duomo (cathedral), bell tower and (far right) Baptistry.
Crowds were such that the queues to visit these stretched for hundreds of
yards, so we didn’t make it inside. Just admiring the magnificent exterior was sufficient
…
In-between, there was stunning architecture and statuary to
behold at every point.
Below: At Basilica di San Lorenzo
Not to mention the bizarre-but-remarkable, such as Ponte
Vecchio (the old bridge – photo below) once the site of the city’s butcheries complete
with animal slaughter houses. It is now wall-to-wall jewellers shops, following
the decree of the all-powerful Medici family in ‘I-dunno-when-but-probably-c.1600s’
when they became offended by the smell wafting up to the specially-built
corridor connecting their massive palaces on either side of the river Arno and
banished the butchers for good. That corridor is 1 km long, and is going to be
opened to the public next year which will add yet another attraction to a city
bursting at the seams with attractions already.
Below: view of Ponte Vecchio from Uffizi Gallery, showing
the Medici corridor exiting the Uffizi. The Uffizi Gallery buildings were formerly
the City administration offices, when the Medici’s basically ran the city state.
They decided they “needed” a walkway from their “home” at Palazzo Pitti on the
other side of the river to work at the “office” and chose to enclose it so they
could not be seen by the city hoi-polloi as they went about their business. Oh,
and just behind the Uffizi is Palazzo Vecchio, also a palace owned by the
Medicis, so they could stroll in a leisurely fashion between their “houses” as
well. This is what being bankers to the Kings of England, Spain and so on
bought you, if you felt like it …
Bern
What could possibly compete with/follow Florence? In our
case it was Bern, the ‘de-facto’ capital of Switzerland (according to Wikipedia
– seems Switzerland has different administrative centres, but Bern is
considered the main one). This is another gorgeous, historic European city, the
old part of which is enclosed in a loop of the fast-flowing River Aare that
runs on three sides of the city. It did a pretty good job of keeping pace with
Florence in the “wow!” stakes.
Cathedral, and River Aare
We explored by foot, late on Sunday after we arrived, then again this morning for over 4 hours. Quite apart from the beautiful setting and the marvellous buildings mostly dating from the 15th and 16th centuries, the city was so quiet! Largely only trams and buses in centre, and way, way fewer people, so it was a blessed delight to stroll largely unhindered (especially after Florence).
Clocktower, and one of about a dozen figurehead statues
depicting city history and mythology dotted throughout the Old City.
Tonight (Monday 26th) we are in Zurich and have the
best part of the day tomorrow to explore before heading to the mountains to
meet up with Edith and Sarah, friends we met in Kununnara (of all places – far north-east
Western Australia) when we travelled round Aus in 2010 – the last time we did a
trip of this scale!
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