April 19
Firenze (Florence)

We woke up uncharacteristically early, about 6:30 when the sun came up, ate a couple of sinfully rich chocolate pastries with our espresso, and headed to the train station in Chiusi. After some initial confusion on my part (what could Arrivo possibly mean in Italian?), Kathy took over and got us two tickets on the 9:04 train to Firenza, with stops in Fortezza di Lago Trasimeno, Arezzo, and about four other places. It took about two hours to get to Florence, but at least I didn't have to drive.

The lady who sat across from us looked Italian to me, so we didn't really try talking to her most of the trip. Her clothes were dark and wrinkled and her hair looked like it hadn't been washed in a while. When the train stopped in some suburban station called Firenza something-or-another, we wondered out loud if this could be our station. The woman answered in Australian English and assured us we weren't there yet. Turns out, she was also traveling from Chiusi to Florence for the day. "I'm staying with friends in Chiusi, " she said, "in a very rustic apartment." "Are you going to see the sights in Florence?" I asked. "No," she said, "I'm going to wash my hair. You must never tell anyone," she demanded, "but I just can't continue washing my hair in a bowl of cold water." Kathy asked her if there was some special mineral springs or something in Florence. She said, "No I'm going to a hairdresser, now don't forget, you can't tell anyone about this."

As usual, it was raining and cold when we arrived in Florence. We made our way as quickly as possible to the famous Uffizi Museum on the bank of the river Arno. I was studying the little street map to figure out the shortest possible route via a series of complicated turns when Kathy had a better idea. So we walked to the river and turned left.

Several of our friends (you know who you are) warned us to buy admission tickets for the Uffizi online before we arrived. But we just weren't that organized. As a result we spent the next four hours waiting in line outside in the cold (at least it was sheltered from the driving rain). Kathy made friends with the folks around us. The couple behind us spoke English--he was British and she was from Spain. The couple ahead was German, and a middle-aged man in a floppy hat and windbreaker adopted Kathy and me. He stood directly beside us all morning, smiling but never saying anything. After four hours standing basically in the same place, we were like extended family.

About three hours into the ordeal some teenagers tried to cut in line ahead of us to skip the long wait. Kathy and the Spanish lady were like lionesses protecting their territory. By the time the teenagers had been told in three different languages where the end of the line was, they finally relented and slinked away, licking their wounds.

The museum itself was not as impressive as we imagined it would be. Maybe it was the long wait, or maybe I just don't like Italian Renaissance painters. I mean, how may chubby baby Jesus' with oversized heads and gold leaf halos can you enjoy in one afternoon? We did like the Birth of Venus by Botticelli (aka. Venus on the half shell) and we enjoyed the de Vinci paintings, especially the early ones where he was still learning all the cool perspective stuff. Also, an Italian painter named Notti caught our eye, mainly because the people in his paintings look happy - even his version of the Madonna and child had happy, smiling people in it, rather than the dark, sullen folks in all the other versions of that scene. But then I'm from Texas, what do I know about art?

We left the Uffizi and went straight to see (guess what) a church! But this one was truly grand. The Duomo group in Florence is amazing. Constructed of alternating rows of green and white marble with red marble accents. After touring the cathedral and its Baptistry (which contained some of the most a remarkable mosaics we have ever seen), we were standing outside snapping pictures of the facade and bell towers at exactly 6:05pm on April 19th, 2005 when the bells started to chime. I fact, all the bells in Florence began to ring at the same time as people streamed toward the church in large groups. That's when we knew the new Pope, Pope Benedict XVI, had been elected in Rome. How lucky is that? It was a spectacle of a lifetime.

Dinner that night was at a nice trattoria down the street from the Stazzione Centrale (train station). Kathy had Tuscan vegetable soup and steak with peppercorn cream sauce. I had penne pasta with spicy hot tomato sauce and stewed veal Florentine style. Of course, since I wasn't driving, we shared a bottle of excellent Rosso di Montepulciano, and then ran to the station to catch the last express train home to Chiusi and La Boncia. Kathy did have a moment of stress when we barely missed the 7:58pm train we had planned to take. We did what we usually do when we're lost in a strange land, miles from home (by any definition) we went to McDonald's to collect our thoughts. Eventually we found an 8:36pm express train to Rome with just two stops along the way - first Arezzo, then Chiusi. An hour and a half later and a short drive into the hills on a dirt road, and we were in bed again, snoring away.