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| "Looking for Peace and Quiet in Florence" |
(Florence, Tuesday, 13th June 2000, 6.35 p.m. )
We'll skate lightly over England's pathetic, inept performance last night against Portugal in the Euro 2000 soccer tournament, where they lost 3-2 after leading 2-0 in the first twenty minutes. I won't mention the complete lack of intelligence in their tactics, nor their preference for passing the ball to their opponents rather than each other. And I won't even state the now obvious fact that England is a second-rate power in soccer which hasn't won anything since I was a baby; the sooner we all accomodate ourselves to that fact, the lower our expectations and hence our inevitable frustrations.
Yeah, I know, it's dumb to get bent out of shape by a soccer game, but I guess my upbringing in the soccer-fierce Northeast of England is showing. I woke up in more or less a bad mood, feeling particularly tired. But two hours of physical activity of my own gradually lifted me mood back to normal. For the first morning in a few days the skies were clear and sunny. The hotel manager had told me about a park along the Arno which would be good for running in, so I set off, running through grand piazzas, and past magnificent buildings, to get down to the Arno, and then East along the Arno to the park.
It's really the only free park of any substantial size in Florence, and ... well, I've seen better. A long, skinny, trash-ridden park bounded on one side by a market, and on the other by a major road filled with the ever-present screeching scooters. There was one, noble, shady path lined with tall trees, but Florence definitely falls short when it comes to public parks. In fact, you could not call Florence a very green city.
After working out and showering, I felt like a new man. I'd decided I needed a quiet, relaxing day of reading and writing, and had planned to take the bus to the nearby town of Fiesole, which apparently offers some great views of Florence and some hill-top breezes. But when I saw the standing-room-only bus leave just as I arrived at the bus stop, I decided to just try and find somewhere peaceful in Florence to hang out. That's not as easy as it sounds! I know I keep mentioning it, but Florence, like Rome, is a city of thousands of mopeds. They sound much like leaf-blowers or buzzsaws, and, no matter where you are, there's one buzzing loudly past you every few seconds. This is the second thing (after the shortness of green space) that I dislike about Florence. In fact, I'm looking forward to finding peace and quiet in London, of all places!
Eventually, I found a shaded, relatively peaceful spot in Piazza della Signorina to eat my strange, improvised picnic lunch of liver, spinach and a ham sandwich. I spent most of the afternoon reading, and starting to plan what I'd do in London (to where I'm heading for two weeks in a couple of days) while sitting at a cafe in the quiet Piazza della Repubblica. By coincidence, I sat next to the same small group of Americans (one who's moving to San Francisco next month) I'd sat next to at the cafe on the roof of the Uffizi a few days earlier. Then, as now, I took a group photo of them with their camera in exchange for one of them taking a "group" photo of little old me :)
In a cafe on Piazza della Repubblica - photo courtesy of a nice, older American woman
And I finally figured out what to buy myself as a souvenir of Italy. When in Santa Croce yesterday (with no Baedeker, you remember :), I'd found the Leather School, which sells authentic, local leather work at reasonable prices. So I bought an elegant leather credit-card holder, and a little box (which I'm going to use to hold my inelegant ear-plugs when I travel).
The souvenirs I bought at the Leather School in Santa Croce
As I speak, another titanic thunderstorm has just hit Florence. Deafening thunderbolts are ripping through the city, and the courtyard beneath my window is rattling with heavy raindrops.