Hooky, Italian style

Since I've been pretty much "on duty" every day until today (meeting Saturday afternoon, student events Sunday afternoon, more student events all day Monday), I declared today a day of rest and played hooky from the convention.

I had stayed up too late last night playing on the computer (I haven't caught up with my reading in days!) and reading a book, so I allowed myself to sleep in a bit this morning. That didn't last very long, though, so I was up and out in plenty of time to grab breakfast before I left the building.

I had been fretting for some time about my early-morning flight out of Rome, and I somewhat frantically emailed a friend whose family is from Italy for advice. I got her answer this morning (she's traveling, too), but I sort of just scanned it before I set out to arrange my train travel for tomorrow night back to Rome. As it turns out, she advised me to do as I had suggested to her: take a train to Rome's city center, find a hotel nearby, and then take either a train or a taxi to the airport.

Since I didn't read the message too carefully, I had arranged train travel all the way to the airport, so I went online for rooms nearby. I found one about 3 miles away for a decent price, and I feel certain I can get to the airport from there in the wee hours of the morning. I won't promise that I'll sleep well, but at least I'll have a bed.

I pulled most of my clothes out of the closet and started trying to juggle getting the original junk I brought along with a collection of souvenirs and a new backpack into the suitcase I brought and potentially only one carry-on piece. My bigger concern is that the trains all have two steps up from the platform that I have to maneuver four times with the weight of the suitcase(s); these are the times I wish I had an extra pair of arms.

But this didn't seem to "count" as playing hooky, so I locked up my room and headed downstairs to see which direction the hotel manager thought I should go to start. She had a flyer for a place that advertised Leonardo da Vinci's machines, with a small additional charge for lunch, and it was right on the way to the "academy" where the statue of David stands. I was on my way!

I made it to the da Vinci museum and was pleased to find that about half the machines were interactive; it was fun to play with them and see how they really worked. Students at a local art school had built models from his sketches of human anatomy, and television monitors provided commentary and history.

When I had seen all I thought I wanted to see, I went to the desk to collect my lunch, but my ticket had fallen out of my hands. I asked if I could possibly get lunch without the ticket, but the manager just sort of growled, "Find the ticket." I cruised back through all the smallish rooms to check for a single slip of paper, but to no avail.

The difference between the cost of admission and the cost of admission plus lunch was only one euro, so I asked whether I could just pay an extra euro and get the meal. "Find the ticket."

A young man was mopping the floor near her desk, so I asked him if he'd seen my ticket. He shook his head slowly, then started to dig through bits of paper in a small plastic bag. I hated seeing him do that, so I pitched in, and in a couple of minutes, we had it. "This way," the manager said, as she led me into a small room with a few tables and some assorted books. "What do you want to drink?" she asked. Iced tea was an option; she pretty obviously didn't quite get the "iced" part. "The pizza today is ham," she said. "Do you want it?" I sort of thought that might have been a good question to ask before she took my extra euro and certainly before she sent me dumpster diving for my ticket, but I haven't had much ham here, so it was fine.

I stopped by a "supermarket" (where I bought a diet coke but mostly learned that euros really do go all the way to 1-cent pieces; I don't know what they call them) and found the "academy" easily enough, but the line stretched out the door, down the block, around the corner, and just kept going. I saw a young woman sort of monitoring the line and asked her how long the wait was; she assured me it was about 2 hours from where I was, and it wouldn't let up all day: the exhibit is closed on Monday, and on Tuesdays it's nearly impossible to get in. I was really disappointed because I understand the work is beautiful, but I didn't really feel like spending two of my precious hours in Florence standing in a line.

I grabbed a map I'd picked up somewhere of "stuff to see" and saw that the next stop was only a couple of blocks farther away, so I set off for the "piazza." The church on one side (they almost all seem to have a church on one side) had a carving that looked like somebody was up to mischief, and I saw a couple of nuns dressed in gray habits reading something on a door. The sign said it was a museum, it cost only 4 euros, and I had about enough time to see what the Italians called a "convent" but I'd have called a monastery before it closed.

The first room was a little disappointing—I probably should have had greater appreciation for the paintings, but I'm not that much into religious art to begin with, and the lack of realism (flat faces, Baby Jesus looking like a miniature 4-year-old) didn't appeal to me at all. I was sort of wondering if I'd blown my 4 euros.

The walk along the side of the garden area was much more interesting; generally, it was lined with tributes to monks who had passed that way in the 13- and 1400s. I cut across the chapel-like room that houses the gift shop and found myself in a hallway crammed full of architectural embellishments from the outside of another building; it turns out that building had begun to crumble some years ago, and the museum had "adopted" as much as it could for caretaking. The building I was in was built in about the 1300s; those parts I was seeing were older still.

Upstairs a long room held displays of music prayer books from at least that long ago. Some of the music books were as tall as my arm is long, and the artwork to "illuminate" the pages was amazingly detailed. A couple of volumes looked like well-worn Bibles (except that the pages had been inked by hand), and I enjoyed imagining the monk (monks?) who must have pored over it every day.

One end of the long room was over the garden area, and it was filled with the monk's cells. I'd always thought of the cells as little more than closets with room only for the monks to pray and sleep, but these were the size of small bedrooms, all with windows, and some sort of "split" into two areas; in one case, the second area was up a small flight of stairs. I don't know whether the artwork in them was original or not (hard to imagine that it could be), but the paintings were bright and clean and cheery—a pretty far cry from my childhood images of monks in their small, dark, loney cells.

From there, I headed up the street to the next spot on my map to find a building marked MDCI on the portico; I'm pretty sure that's not its address. Before I reached it, I saw a couple of young men in Italian military gear standing in the open door to a Military Geogragy display; turns out they were drumming up recruits for the mapmakers.

On the far side of the plaza, I discovered the Museum of Natural History, so I ducked in to take a look. The museum is under construction for a planned redesign in October or so, but once I wound my way into the "old" parts, it, too, was amazing. Much of it, of course, was artifacts from Italy; I found myself sort of racing through the ancient Egyptian displays because, fascinating as mummies and the lore around them is, I was there to see Italy. Seeing relics of the country while I was in the country was pretty cool.

The next "hot spot" on the map appeared to be just a couple of long blocks farther, but when I got to the right intersection, it didn't seem to be there at all. I strolled through the park across the street (one of a very few places here where I've actually seen plants), then started down the block in search of the "missing" church. When I got there, I had to do a double-take: the phrase I had been unable to figure out on the map has to have meant "Hebrew"; the building was a synagogue.

The synagogue had a museum (again, for a 4-euro price), but as appealing as the description was, I was getting ready to head back home. I used my trusty map to navigate to a corner that should turn me in the right direction, picked one of the five streets that intersected there, and was relieved to find a likely-looking street name a few yards down the way.

I had walked a long way out from my hotel on the way out, and I walked a pretty long way back before I began to feel certain I was headed the right way, but I had noticed on the way out that even after I had left the last museum, I could still see the Duomo. On the way back, somehow the configuration of streets gave me another glimpse of it, and I knew I was on my way back home.

Since I was getting thirsty again, I stopped into a market that really did look and feel like and old-fashioned American grocery store in hopes for another coke for less than a euro. They didn't have any diet drinks cold, so I bought—and loved—a nice cool liter of milk.

I managed to lose my sense of where the Duomo was after a while, but the trusty map said I was moving the right way, and I plowed on. I was down to my last mission: I needed a watch. The one I've been wearing for a couple of years has been losing time here and there, and lately it's just plain stopped running with uncomfortable frequency, so I wanted a new one to wear home. I think I spent 20 bucks on the last one, and I've probably worn it for 4 or 5 years. You can pick up a cheap watch nearly anywhere in America; not so Florence.

I had been to or by a bunch of the street vendors over the last several days, but I couldn't really remember seeing any watches. I found a Swatch store near the Duomo, but at those prices, it wasn't going to help me. I headed back toward the market area where I bought souvenirs yesterday, but nothing seemed to pop up there. I found a small jewelry shop where I found a ring I like on sale, and the store manager and her friend knew of a shop if I would "turn left, then turn left again, and then it's right up there on your right." Which it was, but it's watches either cost as much as Swatch or looked really, really awful. I saw a Timex sign in a shop across the street, but they didn't even have the ugly cheap watches. It was back to street vendors.

I noticed after a block or two that the vendors I was seeing all seemed to have shops behind them, and on one corner was a little watch shop. I wasn't crazy about the price I had to pay, but the watch is decent, it's a Casio, and was generally in my price range. I could go home at last.

I'd definitely gotten myself out of sight of the Duomo, but I figured out from my map which way I'd have to go to get back, and soon I started recognizing landmarks along my way.

Now if I can figure out how to pack everything for tomorrow morning in storage while I'm at the conference, I think this is all going to come out okay!