by Kyle James
This Basilica di Santa Croce was not as stunningly beautiful as the Duomo, but it held the tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli, and Galileo—three of my top five Italians. The other two obviously being Mario and Luigi from Super Mario Bros.
Our next stop was the Uffizi Museum to get tickets to see the statue of David the following morning. This was the “must-see” in Florence, and arguably the most famous sculpture in the world. Ash bought the tickets while I grabbed espresso so we could refuel for the evening. She returned and told me we had a date with David at 8:30 a.m. There’s nothing like massive stone genitals for breakfast.
When Ash was here studying, she’d frequently gone to an amazing overlook of the entire city, and she wanted to take me there. There was no wonder this view was going to be amazing; hiking to the top was grueling. There was a long staircase that looked never-ending from the bottom, and there were vendors selling selfie sticks, stickers, paintings, and sculptures at each platform between flights of stairs. These were smart salesmen; they knew people were going to be making plenty of pit stops.
At the top, we walked along a path that led to a stunning view of Florence. The only problem was everyone seemed to know of this view. Ash commented that almost no one was here when she’d visited four years ago. This was the main difference between Italy and Croatia: Croatia had almost the same amount of beauty with exponentially fewer tourists. Unfortunately, the food didn’t even come close in Croatia. If you want advice on your next trip, I would do both. Go to Italy to eat, then cross the Adriatic for peace in Croatia.
We took pictures (along with literally everyone else) of the beautiful city and sat on the large amphitheater-style steps until the selfie sticks and fellow view-enjoyers became too much to handle. At one point I went to take a picture of Ash, and she was sandwiched between two selfie sticks. The couples responsible for the sticks didn’t even notice her. I snapped the symbolic shot.
8/8/15
Florence, Italy
Holy Duomo, what an awful night. I would have preferred to sleep in a den with howling wolves or a thousand cats in heat than spend one more night like this last one.
Our 8:30 a.m. appointment was the best decision we could have made. We skipped the entire line and stepped inside the 436-year-old museum. First we entered the Botticelli rooms. Botticelli was a famous Florentine widely considered one of the best Renaissance painters. He was most famous for his two pieces: Primavera and The Birth of Venus, both of which were hanging in the Uffizi. It wasn’t hard to spot The Birth of Venus. The roughly six-by-nine-foot painting dominated the attention of everyone in the room—all four of us. Botticelli was amazing, but we were here to see David’s cajones, so we left to find him.
We found a curator sitting silently along a wall, waiting patiently for a random observer to ask him a question about one of the eight paintings in the room. We asked him where we could find David, and he replied the five worst words since “Hey, look! There’s a Zara.”
“David? In a different museum.”
“I’m sorry,” I replied. “You mean a different wing of the museum?”
“Nope, David is at the Galleria dell’Accademia,” he replied, almost excited that he was about to witness one of us get extremely mad at the other.
I turned slowly to Ash, whose face was red with embarrassment. “Oh yeah, that’s right. It is in a different museum,” she said, half smiling, clearly with her proverbial tail between her legs.
I should have done more research, but she’d lived here once. We marched home, dejected, then grabbed slices of pizza and napped. I was too tired to care.
By evening, La Cantinetta was calling our name. It was our last night in Florence, so we returned to the land of taste bud explosions. We had planned on getting the exact same meal as before, but I sent my brother, Carter, a picture of the appetizers to get his advice. He knew much more about food than we did. He chose a platter of local Tuscan meats and said, “Those meats will knock your socks off.” My socks were stuck to my feet from the sweat, so these meats would have to be pretty amazing.
After we ordered, I watched as the butcher pulled gargantuan cured meats from hangers and shaved off pieces onto our plates. I noticed a sliver of a piece that was rather small, and the chef threw it away, as it was not to his standard. Cutting corners was not an option for an Italian chef. This was not work; this was his passion, his craft. Against all odds, consider me sockless.
8/9/15
Florence, Italy → Siena, Italy
I slept absolutely great. It felt amazing to get a good night’s rest. I’m kidding; it was another night in Airbnb hell, a miserable experience I won’t get into. Thankfully, Airbnb issued us a 150-dollar voucher for our catastrophe in Florence.
There were no BlaBlaCars to take us from Florence to Siena. I guess we had to do what travelers did in past decades—we started the mile-long walk to the train station. The route from our Airbnb to the station took us past the Duomo. As we walked by the giant one last time, I realized I was in the backdrop of at least five selfies.
Two tickets to Siena cost thirty euros total. This was painful for us to pay after so many BlaBlaCar trips in the single digits, but I had to admit, the ease of walking up to a kiosk and printing tickets to the next train was extremely relaxing. No waiting in the blazing heat for lost drivers or trying to communicate via stolen restaurant Wi-Fi. We knew exactly where the train would be and when. We couldn’t say that about many BlaBlaCar drivers.
We arrived in Siena an hour and a half later, and to be quite honest, neither of us knew a damn thing about this city. We’d never even planned on coming here until we got to New York City and Orrie and Rebekah had told us that Siena was a city we had to visit. We fully trusted their opinions, so when we got around to planning Italy, we penciled in a few days.
The station was small, and we immediately noticed Siena was very different from Florence. It was more of a Tuscan village than a city. Rolling countryside and lush vineyards surrounded us. As we scanned the hillside, we spotted a small white car in the visitors’ lot. Alessandra, our next Airbnb host, hugged us immediately and welcomed us to Siena.
The roads in Siena were insanely tight and hugged beige and tan buildings with what seemed like only a foot of space between car and building. We continued to climb the mountainside and passed under the large gate in the city walls. “Only resident cars allowed in town,” Alessandra told us as a guard checked her windshield.
She took us to our place in the very heart of town and parked on the side of the road. “This way!” she told us excitedly, and skipped onto a side road that was so steep, there was no way a car could get up it. I was basically falling forward and throwing one leg up at a time in front of me to gain enough momentum to keep from tipping backward with my backpack on. I turned around to see Ash on all fours, climbing and laughing with joy. She was already obsessed with Siena.
Alessandra gave us the quick run of our awesome apartment before heading out. We followed her out the door to go downtown, and she pointed up the street and yelled, “That way!” before speeding off down the hill. A few blocks down an empty steep hill and we arrived at the main attraction of Siena, the famous Piazza del Campo.
The Piazza del Campo is a huge flat area made up of hard dirt and surrounded by restaurants and shops. My only question was why there was so much unoccupied room in the middle. I thought it might have been some sort of sports field, but there were no goals or lines. We found a café along the outskirts of the field and started talking to the owner, who was sitting outside. I asked him about the Piazza del Campo, and he looked at me, confused, and then said something about Palio horses and laughed at me. Holy shit … this is where the Palio race is?
I’d learned about this as a kid, and now when I looked it up (borrowing the same man’s Wi-Fi code off his menu), it all looked familiar. The Palio race is held twice a year in this city square and around a windy course lined with people. It is a famous race like no other in the world, closely re
sembling rally car races … but for horses. We’d missed the last race by a couple of weeks, and that explained the lack of people in the village.
After seeing the largest attraction in Siena and walking through the tiny alleys for a few hours, we grabbed two nice bottles of five-euro Chianti from a local market and found a view of the Basilica of San Domenico. We sat on a stone wall and drank the Chianti right out of the bottle. Actually, I was the one drinking it straight from the bottle; Ash had purchased a small one-euro measuring cup from the market because she is a classy gal.
We headed home to get ready for the evening, and as I showered, I heard Ash’s stomach growl from the other room. Uh-oh, she is about to be hangry. I heard her come running, and I braced for impact in case she had already transformed into the Hangry Hulkess.
“Kyle, did you hear that thunder?”
“Oh, uh, yeah, yeah, I heard it,” I said, getting up out of the fetal position.
We hadn’t seen a drop of rain since Budapest, let alone a storm. It had been in the midnineties for weeks now. We ran to the window, and I immediately felt a cool, pre-rain gust, releasing mountain ranges of goose bumps on my body. We felt like kids at Camp Green Lake from the movie Holes, and ran outside to dance euphorically down the street in the first drops of rain.
Not sure how we didn’t pick up on this piece of the puzzle, but the light drizzle and distant rumbles of thunder turned into a torrential downpour. We had our phones, wallets, and Ash’s camera all in prime condition to be ruined so we ducked into the closest café and ordered a bottle of wine to watch the rain. The ten-euro bottle of quality wine was a steal, but this was our third bottle of wine today, and Ash was clearly feeling it. She sported the googly eyes you stick on arts and crafts.
Halfway through our pasta, she let out a hiccup that would have woken up Sleeping Beauty. I almost dropped my fork. I looked at her as her face turned red with embarrassment. It was a mix between a hiccup, a burp, and a slight scream. We both knew what was coming next, but there was nothing either of us could do, and moments later another hiccup blurted out. I couldn’t help but laugh, and the couple next to us chuckled too. Ash tried holding her breath and drinking upside down, neither of which could prevent the onslaught of hiccups barraging our table.
The hiccups continued until we arrived home, and then Ash began throwing up red wine. I felt bad for not being sick with her, but red wine doesn’t affect me like it does most people. I come from a grape-loving family, but Ash comes from a family of light drinkers.
I tried to console her and rub her back, but she gets really mad at me—and everyone else around her—when she is sick. I also tried to make her feel better by reminding her that at least she didn’t have the hiccups anymore, but she was far from amused. I sat on the bed and listened to make sure she was okay, and once it seemed like she had finally stopped throwing up, I walked to the bathroom to take care of her. At the precise moment I reached the door, I heard another loud hiccup. I turned right around and went back to the bedroom, an abundance of cuss words at my heels.
8/10/15
Siena, Italy
What a night. The fan blowing cool air on us was great. The rain, meanwhile, continued to pour all day, so we found shelter under a cathedral and caught up on work.
The owner of a pizzeria outside of the cathedral told us we looked hungry and asked if he could feed us. We loved the sincerity in his voice. Ash ordered a glass of wine with her personal pie. Talk about getting back on the horse. She was like a pestering fly on a farm.
After lunch we continued relaxing. It was hard for us to relax like this (harder for Ash than for me), but once we came to terms with the fact that we couldn’t afford to shop and had visited most of the famous places yesterday, it was an easy decision. I grabbed another bottle of wine from a market as Ash took refuge from the rain under a church ledge. We are sounding more and more like alcoholics, but I swear, it was casual drinking here.
When I returned to find her reading on the brick wall under the ledge, she looked gorgeous. She was perfectly at peace with her life, and she almost blended in with the wall and pillar of the cathedral. I took a picture of her reading on the wall, and to this day it is my favorite of our entire journey. Ashley wore Italy well.
By the time we got to dinner, we were still forty dollars under budget. This had the possibility of being the first night in Italy we were under budget. But somewhere between sitting on the wall in the rain and walking to dinner, we started arguing about something stupid. Whatever it was, it wasn’t what we were actually fighting about. It was just the last piece of tinder that was needed to spark a wildfire, and neither of us felt like being a fireman right then.
The Chianti catalyst wasn’t helping. Red wine is like that high school idiot who stands behind an argument and chants, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!” The argument intensified. We only took breaks to politely order food and put on our “fake waiter smiles.” Ash ordered pasta, which inevitably came out before my pizza. During her meal, we self-prescribed the silent treatment. At this point, we could finish each other’s sentences, so arguing just became a chess match. She finished her food, stood up dramatically, and said, “I am going home,” leaving me to wait on my food. She had my king in her sight: check.
I ate half my pizza and boxed it up, although I wasn’t overly worried about her getting kidnapped in Siena. I passed a gelato shop that I couldn’t resist, and blew our last five dollars for the day on the frozen treat. At least we were right at our budget. By the time I got home, I found Ash sitting on the stoop outside our place. I could feel the heat from her fuming ears. I’d had the keys all along. I guess it wasn’t checkmate; I’d had that random rook in striking distance. She stood up furiously and proclaimed, “I can’t do this with you anymore. I think we should travel alone for a while and meet back up in Greece, and I used our last five dollars on gelato on the way home, so update the budget accordingly.” Hmmm, little did she know I’d also used … Never mind.
Her statement was clearly a bluff. I mean, without me she would fall asleep on a train and end up in the middle of Paris all over again, but what else could she say to get under my skin? Neither of us was going anywhere, and we both knew it. I needed her just as much as she needed me. That was the dangerous part about fighting on this journey: no words or actions could take away from the fact that we needed each other and we were in this together.
“Fine,” I told her. “I will look for my own Airbnbs tomorrow.” I called her bluff and went inside to sleep. She slammed doors and drawers as she got ready for bed, making sure I could hear her anger. The wine put me to sleep instantly, and I dozed off until she got into bed. Once again, she made sure I felt her anger with every movement under the covers.
8/11/15
Siena, Italy → Genoa, Italy
I woke up and had forgotten about our fight. This made things exponentially worse for me.
“Morning, baby, what time are we meeting Alessandra again?” I said, rolling out of bed.
She just stared at me blankly, shook her head, and walked into the bathroom. I had slept so well that my REM sleep had washed away all the previous night’s arguments. There is nothing to make you look dumber than trying to reenter argument mode after clearly being over it. I had no other route to take than to apologize.
“Ash, I’m sorry for whatever we were fighting about,” I said, “but we have a long day today, so let’s just let it go.”
“Fine,” she said, and then she walked out the door with her backpack. This was going to be a long day, and apparently we were meeting Alessandra now.
With no BlaBlaCars or affordable buses going from Siena to Genoa, we had to resort back to the Italian rail system. We had tried to find the route on the website, but it was extremely confusing and non-user-friendly. We walked inside the station and asked the woman behind the ticket counter if we could get tickets to Genoa. She looked at us like we were trying to buy an iPhone 2 from an Apple Store. “Yes, but you will go to thr
ee cities and have two layovers.”
We had no other options. “Okay, great, two tickets please,” I replied.
We boarded the first train of our journey to Genoa, and noticed we were two of three people on it, the third being a woman who looked to be in her late eighties. With the confidence that she wasn’t going to steal our backpacks (if she did, she deserved them), I went to sleep.
I dreamed I was a substitute teacher in a class I couldn’t control. I tried to yell at the kids to quiet down, but the screaming got louder and louder until I jolted awake. I looked around at the cabin to see almost every seat filled and children running up and down the aisle, screaming. There is no better birth control than being in close quarters with obnoxious children. Luckily, our backpacks were still in the compartment above us.
We had little to no room for error at our first stop in Empoli. We had a six-minute window from the moment our train arrived until our departure to Pisa. We got off the train as quickly as the three strollers in front of us would allow, and frantically beelined to the LED monitor with departure information like we were on The Amazing Race.
Our next train was also packed. I guess everyone was heading to see the architectural blunder in Pisa.
When we arrived in Pisa, I thought about staying on the train. Ash woke up from yet another nap, and to add on to her anger from last night, she was hungry. This was a lethal combination for my safety. This was no time for games; I had to act fast and with the only way I knew how (and which constantly failed me): humor.
“Hey, you wanna Pisa me?” I said, throwing up my fists. She cracked a fake smile and then went back to stone face. I retreated to staring at the tracks. Ten minutes later, I tried again, “What do you call a leaning picture in the Louvre?”
It took her a few seconds of me staring at her to reply. “I really don’t care, Kyle.”