Day trips from Fucecchio

Leonardo da Vinci was not just a painter but also an accomplished inventor. He conceived his first design for a flying machine in 1488, more than 400 years before the first airplane took off. We once again packed our lunch and headed out for a day trip to Vinci. The town of Vinci claims to be his birthplace and is only a short drive from where we were staying.  Da Vinci died in 1519 and this hilltop town celebrates Leonardo in the Museo Leonardiano which is located in a 13^th century castle.

The museum displays wooden models of his machines based on his drawings from notebooks, which are shown alongside the models. There is a bicycle, a diving suit, armoured tank and even a machine gun.  There is a Da Vinci museum touring North American with similar displays inspired from this museum – check it out if you can.  Calvin is sure he (Leonardo, not Calvin) was visited by Aliens – his ideas seem FAR too advanced for his time.  We took our time and really tried to absorb what a forward thinking, Renaissance man he really was.

If there is a tower to climb, we must climb it and that we did in Vinci. The top boasted a beautiful view of Tuscany, without tourists, but flies swarmed from all angles so we snapped a few pics and returned to the museum.

Lucca was next on the list of small towns to visit and it was about the same distance from our apartment as Vinci, but in the opposite direction.  Two towns in one day, oh my!  The old town of Lucca is surrounded by 17^th century ramparts that encircle the entire town. If you are not a resident then you cannot drive in the city.  We parked outside the walls and walked in which makes for a fairly peaceful tour without the worry of many cars.



Tower is over Devin's right shoulder...see the tree! WOW!



We walked around the centre of town and visited the tower of Guinigi which is a famous landmark because of the oak trees that grow out of the top of the tower.  The story is that over many centuries, soot from windstorms combined with seeds dropped from birds led to the birth of some pretty impressive oak trees on the top of a 44 m tower. 

Towers are everywhere in Italy and it is said that the towers signified the power and wealth of the builder and just like today, it seems that size (of your tower) and bettering the ‘Jones’ mattered a great deal.   We didn’t climb this tower…a first for us….but they were charging far too much, in our opinion, for the pleasure of walking up 250 stairs.  We explored for a bit longer and stopped for a slice of pizza while watching the people go by. We went for a walk along the ramparts which are extremely high city walls that offer great views of the city and kept enemies out hundreds of years ago but belong to joggers and bikers now. We left Lucca and headed back to Fucecchio for an early night.

Florence

This day trip to Florence involved sightseeing during the day and an international football match in the evening.

Calvin and Noah dropped us off to go find a parking spot closer to the stadium as we would be exiting the match at 11:00pm and we weren’t certain of the outcome so we could not predict the fan reaction but we all know that Italians do NOT lack passion.  Devin, Aidan and I were dropped as close as possible to Accademia with the main goal of seeing David, one of many Michelangelo masterpieces. The three of us made it there fairly quickly and I wondered why the line that usually wraps around the block wasn’t anywhere in sight until I saw the sign on the door “Closed due to workers strike”. What? But we are from Canada and my kids really want to see this statue and I’m not leaving until they see it! I didn’t say any of those things but I was really disappointed. Luckily there was a small supermarket across the street where I bought lunch for Dev, Aidan and I.  It was over an hour or so for Noah and Calvin to get to the museum as they had a 40 minute walk from the stadium.  They were equally disappointed and Noah hoped we could come back later in the week. I remembered that there was a copy of David in the Piazza della Signoria and so we decided to make do with the replica. 

On the way we stopped at the Duomo and walked all around to get a good perspective of this famous Florence symbol. It is richly decorated and its orange tiled cathedral roof can be seen from many spots in Florence as the city’s tallest building.

The separate Baptistry building is the home of the celebrated bronze doors that depict scriptural subjects but more impressively show such incredible perspective, depth and individual figures.

Aidan and Noah went right up front to view the doors, past the tourist groups and took many pictures, including the one Aidan took and we have posted here. Devin sat on Calvin’s shoulders and we spent a bit of time admiring the craftsmanship.  The boys had just negotiated three Italia Football scarves for the game that they were proudly wearing around their necks when we ran into a Slovenia fan also admiring the bronze doors. He was a friendly older gentleman who couldn’t speak English (but tried) and we managed to make out Hope Is Eternal (as it applied to his team – turns out they need more than hope!). We walked to the Piazza dei Signoria to see the replica of the David statue. We took some pictures and marvelled at the 17 foot tall dude.

We happened upon a little comedy show going on in the square so we grabbed a seat and watched for about 15 minutes. A mime performer was very sneakily walking behind people mimicking them and it was hilarious. The boys could have stayed all afternoon watching him and they showed their appreciation by adding a couple of euros to his hat.

Some last pictures at the Ponte Vecchio bridge and we were off to grab some street meat before the game. 

We retraced Calvin and Noah’s steps from the morning and arrived at the stadium a bit earlier than expected.  The game was a 2012 Euro Qualification game and Slovenia had played well against Italy in the past so tensions were high when we arrived. 

For the record, we were, of course, cheering for Italia.    On the walk, we ran into some rowdy, pickled Slovenia football fans.  They were sporting their 2 can beer helmets, a megaphone and as much Slovenia football gear as you could imagine.  While we waited for the light to turn green, the Slovenians saw our boys wearing their Italia scarves and decided to give the boys a bit of hard time. They razzed them a bit and the English must have clued them in that we weren’t Italian and so they asked where we were from. When we told them, they started to sing a bit of Oh Canada…pretty impressive.   They were really nice and pretty funny as they gave all the locals a hard time on the walk to the stadium.  I’m not sure how many beer they had during the game or if they were as happy after the game but we were glad we didn’t run in to them on the walk back to the car.

We found our seats at the stadium, and they were great seats and a big relief since Calvin couldn’t really tell on-line when he was buying them and was hoping they were not in the Slovenia fan zone! The singing of the Italian national anthem was great. It sounded so lively and full of pride.

Let us unite, let us love one another,

For union and love

Reveal to the people

The ways of the Lord.

Let us swear to set free

The land of our birth:

United, for God,

Who can overcome us?

Ok, it’s no haka but intimidating none the less, especially when you don’t understand the lyrics and 50,000 are singing and pumping their fists.  

There was no score for most of the game but plenty of fans standing and yelling and waving their arms. There were four generations of a family sitting in front of us and the women could singlehandedly scare the #$)*# out of any competitor…in between smokes of course.  They were screaming, throwing their hands in the air, kicking imaginary soccer balls, hitting their men sitting nearby and there were plenty of groans, Italian cuss words, growls and cheering.   Noah started imitating their every move and we were cracking up.  He looked like a really passionate Italian fan and you would never know he couldn’t speak a word of Italian from his arm waiving.  The ‘real’ fans sat behind their teams’ net and never sat down during the game. 

They started the wave and the boys jumped right in.  With 15 minutes remaining in the game, Italy subbed in their striker, Mario Balotelli, as well as two other mid fielders.  The women went absolutely nuts when Mario rose from the bench.  The crowd chanted Mario, Mario, Mario and flashbulbs lit up the stadium.  Very cool.  Italy had dominated the entire game and the 0–0 score did not reflect the half dozen scoring opportunities but when these superstars took to the field, it was as if Italy was playing with children.  They marched down the field to score a quick goal and seal the victory.   The crowd went wild and so did we!  We high fived a few of the grandmothers in front of us and they almost knocked us over.   The fans sang as we exited the building and it was well after midnight by the time we got home.  Another great day (even without the real David).