the great adventure

last post was Sunday afternoon, eh? Well, immediately after leaving the internet cafe, an American guy asked us where we were from. He was wearing an Oakland A's polo shirt, so I asked him about it and it turns out he was Danny Putnam's father-in-law. Danny Putnam played for Stanford against Rice in the CWS in 2003 and is in the A's organization. So that was a bizarre coincidence.

It being Sunday afternoon in Florence, the Uffizi Museum was packed with a two-hour wait, so we skipped it and walked to Piazza del Michelangelo, which has an incredible overlooking view of the city. While up there, we visited San Miniato al Monte, a favorite church of Megan's landlady. It was really neat, with a ton of frescoes and a great patterned ceiling/intricately decorated roof supports. The Florentines used this church to defend against the armies of Charles V and a Medici pope back in the day and put Michelangelo in charge of the defenses. He drew fire to this church's belltower by placing two cannons in it, then bolstered its defenses by hanging mattresses on the side of the tower, saving it from demolition. We walked around the extensive cemetery around the belltower.

Then we people watched on the steps of Il Duomo and eventually headed to dinner. After seating us at a big table, they made us move and fill in another table; it eventually became the English-speaking table, and we made conversation with a Penn State art history prof.

Monday/yesterday was our last day in Florence, and not even a full day. We bussed into the city around noon for lunch, then began the churchwalk (big museums closed). With Megan leading the way with more knowledge than you can possibly imagine, we hit Santa Maria Novella, San Lorenzo, the duomo, and Santa Croce. We missed the duomo baptistry (sorry, Mom) and one of the big Medici tombs. You've got to draw the line somewhere. But the churches were really neat, and Megan knew a lot of little stuff. For instance, the floor of the church in San Lorenzo was designed to resemble the grill on which he was martyred. Good stuff.

So we bussed back up to the villa, got our stuff, and headed back out. Between waiting for busses and walking to and from the bus stop, the back-and-forth took about two hours, so we just missed the 1814 train. That was probably a good thing, however, because we got to eat dinner before the train ride, heading out on the 1914. We got to Milano a little after 2200, and this was the part of the trip I had been worried about. We had an address for Pietro's but hadn't been able to find it on a map. So we gave it to a taxi driver and he said he knew where it was. When we got in, it became apparent that he didn't need to know where it was, because he had a tricked-out GPS system in the cab. And it doubled as TV when it wasn't giving him directions. So he dropped us off here and it was all amazingly easy to get in to the apartment, since one of Pietro's roommates was here to let us in. A big relief for me.

Pietro is a pen pal of my brother's from when we were kids, so he's in his late twenties. My family has visited the family here in Milano before, but not since I was in high school. Pietro is doing his residency at the moment en route to becoming a neurologist. Yikes. But we're staying at his place, and he greeted us warmly when he got home from attending a concert, told us to make ourselves at home, and circled some places on a map for us. So today we're doing laundry, enjoying the internet, and relaxing before we check out Milano itself. And trying to figure out plans for the rest of the trip.

Next game: tomorrow, Serie A: Inter Milan v. Roma
Next stop: some time on Saturday, Barcelona, Spain