Tuscany – The BFG Abroad

Venetian winters have their charms – there is no doubt about that. The light begins to fade around 3.00pm and soon the whole sky is thickly swathed in ochre-orange twilight. The night captures Venice around 6.00pm and sprinkles it with stars, which makes late-night walking a pleasure.

However, the Antipodean in me had a longing for a return to nature, so when a few friends of mine asked me if I wanted to tag along with them for a weekend in Florence, I couldn’t resist. Florence promised to put on a good show for us; it was forecasted to be a perfect Spring weekend, full of sunny blue skies and temperate breezes.

We caught the train out of Venice, and within two hours, we had arrived. I played tour guide, as this was my third time in Firenze, and I tempted the tired and hungry travellers with lavish descriptions of creamy truffle dips, verdurous produce and more parmesan than you could poke a stick at.

We headed to the second floor of the market to sample the goods of the providers in an effort to appease our collective hunger.

Unfortunately we were so preoccupied with our very late breakfast, that we forgot that the stalls below closed at 3.00pm. Cue terse silence on my part. It was a dark moment for me. I’d rather not talk about it.

It was one of our party’s birthday, and it was mutually agreed that we should throw a little soirée in our Airbnb that night. Another had the bright idea of making pizza, so off we traipsed around Florence, in search of the essentials: cake, wine, olive oil and bread. All stations to carb central, thank you very much.

Pasqua (Easter) is just around the corner!

So off we went, traipsing and giggling among the backstreets of Florence on our quest for necessities. Along the way, we accumulated three bottles of excellent wine, two baguettes, a gorgeous vintage Burberry coat, two birthday cakes, pizza ingredients and Sicilian oranges. An odd mix, but it worked.

We returned to the Airbnb, pumped up the music, poured the wine, and began our pyjama-pizza-Prosecco party. Try saying that three times fast. I started on the dough, and taught the birthday girl how to knead, but it might have been better if the chef wasn’t four glasses deep. Whoops.

Several kilos of pizza, an inebriated fashion show and a few Venetian guests later, we retired in the early hours of the morning; full, happy and sloshed.

The next morning, half our party went to a Korean film lecture, and the other journeyed to the Uffizi. R and I spent 5 hours in amongst the exhibitions, which contain some of my favourite pieces of art ever.

My third time at the Uffizi was perhaps the worst – I’m not sure, if in the epoch of the smartphone, people have become more obnoxious and facile than ever, or if I was just particularly sensitive to it, but I was quite honestly ready to deck a few American tourists who thought that invading my personal space/sticking their phone an inch from my face in order to take a photo was appropriate.

And I know I’m coming off as a particularly insufferable cross between Miss Manners and a pedant, but I just cannot fathom the point of paying to enter a gallery like the Uffizi, in order to spend five seconds in front of the most well-known pictures, to take your own photo of them, so that you can torment your friends with photos/never look at it.

Aristotle said that ‘the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.’, and even though he was a relatively misogynistic classist (who wasn’t, or isn’t, I suppose), I couldn’t agree more with him. Art, in whatever form, in whatever school, exists to comment on our manner of living, exists to evoke or soothe human emotion. To wait to be attributed meaning, in whatever minutiae possible; to be seen — truly seen — to look at you from whatever pedestal it’s on and ask you, the consumer, how it connects to you and your plastic-filled, tech-obsessed, apathetic 21st century life.

It could be the worst thing you’ve ever seen, the best, or simply inconsequential. But if you don’t even consider it, if you look at a painted piece of canvas that has existed for 400 years through the camera lens of your phone and walk away with no connection, no opinion except the one written on the wall next to it, tell me, what was the point? Was it simply a bullet point on the to-do list of your life?

Rant over, in the interests of touristic safety, I spent most of my time away from the shoving and phone/face contact, sitting in the hallways and admiring the ceilings. Painted by Alessandro Allori in the Mannerist style in the 16th century – it’s essentially a big pagan party up above. Littered with mythological creatures, references to then contemporary Florentine finds and seriously weird demons – – it’s easy to get a kink in your neck from admiring the airy art up above.

Saturday night we indulged in the Florentine classic, bistecca alla fiorentina,which, as you can see, was practically served mooing.

Most tourists having absconded, we walked around the Duomo for a few hours, enjoying the peace and marvelling at the stonework in the warm evening.

Me, R, J and H after a few bottles of Chianti…

Sunday dawned bright and balmy; the perfect temperature for our adventure to come. I had booked a day’s riding through the olive groves and vineyards of Tuscany, and I couldn’t be more excited. We walked to the pickup point, met our guide Marco (of course), and were driven to the stables to meet our noble steeds. Soon, we were off!