Canadian Prison a la Florentine

And yes, we’ve done time there…

After Verona we took a train to Firenze (Florence), the birthplace of the Renaissance! Our room at the Pensione Canada  wasn’t ready (of course) so we dropped off our bags and went to see the sights. Our first was the Academia – the museum with Michelangelo’s David statue. We realized that we had not pre-booked the museum and were dreading a 3 hour queue. Luckily for us though the line was very small and it only took us about an hour and a half to get in. Just in time too, apparently the Rubin’s were due for some crappy weather and it just started thunder storming as we entered the museum. David is an amazing piece of work, and the placement in the museum is just perfect. As you round the corner he literally jumps out at you, completely dominating the space. It was quite breathtaking, we sat down and simply stared at him. Adam, such a rebel, decided to break the rules and snap a few pictures sans flash…unfortunately we have not perfected our ‘sneaky museum photo’ technique and were called out by a mean museum lady, MML for short (we discovered that there are lots of MML’s in Florence). She actually threatened to call the police if he “took just one more photo”. We wanted to carry the camera out in the open just to dare someone to accuse us of picture taking again…but we decided to act like adults and enjoyed the rest of the museum, maybe with our tails a bit between the legs.

The weather still looked pretty threatening after the Academia so we went back to our hotel to check out our room and grab an umbrella. The room was spotless, like hospital spotless, right down to the decorations (i.e. bare white walls, white dresser, white sheets, white lamps, white floors). We ventured back out to see if we could book tickets for the Uffizi in person. Thankfully they did and we now had a date with the Uffizi for the following afternoon. This was like a beacon of light apparently because after we booked the tickets the rain stopped, the sun came out, and the crowds seemed a bit less hectic. We headed to Ponte Vecchia, Florence’s famous bridge full of shops, very similar to the Rialto bridge in Venice, to see what we could see. It was a beautiful sight with all the hills and mountains surrounding the area.

At this point something happened that hasn’t happened in 26 years, and isn’t likely to occur again for several years to come…Adam got bit by the shopping bug. That’s right folks, Adam “I only shop online” Rubin had a heyday trying on all kinds of European pants, shirts, jackets etc. before settling on a few items which I dubbed “wardrobe basics”. (Adam won’t let me post this until I confess that I urged him to make the purchases and made “wardrobe basics” sound like life-necessities — I’m quite the salesman). He looks quite sharp now leaving people wondering (I’m sure) what that nice looking European man is doing with an American girl dressed all in cotton?! After this excursion we were very ready for dinner (Adam couldn’t figure out why he was so tired and hungry…guys don’t realize just how hard shopping is!) and set out to find Trattoria Annelise(?) recommended by the front desk hotel woman.

Ok, wait, before I continue about our delicious dinner and the events that happened afterwards, including our incarceration, a few words need to be said about this “hotel” Pensione Canada. First of all we are convinced that they really meant “Prison Canada” but that something was lost in translation. Guests here are not allowed to leave with their key. Every time you leave you must leave your key with the front desk lady, and when you want back in must ring the bell and wait for the door to be opened. Curfew (yes, they have a curfew) is at 1:00 AM which is fine…or so we thought…we’ll get to that later. This means that the same hotel lady stays here literally all night until 1:00 AM in case people want to come and go. A bit strange. To add to this strangeness there are three people who apparently work the hotel – hotel lady (middle aged, probably has a past in prison warding), hotel woman (old, no English, lurker), and hotel man (middle aged, only saw him once).

Ok…back to Trattoria Annelise…we waited for about 30 minutes for an outdoor table and met some great folks, including a young couple from Manchester who, guess what, were staying in Pensione Canada as well! Well we thought that was just swell and proceeded to shut the restaurant down chatting it up (and drinking vino della casa, of course). Not ready to call it a night, we went to a bar that was directly next to the Pensione and here we all met another young couple from Nashville who, guess what (!), were also staying in Pensione Canada! Wow! We thought this was so amazing and when 1 AM rolled around decided that we should all go upstairs and hang out in one of our rooms.

Dundundunnnnnn….this is where the hotel lady and our new name “Canadian Prison a la Florentine” comes in…hotel lady lets all six of us in, gives us all our keys, and then stations herself in the middle of the hallway to make sure we go to our rooms. Like a sentinel. Our room and the Nashville couples room were actually right next to one another, but our Manchester friends were down the separate hallway. Operation Rescue Manchester Friends commenced with myself going down the hall…this was about 15 minutes after we had all gone to our rooms…and Ms. Sentinel was still manning her post. She hissed (yes hissed is actually the best word to describe the way she talked) “Where are you going! It’s past curfew!” I quickly explained that I wanted to say goodnight to my new friends and kept walking to their room. She did NOT appreciate that I knocked on their door (“They are sleeping!”) and our Manchester friends opened up just in time for me to bust out in muffled laughter. ORMF (Op. Rescue Manch. Friends) continued as we started back down the hall in single file. This is where things got ugly. Manchester friends were bringing a bottle of wine, but knew that the Sentinel wouldn’t like this, so they were hiding it…apparently Sentinels can see through any trick you have and she starts hissing “You have wine! It’s illegal!!! It’s illegal!” Manhandling occurred, a bit of chasing occurred, and all of it ended with the Sentinel bursting into our Nashville friends room to yell at us for trying to drink wine claiming all along “It’s illegal!”. We finally get her out of there and continued to hang out for about the next hour, laughing about how insane the Sentinel is and renaming our Prison, I mean hotel. (By the way, the inserted picture has nothing to do with this story, but thought the ominous clouds added a nice touch…)

The next day dawned with a bit less excitement than the night had ended with (it’s so easy to forget that wine contains sulfites when you’re having fun…). Nevertheless we headed out, into the rain, to visit the Uffizi museum. The works of art that I was most excited about here were two Boticelli’s: Birth of Venus and Primavera. These paintings are so beautiful in real life, even encased behind glass they do not become any less remarkable. Adam and I were both astonished with how large the paintings were, we had only ever seen reproductions in books, the real things must have been over six feet wide. Primavera is definitely my more favorite of the two because of the way the characters in the scene seem to flow together more seamlessly. The birth of Venus can feel a bit disjointed, as if three parts of a story were pushed together into the same frame. Seeing both of them in the same room however was a real treat! Some things we did not know where in the Uffizi were several of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings, and one Michelangelo painting – apparently it is the only one of his paintings still in Florence. We also got to see several Caravaggio’s as there was an exhibit going on. These were quite different from the mostly religious and mythological scenes taking place upstairs in the main Gallery’s…Caravaggio apparently loved decapitated heads and had a real knack for painting gruesome things with striking reality.

Feeling a bit museum-ed out we decided to tackle the campanile (bell tower) built right next to the Duomo. This climb – 418 steps tall – was well worth the effort for all of the gorgeous views it afforded. We took around 200 pictures of the Duomo (I am exaggerating but I am not sure by how much…it’s that close!) and had to remind ourselves to get one or two with us in the frame. After this, and wandering around the town some more, it was time for dinner. We found a cute little pizzeria right on the side of a road…a very busy road it turns out…and had some delicious pasta, fagioli, and pizza. Poor Adam is still searching for the perfect pizza by the way…a Napoli pizza (sauce, slices of mozzarella, slices of tomato, and a ton of basil). This one was a bit far from the mark: no sauce, melted mozzarella, and sliced cherry tomatoes, but it was still good. We were back to the hotel after our daily passaggiatta and gelato at 10:30 to avoid the wrath of the Sentinel.

The next morning check out was at 10, so we headed out to get a few more glimpses of Florence…after we checked and found out that our Prison-hotel does NOT hold luggage for even an hour to give guests more time to explore (“It is not possible. The train station checks bags.”). Needless to say we were not too sad about the prospect of leaving our holding cells…leaving Florence, on the other hand, was a bit more difficult.

We got out to the airport very easily and picked up our car – a little Ford Fiesta, over my many protestations who wanted the smallest, most European car they had – and started our wandering towards Lucca.

Side note: Pensione Canada was extremely clean, and the hotel lady gave good recommendations for food and gelato. If you can handle the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde switches that occur between the hours of 1:00 – 3:00 AM then this may be the place for you…