a room with a view

Today's soundtrack:
Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones
Step on my Old Size Nines by Stereophonics
Sinner by Neil Finn

I know that the list has not even a hint of Italy, but I have been nursing a feeling of nostalgia for Florence this evening. It may have started with the comment made by a certain professor that E.M. Forster was boring, or it may have been triggered by the familiar old, hot sewage smell coming from a house I passed by on my way home yesterday, but I have an overwhelming urge to sit back and smile about la dolce vita.

Do you see the bell tower in the picture. Built in the 1890s or so in the Neo-Gothic style so that it would match the rest of the Santa Croce. The Santa Croce is still the home of Franciscan monks and so bells ring out at terce and none, calling the old women to mass and the rest of us from our beds. I was the only one in the apartment with a room that faced the Santa Croce; everyone else faced the Red Garter, an American bar that seemed to be the stop for every Contiki tour that come through that month. So as a result, I was the only one to wake up with the bells. I would roll out of bed at an hour that seems ungodly to me here, quietly make my porridge and open the shutters of the windows in the dining room. If I sat at exactly the right spot, I would be able to watch the sun hit the Southern Gothic features. You see, this photo - this exact scene - is what I woke up to every morning for five weeks.

Later that morning my Edwardian Sister - the very dignified but somewhat constitutionally delicate Lady J - would make our daily commute to our seminar on the other side of the old part of the city. Down a side street, dodging the streetcleaners and men pulling their stalls of t-shirts, being careful not to breath when another alley linked up because of the sewer smell, until we saunter into the Piazza della Signoria. The Uffizi, the Palazzo Vecchio, and the Rape of the Sabine, but not a single tourist in site. The entire city was only just waking up. A small round stone, completely out of place with the rest of the irregular cobblestones, marks the spot where Savonarola was burned. We continue on a wider road, reading wall plaques that quote Dante, walking and walking until we see the Baptistry. And then, the Duomo. We pause. Sigh. Take a deep breath and realise the entire piazza smells like a horse. But it's only Lady J, the cart men, and me in the piazza. Bells toll for the next mass.

"Children, I have to tell you. You have no idea. You just don't know".