ON A TRAIN FROM FLORENCE TO ROME, Monday, May 23, 2022 – I love super-fast trains. Love them. From my first ride on a Shinkansen in Japan, I was hooked, and the Italian super-fast trains, the Frescciarossa, are just as smooth and fun as their Asian counterparts. Ok, so they don’t really run on time that much, but ours was only 9 minutes late, and now we are speeding along across the Tuscan countryside watching the hills and red-roofed houses flash by our windows. 

 We had a wonderful, if very brief, stay in Florence, where we met up again with Grazia, who drove the 1 ½-hour drive to brave the heat and the crowds of a Florentine weekend with us. Florence is a small medieval city, with narrow, winding streets despite the best attempts of the ancient Romans to set it up as a traditional grid-patterned Roman military camp – the traces of which still remain in the main (wider) streets and the piazzas, one of which was the old Roman Forum. But I digress. The fact is that Florence is small, so when it is filled with masses of tourists – as it was this weekend – it feels extremely crowded. Regardless of what you may read in the news, European travel is full-on this summer. There were many Americans among the throngs, many of them young, but we also heard UK English, German, Russian, Chinese and Italian spoken among the tourists. 

 The theme of our weekend with Grazia was art – very old and very new. I have been focused this trip on showing Will and Amy great masterpieces of the past, but Grazia pulled me into the present, taking me to an NFT art show (what???? Yes, my thought exactly) that was running alongside the Donatello exhibition at the Strozzi Palace. It is digital art, sold digitally, sometimes for very large amounts of money, apparently using crypto or something. I am rather skeptical, but perhaps I am just too old. Grazia’s friend, who deals in art, is taking notice of the trend however, so stay tuned when you hear about NFTs. Grazia and I saw a massive digital artwork in the entryway of the storied Renaissance palace – it was a huge white frame filled with swirling, psychedelic shapes that constantly morphed and seemed to spill out of the frame into our space. It actually made us think of the introduction of linear perspective I have been so obsessively telling W&A about – how Donatello in sculpture and then Masaccio in painting continued the revolution in art toward humanism and realism started by Giotto (and Pisano before him) in the early 14^th century. Maybe people looking at this new-fangled art perfected by Leonard da Vinci were met with the same skepticism. Unfortunately, my loyal gang of art lovers were worn out and missed the NFT show, as well as the tour of an amazing collection of modern, 20^th and 21^st century art collected by Grazia’s friend’s father. The collection included Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, as well as many other artists I was not familiar with, but should have been. My friend Twink would have been over the moon. 

But lest I forget, Rick and I were also able to have an amazing experience examining, up close, the amazing 15^th century frescoes by Masolino and Masaccio at the Brancacci Chapel south of the Arno River. They are being restored, and visitors are allowed to climb the scaffolding to see the frescoes in small groups, for a half hour. It was amazing to be able to witness this transition from stylized to more realistic, between abstraction and realism – a tension that we saw play out in the modern art of the Casamonti collection as well. Oh yes, and we took W&A to the Uffizi late yesterday before joining Grazia again for a final Florence farewell dinner. Oh, just a few Duccios, Botticellis, Leonardos and Michelangelos before dinner. And we had some amazing food in Florence – the first night, Will and Amy sought out Chinese noodles while we had dinner with Grazia and a few friends from Florence and Rome at the 4 Leoni. Grazia also set us up for an amazing lunch at a hotel-top restaurant with beautiful views of the city – and the best truffle pastas.

Dinner last night was lovely, too, and it was funny, because we first said goodbye to Grazia Saturday night, because she was headed back home on the coast after spending the night at her friend’s house. But then she decided to stay, so we spent Sunday afternoon together at the modern art museum, and said goodbye again. Then she walked her sweet little King Charles Spaniel around a while and decided to stay for dinner! So we had the pleasure of a wonderful Florentine meal with her before she hit the road for home last night. So every time we said goodbye and see you soon, it was true. So hopefully, it will be true again. So we are off to our final stop – Roma! First on the itinerary is pizza, followed by the Roman Forum at night. Tomorrow morning we will get up at 6 a.m. for our early-morning breakfast tour of the Vatican