VI.x. Back in Tuscany

"Simply by not owning three medium-sized castles in Tuscany I have saved enough money in the last forty years on insurance premiums alone to buy a medium-sized castle in Tuscany."
- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The weather in Bologna has turned decidedly lousy, after what was a beautiful and unusually sun-drenched January. An exceptionally cold front had now descended on Southern Europe, something the uniformed military personnel who still announce the weather on Italian television blamed squarely on Siberia. Together with the cold, a great deal of precipitation fell, ending the drought, smog, and haze that had been jointly blamed on automobiles and the Sirocco, the dusty wind that, at least according to meteorological legend, originates in the sands of North Africa.
    I felt that the best refuge from this on a quiet Sunday would be Tuscany, only an hour south but almost invariably four or five degrees warmer thanks to the tunnel-pierced climactic frontier that is the Apennine range.
    I took the train to Florence, wanting to visit the Uffizi, then perhaps take a bus up to the quiet town of Fiesole in the afternoon. The entrance queue for the Uffizi, unlike when I last visited it in January under quite different circumstances, was not diminished as I thought it would have been on this Sunday morning. Instead, it was even more lengthy than usual. Discouraged and unwilling to wait in the drizzling cold of Vasari's austere courtyard for several hours, I wandered around thinking of what to do. Sunday morning meant that most of the churches were closed, and I had recently visited most of the other museums. At this point, Florence really felt like the small city that it is. Finally, I decided to visit the archaeological museum, tucked into a palazzo off Bruneleschi's Piazza Santissima Annunziata, a place where quite understandably, nobody goes.
    Up in Fiesole things were as grim, if not more so. The view was stunning as usual, though not as beautiful as from San Miniato on the other side of the city. The lush walled villas that ring the eastern side of the city, home to academic institutes and a fortunate few private individuals, were visible below, battened down for the winter season. The rain began falling quite heavily, and to my dismay even the museums in Fiesole were closed. Even the church of San Domenico, where Fra Angelico lived and worked, had its door closed shut. I decided to leave Florence shortly after lunch, and headed to Pistoia, as I had a hankering to see Giovanni Pisano's marble pulpit once more. Unfortunately, the church it is in, Sant'Andrea, was hosting some sort of young pilgrim's gathering, and so it too was impossible to see. Pistoia, it seemed, is even less hospitable on a Sunday in February than Florence is.
    On my way back to Bologna, I had a stopover in Prato and took advantage to stroll through the city, stopping my favourite pasticceria, a place called pane e ciocolatto. I consoled myself with a caramel flavoured cup of Eraclea, the pudding-like hot chocolate that is served all over Italy in as many as thirty-two different variants. The chocolate was so strong, even for my taste, that I had to ask for a glass of water as well.
    Not all days can be perfect.