Empty Mangers

At first, we thought hooligans were stealing all the baby Jesus figures from Nativity scenes around town--including this one inside the Duomo. (That would be the explanation in the States.) But such blasphemy seemed impossible in a Catholic country like Italy.

Then, we figured it out: The baby isn't born until Dec. 24.

Frosty in Firenze

Last night, the rain turned into sleet and started to stick. You-know-who has been whining about the lack of snow (one more reason Salt Lake City is SO much better than Florence). I didn't want to get his hopes up.

But this morning we opened the windows and the city had been frosted--for the first time in years. It wasn't just scrapbookers from Utah snapping photos. Jack pulled on his size 5 snow pants and his new Christmas sweater and tromped out onto the deck to make a snow"man".

It's small. But it will do.

O Tannenbaum

A city Christmas tree after all--at Piazza della Repubblica. (It's sponsored by the hotels around the square.)

Santa seems to be optional. He comes and goes.

Takeout

Vending machine caves are tucked into buildings around town for fast food on the go.

There's espresso, cola, fizzy water, Fanta and--slightly disturbing--hot meals. For 3 to 5 euros, your options range from farfalle with smoked salmon to lasagna al forno. Those selections are always empty. I've tried to buy one just for the novelty. Either they're selling out...or the concept has failed.

I have a hard time believing Italians would eat reheated pasta from a vending machine.

All He Wants for Christmas...

In Italy, children place their baby teeth under a glass next to the bed. During the night, a mouse, "Topino," removes the tooth and leaves a few coins underneath the glass.

We've been visited by the tooth fairy TWICE in the last week.

"She brought Italian money!" he said.

Lost in Translation

Italians are mystified by American outrage at the verdict in Amanda Knox's murder trial. They're watching CNN's analysts blame it on a parochial Perugia jury or Fox's pundits chalk it up to anti-American student sentiment in a college town. They saw Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sort of deflect the question of whether or not the U.S. government would intervene.

Reaction here ranges from defensive affront that anyone would knock Italy's judicial system to outright cynicism: the local TV affiliate compared Knox to Carlo Parlanti, an Italian convicted of rape in California and sent to prison for nine years (many Italians believe he was set up). America jailed an innocent Italian--so...tit-for-tat.

The people I've talked to reassure me that Amanda is "doing fine" in prison. They promise that her sentence will be reduced to 10 years on appeal. "A girl died," they say. "Someone had to go to prison."

Flipped Switch

The day after Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the American Christmas shopping season. The day of the Immaculate Conception--or rather, the weekend before--seems to kick off the holiday for Italians.

Tuesday, Dec. 8 is a national holiday. Schools are closed. Many Italians made a four-day weekend of it: Driving up to Germany or descending on Florence to see the Uffizi and the David without American and Japanese tourists--and to shop.

Most of the stores opened on Sunday and stayed open (unheard of!). And walking through town is like pressing through a mosh pit full of people in puffy black coats. (Except for the guy in purple; he's a mime.)

"German" Christmas Market

At Santa Croce through Dec. 20.

Northern Italians from the Alpine regions come to town speaking German, grilling wurstel and bratwurst and peddling carved wooden nativity scenes and stocking caps.

It's almost as good as Strasbourg or Munich--and the natives flock there in droves to eat strudel and buy ornaments.

I bought these....for Jack.

Values Education

Last month, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that crosses displayed in Italy's classrooms violate parents' rights to raise their children according to their own values.

A Finnish immigrant sued after schools in Padua refused to remove the crosses from her child's classrooms. Her efforts failed in Italian courts. But the European court ordered the state to pay the woman 5,000 euros.

Italian government officials call the ruling "shameful" and say the rest of the European Union is abandoning its heritage. And citizens are going to the piazzas to collect signatures--including at this tent in Piazza della Repubblica last weekend--in an attempt to reverse the ruling.

This would all be quaint if it didn't feel so familiar....

Bicycle Graveyard

Florence is a town for bicycles--bikeways, bike shops, bike chains and locks latched everywhere.

It's also the last resting place for a lot of skeletons. Some are the victims of hoodlums who stomp on the spokes, bending the wheels so their owners can't ride home. Others seem simply to have been left to scavengers--seats and front wheels missing, tires breaking down in the elements and frames rusting for months.

You never know when someone might come, unlock the chain and ride off on the thing...

Strings of Streetlights

Christmas trees are rare. Stockings are few. No Santa parade--although there is a plastic replica on the carousel at Piazza della Repubblica.

But Firenze does have lights. Lots and lots of lights. Some with the obligatory Fleur de Lis. Others just draped over alleys or shaped into curtains.

The halls are decked.

42 kilometers plus 195 meters

Yesterday was Marathon Day. And the town virtually shut down to make way for 10,000 runners from 60 countries.

Besides skirting Piazzale Michelangelo, Ponte Vecchio and the Duomo before ending at Santa Croce, the route zigzagged around our apartment. Helicopters buzzed overhead for what seemed like hours, disappeared and then hovered some more.

As expected, the Kenyan won.

All in all, a grueling way to sightsee...

Black Friday

Like retailers in America, Florence's shop owners are nervous.

A few months ago, they parked Lamborghinis on Via Tornabuoni in hopes of inspiring shopppers.

Now, the message is even more bald-faced: "Keep Shopping" (with a purple Fleur de Lis for good measure) in spite of a little torn up sidewalk. Spending, apparently, is your duty as a patriotic Florentine.

Thanksgiving in Firenze

The menu from the Four Seasons Hotel, including: spinach flan, lobster chowder and pumpkin risotto. For only 75 euros ($105) a person!

And pumpkin pies from Mama's Bakery, the self-proclaimed "American bakery" in town, were available -- pre-order only -- for the bargain price of 25 euros... each.

Wish I'd thought of that. I could have made a bundle.

Olio Nuovo

The new oil is out. The first press--the REAL first press--of the olives, this stuff is like Fruit of the Gods for Tuscans. Bright green and a little bit murky, it tastes grassy, almost peppery. The Italians sop it up with toasted Pane Toscano. It's company food: a treat you pull out to impress your guests or give to a hostess who's the mostest. This doesn't get shipped in bulk to the U.S. And it's $20 a liter.

Extra Virgin doesn't even compare...

Castello Verrazzano

The generation of Italians who love Americans as World War II liberators is dying off. For younger people, feelings are muddled by the war in Iraq and the Coca-Cola corporate homogenization of the world.

But Luigi Capollini, the owner of Castello Verrazzano, has missed the memo. Luigi's father bought the castle and its vineyards in the 1950s after the previous family (allies of the fascists) were disgraced. Luigi feels a unique connection to America. His father made his fortune importing coffee from Brazil. And the Capollinis have lined their walls with artwork and mementos of the famous Italian explorer and the New York bridge named after him. (Unfortunately, Verrazzano was eaten by cannibals in the Bahamas on his third trip to the New World.)

This weekend, we got the private tour of the fortress and cellars--where they raise their own wild boars and age proscuitto and balsamico--and a lunch of tagliatelle with Cinghiale (wild boar) sauce and guinea fowl with Luigi and his family.

Oh--they also make a great, affordable Chianti Classico riserva.

Wi-Firenze

In this place where high-tech struggles to meet the ancient, credit card readers are often "broken" and you stand in line with everyone else at the post office to pay your bills.

But Florence is catching up. This month, the city wired 12 piazzas around town--free WiFi for one hour outside the Uffizi, in Santo Spirito, Piazza Santa Croce and Piazzale Michelangelo. You can post those pictures to Facebook immediately after you take them...

Floods in Florence

November is the month when Florence floods. After the downpours of September and October, the Arno rises a bit, turns a bit more brown.

Some years, the water is catastrophic: 1177, 1333, 1557, 1740, 1844 and 1864. The most damaging, of course, was the flood of Nov. 4, 1966, when much of the old town was under water for days. Santa Croce, the Biblioteca Nazionale, the Brancacci Chapel were all filled with varying levels of brown muck.

I just finished a great book about that flood, Dark Water, by Robert Clark. Following one work, Cimabue's Crocifisso c. 1288, from mold to "restoration," Clark shows how even Florence's masterpieces couldn't overcome the blind ambition and bureaucratic morass that sometimes define life in this place.

Despite overflow basins upstream and high-tech river level monitoring, I'm looking askance at the Arno this month.

For the Birds

The monstrous new court complex by the airport hasn't been occupied by humans yet. But pigeons have taken roost.

Construction on the "Palagiustizia" (or Palace of Justice) started in the 1970s. It's a massive modern hodge-podge--with circular windows and jutting glass atriums and brick battlements. It seems the point was to design something that looked completely different from Florence's Renaissance architecture (usually a bad idea).

Biologists estimate there are about 100 nests in the building. Rather than set traps and take care of the problem quickly and efficiently, authorities are considering sterilizing the birds to slowly decrease the population.

Did I mention pigeons are protected in Italy?

Bronze Elephant

City leaders still can't decide what to do with Greg Wyatt's "Two Rivers" sculpture. The exhibit is long gone, but the bronze still languishes next to more classical pieces in Piazza della Signoria.

The original idea was to move the American sculptor's work to another square. But that plan fell apart.

It's not the kind of thing you can regift...

Off the Beaten Path

After trudging with the masses through the Uffizi, the Accademia and the Duomo, I'm starting to appreciate the lesser-visited sites.

The great Renaissance painters liberally sprinkled their work throughout abbeys and monasteries and cloisters around Tuscany. And, with fewer tourists and less artwork crammed in the space, you can really appreciate what's in front of you.

Lately, I've been on a "Last Supper" tour. In the eating halls of these abbeys and monasteries and cloisters, the practice was to depict Christ and the Apostles in plaster. It's so common, Cenacolo has become synonymous with the Last Supper. The one above, by Ghirlandaio, is in Ognissanti, our neighborhood church. Da Vinci reportedly borrowed liberally from the earlier painting for his more famous rendition in Milano.

Even better: Admission to most of the Cenacolos is free.

Tuscan Sushi

The cliche about food in Tuscany is that it's all meat all the time -- wild boar, rabbit, pigeon sauce even. For critics, the monotony is broken up only occasionally by a few overcooked vegetables.

Dario Cecchini, the Butcher-Preacher of Panzano (and a dead ringer for Liberace), literally embodies the conventional wisdom. A Sunday lunch at his place, Macelleria Cecchini or Officina della Bistecca, is an adventure in red meat: six courses of chianina beef ranging from raw ground (or "sushi" as he calls it) to a traditional Beafsteak Florentine, three inches thick, charred on the outside and room temperature on the inside.

Carrying the cliche even further, Dario appears halfway through the meal to deliver his big line: "To Beef or Not to Beef." Somehow, you forgive him.

I've avoided carpaccio for a reason. I never thought I'd eat raw ground meat in an age of mad cow. But as Tuscan cookbook author Judy Witts Francini (www.divinacucina.com) says, "It's like butta." It was. Butta mixed with garlic and herbs. The baked potatoes were softened up with Tuscan "butter" -- raw pork lard mixed with herbs. The vegetables were crudite--for dipping in red wine vinegar and olive oil. And the whole meal was topped off with olive oil cake.

It was the perfect meal for a blustery fall day.

Jamie Oliver and Alice Waters are rumored to be fans.

But for your heart's sake, eat here just once a year.

Honda in Firenze

Oil Change: $110 (for the oil)

Tire Rotation: $75

Gallon of Gas: $6

Having a car in Italy: Priceless

Postscript

The archbishop of Florence has relieved an activist priest of his duties after Don Allesandro Santoro married a "same-sex" couple. The couple has lived together for more than 10 years and were joined in a civil union in 1983. The bride was born male but underwent gender reassignment surgery to become female. The church still considers her male...

As Italy Goes

A shoutout to Maine:

Italy, unofficially a Catholic country, probably will be one of the last developed nations to grant gay couples any rights. And yet, there's a whisper of a human rights campaign in this anarchist graffiti stencil I found....

Locked in Love

Midway across the Ponte Vecchio, couples have turned the wrought iron fence around the Cellini statue into a gnarled mass of brass.

I have a feeling that this developed through benign neglect--a byproduct of people leaving bicycle locks at random spots around the city and cleanup crews allowing them to multiply. Eventually, the clumps of locks grow so massive, they become monuments in and of themselves.

On the bridge, lovers pledge their troth, sign their names to a lock and then latch it. Forever and ever.

As far as I'm concerned, it's better than carving initials in an aspen tree....

Ringing in My Ears

Church bells are ubiquitous in Italy--like the Medici coats of arms on the buildings and the Fleurs de Lis on the sidewalks. A sort of soundtrack for Firenze, one church starts up at 7 a.m.; another finishes the day at 6 p.m. Occasionally, you'll hear them off in the distance at 9 p.m. They're a great help to people whose watch batteries are broken (me).

So I was gobsmacked to hear that the curmudgeons in one Phoenix suburb went to court to stop the bishop of The Cathedral of Christ the King from playing a recording of church bells....(http://abcnews.go.com/WN/freedom-religion-questioned-ringing-church-bells-case/story?id=8978147) They want their peace and quiet!

To be fair, REAL church bells are much more charming than recorded church bells. Could be the grumpy old men objected to the cheese factor.

Still....I hope the church wins.

Graffiti is an Italian Word

Which totally makes sense....

Vasari Corridor

Getting a tour of the Percorso Del Principe (Way of the Princes) encapsulates everything you've heard about Italy: It's not WHAT you know; it's WHO you know. And modern-day life is routinely stymied by labrynthine government bureaucracy and mind-boggling inefficiencies.

A friend who knows someone who knows someone arranged for me and some friends to walk the Vasari Corridor, the overheard walkway between the Uffizi and Palazzo Pitti commissioned by the Medici in 1560. Cosimo I wanted to bypass potential assassins and avoid mixing with the unwashed masses.

It's a strangely quiet sanctuary above the teeming crowds at Piazza della Signoria and Ponte Vecchio. Little has changed inside since Firenze's grand dukes walked from home to the office and back. In the 1930s, Mussolini added three picture windows overlooking the Arno for a visit by Adolf Hitler. And paintings scorched and melted by a 1993 mafia car bomb are on display.

But most interesting are the self-portraits of artists such as Rembrandt and Tiziano, whose distinctive styles of painting are apparent when they paint themselves. Here's modernist Marc Chagall:

Through official channels, the tour costs $135 and takes months to arrange. Many natives have never done it.

We were some of the last to go in before the corridor closes for two years. For the first time, crews are going to add heating and air conditioning (after four centuries of the corridor's existence and decades behind technology) to finally protect the artwork from sweltering summers and freeze-and-thaw winters.

Good Luck Charm

Normally, I think rats are disgusting. We had a nest of them in our back yard in Salt Lake City. Discovered them when we tore down a shed and found a cache of empty walnut shells.

But I make an exception for Coypu. These guys are Beatrix Potter cute. Muskrats that have emigrated from farms in the north, they've taken up residence on the Arno's banks. They're the size of small beavers -- and just as hairy.

Along with noisy families of ducks and geese, we seem to have a clutch of Coypu outside our window. Fodor's or Frommer's -- one of the Florence guidebooks -- says you're lucky if you catch a glimpse...

Signs of the Apocalypse

Or Halloween.

Italians don't do much with the Day of the Dead. Carnivale is a bigger costume party. And there are no orange carving pumpkins to be found--except on U.S. Air Force bases.

And yet....

A Study in Profiles

Jack and a sculpture at Boboli Gardens...Snub nose meets Roman.

Italy's Melting Pot

With a national birthrate hovering at less than replacement value for the past two decades, Italy had to find labor somewhere--people to build the cars and clean the hotels and work in Tabacchi shops. So, they turned to Albania, India, Pakistan, China and North Africa.

A few years ago, the only ethnic restaurants to be found were Chinese and American fast food. Now, there are Indian restaurants, Kebab shops and Shushi plates. And more and more headscarves dot the market.

Still, in a land where basketball is a distant second to soccer, I never expected to see a pickup cricket game (played with a tennis ball) this weekend on the concrete river embankment outside our window....

Reagan Outdoor Advertising

A friend was just remarking how you don't see many billboards in Italy....

Apparently, they just hang banners from the Ponte Vecchio for the right price. This one -- an ad for grocery chain Esselunga's silverware campaign (I'm dutifully collecting stickers and points so I can buy the serving spoon) -- appeared yesterday.

Next up: The Duomo.

Cat Ladies

Rome is famous for its feral cats -- nearly 200,000 of them -- and the ladies who take care of them. They're women of a certain age who haul cat food to points around the town day after day. The most famous gather at Largo di Torre Argentina, an ancient archaelogical dig with 250 wild cats in residence.

In America, the cat ladies would take the critters home and, inevitably, the neighbors would call animal services when the smell got too rank.

I've found one of Florence's m0st dependable cat ladies on my hikes up to Piazzale Michelangelo and the church of San Miniato al Monte. She stops at the same spot on the stairs every morning at about 9 a.m. Her grocery cart is loaded with dry food and plastic plates. And the cats come running.

She's a little cranky, so this photo was taken on the fly....

Buyer Beware

If I wanted to buy a designer purse, I'd probably be tempted by the knockoff Pradas and Guccis nestled into dirty sheets outside all the major tourist attractions in town. But I hope I would notice that the vendors bundle the whole shebang up like a...um...hobo bag and start heading in the other direction when the police are near.

In recent years, Italy has started to crack down on pirated fashion. Signs are posted to warn unsuspecting shoppers. For the price of the ticket -- $1,000 -- you could almost afford the real thing.

Wonder if they'd care as much about a Hermes bag....

After the Harvest

Never thought it could happen. But eventually, Florence starts to look like background to the mundane tasks of life: grocery shopping, school buses, dodging cars during morning walks.

We got out of town last weekend and drove to Montalcino. After a hotel manager/scam artist tried to charge us 185 euros a night to stay in his dated rooms with a "view," we drove down the road a bit further and found the agriturismo for Il Cocco vineyard. (Here's where I slip into diminutives...) It's run by the cutest young winemaker, Giacomo, who seems doomed to scrape by despite 16-hour days and a great Rosso di Montalcino. Still in the process of establishing his vintage, he's been taken by a California wine merchant who didn't pay for the bottles Giacomo shipped....

The accommodations were rustic but "not too precious," as Mary Malouf, the food editor of Salt Lake Magazine and a friend in town, put it. The place was guarded by a skittish Germ

an Shepherd named Cookie who only wanted to play soccer/keep-away. And the terraces were adorned with an unusual number of sexually provocative statues.

It was just the kind of can't-be-duplicated experience to remind us how lucky we are....

Fall-colored Fashion

The Italians are a little smug about American fashion. And with good reason. There's a lot to explain: Touring Europe in Nike running shoes, Dockers pleated khakis, Hawaiian shirts.

I'm turning the tables. In one afternoon at the Duomo, I snapped these shots. Fashion-forward as the Italians are, I don't think the crimson-hued pants many of the men wear are ever going to sweep the world.

I dare you men out there to put these on.

(OK. This guy is a street cleaner.)