Midnight in Florence

There’s something enchanting about Florence at midnight. Here, after a long evening of checking out restaurants for my new Italy guidebook, my research assistant Karin and I finish the day on what’s considered the first square of the Renaissance, Piazza della S. S. Annunziata, with the delicate arcaded porch of Brunelleschi’s Hospital of the Innocents. Downtown Florence is essentially traffic-free now, and it feels completely safe.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

 

My Crew Hard at Work

Imagine being all alone with one of the best cameramen in the world to film one of the best paintings in the world. Here with Karel Bauer and Simon Griffith, we are busy in the Uffizi Gallery filming Botticelli’s Allegory of Spring.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

Shooting David

Being a public-television film crew, we have to be creative in production. With a smooth floor and a good wheelchair, we’ve made a “poor man’s dolly” in order to get a nice swooping shot of Michelangelo’s David.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

 

Snapshots of My Time in Italy

All over Europe travelers forget guidebooks or leave them behind in hotels, and the hotels fill their shelves with them. They can be a fine source of supplemental information for the good student traveler. Hotel Bernini, a long-time favorite of our readers, in Siena.

The best five euros you can spend in Siena is for a pre-dinner cocktail on Il Campo, one of my favorite squares in Europe for lingering and people watching.

When you enjoy a full-blown Italian dinner, you don't get out until midnight. And when you leave, the table is a mess, with plenty of evidence of high-calorie and firewater fun. Waiters provide lots of drinks that seem designed to keep you from leaving. This is Karin Kibby, one of my ace Italy guides, who helped me out with my research in Florence.

All over Europe, museums are closed one day a week. And on this day they are very busy with film crews, VIP tours, and routine dusting, arranging, and maintenance. At the Uffizi this Monday, the Botticelli masterpieces were draped to protect them from flying dust as holes were being drilled.