A tarnished gem

The 10 euro, 3 hour train ride from Florence to Orvieto was supposed to be filled with important, contemplative stares out the window like you see on Eurail pamphlets. The rain, however, washed out the passing farms and hilltop villages so I took out my netbook to write about Florence.

Florence is a masterpiece in need of restoration. Cobblestone streets and weathered statues add character, tell stories. The centuries of soot and relatively recent additions of grafitti do not. Maybe my expectations were skewed by arriving from the newly refurbished, stunning 2010 Bordeaux, where the limestone buildings actually shine (centuries of soot lasered and powerwashed) and the wine actually makes up for the mostly overrated French food that I encountered over seven weeks through the countryside and village hopping. As incredible as Bordeaux looks and tastes, it is worth noting that France is $100 billion in the hole -- an amount that must somehow (more debt) appear by 2013 in order to comply to EU's country club rules.

I don't know about Italy's budget situation, but some tourist revenue should rollback into clean-up projects and perhaps rollover into programs for the tagging youth.

The government's complacency towards cleaning the city is, to me, frustratingly dismissable given the well-kept art work and memorials inside the museums and churches. You walk into the Uffizi Museum and see Botticellis, Donatellos, Michelangelos, da Vincis, Rembrandts. You stand in Dante's house, walk ten minutes, and stare up in awe at David. You end the day by standing before Galileo's tomb, shaking your head in disbelief at what you're looking at and what you've seen that day, only to walk away with the understanding that this place was no doubt the "gem of the Renaissance".

If you're going, walk in between museums with gelato in hand. The city will be perfect. And if you pass by Machiavelli's statue outside the Uffizi, give him a nod for his continued influence.