Actually, after reviewing my pictures on my iPod (the only way I can keep track of the days and what we did on them is by looking at my photo album, which thankfully records on which days photos were taken) I realize that the next interesting event which occurred was the Medieval Manhattan. So, we shall commence with that! Onwards, dear readers!
Medieval Manhattan
The official name of said Medieval Manhattan is San Gimignano, and it is a little Tuscan town about an hour and a half away from Florence that is known for, as you may have guessed, its skyscrapers. Or at least towers, they don't nearly reach the height and grandeur of the real Manhattan's skyscrapers. But let's call them skyscrapers, just because it is far more interesting. These skyscrapers were built by the wealthy families of San Gimignano as displays of wealth and power, similar to the Medici and their sponsorship of great artists here in Florence. At one point there were over 70 of them; currently there are 13. It was quite a quaint town, with a beautiful church, gorgeous views of the Tuscan countryside, and extremely medieval piazzas, cobblestone alleys, and houses. It was of course nothing like Florence, as its height was in the medieval period as opposed to the Renaissance. That being said, it was extremely beautiful in entirely different ways. We ended up spending a large portion of our time in its cathedral, which had two frescoed walls, one telling stories of the New Testament and the other of the Old Testament. We also headed up onto the old wall of the city, and got an amazing view of the surrounding countryside. And of course one cannot forget the gelato, which has in recent weeks become a staple of our diets. Another exciting monument there (which we unfortunately did not see the inside of) was a room that was supposedly used by the famed Dante Alighieri, writer of The Divine Comedy. We did, however, eat lunch directly outside of it, which I thought spectacular. We also, after completing our visit of San Gimignano, headed to the neighboring town of Volterra, the former home of the Medici family. Although it was not our intended destination, we did enjoy seeing an ancient Roman theater and a state prison which was formerly the Medici family's palace.
A Flat, Upside Down World Which Lacks the Americas (aka pre-Colombian map)
This is perhaps the least interesting of my descriptions intended to entice you at the end of my last post, dear readers. Please, bear with me, as the spectacular story of the counterfeit 20 is near. The pre-Colombian map was seen in the Museo Galileo, and was far more interesting in person than it will be in my (or any one else's) description of it. But again, I beg you to bear with me. I, personally, am fascinated by old, and specifically inaccurate, maps. Is it not funny to see something as mundane as a map so incredibly wrong? In a world where I can simply pull out a phone and open up the GPS app or Google Maps and find anything from a photo of my own house to a diagram of the entire planet with a few absentminded taps and swipes, it's hard to imagine any map being inaccurate. I find it particularly hilarious when I come across a map where California is displayed as an island (and there were a lot of those). Lots of times mapmakers would have no real idea of what a certain part of the world looked like, so I've seen my share of maps where anything north of Québec was only vaguely outlined, barely suggesting land of some sort, or covered up with a plaque or sea monsters. Not to mention all the maps and globes with weirdly distorted and barely recognizable land forms. On our trip so far, the only continent that was accurately drawn on any of the old maps I've seen was Western Europe. It is also fascinating to wonder how they became so inaccurate. Anyway, this was the oldest map that I've seen so far. It was pre-Colombian, which I found interesting because one wouldn't think twice if they walked by a flat map, but people actually thought the world was flat back then. It also had north in the direction that is usually south, so the whole thing looked upside down despite its text being right side up. Africa and Asia were also weirdly distorted, the only recognizable features being around Western Europe and the Mediterranean. One could only tell what everything else was by the labels. And finally, to top it all off, this "world map" was missing the Americas, as Europeans hadn't "discovered" them yet. It was overall very interesting and we had a lot of fun with it. I might add that at that same museum we also saw three of Galileo's fingers and his tooth. Whether or not they were legitimate is beyond me, but it sure was disgusting!
The Counterfeit 20 / Sandwiches The Size of My Head
I presume, dear readers, that you recall the Mercato Centrale, which appeared in my previous two posts. Little did we know that it would become the site of an extremely exciting event in the story of our stay here in Florence.
On the eventful morning of March 23 my mom went grocery shopping at the Mercato Centrale while the rest of us did work at home. When she came back she told us that the woman at the produce stand was really nice, helping my mom pack her bag, giving her advice against people who might cheat her, and even giving her a free lemon. The woman had been particularly thankful when she accidentally gave my mom two 20 Euro bills' worth in change instead of a 20 and a 10 and my mom swiftly returned one of the bills and got the right amount. Immediately, my brother Nicholas said, "She was probably lying to you. I'll bet she was trying to cheat you, that's why she was like, 'Be careful of people trying to cheat you because you're a foreigner!' Then if she cheated you, you wouldn't suspect anything."
All of us thought that Nick had a valid point, but none of us could come up with a way that she could've gained something from that interaction—the receipt was legitimate, my mom had paid the right amount, and nothing was missing from the grocery bag—so we dismissed it. Little did we know, it was a legitimate concern. Later that day we got massive sandwiches for lunch (they were like Subway style, where you chose what you wanted in your sandwich, except it was a MILLION times better than Subway). But we had barely paid and walked out the door when the guy from the shop ran after us, waving a 20 Euro bill in the air. We turned around and he told us that we had paid with a fake. We were really surprised, but of course we took it back and gave him a legitimate twenty instead. We had a long time to ponder over where we had picked up the fake (I'm telling you, those sandwiches were massive) and eventually my mom came to the conclusion that she had gotten it at the Mercato Centrale that morning. After all, we knew that we had gotten it earlier that day and the only other place where we had bought anything was the market. Eventually, after a lot of recalling on my mom's part, we realized that the only place that my mom had spent enough to get a 20 Euro bill in change was... THE PRODUCE STAND.
That nice lady who had been so helpful and so concerned about my mom not getting cheated was a cheat herself. Just as my brother predicted. He, of course, got a pretty big head about it, although rightfully so. He kept going on about how he had always known that she was being too nice not to be a liar, and the rest of us laughed and shook our heads and told him, Nicholas, you were right. The rest of us were wrong and you were right. Unfortunately, it was already too late to go back to the market (it closes at two every afternoon) so we ended up just going on with our day. We spent the rest of the afternoon at the Boboli Gardens, which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately we kind of started late so we didn't get to stay there for very long, but we definitely enjoyed it.
The next day, the first thing we did in the morning was go to the Mercato Centrale. We decided that we should all go as a family to support my mom, who was going to do most of the talking because she was the one who bought the groceries the day before. We also decided that if they weren't going to be nice about it, my dad would take pictures of the store front and my mom would threaten to give them a bad review on Trip Advisor. Armed with our threats and a thorough game plan, we marched into the Mercato Centrale and made our way towards the produce stand. My mom was nervous (and I can't blame her) but when we got there the woman from the previous day wasn't there! We ended up talking to this other man who my mom hadn't talked to, but who was also there when we got the counterfeit. We explained the problem, he examined the bill, and immediately he said, "No problem!" He then opened up the cash register, grabbed a real bill, took the counterfeit from my mom, gave her the real one, and put the counterfeit back into the cash register. "All done!"
We were really happy that he didn't put up a fight, so we thanked him and walked away. But as we rounded the corner, the Mercato Centrale no longer in sight, my dad said, "That was easy. Almost too easy." We all thought about it for a while, and then we realized that he was right; it was too easy. He had given us the right one pretty much immediately. And then I realized something else.
"He put the fake back inside the cash register."
Everyone stopped. He had put the fake back inside the cash register.... What would he need that for? To give it to someone else. We all groaned. My mom had never had both bills in her hand at the same time; he had taken the fake, and then given her the real one. There wasn't really anything we could have done about it. After a quick discussion, we decided to walk in with our heads held high and ask him to destroy the fake. We were all kind of nervous, my mom in particular, but we went back to the produce stand. The guy looked really surprised, but he walked up to us. My mom said, "We just wanted to make sure that we destroyed the bill. Ripped it up."
The guy looked confused for a second, but then he said, "Oh! Already done!"
We were surprised. "Really?"
"Yes! Tore it up and threw it away!" He made a motion of dusting off his hands. Then he started pushing us out of the way, moving forward so that my mom and dad moved back, until finally we were nowhere near the produce stand. Then he walked up to another customer, completely ignoring us.
I have to admit, we were slightly dumbfounded. There really wasn't anything else we could do. The guy was a liar and a cheat, even more so than the woman the day before because she evidently felt guilty while he seemed to have no qualms about what he was doing. My dad stepped up to the wastepaper basket next to the cash register and shook his head. No sign of the counterfeit. We all stood there for a while, staring him down (the guy was very obviously trying to ignore us) and then we walked away. So the whole thing is going on Trip Advisor after all.
The one thing that did get out of it (other than a real bill) was a great story. We made sure to take pictures of both the fake and a real bill next to each other, in order to compare, and my brother wrote a great blog post about all the detective work he did (it went beyond identifying the woman as a liar; if you'd like to hear his version of the story, which is much more interesting and Sherlock Holmes-y, check out his blog at nicksawesomeadventures.blogspot.com). I, as you may remember from my last post, wrote my first ever play about it. It's still a work in progress, and I'm not the most proud of it ever, but if you'd like to see it comment or email me and I'll send it to you.
Other Stuff That Happened
The next day we went to the Borgello Museum, which houses Donatello's David (not as famous as Michelangelo's, unfortunately--poor Donatello) and we got to see lots of amazing Renaissance art--and some not-so-amazing Medieval art. ;D That was a lot of fun. On Friday we also went to the Palazzo Vecchio for the first time, which was fun because we got to take the "secret passages tour," in which we got to see all the secret rooms and back passages used by the ruling Medici family when trying to avoid the riff raff--or even each other. There were a lot of false doors, paintings that were really cabinets, cabinets that were really doors, and, of course, secret passages. Very cool.
Everything Revolves Around Nicholas
He did, of course, deserve it. It was his birthday, after all. Double digits! He seemed very excited about that. :D Anyway, Nicholas is a homebody. He will do anything to be able to stay home and play Legos for the weekend, particularly nowadays because we're out doing stuff so often. Sometimes he will spend the entire weekend without getting out of his pajamas once. So what did he want to do to celebrate his birthday? Stay at home.
To give you an idea of what that looked like, I'm going to tell you about Man Cave Weekend. Last year at the beginning of the summer my mom and I went on a three day trip with my Girl Scouts troop to Lake Tahoe. Of course, my dad and brother were slightly disappointed that they weren't going as well, and so to make up for it they had Man Cave Weekend, in which they watched three movies in a row in one day, went to another movie at the theater, and played video games for hours on end. It was hardcore. They only ever went out to go to movies and play footbball, and that was only for a few hours. Anyway, my brother wanted to do something like that. Originally we were going to celebrate on his actual birthday, which was Saturday, but he ended up having a baseball game that day and it didn't work out. So it ended up becoming Man Cave Thursday. We got up in the morning, ate pastries for breakfast, played the football video game Madden Mobile, watched a basketball game, went out for pizza, bought my brother a Lego, went home and finished the basketball game, went to his baseball practice, and then watched a 2012 Giants baseball game during dinner. It was Nicholas's ideal day. Unfortunately, not all of the stuff that he wanted to accomplish got done, and Friday we were busy with our tour at the Palazzo Vecchio, so on Saturday we had to finish out fun stuff. We did actually watch a movie Friday night (X-Men Days of Future Past--it was very good) which was another thing on his list for Mancave Thursday through Saturday. Nick also had a game on Saturday (remember that was the actual day of his birthday) so in the morning we went shopping for some stuff that we needed, had lunch with the family of one of Nick's new friends from his baseball team, went to a four hour baseball game with them, went shopping again, and then went out to the Mexican place for dinner. Thus we completed Nicholas's birthday wishes! On Sunday he also had a game (this one was a real game--the previous one was pretty much just practice, where he played against his own team) so we got up REALLY early in the morning to get to that. We had been rising at about 9 every single other morning, so already getting up at 7:30 for an 8:30 game was going to be a struggle. But then we realized that it was the end of daylight savings time, so we basically had to get up at 6:30 in the morning! It was pretty brutal for us, even though it would have been no problem had we been at home. Anyway, the game took up the greater part of our day. Overall it was a pretty hectic weekend.
Looking back at the beginning of this post, I realize that I started off in a very different author's persona than I ended in. Hope you enjoyed it. ;D And today we're going to see "Naked David," so I'm sure I'll have lots of great stories and photos to share for my next post!
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