Villa Demidoff

It's my last Saturday in Florence, so I had to make it worth something by taking a short trip. I woke up earlier than my alarm clock which allowed me to have a longer day than I had originally planned. I took the 25A bus to Pratolino and within twenty minutes or so, I was steps from Villa Demidoff.

This park in the small town of Pratolino was once called Villa Medicea di Pratolino, formerly owned by--you guessed it--the Medici family. It is huge and spans an entire hill. The bus driver told me to get off a few stops early, so at first I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere save for the sounds of children laughing in the far distance. I followed the laughter and found myself in an adventure park with obstacle courses. Not what I was looking for!

I asked one of the mothers and she pointed me in the right direction. Within five minutes I found the entrance gate and was surprised to see so many tents and families. There was some sort of agricultural fair going on which meant that tons of Tuscan farms and small shops each had a booth selling their wares, which ranged from cheeses to hams to hippie purses to marble mortars and pestles, etc etc. This caught me off guard because a couple of weeks ago, my teacher (who had also recommended San Galgano) said he came and there were probably only ten people in the whole park. Oh well, on the upside, I wouldn't have to worry about finding lunch.

As I walked down the small dirt paths I came across some of its main sights:

Giambologna's Colosso dell'Appennino (Colossus of the Apennine Mountains)

La Grande Voliera

Viale degli Zampilli -- closed to the public

Grotta di Cupido

Giardino della Villetta

Note to Nicky, there were very clean, new (and free!) public washrooms nearby! I was impressed...

Cappella (chapel)

I couldn't wander as far as I liked since many of the paths were roped off. I had wanted to find a secluded plot of grass to sit down and read my book. Instead I found a quiet path with a bench on which I could splay out to try and get a bit of a tan while reading Italo Calvino's Le cosmocomiche (in its original Italian! And a nice punny title since it consists of imaginative stories about the cosmos). Another teacher highly recommended a few of Calvino's books but unfortunately all of the good ones were checked out of the library so I was stuck with this one. So far I have read about a band of men who would jump on the moon to cultivate moon-cheese and moon-milk and about the first day there was light in the world. Or at least that's what I think the stories have been about...

By around 1:00pm I decided to explore some more to make sure I saw all of the important sights. That was when I saw a huge, almost entirely vacant field of dry grass. I tried to lay down comfortably but it was hard using just plastic bags as padding--that, and I could see and hear insects all around me and was paranoid a bug would crawl up my onesie. But I needed to tan the backs of my legs because I didn't want to end up with two-toned legs.

I didn't feel any particular hunger but seeing the Tuscan agricultural fair around me, plus the fact that it was almost 2:00pm, made me stop and buy a porchetta sandwich. Then I made my way back towards the exit, asked a few people where the bus loop was along my search for it (since I had gotten off a few stops earlier), and luckily made it a minute before it left. It was a HUGE relief since the next bus would come in 40 minutes and I didn't feel like walking around Pratolino.

The bus ride back was both beautiful and unnerving--beautiful because at points I could see the panorama of the Tuscan hills with terracotta-roofed houses; unnerving because the bus driver was going so fast, which would normally not faze me but since the roads seemed to only consist of potholes I thought that at some point or another the bus would break into two.

Today's word of the day is parere. As a noun it means "opinion" or "advice" and as a verb it means "to seem".