Thirty-six minutes. This was the time I had allowed to see the jewel of the Renaissance and still safely make my connection on to Siena. A challenge, I realised, but it would be fun, too, a chance to clear my head of Venice and the night before, and so I hopped from the train and deposited my bag in the deposito bagagli, a piece of Italian that sounded, frankly, made up. I set the alarm on my phone and strode out into the petroleum haze of the station square, past the shabby tourist shops and snack bars, the dubious hostels, multiple pharmacies and Bureaux de Change — who still needs a Bureau de Change, I wondered, in this age of the international cashpoint card? Never mind that, at the end of the street I glimpsed a sliver of the famous Duomo, startling in its scale and intricacy even at a distance, but there was no time, no time, eight minutes on the clock already, and so with one eye on the tourist information map, I strode to the right, past phone shops and stalls selling tacky leather goods under graceful arches, zigzagging to a great square — the Piazza della Signoria, my map told me — dominated by a crenellated fortress, the kind a child might make from a cardboard box and, to the right, a cluster of immense statues like the pieces from some deranged game of chess; gods, lions and dragons, warriors with raised swords and severed heads, another naked soldier dying extravagantly in his comrade’s arms, screaming women, a naked, psychotic man with a truncheon clubbing a centaur to death and, watching over all of this surreal ultra-violence with fey distaste, Michelangelo’s David. Fifteen minutes gone now, and my guidebook had informed me that this was only a reproduction so I noted the disproportionate size of the hands and walked on towards the Uffizi Gallery. It was not yet ten in the morning and already an immense queue of people stretched beneath the colonnade, fanning themselves with hotel maps while living statues of, incomprehensibly, the Statue of Liberty and an Egyptian pharaoh, stood on crates beneath the marble images of Giotto, Donatello and Pisano. Nineteen minutes gone, and now here was a woman in a pink body-stocking and a long blonde wig, balanced upon a papier-mâché clamshell for the amusement of the weary queue while tantalisingly, in the elegant galleries above our heads, was the real thing, hanging alongside Uccellos and Caravaggios and da Vincis, Titian’s famous Venus of Urbino and three — three! — Rembrandt self-portraits. Connie had been here to the Uffizi as a student, had talked yearningly about returning — a little jewel, she said, very cool and beautiful — and like a smart traveller, I had pre-booked tickets for four days hence, and it occurred to me, as the timer showed nineteen minutes, that if this afternoon’s reunion with Albie went well, we might still make our booking! Perhaps my son and I could travel around some Tuscan hill towns then rendezvous with Connie right here. ‘They should call it the “Queue-ffizi!” I’d quip as we strolled past the hordes of less canny, less forward-thinking tourists. ‘You pre-booked — great idea, Dad!’ Albie would say, and standing in front of Primavera once again, Connie would take my hand. ‘Thank you, Douglas!’ she’d say, and all my care and preparation would be vindicated. No time to daydream, though — twenty minutes had gone now. I strode towards the river, hoping for a glimpse of the Ponte Vecchio, but now the alarm was sounding on my phone, meaning that I had fourteen minutes to return to the station and for the moment I would have to settle for seeing only the queue for the Uffizi, one thin slice of the great Duomo, an artificial David, a living statue Venus. Seen in twenty-two minutes, Florence was a Botticelli fridge magnet in a tan leather handbag, but never mind, we’d be back as a family. I retraced my steps and at twenty-nine minutes the station was in sight again. Breathless, sleep-deprived, perspiring quite heavily, I resolved to stop alternating strong coffee with alcohol and to rest on the Siena train, settling smugly into my seat on the 1010 with a comfortable three minutes to spare. I listened to the train announcement. Montelupo-Capraia, Empoli, Castelfiorentino, San Gimignano; even the names were picturesque. I would be in Siena by 1138, about the time that Albie would be getting out of bed. I closed my eyes, reclined my seat as far as it would go — the pleasures of European rolling stock! — and watched the outskirts of the city go by, feeling my eyelids growing heavy then realising, with a start, that I had left all of my belongings in the left-luggage office of Santa Maria Novella station.
128. the siena train
