Monday May 30th
Well, much to our disappointment, the curator of our villa checked us into the wrong apartment. We were supposed to be upstairs, and not supposed to have the backyard. I had thought that originally, but figured that Ms. Rita knew what she was doing. Well, she came and moved us upstairs this morning, to Katie’s bitter disappointment. There is a family coming in tomorrow for the downstairs apartment. Oh well, at least we had one great night in the awesome downstairs villa. I felt and still feel very badly for Katie as she was so excited at the place. The new one is “suckish” according to her.
My goal for this morning was to figure out the bus system and get us passes. I was able to get us apsses with no problem after a quick internet search turned up the Florence bus website with plenty of information in English. I bought multi-ride passes for us at a newstand, and with the info online, I got settled with the lines and stops.
I also solved the basil problem from yesterday. I couldn’t get my own scanning gun at the supermarket because you need to have a customer loyalty card, which is just too much for me to set up for a week. But there was a street market across from our villa this morning and I bought a basil plant! It was only 2 euros, and is a nice healthy size. The bunch of basil was 1.5 euros, so I come out ahead this way – more than enough basil for the week!
Katie and I took the bus into town and did a walking tour of the major sights. The Duomo is the main sight in town, a church with the very first Renaissance dome – the one all other church domes are based on. It was really interesting to see, and the façade of the church was extremely impressive, all gingerbread cakey with tons of intricate lace looking details. The façade was added in the 1870s, so it is not original, and has many detractors, but I liked it.
It was blistering heat – about 86 and bright sun – so we had gelato as we walked through the many outdoor markets. Katie had two kinds of chocolate and I had coconut and mixed berries. I really like the fruit gelato flavors, which really make your tongue come alive and leap with joy. The flavors are so intense! The outdoor markets were fun to walk through – lots of leather stalls (is leather Florentine?) with belts, jackets and wallets, plus the standard tourist fare. Plenty of small replica of Michelangelo’s David, and lot of Pinocchio puppets.
We continued our tour past the old city hall where a replica of Michelangelo’s David stands outside, in the same spot where it stood for 350 years, before concerns about erosion moved it indoors to the Accademia gallery (we go there on Saturday). It is much bigger than I expected! I thought it was life size, but it is 17 feet tall. The replica was impressive, so I’m sure we’ll like the real thing.
We saw the Medici family’s palace, and an outdoor sculpture area adjacent to city hall that has housed sculptures since the Renaissance. Now it houses both sculptures and lots of tourists eating gelato! There is a gelato stand on average about every 15 feet, and the place is packed with tourists – we haven’t heard this much English in months!!!
We stopped in a shady pizzeria for lunch, and the pizza was good, but not excellent. It’s so hard to tell which restaurants are going to be good or not, so I am emailing some contacts for recommendations. I’m sure we’ll find excellent pizza. It was too hot to eat pasta, but we will at least once or twice, maybe we can find a restaurant with air conditioning.
Tomorrow we are heading to the Italian seaside for the day, we got recommendations for a beach with nice sand and swimming from some locals, so we are really looking forward to it. this time we will use lots of sunscreen!
Sorry to hear you had to move to a suckish apartment. Hopefully you won't have to spend too much time in it. As for all the leather shops, Florence is known for leather. It's also known for the florentine box. I actually got a florentine box made out of leather when I was in Florence, killing two birds with one stone. I think, typically, the boxes were made out of wood. Tuscany, by the way, is known for its ceramics. When you travel outside of Florence, perhaps you might have a chance to check out a ceramics shop. I picked up two small ceramic items while I was in Tuscany, a little pitcher and a plate.
ReplyDeleteYES!- I realized that I should have asked you to get me a bag in Florence. I remember my parents and my friend got some for me when they went to Florence and I still have them!
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