Taking on Florence with Steve

            Early Sunday night we arrived in Florence and spent the night planning out the rest of our trip until dinner.  After the first dinner we learned that the food in Florence was better and more affordable than in Rome.  Also, I had my first glass of real Tuscan Wine.  It’s red, which I prefer, and has a sharp taste to it that I loved.  I had some of the best wine I’ve ever tried while in Florence.  That night we also took some pictures of the Duomo at night.  The Duomo is like no building I have ever seen.  It’s made of different colored marble and has a matching tower along side it.  You’re able to go up both but we decided to go up the Dome of the Duomo instead of the Tower, which I think was the better choice.  More on that further down the page.

            We had two full days in Florence (Monday and Tuesday) but we had to be strategic to fit everything in because most of the museums were closed on Monday.  On Monday we went to the Palazzo Vecchio .   It’s the first, and smaller, of two palaces in Florence that were owned by the Medici family.  There, we did one a secret passageway tour of the palace, which I thought was super cool.  There was one room that was the treasure room of one of the sons and inside you were completely in closed with no windows.  The room was shaped like a treasure chest and all the walls and ceiling were lined with different renaissance paintings.  The paintings all related to alchemy and the four elements of earth, wind, water, and fire.  Each painting opened to a chest where his treasures were stored and the element expressed in the scene of the painting corresponded to what treasure were inside.  The coolest part, was that some of the painting were actually doors and opened into secret passageways instead of treasures.  We also went to the top of the palace’s towers.  It had a nice view of the city, but I would say going up is not really worth it if you  are also going to the top of the Duomo dome like we ended up doing the next day.

            After the museum we found what became our favorite restaurant of the trip, Pizzeria Toto.  IT WAS SO GOOD.  I’m lactose so I can only have the tomato and arugula pizza, and theirs was the best by far.  To the point where I didn’t feel like I was missing out.  Steve said the pizza he had there was the best pizza he’s ever had, and reviews that we found on trip advisor confirmed that statement.  He also got these cheese and meat wrap type things each day which he said were really good as well.  We also had nutella calzones there both Monday and Tuesday.  And yes I repeat, a calzone filled with nutella, dusted with powdered sugar, and then warmed up in a wood fired oven to perfection.  We went back there for lunch the next day and I got one of their sandwiches, seasoned pork, which they also bake in the wood fired oven.  They also had a barrel of that Tuscan wine that I loved.

            After our first Pizzeria Toto experience, we went inside the Duomo (but not to the top of the dome), and then we went to a free walking tour through the city.   The tour took us too Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Palazzo Vecchio, Ponte Vecchio (the bridge), and Palazzo Pitti. We got our first gelato/sorbet from our tour guides favorite gelateria.  Europe in general has many more sorbet options at each gelateria than in the States.  At this particular place I had almond and strawberry.  Steve asked for three of the scooper’s favorite flavors.  He did the same the next night at Grom, which was recommended to us by Kelly Berry (shout out!).  I had been holding out for that place because I saw online that they had chocolate sorbet.  I had two scoops of that and a scoop of pear sorbet that night, and it surpassed my expectations as it had the texture of fudge with chocolate bar pieces swirled in.

            But anyway, after the tour we went to the top of the hill across the river to different churches that over look the city.  The best view was from Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. The river itself was beautiful and picturesque of Tuscany.  Little houses were built along it and leading up to were gold and jewelry stores that had beautiful window displays for window-shopping.  The rest of the night we wandered the streets of the city.  We were very amused by one of the areas that was basically a fifth avenue of New York, filled with so many high scale clothing and accessories stores, including my personal favorite, “Armoni Kids”.  Riiidiculous.

            Tuesday was a pretty rainy day on and off.  We got up early to get to the Uffizi Museum to beat the lines, but we didn’t get there early enough and ended up waiting in line for 2 ½ hours.  The museum was nice, but in my opinion only worth the wait if you’re very into Renaissance art, because that’s all there is.  Steve and I have learned that both enjoy and appreciate art and going to art museums, but this one did not have the variety that we like.  We did enjoy seeing the Michael Angelo works though.  We then went to the top of Duomo dome.  It was so cool to climb up because before you go outside to the top you get to be up close and personal to the inside of the dome and see all the details of the mural that you can’t see from the ground.   And the view outside on the top of the dome was amazing.  It looked over the whole city and we got some great pictures.

            From the dome we went to the Petti Palace.  There were two parts (with two separate tickets) of the Petti Palace and sadly we could only see one half before the museum closed.  The half we went to had the modern art exhibit, the royal treasures, and a walk through of the living corridors of the palace.  We loved seeing the palace rooms there and at the Palacio Real earlier in our trip in Madrid, and the modern art exhibit was a needed change of pace from the renaissance overload in the Uffizi. 

            Overall, we loved Rome and Florence and hope to back to Florence to finish up things we didn’t see and do a day trip to the Tower of Pisa.  The overall goal ifs another trip to Italy in the future with more time in all the cities we want to visit.