Florence (Firenze) 4/3-4/6 2010
This is a neon sign on the Arno River side of the Uffizi Museum in Florence. We arrived at Hotel David from Rome at ~11am on Saturday 4/3/10. We got such a warm welcome! After dropping off our luggage we hoofed it to Florence city center to have a look see. What a charming city. All of the major historic sites are within walking distance of each other making the city easy to negotiate. Given the time constraint of being there over the Easter weekend we had to pack in as much sightseeing as possible. It was a thrill to see & then walk over Ponte Vecchio. As you know, the bridge is lined with gold shops. The storefronts are beautiful & chock full of every style of gold jewelry you can think of. Our first stop was to secure tickets for the Uffizi. The line to get in Saturday was very long & disheartening. Then we spied a separate line for Sunday timed tickets. We hopped right in that one & had tickets in hand for 10:30am in 15 minutes. Passing by the Loggia of Lanzi at Piazze Della Signioria we were struck by the dozens of beautiful sculptures just sitting there. David is everywhere in Florence. Even though we didn’t get to the Accademie Museum to see the original David, there are enough copies around the city that it ended up being ok. Well, except we didn’t see Michaelangelo’s cool unfinished sculptures. Maybe next time. We also missed out on the Medici Chapel but when you read on you’ll see that we missed precious little else in Florence.
There was hardly a line at the Palazzo Vecchio, which I just don’t understand. That place is a must-see. The architecture is beautiful, the rooms are filled with amazing sculptures, artwork & furnishings with inlaid stone forming glorious landscapes & pictures of various birds & animals, the ceilings & walls are painted & ornate & the views from the upper floors are gorgeous. From there we went to the Baptistry to see the famous copy of the Ghilberti doors. They’re much more impressive in person than any picture can portray. We went inside & saw they elaborate gold mosaic ceiling & more beautiful artwork. There was a mural depicting horrendous scenes of Hell. I don’t want to go there.
We tried to get into the Duomo after that but it was closed so we walked on toward Santa Croce. Along the way we stopped to go through the market at Piazza della Repubblica. There were vendors all around the square selling all kinds of foodstuffs. Meat, cheese, honey, olive oil, bread, jellies, wine, much more. There is a pretty merry-go-round in the square decorated with more nice pictures…of bare-breasted ladies. Steve laughed & commented that it could only be in Italy where that would be seen on a kids' ride! Ok, so on to Santa Croce. This is another absolutely gorgeous church. There are more beautiful painted walls, tile on the beams of the basilica, tombs in the niches & on the floor of people you’ve learned about long ago such as Michaelangelo (yes, THE Michaelangelo), Galileo, Dante, Rossini & Marconi. We stopped at a restaurant at one of the Piazzas for a quick lunch. I had a salad & Steve had a pizza. They were ok but not great. The food filled a hole. A lovely walk back to the hotel for heavy snacks & juice ended our first day in Florence. The Hotel David (www.davidhotel.it) was a sweet find on TripAdvisor. It’s an 18th century home that was converted to a hotel some time ago. It’s furnished with antiques & the walls have lovely paintings of little critters & scenes of Florence on them. Very charming. I’ll save the remainder of my review for TripAdvisor. I culled photos, read email & collapsed.
Day 2 (4/4/10)in Florence began with beautiful sunshine & a delicious breakfast courtesy of the hotel. It was yet another sumptuous feast of Italian breads, cakes, eggs, bacon, cereals, yogurt, of course café Americano, fruit, cheese, & the most delicious ham I ever tasted. Strolling over the Ponte Vecchio with a smaller crowd allowed some fun window shopping along the gold stores. Not being much of a jewelry type I saved Steve thousands of dollars, I’m sure. We had an appointment at the Uffizi at 10:30am. It was Easter Sunday but thankfully some of the sights that are usually closed on Sundays were open regardless. The Uffizi (www.uffizi.com) is organized by dates of the items. The museum was begun in 1581 by one of the Medicis. They acquired lots & lots of the goodies the world had to offer. As a matter of fact, their collection is still growing due to active acquisition personnel. There were ancient sculptures dating back to the 3rd century BC right in arm’s reach. You can look into the eyes of these pieces of marble & see the past. It was rather romantic. The wow factor in this place is incredible! Since it’s organized in a logical fashion it was easy to relax & enjoy each successive room without having to regroup & figure out what came next. That may sound really stupid but if you think logically, it works well. A guide book wasn’t necessary but might have been helpful. It took ~3 hours to see ‘everything’…as if we could. Botticelli’s mentor Fra Filippo Lippi’s work is gorgeous. There were several works that I had to pull myself away from. After his room came Botticelli’s room. There were 3 or 4 works that I thought were even more brilliant than Primavera & The Birth of Venus. Those 2 rooms might have been my favorites. There’s a lovely terrace on the top floor that’s great for grabbing a snack & drink as well as snap pictures of the city below. Even though we had already seen a gazillion beautiful paintings, sculptures, ceilings, furnishings, the Uffizi dazzled both of us. You MUST go there!
Later that evening we took a walk to find someplace for dinner but only found one place open. Lunch was ample so we ended up just having a snack & went to Caffe Michaelangelo just around the corner from the hotel for gelato. The place is mainly a bar but the gelato was pretty good.
Day 3 (4/5/10)
After another delish breakfast we strolled to the Duomo. We confirmed the day before that it would be open Monday…again not usual but given the crowds over the Easter holiday someone must have taken pity on the tourists. The wait was only 45 minutes. And man, was it ever worth it! The climb up was thrilling. About 1/3 up there’s a room that looks like an attic for storing friezes, various sculptures of priests & popes and some busts of who knows who. It was as if they had extra stuff they needed to store somewhere. The stairway shrinks the higher up you go to the point that we could go only single-file. The guards had 2-ways to regulate traffic. There are 2 levels that have balconies inside the church for viewing the art on the ceiling. There’s a mural depicting heaven, purgatory, life & hell that can be seen up close. The depiction of hell on the Duomo was the most terrifying scene. I can’t even describe it to you because it’s more disgusting than I can handle. Suffice it to say I REALLY REALLY REALLY don’t want to go there. Once the top is reached you are at the highest observation point in Florence. The view is amazing! The whole city spreads out below in all its red-tiled glory. When it was our turn to descend the guards stopped ascending traffic to let us by. It was a tight squeeze in there. Thankfully everyone was pleasant about the big squeeze & were very polite.
The afternoon led us up to a charming town north of Florence called Fiesole. We took an enjoyable bus trip up that wound through the streets of Florence & on up into the hills. Lunch was adequate but filling. Steve had pizza (no, really?!) & I had a bresaeola sandwich. we walked all around the town looking for interesting sights. We came upon the Etruscan wall that surrounded the village & an Etruscan tomb. See pic of me in the sidebar. We saw as much of the town as we wanted to in a couple hours. Home sweet home to the Hotel David to chill a bit in our room & grab a snack. Later, a pleasant walk along the Arno River led us back to Ponte Vecchio for gelato. It was by far the least tasty of all the gelato we’d had so far but not-so-good gelato is better than no gelato ;-/ Sleep came easily. We had to get up & out early to make our train to Sorrento the next morning…after another delicious breakfast, of course! Florence is so very different from Rome. It’s much quieter although traffic noise & honking horns remain a constant in Italy. Italian drivers are absolutely nuts. Somehow they don’t crash into each other or kill pedestrians. It’s no wonder that Italians win all kinds of road races.
Well, this is it for the Florence leg. More to come from Sorrento…
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