A Day in Florence
David, Lunch, Duomo, Dinner. The End.
ok fine, there's more.
Me being who I am, I booked tickets for the David at 11am and climbing the dome at 3pm. The lines are long and we only had one day so we had to stick to the schedule!
Our B&B in Florence was not ideal. Villa Alla Rampe was beautiful, very nice place. The downside? It's a 35 minute walk from the train station, so about 25 minutes to the city center. Not terrible, but a little longer than ideal. Can't remember if I mentioned that we had to drag our suitcases (well, my suitcase...adam has a backpack) along the river on the way to the hotel. There is a bus, but infrequent and we never actually managed to get on it. Also the breakfast was not spectacular and I feel like breakfast in Italy should be incredible especially at a B&B buttttt there was a sign in the breakfast room that read something like "the Italian law does not allow us to serve any homemade or fresh food, only prepackaged items". I have to assume this is true but what a terrible law!
We had a later start on Saturday morning after all the wine of Friday. I kept breakfast light and we strolled slowly towards the museo. I thought the museum was one place (why is there a gigantic David outside the Palazzo vecchio if the real thing isn't inside?), ended up being a bit further so we continued the walk, waited on line, found the tickets and finally museumed. Renaissance art covering the first room, then the big guy is at the end of the second room. Tourists and tour groups everywhere with their phones, snapchats, facebooks, instagrams, etc. People literally travel to take the pictures and say they've seen in. I found the unfinished statues leading up to the David just as interesting. Michelangelo described them as souls trapped in marble that he was releasing. Amazing. Anyway, the big guy for you to marvel:
I had enough of people and their social media as they took selfies in the plaster cast display room and pictures of things with Snapchat just to show where they are without reading anything, kids making their parents move out of the way so they could take better videos. Small museums are tough, especially when they have something famous. I enjoy the silence of the met better.
After the museum we set out to find lunch. I didn't want anything too big because we had reservations for a good dinner later. Got a little lost trying to find a sunny place to sit not in the main tourist Piazza's but ended up finding a sandwich place next to a fried food shop.
Two sandwiches, fried mozzarella balls, and fried zucchini flowers! Finally got to try them! I hear my moms are better though. These were not filled with anything and basically tasted the same as fried zucchini. I took a video but I guess I can't post it. Annoying squarespace. Well I posted it on my tumblr then...take that squarespace! http://foodiana.tumblr.com/
While waiting for our ticket time for the Duomo, we looked around some of the stalls versus stores selling leather. I was hesitant to buy the cheap stuff assuming that this is the canal street of Florence and not sure if it's even real leather or something that feels similar and sprayed with some leather scented perfume. I don't trust any of these places!!! I bought nothing.
Now the best part of the day, climbing to the top of the Dome-o. 463 stairs, totally worth how nervous I was about being so high up. It did take me a few minutes to be able to stand close to the edge for the picture and I was not sorry about climbing down.
Dinner deserves its own post. Next up: big chiannini beef!
