After breakfast we took a while to get moving, but we are on vacation, so it really doesn’t matter. Finally, though, we went to the Santa Maria del Fiore (The Florence Duomo), and checked out the lines: while we had tickets, there’s no “skip the line” kind of thing. We walked past a VERY long line for the cathedral (there’s no ticket required for that, but what a long line!) so we opted instead to begin with the Santa Reparata line. I’ll confess I had no idea what Santa Reparata even was — it just came with the ticket we purchased. (You can click on the link to read about it, but if you don’t want to I will at least tell you it’s an archaeological dig, below the Duomo Cathedral.) While the line wasn’t horrendous, it stopped for a while and we just stood there, but finally we were in and, lo and behold, it let us in to the church itself. Nice! We took a few photos, but realized that we come out of Santa Reparata the same we we go in so we figured we’d see more of the cathedral on the way out … and thankfully we we can ignore that long line outside.
Seeing the old church — what remains, that is — was really something. I love to see the floor tile work and imaging it was being walked on so very long ago.
Back to the cathedral we went.
From there we checked out the Baptistry of St. John. I’ll admit I was a bit disappointed because they were working on things and there was so much scaffolding, but the website had warned us of that so it’s not like I hadn’t read it earlier. The floor, though, was very cool and I couldn’t stop taking photos of it. There were other interesting things I could photograph attempting to leave out the scaffolding for the most part.
Then it was a walk to find lunch and, yes, we took some time, as always, to figure out where to eat because that’s how we do things!
We were also planning on getting to the Brandon recommended Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. It was gorgeous inside, and the fragrances I checked out were wonderful. So was the interior of the building.
In addition they had an installation there called Blooming in Paradise that I just loved. I can try and post the video here, but I am guessing it won’t load. But photos … I have photos!
Finally we went to the Duomo’s museum. We walked around. we looked at statues and lots of shiny things, as well as the garb important men wore … but honestly, I get a bit weary of all that after a while. This work, though, was amazing:
So we opted to head back to the hotel for a rest after having just a little bit of gelato.
When we arrived at our hotel, though, the man at the desk, Allesandro, started talking to us. And we talked for quite some time, learning more about Italy, the language, and lots of other things. I believe it was at least an hour standing at the desk! He recommended a few places for both drinks and food, so we decided to rest a wee bit and then head to one of the places close by.
The restaurant … oh dear … the food we were served was good. The service was the worst I’ve ever experienced! The forgot Dan’s main dish entirely. It took eons to get the server’s attention, and we ordered cantucci and vin santo for dessert. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally we got his attention again and he said it was left underneath the counter or some such thing. We said never mind, we’ll just take the bill, which he (finally) brought out and of course it included Dan’s main. So we had to point that out and he brought it out with the main removed, but Dan said it still was off somehow, but we just wanted to leave at that point! I chalk it up to, perhaps, a server’s first week. At least I hope so!
Tomorrow it’s a bit of laundry and then a trip to a museum.
Arrivederci!
