This morning was laundry day, primarily for Dan (I do most of my wash in the sink), so after breakfast he went down and used the laundromat that is very nearby, and I goofed off here in the room. (Hey, I got Wordle on the second guess … yippee for me!) Then it was off to the Uffizi to pick up our tickets I’d reserved ahead of time.

(Brandon, did you know about this other spot for the perfume place?)

Below are a few photos of things I saw. Normally I no longer take photos of artwork, but I figured I’d do some for this blog. Some you will probably recognize. One question (since I’m lazy and don’t want to look it up): why is Mary always in a blue cloak, frequently with green lining, and a red or pink dress? Anyone?

From Uffizi we went on the lunch hunt. Lo and behold, we ended up right across the street from our hotel. Handy, since we were going to put our feet up for a while. The focaccia we ordered were presented in an interesting way:

After a bit of rest (I don’t recall taking rests last time we did a trip … guess our age is showing!) we went back out, crossed over the bridge again, and went up a bit of a hill. We sure weren’t the only ones up there! We ended up at a spot where we had an amazing view, along with a ton of other people, sellers, a singer/guitarist, and one guy who would get the crowd that was sitting on a bunch of stairs to do goofy things. It was like one huge party, and while I am not one for parties it really was a kick to be there.

Then back down the hill …

and dinner at another restaurant very close to our hotel. This time we ended our meal with cantucci and vin santo. Finally!

Tomorrow we don’t have a lot of plans, so I suspect we’ll have to figure things out in the morning. We thought about Fiesole (recommended by several people), but I’m just not sure if we have the “get-up-and-go” energy. We’ll see!

And now we are pretty darn tired.

Buona sera!

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!

We began our day with breakfast at the hotel. Might as well — it came with the room! It’s a small room, so we are asked what time we would like and are told it’s a 30 minute stay, but the man at the front desk implied that was rather flexible, and since there were barely any people in the room I wasn’t worried and didn’t feel rushed.

Our breakfast room:

After going back up to our room (remember how we are on the third floor? We have to go up and down several times a day … I just love getting the stair credits on my watch!) we went out to ramble some more.

The front of our hotel (all you see is the door):

We ended up going through a section where there were so many stalls and so much selling of goods, all of which look alike. Some of the stalls say “Made in Italy” but I was skeptical. Still, what do I know? Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. I can’t add anything to my luggage anyway, so I just look and enjoy the colors!

We saw the “market” although on Sunday the lower, real market isn’t open. The upper market features a ton of places to buy a bite to eat. It wasn’t very crowded and had we not just eaten we would have taken advantage of that. Come to find out there are good things about a hotel provided breakfast, but there is also a downside: you can’t have a breakfast elsewhere, unless you are willing to “lose” the free breakfast.

From there it was more ambling, and we ended up away from the center of the city and it was much quieter and very enjoyable.

We headed back to the craziness of the tourist area, and decided we needed to find lunch. Of course that means looking at a number of places and not finding something right away. But we eventually settled on a place, ordered salads and an Aperol spritz each. A group of musicians passed by and since we took photos we gave the trumpet player a euro. I hope he uses it for lessons as he was painful to listen to!

Prior to lunch:

At that point we decided it would be nice to rest up in our room. We turned right from the restaurant and walked a bit before we opted to look at a map. Turns out the restaurant was on the same street as our hotel and quite close to it. HAH! It is very doubtful I’ll ever really figure this city out and will get lost any time I head out the door! Shoot, I even get rather befuddled going from the street to our room, there are so many stairs, and twists and turns.

From the rest up time we decided to go over the Ponte Vecchio and investigate the other side. I’m not a jewelry sort, so we didn’t stop on the bridge to look at things at all. As we walk we have to dodge the sellers of various “art” (we noticed they all have the same eight pieces, which they put on the street. Does anyone buy this stuff?!), and various other things of no interest to us (or most anyone else, it seems). As always we just walked randomly … we are good at our random walks.

Then back over a different, much less crowded bridge…

and we opted to find a spot for dinner. We had seen a place prior to crossing the Ponte Vecchio that we had gone to with my sister some years back, so we decided to give it a go. Sure enough, we could eat in the back “garden” (since when is the fake grass they use for things like this called a garden, I wonder?) and had a very tasty dinner. (As it turns out, this is NOT under the same ownership as it was when we were here years ago: I think the food is actually better … and it’s definitely more expensive.)

Back to our hotel we went …

And now we are back in our room, a bit on the early side. We are going to try and wake up earlier tomorrow and see if we can get into the Duomo cathedral (no tickets for that part). Then we might go to the places at the Duomo for which we did have to purchase tickets … but NO bell tower or dome for this one. I’m not up for more heights, and we both agreed we could skip the stairs here in Florence.

Buona notte!

Side note: I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before or not, but all the images I post here are iPhone shots that I do not work on at all, and I reduce them so they load more quickly. I hope no one was expecting great art, because you sure aren’t getting it!

Second side note: We’ve now been out for over a month. This all seems to be going so fast.