On to Florence — Musings From the Road

We're off to Florence. Ten days in Venice and now 5 in Florence. We left Venice and 2 hours later we hit Florence. The train was supposed to be a fast one and hit about 160km/hr on the trip. That's not fast compared to France or Japan but then again it's fast compared to the bus on rails they have in Sicily. The biggest problem was when we went through the tunnels in the mountains. Exiting each one there was a pressure drop like in an airplane. Some of them really hurt.

We got to Florence at 3:50, about 15 minutes behind schedule. You only have a few minutes to get on or off and the folks on the train were standing and collecting their luggage about 15 minutes before we arrived. We took the clue and got our bags and joined the line. We were staying as La Stella D'Oro B&B which is only a few blocks from the train station. Not knowing our way around added to our walk. It took 15 - 20 minutes to find the place when it should have taken 10. On the train the free web service was not that good and I missed the message from Enrico, the owner, about our arrival time so we had to call him when we got there. The neighbor who lives on the same floor let us in and we called from the landing outside the B&B door. Enrico showed up about 5 minutes later, not a problem. We had to wait a few minutes like that in Cinisi too. La Stella is a great place. It's in the center of the city, only about 20 minutes to the Uffizi and pretty direct a route too. The Duomo is less than 10 minutes walk. You need to watch out for the motorinos and cars in that town. They rip around pretty fast, a lot fast really. Enrico told us about a place to eat near San Lorenzo, Trattoria lo Stracoto, and recommended it highly. We walked around the church and didn't see it immediately so we headed around the block in the opposite direction. One blessing was that we came upon the Baptistery of San Giovanni and the Duomo. It was cold, close to freezing. Drier than Venice but windier. At least we didn't have to worry about frost on bridges over canals at night before there was salt spread on them.

Enrico's recommendation was spot-on. We shared the Cacio e Pepe and then we each had a secundi. The Tuscan beef stew Cathy had was excellent, we looked up the recipe online and will try to make it at home. My Bistecca Stracoto seemed to have the same sauce as the stew and we'll use the stew recipe for beef as well.

San Giovanni with the Duomo and Campenile in the background

Bistecca Stracoto w/ spinach

Tuscan beef stew

The Campanile the next day.

We had purchased our tickets for the Uffizi in advance but the voucher had to be printed. It would be nice if the museo got into the 21st century and could use electronic tickets and vouchers. We spoke w/ Enrico about our problem. We had to be at the museo between 12:30 and 12:45 or we would lose our entry and that meant finding somewhere to print the damn voucher in the AM. He had me forward my email for the voucher to him and he printed it off immediately.

The next morning we headed down to the Uffizi. Good God! It took us 5 1/2 hours to cover the place but we did it. We thought we walked a lot in Venice. Averaged about 8 - 10 km per day but the Uffizi took us over 12. Florence is a really beautiful city. We had left early and had extra time before we could enter so I took photos of the Duomo and San Giovanni and the statuary outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the Piazza del Signoria and the statues of famous Italians from Florence outside the entrance to the Uffizi.

Museo Nacionale

Copy of David outside of the Uffizi

Ponte Vecchio on the Arno river. This is the only bridge not destroyed during WWII

The two wings of the Uffizi from the end by the Arno

Michiavelli

Dante

Michelangelo

DaVinci

Where and how can you begin to describe this place and take or show all the photos? The walls, the ceilings, the statuary. It took over 5 hours to cover all of it. Here are just a few. I surely can't being to describe all of them, or even try. So here goes. I'll try to time how long it takes for all these to upload. It took 15 minutes not including the time to add a few descriptions.

Botticelli's

A procession that came across the Ponte Vecchio and through the Uffizi with drums and traditional flag twirlers to the piazza. We think it had to do with the Epiphany.

Caravaggio's Medusa. Supposedly this is the artist's self-portrait from when he was younger.

The evening after our tour of the Uffizi we went to dinner at a small restaurant just south of the Duomo on Via Del Studio, Ristorante Il Caminetto. We shared the Tagliatelle ragu, Cathy had the Zolfini Pratomano, I had Coniglio Vernaccia (rarely pass the chance for bunny) and shared the paneforte for dessert. Great food, good service and nice atmosphere. Check this place out if you're in Florence.

I'll close for now. Next time I'll deal with our 2nd day when we went through the Palazzo Vecchio, the first major palace of the Medici.