Friday, May 1, 2015

Italy 2015 - Firenze

Roof terrace

This is post number three about our Italian trip. The previous posts are:

  1. Milano
  2. Venezia

After Venice we took the train to Florence. Upon arrival we walked to the Airbnb apartment we had reserved a few blocks from the train station. This was a cool apartment with a private roof terrace accessed by a cool steep staircase.

Once we were settled we walked to the center of town, stopping first in the Piazza della Repubblica where Charlotte and I rode a carousel and then a strange man made a balloon animal bear for her. From there we wandered in the direction of the Duomo.

Our main goal in Florence was to have dinner with Isabel. She's the daughter of one of my best friends and she has spent the school year attending college in Florence. She met us at her dad's favorite restaurant and we had a very pleasant dinner and visit.

Afterward Isabel walked back to the center of town with us and took us to her favorite gelato shop, Eduardo's, behind the Duomo. It is quite popular and we had to wait about half an hour. Carol and Audrey ordered a crepe filled with pistachio gelato that was messy and excellent.

The next morning we dropped our bags at the train station "left luggage" so we could sightsee some more. We went to a coffee bar in the station and tried to order hot chocolate but they were apparently out of whatever they use to make it normally. The barista custom-made steamed milk with chocolate for the girls.

Our friend Kelly in Seattle and her kids had visited the Leonardo da Vinci Museum in Florence and Kelly had recommended it. That was our goal for the morning and we also thought it was great. The museum contains working models of many mechanisms invented by da Vinci that you can manipulate to see how they worked. I was amazed by the breadth of his inventions.

Also, completely by coincidence, we were visiting the museum on Leonardo's birthday 563 years after his birth!

After the museum we walked back toward the Duomo. We would have liked to go inside but the line was very long. The line for Giotto's Campanile (completed in 1359), however, was very short so up we went. 414 steps. The view from the top is fantastic.

We happened to be at the top at the stroke of noon so we enjoyed/endured very loud bells tolling! We jumped out of our shoes at the first bell.

We walked around the city more, visiting the Ponte Vecchio and the piazza in front of the Pitti Palace. We experienced one of our few rip-offs of the trip when we made the mistake of buying gelato right by the Ponte Vecchio. We paid €16 for three smalls (typical price would be €6 or less). Oh well, what's travel without getting a little ripped off now and then? Live and learn.

In the late afternoon we picked up our rental car and headed south through the hill country of Tuscany and Umbria.

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