[32] Florence & Pisa

Florence
see all photos »

[32]

Florence

No one told us before we bought the tickets that the gardens were built on a steep hill.

In Florence we have reached a new high in Internet prices. Five Euro for a half hour, ten Euro for on hour, 240 Euro for 24 hours, which is approximately $300. If you want something other than Italian food, you need a plane ticket. Although, it’s not been terrible, it hasn’t been that remarkable either. A $20 steak at Romanogili’s in Iron Mountain would cost you $80 in Italy - if you could get it. We can’t figure out how they manage to cut the veal and pork chops so thin - and they’re still tough!

View from the Ufizzi
see all photos »

Wednesday, we went to the Academy of Fine Arts, to see the David and Michelangelo’s Slaves. There is a copy of the David in the square outside the Uffizi gallery but they moved the original inside the Academy about a hundred and fifty years ago. Thursday, we went to the Uffizi (former offices of the Medici’s) Gallery. Botticelli has a full room here with The Birth of Venus on one wall and Primavera on another. Both of them beautiful.

Friday, we took a day off and went for a lazy stroll over to the Ponte Vecchio That’s the bridge over the Arno River that’s been covered with shops for centuries. I remembered it as a quaint street with funky little shops. Now the shops are all selling very expensive jewelry. It’s still quaint but it’s lost the funkiness. Almost as soon as you leave the bridge you are faced with the Pitti Palace, the former residence of the Medici family. It’s now a museum but since we’ve already reached our quota of two museums in any town (strict REB rule of travel), we didn’t go in. We just wanted to stroll through the Biboli Gardens behind the palace and take a break from hard core sightseeing.

Copy of the "David"
see all photos »

No one told us before we bought the tickets that the gardens were built on a steep hill. This is a climb neither of us would have been able to do three months ago. We were lucky that it was an overcast day and therefore a little cooler. We no sooner finished this two-hour hike and found our way to a tiny trattoria on the Via Romano when the skies opened and it poured for about a half hour. I usually don’t go anywhere without my umbrella, but I’d left it in a restaurant. Too bad. Bonnie and Barbi, you’ll remember it was the blue one I bought in Amsterdam when we all got umbrellas. Someone got a nice bumper shoot with only a couple broken spines.

Florence
see all photos »

Now we’re sitting in our room listening to it rain on the tile roof outside. We can also hear the Florentine bells ring out every fifteen minutes from somewhere. Yesterday, Saturday, we went to Pisa. It was an overcast day to begin that threatened to turn out nice. The sun came out at one point. But then it reconsidered and the rain came. A lot. We walked through town to the pretty piazza where they keep the duomo, the babtistry and the bell tower and leans a little. Apparently, as they were building this thing, as they got to the third tier it started to lean - one side began to sink in the sandy soil. Not to worry, they said, let’s keep building and they did.

The Duomo in Florence
see all photos »

We just came back from a lovely, long and expensive lunch. We don’t do this too often but now and again it’s fun. Since I was feeling a little low this morning, REB went to the train station and made our rail reservations for tomorrow and scoped out the self-serve laundry. We got that done today, which is always a good feeling. Clean clothes for another ten days. These Italians really like to stand. The laundromat had no seats, not even a curb to sit on. So we rewarded ourselves with a nice lunch at a little trattoria around the corner from our hotel. Now we sit in our room (which today has heat - Hurray!) and contemplate a nap. That is Ralph naps and I write. That’s okay, the clothes are clean and drying around the room (they’re draped over every piece of available furniture and luggage), we’ve had a good meal and will survive without more food today if we don’t feel like going out. We have enough water and vodka to last the night, train reservations for tomorrow and room reservations for tomorrow night. All is good in the world.

Leather market
see all photos »

How is it with you?

Love to all,

-30-