Posted by Karbo
We arrived in Florence on the 20th and spent our first day walking around the city centre. We had dinner at Gusta Osteria. We noticed that in Italy, pasta is usually served as a starter course and comes in smaller portions than it does in Canada. The main course is usually a meat or fish dish. We opted for pasta and their famous meat balls, which were very good except that I chomped down on bits of broken glass! The owners tried to convince us that it was probably rock salt but eventually ended up replacing the dish.
We met an American lady and her 2 dogs in the restaurant (again...we love how dogs are allowed almost everywhere in Europe!). She had recently moved to Florence and she warned us about the mosquitoes. According to her, they have a habit of waking you up at 3AM in the morning.
We learned later that night, and almost every night thereafter, that the mosquitoes in Florence certainly seem to work on a very punctual timetable. We had mosquitoes zooming into our ears and waking us up around 2:30AM ~ 3:00AM every morning! We were lucky to be there in the winter; apparently the problem is even worse in the summer. For those planning to visit Italy, I'd recommend investing in a mosquito net if you're going during the summer.
We started our first full day in Florence with another free walking tour with Florence Free Tour. It was a cold, wet morning and umbrella vendors appeared on every corner five minutes before the rain started - we started using these vendors as a very reliable weather forecast.
We had lunch at All'antico Vinaio, a tiny sandwich shop in the middle of Florence. The shop is lined with different kinds of spreads, hams, cheeses, and condiments for you to build your own sandwich. There's also self-serve wine at the front of the shop. The sandwiches are very reasonably priced and most importantly of all, delicious!
After lunch we went to the Uffizi Gallery. It'd been a while since we'd gone to an art gallery but we knew we had to go to this one.
On our first sunny day, we went to all the viewpoints in and around the city centre. We climbed up Giotto's Bell Tower and the dome of the Piazza del Duomo. Afterwards, we walked across the river and up even more stairs to the Piazzale Michelangelo and Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. Our legs were pretty done at the end of the day but we saw some amazing views and architecture!
Jason: A funny sequence of selfies taken as a truck drove dangerously close past my outreached arm. My face is pretty neutral throughout but Karbo's face tells the story:
Aside from the Uffizi, we also went to the Accedemia Gallery. The gallery houses lots of artwork but we were really there with one objective, to see David!
The Basilica Santa Croce is where the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and Rossini are kept, to name a few. Unlike some of the other churches we'd been to in Europe, none of the churches in Italy are heated. I think we would have spent more time admiring the monuments and paintings if it wasn't so cold that we had to leave to warm ourselves in a nearby cafe.
We went to a lot of Italian cafes while we were in Florence. The price difference between a sit-down cappuccino (around €6) and a cappuccino at the bar (around €1.50) is outrageous! No matter how tired we were, we always chose to stand. We were on a budget after all.
While in Florence, we took day trips to Siena and Pisa. Posts on these two cities are coming up!