Florence - Day 2

It’s tough to visit any place for the weekend and feel like you’ve seen it all, but it’s especially true for Florence.

We called the advance reservation line for the Uffizi earlier this week, but they didn’t have any bookings available for this weekend. We had heard about lines snaking along the building, so we decided to wake up early (again) to get in line before it opened. That meant a 6:30am wake up and in line by 7:30am. Pretty impressive if you ask me! On the way, I took the opportunity to snap a picture of Jon in front of Ghiberti's bronze doors at the Battistero:
We got to the museum with about 20 people in line ahead of us, so while Jon held our place in line, I grabbed a strong coffee from Rivoire, which was just around the corner but seemingly the only place open that early on a Saturday. The line was oddly competitive with an old French couple behind us constantly trying to cut us and me constantly trying to held our place in the line.

Finally the doors opened and we explored the museum, which contains art from the Medici family collection. The museum is very nice to navigate – it is laid out in chronological order, so for instance, we were able to compare Botticcelli’s “The Birth of Venus” with “The Spring”. OK maybe, we crashed a tour group discussing those two paintings, but it was really interesting- haha! We definitely enjoyed wandering through the museum– very interesting to see how artists’ styles change through the centuries.
We got out the museum at around 10:30 and wander toward the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence and where most of the jewellery merchants have their shops.

Given that Jon just got me some fabulous earrings for my birthday, I figured we’d skip it on this trip and moved along. Last trip to Florence, I met our friend Basim at the end of the Ponte Vecchio who sold handbags – I looked for him, but seems like perhaps he’s moved on with his career.

On the other side of the bridge, we wandered about the Oltrarno. Between popping our heads into local shops and sitting down on available benches on the sidewalks (have I mentioned that our legs are in serious pain from all this walking?), we passed the Palazzo Pitti (Pitti Palace), which we didn’t go into, but Jon wanted to take this picture of me in front:

Along the same road, we found an entrance to the Giardino di Boboli (Boboli Gardens) which we thought would be a nice diversion. The woman at the gate said admission was €9, so we decided to walk a bit to decide whether we would go ahead. And we just happened to notice a gate open to another garden across the street. We were just starting to enjoy it when, some Italian man came up to us and ushered us out with his hands. Uh, I guess we were wandering around some rich Florentine’s private garden. Oops!

On our way back to the other side of the Arno River, we found an artist’s workshop and bought a beautiful frame covered with marbleized paper that is famous in Florence. Of course, we had a specific reason for wandering back to the other side of town so quickly – we had to go back to Il Pizzaiuolo, the restaurant we tried to eat at for lunch yesterday. We got there just after 12:30 and there were plenty of open tables – by 1pm there was a line out the door!
The service was, how shall I say, leisurely. But the food was excellent- started with bruscetta and each had a pizza (seriously – can we got anywhere without gorging ourselves on local gastronomy?) and we were surrounded by locals, which generally makes us happy.

For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered through the streets of Florence. In putting together our itinerary for the trip, I read about Scuola del Cuoio, which sells great leather goods and also has artisans at work inside the same shop so you can see how things are made. I got a new wallet and Jon finally found the perfect credit card holder and luckily a craftsman was available to personalize it with his initials.

After a significant nap, we got ready for dinner – Jon’s dinner selection – Fuor D’Acqua. Anticipating our normal eating regime, we opted to walk to the restaurant which is in the Oltrarno (Jon’s made it a habit on this trip to pick restaurants at the farthest corners of the city, so at least we ended up burning some of the calories we ate).

The upside of the walk was that we got the pleasure of seeing a fabulous sunset over the Arno River.

Along our walk we also walked through the old city doors, or porte, the remains of which demarcate the center of Florence, or centro storico.

Anyway, we got to the restaurant and quickly realized that without a doubt we were the only non-locals in the restaurant and happily they figured out who we were very quickly. This place is known for their fish, which we were excited about after a night of gorging ourselves with pasta. We started out with a glass of prosecco (yes, first people I thought of were the newly dubbed Blix’s)… and the only waiter with decent English came to the table to explain that, yes there is a menu, but they get fresh fish each evening at 8:15pm and most people just allow them to prepare dishes with some guidance. That sounded exciting, so we went for it, specifying that we wanted the bronzino for our main. We ordered a great bottle of white wine, leaned back and held our breath hoping for the best. Mom and Dad should probably look away at this point, so you aren’t disappointed with the wide array of shellfish (which of course I didn’t touch, but keep the love for Jon strong ;) )…

Our first course came out as a platter of raw fish – tuna, yellowtail, shrimp (yes raw and scary looking) and a ceviche of something. A delicious start and we were feeling happy. Next, a dish with shrimp (cooked this time) on a bed of white beans, which yet again was exquisite. The waiter arrived with the next dish that he dubbed, ‘the last’ and it was our bronzino paired with asparagus (which Jon never ever eats because of the after affects – we all know how much he is missing out). It looked pretty pathetic in volume compared to the lobsters sitting on the tables around us. I tried not to get too discouraged, but it was pretty upsetting – we didn’t even get the pasta with seafood that we requested. Not one to get ripped off, Jon just started eating and drinking everything in site. Literally – ate all the bread in the basket. Poured himself a mighty large glass of water, etc. They took away the dish and I can only imagine the glaring looks he received from us.

But then, another dish came out as our ‘last,’ tuna prepared w/XXX. While we weren’t disappointed with the preparation, we were still struggling to understand why we were getting ripped off. Yes, we knew that we were in Italy and aren’t masters of the language, but had we missed something when we first sat down? We were resigned to the fact that this was it – no pasta, measly main dish, but on the upside, finally we could leave a Tuscan restaurant without feeling like whales.

And I am sure you can expect what happened next – our of the kitchen came a glorious plate filled with spaghetti and shrimp dressed tomato sauce, the way you can only find in a real Italian restaurant. I haven’t seen a broader smile on Jon’s face in a while – and boy did he enjoy the pasta, though at this point we were both regretting finishing off the bread and all the previous dishes because we know what is coming next – our bronzino, baked in a salt crust. Which was so tender and delicious it’s hard to find words. And weak as we are, we couldn’t even come close to finishing half.

The meal goes on for a couple more courses, but I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but just realize that I literally had to move my belt to one whole wider in order to walk out of the restaurant. This one is from a few feet from our hotel room: