Journey Across Italy- Day 8
Day 8-Monday December 26th.
The Hilton in Florence was very nice but not conveniently located. It was across the river, pretty far from the city center and really not walkable especially in the cold. It’s a smaller city so there’s no metro in Florence, just busses trams, and even those are somewhat limited. On a future visit I would stay closer into historic downtown and not have to worry about driving but our next few destinations were going to require a car anyway so on this morning we picked up our 2 rental cars and used those to get around. We parked at the train station in downtown Florence (the same one we can come in on the day before) because it had the largest parking garage and walked from there. We didn’t have any tours or bookings planned, we just walked around and explored the city. It was quite busy and still felt festive from Christmas.
We finished the day with dinner closer to our hotel at an amazing steak house. Steak Florentine is the King of Tuscan cuisine and as proper carnivores we knew we couldn’t skip it while here.
Lunch: It was a nice place right beside the Palazzo Vecchio with outdoor seating. Google says it’s an Irish pub but definitely was not- look at my delicious pasta pics!
Dinner: La Braceria Scandicci
Santa Maria Novella
Lots of Designer stores in Florence. I really enjoyed this Louis Vuitton lego display.
Piazza della Repubblica square
Piazza del Mercato Nuovo
Palazzo Vecchio
Fountain of Neptune
Loggia dei Lanzi
Inside the Palazzo
Tagliatelle with mushrooms and truffles, a local delicacy.
Tagliatelle with meat sauce
Uffizi Gallery
Along the Uffizi Gallery Corridor there are many states of famous Italians (it might be famous Florentines specifically but I’m not an expert on everyone’s origins.)
View of Pont Vecchio from the East.
Looking down Pont Vecchio
We walked back through Piazza del Mercato Nuovo and a street performer was singing opera! It was so beautiful he was so talented. I’ll upload the video to our Facebook page.
Chalk art
Florence’s famous Cathedral or Duomo
Baptistry of St. John. A Baptistry is a hall or chapel situated close to, or connected with, a church, in which the sacrament of baptism is administered.
Gold doors of the Baptistry of St. John
It not paint, its all different colored MARBLE.
On the side.
Da Vinci Hands on Museum.
Wine windows! Little windows used for hundreds of years to sell wine in a fiasco (glass bottle) without having to open a shop and avoid paying taxes. These wine windows also posed a useful anti-contagion way to sell wine during the epidemic of 1630-1633, and more recently, during the days of the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.
Backside of the Basilica de San Lorenzo di Firenze.
Cappuccino our side San Lorenzo
For dinner we stayed on our side of the river and went to this amazing steak restaurant.
The specialty, Steak Florentine. It was literally the best steak of my life.
All the meats and cheeses!
Our rental car.