Well, my day started a bit later than Dale’s, he was up and out exploring before I even woke up. Though as I did not wake up until around 11am, I guess it was not hard to do. I stayed up until after 11pm on Friday, the day we got in, I was trying to reset my body clock. I woke up at 3am, scolded myself and convinced my body to go back to sleep. When Dale came back he brought an apple. While we ate it we discussed what to do with the rest of today. Two things were considered; first, I have been having a lot of pain in my feet again, so I am trying to pace myself for the trip. Second Dale loves museums And I am not a huge museum fan.
We decided to walk around a bit and find some lunch
The architecture is really fantastic with building dating back a thousand or more years
In one of the store windows I saw these wonderful drawings of Carnival costumed figures
Then we were to the Ponte Vecchio. We crossed at sat at a small street cafe. I ordered caprese salad and grilled vegetables, Dale ordered one of their meals. Mine was the best grilled vegetables I have ever had, the tomatoes and fresh mozzarella with cucumber and shredded carrots on the side was awesome also. He thought he as getting lasagna and vegetables with a dessert. When my salad plate and grilled vegetable plate came out so did his huge serving of lasagna. After we had both finished those, I had a couple bites of his and he had some of both mine. They cleared the plates. Then they brought him another full plate with fried potato wedges and chicken with mushrooms covered in cream sauce. I also had a bite of that, but there was so much food, even if we had split the meal Dale ordered we could not have finished it all. Then they brought out a dessert. It was very good, I stuffed in one bite and totally enjoyed it, Dale made room for all the rest.
After lunch we split up because he had a museum he wanted to go to to see an exhibit we saw a poster for. I just wandered back across the bridge an down some new (for me) streets.
It is so fun. I think all the shops that line both sides of this bridge are now gold smith shops.
Each shop has most of what they have to sell in their windows
As the shops themselves are only about 10 feet deep by 15 wide.
I also passed this shop walking around after I left the bridge. It was full of silver antiques
This is the view down the river from the bridge with the shops on it
Here is a picture of the bridge from the street by the river
The houses probably belonged to the wealthy merchant class to begin with as they would have had access to the river for trade
Every now and then you could see a totally different building
Across from the river were these tiny alley ways between buildings
And many of the doors are these elaborately decorated things
Passed this shop that had stone beads in jars like candy
The bridges spanning the rivers have these amazing sculptures
Many of the building felt like they were almost fortified castles
Instead of bars or metal grates to pull down, many of the store fronts had huge wooden shutters that they close when the store is closed
Random statuary is found on most blocks in the area we are staying
Another of the beautiful carved doors
The plazas are very open and have centers with tall structures
In America, it is easy to forget that many places have a good deal more history than just a couple of hundred years
I am not sure about all of Florence, but the parts I have seem, I would rather walk around than drive. Most streets are narrow and one way.
Many people walk in these roads only moving to the sides when a car comes up
There are paper and journal shops all around with wonderful things in them. If we were not just starting our trip, I would be tempted to pick up some things
Many of the shops I passed were tiny one smaller room places where the creator of the products there working
There are some bigger (two lane wide) streets with mini plaza at intersections
Very pretty potter/mosaic shops around our area
Also linen shops
This building is in the plaza our hotel is at. It has been occupied continually since before 1200AD
The sister hotel across from us
This is our hotel
Here is a panorama from my hotel window
The one thing that has surprised me the most is the amount of English with American accents I have been hearing. I even ended up speaking with one woman while admiring a door. She also commented on the amount of English she had been hearing just walking around. She had just come from Milano and said that hearing English was not as prevalent there.
After Dale and I met back up, we decided to take another stroll down one of the other streets.
On our late afternoon walk, we did some window shopping. At the end of one of the streets in the plaza we came across this building. It just looked like almost a fort with no windows on the ground level. I believe it is one of the many museums in town. They are everywhere. Dale should be able to find tons to browse through
We also did a bit of window shopping. Even stepped into a couple of stores looking for nice Italian shirts for Dale. Nothing grabbed him. Italy is a Mecca for women’s fashion, so of course nothing even pinged or caught my eye. I am much more into super comfortable, not height of fashion girl
This building’s top was lite by the sun as it was going down.
The building is super impressive. I am not sure if it was a church or a palace, but very impressive
As we headed back, we walked around the basilica di Santa Maria Novella. It looks very huge and almost overwhelming. We were not able to go inside, but got a good picture at sunset
In the plaza the church sat on, they were having a street fair with vendors and a concert. I love wandering and stumbling on interesting things,
On our wandering we stopped for some gelato, so good!
Also we stopped in a little bodega, where we got a couple of sandwiches to go as we wanted to eat light tonight after our good lunchtime meal. We were still not hungry after having the cups of gelato, but knew we would want something before bed,
All in all a fun day.
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