So our final chapter in our Italy trip was based in Florence, Italy. We arrived in Florence and were extremely tired so we decided to take a nap. Our hotel room was gorgeous… the best one yet. After sleeping for a few hours, we woke up and got moving. It was around 5 p.m. so when we finally got outside, the city was pretty empty (most of the museums/churches close at 5 p.m. so that’s normal). We were a little disappointed that the city was so empty and didn’t think any city could compare to how much fun we had in Rome and Venice, so we decided that Florence wasn’t going to be as fun as the other cities right away… we were wrong : )
We decided to get some gelato and we found our favorite gelato flavors of the trip… Scott’s favorite was the coffee and chocolate mixed together and mine was tiramisu (the next day I got banana and that became my new favorite ) ; ) It seemed like the gelato tasted better in Florence… more authentic or something. We decided to walk around the Duomo and look at the Ghiberti doors while there weren’t very many tourists. We then decided to go to dinner near the Duomo. Right when we figured out what restaurant we wanted to go to, Scott looked over and Sammy and Dena from Jersey Shore were in the restaurant on camera filming the show. I quickly took a picture and we decided to eat at the restaurant next door so we could look at the reactions of people when they saw the Jersey Shore being filmed. Pretty random running into the Jersey Shore in the middle of Italy eh? The food was the best we had tasted in Italy yet. Not complicated - just spaghetti or pizza with a caprese salad, but maybe we just enjoyed it more because we started to finally relax and enjoy ourselves and take things slow.
Day 7
We woke up the next day to a beautiful view from our hotel room. The complementary breakfast at our hotel was amazing. It had the most beautiful view of all of Florence from the roof top. I highly recommend you stay at the Hotel Baglioni in Florence if you go. After breakfast we decided to head out to the city and walk through the main art museums and churches (lots of walking again – and it was HOT outside!).
First, we decided to climb the stairs in the Duomo to go to the top of the basilica. It was quite the workout! You have to climb a bunch of stairs that are going in a circle in a really small space… so you are exhausted, claustrophobic and dizzy the whole way up, but it’s beautiful when you get there because you can see all of Florence (which has some mountainside – Tuscany area) and you can see the painting on the basilica up close. According to Wikipedia, the basilica and church construction began in 1296 in the Gothic style to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was completed structurally in 1436 with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi.
Picture from the web:
We heard that we HAD to see The David statue so we walked to The Galleria de Academia and waited in line (since we didn’t have reservations). We only waited about 45 minutes, but it was worth it. The David is amazing…. You just sit there in aw of how beautiful the sculpture is, how perfect it is. I can’t help but think that Scott looks like The David… they have the same body type and the same hair!
We were tired, but decided to continue to the Uffizi museum to see more Byzantine art, Da Vinci, Caravaggio and the famous Botticelli painting - The Birth of Venus. I would highly recommend that you eat lunch and get hydrated before you go into this museum because it is huge and there is a lot to look at. The Birth of Venus painting was amazing.
Picture from the web:
When we left the Uffizi it started to rain (like it did in the afternoon at the same time everyday). We got some more Tiramisu Gelato and ran back to our hotel in the rain.
Day 8
We decided to go on a tour of the countryside near Florence (The Tuscany region) so we went to this cute little town called Shianti. I tried some blackberry gelato before we got on the bus and it wasn’t my favorite flavor… (we did eat a new flavor each day though!)…. I wish we had more gelato in the U.S.
Anyway, the tour included a tour of some small town countryside churches, a tour of a medieval castle, a tour showing how to make wine and how to make olive oil, and a wine tasting with hors d'œuvres. It was extremely relaxing and romantic which was just what the doctor ordered. We met some cute couples from Mesa, Arizona that told us they had a lot of trouble on their vacation (with taxis overcharging them, losing luggage and taxis bringing them to bad parts of town) so we felt very blessed that everything went smoothly for us. We tasted three different wines after we learned how they brewed them. One that was aged 1 – 3 years, one that was aged 5 – 10 years, and a desert wine that was aged for about five years that was a specialty wine where they had to first make the wine into raisins THEN squeeze it. Apparently they serve this wine in the churches as part of sacrament in their town.
A cool story about the medieval castle (Castello Del Trebbio) where we did the wine tasting before I conclude – The castle was built in the 1300’s and inhabited by the Pazzi family who was the second richest family in town. Obviously the richest family town was the Medici family who commissioned the artists to make Florence (and other cities) beautiful with their art. The Pazzi family was jealous of the Medici family and wanted to kill them so they could be the number one family so they conspired with the Pope at the time to kill the Medici family in this castle. The Pazzi family was successful in killing one of the Medici brothers, but not the most powerful brother – Lorenzo. Lorenzo found out about the conspiracy and killed everyone in the Pazzi family and seized their property (including the castle we were in).
For years the castle was empty, but they told us a cute story that an older man met a woman from Belgium on a train and immediately fell in love with her. She wanted to move to the castle even though it was cold ( you literally have to burn wood to get any heat in the place ), but she loved it. They had five kids in six years and raise their family in the castle. They revived the wine vineyards and olive trees and brought the place back to life. When the boys turned 20ish their father passed away and soon after their mother died in a car crash. The boys had to sell the castle because they couldn’t afford to pay for it. There is a modern day family that lives in the castle with a beautiful original Raphael painting in the living room. They cook in a wood burning stove, make wine and olive oil, and live in the most beautiful countryside of Italy. What a life!!!
Image from the web:
We came back to the city and went to dinner at the same café we dined at the first night in Florence (because the food was so good). When we were done, we saw three more Jersey Shore characters being filmed – Mike, Vinny and Pauly… MVP. It was surreal to see them in person… and in Italy no less?
The trip was absolutely fabulous and we hope to go back to Italy one day.
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