We love Florence. We have decided to cancel Milan/Lake Como to spend an extra day here. We got in fairly late last night, and we are staying at a very cute hotel. Our room is actually in an apartment building, and it is a studio with a kitchen. After we type up this entry, we will be heading off to the market to buy some food for our fridge. We are going to have a picnic breakfast tomorrow morning at Giardini Boboli. We also hope to go to the Galleria dell Accademia to see David and all the other tresaures burried within.
Today got off to an interesting start. We decided to stay in Florence, and were able to get our cute room for another night at the same Priceline rate. We had the hotel desk clerk make reservations for us to eat lunch at Ristorante Casa di Dante. We also asked for directions for a drop off laundry. We spent a few hours in Amsterdam doing it ourselves, and it occured to us that it may be worth paying somebody else to do it for us so we could enjoy ourselves since time is at a premium right now. The first place we went that the desk clerk gave us directions to turned out to be a self service laundry. Our guidebook gave us directions for one, which we tried to find. We ended up at a convent, where a very kind nun tried to explain in rapid Italian that we were in the wrong place. She kept gestering to Kirk's red jacket and Jeremy's black one (we got him one at a thrift store in Berlin) and waving her arms. The addresses in Florence are weird. There are two numbers, one red and one black, and we were at the black address. We needed the red address. We found it, dropped off our laundry, and were on our way to lunch!
Lunch was one of the better parts of this trip. Casa di Dante has been open since the 1400's and was a favorite of various artists during the Rennesance. The food was incredible, and we were stuffed at the end. We did the whole traditional Italian thing, which was eating an appitizer, a first course, and a second course. We also had to try the wine! Our appetizer was pears with brie and dandelion leaves. Even Kirk, who is not a fan of brie, enjoyed it, especialy with the dandlion leaves. For our first course, Kirk had a ravioli with this sauce that really looked like nacho cheese, but tasted like heaven. Cathy had a soup with bacon and vegetables, which everybody liked. Jeremy's risotto with gorgonzalla cheese was the hit. Everybody kept sneaking bites off his plate. Our second course was just as good. Kirk had chicken marsala, and Cathy and Jeremy both had a souflee with a cheese sauce. We followed with coffee, and we tried a 1/4 liter of both the red and white wines. Mmmmm...
After we were stuffed to the gills, we went to the Duomo. It was really big, really pretty, and best of all, Free! We also paid a small fee to go look at the ruins of an earlier church, where we got to see the tomb of one of the ex customers of where we ate lunch.
After the Duomo, Jeremy went up the tower and took pictures for all of us. We then went shopping at the markets for gifts and postcards and such. Cathy popped into Gucci to check out the bags-a bargain at about 1300 euros each- but did not find anything she liked. They looked too cheap to her! Most of her bags cost at least 5000 each, you know.
We are off to find food for our breakfast tomorrow, then possibly to Pisa to get a picture of the tower at night. Speaking of pictures, one day we will upload lots of pictures from this trip! We are sad that it has not been as easy to do that as we had hoped.
Tomorrow evening we are starting the journey back to Frankfort so we can come home. We hope to update again, but if we do not, we will see everybody when we get back.
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