Coming off the high of Rome, I was really looking forward to spending the next few days in a different Italian city — Florence. My junior year of college I took a Renaissance art history class and I thought to myself, “Wow, one day I could actually see all those things in person…” and now it was really happening!
As we approached our hotel, the first thing we saw was the massive pink, green and white bell tower directly down the street from our entrance. I was absolutely awestruck, so you can imagine my happiness when we finally checked into our room only to discover that our window provided a spectacular view of the whole darn Duomo. But before we could dive into the city, we needed food of course, so we sped walked to Osteria Alla Antica for some famous sandwiches (which were good but not totally worth the hype) and then marched right back to the Duomo. At last, it was time to press play on our new bro, Rick Steves’ audio tour, “A Renaissance Walk.”
Rick’s tour provided the background on all the impressive artwork in the city that we had raced past just 20 minutes before in our hurry to get sandwiches. We saw the Duomo, the bronze Baptistry doors, La Plaza de la Signoria, Orsanmichel, the Uffizi courtyard and more, eventually leading us to the brilliant views on the Ponte Vecchio. Every stop on our tour was just a surreal experience as I got to see, and in some cases touch, the pieces that I spent weeks analyzing in a classroom. I loved every minute of it.
After a brief photoshoot in front of the Arno River, we hiked up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, stopping for some fresh gelato on the way. By the way, when I say hike, it’s no joke. Every single person was sweating bullets by the time they got up there, especially with the gorgeous warm weather we were having. Regardless, we made it, and spent the next hour enjoying the sun set over the Firenze cityscape.
Once we made it back to the hotel to freshen up, I panicked a little. We had a dinner reservation for our first night, but I realized that we didn’t have a single one booked for the rest of our trip, and we had already observed that Florence was much more crowded than Rome. I knew the place I really wanted to try was nearby, so we opted to just walk over and see if they could take us for the next night, and thankfully they could squeeze us in. Whew!
Anyways, after my momentary freak out, we split a pre-dinner porchetta sandwich in a piazza and leisurely strolled around until our fancy dinner. I could have sworn the reservation was for 9pm, but at about 8:43pm, I checked the email confirmation, and lo-and-behold, the reservation was at 8:30pm. Brian and I then proceeded to SPRINT through the narrow Italian streets and basically crashed through the doors of Essenziale at 8:48pm. It was fine — they hadn’t even realized we were late.
Dinner at Essenziale came highly recommended from many different sources, and it was quite tasty. It was 65€ per person for six courses plus a few bonus bites. We felt it was a reasonable price, and it showed us what a “special occasion” meal is for the Florentines (others in the restaurant appeared to be celebrating an anniversary, birthday, or an elevated corporate dinner). Upon arrival, our waitress informed us that the menu is secret, and our silverware was in a drawer under the table as to not give away the surprises ahead. This also meant that we had to take her word on the wine pairings. One bottle was 45€ and the other was 60€, so as you can imagine we picked the cheaper one, and I’m pretty sure I saw the waitress roll her eyes at us. Every course was lovely and unique, and by the time dinner was over, we were both very satisfied…but Bri wanted more gelato. We made a short detour to find a highly-rated shop, and unfortunately they were closed — oh well, we’d try again tomorrow.
The next morning, we got to sleep in. Turns out, there aren’t a crazy number of tourist attractions in Florence, and even with a fully-planned out schedule, there was going to be time to kill. Breakfast was at Il Mercato Centrale di Firenze, which hosts fresh produce and meat stalls on the first floor, and an upscale food court on the second. It was here that I had one of my favorite foods in Italy (though Brian will tell you that everything I ate was my favorite) — the arancino. This is essentially a ball of cheesy risotto stuffed with a different filling, in this case Bolognese meat sauce, covered in bread crumbs and deep fried. Y.U.M. Bri was only a little ashamed when I told him it reminded me of the Rice-a-Roni I loved as a kid. 😉
Next up was the Galleria dell’Accademia, and most importantly, Michelangelo’s David. We had seen the copy of the David in the Piazza della Signoria yesterday, and I was super underwhelmed, but geez is the real thing impressive. Between the basic knowledge I already had from my Art History class and Rick Steves sharing more details through the AirPods, I was able to really appreciate the challenges that Michelangelo had to overcome with this thing.
After a solid 15 minutes admiring the grand marble statue, our buddy Rick showed us around the rest of the museum, which was surprisingly interesting. If Bri and I didn’t have Rick, I promise we would have looked at the David and then spent the next 3 minutes pretending to glance at the other things in the room, probably not even reading the signs. But with Rick, we actually enjoyed seeing “The Prisoner” statues and learning about Michelangelo’s artistic process.
Now it was time for lunch, so we popped over to Trattoria Mario for some traditional Florentine steak. This is a popular restaurant, and even having gotten there 2 minutes after it opened, we just barely snagged one of the last empty tables. As it turns out though, the restaurant was able to seat almost twice as many people after we sat down because, as we learned in Rome, there’s no word for privacy in Italian (no really, there’s not). Halfway through our meal, the waiter sat a nice Italian couple at our very small table…hi friends! Bri and I thought the whole thing was funny, and could not picture eating our steak at a small four-person table in an American restaurant and having some strangers sit down with us.
I also should point out that Florentine steak is very large and very rare. In fact, Trattoria Mario explicitly tells you that they will serve your steak rare and will not accommodate any special requests. Brian joked he had trained for this his whole life because his dad always cooks meat on the rarer side, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to choke down something THAT red. In the end, the meat was so flavorful that Brian and I consumed the whole 2.4 pound beast.
We hung out on a bench in front of the Church of Santa Croce to let our bellies rest for a bit, but I’m only a little embarrassed to tell you that it wasn’t long before we split another sandwich at Osteria Alla Antica (still good but still not worth the hype) and each got a cup of gelato. We then made our way back to the Duomo where we took a few more pictures, used the restroom in our hotel room across the street, and paraded over to our final museum in Florence, the Uffizi.
Once again, Rick guided us through the Medici’s old offices, beginning with Medieval art and highlighting the changing artistic techniques as the Renaissance began. I fangirled over a few pieces (looking at you, Boticelli) and really enjoyed the hour-long tour. Seriously, if you’re money-conscious like us and just want a quick guided tour of the highlights, Rick Steves is absolutely the way to go. When we wrapped up at the Uffizi, it was just about sunset, so we strolled back to the Ponte Vecchio as lovers do, and enjoyed the pink and purple skies over the Arno. As darkness descended, we stopped by Gelateria La Carraia (the shop Bri had wanted to try the night before) and devoured the creamiest gelato we’ve ever had.
We did some people watching and snacked on delicious asiago and tomato crostone paired with wine at Volpi e L’Uva, but the main treat came later at Vini e Vecchi, the restaurant that agreed to squeeze us in the night before. Here we enjoyed some traditional Tuscan fare, including a fantastic osso bucco, but even better pappardelle with duck ragu. For the second time this trip, we re-ordered something because it was so good (see the mind-blowing panna cotta on our first night in Rome). After enjoying the first and second courses, our waiter asked if we wanted dessert. Our response to him was, “Yes, but first, can we please have another plate of the pappardelle?” Brian was embarrassed that we were the chubby tourists reordering the first course, but I insisted that they would find it flattering — and they did! Another great meal behind us, it was now time to pack up our bags and prepare for our early morning flight back to Barcelona.
Summarizing Florence is hard for me to do. Visiting Rome was a dream come true for me, and the cities are so different that it’s hard/unfair to compare them. As my father-in-law said, walking the streets of Florence is similar to walking in an open-air museum. Everywhere you look there is history, but unlike Rome, I didn’t get the feeling that this was a real working city. Of course, we stayed primarily in the most touristed part of town, but the concentration of attractions combined with the number of tourists (even in February), made this seem like a non-stop museum tour. This is not to say I did not enjoy my time here — quite the opposite. I loved the art and the food and the romance. But perhaps the wiser thing to do would have been to visit Florence first, and work my way backwards in time to the Roman Ruins and the true highlight of this trip, Roma.
Planners on the Go 