Europe 25: Florence, Day 1

Our first full day in Florence was a full one, which is what you want when you have a limited amount of time in a place full of things to do and see.

Somewhere in the depths of my phone is an app that I did not ask for and only ever check when I’m traveling. The rest of the time it sits in a folder labeled “Useless Things” which gets bigger with every major OS update. Among other things, this app counts my steps. I have no idea how it does this nor do I care to find out. All I know is that when I go on these trips it will occasionally send me notifications such as “Your activity levels have changed!” to let me know that I’m getting up and about more than I usually do as an academic, and then when I come back it sends me the same message in reverse to let me know that I’m back to my normal life as an immovable object. I’m not sure this is helpful. But I did end up checking the step count periodically while we were away and this was the day that I exceeded 30,000 steps. That may be a record for me. It may not. I’d need to check more often and that would require effort. But it was a lot.

We were up pretty early because of the time shift and had breakfast in the apartment thanks to Stacey and JR’s generosity the night before. We discovered that our credit card company had rejected the payments we’d made on the tram ride from the airport – you just wave your phone at the little pad by the door and it pays for things, and this is how public transportation should work, I think – but we weren’t able to contact them about it. This is called "foreshadowing," kids, and it becomes relevant again in a few days. Eventually the credit card company decided that those charges were okay, though, and sent us a note that they’d finally approved it. This was good to hear.

Stacey and JR came by around 7:30am and we set off for the Uffizi, which was about a half hour walk away.

Along the way we passed this staircase, which is definitely in the running to be my next profile picture on social media.

If you want to get anywhere in the historic part of Florence you have to pass through the piazza where the Duomo is (and, for the record, I’m just going to keep calling it Florence rather than the proper Italian name Firenze because I’m an American and using Firenze just smacks of being That Guy a bit too much for me). It’s absolutely central to the historical heart of Florence and it’s on the way to pretty much everything you want to get to. It’s gorgeous, however, so we didn’t mind.

The marble in the Duomo and its associated buildings is actually green and white, not black and white though that’s hard to see from the photos. You see this combination all over Florence, and after a while it occurred to me that this is probably why the adjective “Florentine” in nearly every context related to food means “add spinach to it.” This might just be me, though.

Between the Duomo and the Uffizi is the Piazza della Signoria, a wide-open space full of statues. There’s a very tall modern one right in the middle, for example.

And off to one side is a full-scale copy of Michelangelo’s David, which they put there when they moved the original indoors a while back. You don’t realize how big that statue is until you see it in person. We did eventually go see the original too, and yes it is that big.

There’s also a long row of statues under the overhang of a building on one side that we were content to view from afar, though later we did come back to see the statue of Neptune just to the side of that.

The trick to the Uffizi, we were told, is to get there early because if you wait until later in the day it becomes a mob scene. We showed up pretty much as it opened and after waiting in line for a bit they let us in. We didn’t even try to stick together, as that way madness lies, but we did set up a meeting time and place and we ran into each other from time to time.

The thing I learned about Florence that was immediately obvious in the Uffizi is that while Rome is basically Classical, Florence is mostly medieval and Renaissance. You find all of those things in both cities, of course, but there is a distinct emphasis that differs between them. The other thing I learned is that there is a LOT of art in Florence. You could spend an entire day in the Uffizi and never see the half of it, in part because it's kind of a rabbit warren that unfolds in nonlinear space, and that’s just one museum. As it was, we had a couple of hours so we did the best we could.

There were a great number of paintings, many of which I liked for reasons of my own that probably wouldn’t pass muster with an art critic but then I am not an art critic so I’m good with that.

There were sculptures, some of which were classical.

Not all of these were classics in the way you’d think, but they were old nonetheless. There’s nothing quite like an art gallery to remind you that people have always been people and that modern notions of propriety are not all that applicable to past epochs.

Also, just a reminder that you are allowed to have some fun with this stuff.

This was one of my favorites because you so rarely find characters in medieval paintings speaking to each other using the equivalent of cartoon speech bubbles, and even more rarely do you find the words simply embossed into the gold.

We met up briefly in one of the corridors. It was a hot day – most of the time we were in Florence it got up to around 92F/33C, which is significantly cooler than it would be immediately after we left so our timing was relatively good that way. The climate isn’t changing, folks. The climate has changed. We’re just trying to figure out how to survive the new one, or at least those of us with more than seven working brain cells are trying. Many are not, however, and you can draw your own conclusions from there. The Uffizi is air conditioned, though, and sometimes you just have to stand on the grate and be glad for it.

The photo of all of us is just one photo. Every time I look at it I think it’s a composite with me just stuck onto the side of the original like some amateur Photoshop job, but no – that’s what it was.

There were a number of exhibits that I particularly enjoyed. There was a map room, for example – I love maps of any kind, for no particular reason other than they’re fun and that’s enough. That map covers the entire wall and is somewhere around 5 meters by 15.

There was a display of artist self-portraits that I thought was fascinating. There have always been selfies, after all. It’s just easier now. From top to bottom, these are Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Elisabeth Vigée-LeBrun, Solomon Adler (who looks like he’s having a whale of a time, doesn’t he?) and Beatrice Ancillotti Goretti, and they’re here solely because I liked them. That’s all you need for art, I think.

There’s an entire room devoted to Botticelli, which makes a certain amount of sense when you think about it. The centerpiece, of course, is The Birth of Venus, which is a painting I show to my Western Civ classes when we get to the Renaissance. I took a lot of photos of a lot of paintings on the theory that they’d make good slides for that class, actually. This was just one. As with the statue of David, you don’t realize how big it is until you’re standing in front of it

Also, Botticelli definitely had a type that he liked.

We saw works from three of the four Ninja Turtles while we were at the Uffizi. There was artwork by Leonardo, for example.

And Rafael.

And Michelangelo.

I don’t remember any Donatello in the Uffizi, which is not to say that there weren’t pieces by him there – quite possibly even pieces that I saw and just didn’t remember. It’s a big place. We saw Donatello pieces in other places, though, so in the end we collected the whole set. Dude.

One of the things I enjoyed most about the Uffizi, oddly enough, is that it provides some really lovely views of Florence from the windows. Reality can be just as much art as paintings and sculptures, I think.

From the museum you can see the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest standing bridge over the Arno. It was built in the mid-1300s on the site of ancient bridges going back to the Roman Empire, and it is – according to a brief internet search I just did – the only bridge in Florence that survived World War II. On the street level it is full of shops and people, but above that is the Vasari Corridor, which the ruling Medici family built in the late 1500s and used to get from one side of the river to the other without being bothered by actual contact with the people they ruled. The Vasari Corridor has been closed for about eight years for renovations, and they just reopened it this past December. It runs for about a kilometer and it goes from the Uffizi over the Ponte Vecchio to the Palazzo Priti and the Boboli Gardens.

We had tickets for the Corridor – which are timed – so at the appointed hour we presented ourselves at one end and set off. Our guide was informative but completely without affect, which lent a certain comical tone to the whole thing that you'd understand completely if you've ever seen Eleanor Morton's videos on Instagram or TikTok, and they haven’t quite managed to put the art back up yet. But you do get some lovely views of the river and the Ponte Vecchio below you as you go.

About halfway through this – not on the bridge, of course, but somewhere in the Oltrarno neighborhood across the river from the Uffizi – you pass a little window on the left and you can look down to see the Church of Santa Felicita which has a private balcony, accessible only through the Corridor I think, where the Medicis could attend services.

We got to the end and found ourselves at the entrance to the Boboli Gardens and the exit to the Palazzo Priti, neither of which we were going to explore that day. You actually come out at a little grotto that is, well, not exactly my sort of thing, but it was interesting to look at in a train wreck sort of way.

In the little courtyard in front of the grotto was this statue, which in my head I call “Incel on a Turtle.” I suppose it has a more official name but I’m just going to stick with my name for it as it’s probably funnier.

By this time the day was well underway and the sun was beating down on us, so we found our way to a nearby piazza where we located a market that would sell us drinks and I got to introduce Stacey and JR to chinotto, my favorite Italian beverage. It’s a bitter-orange soda (also, though I’ve never seen it in person, a liqueur) and it’s hard to find in the US so I’m always happy to grab some when I see it.

At the end of the piazza was the Basilica di Santa Spirito, a 15th-century church that beckoned us in with promises of interesting sights and shelter from the sun. You’re not allowed to take photos of the church from inside, but you can point your camera at the open front door from outside and get a decent idea of what it looks like.

It’s got a lot of artwork and carvings inside, and for a couple of euros you can go into a side chapel and see a larger-than-life wooden crucifix hanging in the middle of the room that was made by a teenaged Michelangelo. It was a bit oddly shaped from that perspective but apparently if they’d have put it at the height that it was supposed to be the perspectives would have sorted themselves out. Also, if you go all the way through the church you will find a really peaceful little courtyard with a pond.

Plus you can make your way into what is, at least by comparison, the New Refectory where this is a lovely fresco by Bernadino Pocetti, painted in 1597. We liked how he found space for the cat as well.

We went back to the piazza and had lunch, surrounded by friends and spouses, out in the open air with good food and a drink in hand, and if there is a better way to do that I’m not sure what it is. Though it is a fact that Florentines do not use salt in their recipes for bread, which makes for very odd-tasting bread.

We explored the piazza a bit after that, stopping by a stall that sold copper art pieces that were far too heavy to consider bringing home but were interesting to see, and it was at that point that we noticed a commotion over by the fountain in the middle of the piazza. It was about midafternoon and apparently it was the last day of school in Florence, and there was a large group of teenagers celebrating that fact by invading the fountain, tossing each other in, splashing water on each other, and generally having a grand time, and all the old people like us just stood there and watched with vague smiles on our faces because we remember what that day felt like and that kind of joy is infectious.

We wandered back through the streets of Oltrarno and over to the Ponte Vecchio after that. They have these things called wine windows in Florence, and apparently if you go at the right time you can give people money through that window and they will hand you a glass of wine and I think this is something that we should have here in the US except that we cannot have nice things like that especially when it comes to alcohol so I suppose I’ll just have to go back to Italy someday as we never found one that was open when we happened by.

The Ponte Vecchio at ground level is a crowded street lined with jewelry shops and you kind of bump along from one to the other, stopping at the gap between buildings that you find in the center of the bridge to look out over the river with all the other tourists, and there is a certain camaraderie in that I suppose.

From there we walked back to Stacey and JR’s apartment, stopping briefly to grab some groceries at a small market where I found paprika potato chips and more chinotto, and generally just enjoying the sights as we walked by them. I will say that the Piazza del Limbo was notably dance-free, however.

We rested a bit with Stacey and JR and then walked back to our own apartment for siesta time. It is good to plan for that when you have these vacations, especially when you are no longer 25 years old.

Plus, we had to gear up for our Florentine Steak Experience.

Florentine steak is one of the signature dishes of Florence, and having now had this Experience I understand why. Stacey and JR met us at our front door and we walked into the historic town center to Fiaschetteria-Trattoria Mario, a lovely little place that unfortunately sits right next door to another restaurant that is TikTok Famous so there was a milling crowd of people much hipper and trendier than I am in the street outside but fortunately we weren’t going there.

Fiaschetteria-Trattoria Mario is the sort of place where you need to make reservations a week in advance, which Stacey and JR had thoughtfully done. It’s narrow and deep and when we got there for our appointed time there was a little sign that said their next opening was days away. They seated us at a small table near the front and a waiter came over to take our order. We told him Florentine steak, and he disappeared into the kitchen, which is only separated from the rest of the place by a glass panel.

There followed a resounding WHACK! and a couple of minutes later he reappeared at our table with about half a cow on a plate. Have you ever seen a tomahawk steak? It was kind of like that only bigger, and the waiter proudly announced that it weighed 2.1 kilograms, which is about 4.5 pounds in bald eagle units. We nodded, ordered a couple of cursory sides (small salads, wine/beer according to preference, and an order of fries – the trick to this is not to eat much else) and he disappeared.

Florentine steaks are simply prepared. They throw salt onto the frying surface and sear one side, and then repeat with the other. The outside gets caramelized and crunchy while the inside remains rare. I’m not much on rare steaks, but it was surprisingly good and, well, filling.

There’s always room for dessert though.

It was a meal that pretty much required a passegiata around the town and we joined the slow-moving crowds ebbing and flowing through the historic central district of Florence. We walked past San Lorenzo, which was marvelously lit up and surrounded by art. I’m going to do an entire separate post on art in the streets of Florence so I’ll pass over that lightly at the moment, but it was nice to see.

We passed by the Duomo, of course, which was surrounded by happy crowds. buskers, diners, and hucksters selling those pinwheel toys that fly up about twenty meters and then land on someone’s head.

We stumbled into the Mercato Centrale, which was mostly closed though the upstairs was open. That’s where the restaurants are, rather than the vendors. It was fun to wander around and see what they had, and there was a television on showing the French Open. Stacey and JR are both big tennis fans, and it is a sport that Kim enjoys as well. It’s not one I follow but when you are surrounded by fans it’s pretty easy to get interested in how it’s going, and we watched for a bit before heading off back into the night. We passed another wine door, also closed. Eventually we had walked enough to clear some room so we found a gelato shop and made our presence felt.

I always get lemon, because that is the king of gelato flavors. They only had it in a granita, though, and let me tell you it was just wonderful and surprisingly inexpensive. We stood there in the street with our various treats, watching the people go by. It was a lovely way to end a good day.