Infrequent Musings on Travel: July 2013

Welcome to part two of our second anniversary recap. As a reminder, Dorothy and I went to Italy earlier this year to celebrate our second anniversary with our partners in crime from our 2012 trip to Bermuda. In case you missed it, I’ve broken out this trip into separate entries and you can find part one here, which covers off on our initial travel from the States and our stay in Milan and Venice. However, given the length of each city, I’m breaking this up even further and into three parts, and part two will focus on our stay in Florence (and trip through Tuscany).

Florence / Tuscany

Our third stop took us to Florence, or Firenze if you prefer. Upon arrival we had to head to the Accademia Gallery for tickets to our Skip the Line tour, again booked through Viator. This was a little bit of a rush-rush, as we had to get from the train station, to the hotel to drop off our bags, and back to the gallery. When we got to the gallery there were already hundreds of people waiting outside. Apparently we looked totally out of place because an employee from the tour came right over to us, asked our name and gave us our badges to get right in. We just made it on time!

Our tour guide’s name was William and he took us through the gallery, focusing heavily on Michaelangelo’s work. I have to say that if I was half as passionate about, well anything, as William was to Michaelangelo’s work, I would probably be a millionaire. He provided a ton of knowledge and the occasional biases towards Michaelangelo – which is/was completely fine by the way. Turning the corner in the gallery you run right into the Statue of David. Very impressive, but also interesting to see how that is the one sculpture that stands above all others in art history, when so many more look similar. (Don’t kill me art buffs and historians.)

After the tour and a little more browsing of the gallery it was time to eat lunch and what better way to celebrate Florence than another pizza pie? We ate at a café around the corner from the gallery and on the square; it was definitively a top three pizza of the trip. Afterward it was time to get in as much of Florence as we could, as the following day was a tour around Tuscany (more on that later).

We walked to Florence’s Duomo which was beautiful ... but also very congested. Warning: we were entering “that” portion of the trip very quickly where masses of people got a “little” agitating – emphasis on “”. Our next venture was set to be Giotto’s Campanile, the bell tower in the square. Given said mood, we decided to skip climbing the tower in an effort to get away from some of the crowd. Enter two men offering up their artistic capabilities to draw us for a souvenir. Brad and Alicia took them up on their offer and after ten minutes of sitting there watching them get drawn, Dorothy and I caved as well. Let’s just say that this caricature isn’t on our walls, as my face looks like a bloated gerbil (see below). Brad and Alicia’s artist had two front teeth, and that was all. They had the same features in their caricature.

After quickly moving along we continued down our path to the river and bridges, crossing over at Ponte Vecchio. Again, just more and more people, including tons of kids and tours that were “in our way”. We crossed the bridge, walked along the river on the south side of Florence and crossed back over to see Santa Croce and its square. Here, we wound up doing our souvenir shopping and then waffling on what our next step was.

After netting out that a return to the hotel was in order, we walked a number of side streets back to Hotel Meridiana. As an aside, the hotel was a little out of the way and off the map, but perfectly fine. Their breakfast was good and they have WiFi. The problem: for one night, the hotel was packed with kids on a tour. This really became a problem when they ran up and down the hallway at 2am later that evening. Well, that is what Brad and Alicia told us, as Dorothy and I slept right through it.

In any case, we were back at the hotel searching for a place to reacquaint ourselves with aperitivo. We received a few recommendations and were on our way. For the life of us, we could not find anything open or with aperitivo. It took a good hour to finally find one of the places we were looking for – Kitsch. The aperitivo here was very good and included a lot of variety. Afterward, we wound up going back to one of the few places we found to be open, Finnegan’s Irish Pub! Please don’t judge us for going to ONE Irish pub on the trip. After buying a t-shirt souvenir from the bar (A’s colors), it was time to head back to the hotel and prepare for day two.

We were up bright and early for our second day in Florence, which actually took us out of Florence and into other highlights of Tuscany. To me, this was the highlight of this stop along the trip. We booked a one day sightseeing tour that took us to Siena, San Gimignano, and Pisa. After getting on the bus and getting through the (annoying) traffic in Florence, we were on our way to Siena. The countryside in gorgeous and I would highly recommend getting out of Florence for at least a day while there.

Our first stop was Siena, which I knew literally nothing about before that day. It is a pretty town with a ton of history in it. The cathedral was absolutely gorgeous. However, I’m going to go right past this and tell you what caught my eye more than anything – their main piazza becomes a major horse race center called the Palio. Words cannot describe how mad I was for not knowing about the Palio prior to stepping foot in Siena. Here is the chaos that ensues twice a year in the square:

Seriously?! This happens twice a year! We need to move on before this stops being a travel blog.

The next top of the tour was for lunch at a vineyard before heading to San Gimignano. The vineyard also makes their own, natural foods on site, so they provided a tour of the grounds. After the tour, it was time to sit down with the entire bus for some pasta, meats, and a few glasses of wine. The wine apparently flowed a little easier for some on the tour, as a few women were rip-roaring drunk at 1pm upon leaving the vineyard (so drunk that they were later told to shape up or were going to be left behind!). The background of pictures from the winery are amazing - again, see below.

Next on the tour was a trip to San Gimignano. This felt like its own little world/city, bordered by wall away from the rest of Tuscany. Within the town you will find a “world famous gelato” store, which has won multiple awards for being, literally, the best in the world. I can’t say I would disagree with this, it was fantastic. Brad and Alicia purchased a few pieces of artwork and on the way back to the tour bus, we fell into the torture museum. Naturally, we were upsold for tickets to both the torture and witch museums and “ran” through them both in order to make it back to the bus on time … which of course was a few minutes late.

Our last stop was to Pisa, a seemingly quaint little city in Tuscany with one very popular tower. Dorothy and I chose to climb the tower. Thanks to the aforementioned winos, we didn’t have too much time in Pisa. The four of us snapped a ton of cheesy pictures with the tower and Dorothy and I were then on our way to the top of the tower. I would recommend doing this, barring a terrible fear of heights or closed-in space. Other than that, you’ll be perfectly fine. By the way, Dorothy doesn’t like either of those and may not have enjoyed going the last bit of stairs to the very top of the Tower.

Unfortunately, by the time we made our way back down the tower (30 minutes in all), it was almost time to go, so we didn’t get a chance to really walk around Pisa too much. This would be my only issue with the tour, if enough people are climbing the tower, they should be grouped together on one bus for an extra 30 minutes or so of touring, so that they can do both the tower climb and a little more sightseeing. Again, thank you winos.

Upon returning to Florence in the evening we basically gave a cap tip to the city and took a recommendation from our tour guide to eat on the south side of the city – Osteria Santo Spirito. The food was very good and worth the short wait. After the meal and a few adult beverages we took the party of four back to the hotel bar. The party of four quickly became three, then two, and then … it was time to head to Rome!

This concludes part two of our little mini-series. We’ll wrap up our trip in the coming weeks! What other recommendations do you have for Florence or across Tuscany?

Here are a few pictures from this portion of the trip!

Our tour guide for the Statue of David: