Hello Florence

What to say about my first experience of Florence? Well, first let me share the brief bus drive through the Tuscan landscape on our way to Florence from Pisa. A lot of movies romanticize Tuscany and show only it's most beautiful spots - and from my brief drive I can say there are lots of them to choose from! I am hoping we will have a day to rent a car so I can see more of the countryside... but I'm not sure if I will be willing to tear myself away from Florence! So far I love it here! It is very busy and bustling, but much cheerier than Paris. It actually reminds me a lot of Venice (Italy, not Beach). There are modern shops situated in historic buildings, there's a flea market where they sell amazing leather goods at reasonable prices, and the coffee!!! We arrived around 10:30, too early for the hotel to have our room ready, so we wandered the city while we waited. We found one of the many little walk up cafes where you enjoy your coffee at the counter. I ordered a cappuccino and Ryan a mocha, and oh my stars! I've been to Italy before, but I don't think I've ever had this excellent of quality of espresso! If I wasn't so sensitive to caffeine, I probably would have ordered five more!

After our little coffee break, we then wandered the streets some more and found... an H&M! Previous readers will know of my obsession with visiting an H&M in every city I find, so when I say I did not leave empty handed, there should be no surprise! To be fair, when we left for Europe, the weather forecast was showing rain everywhere - now it appears we are here in time for a slight heat wave (mid 70s) - so I was really not prepared clothing-wise for these warmer temps, and where better to rectify this problem than H&M? Followed by Zara, of course! :D

For lunch we hit a pizzaria Ryan had eaten at on one of his past trips to Florence - Ryan had a prosciutto pizza and I had a quattro stragione - artichoke, olive, prosciutto, and mushroom. They were pretty big pizzas, but so good we both cleaned our plates, and then got gelato (pistachio for me, chocolate hazelnut for Ryan).

To burn off some calories to make room for dinner later, we walked across the Ponte Vecchio to the Pitti Palace. The grounds here are very lovely and peaceful so we spent the majority of our time here viewing the gardens and the many statues throughout. We did spend a little time in the museum itself, which consisted mostly of china brought over during the Marco Polo era, and formerly used religious paraphernalia, like ivory incense burners and such. There were multiple tour groups being lead through while we were looking around, so we cut our visit short to head back to the hotel to relax before dinner.

Before dinner we went up to the top of our hotel, which has a tower balcony over looking the entire city. Not a bad place to watch the sun set, what with the Duomo and the Campanile and Gallileo's Observatory all clearly recognizable and so close it felt like we could touch them (we could not).

For dinner we visited another restaurant that Ryan had frequented on his past trip here. We ordered the mixed crostini antipasto - I ate the crostini with the mushrooms, tomatoes, white beans, and pâté, and Ryan kept it safe with the prosciutto and salami. I tried to get Ryan to try the pâté - he made a face and placed an infinitesimal amount on his fork and then, just before placing the fork in his mouth, wisely asked, "How is it?" My response, "Pretty good - smells and tastes kinda cat foody." He chose to skip it and I got to keep it to myself. And then I licked my paws and cleaned my face with them. After that, Ryan had ravioli in a tomato and ham sauce and I had truffle risotto. All in all, pretty good eats on our first day in Florence!

The Palazzo Vecchio, aka the old Medici palace, conveniently stays open til midnight on Sunday's, so we decided to visit around 9pm, after the tour groups had been bussed away for the day. Cosimo the First built it for his lovely wife, who said it wasn't grand or opulent enough for her, so poor Cosimo built the Pitti Palace instead and left the Palazzo Vecchio as a museum. It has beautifully painted ceilings as well as ornate furniture throughout. They even have a reliquary in their chapel (they found some bones buried under the altar when renovating, and though I don't think they know whose bones they are, they decided to keep them in the chapel as relics).

By far our favorite room was the cartography room - I never knew Ryan shared my love of staring at old maps and laughing at just how wrong they were. In all seriousness, I actually am really impressed with how much they did know then, considering their only means of transport to foreign lands would be by boat, and without refrigerators, modern bathrooms, or bottled water, that could not be an easy trip.

All in all, a very nice start in our home away from home for the next 4 days!