Florence and the (penny smashing) Machine

So we made it to Florence!  When we got to our apartment we were greeted by the mother of the lady that managed the apartment because it turns out she was out of town, which was interesting because her mom didn't speak English, at all.  So she gave us a tour of the apartment by means of pointing and gesturing, we had a short conversation with her daughter on the phone, and then we were left to our own devices, not even really knowing where the closest grocery store was and exhausted from our very odd train experience.  

I will just say we were thankful for the peanut butter and nutella I stuffed in my bag from Zagreb when we first arrived in Florence.  When we did venture out one of the first things we did was find a place to eat.  Florence is definitely not lacking on little restaurants and cafes and we found one not far from our house in a little courtyard area of a building that turned out to be super yummy!  We were excited that Italy had pepperoni pizza (or hot salami... close enough) as Croatia was big on ham on pizza but not so much pepperoni.  

After that we ventured a little further and found that we lived super close to what turned out to be my two favorite things in Florence:  Pitti Palace (which is like 5 places in one but more about it later) and the Ponte Vecchio, or Old Bridge.  

They were literally a 3 minute walk from our apartment.  It was perfect.  My love affair with the bridge started the first time we crossed it.  I had seen pictures and heard about it from my lovely friend Bonnie as one of her favorite places in Florence and was so excited to see it and walk across the bridge myself!  Living so close we crossed it many, many times while in Florence, and got to see it many different ways.  

We saw it crowded with people in the middle of the day, at night with all the shops closed up like old trunks with elaborate locks and metal decorations on the outside, at sunset with beautiful reflections on the water, once we even saw it with an almost naked man running across it wearing nothing by red underwear and a scarf (for some reason followed by another guy with a video camera, we're still looking for the youtube video), and I have to say my favorite way, we saw it with street musicians playing on it in the evening accompanied by a yummy gelato cone from one of the many Florence gelato shops.

Group of locks along the bridge

 There was a tradition for couples to lock locks on the bridge near a statue, but the city of Florence has tried to put a stop to it and imposed a fine for doing so.  As a result, people find anywhere they can on the bridge and lock their locks there so all over in random places you can see groups of locks attached together.
We crossed the bridge almost everyday and I have to say I have way too many pictures of it because, even though I had probably taken that same picture before, I was usually compelled to stop and photograph it because it's just so damn photogenic :)

here are some of those pics   

                                      
Another great place in Florence is the Piazza Signoria, just steps away from the Uffizi Gallery, a great place to people watch and home to a collection of outdoor statues, including an awesome bronze statue of "Perseus with the Head of Medusa" by Cellini and a replica of Michelangelo's David.

              

Not far from the Piazza Signoria is the Piazza Republica, which has a huge archway and a charming carousel, and is the place to go for a market filled with leather goods and souvenirs from Florence.  Later on in our trip we ended up getting some leather bracelets from one of the vendor stands on the Piazza Republica (we shopped around and if you're ever in the market for leather bracelets, definitely go to the stands in Piazza Republica, they gave us a great deal! ).

   

And it was also a place where we saw this great string trio play a couple 

times, they were awesome!

Now, you can't really mention Florence without talking about the icon of the city, the Duomo.  

Between the train station and the Piazza Signoria is the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore and the famous brick covered Duomo.  It's truly an awesome sight to see, huge and imposing in the center of Florence and incredibly detailed with the green and white facade, complete with many statues and intricately carved windows and designs.  Just in front of it is the Battistero di San Giovanni with its famous Golden doors with relief sculptures on them that are also quite impressive themselves and rarely without tourists posing for pictures in front of them. The inside of the dome itself is covered in Fresco paintings that are pretty striking but I have to say I was taken with the candle trees in the center of the church, which were absolutely beautiful.  

The inside of the Duomo

        

 After visiting some of the main sights, we decided to just go explore the city, do a little window shopping, pick out what restaurants we'd like to come back and try, and look for spots we knew we could come back to and just sit, have a glass of wine, eat some prosciutto and cheese and bread, and just relax and take in the beauty of the city. We had several of those spots by the end of our time here.  Here are some random pics from around the city:

I love my moka pot!

It became an addiction

Two things we couldn't get enough of in Florence - coffee (well me at least Erin isn't really a coffee fan) and gelato.  Our apartment had this Moka pot that I figured out how to use by watching a youtube video, and became pretty much my favorite thing each morning.  I'm definitely going to have to get one of those babies when I get back home!






And the gelato in Florence was amazing!  We got a recommendation from our friend Megan to go to Gelateria Del Niro near the Piazza del Signoria and after trying several gelato places in the city we agree that it was our favorite!  Thanks Megan!

The statue on the left is of Galileo Galilei

We also had to pick out which museums we'd want to visit while we were here, because one thing Florence has is an abundance of museums.  We ended up choosing to get the "Friends of the Uffizi card" which gave us access to the big museums like the Uffizi te Bargello and the Accedemia as well as Pitti Palace, some of the Medici Villas, and several other places and it ended up being a great deal.  I think it was worth it just for the entry to Pitti Palace/Boboli Gardens it gave us as we ended up going there time after time.  

Great views from the cafe at the Uffizi

One of the first museums we went to was the Uffizi Gallery, which has some pretty famous pieces like Botticelli's 'Venus' as well has tons of other paintings and sculptures.  However, the ceilings were actually one of my favorite things at the Uffizi Gallery, and we usually ended up with a sore neck while being there from looking upward to much!

I'm actually surprised I didn't run into more people.  But really I loved looking at those painted ceilings (Florence in general has some pretty amazing ceilings especially in the Pitti Palace Museums!)  and we noticed something pretty awesome when we were checking out the ceilings on the top floor in the second corridor, each section of ceiling had a theme and a name.
The names were not in English but the language was close enough that we could usually figure it out especially when looking at the paintings on that particular ceiling.  So we spent some time deciphering what each ceiling was, and I remember there was a Mathematics ceiling, a Philosophy ceiling, as well as ceilings for Painting, Justice and Architecture just to name a few.
All the ceilings had a central figure and other things around it and out of all the sections, only 1 didn't have a person at the center.
Now this ceiling was on the opposite corridor from the "themed and named" ceilings but guess what the only non-human center of a ceiling had? That's right.  An owl.  I'm glad they share an appreciation for owls, they are pretty great!

So kinda random:  I found a penny smashing machine in Florence! (Well actually a 2 cent euro smasher) 

 I love these and was so excited to find one here! woooo!

walking through the park to get to the market

The lady that managed the apartment we stayed in gave us a list of places to go and things to do that she recommended and on that list was the Tuesday Market by the river.  We had to walk a ways (about 4 bridges from the Old Bridge from our house) but it was actually pretty cool when we got there.  I got to see a beautiful park that we walked through to get to the market and the market itself was a trip.

The bustling Tuesday Market

The vendors all have trucks that they park along this street by the river and you can find pretty much anything there, from kitchen utensils to clothes to flowers and produce!  It seemed like we walked for miles going through that market, and it was fun to see all the different stuff for sale there (not to mention some of the characters selling those things!)

Here's a picture from when we were walking back home from across the river.  All those vans are the vendors and the market just goes on and on!

This is also where I bought my new owl.  He's pretty cute and his name is Jacapo.  And you might be seeing more of him.  But more on that later.

I'll leave you with a few pictures of some of my favorite Florence yummyness, drinks and desserts!