Day 4: Florence
Today we eat breakfast in our apartment for the first time…..coffee, tea, bread (from the bakery around the corner) and butter, and yogurt. I enjoy my three big cups of strong “American” coffee….
We head out (somewhat late) for the Mercato Centrale and San Lorenzo….so we take the little electric bus that stops near our apartment, threads its way through the neighborhoods of San Spirito and San Frediano, crosses the river and deposits us at the train station. Very handy. The market is about four blocks from the train station…..it is a large two story building with all the regular types of food stalls—beautiful cheeses, bread, meat, fish and fruit and vegetables. We walk around one time just looking and then we pick up some fruit and cheese. Lunch is at Nerbone, a well-known local place in the market. One braves the crowd to get the attention of the counter staff, order and pay. You then pick up your food and find a place at one of the tables across the aisle. The clientele is very mixed….lots of locals and an equal number of tourists. There is a poster in Japanese on the wall—probably from a Japanese guidebook—and there are a good number of Japanese having lunch there.
I have their famous boiled beef on a great roll…served with gravy and green and red sauces. Diana has a plate of delicious sausage and marinated artichokes as well as a very pretty Greek salad. We squeeze into a table and enjoy our lunch.
After lunch we stroll through the large outdoor San Lorenzo market which features stall after stall of leather products. Today we are not buying but going to the Church of San Lorenzo just around the corner. The church has an unfinished, rough façade but the interior is all cool Brunelleschi— gray and serene and perfectly proportioned. The interior is very light…there is very little stained glass. We sit down and read up on the church in several guidebooks…again we find Eve Borsook’s Companion Guide extremely valuable and easy to read. We walk around the church and the sacristies…following the maps in the Companion Guide and the Blue Guide. Highlights are the twin raised pulpits on either side of the aisle done by Donatello….carved with scenes from the life of Christ ….and the old sacristy, designed by Brunelleschi himself. There is also a pleasant cloister with an orange tree growing in the middle.
We make a detour on the way back to the apartment to check the opening hours of the Badia Fiorentina, which is only open on Monday afternoons for tourists. We plan to return later in the afternoon (it is open from 3-6 pm).
We walk back across the always crowded Ponte Vecchio and stop at a shoe store that’s been written up in one of our guide books as a good place to go for made to order shoes. Diana – she of the size 11 shoes and the often uncomfortable feet – has imagined it would be wonderful to get shoes made to measure. Unfortunately the cost of 450 Euros seems just a bit extravagant.
The Badia Fiorentina dates back to the 10th century and has a couple of nice paintings and sculptures. There are very few people visiting so it is a quiet oasis in the midst of so many tourists. There is a lovely Filippo Lippi painting “The Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard”, several impressive tombs and a slightly ramshackle cloister with a deteriorating fresco cycle on the upper story portraying scenes from the life of St. Bernard.
We next stop at one of the cafes on the Piazza della Signoria for a glass of prosecco and a chance to watch the people criss-crossing the piazza. With our prosecco, we are served a couple of canapés…one with ham, one with smoked fish..and some olives. We notice that people who ordered beer got pistachio nuts and other people who had a large assortment of drinks had yet another type of hors d’oeuvre. We speculate whether it is by chance or is there is a strict table of what snack goes with what drink.
Before we get back to the apartment, we stop at the bakery to buy some more bread and other supplies for breakfast tomorrow.
Dinner time approaches and we have to decide if we are more tired than hungry….we decide to just go around the corner to the Osteria Vasari, where we had gone for our first dinner. Unfortunately, it is closed on Mondays so we head toward the Ponte Vecchio. Nearby there is a small square with several restaurants on it….we go into one that I had read about—Celestino’s. We have an excellent meal….the best ribollita I have ever had followed by the best fried brains and the best Tuscan beans in oil. Diana’s first course ravioli is okay, but she really enjoys her lamb chops and spinach. We drink the house Chianti, which is terrific. We also enjoy the professionalism of the waiter and how he unflappingly deals with a difficult table of German tourists who are sitting next to us. The bills comes to about Euro 70.00….but we are well satisfied.
We only have a short walk back to the apartment….on the way, we notice the moon hanging in the sky above Santa Croce.
We head out (somewhat late) for the Mercato Centrale and San Lorenzo….so we take the little electric bus that stops near our apartment, threads its way through the neighborhoods of San Spirito and San Frediano, crosses the river and deposits us at the train station. Very handy. The market is about four blocks from the train station…..it is a large two story building with all the regular types of food stalls—beautiful cheeses, bread, meat, fish and fruit and vegetables. We walk around one time just looking and then we pick up some fruit and cheese. Lunch is at Nerbone, a well-known local place in the market. One braves the crowd to get the attention of the counter staff, order and pay. You then pick up your food and find a place at one of the tables across the aisle. The clientele is very mixed….lots of locals and an equal number of tourists. There is a poster in Japanese on the wall—probably from a Japanese guidebook—and there are a good number of Japanese having lunch there.
I have their famous boiled beef on a great roll…served with gravy and green and red sauces. Diana has a plate of delicious sausage and marinated artichokes as well as a very pretty Greek salad. We squeeze into a table and enjoy our lunch.
After lunch we stroll through the large outdoor San Lorenzo market which features stall after stall of leather products. Today we are not buying but going to the Church of San Lorenzo just around the corner. The church has an unfinished, rough façade but the interior is all cool Brunelleschi— gray and serene and perfectly proportioned. The interior is very light…there is very little stained glass. We sit down and read up on the church in several guidebooks…again we find Eve Borsook’s Companion Guide extremely valuable and easy to read. We walk around the church and the sacristies…following the maps in the Companion Guide and the Blue Guide. Highlights are the twin raised pulpits on either side of the aisle done by Donatello….carved with scenes from the life of Christ ….and the old sacristy, designed by Brunelleschi himself. There is also a pleasant cloister with an orange tree growing in the middle.
We make a detour on the way back to the apartment to check the opening hours of the Badia Fiorentina, which is only open on Monday afternoons for tourists. We plan to return later in the afternoon (it is open from 3-6 pm).
We walk back across the always crowded Ponte Vecchio and stop at a shoe store that’s been written up in one of our guide books as a good place to go for made to order shoes. Diana – she of the size 11 shoes and the often uncomfortable feet – has imagined it would be wonderful to get shoes made to measure. Unfortunately the cost of 450 Euros seems just a bit extravagant.
The Badia Fiorentina dates back to the 10th century and has a couple of nice paintings and sculptures. There are very few people visiting so it is a quiet oasis in the midst of so many tourists. There is a lovely Filippo Lippi painting “The Apparition of the Virgin to St. Bernard”, several impressive tombs and a slightly ramshackle cloister with a deteriorating fresco cycle on the upper story portraying scenes from the life of St. Bernard.
We next stop at one of the cafes on the Piazza della Signoria for a glass of prosecco and a chance to watch the people criss-crossing the piazza. With our prosecco, we are served a couple of canapés…one with ham, one with smoked fish..and some olives. We notice that people who ordered beer got pistachio nuts and other people who had a large assortment of drinks had yet another type of hors d’oeuvre. We speculate whether it is by chance or is there is a strict table of what snack goes with what drink.
Before we get back to the apartment, we stop at the bakery to buy some more bread and other supplies for breakfast tomorrow.
Dinner time approaches and we have to decide if we are more tired than hungry….we decide to just go around the corner to the Osteria Vasari, where we had gone for our first dinner. Unfortunately, it is closed on Mondays so we head toward the Ponte Vecchio. Nearby there is a small square with several restaurants on it….we go into one that I had read about—Celestino’s. We have an excellent meal….the best ribollita I have ever had followed by the best fried brains and the best Tuscan beans in oil. Diana’s first course ravioli is okay, but she really enjoys her lamb chops and spinach. We drink the house Chianti, which is terrific. We also enjoy the professionalism of the waiter and how he unflappingly deals with a difficult table of German tourists who are sitting next to us. The bills comes to about Euro 70.00….but we are well satisfied.
We only have a short walk back to the apartment….on the way, we notice the moon hanging in the sky above Santa Croce.
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