View from Piazza Michaelangelo
Interesting growths on the walls and ceilings of these little grottos on the
walk up to the scenic overlook above. There was water seeping, and sometimes
actually running out of the walls in them and the pigeons thought them a
great place to hand out... We toured the Gardens of Boboli at the
Medici spread in Piazza dei Pitti and came across the Egyptian obelisk, you
can see in the insert that the whole thing was supported on the backs of
bronze tortoises. We've discover these at the bases of several pillars
and obelisks....
Gilli, est.. 1749
One of a dozen varieties of cute little 3 wheelers so popular around
town....
OSHA
would have a field day here. While some features in the bathrooms are really
neat, like
a valve you can open on the toilet to regulate how
much of a flush you
need to heated towel bars, some others are down right dangerous. This tub /
shower is about 3' long and split level. Note the left side is about 3-4"
raised, how to break your neck in Italy!
The overly famous Ponte Vecchio, a marvel in condensed
overpriced shopping opportunities....
On
the east end of Piazza Signora, just outside the Uffizi, stands a
recreation of Firenze's favorite son David. This is the piazza where we
discovered and re-discovered one of Firenze's finest restaurants and it's
secret desert: Vin Santo! While it is no longer on the restaurant's
menu, we told the waiter at Cafe de Barghello that our friend Bobio
told us to ask for it and sure enough, it was delivered up with plenty
of Italian flare!!
IT is said that if you wish to return to Firenze you must
touch the snout of this drooling pig...
Santa Croce
[on left], wherein the likes of Machiavelli, Rossini
and others are buried. Santa Maria Novella Church [lower right]. Just for
the record, I find most of theses churches intriguing not for the
significance as churches but because they are remarkable buildings
architecturally. The outsides aren't usually as interesting as the insides,
but the photographs rarely come out on the inside, generally they are
quite remarkable on the insides. Fascinating, in part because of the
astounding juxtaposition between what common life was like at the time of
their construction on the outside and the incredible lavishness on the
inside and in part because of the difficulty in carving a 60' piece of
marble into an ornate 30" curved crown molding and hoisting it 70' in the
air to circum-navigate the base of a dome. By any standard, these are
amazing buildings!
gated common area for employees to lunch in. In its center was a 25' tall
homage to Backus, or at the very least, an irreverent slap in the face of
sobriety at work although recent studies indicate the most successful lean
toward the spirits.
There is this spectacular restaurant in Florence called Il Cantastorie,
I can only assume, "The Singer". Wel
l,
or Alora, as the natives say, at Il Cantastorie there is this great looking
tenor who has Puccini down pat, as well as Bon Jovi and probably way
to many other American pop artists! He doesn't just sing, he has the
spectacular voice and the tremendous presence of a true Cantatori.... He
repeatedly leaped into the restaurant with a few purloined breadsticks to
tap out parts of the different melodies on wine glasses of varying
fullness. I only wish Lizette was here to enjoy it with us!!!! Happy
Birthday Lizette, we love you! It's probably a good thing you weren't here,
Jane had way to much fun already!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ohmigosh, perhaps this really is heaven! We left Il Cantatori and wandered
down the same street we had traveled at least a half a dozen times in the
past few days.... but somehow, magically, this new place had
appeared... They had, as you can see, an enormous selection of Italian wines, many of which were available for sampling. Gosh, I love Italy, they lack a lot of the hang ups that Americans take for granted...... Anyway, the woman I was dealing with helped me narrow down a fine Multipiacino Chianti, something we had learned to appreciate in the past week as well as something we could never find at home. Bottom line; for 7.5� [and �s are essentially the same as $] I managed a spectacular Grand reserve..... For those of you who speak "wine", I need not say any more.......