Our room is really cute, and it is nice to have a decent sized bathroom for once, one with a countertop for all my stuff. Their free breakfast is also awesome. The server makes simley faces in our cappachino. Red currant yogurt, peach marmelada, I wish this stuff could get back to the states.
Get some fatty salami Toscana and mixed purple olives. They try and sell us on bread, but we are not sold, not unless it is a paneteria. The polizia look super cool in their uniforms, with their vespas and cigarettes. Pedestrians own the streets in this town. So many open doors with people selling right onto the streets. Lots of high fashion stops, leather goods, handbags, looks like Sarah's paradise.
The Uffizi looks nice in the daytime from the outside. Mind-blowing on the inside, you have Boticelli, Michelangelo, a mix of eras and ornate ceilings. Perfect for MySpace photos.
We wander to the duomo. I try and light someone else's candle that has gone out, is that bad or good karma? The ceiling is incredible, but it hurts your neck to keep looking up. It is dizzying with the hellfire and optical illusions of depth. We wish we could go to the top but hunger and budget move us forward.
I have my sights on Antico Fattore, but a miscalculation gets us there 20 minutes before open time. The smell of basil and onions emanates from the alley and makes our tummies grumble.
The Ruffino Chianti is exquisite, cheap, rustic and grapey. There is too much on the menu to try, tuscan delights. We pass on fagioli and opt for boar papardelle. The meat tastes like earth and cloves, like gamey beef and I love the soft floppy homemade papardelle noodles. The food comes so quick, as always, but maybe that is because it is homecooking and not a fancy "risorante". The lamb is like shake and bake and no cheese with the zucchini flowers, bland. So we order tortellini porcini and confuse the waiter by having a "primo piatto doppo di secondo piatto".
Head off across the Ponte Vecchio, which isn't as cool now that the shops are open, just a bunch of jewelry. There are no tempting gelaterias, so we continue onto the Boboli Gardens. Tickets come in packs, so we get suckered into a ticket for a stupid costume museum filled with ugly clothes. Once we get to the gardens, we tempt a stray kitty cat with our bag full of salami. We miss our kitties back home.
We climb up and the view of Firenze gets prettier and prettier. At the top, we see a great view to either side. On one hand you have the tuscan hills with castles, yellow villas and GREEN (first green of the trip) trees. On the other you have a sienna colored city with the faint sound of honking horns. It's romantic up here, a place to get married, if only they'd open a wine bar or a restaurant.
The Tuscan sun is warm and for the first time all trip we can take off our coats for photos. We see more of those weird trees from Beaune, only this time they have leaves. We make our way down and back up an alley, which leads us to another garden, another set of stairs, and another fantastic view of Firenze. I feel in awe and at peace. We sit in a secluded little cave lined with coral and shells, that drowns out the city noise as we look down over the city.
We find a weird abandoned exit to the gardens. Is this elevator safe? It must be, it dumps us into a gift shop. On our way to Piazzale Michelangelo, we find a back entrance to a grocery store. We get a cheap wine, but forget our corkscrew. Quickly sneak use of the stores corkscrew then run away, no time to look at the prosciutto and artichoke tortellini.
We buy bread from a creepy old man with a cat (or is it just a cat recording, never figured it out). We knew we were in for trouble when the bread sounded like bricks as they were put down on the table. We taste the bread as we ascend our final set of stairs, and it tastes terrible. Oh well, we make the most off it by wrapping it in parma and cheese.
Our camera dies at the top of the Piazzale, so the beautiful sunset can only live in our memories. There are tons of purse sellers and artists, many people painting the scene of the city and then trying to sell it to you, Asians with grasshopper mobiles made out of grass. We do end up buying a purse sized tripod from a street vendor.
We can't believe we had come up so far, as we make our way back down in the twilight. We look back up to the setting sun over the hill, just beautiful, we really need to charge our camera. I can't pass up the gelato on the way back, and we are terribly overcharged, upsold to the waffle cone. We taste test the leftover box wine against our new Montelpulciano d'Abruzzo and guess which won. We take an extended nap after downing the remaining wine. Wine naps are the best.
Acqua al due is super busy tonight. They try and push us off onto their other establishment, but I won't hear of it. The alleyway smells of delicious steak, and that is what I want, damn it. We put our name on the waiting list and go off in search of some pre-dinner drinks, a more difficult feat than it sounds. Can't find the MayDay club's address because the numbers skip from big to small (12 30 32 34 36 14 38 40). Closed clubs, obnoxious singers, places that will only serve you dinner. Finally find MayDay and stand outside long enough for the owner to open up the gates.
We meet a girl from New York who tells us off her experiences here in Italy, we tell ours. The jazz club is such a unique atmosphere in this town. Lights cast diamond shadows on the paintings, records nailed to the ceiling. The super nice bartender gets us a beer and a pomegranate martini.
We go back to Acqua, wait forever, and then are seated next to bubbly valley girls from America that explain the menu to each other in bad Italian. We order the "assaggio" which is a sample of each of the primo piatto. Order a half bottle, get a full by mistake, oh well. We watch them make our food on a TV screen into the kitchen, it takes confidence to show your chefs cooking. Is that plate ours, we are hungry?
We sample broccoli crème macaroni, big and floppy. There is a penne with gorgonzola, and Tom's face lights up for the squishy good gnocchi in brown sauce with bitter raddichio. Tom says that the wine takes on a whole new meaning with the food. Too true, we've been drinking a lot of vino this trip. Rigatoni in meat sauce is very al dente and we finish with searing hot spirals of pasta in red pepper sauce.
We wait forever, but there are people around us who have been waiting longer. Half the people next to us get a steak, half are left empty handed. Luckily ours comes just in time. It isn't Florentine steak, but it is deliciously rare and covered in porcinis and that is just fine with me.
We go back to the May Fly for a final drink. The guy loves us because we returned and serves us popcorn to snack on. We have snickers and after dinner mint martinis (not mixed together). On the way back, some guys try and sell us weed, no thanks. We wake up the bubbly gay concierge, who tells us it is okay, "I hope you had a drink on me."