Italy - Florence - Days 8 & 9 (May 30th & 31st)

May 9
4 min read

Updated: Jun 2

Saturday 5/30

Today began as a travel day as we departed from Cinque Terre and headed to the heart of the Renaissance, Florence. Mike was looking forward to this leg of the journey as the Renaissance is part of his AP European History curriculum that he's been teaching for decades, and FINALLY he will get to see some of the art and architecture he's never seen in person!

Additionally, since this was Katie's 2nd time to Florence, she was looking forward to seeing the sights again, eating some good food, and showing her history nerd of a boyfriend around town (ok, well maybe not that last part so much!).

After a 15 minute train ride and a 3 hour bus ride we arrived at the Hotel California in the heart of old town Florence, a stone's throw from the Duomo. There was plenty of room at the Hotel California, such a lovely place! Ok, now that I'm done with the Eagles references, time to move on!

Mike was SUPER smart and packed in TWO touristy things to do on a busy travel day 😒 But even before we could hit those two places, we went to the relatively lesser known Medici Chapel "Cappelle Medicee" and were blown away by the architecture and the tomb sculptures created by Michaelangelo. If you ever get to Florence, this is highly recommended...not many tourists there either! Secondly we walked to Florence's famous Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower), better known as the Duomo, completed by Brunelleschi in 1536. This is the iconic dome that dominates the Florentine skyline. The interior is truly a marvel, dominated by impressive paintings and beautiful stained glass windows.

Afterwards we traveled downstairs to the Santa Reparata, an underground crypt underneath the Duomo. There we saw all kinds of very cool old tombs, many of which reminded Mike of the "tomb of Sir Richard" from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade..and he made sure to tell Katie about it no less than 15 times which led to yet another "Mike-induced" headache that Katie suffers through quite often!

From there we traveled across the street to the Baptisery of San Giovanni, standing in front of the Duomo, and is an ancient religious and civil center of Florence and another masterpiece of Italian architecture.

At 4pm we had tickets to the famous Uffizi Museum so we high-tailed it over there and battled through the throngs of tourists to make our way into the door. There we viewed many vintage paintings and sculptures from Renaissance masters such as DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, Botticelli, Gentileschi, and Caravaggio. If you have a favorite teenage mutant ninja turtle, his work was on display!!

Afterwards we returned back to the hotel, cleaned up and went to a nice dinner at Giglio Rosso, about a 15 minute walk away. We finished up the evening with a nice walk of the town and found a large crowd around a musician who was playing (not kidding) AN ELECTRIC ACCORDION! I had no idea that such a thing existed! He was playing hits by Abba and other artists and the crowd were all singing, clapping and dancing! What a great end to the day.

Sunday 5/31

After starting our day off with a typical European hotel breakfast (cheeses, meats, fruits, pastries) we walked 5 minutes down the street for our 10:15am date at the Accademia. We checked out more paintings...but who cares!! The crown jewel of this museum is Michelangelo's David, a 17 ft. colossus sculpture chiseled from a single piece of granite in 1504. WOW!! This is what Mike was waiting for and it did not disappoint!! Much larger and imposing than I thought. The museum also had a musical instrument exhibit which displayed all types of instruments from the 1200-1800s, including a stradivarius violin!

After the museum, we walked to the Ponte Vecchio bridge and did some shopping and took some amazing pictures of the scenery. It was a very cool area, but jam-packed with tourists.

We followed up this adventure with a quick lunch consisting of gluten-free pizza for Katie, and a big sandwich for Mike.

Once we returned back to the hotel and rested up after lunch, we walked over to the other side of the Arno river and got picked up and transported to our Italian cooking class through the Accidental Tourist company. Katie had done this tour before during her previous visit to Florence 20 years ago. She absolutely raved about how delicious the food was, so obviously we had to do this again! Once there, we met our three classmates from Tennessee and we proceeded to make some delicious pasta, which eventually turned into cheese and spinach stuffed ravioli, as well as fettuccine noodles. We had red wine, homemade bread, and a few other delicious treats (see pictures!).We learned more about the importance of family recipes and ingredients and how food is central to Italian culture. We had a great time and probably ended up eating too much! LOL.

Tomorrow our Italian tour will take us to the Tuscan city of Assisi.

That's all for now, arrivederci!!