Florence: Even More Exploring

Day 4: The Uffizi

For a while, we had been yo-yo-ing back and forth about whether Uffizi Gallery tickets would be worth the price. With high popularity amongst tourists coupled with restricted visitor numbers due to COVID, the only way of guaranteeing a visit is to book in advance. This would set us back 24 euros each because as non-EU citizens, we are not eligible for the 18-25-year-old museum discounts (thanks a lot, Brexit). However, the Uffizi is such an iconic museum, and its central location meant that we had walked past it umpteen times, so decided to take the plunge and bought tickets for Sunday afternoon. 

Before heading to the Uffizi, we spent the morning strolling through the Santa Croce district. This is an area to the far side of the Duomo which we had not yet visited, and which seems to be much less favoured by tourists. Here, the buildings look as old as they are, with peeling paint and crumbling doorsteps, and a distinct smell of sewage emanates from the gutters every few dozen meters. At the same time, the streets have retained their Florentinian identity instead of adopting American clothing brands like those in the center, with families clustering in cafes after mass and parks filling up with dog walkers. We visited a church that houses Galileo's grave, and then we spent some time wandering around the Arno river. For an early lunch, we picked up a panini and Tuscan-style sausage roll (a rolled-up piece of pizza dough stuffed with every variation of meat) and stood looking over the water as we ate. The sky was grey and ominous, and soon enough it erupted into thunder, lighting, and light rain. 

Santa Croce Basilica

Ominous Skies

After the storm had passed, we headed over to the Uffizi itself to collect our tickets. This was when we realised how key it is to prebook: the queue outside the ticket office was huge, but it took us only a couple of minutes to collect ours from a separate desk. We then joined the waiting line outside of the gallery, and when the 1:15 time slot was called through, we were the first to make it to security. From there, we climbed up to the second floor where the visit begins. We entered into a long corridor with intricately painted ceilings and walls lined with classical statues. Here, we plugged in our headphones, as we had downloaded a trusty Rick Steves guide to the Uffizi. Led by his handy directions, as well as a map, we made our way through the halls of the gallery and took in the impressive Renaissance artwork. With little knowledge about religious history or art history, I have often found this sort of art to be uninspiring, but with Rick's wisdom to guide me along, I found these rooms truly fascinating. The art is arranged chronologically, so we learned about both the history and techniques of Florentine artists, discovering how 3D realism became crucial to portraiture and how the elite Medici family ushered a new trend of lavishness into the artistic realm, where previously art had been focused on piety. We discovered the peak of this era of opulence in the form of Botticelli's Venus, and we experienced a familiar smugness as our virtual guide offered more interesting and in-depth details than some of the official tour guides passing through the same room. 

The Uffizi Corridors

The Birth of Venus

As with many of the Italian museums, the Uffizi is a work of art in itself. This was clear in the decorative corridors, but also in some of the rooms, such as one with a mosaiced floor and a magnificent gilded dome that housed lounging statues. It was also clear when looking out of the Uffizi's windows, which offer a stunning view over the living work of art which is the Arno river. 

Beautiful Halls...

...And Beautiful Views

After spending over 3 hours in the gallery, alternating between listening to the audio guide and venturing off the tour's trail, we emerged back out into the streets. Satisfied but exhausted, we trekked back to the apartment for a shower. 

That evening, we headed back out into the streets for our regular cheap-eat: pizza. We found a local pizzeria run by a single man who acts as chef-cum-maitre d'. He ushered us inside and proudly waited on our table and the two others. It was very quiet inside, but the music and chatter wafting in from outside made it feel cozy. The pizza itself was (of course) amazing, but I would say better than most - it had the perfect combination of a thin base and lots of sauce and toppings. We're both enjoying our days in Florence more when we eat out, because the lower temperatures and great atmosphere make it more pleasant than the day. 

Day 5: the other side of the river

Today, we headed to a completely unfamiliar area of Florence: we crossed the Ponte Vecchio. This side of the river features a much steeper terrain, with many of its attractions being reached only by multi-story hill climbs. The benefit of this is that there are fewer tourists, but the negative is that the uphill drags can feel neverending. During the early part of our touring, I will admit to feeling very disgruntled. A lot of attractions on our to-see list were pay-to-enter, and when we summited a steep hill to find a fort with free entry, we discovered the gates were closed to tourists on Mondays. To get to the next place on our list, we had to climb back to the bottom and ascend a neighboring hill. Max would agree that I was not great company as we walked down that hill. 

The First Views

Once we had walked partway up the next hill, however, our fortunes changed. Firstly, we entered into a public rose garden - whilst there were not very many roses to speak of in the dry garden, there were sweet benches with good views of the city. From there, we walked further up the hill and reached the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is like one big balcony overlooking Florence. There were some really amazing views from here, and this is the view which most tourists aim for. Not us, though - we had our sights set on the highest viewing point, a hilltop Basilica. This amazing church didn't disappoint. Not only was it beautiful in itself, with a blue-and-white marble exterior and an ornate interior, but it gave the best view of the city with a calmer atmosphere to boot. This sight made up for all of the disappointments of expensive entry tickets on the other hill, and it felt like a bucket list ticked to overlook such a famous city from this height. 

The Basilica

The Basilica Interior

Incredible Views!

As we headed back down the hill, we stopped at a cafe where Max bought a salami panini from a very friendly chef. From a school trip to Italy when I was 15, I had gotten the impression that a lot of Italians have a strong dislike for Brits and tend to be rude and abrupt, especially from my experiences in cafes and restaurants in Capri. I have been proven very wrong over the last weeks, since everyone we meet here seems to be stunningly friendly, exemplified again today when another customer in the cafe joked with us in perfect English, and when we were later given a handy discount when we couldn't scrounge enough change to cover three postcards. 

Walking through streets on this side of Florence, we were treated to many interesting shopfronts. By far the most interesting was a tiny shop which seemed to have come straight out of Harry Potter. It professed itself to be a jewelry museum, but it was part house-of-horrors, part wonderland, with mechanized pendants crawling like spiders, bottles of perfume bubbling eerily, and rings displayed neatly in Gothic boxes. It was such a beguiling and unusual shop that Max was semi-convinced it really was magical, and that it might have some strange effect on the rest of our day... 

The Cafes

The Amazing Shop

For me, the best discoveries of this district came when we rounded the corner to our next destination, a rather underwhelming church. Here, we found a cafe which sold THE BEST gelato I have ever tasted. We shared hazelnut and chocolate mousse flavours: they were both thick and creamy, with the chocolate scoop brimming with shards of real chocolate and the two flavours combining to create luxury nutella. The other amazing discovery was a stall selling vintage Levi's jeans. As a heavy shower hit, we sheltered under the canvas and I began rifling through the jeans. There were some truly amazing finds, and I will admit to walking away with my own pair, unconscious of the still-falling rain as I proudly carried my bag of blue denim through the slippery streets. 

In the evening, we returned to the far side of the river for dinner. Once again, the Fork app had struck gold, delivering us a family-run restaurant just off of the tourist trail. This restaurant specialized in Florentine steak and other local dishes. With our handy 30% discount, we had two delicious dishes, seafood risotto and seafood linguine, for the same price as the tomato pasta. 

Seafood Spaghetti

When we had left the strange jewelry shop earlier in the day, we had joked that it might have a magical effect on the rest of our day, or that we would walk back out into the street and find ourselves in a different century. As we headed back from dinner, the magic of that shop seemed to become a reality. Firstly, as we crossed the Ponte Vecchio to stunning views of the lamplit river, a band of buskers began playing, and the first song they struck up was Nat King Cole's L-O-V-E - a song which instantly transports me back to my childhood trips to evening markets in France, where the resident busker never failed to play that same number. After taking in the pure beauty of this moment on the river, we somehow headed down a street that we hadn't visited yet and bumped right into a mythical statue that had alluded us up to this point. The Fontana del Porcellino statue is a bronze boar, and legend has it that when visitors rub its nose, their return to Florence is guaranteed. Up until this point I had enjoyed Florence but, unlike Rome, held no intention of revisiting it. This evening revealed another side of Florence which we had somehow missed, with the unparalleled charm of the music and lamplights convincing me that a return was vital, and right on cue, we stumbled upon the Porcellino. The next event was a truly incredible one. We had joked about being transported to a different era, and now the loud booming of drums drew our attention and we rounded the corner to stumble directly into the path of a procession. A couple of hundred Florentine men were marching in time through the streets while dressed head-to-toe in Renaissance garb, with knights, priests, and noblemen being escorted by a vast train of costumed musicians and followers. We have since googled what this event was, but to no avail - there is no mention of the specific event on tourist websites. Once we had followed the procession to its finale, we headed back past a moonlit Duomo and were carried out of the city on a wave of Jazz as a large band of buskers played the Jungle Book's "I Wanns Be Like You". On the way home, we popped into a Gelato shop to buy a cone of stracciatella and witnessed another unique event: the shop owner put the queue on hold as a family friend popped in out of the blue. He hadn't seen her since she moved to New York (in the time in between she had gained a husband and two babies) and his joy at reuniting was radiant. 

Ponte Vecchio at night

An Unexpected Procession

When we arrived in Florence, we had found it pretty and interesting, but whilst the other cities on the trip far surpassed our low expectations, Florence had just about met our high ones. In the coming days, however, it began to grow on us, and by the end of this evening we learned that Florence in the daytime is attractive, but Florence at night is spectacular. I now find myself hoping that the Porcellino myth is more than just a myth, and that I will return to Florence to drink in the beauty of the night.  

Il Duomo at Night