August in Florence
July 25-July 31st
Our flight to Florence landed around 6:30pm and we started our venture to the apartment with Kuzco. The first part was an easy (but packed) tram ride, but we had a twenty minute walk through the city center with the cat carrier which was a bit less pleasant. Once we made it up the steep hill and the 5 flights of stairs, Kuzco was eager to start exploring what bird watching spots he had in the new place. We kept him in his play pen as we ran to get some groceries so we could monitor his first time roaming free. With not much time left in the day we made some pasta for dinner (we are in Italy of course!) any enjoyed the view from the kitchen.
The next morning we headed out to start exploring the city and grab one of the many famous sandwiches in Florence (we’re keeping a running score). Our sandwiches of the day were from L’ Girone De’ Ghiotti where we waited in line for about 45 minutes. The sandwiches were full of meat and some very toasted bread which were a great start to the day. We walked by the Duomo, Piazza del Signoria and Piazza della Republica. We made pasta for dinner and watched the commotion of the city from above- including hearing what sounded like a marching band. Neither of us could tell where it was coming from until we went on our post-dinner walk when we stubbled across a massive parade in front of the Duomo. We following the parade around the city for a bit before heading back to rest up for our food tour in the morning.
Our food tour started the next morning at Piazza Santa Croce and we headed straight to Mercato de Sant’Ambrogio where we were greeted with cheese, meat and wine. It was quickly followed by Lampredotto (cow stomach!) which was surprisingly much better than expected! We stopped at a couple more vendors to try seasonal fruit, biscotti and Coccoli before heading to a pasta lunch. The final stop was for gelato where we tried buontalenti which was a very creamy, vanilla flavor named after Bernardo Buontalenti.
To help recover from our food tour we set out to turn one of the tourist sights into our exercise for the day and went up and down to the top of Piazza Michaelangelo a few times. We also made a few stops to pick up Too Good To Go orders to add to the charcuterie board of the evening. We lucked out at all three stops with massive bags full of cookies, breads, sandwiches and other snacks - we were set for days!
Our main stop the next day was the Galileo Museum. It was very interesting and full of scientific tools and devices - also the home to Galileo’s middle finger! It’s right by Al’ Antico Vinaio - known for their sandwiches and the hour plus line it typically takes to get one. Apparently 3:00pm is the time to go because it took us less than 10 minutes to get one! Since we no longer needed to go home for lunch, we decided to do some window shopping for some leather items and explore different markets. On our way home for dinner (some too good to go leftovers) we stopped at Fuor di Porta where we sampled a few wines to purchase and they bottled them for us to take home! Another exciting part of our first week was taking a pasta cooking class where we made pasta, sauce and tiramisu. It was a very fun and filling way to spend the afternoon in the city out of the heat. We spent the evening picking us some pizza and enjoying it with the view from the apartment.
The next day turned into a bit of a trendy food crawl, We headed to Pino’s Sandwiches right at 11 since they are closed for almost the whole month we’re here. That’s one thing we learned about being in Florence (or Italy in general) in August. Many small shops and restaurants close for 2-3 weeks (sometimes even longer). The best thing about being in Florence for a month is that if somewhere was closed for a couple of weeks, we made sure to go back when they opened! Back to the sandwiches, we had expected a much longer line at Pino’s but were able to walk right in and get lunch! They were good, but not our favorite stop. We walked past Vivoli on the way into the city center and figured we might as well hop in line and it was well worth the hype. It took us longer than it should to realize that the flavor wasn’t just the topping on the gelato but also the flavor of the gelato itself. I got salted caramel and Steinar got pistachio and they were both 100/10!
We spent most of the first week exploring at a slower pace to really be able to take it in and enjoy our rooftop patio as well. Kuzco loves his new spot and how many window he has to watch birds, so I have a feeling he will be very disappointed when it’s time to move to our next spot in at the end of August!
