Firenze/Florence: round about town

We visited Florence very briefly in 1996, and had always vowed to return. So, after only 21 years, the vow was honored!

Our tiny car no longer with us at this point, the rest of our trip was undertaken via public transportation. The go-to guy, Rick Steves, recommends taking the bus instead of the train from Siena to Florence and it was a quick, scenic, economical ride (€15,60 for the two of us, according to my notes). Here's one of the nice views out the bus window, as we crossed the Arno, heading to the train station:

Our hotel (another of Rick's great recommendations) isn't far from the station, and is conveniently close to Florence's major sights. So after checking in we headed straight "downtown." We made this walk, back and forth, several times during our time in Florence, and I thought I'd share with you some of the sights we became familiar with along the way, many of which will get more detailed posts later.

another day, another Duomo...

Florence's Renaissance Duomo is even more spectacular, and certainly more famous, than Siena's. One section of the main church was scaffolded off for refurbishment works (see the framing on the upper left above). And it was  really crowded, all the time...

Still impressive, though, don't you think? I'll have some more photos of this landmark structure, inside and out, in a later post.

Moving on through this city of famous sights, you come to the Palazzo Vecchio (old palace), sporting a tower as handsome as Siena's. We thought the modern sculpture in the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the palazzo, made an interesting counterpoint to the late medieval landmark...

And this isn't the only modern touch in this most Renaissance of cities. Here's a neat shiny piece of public art (much smaller, but it reminded me of Chicago's Bean) that we passed several times on our walks:

In fact, chrome must be a Florentine thing; on his walk through Oltrarno, Henry saw this eye-catching installation outside the Pitti Palace:

But, of course, old stuff is the main attraction in Florence. Also on his Oltrarno walk, Henry snapped this great shot of the "old bridge," otherwise known as the Ponte Vecchio:

I don't think he could have ordered up a more perfect reflective surface! Yes, we had great weather in Florence as well as in Siena.

My favorite Florentine church is Santa Croce, seen here in the background, behind the statue of local-boy-made-good Dante Alighieri:

I'll show you more of this lovely church's exterior when I post about Florence's architecture. 

But unfortunately, I can't show you any of the inside (nor any of the Pazzi Chapel, which I'd recently learned about and was keen to visit). We were too late to go in by the time we made it here on our first afternoon, and so pencilled in a visit for the next day, not knowing that October 4 is Saint Francis' feast day and the whole complex was closed, except for mass! Bummer! Those Catholics and their feast days....

(We also missed out on seeing a soccer game while we were in Italy, much to our regret, but it just didn't work out, schedule-wise, in any of the cities we visited. The Fiorentina store, glimpsed on one of our walks about town, was as close as we got.)

The tower at the Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo's Campanile (which we climbed in 1996 but not in 2017) aren't the only attractive towers in town. Our first museum stop was the Bargello, which is marked by the square-ish tower on the right here. (I'll show you some of the many treasures inside this remarkable museum in a future post.) The other is La Badia, a medieval abbey that's still a monastery:

From the grand to the mundane, this storefront provided a handy landmark that assured us we had chosen the right tiny street off the Piazza del Duomo to get us back to our hotel...

Speaking of our hotel—the Hotel il Bargellino on Via Guelfa—was it a find! I've already mentioned its great location, close to both the train station and the major sights. Another plus was the friendly proprietor, who is from Boston but has lived in Florence for years. 

our hotel's lovely terrace

(All of the people running the hotels we stayed at in Italy were super-nice and cooperative, but it was an extra convenience to have one who speaks both fluent English and Italian!)

We just mentioned to her that we planned to go to the Uffizi during our stay and she said we needed to make reservations right away. So she just called them up, found out that they were full up for the next day (when we had planned to go) and made us a reservation for early the next morning. We might have missed out on this must-see museum without her help.

She also told us where to find a handy travel agent; having them make the train reservations we needed to get to Bergamo was so much easier than trying to decipher the Trenitalia website ourselves.

But the best perk this great hotel offers is their beautiful rooftop terrace, open for guests to use! Our first dinner in Florence was enjoyed up there, after a stop at a local grocery on our way "home" from sightseeing.

I'll be showing you more details about our encounters with Florence's major tourist sights in future posts. Next up, though, we'll venture across the Arno to see where to get great views of the city like the one at the top of the post. Stay tuned!