A Day in Florence

We started the day with breakfast!  Rebecca is gluten free, and has found it reasonably easy even in the land of bread! We ate breakfast at a place that had a whole floor full of gluten free options.  A whole floor!  It was advertised at the door- gluten free area!  Rebecca had a gluten free apple strudel. 

Cathy picked a sandwich that looked good, and pretty much was, but what she thought was a nice, thick layer of cheese was actually a nice, think layer of mayonnaise. Blegh.

f We went to the Uffizi Gallery.  On the way, we got this shot of the Ponte Vecchio on the way.  We did not have time to stop and admire it properly but it is on our list.

We had a date with the Uffizi. We tried to make reservations, but there was not anything until March 25, so we went and stood in line.  It was only about an hour, which was not so bad considering!  We met a nice lady from California in the line.  She ended up leaving before we got there because she was leaving for Rome today and did not have time to wait.  We went through it in about three hours, and we did not look at every tiny thing.  I think you could easily spend a week in there and not even touch everything worth seeing!  My favorite paintings were the medieval portraits of Mary adoring the Christ child.  Cathy called them the "Side eye Mary" paintings, because all of them really looked like Mary was giving him the side eye!  Rebecca liked Venus on the half shell The Birth of Venus.   It was really neat.  We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but I got this picture of a window outside!

We also took this charming joint selfie.

Spending three hours considering the ramifications of Mary's side eye on future artistic generations makes one hungry.  We stopped at the first place that seemed reasonably priced and enjoyed an amazing lunch.

Rebecca had salami stuffed with marscapone.  Seriously delicious.  

Cathy had cheese gnocchi.  She asked Rebecca at some point how rude it would be to pick up the plate and lick it clean. :)  (She settled for using some bread to mop up the sauce.)

All this was followed by a latte.  Even if you're not a coffee drinker, you have to order at least one in Italy.  They're just so pretty!

Lunch was eaten at a leisurely pace, but soon we were back on our feet and headed to the Duomo.  Rebecca really wanted to head the nearby museum, so we went there first to see the original doors that were once on the church.  It was so detailed. And here they are:

We then popped over to go see the top of the dome.  They are very serious about modesty in churches in Italy, but we found the signs saying that  you can't wear sleeveless tops/shorts kind of funny and confusing!  Doesn't it appear that they are requesting no shirts or pants/skirts in the warning sign?

Holy staircase batman!  The stairs when ON and ON and ON!  Cathy had flashbacks to climbing up cathedral steps on European trips as a child. :)

We thought we were at the top here, but it was just a stopping point to see the painting on top  of the dome.  It was so realistic.  It was all paint, but it looked like a lot of the pictures were actually sitting on the edge with their legs dangling down. It was almost like statues, but it was just paint!

We climbed and climbed and climbed until we reached the top and were rewarded with an amazing view of Florence for our efforts.

Rebecca was not 100% thrilled with the heights, but said she was glad that she made the climb.

Cathy tries to show what it feels like to climb 463 steps by facial expression alone. 

After we made it down the 463 steps, we stopped briefly by the Baptistery.   It had a nicely painted/gold leafed ceiling.

Our next stop was our hotel, where we tried to recover and stretch.  We will feel this day in our calves for a few days I'm sure!

For dinner we decided to go to Pizza Man Dr. Pizza.  Rebecca found it in her gluten free Italy book.  It did not look like it was far, so we decided to walk, and that's how we ended up hopelessly lost in the rain.  Cathy's emergency backup plan in such cases is to get on a bus, which turned out to be a good move.  We were able to get back to the train station, and then take the tram to the pizza place.  It was worth the wait!

The menu was in Italian, so we had to wing it a bit.  Rebecca got a pizza with eggplant and a gluten free crust.

Cathy got a pizza with a delicious, smoky provolone and tomatoes.

We finished off the meal with dessert.  We ordered gelato, and they brought out an amazing blueberry mouse.  It was not what we were expecting, but it was creamy and wonderful.

We may have had a tiny sip of wine as well.

Andy guarded my tram fare.

Off to bed now- we have another crazy, packed day ahead of us tomorrow!