Honeymoon Part VII

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The alarm went off at 05:15 playing Europe's "The Final Countdown." I shut it off almost immediately, knowing I had set another, and went back to sleep for another 30 minutes. "Move Along" was our second alarm, and when that woke us up we got out of bed.

We had packed the night before and set out our clothes for the day, so getting ready was quick and easy. The concierge remembered us from the night before when we asked about a taxi and called one for us. Then, he said, "No one is looking, how about an espresso?"

Our taxi arrived shortly and took us to the train station. I went to the counter to get our ticket situation figured out and she knew just what to do. Our tickets were first class and will probably be the only time we ride first class. Unfortunately, even though we had a ticket, we had to pay a reservation fee of 20 Euros.

We were reading our books about Florence for awhile and had both taken dramamine. I started feeling sick, so I went to sleep. When I woke up we were arriving in Florence and Jason was asleep too. We got our bags and exited the train.

We went straight to the taxis after our bad experience in Mestre. The taxi ride was short and cost about 10 Euros, tax was 4 Euros. The hotel seemed nice, Frommer's said even two star placed are amazing here because they are in palaces and other historical buildings. I don't think ours' is that cool, but when we got to our room it was nice, had air conditioning and faced the garden behind the hotel, which also meant it would be quiet. We didn't actually get our room until four hours after we arrived though, so for that time time our luggage was locked in a cage. That option was way better than having to sit in the hotel with our baggage or carry it around town, so I am glad they had the luggage cage.

We asked the concierge the best way to spend 3 or 4 hours and he sent us towards the market and a couple of churches. The first basillica we saw was giant. It had a lot of green stone that looked like it was marble, I'm not sure because we didn't look very closely. We got distracted by the Lindt store. Of course we had to buy some chocolate, so we got a variety to snack on. We ate some of our delicious chocolate as we tried to find a place to eat suggested by Frommer's.

Of course, when we finally found the place, they weren't open yet. It was 11:25 and the lady told us they open at 12:00. Next door was a museum, The Torture Museum: The Florence Dungeon. The audio tour was supposed to take 35 minutes so we thought that would be perfect to kill time before lunch. We were given the student rate because she didn't have enough change for our big bill. We were learning a lot about how people were punished, lack of hygiene, and widespread disease. After the Torture Museum we went next door to eat.

For the first course I got rice and asparagus, Jason had some sort of penne pasta with shredded beef and tomato sauce. Then, I had chicken with some cheese sauce, and Jason had a beef fillet with a hard cheese grated on top. Of course, we shared everything pretty evenly and it was delicious. We had water and a red wine to accompany our meal. We were only going to have water, but the waitress was like, "No vino?" So we decided we should have it after all. It was delicious and we were stuffed. This place was legit, Frommer's did good! A lot of Italians were eating there and the menu we ordered from was hand-written in Italian, so our waitress had to tell us what everything was.

The combination of a full stomach and wine made us quite tired and it was close to 2:00pm, so we headed for our hotel to check in and have a nap.On our way to the hotel, we walked through the market checking things out.

Apparently we needed a nap more than we realized. We went to sleep around 14:30 and didn't get up until 19:00. I think it was a lot because we didn't sleep well in Mestre without air conditioning and couldn't take breaks in the middle of the day to rest there either. It worked out well because most restaurants don't begin serving dinner until late anyway.

Frommer's directed us well earlier, so we went to a place he gave 2-stars for dinner. We had a large lunch and though we would have a light dinner. As always, I was hungrier than Jason and I ordered for us. We got a spaghetti dish with tomato sauce, garlic, cherry tomatoes and basil. I also ordered us rabbit-hunter style (it was in a tomato sauce with olives) and I had still water while Jason had sparkling. The rabbit was better than either of us expected. It was tender and had good flavor when you ate it with the tomato sauce and an olive. The spaghetti was amazing! We think they make their own pasta, which makes sense because Frommer's said they make everything from scratch. While we were dining a band was doing soundcheck, but when we were getting ready to leave, they still hadn't started playing, so we headed back to the hotel rather than trying to stick around a listen to them.

We went a little too far because the street we were supposed to turn on starts out with a different name--they seem to do that a lot here. It was nice though because we ran into a lady that was looking for the same street and got to help her find it as well. We have internet at this hotel, but only in the lobby. So we uploaded some pictures to Facebook so we could update everyone and how awesome everything was going.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

We slept in a bit today, not getting up until around 9am. Jason went down to breakfast without me because my stomach was bothering me. He said breakfast was not any better here than Mestre, so apparently Italians don't do breakfast well.

Around 10:00 we took off for Accademia because Jason thought I sounded most excited to see the real David. This is true. There isn't a ton of attraction to Florence other than David. The line was long and did not appear to be moving, so I continued standing in line and taking pictures of a dog laying in a market cart while Jason went to see if there was a better way. It was now 10:30 and he came back with tickets for 12:00.

Since we had some time to enjoy the city, we decided to check out our tour. It said it wanted us to meet at the train station. While we waited for the tour we grabbed some Italian fast food--pizza and hash browns. The browns worked well for breakfast, so I'm glad he ordered that for us instead of french fries. It was actually the closest thing to a breakfast food that was edible since we arrived in Italy.

The bus finally came to pick us up. The tour wasn't very educational or interesting. Then again, I don't think Florence is as spectacular or as interesting as Paris or Venice, but the food (save for breakfast) has been amazing in Florence thus far. On our tour we went in the hills and saw things we probably wouldn't have seen on foot, including Piazza Michaelangelo with a bronze copy of David and some stellar views. Jason hopped out while we were stopped there and ran, literally ran, to take some pictures. We got off the bus before the end of the tour so we could make it over to Accademia.

Accademia turned out to be really fun. It is a pretty small museum, especially after going to The Louvre, but they have a lot to see. The best parts were the collection of musical instruments and the sculptures. There were a couple of really cool sculptures. One was of a lady who was married to a banker I think, and because people came to know here from the sculpture, it helped her out when she went to a political function. Another sculpture of a woman and a child was interesting to me because the woman wasn't very tall or large, but her feet looked huge! Of course, David was astounding! It was pretty surprising how big he really is, and there is so much detail! You can see not only his true to life muscles, but his veins. I thought the detail of the veins was amazing.

The other neat thing about Accademia is that there are a lot of religious works. So, Jason and I got to talking and I realized he doesn't understand a lot about the historical timeline, particularly that of the church. We talked about how the depictions of Biblical stories in art was important because lay people couldn't read the Bible for themselves.

After touring Accademia it was getting close to 15:00, so we thought we had better eat lunch before places close down. We went to the same place we went for lunch the day before. I had lasagna and Jason got macaroni with ragu. Both were good, but the lasagna was much better. The nice waitress from the day before wasn't working, and the guy working in her place didn't seem to want to work, so unfortunately it wasn't as good as it was the first time.

After lunch we went through the market and I got an apron with my name embroidered on it. We were going to clean up and try to hit up the other big museum in Florence before it closed. However, we talked to our concierge and he said if you go in the morning there isn't much of a line, so we made that our new plan.

Taking advantage of our free time we relaxed in the afternoon. Around 19:30 we headed out to dinner. Jason wanted to go to the same place again so we started to head that way. Instead, we ended up eating where I originally wanted us to eat, Sabatini. Jason didn't want to go there because it seemed expensive and that was true. We were definitely glad we had worn semi-nice clothes, they even asked if we had reservations. The dining room was all indoor and candlelit. Unlike most places in Italy, we didn't sit at the same table as another couple. We had rissoto and asparagus, spaghetti with basil and tomato which had more basil than the last time we got a similar dish, and we shared a beef in a red wine sauce. It was good, but set us back 80 Euros.