Had dinner at a celebrated local restaurant, La Buca Lapi. This gets rave reviews in the guides, but I can't figure out why. The decor is dismal, as the dining room is underground in what looks to be a subway tunnel, and the tunnel ceiling is covered with travel posters. The overall effect is one of claustrophobia, depression and messiness. The menu is supposedly strong on Florentine specialties, so I opted for the quintessential Florentine dish, bistecca alla fiorentina. I'm not a big meat eater, butI generally like this dish. Here, though, it comes in Flintstone sized portions, and is bloody raw. The good news with that combination is that you lose weight eating it, because the amount of energy used trying to tear a knife through a huge slab of raw cow more than compensates for the calories consumed. Service was fine, though. (8-7-11) Reminded Somchai that yet another birthday went by unrecognized then went to bed.

The adjoining Boboli Gardens is a real treat, really the only green part of Florence. It's got spectacular views of Florence across the river, as well as the rolling Tuscan countryside.

We ended the day at the Pitti Palace, the only real sight on the other side of the river. It's yet another Medici palace, and as described previously they had a corridor built from the Palazzo Vecchio, over the bridge, straight into the Pitti Palace so they never had to mingle with the rest of the city. Because this side of the river is less urban, the Medici had plenty of elbow room, and the residence and garden took on gargantuan proportions. The enormous palace is composed of a dour brown stone with a severe, repetitive pattern to make it about as welcoming as a giant middle finger. Inside is divided among seven different museums displaying the former Medici collections, from masterpiece paintings to souvenir knicknacks.

Next stop was the Bargello, Italy's best sculpture museum. As you can see, it bears a striking similarity to the Palazzo Vecchio, and in fact it was the original seat of government. The city outgrew it, so they built a larger version of the building right next door, and turned this into a prison. Eventually it was transformed into the sculpture museum. It's a great collection, but also interestingly displayed in this eccentric building. I found it much more interesting than the Uffizi.

Just outside the church is a sprawling flea market clogging up all the surrounding streets. Didn't find much of interest in the market, but there's also a very swish food market there as well. I think a good food market is one of the best sightseeing experiences there is, since it's chock full of local color, the food on display is amazing, and the European shopping habits (wandering around from stall to stall, discussing each piece of produce, fish etc. with the seller, selecting your purchase and moving on to the next shop) is so contrary to my lightning strike approach to the supermarket. As usual, Somchai zeroed in on the vegetable display, while I had the rest of the market covered.

Here are some photos of the interior, (all stolen). In addition to being beautiful, it's also the burial place of Florence's leading lights. Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Galileo, Dante, etc. all have elaborate memorials atop their tombs.

Had dinner at the hotel's outdoor terrace restaurant, which had excellent food and a very nice buzz to it.

Our meandering about town did have a couple of specific destinations in mind. First we made a pilgrimage to Vivoli gelato, supposedly the best in town. Judging by the neverending lines in front of every gelato shop, and the vast number of said shops, the average tourist would have to eat gelato fourteen times a day by my calculation. Much of it looks pretty terrible, especially in the main tourist area, huge tubs of neon coloured stuff. Vivoli, on the other hand, is quite hard to find, in a quiet residential neighborhood, and serves a huge variety of flavours, none of them neon. It's still packed all the time, but at least by the time you've found the place you feel like you've earned it.

Our final stop of the day was at the Franciscans' church, Santa Croce. The present building is mostly from the 15th century, and sits unassumingly on a huge, somewhat barren piazza. It's much larger than it appears from the front, however, and the interior is well worth a look, as are the attached cloisters, pictured here.

Kind of a lazy post, as I've got lots of photos of streetscapes rather than particular sights. I think a lot of the photos were a byproduct of Somchai's attempt to photograph goodlooking Italians, but the resulting photos give a good idea of the city's bustling street life. So I'll just post the photos without commentary, then go to bed.

The Germans blew up all the bridges crossing the Arno as they retreated from Italy during World War II except this one, the Ponte Vecchio. Somehow the city managed to convince them to spare this bridge, so the Germans blew up the nearby buildings to fill the bridge with rubble instead. There's been a bridge here since Roman times, but the current version dates to the fourteenth century. Like bridges all over Europe, people inexplicably decided to build their homes on the bridge, which is something I'll never understand. First the butchers moved in, attracted in part by the ability to throw the inedible bits into the river below. However, when the Medici built a secret passageway on top of the bridge connecting their various palaces, the butchers' fates were sealed, since a Medici wasn't about to walk over the slaughterhouse stench. So out went the butchers, and in came the goldsmiths, where they remain to this day.

After the Uffizi, we wandered around the city for the rest of the afternoon. Here are some photos of the Arno River (plus some ink stain that got on our scanner and ruined a lot of the photos in the next few entries). Behind Somchai are the Palazzo Vecchio and the Uffizi. The opposite bank is mostly residences, and generally ignored by tourists with the sole exception of the Pitti Palace, which we visit later in the week.

What it lacks in interior fireworks, however, it makes up for in its external views. It's got a couple of great vantage points to take some panoramic views of the city's rooftops and of course the Duomo.

We then went over to the last official wedding event, a brunch at a cafe on the square in front of Palazzo Vecchio (see picture), followed by a guided tour of the world famous Uffizi Gallery. The guide was very informative, and the museum's collection is, as you'd expect, chock full of the big brand names of the Renaissance. However, in comparison with the other great galleries of the world, this one seems a bit tired. It's housed in two long parallel galleries (see other picture), and in that respect is very organized, but every room is the same uniform design albeit stuffed with priceless paintings. It's also considerably smaller than its competitors, which, coming after a long drunken wedding, is not such a bad thing.

We went back to our hotel for a bit of a rest before heading out to the rehearsal dinner, which was held at one of the old palaces that are littered about the city. The palace is on Florence's nicest square, the Piazza Santissima Annunziata. The piazza is dominated by the Spedale degli Innocenti, Florence's main orphanage built in the 1440's and still operating today. It's most famous to tourists for the lazy susan device built into the wall. Florence's unwed mothers could sneak up unnoticed to the lazy susan, plop their baby on it, give it a spin and watch the baby disappear into the orphanage's protective arms. There's also an old church that was remodeled to go with the architectural flow of the orphanage.

The dinner's setting was wonderful, held in the beautifully candlelit gardens of the palace. But since we didn't bring our camera, you'll just have to take our word for it.

Inside the Duomo is considerably more subdued and, in fact, rather boring. The contrast between the crazy marble patterns outside and the plain white interior is striking, but even more striking is the absence of important religious art. Considering Florence is the epicenter of the Renaissance, which focused almost exclusively on religious art, it's cupboards are pretty bare.

Despite its central importance, the baptistry is completely dwarfed by the Duomo, or cathedral. It was built in the 1290's by a fairly lazy architect. It's a massive place built with a huge dome over the center of the cross. Problem is the lazy architect didn't know how to build the dome, so he just left a huge hole in the middle after building the rest of the church and moved on to another project. Then the loser of the bronze door competition from the previous post, Brunelleschi, came to the rescue. Suicidal after the loss of the bronze door, he took up the dome task with gusto, notwithstanding that he had no architectural training. But somehow, from studying books and other churches, he figured out how to build the world's biggest unsupported dome, and his dome is certainly more deeply etched in every tourist's mind than the little bronze door.

The church is quite a statement, and I think a beautiful one, although most art historians think it over the top and a bit of a shambles. It also doesn't look like a church, and it's got much less religious art and symbolism than almost any other church. Its most famous priest was Savanarola, who in the late 15th century was a crazy fundamentalist, railing about the sinners and condemning everyone to hell. Things came to a head when he ordered the whole city to assemble in the plaza and burn all their ball gowns, musical instruments, paintings, jewelry etc., which they dutifully did. (This is the Bonfire of the Vanities, if you're wondering where that expression came from.) After they destroyed their entire cultural heritage, though, they had second thoughts, and decided to burn him as well.

We then walked up to tourism's ground zero, the Duomo. This was the only place reminiscent of my previous trips to Florence, jam packed with tourists, mostly eating gelato and sitting all over the plaza wherever there was space. The photos in this entry are of the oldest part of the Duomo complex, the Baptistry. The baptistry was founded in the 7th century, although every generation embelished it so it's quite a sensory overload. It must have been even more so every new year's day, when all the babies born in Florence the previous year were assembled in this cavernous echo chamber to get baptized and presumably scream at the top of their lungs. Heaven.

The baptistry is most famous for its bronze doors, one seet of which is pictured here. In 1401 the city held a famous competition to design the last remaining set of doors, won by Ghiberti. He then spent 27 years on the doors, and are considered the first art work of the Renaissance and a key influence for Michelangelo and other subsequent Renaissance painters. Although again it's hard to really see the difference, because everyone knows this story these doors are swamped with the tourist paparazzi, while the others,which were equally famous in their day, are ignored. For my undereducated money, the gold mosaics in the ceiling are the real stunners.

We then walked through the atmospheric streets of Florence to the Medici Palace. The palace is typical of Florence, and therefore part of what makes Florence atypical of other cities. It was undeniably the artistic center of Europe and one of the power centers of Italy during the Renaissance. But it was also incredibly unstable, with families constantly warring with one another for control. This was an urban planning problem, since these warring families were also neighbors. So the narrow streets are lined with palaces that are essentially fortresses, massive stone walls and small windows, which isn't exactly inviting. Impressive, yes, but not exactly La Dolce Vita. The Medici were the most powerful of the warring families and controlled the city for much of the Renaissance. They were also Europe's most powerful banking family, and probably the richest as well. Unfortunately for tourists, though, only a small portion of the palace is open for visitors.

The next morning (Friday if you're counting) we had a fantastic breakfast at the hotel, where Somchai became addicted to parma ham. We had most of the day free before the rehearsal dinner in the evening, so we went into Florence to do some sightseeing. First we went to the Accademia, which is usually a mob scene, but like most of Florence was pretty empty post 9/11. I have to say I don't really get the attraction of this museum. It's on every tourist's to do list, but it really only has one statue, which happens to probably be the most famous in the world, Michelangelo's David. It has sketches of David and preliminary models of David, and the final product, but that's pretty much it. But people stand in line for hours to see this, which is doubly strange since there's an exact replica of the statue in Florence's main square. Michelangelo made the statue for the square, but time and pigeons took their toll, and it was moved inside the Accademia for safekeeping. It's clearly a tick the box kind of stop for everyone but those in the arts.

69. Florence

We finally arrived in Florence, staying at the Villa San Michele, one of my all time favorite hotels. It's actually in Fiesole, a town on the hillside overlooking Florence, which is a charming town that's worth a trip in its own right, as you will soon see. We thought it would be a bit remote so we ended up splitting our stay with a more centrally located hotel. But Florence is just a pretty15 minute walk downhill or a shorter cab ride, so if I were to do it again, I'd stay here for the duration.

It's a fifteenth century villa designed by Michelangelo, so you can't get any more Florentine than that. Originally designed as a monastery, it later became a private house until transformed into the current boutique hotel.