… and a lot of other places in Firenze on our last wonderful day in the city. We started the day by taking a cab with Mia to the Pitti Palace, one of the many Medici residences in Firenze and elsewhere. They were one wealthy family! The Pitti Palace is filled with magnificent works of art, mostly canvases by artists like Botticelli, Raphael, Rubens, Bronzino, and just about every other Italian artist you can think of. In addition to works from the Renaissance, there were marbles from ancient Rome, Italian artists from the Impressionist period, and several galleries of fairly modern art. It sits across from a great group of buildings.
The palace itself is similar to the Louvre or the Uffizi in size and mag nificence. Like the Louvre, the Pitti Palace has an elegant apartment which was furnished for and used by Napoleon; perhaps most interesting was his bathroom, complete with a carved marble bathtub. With a little imagination you could picture him stepping into that tub and settling into some bubbles…
We were all very hungry by the time we left the Pitti Palace, so we stopped nearby in a tiny restaurant for lunch, Caffe degli Artigiani. They had very good salads and sandwiches. The whole restaurant was so small it was almost claustrophobia-inducing. Well-fed, we proceeded to two notable churches: the Santi Apostoli, on Piazza del Limbo, where the holy flints from Jerusalem are housed, and used to light the Easter fire every year; and the Holy Trinity church, which has an outstanding chapel painted by Ghirlandaio for the Sassetti family, who were friends of the Medicis. Mia provided a photo op of Ponte Vecchio – the old bridge.
Next we went to find a cameo maker who carves custom cameos near Ponte Vecchio; in walking there we spotted a shop which had antique micro-mosaic pins from the 1920s-30s. The cameo shop was close by, and we stopped and talked to the artist. Great chance for some window shopping! We even found a shop with jewelry making equipment!
On our walk we passed many small artisanal factories: art studios, embroidery on leather, puppet making. Each shop featured the actual craftsmen creating the items being sold. It was charming. We wound up at the old Santa Maria Novella pharmacy, and tried their perfumes one more time. We were planning to walk from there to the leather market, but decided instead to stop at JK Bar for a cup of hot chocolate and some petit fours (actually a big slab of coffee cake and some pistachios) on their lovely patio, overlooking the Santa Maria Novella church.
On the long walk home we passed Ristorante Buca Mario, one of three restaurants recommended to us by the clerk at our hotel. We decided to stop and have a nice farewell dinner. The food was delicious, including pappardelle with wild boar sauce and fried artichokes. For dessert we shared a fresh frutti di bosco (raspberry and blueberry) tart, on a vanilla pudding base, with fresh hand-whipped cream. Very tasty!
We walked Mia home and went back to our hotel to pack, never a pleasant task. It seemed particularly disorganized this time, perhaps because the lack of storage drawers at the AC Hotel had kept us living out of our suitcases.
No comments:
Post a Comment