Happy To Be In Florence - Day One

"Visiting Florence was like attending a surprise party every day."

Jennifer Coburn, "We'll Always Have Paris:  A Mother - Daughter Memoir"

Another early morning exit from Sassaia for Mary, Paula and me ... Jesus and Gladys met us by their car at 7:48 am to head to Chiusi and our train to Florence!  They were going for a day-trip, we three were staying two nights and then sending Mary off to the Florence Airport for her trip home to Syracuse on Wednesday.  

Train trip was smooth and easy. Mary sat with Gladys & Jesus; Paula and I with a lovely young Italian woman from Bologna who spent the entire two hours working on her English lessons. "It is so hard," she told us.  I'm so grateful that English is my native language. After studying the Italian language a bit over the past several years, I've come to realize how much more difficult a language English is!

Our arrival at the frantically busy and congested Santa Maria Novella train station was, as always, a bit of a shock to the senses.  After the extreme quiet and peacefulness of Chiarentana and Tuscany  ... I believe we were all thinking, "Why did we come here?  Why did we leave our pretty rooms at the Sassaia farmhouse ... and all those beautiful rolling hills in every direction????"  But then, we remembered we were in FLORENCE, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and a city that attracts millions of visitors each year - with very good reason!

Florence Grand Tour

We walked from the Santa Maria Novella train station to the Florence Grand Tour B&B, Via Santa Reparata, 21, where I've had the pleasure of knowing and staying with the lovely owners, Cristina and Giuseppe, since 2003.  Imagine my surprise when Guiseppe greeted us warmly at the door and THEN introduced us to "the new owner" (an American woman from Dallas)!!!  Cristina, Guiseppe, their daughter Isabel and their doggie Alberto are leaving Florence and moving to the villa they purchased several years ago in Tuscany's Chianti region.  Of course, I wish them well, but will miss having them there on Via Santa Reparata to refer friends to in Florence!

Our waiter

Our pizza maker!

After settling into our "Diva" Suite, Paula, Mary and I headed to my favorite lunch spot, Casa del Vin Santo. Along the way, they got their first glimpses of the amazing Florence Duomo, Campanile and Baptistery.   I could tell then that they had already adjusted to the hustle-bustle of Firenze and that they were thrilled to be here!  At lunch, we each ordered one menu item and share three ways:  Prosciutto with melon, margarita pizza and spinach - ricotta tortelloni with pine nuts.  ALL delicious.

Mary & Paula headed off to the Duomo for their 3:30 timed entry to climb up to the top of Brunelleschi's enormous dome. (473 steps up, 473 back down); since I've done that several times in the past, I made my way over to the Duomo Museum which I'd never visited before ... but had heard great things about.  Imagine an entire 4-story museum dedicated to just one single building - The Duomo!  It was amazing, one of the best museums I've ever had the pleasure of exploring!  After a couple of hours, M & P joined me and we had a terrific time watching the informative videos, gazing at the incredible models of Brunelleschi's dome and the original facade of the church, seeing the original gold "Gates of Paradise" doors by Ghilberti, Donatello's Mary Magdalene, Michelangelos's last Pieta.  Just simply wonderful.  After the museum, we were delighted to find NO line at the Baptistery, so stopped in there briefly to view its incredible ceiling mosaics.

Back to the Grand Tour to rest our feet for a bit, then we were off again for our 8 pm reservation at 4 Leone in the Oltrarno neighborhood of Florence, across the Arno River. We took some pretty sunset photos from the Ponte Vecchio, then, led by super-street-navigator Mary, found our way to the tiny piazza where 4 Leone is tucked away.  Oh, oh!  The host (an unusually grumpy Italian - quite rare!) didn't have any record of our reservation which we'd requested weeks ago, and informed me that there was NO table for us. A delightful, lovely, fabulous woman hostess came to our rescue and informed the grumpy guy (in rapid-fire Italian) that they DID have a table where we could be seated. As she graciously sat us at that table and then brought us complimentary glasses of prosecco, she said something about solidarity and women in Italian that I translated very roughly as, "We women must stick together!"

After a delicious dinner, our waiter called a taxi to take us up to the Piazzalle Michelangelo.  What a view!  The lights of the city, the Arno, the Duomo, Santa Croce below us were beautiful and a street musician's accordion music made the scene even more perfect.

When we were ready to head back to town, there wasn't a taxi in sight, so we got adventurous and decided to take the bus.  Regrettably, after about a 20-minute bus ride, the bus stopped and everyone got off!  We ended up getting a taxi back to the Grand Tour where we fell into our beds, exhausted, but very happy to be in Florence!