After two full days in Touristland it was time for us to get out of Rome and take the train to Florence. We booked 1st class seats for both of our trains to Florence and Venice which was pretty fun with the free sparkling wine and super comfy seats next to the window.
We arrived into Florence around noon and checked into our our B&B which ended up being super convient to everywhere we were going. Although still touristy, Florence still has some charm which i understand why most people said it was their favorite city in Italy. We quickly found a popular eatery Trattoria Mario, that was crowded and everyone ends up having to share tables with other strangers. We finally got our first taste of good pasta with an order of the Penne Ragu, Veal Steak, and of course a half liter of wine.
After lunch we made our way down to the Accademia Gallery where Michelangelo Statue of David lives. Thanks to Joy’s booking of all our museum times in Florence we were able to skip the long line of people doing standby and got in pretty quickly. There are many signs around the museum stating that photography is prohibited and try as i might i couldn’t get Joy’s attention through her headphone tour. She got off one good shot before a large lady had to scream at her “No Pictures!.” While all that went on i made my way to the bench nearby and got a good shot with my iPhone. The museum was pretty small itself so we were in and out of there in about 30 minutes.
The good thing about Florence is that its not a very big city so there isn’t a need to learn the public transportation system and everything is at most a mile away. From the Accademia its a short walk to the Ponte Vecchio bridge where we took a lot of pictures and just hung out until dinner.
While lunch is very easy to figure out, dinner is a different story. There are many cheap and good places to eat that are only open for lunch which makes figuring out dinner a crap shoot. TripAdvisor reviews tend to be a mix of good and bad reviews for the same restaurant always battling between too expensive to not authentic or really good and so we just chose something nearby with a good number of decent reviews Trattoria Katti. Dinner was another half liter of wine and some tagliatelle, gnocchi, and tomatoes.
For dessert we headed back towards the Accademia to get some Granita from Gelateria Carabe. The lemon ice was a really good way to clean up the palate after so much cream and butter from dinner.
