Dia Tredici …Waking and Walking in Florence

View of Florence from the Boboli gardens of the Pitti Palace.

I awaken a little tired. It has been a whirlwind of an adventure so far and today requires a slower, gentler start. Fortunately, we have nothing specific planned, so we have a leisurely breakfast, then head out on our usual “walking safari” to see what we find. We have decided to stay on our side of the Arno in an area called Oltrarno, which literally means “the other side of the Arno.” Implying, in old times, the “wrong” side. That was until one of the Medici moved over here into the Pitti Palace and then it was cool.

We wander down a street close to our apartment that comes right off the end of the Ponte Vecchio. It is filled with interesting little shops and we pass a shoemaker’s shop where they are still made by hand.

It is baking hot, right around 30° C, but everything is made of stone, even the streets, so it is like being in a very large pizza oven. Just a block or so down the street we arrive at the Pitti Palace, which, as palaces go is pretty mundane; looking more like a penitentiary. We decide to skip the palace part and just tour the gardens, but they are packaged with some other things, so we end up in the going through three Museum parts of the Palace, supposedly for porcelain, costumes and silver, but in fact it is a mishmash of a lot of things that amounts to an interesting tour, and to boot, we got to see some “palace-like” decoration of the rooms. We wander the first few and no one says anything about me snapping away with the camera. Then I get two rooms where they chase me down and say “no photos” then, I just take what I can with no one around. Seriously, I don’t use a flash, so I’m not damaging anything and these things are so old there should be no copyright issues. Oh well, like a good Italian I only pay attention to the rules that I like, I don’t have the language to argue with them.

We enter the Boboli Gardens of the palace and are quite disappointed that they are unkempt. This could be a mini Versailles, but the plants are withered and gone wild. There are nice views over the Arno and the city of Florence from one end, and since we are baking, we decide to cut our losses at this garden and go to the Giardino Bardini, which is just down the road and included on the ticket. This turns out to be a good plan. These gardens are lovely and cascade down a hill. We follow their natural path and emerge at street level two blocks from “home”. We return to the apartment for an air-conditioned break.

For dinner we walk deeper into the Oltrarno and find a restaurant, in Piazza S. Spirito where everyone shares long tables, called the Borgo Antico. It is wonderful and high-spirited and the food is great. I finally have a huge salad that is a wonderful change from pizza and pasta. Unfortunately, everyone at our table is most comfortable in Asian languages so we can only smile and enjoy the ambiance. There are so many young people. I love that Florence is a university town and I get the sense that they have many foreign students. It feels so much more cosmopolitan than Venice, or perhaps even Rome.

On thing that cracks us up is that we hear Johnny Cash on the sound system, and they turn it up. This is the second time we have heard him today and it feels so anachronistic. Tonight he was crooning Satisfied Mind. Too funny.

Walking back to the apartment along the Arno we wander out on one of the bridges and look down the river…wow, we didn’t know the river ran west to east, but the sunset at the horizon left no doubt. Beautiful. Further up the walk home we find gelato and more interesting streets and alleys.

One thing that is apparent by markings on city infrastructure is that the Fleur de Lys, which I think of as French, is the symbol of Florence. I will have to learn more about this…interesting that both cultures chose the lily as their symbol. Since I don’t believe in coincidence, there must be a story here!

Sipping wine on the patio now. Have a great evening wherever you are!