Upon my return we head out for a walk of the city. It's raining and a bit gloomy outside. We think about heading to the Uffizi gallery but are a little over Renaissance art, so we head to the Palazzo Strozzi to see some modern art. There's an interesting travelling exhibition on at the moment, looking at some of the works from the collections of Peggy Guggenheims Venice gallery and the New York Solomon r Guggenheim. The exhibition explores the trans Atlantic links between the First World War and the 60s and how Peggy Guggenheim helped facilitate artists crossing over between the two, globalising the modern art scene. There's some really great stuff here, Kandinsky, Yves Tanguy, Pollock, Max Ernst and my favourite of the exhibition Alex Calder and his amazing mobiles.
After getting our fix of modernity in this Renaissance city, we stroll over to the Uffizi gallery and it's large piazza. It's actually quite a funny square. There's so many sculptures. Some we've already seen before, like the Statue of David, this ones a copy, but there's one new one we haven't seen before. Randomly there's a large golden man writing a golden turtle. So random.
We wander through the Uffizi entry courtyard, but don't go into the gallery. We pass all the statues of all the brilliant artists, minds and inventors before reaching the river. We stroll through the arched colonnade along the river before turning into the Ponte Vechhio. It's a little bit more busy than yesterday but still not that impressive.
We head back into the Santo Spirito area, which is also more alive as the shops are open. We head to La Casalinga trattoria for lunch. After a brief wait, where locals get seated before visitors, which is kinda cool, we are seated at our paper table clothed table. We both order the ravioli but sim gets the butter and sage and I get the pomodorro Bolognese. It's delicious. We also get a salad and I opt for secondi, roast beef. It's awesome, reminds me of my nonnas. Sliced thinly and flavoured simply with olive oil, herbs and salt, lots of salt. It's very tender inside, pinkish red in colour whilst the outside forms a crispy crust. Yum.
Accompanied with half a litre of table red wine and it's one tasty Tuscan meal!
After lunch we stroll back to the river and try another recommended gelato place, Gelato Santa Trinita. It's good but not as good as yesterday's.
We stroll along the river and make our way up to the piazzale Michelangelo. We climb up the hill and slightly breathless at the top, we are greeted with an amazing view over the city. It's sensational. It really is quite a low scale city, punctuated by the duomo and other churches penetrating the roof datum line.
Another interesting thing we see is yet another David statue, this ones in copper. Sims dad warned us about the multiples, so far we've seen the real David, the fake marble David, the Copper David and Craig David, who apparently chills on Sunday's.
We head back down the hill and over the river into the Santa Croce area where we pass the Basilica Santa Croce before heading back to the apartment.
After another afternoon nap we head out in the early evening to walk up the Cupola. We join the relatively short line to get up to the top. Sim holds our place while I get an espresso at the caffe bar nearby. Need a pick me up! Bloody naps!
I rejoin the line and we head inside and up the stairs. It's a quick ascent up to the middle level where we venture out onto a balcony walkway inside the cathedrals dome. From here we get a close up view of the fresco ceiling. It's in the same style as the Sistine Chapel ceiling though not as amazing.
We climb up some more stairs and we are now in the dome, between the inner and outer layer. It's interesting to see the herringbone brick construction that made this structure possible.
The stairs of the dome are not as impressive as the stair accent at St Peters in Rome however.
We arrive at the top, up on the lantern. The view is incredible. It's a sea of terracotta. You get a real sense of the scale of Florence, defined by the hills in the distance. We're told that the Florence region has 400,000 people and the city centre within the old walls only having 60,000. Quite interesting.
Whilst the view is spectacular I'm equally as impressed with Brunelleschi's architecture of the marble lantern. Although it's a shame that it's been written all over with markers and pens. Why do people feel the need to write Crap on everything. No one cares that G.H. was here!
We sit a while and take in the city. It really is picturesque from this perspective. We finally make our way down, before sharing a pizza for dinner (Lunch was filling).
It's now after 8 and we're wrecked. We call it an early night and chill out at the apartment.
Early start tomorrow
mat + sim
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