We’re starting a little slow this week. Monday was a travel day, yesterday our usual get-the-lay-of-the-land day, so treasures await today — two museums planned, the Galileo and Uffizi.
Yes, we’re in Florence. Which is lovely. The Airbnb is nicer, which is to say the toilet flushes well and the shower doesn’t appear to have been designed for elves. It’s quieter. And not far away:
The Arno River. Over which stretches the ancient Ponte Vecchio:
It used to be leather workers and tannery operations on the bridge, convenient because you just threw the waste into the river. Now it’s all jewelers.
The weather is sharply cooler, and yesterday it rained. The news today said the Palazzo Vecchio, aka city hall, had authorized six additional days of heating for the building, to accommodate the elderly and those in a fragile state. (I’m sure they pronounced it fra-gee-lay.) One more day of cool, then gradual warming through the weekend.
Pizza continues to be outstanding.
A little shopping for the people who are helping out at home, but we won’t get too into that. However, IYKYK:
King Neptune outside the Palazzo Vecchio, not far from where Savonarola burned.
Soon I will be immersed in Botticelli. More later.
Jeff Gill said on April 24, 2024 at 7:32 am
Delightful set of pics — thank you so much!
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Robert said on April 24, 2024 at 8:42 am
Thanks for sharing your travel experiences in Italy with us.
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Dorothy said on April 24, 2024 at 8:49 am
I truthfully DID LOL at fra-gee-lay! These pictures are great and thank you so much for posting them.
My friend Susan and her husband Mark are also in that general vicinity are having a grand time as well. They started in Italy and then got on a boat. She sent a neat picture from Gibraltar of her and a simian creature whose genus I am not sure of and it was fab. You can’t touch them or feed them but they’re so used to humans, they sit and pose for pictures with tourists. The closeup she got of him was tremendous. (I just Googled it and I think it was a barbary ape.)
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Jeff Gill said on April 24, 2024 at 10:13 am
Fognatura is a lovely word for sewers.
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tajalli said on April 24, 2024 at 10:43 am
Thanks for clearing up what that word was, Jeff. The ongoing pictures are a delight, love the brickwork style seems to predominate.
With regard to Italian food, Evangelical Pastefarianism 2 on Facebook shared this YouTube of the proper way to honor the Flying Spaghetti Monster when preparing pasta.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OI7iChKtPuc
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alex said on April 24, 2024 at 11:58 am
Loved the pasta vid, tajalli. I promise to be a better cook from now on. Thank God I don’t use the Barilla brand, the only mistake that won’t need any correcting.
Tarzanella is the word for dingleberries. It’s because they swing like Tarzan, it was explained to me and fellow diners, by an Italian graduate student working at an Italian restaurant in Chicago.
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ROGirl said on April 24, 2024 at 12:26 pm
I have a pair of small 18k gold stud earrings with coral that I bought for about $20 in a jewelry shop on the Ponte Vecchio about a million years ago. I still wear them on a regular basis.
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Scout said on April 24, 2024 at 12:27 pm
Your pictures are bringing back so many happy memories of our trip to the boot 8 years ago. It also reminds me that I want to go back to see the sites of Fee-rehn-zee we missed when we had to cut our visit there short due to a water main break that virtually shut down the city. https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sdut-water-main-break-creates-sinkhole-along-florences-2016may25-story.html
We made lemonade out of that lemon by renting a car and driving to Siena where we enjoyed those previously unscheduled days in Tuscany before heading to Venice.
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ROGirl said on April 24, 2024 at 12:36 pm
If the Vivoli ice cream shop still exists, I recommend a visit. And climbing to the top of the Duomo is worth it for the spectacular view.
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Heather said on April 24, 2024 at 12:42 pm
There’s nothing like the smell of the original Antica Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella.
My favorite area for quiet contemplation in Florence: the Pazzi Chapel.
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Jeff Borden said on April 24, 2024 at 1:11 pm
We celebrated my 53rd birthday at a restaurant on Via Tintoro…about a pound and a half of T-bone pounded into an amazingly tender slab by a large chef wielding a wooden mallet. I wonder if it’s still there? The name escapes me at the moment.
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Sherri said on April 24, 2024 at 1:57 pm
It may be that the best thing Biden has done is to appoint Lina Khan to the FTC. The FTC has just ruled that non-compete clauses are not okay, the clauses in employment contracts that prevent you from leaving to work for a competitor for a period of time. They’ve proliferated to the point that fast food restaurants like Jimmy John’s use them now.
Of course, a lawsuit has already been filed to stop this ruling, because business thinks that it’s impossible to be successful without such clauses. The fact that such clauses have been illegal in California for forever, and entire industries have been created and thrived there, doesn’t seem to convince them otherwise.
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susan said on April 24, 2024 at 7:25 pm
American capitalism is a non-compete clause.
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