Day 5 - Florence

A Ceiling at the Bargello

After a delicious breakfast in our hotel, we started the morning with a visit to the Bargello museum, one of mom's favorite museums in Florence, because of the beauty of the building, especially some of its ceilings.

The Bargello is one of the largest collections of Renaissance sculpture in Italy, but prior to being a museum it served as the police headquarters as well as a prison dating back to the 13th century.  We then headed back to the Duomo, but decided that we did not want to deal with the crowds, so instead we strolled over to the western side of the city to visit the Principe hotel, where mom and dad stayed on their first visit to Florence more than 20 years ago. Not surprisingly, they did not remember much about the hotel, but they did vaguely remember some of the restaurants they ate in while they were staying there.

The Famous Sign

On the way back to our hotel, we passed some interesting shops, including one in which we saw a sign that said, "if you were waiting for a sign - this is it."  We really should have bought it, but we could not figure out how we would get it home. We also passed a number of great looking restaurants, including Buca Mario where we ended up stopping for lunch.  After lunch we came to Gelato Lorenzo, where of course we had to stop.

Gelateria Lorenzo

By then it was time to head back to the hotel for our afternoon nap.  We really like the hotel, Gallery Art Hotel. It is one of the hotels in the Lugarno chain which were all designed by the famous Ferragamo group.  It is fairly modern and beautifully designed, which is fitting for Florence, a highly fashionable city.

After our nap, we headed out for our second dinner in Florence.  We went to a restaurant not too far from our hotel called Francesco Vini.  We were discouraged by the appearance of the restaurant, which can only be described as, "a bit past its prime."  In contrast to the appearance of the restaurant however, our food was actually quite good.  We started off with Bruschetta Misto, bruschetta with a variety of toppings, including chicken liver, lard (lard?), and of course the classic tomatoes.  I followed that up nicely with a wonderful sliced sirloin steak on a bed of arugula and cherry tomatoes, which was perfectly seasoned and so tender that it fell apart in my mouth.  Once again we capped off the night with some gelato on our way back to the hotel and called it a night.