Poxatony Jim

How many Jim's are there?  Believe it or not there are two in this crew.  To date you have only seen one Jim because the other had not come out of his hotel room until today!  Puxatony Jim came out and didn't see his shadow, meaning it was going to rain!  Poor Fr. Jim was under the weather in Rome and spent the four days recovering from a cold only to arrive in Florence during a storm.

But not even rain can take away the beauty of Florence and Tuscany.  A bad day in Tuscany is better than a good day anywhere else and where else to be but beautiful Florence!!!

Breakfast in Rome

We arrived at our hotel, which is quite nice.  The rooms are rather big for Italy, which is nice.  Our base here is North Florence about 8 or 9 blocks from Santa Maria Fiore (St. Mary of the Flowers), the Cathedral of Florence with the famous Duomo of Brunelleschi.  The Dome (Duomo) was and is an engineering marvel.  Donato Bramante had plans for a Dome on top of the New St. Peter's but was unsure how to achieve a dome of that size.  When Michelangelo was Chief Architect of St. Peter's he studied the Pantheon and, being a Florentine, he wrote to the Signoria (ruling council of Florence) asking them to send Brunelleschi's architectural plans for the Duomo to Rome.  From these he was able to bring Bramante's idea for a Dome to realization.

Here's Mom approaching the Baptistry of Santa Maria Fiore.

You can barely see here in the center but that's Mom experiencing awe at the beauty of S. Maria Fiore, next to the Cathedral is the Campanelle or Bell Tower, a free standing structure.  The baptistry is directly in front of the Cathedral.

Mom dwarfed by S. Maria Fiore

After the Cathedral we were hungry from our trip by high speed train to Florence and found a very nice  neighborhood eatery.  It was on a non-descript street with no advertising, we went down a long staircase into the basement where we found 10 crowded tables of happy people.  We waited 10 minutes and were seated.  It was so local you had to get your own water, silverware, bread, condiments and place your order at the counter.  Your name was called and you went over and picked up your feast.  Two choices meat or vegetarian.  We had roasted pork with Rosemary, Whole Wheat pasta in a sauce made with a paste of tomatoe and Olives and Cannaloni beans, Red Wine, Coffee, Flourless chocolate tart with citron and biscotti.  The Vegetarian plate was cannaloni beans, Cuscus, the same pasta as the meat dish and saute fennel.  Everything homemade with only local Organic Florentine ingredients.  Our server was the only person who spoke broken English and she was wonderful.  The chef came out to ask how we liked his food...we liked it all right, we liked it real good!!!  It was fabulous!  6 people, dinner, water, bread, dessert, coffee and a liter of wine...all for only 79 Euro's including the tip!  UNBELIEVABLE!  FANTASTIC FOOD!!!!  Best in Italy so far and the people were so friendly.

Following Pranzo we strolled in the rain to see the Piazza Vecchio, the Uffuzi, Santa Maria Novella, and several other sites.

No trip to Florence would be complete without seeing the Arno River and the Ponte Vecchio (the old bridge).  The structures you see are shops, jewelry shops to be specific.  To be more specific gold shops, mostly 18K and every style imaginable.  The ladies forgot it was raining, all they saw was the brilliant aura of sunlight bouncing off the gold.

Ponte Vecchio

  We are so stuffed we decided to just have plain old pizza for Cena!  Bella Fiorenza!