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Venice Time

On thursday Jake and I travelled from Florence to Venice. We were a little nervous about having to tackle the Italian trains again, but this trip went much more smoothly! We had actual reservations from our travel agent, so we were able to go directly to our assigned seats, which were in a lovely first class car! The seats were nice and roomy, and they even came by and served snacks and drinks. The drinks were nice, but the snack was this ridiculous cross between a fruit snack and a granola bar - it was sort of like eating sour, rubbery cardboard. Not delicious. We were also smart enough to look up the name of our arrival station, so we knew for sure that we were getting off at the right stop.

We had decided to leave our big suitcase in the storage facility at the train station, since we were going to be staying such a short time, and doing so allowed us to take the waterbus (6.50 euro pp)to the hotel instead of a water taxi (90 euro!!). Definitely worth it! However the waterbus dropped us off a few blocks from the hotel, and Jake and I definitely weren't prepared for navigating Venice. We had written down directions, but we had no map with us, and we were hopelessly lost after about 90 seconds of walking around. Jake is usually great at getting around in new places, so I knew Venice had to be hard if he couldn't do it. I get lost walking around my own neighborhood, so obviously I was no help at all.

After stopping to ask directions a few times, we finally managed to locate our hotel. And it was fantastic! We were staying at Hotel Ruzzini Palace, which is right on Campo del Santa Maria Formosa. The hotel was absolutely beautiful, and they were nice enough to upgrade us to a killer suite since our travel agent told them that this was our honeymoon. It was huuuuuuge!!!! It was called Suite Paradiso, because our windows overlooked the Paradiso Canal - and it definitely felt like paradise to me!

We picked up a good map at the front desk of the hotel, and then we headed out to explore Venice. We stopped for lunch at a little place right down the road, and it was great. I had an amazing Spaghetti ai Frutti da Mare, and Jake had liver and onions, a specialty of Venice. It was tasty, but Jake was disappointed because it didn't come with the polenta that was promised on the menu. He's still a little bitter about it. After lunch we wandered around the crazy tiny winding streets of Venice, and enjoyed being in such a different place. We explored St. Marks Square, and got ourselves soundly lost again. Luckily we had the map this time, and although it would have been useless to me, Jake was able to easily navigate our way back to the hotel. We stopped in quickly to put on some warmer clothes, and then headed out again.

We went back to see San Marco at night, and spent some time listening to the dueling orchestras that play at the restaurants lining the square. We also watched the gondolas, and Jake took tons of pictures.

At about 10:30 we headed back to the hotel and managed to easily find our way. Once we got there, the hotel surprised us with a complimentary bottle of champagne in our room!! It was the perfect way to end our first day in Venice.

Lazy day in Florence

Wednesday was our last day in Florence. We decided to make it a lazy day. We started out from the hotel at about 11am and walked to the far side of piazza Santa Maria Novella. Just down the street is a pharmacy run by the church of Santa Maria Novella that is a few hundred years old. All of the recipes for the elixers, soups, soaps, perfumes, etc. were created by the friars of the church and are still used today. The pharmacy is beautifully decorated and is wonderful to see.
After lunch we headed back out into the city to wander a bit and see what some of the street merchants had to offer. Some hagling led to a new belt for me and a bag for Erica. We headed back accross the Arno and grabbed a couple fresh pastries from a small shop near the ponte vechio and sat in front of Pallazzo Pritti to eat. We spent a bit of time people watching and enjoying the beautiful weather before deciding to start walking again.
After a few hours of exploring we found a small place for dinner. The waiter took us inside where we took a spiral staircase down to the basement - the restaruant is much larger inside than it appears from the street. We shared an appetizer of Prosciutto and fresh mozzerella cheese which was so tasty. Erica had pasta with a nice pesto sauce and I had a beef stew with beans. We followed the nice meal up with some cappuccino and headed back to the hotel. It was time to pack and prepare for our next leg of the journey - Venice.
We had an amazing time in Florence.

Uffizi and Il Latini

We had reservations to visit the Uffizi Gallery on Tuesday evening, so after a short nap at the hotel, we headed back out and made our way to the museum. Jake and I were both really exited to visit the Gallery, but I have to say, we were somewhat disappointed!
I know, you're thinking how could you possibly be disappointed in the Uffizi?! But the museum was the most crowded and tourist filled place that we had visited so far. You could hardly enter the gallery rooms, let alone enjoy the paintings because the place was so filled with large tour groups. We tried three times to go see the Birth of Venus, but each time she was surrounded by at least sixty people, and it was hard to get close enough to really see it. There were at least three times as many people there, than had been at the David that morning! It really surprised me. It also didn't help that the Uffizi isn't air conditioned, so it was very hot and stuffy in there. Jake and I both agreed that we weren't having the best time, but it would be a shame to be at the Gallery, and to not at least walk through all of the rooms. We did eventually get close enough to see Venus, as well as some other wonderful paintings by Botticelli, and a few by DaVinci as well! After about an hour and a half of fighting the crowds, we'd had enough, and we headed back to the hotel to get changed for dinner.
We had reservations at Il Latini for 9:30 that night. Il Latini is a restaurant recommended to us by Jeff and Nicole, and we were really excited to try it. They only do two seatings each night - 7:30 and 9:30, and you are seated family style with the other diners. You also don't really order food - you pretty much just tell them what courses you want, and then eat what they bring you.
We were seated with a couple from Boston, who were also on their honeymoon, and there was a couple at the table next to us who were from Rochester! Isn't it a small world? We had fun getting to know them over dinner.
The food was amazing at this place. Our appetizer was a tuscan style variety of sliced meats, including freshly shaved prosciutto, a caprese salad, and this cold grain salad with olive oil, tomatoes and celery. It was fantastic! For the primi patti Jake ordered Pappa al Pomodoro (tomato and bread soup), and I got spinach and cheese ravioli. Delizioso! For secondi patti we shared a florentine steak, and it was seriously the largest steak I'd ever seen in my life!! It was at least two inches thick. Jake and I together couldn't finish it! The size of our steak caused Jake to reminisce about a restaurant he went to in Texas once that offered a 72 ounce steak for free if you could finish it in one hour. When Jake told the story, the lady from Rochester at the next table started laughing and told him that she had eaten there as well!! I guess it's a common tourist stop when you're driving across the country.
For dessert, Jake ordered a panna cotta, and I got the Creme Caramel. They also served us cappuchinos and some really delicious dessert wine. Just as we were finishing up they came around one more time with shots of Jaegermeister. It was a really great meal. If you're ever in florence, you should definitely check it out!

Florence Tour

Tuesday was our tour day, so we had some quick breakfast and headed outside the hotel to wait for our pickup at about 9am. We met up with the rest of the tour at the train station and took a bus to Piazza Michelangelo for a view of the entire city. The piazza is situated on a hill just to the south east of the city along the boulevard. This is the ritzy area and the majority of the houses have private parks or gardens. We stayed here for about 15 minutes and admired the view before boarding the bus again.
Next stop was the Academie. This used to be a school where students could go to study art and has been converted to a museum. Inside we spent a little bit of time perusing the medieval painings and the gallery of musical instruments collected by the Medici. The musical instruments had some interesting pieces including an upright piano, some hurdy gurdies and some string instruments made by Stratevari.
Next we moved to the sculptures which included the "Slaves" by michelangelo. These pieces are purposely left unfinished. The figures all appear to be trapped within the marble and are struggling to escape. You can get close enough to see all the gauges made by Michelangelo's chisels and the pieces are quite stunning. The highlight of the Academie is of course Michelangelo's David. There is a seperate room specifically for this piece. David was completed in 1504 and was originally designed to stand atop of the cathedral. The intended positioning of the figure led michelangelo to make the davids hands and head larger so they would appear more proportional from the intended perspective. There is an amazing amount of detail for a statue meant to be so far from the viewer. The veins in his arms and the intensity of his expression wouldn't be visible at all. David was a popular subject for a lot of artists at the time, yet michelangelo made this one unique. Usually david is portrayed as a young boy, here he is depicted as a bit older, in his twenties. Usually david is shown in celebration after killing Goliath, however Michelangelo has shown him in the moments before his confrontation, holding the stone in one hand and his sling in the other. You can see in his expression that he is focused, with a clarity of purpose.
There was a showing of Robert Maplethorpe at the museum as well. They had taken some of the photos and placed them next to other pieces in the gallery. There were 4 photos placed next to the David. I don't understand why the gallery would do this as it seems silly to compare Maplethorpe to Michelangelo, and the photos seemed to be placed in the way and obstructed some angles of the sculpture - Please Italy, stop trying to mix old and new, it doesn't work, detracts from the originals as well as the modern pieces and is quite annoying.

The tour was going to the Duomo next so we decided to leave them and head off on our own. We headed to Santa Croce, another church south east of the duomo. Santa Croce is a bit smaller than the duomo but houses the tombs of Gallileo, Michealangelo, Dante and Machiavelli - quite the lineup, and being a fan of all of them, this was was a must see. The interior of the church is being restored so there was quite a bit of scaffolding and some of the sites were pretty obstructed. The monuments to Dante and Machiavelli were tightly wrapped and protected from falling stone so they could not be enjoyed. Luckily Gallileo and Michelangelo were untouched and in full view. We wandered through the church museum and spent a bit of time in a small garden which most of the other tourists didn't seem to find interesting. It was nice to be able to relax in a beautiful place that wasn't crawling with people.
It had been a pretty full morning so we headed back to the hotel for a little rest.