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lillibetWe got another late start and didn't arrive in Florence until around noon. There was some big exposition clogging up our usual parking lot, but we figured the wait would probably be shorter than getting somewhere else, so Trish & Steve headed into the city while Jason and I sat in line and Jason parked the car into a tiny little space once we were finally allowed into the lot.
We had intended to visit the Biblioteca Laurenziana, the library of San Lorenzo that we hadn't gotten to on our visit to the church. It was designed by Michelangelo and is reputed to be lovely, but we wouldn't know because it was closed 3-16 September. Denied there, we turned back to Santa Maria Novella and visited the museum there, which includes some frescoes by Paolo Uccello, one of the early experimenters with perspective. Sadly, the ones in the smaller cloister are in pretty bad shape and the larger cloister, where they seemed to be either holding up better or more recently restored, is closed to the public for use as a parade ground by the police, with only a narrow view through a barred door to let us know what we were missing.
We met up with Steve and Trish and had lunch at Gusto, once again enjoying their shrimp cocktail (the English kind, with Thousand Island-style dressing) and pizzas. There are enough mediocre-to-bad pizza places serving the tourists that having found one we liked, it made sense to stick with it and its location was very convenient. The others visited the Museo di Storia della Science ("Museum of the History of Science"), but I wanted to check with Avis to see if it would be acceptable for us to return our car in the city instead of the airport, so I walked up and found their office. That sorted, I picked up a paper--the two stands I tried were out of English-language papers, so I chose El Pais from Madrid and read the news in Spanish. Turns out there was a busload of Spanish tourists in line to go up to the observation deck when the first plane hit the WTC, so the paper had a little local interest to spin.
I met the others outside the museum--which they seemed to have enjoyed, though I never heard much about it--and we walked the long way round to Santa Croce. During our previous visit, we had noticed that there's a leather-working school in the monastery buildings behind the church and my sister, Anne, had been very insistent that we buy leather goods in Florence, so we stopped in there and got a few things. Jason and I went to the Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce while his parents toured the church itself. The museum includes access to the Pazzi chapel designed by Brunelleschi and decorated with tondi (round works) by Luca della Robbia in the signature glazed terra cotta that was his family's specialty and a rondel attributed to Donatello. There was an interesting Tree of Life fresco by Tadeo Gaddi in the refectory, but otherwise the museum was fairly small and lackluster. We went back into the church, but they weren't letting people up into the nave at that late hour, so we sat in the entry and waited for Steve and Trish to exit, shooed out by a shouting priest.
We sat on the steps of the church again--an excellent place for a rest--and then searched out a restaurant recommended by every guidebook and website we'd looked at. Cibreo is one of the higher-end restaurants in town, but they also run a more casual, lower priced trattoria around the corner that shares a kitchen and much of the menu with its neighbor. We were on the doorstep when they opened at 7pm and by 7:10pm every table was full. We could certainly appreciate the reason when we tasted their food. We shared antipasti of tomato flan and eggplant with garlic and then each had one of their four soups: yellow pepper, pureed bean, fish (smoky, like the ones we had so often in Portugal), and pappa al pomodoro (tomato and bread, which is almost solid in texture). All were excellent and shared liberally. Steve ordered the tuna, lightly grilled with olive oil and herbs. Jason had the shish kebab of lamb, chicken and beef that we had all sighed over. I had the stuffed rabbit with hot pepper jelly on the side. Trish had my favorite dish, zampa di vitello that was veal stewed with tomatoes and garlic. I think it would have been better served over pasta, but it was mighty tasty stuff. There was no way we could eat dessert after such a rich meal and we were glad of the walk across town to the train station to give us a chance to digest it. The drive home was uneventful and we settled in for the night.
Next, our last day in Tuscany...
We had intended to visit the Biblioteca Laurenziana, the library of San Lorenzo that we hadn't gotten to on our visit to the church. It was designed by Michelangelo and is reputed to be lovely, but we wouldn't know because it was closed 3-16 September. Denied there, we turned back to Santa Maria Novella and visited the museum there, which includes some frescoes by Paolo Uccello, one of the early experimenters with perspective. Sadly, the ones in the smaller cloister are in pretty bad shape and the larger cloister, where they seemed to be either holding up better or more recently restored, is closed to the public for use as a parade ground by the police, with only a narrow view through a barred door to let us know what we were missing.
We met up with Steve and Trish and had lunch at Gusto, once again enjoying their shrimp cocktail (the English kind, with Thousand Island-style dressing) and pizzas. There are enough mediocre-to-bad pizza places serving the tourists that having found one we liked, it made sense to stick with it and its location was very convenient. The others visited the Museo di Storia della Science ("Museum of the History of Science"), but I wanted to check with Avis to see if it would be acceptable for us to return our car in the city instead of the airport, so I walked up and found their office. That sorted, I picked up a paper--the two stands I tried were out of English-language papers, so I chose El Pais from Madrid and read the news in Spanish. Turns out there was a busload of Spanish tourists in line to go up to the observation deck when the first plane hit the WTC, so the paper had a little local interest to spin.
I met the others outside the museum--which they seemed to have enjoyed, though I never heard much about it--and we walked the long way round to Santa Croce. During our previous visit, we had noticed that there's a leather-working school in the monastery buildings behind the church and my sister, Anne, had been very insistent that we buy leather goods in Florence, so we stopped in there and got a few things. Jason and I went to the Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce while his parents toured the church itself. The museum includes access to the Pazzi chapel designed by Brunelleschi and decorated with tondi (round works) by Luca della Robbia in the signature glazed terra cotta that was his family's specialty and a rondel attributed to Donatello. There was an interesting Tree of Life fresco by Tadeo Gaddi in the refectory, but otherwise the museum was fairly small and lackluster. We went back into the church, but they weren't letting people up into the nave at that late hour, so we sat in the entry and waited for Steve and Trish to exit, shooed out by a shouting priest.
We sat on the steps of the church again--an excellent place for a rest--and then searched out a restaurant recommended by every guidebook and website we'd looked at. Cibreo is one of the higher-end restaurants in town, but they also run a more casual, lower priced trattoria around the corner that shares a kitchen and much of the menu with its neighbor. We were on the doorstep when they opened at 7pm and by 7:10pm every table was full. We could certainly appreciate the reason when we tasted their food. We shared antipasti of tomato flan and eggplant with garlic and then each had one of their four soups: yellow pepper, pureed bean, fish (smoky, like the ones we had so often in Portugal), and pappa al pomodoro (tomato and bread, which is almost solid in texture). All were excellent and shared liberally. Steve ordered the tuna, lightly grilled with olive oil and herbs. Jason had the shish kebab of lamb, chicken and beef that we had all sighed over. I had the stuffed rabbit with hot pepper jelly on the side. Trish had my favorite dish, zampa di vitello that was veal stewed with tomatoes and garlic. I think it would have been better served over pasta, but it was mighty tasty stuff. There was no way we could eat dessert after such a rich meal and we were glad of the walk across town to the train station to give us a chance to digest it. The drive home was uneventful and we settled in for the night.
Next, our last day in Tuscany...
