Honeymoon in Italy: Highlights of Florence, Part I

 

Our adorable room in the Casa del Garbo

After Rome, we took a train back to Florence to stay there for real this time. We stayed at the Casa del Garbo, which had a much different feel from our hotel in Rome. The building was originally built in the 1300's, and now it's a cute hotel with suites named after famous people (we stayed in the "Lorenzo il Magnifico" room). We liked the quaint feel of it, with older art on the walls, actual wooden shutters across the windows, and a little nook where we could enjoy our breakfast every morning, delivered right to our door!

The hotel looks RIGHT onto the Piazza della Signoria, and we could see the Palazzo Vecchio, a statue of the leader Cosimo of the Medici family, and the Fountain of Neptune from our window. Such a great location! And there is a fountain right across the square, so we could fill up our water bottles to take on our wanderings. We were so close to the Uffizi Gallery and the Ponte Vecchio, so doing all the touristy things was easy!

This is the Palazzo Vecchio with the full moon behind it.

Speaking of those touristy things, we had to check them out! Our travel agent booked us tickets for the Uffizi Gallery and the Galleria dell'Accademia, so we did those back-to-back. 

At the Uffizi, I was mostly overwhelmed by the ornately decorated ceilings. I couldn't help but look up the whole time!

But everything was lavishly decked-out, even the floors!

This was the view from the rooftop of the Ufizzi. You can see the Duomo right there!

When we left the Uffizi, we walked about 15 minutes to the Accademia to see more art, but mainly to see Michelangelo's David:

Pictures don't do him justice, but the David is enormous. He is 14 feet tall, and the space where he stands now was built specifically for the statue to be admired under a skylight. He really is absolutely beautiful. Even though Michelangelo was only 26 when he started carving the statue, he was already well-known for his skill and admiration of the male human body.

There was a room where we could see models and the final products. There were also videos showing the process of creating the cast to making the finished statue. You could see dots, even nails, on each version for the artists to keep the correct proportions.

There is also a musical instrument museum within the Accademia. I didn't even know upright pianos were a thing!

We walked across the Ponte Vecchio numerous times during our trip. It's the oldest bridge in Italy, and it was the last remaining bridge across the Arno River in World War II. It used to connect the Palazzo Pitti, the palace of the Medicis (more on that in a future post) and the administrative offices of the Uffizi (which means "office"); the Medicis and other important people would walk in an elevated tunnel that was on top of the bridge, and there were butchers on the bridge itself. But once the higher-ups thought the meat smelled bad, jewelers replaced the butchers, and there are lots of jewelry stores on the bridge to this day. I didn't buy anything, but there were many pretty things to look at!

The Ponte Vecchio looks very different from day to night! (These photos are taken on opposite sides of the river, mind you.)

Next up: All our food adventures in Florence!