Mary Tripped Out: June 24th: More Florence

Turns out this was a festival day! Festa di San Giovanni, to celebrate Florence’s patron saint. So...lots of activity going on in the city (processions, parades, and people) but also lots of things closed (like the Duomo). So instead of climbing a bunch of stairs, we instead walked around on solid ground. We found more pasta for lunch, as well as some panna cotta for dessert (so now we try to order that everywhere).

We wanted to go into one of the major museums, so we bought tickets for the Ufizzi Gallery. Unfortunately, it wasn’ t until we were inside that we learned you couldn’t take pictures. It was still quite interesting, we saw a lot of great masterpieces, such as Botocelli’s Birth of Venus, but it’s always more fun when you have photographic evidence.

We’ve been trying to have the local cuisine in all the places we visit, and Florence has the bistecca alla fiorentina, which is a huge steak cooked over wood or charcoal, with salt, pepper, and olive oil. That sounded right up my alley, so we picked another guidebook recommendation for dinner, L’Osteria di Giovanni, and had the hostel’s reception desk call and make our reservation. We managed to show up in time, and were treated to quite the amazing meal.

Festival day procession from the Duomo into the Baptistry