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Published: June 17th 2008
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Day Eight - Travel to Florence and see David
On day eight we leave the resort island of Lido to set off towards Tuscany. It is not a long trip so we do not have any stops other than the rest right before we reach Florence. The countryside is beautiful and much of it reminds me of the foothills of the sierras during springtime. But we don't have the little old cottages and villas that dot the Tuscan hill sides. When we arrive into Florence we are dropped off near the piazza near the Santa Croce church where we received an opportunity to be educated on the specifics of Florentine jewelry. Very nice stuff. And surprisingly very expensive. This place had some scarves woven with gold and silver. Very cool stuff. After the opportunity to buy jewelry, we were escorted to the Peruzzi family's leather shops on the other side of the piazza. We were given a short exhibition on how they stamp gold into their leather products and then, another opportunity to buy products. Many leather products were purchased by this tourist group. They offered us discounts, duty-free, delivery to hotel, and sizing of any leather products. And they
had a leather product for everything. Quite impressive.
Once we were done shopping, our TD gave us “whisper” headsets that we used for our personal tour of several historic sites ending at the Academia to see the David. After walking through some very old streets we landed at the Piazza della Signoria. This piazza has traditionally served as the political and social centerpiece of Florentine life. Today it houses the fountain of Neptune, and many statues the Medici family collected while in power. The statues include Perseus by Cellini and The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna. Beautiful stuff. And there is a copy of David as the statue used to be located here until stored at the Academia in the late 1800s.
Next we arrived at the Florence Duomo, Tower, and Baptistry. Just beautiful. Although they are a copy today, the “Gate of Paradise” on the east door of the baptistry was amazing. Such three dimensional bible stories carved in bronze.
Our journey ended at the Academia where we got to see the real David by Michelangelo. And you know what? Amazingly, it looks a lot like all the other copies I have seen through
Italy and France. But knowing we saw the real one makes us all fell better. Or is it the real one?
Any cathedral or museum with paintings or statues inside will not allow pictures or video, so I don't have any pictures. But you have all seen him before.
After the tour, Maurizio picked us up and we arrived at our hotel with our bags and rooms already setup. Nice work Insight.
In the evening, we walked to a local restaurant for an included dinner. For the past few days we have been lucky in avoiding a major rain downpour. But not this time. As we were walking to our place for dinner, the clouds opened up and poured down on us. With heads down, we walked to our restaurant.
And because of the rain, we were forced to eat inside a hotel instead of the provided garden. The décor in the room was beautiful and once we were seated, the staff provided our primi piatto of an nice Florentine pasta. It was very tasty. But unfortunately, the dinner was all downhill from there. The poor staff had to travel to far to feed us, and
the service became very poor. The portions of the remaining servings were very small. Being on several Insight tours, I was not used to something this low in quality. The rain made an experience that would have been average, way below average. Insight made up for the situation by providing us a personal guided tour of the Assisi Cathedral once we reach Assisi.
EPI Notes: Yes, we had a bad experience with the provided dinner. It was bad all around. A provided meal should only reflect the cultural experience of the city or culture visited. This was just bad food in a bad venue. Fortunately, Insight did make up for the issue with the provided tour leader for the Assisi tour I will discuss in a later blog. In addition, tomorrow night we will have our optional Tuscan Dinner. Oh, baby... that was something. The steak Florentine was just outstanding.
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