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Published: August 29th 2015
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Il Santo Bevitore Ristorante
Tiger shrimp Specialty... Yum! Florence: After a quick train ride in a Trenitalia High speed train, we arrived at the St Maria Novella station, a short 25 Min. walk from our apartment, a bit on the hot side but thankfully no stairs on the way 😊. Again, all at the apartment worked great, Cristina, our host was there to receive us into a beautiful apartment, just on the other side of the river Arno (oltrarno). Living like the Florentines do but within walking distance of all the important sights in Florence and close to great restaurants.... I specially remember the first night in Florence Patricia and I had dinner at "Il Santo Bevitore Ristorante" just around the block from our apartment...it was amazing! the restaurant was recommended by Rick Steves and I must say that his recommendations across our entire trip proved to be consistently spot on! And while we are on the subject of food, how is it that Italians make pasta so good.....They consistently cook the pasta just right and in such a way that it absorbs the flavors that come with it .... it is something I have rarely tasted before.... It's a good thing we were constantly walking and moving during
this trip so we actually managed not to gain any weight.
The day following our arrival,
Patricia's sister Anita joined us all the way from Calgary. We all travelled together for the following and last two weeks after which we returned from Rome together via Toronto where we split off unto our respective homes.
So..
Florence is an amazing city, with so much history: the birth place of renaissance and all the art that comes with it: Michelangelo, Botticelli, Caravaggio, Giotto, Titian etc.; home to the powerful Medici family with all the art it amassed seen at the Palazzo Vecchio and at the Uffizi gallery. Certainly being able to see Michelangelo's David was a treat as well as works of art such as Botticelli's The birth of Venus (pics) and countless sculptures dating back 2000 years to the time of Christ, including many Roman rulers including one of Nero as a child...if the kid grew up with such attention you can almost imagine why he turned out like he did (pics).
And then the architecture...Wow!: all the Grand Churches and Cathedrals in Italy are built with marble columns and marble slabs, sculptures etc. covering the façade and
all the walls. It is hard to imagine the amount of work that went into putting all this together, finding the marble pieces big enough to span columns that could be 40 -60 feet long and then color coordinating these so that there is symmetry in their positioning. We visited both the Church of Santa Maria Novella, a thirteen century Dominican church and the Duomo Cathedral (cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore) I have included some pictures that give an idea but don't quite do justice to the extent of detail and how impressive it looks when you see these huge buildings covered entirely with marble!..... so much more on Florence.... but I don't want to make this too long, so I will close Florence with the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge). it is in fact the oldest bridge in Florence built around the year1500 with houses built on it which were typically butcher shops that conveniently used the river below to dump all the leftovers..... As the story goes, the Medicis crossed this bridge daily to get to work at the Palazzo Vecchio and they did not tolerate the stink, so two things were done, they built an enclosed corridor
Cinque Terre
View from our balcony above the shops on the bridge, where they could cross in protected enclosure. And they also pushed to replace all the butcher shops with jewelry shops, which are the only types of shops that have operated there for the last 500 years! (pics)
Cinque Terre: After a few days in Florence the three of us piled in our rental Alfa Romeo...we were definitely going up in the world from the Lancia we had before 😊 The route is a pleasant drive that took us through are first glimpses of the Tuscany hills...and they are just as one would imagine them to be, with beautiful vistas with rows of vines and doted with walled towns WOW! ..Our trip took us through La Spezia and then turned into a panoramic drive along the coast line as we headed into Riomaggiore, the southernmost town of the Cinque Terre, where we had an apartment right close to the water waiting for us... Of course we could only park above the town, because cars can't go into the town and then walk down to our place.....getting back up when we left was interesting..... 😊
The view from our apartment balcony is perhaps the
Batello unloading
Keeping it from hitting the rocks! prettiest vista that we found in our entire trip. We could see a framed view of the Mediterranean surrounded by the very picturesque homes and buildings that were adjacent and across from us (pic). I feel that in deciding for Riomaggiore we picked the best place for our home base in the Cinque Terre although there may be better beaches in other towns and perhaps more shops as well, this town is the most picturesque and the one where you get the most authentic experience of living in a working small Italian-Mediterranean fishing village! it was a great experience to watch in the evenings, when the fishing boats came in, how all the fishermen came together to help each other pull each other's boats up and hand carry them to their dry births, or as I saw one evening, how excited they got about a gas powered winch that one of them proudly brought, they all surround it and talked about as it was
"this newfangled contraption" 😊 ....when it was all said and done it took much longer to use the winch....and, no surprise, it didn't show up again... 😊 (pics)
We toured all five of the Cinque
The end of the fishing day
All help each other bring their boats in. Terre towns form the sea again on Batellos (Large boats). Interestingly, these boats never stop besides a Pier to load and unload as there are none; they actually load and unload passengers through a gangplank they put out from the front bow and somehow they keep the boat reverse-powered enough so it is not pushed onto the rocky coastline, but yet keeps stable for people to walk on the gangplank... pretty cool! (pics) We spent a full day at Monterrosso which has a pretty good beach and gave us a good chance to chill from all the museum viewing, walking etc. We had some great dinners at
La Grotta and the
Grottino restaurants in Riomaggiore. One of the specialties in this area are anchovies...but not the "salty" ones we've all had out of a can or with Caesar salad. These anchovies were fresh and they are served grilled, fried, however you want them....and they are delicious! And I can't close on Cinque Terre without mentioning the great Mojitos we had at the
Bar Centrale served by Ivo, the owner who with great music and his personal charm makes this place a great place to just sit and chill.....they also serve
Gas powered winch pulling
Newfangled contraption was a novelty but didn't catch great gelato! (pics).
The day we left Cinque Terre we got what was perhaps the only rain we got during our entire trip and
boy did we get it: right at the moment we closed our apartment and started for the car.... it was raining so hard that by the time we got settled in the car we were as soaked as if we had jumped in the shower with our clothes.... it was very wet and hilarious!
This takes us onto the next blog
Italy III: Pisa-Volterra and Rome coming in a few days
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