Florence Day 2- Pitti Palace, Piazza Michelangelo

Right of the bat, we called Mine about the hot water situation. She sent a guy over to fix the problem (which ended up being the Filipino guy again), so now we’re back to comfortable living again, as Angel and I went out earlier this morning to buy mosquito spray. They haven’t been back since we sprayed *cross our fingers!* Breakfast was the café across the street, an apple tart:

Nutella-stuffed croissant:

Nutella wafer cookie:

Cappaccino cream in a wafer cookie:

On our way to the Pitti Palace, we walked across a bridge that gave us views of Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence (built in the 1300s):

Pitti Palace:


The Palace was not part of the Night of the Museums, so we had to pay to get into this one ;(. We waited in line, only to get to the front of the line and learn that the line was for entrance only. We needed to first line up at another line to buy the tickets (which was all the way across the square!) before we could get into the line we were at. Oops. The admission fee is pretty steep~ 8.5 euro gets you into the Palatine Gallery and the Royal Apartments, where all the famous artwork are displayed. 10 euro admits you to the Boboli & Bardini gardens, Costume gallery, Silver & Porcelain museums. So if you want to see the whole palace, it would cost 18.5 euro per person… and the ticket is only valid for one day. Dad bought the Palatine ticket, while the three of us bought the Boboli as Angel and Mom have no interest in artwork. They are however, interested in period costumes  I recommend allocating ¾ of a day, if not the whole day, for the Boboli gardens. It is completely worth it! The gardens are breathtaking, if not a complete cardio exercise (SO many stairs and sloping hills! But that means more Italian food to fit in to your stomach after the long climb!).


It is so vast that the actual palace only comprises 1/8th of the total estate. We didn’t even get time to see the Bardini garden ;(! The Costume gallery has some gorgeous gowns from the 1800-1900s in there. The Porcelain museum is at the very top of the mountain (forces you to climb all those sloping stairs!) and offers a breathtaking view of Tuscany.



The Silver museum houses the treasury of Medici, numerous pendants, rings, necklaces, etc. that the Medicis commissioned and wore. I loved this portion of the museum the best. The level of detailing on the pendants is so minute you have to squint to see, and I marveled the whole time how the artists could carve such beautiful and delicate pieces without the benefit of microscopes.
Again, we were starving by the time we came out of the Pitti Palace. There are some wonderful sandwich places and bakeries right out of the Pitti Palaca on Via Guicciardini leading up to Ponte Vecchio. I think between the 4 of us, we ordered 2 sandwiches at every shop we saw and every one was cheap and delicious (at about 3 euros for one giant sandwich)!
Prosciutto and Mozzarella:

Tuna and Tomato:

Spinach and Ricotta Quiche:

Mom loves butter cookies, so we bought one at Il Forno with orange marmalade on it (the size is bigger than my palm!):

Il Forno sold Vin Santo as well (a dessert wine traditionally paired with biscotti as an after-dinner dessert), and the whole bottle was 6 euros! We had just seen a restaurant sell a glass of Vin Santo with biscotti for 5 euros! There was no way I was letting such a great deal go to waste, so we bought a bottle and put it in our apartment fridge to drink later on ~__^
If you’re ever in Florence, you MUST get gelato at Il Gelato di Filo on the walk up to Piazzale Michelangelo:


The dark chocolate is sooooo dark, rich and thick, the nocciola (hazelnut) is extremely hazelnutty and creamy, and the fruit flavors are very fruity 

Trust me, you’ll need the gelato as energy to get you up the steps! It looks so deceiving at the gate:

… but then…

The first 5 minutes were ok, then our speed got slower and slower:

The view on top is incredible!



They have a Great Wall too! haha

But the REAL reason we came up (as we had NO idea that there were stairs involved! The map gave no indication of a mountain!) is for the copy of the Statue of David in bronze (there’s actually two copies).

There’s a gelato stand next to the Piazzale called Gelato Michelangelo and their flavors are delicious as well. We really liked the Mango and Passionfruit flavors, and the prices were the same as other places we’ve been.

So much that we bought another one!


The other copy of the Statue of David is in front of the Uffizi Palace in Piazza Signoria:

They both don’t compare to the original, but at least the Piazza Signoria copy is more in line with the original (the bronze copy is worn down by weather so the muscles aren’t as defined). Check out the veins on his hand! I marveled at that when I saw the original… it really looks like blood is pumping through him!

The Piazza Signoria:


We went to a supermarket near our apartment (we think it’s run by Chinese people) and we LOVE it! Conad is reasonably priced… actually we think it’s a steal! We bought items for a picnic dinner, like cherry tomatoes (oh so sweet!),


Tuscan Reserve Prosciutto,

Ciabatta and Crema di Tartufo (black truffle butter…. SOOOO much better AND cheaper than the ones we buy in the States, and we thought those were already damn good!).

We opened up a bottle of Chateau Roumieu-Lacoste Sauternes 2007 (6 euros! I’ve never seen Sauternes sold in the States for less than $20!) that we had bought in France, which was AWESOME. Sweet but not too sweet, syrupy but not too cloying and just lightly honeyed. It was a perfect meal to end a day that just kept getting better and better. We all went to sleep with a smile on our faces 