Category: Italy (Page 3 of 4)

Apparently, I didn’t learn my lesson with driving in Naples yesterday and decided that we should go back and try to go the Archeologic Museum there that has a lot of really cool paintings and artifacts from Pompeii, Herculaneum, etc…

The drive back across the peninsula was better today without fog or rain

     
    
 After an hour of routing and rerouting… And driving in this craziness- we decided that no museum was worth it. Haha

So we did a virtual tour of the things we could have seen if we would have been able to park. Worst place to date I have ever tried to take a car. If you vacation in Naples (I mean…really, don’t for more than like 2 days… It’s gross) but if you ignore me and Naples is on the list- no car. Train and bus only. You will enjoy yourself a LOT more. 

  
We did find a spot to park (I don’t think it was really a spot…but when in Naples…) A couple kilometers away and we are at a pizzeria that looked clean and I thought would have a bathroom since Norah was pushing max cap.

Since pizza is from Naples…I had high expectations… And my Margherita pizza was amazing.

Norah was not happy about the wait for pizza

  So I gave my camera. All better.

After that, we left Naples having done nothing and vowing to never come back again. Haha I hate to stereotype an entire city because Naples is HUGE- look closely at this picture, even though it’s through a traffic fence along the highway. The city goes on forever…. I’m sure there’s a nice part… But we didn’t find it.    
  
So we drove back again along the winding roads to Praiano.

   
   We tried to go to the market, but it was closed and so was everything else Kegan went searching for..so that pizza dough of Norah’s came in handy! Kegan added olive oil and some herbs he found on the terrace along with a pack of provolone and prosciutto we had for a snack. It was excellent!  

  Norah played elephant with the door wind stopper thingy…  We hung out for an easy evening full of tickles and airplane rides. 
   And enjoyed this for the last night 

Tomorrow we will see Ravello, Amalfi and Salerno with an overnight ferry leaving Salerno for Sicily. Not sure if we’ll have Internet to post, but we shall see 🙂

This morning, I woke up to my lovely husband cooking an amazing breakfast of eggs and Panchetta in the kitchen. You really do have to chew your own arm off to find some protein in Italy…. So finding real breakfast items in the fridge from our awesome host was amazing.  

 Since we were overlooking the amphitheater, we packed up the car so my new Facebook friend Pasquale could clean the room we stayed in. (You know me…I can make friends with a brick wall if I want to. Haha) 

This stadium was very surprising… First, it’s over 100 years older than the Colliseum in Rome. And that’s the “new” one. (The one that stands today). Apparently, there was an even older amphitheater- the first one ever- that stood here from 300BC through around 100AD when Hadrian decided to revamp and build a new amphitheater. At its height, it could seat 60,000 people and had 4 levels.

The big claim to fame is that Spartacus fought in this amphitheater… But I quickly did some math…and he didn’t. Haha

He did fight in the old one that no longer exists… Spartacus was a tribe leader of the Maidi, a small tribe of “barbarians” in Thrace around 75BC. The Romans were having a heck of a time conquering the Thrace (Macedonia area) due to the barbarians inhabiting the area.  Really they were having trouble with the Balken Celts (think big Scottish naked warriors…I imagine the Balken version wasn’t too far off from this) and a large group of Thracians called the Scordisci. The Scordisci were known to cut off their enemy’s heads and drink human blood from their skulls. Seriously. I can see why they worried the Romans. Ha

When the Romans finally figured out a new area of attack, they were able to take a lot of prisoners from these tribes like Spartacus’s that weren’t hardened Roman fighting machines.

Thracian slaves were very desirable in the gladiator circuits and the best were forced into gladiator schools, which the Capua area was famous for.

Spartacus eventually led a gladiator and slave revolt against Rome with 20,000 of his closest friends eventually…even defeating 2 Roman legions… (There’s a movie with Kirk Douglas about all this…) It is said that they were planning to cross the Alps to escape to their homeland again, but after defeating the Roman legions, they went south for who knows what reason…and Spartacus ended up dead. Not a happy ending. This was not good for his followers. To make an example to would be rebels, they strung up over 6000 bodies along the Appian Way to Rome between Rome and Capua. 

So while it is awesome that this little town is where all of that history started, and it is the site of the original amphitheater, Spartacus didn’t fight here. But it’s as close as you can get.   

 There was a cheesy recreated scene with life size gladiators in the museum. The soundtrack was not only in Italian, it was skippy and weird and just shut off halfway through. We laughed so hard. 

  
The gladiators were dressed according to their origin so that the crowds could identify them. The Thracians wore bronze helmets and shin gaurds like these.

     
 Skip the Colloseum in Rome and head here… We had the place to ourselves, the tickets were €2.50 and we got to go completely underneath the theater which was awesome. We could see the underground tunnels, the stairwells and even the areas where they would have had an elevator to lift the animals up to the fighting floor. Also, just like the colloseum supposedly this theater could be flooded for “naval battles” with the gladiators. 

I may or may not have yelled, “Are you not entertained??” while standing on the edge of the totally empty amphitheater.
    
    
    
    

We left Santa Maria Capua Vetere headed towards Pompeii. 

I don’t think you could get to adulthood without hearing about Pompeii but just in case: Roman city, Mt Vesuvius, 79AD, kaboom, lava, mass destruction, no more Pompeii.

(*Correction: the geologist I’m travelling with has informed me that there was no lava. The issue was the ash cloud and gas- thus lava should have said pyroclastic flow. *eyeroll* haha)

We had another McKinney-ism today. When we first started walking around Pompeii, Kegan says, “ya know, when they were building their streets and houses with volcanic rock…you think they would have questioned how that got there in the first place.” Those McKinneys..always thinking.   

Artist’s rendition of what this would have looked like. Hard to imagine this from what remains today.

  
The House of the Tragic Poet  
    
    
Kegan says, “well there’s the problem. They built everything with Legos…  

My favorite: The Suburban Baths  

I bet this painting of the ocean and ships was amazing at the time…because it’s still pretty bright now.  
    
  

…and I’ll just leave these erotic wall paintings right here. Yup. That is exactly what you think it is.  
    
   
After Pompeii we were going to go to Herculaneum, but Norah fell asleep on us, so we turned around and headed towards the Amalfi Coast. Herculaneum was another city ruined by Vesuvius in Naples. 

Fun fact: Naples literally turned off all of their stop lights. All of them. So it’s like a giant traffic free for all. It’s Mad Max. We Live! We Die! We Live Again! Haha

I don’t need a lot of order in my life…but I need a little more than that.

Once we got out of Naples it was gorgeous all the way over to our hotel.

   
    
  We really couldn’t even see the really high stuff because of the fog….can’t wait to get out exploring tomorrow and see what it looks like.   
  
Our apartment for the next 2 nights was awesome. Except there is no heat. Which I’m sure 360 days a year that isn’t a problem but they were getting tropical storm strength winds and rain…very uncommon for the area. At least there were really thick down comforters and with that we were all cozy for the night.

  The view out of the master bedroom window.

She left these really cute yellow fuzzy flowers on the towels because she says they do that here to make the towels smell good. And they did! They smelled amazing. If anyone knows what kind of flowers these are, please let me know. 

There was even a tray with organic homemade jams for sale. I bought most of them.Haha

There is no parking in this entire area so people just park their scooters on their roofs. It’s hilarious!

Our view from our terrace

  A view down the coastline from our terrace

  Looking back up towards our place

Oh, you know…just a dog hanging out on a roof on the edge of the earth gazing out over the ocean.  

At the recommendation of our host, Ida, we went to dinner at Kasai, a British-Italian fusion restaurant? That’s the best way I can describe it. Haha
  Norah had “chippies” that were listed on the menu as French Fries…but no complaints, she was excited.

We shared a white bean soup with calamari. Fantastic.

 Deep fried anchovies 

I had my first true Italian Spritz. Aperol, white wine, club soda and an orange slice…it was drinkable but I still think I prefer Campari.

Kegan’s fish came to the table whole and the waitress cut off the head and tail and fixed it up for him. I was so excited about mine I ate it before I took a picture of it. Haha I had beef medallions with flakes of Parmesan cheese. It was great. 

Of course everyone loved Norah. The owner even turned on some techno type eighties dance music and they danced together. 

Then the waitress distracted her while we ate. They loved having her in there.   

Next thing I know she’s in the kitchen with 3 big Italian chef guys smiling at her and she’s making a pizza. Our waitress said she was “incredible” as I apologized profusely for the 2nd pizza dough Norah grabbed and tried to make as well. They wouldn’t let me pay for pizza though because they were the ones who wanted her back there… Italians. They did send us with the 2 pizza doughs though for lunch tomorrow! Haha Norah is absolutely beside herself waiting to make that pizza and eat it. lol

We hauled the two bottles from Montepulciano up the 3 flights of stairs and we opened the 2008 for the evening. We may drink the old one tomorrow….but I’m more of a wine hoarder than a wine drinker and I never want to drink them once I buy them. I just want to collect them. Haha so Kegan may have to pry it out of my hands. 

Tomorrow we have an easy day for exploring the Amalfi coast so I’m not sure how many adventures I’ll have to share- but I’ll try to come up with a few. 🙂
  

We left Florence with a lot of ground to make up today since skipping the Chianti wineries. I did want to stop by at least one winery though…so we chose one in Montepulciano since that was a local region close to the interstate we would be travelling on.  The drive to the top of the hill was amazing. It even made the walk straight up the side bearable. Ha 

    
    
 
The winery we went to had a real wine cellar that the old lady unlocked for us to see. We were her first customers of the day since it was only 10:30am. 

   
    
 
She even gave me a proper tasting with a great cheese to compliment. I bought one of the bottles I tasted and as my “souvenir” of the trip- I splurged and bought a 14 year old bottle of Nobile de Montepulciano that had a half inch of dust on it. I’m excited.  

After leaving, we stopped for espresso at a cafe in a tiny town. We picked up an admirer.  
A guy in the coffee shop asked where I was from and if I was enjoying Italy. I said, “Of course, but I really need to learn more Italian” having just fought to tell the lady in the winery that I wanted to BUY the old bottle of wine, not just taste it… He said, “It’s ok, we Italians are pretty good with our English” True. And a very good thing! 
We were back on the road. Norah took a nap for the two hour drive as we backtracked to Rome on our way to Tivoli to see Hadrian’s Villa. The Emporer Hadrian had this giant place built around 120AD because he didn’t really like his palace in Rome. When it was finished, he moved out here, a good 20 miles from Rome and ruled from here for the rest of his life. After him, other emporers came here, too: Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus…it was in use until the fall of Rome in the 400s, it was used by armies in the 500s during the Byzantine wars… Even though it was already in ruins, some jerk Cardinal swiped a lot of the statues and marble for his own estate in the 1500s.

    
    

Domed ceiling of the grand baths. They even had the hole in the center of the dome for steam to escape, much like the Pantheon that was also constructed by Hadrian.
You can even see in the bottom of the photo some exposed entry into the underground tunnels. The slaves and workers were to move about beneath the ground as not to obstruct the serenity and view of the emporer. They are still excavating these underground tunnels.   

Remnants of some herringbone pattern floors maybe? Or maybe from the 1950s…I’m not really sure. Haha
  
The Fish pond outside of the Winter Palace.

The Canopus
   
    
    
    
 

After the Villa we are at the restaurant nearby. Probably the best and definitely the fanciest meal I’ve had so far in Italy

Homemade Spaghetti with Pumpkin 
 

Panchetta with Spinach and Apples
  Fettuccine with Mushrooms

  Pear and Gorgonzola Salad

We continued on to our hotel for the night in Santa Maria Capua Vetere- a small little town that just happens to have a little trick up its sleeve- it’s where the old Roman amphitheater is that Sparticus fought in! And this was our view from the front porch.  
There was a front garden with orange trees and the guy had picked some oranges for us already on the table.    
 

More on the Sparticus Amphitheater tomorrow. We also will be on our way to Pompeii and ending on the Amalfi Coast. 

This was our “extra” day in the middle of the vacation. We had initially planned a wine tasting tour through Chianti and ending in the middle of nowhere midway between Florence and Naples, but the lady cancelled our reservation a couple days before our arrival and pretty much every place in Italy is a giant wine tasting so we asked if we could book a third night in the amazing apartment in Florence. She confirmed it was available, so we had a whole day in Florence that we didn’t plan for. Unscripted vacation? What is that?? I was not okay with this. Haha

We started our morning late. I finally got some sleep! I did manage to win the parent of the year award this morning though… Norah got into a “candy”on the table… A booze soaked chocolate covered cherry of Kegan’s… She definitely felt the effects of that one for a couple of hours…. Haha

We didn’t get started until almost 11am so we stopped for espresso and sandwiches 

Funny face time.  Still feeling the effects of her chocolate cherry cocktail 
We basically have Italy to ourselves most places we go. Which is a good thing…because I don’t know if I could deal otherwise. Ha

Our big event of the day was Pitti Palace and the Boboli Gardens.

Palazzo Pitti (Pitti Palace) is now a museum owned by the city of Florence but has a pretty rich history. It gets its name because Lucca Pitti, a very wealthy Florentine banker, had it built in the 1500s. It is said he wanted it built bigger and better than the Medici palace of the time.     

 
After the death of Cosimo the Elder, and a failed coup he staged to try to steal power , he fell on hard financial times. No one wanted to do business with a man like that…and his heirs were forced to sell the palace after his death…in a cruel twist of fate, to the wife of Cosimo I Medici who then added on to the palace to make it much more fit for his presence… Adding a majority of the current palace and some standard Medici flair.  

An Italian grotto with sculpture, frescoes ceiling and fountain
      

 
We toured the Boboli Gardens first 

  The Amphitheater was modeled off of the Roman amphitheaters with an oblong shape and bench stadium seating. It is said that the first opera was performed here. When Fernidando di Medici married Christine of Lorraine, they had the idea to take a classic story and set it to music and sing the whole thing for the wedding guests, thus…opera.
 There is also a very very old Egyptian obelisk of Ramses II that I’m sure no one who owned this place had any business being in possession of. Ha   
     
    
    
As you can tell, these gardens are huge. We missed some pretty big things just because we didn’t cover all the grounds. 

    
 Oh, and remember that dwarf from yesterday’s painting? Some say this is him as well. However, I think it’s another dwarf-the face is different. Yep. It’s a naked dwarf riding a turtle. Art is weird. 

  
Next we toured the Art Gallery which also extended into the Royal Apartments.

Quick history: built by Lucca Pitti, purchased by Elenor of Toledo- the wife of Cosimo I, then passed down through the Medici until they died out, then passed to the new Dukes of Tuscany- the Lorraines, then to the Savoy’s and briefly was the home of Elisa Bonaparte when Napoleon controlled the area. Lastly, it was the home of King Victor Emmanuel II when Florence was briefly the Capitol of a unified Italy. He then gifted it to the city of Florence- with all of its contents- making it the city’s largest museum and collection.

Everything is decorated basically as it was left in the early 1900s, giving it a very heavy French feel.   
    
   

  
The rest of our day was fairly boring, we backtracked through the city again, seeing the same places again as we looked for a cell phone store. We bought an “unlimited” wifi device with our rental car that I thought was an amazing deal… Yeah well… It quit working 3 days in and we had no internet. Turns out, it had a limit. Haha they underestimated my use of internet! 
Kegan found a meat and cheese shop downstairs and made us a dinner in the apartment complete with a nice bottle of wine.

 Tomorrow is a lot of driving while we make up for the distance we lost by not doing wine in Chianti today and making it towards Naples and the Amalfi coast. 

Sorry for the delay of this post but there is just so much to type and I’ve been busy actually doing more today and slept like a log last night which cut into my usual hour or two of blog time. Ha

We started our day super early (for us, anyway) by hoofing it across the city to the Galleria dell’Accademia. The online sites make you believe you need advanced and “skip the lines” tickets to make sure you don’t waste your vacation waiting to get into these museums. Well, maybe you do in Summer…but in November, you’ll be one of 3 people waiting at the entrance at 8am, having paid $30 more for the same tickets and skipped breakfast just to be sure you weren’t late… But I’m not bitter. Haha

Michaelangelo’s David was awesome. I see what all the fuss is about. He’s like 15 feet tall, the elegance and easiness of his body positioning, the detail…. You can see veins running along his arms, tendons visible like they are showing through real skin… It really is worth all the hoopla unlike so many touristy things that people tell you that you have to see.  
  
    

I love the fact that this major work of art basically happened because Michaelangelo asked some church if he could have an old piece of marble that was laying behind their church. Sort of like if we asked some factory today if we could have some of their old pallets…but then we built a house out of them. Lol 

Behind the statue of David was a cool little room. It housed all of the plaster molds of famous works of sculpture that Lorenzo Bartolini used to teach students. He was a great sculptor himself who Napoleon discovered and brought to France…eventually he came to Florence, but he never quite made a name for himself with as many commissions as he would have liked, his style of sculpture just wasn’t “in style” at the time.

Outside of the teaching molds stands this plaster model of The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna. Art is subjective, but in my opinion- this is one of the top 3 sculptures in the world. The model is amazing in itself…until you see the real one in marble…  What makes this interesting to me is not the detail alone, but the subject matter. When Giambologna finished the sculpture, it still didn’t have a name, one of his fellow sculptors suggested the title as it was fitting to the scene. Also, in a time of such religious and Christian themed art, this work was only to display mannerisms, human form and to basically create something different. This sculpture has a 360 degree viewing angle and the feel of the sculpture changes as you move around it, whereas almost every other sculpture to this point had been carved with one particular viewing point giving the most complete view of the work.   
After we left the Galleria we began backtracking through the city and found ourselves at the Duomo. This building is so big…. Even my wide angle lens could only get pieces. It took over 140 years to build this! They started in the late 1290s and didn’t finish until 1436    
    

The story of the dome has such a great story to me…it makes me laugh because hating your coworkers hasn’t changed in over 700 years. Ha    

Prior to the dome, in 1401, Florence had held a contest and the winner would be commissioned to complete the great Bronze doors of the Baptistry. Donatello was among the artists who entered, but the two finalists were Lorenzo Ghiberti and Filippo Brunelleschi. The sponsors determined it was a tie and couldn’t decide so they gave the job to both artists to complete together. But….Brunelleschi was an egotistic jerk and would not stand for this…. So he quickly decided he was needed in Rome and left for the city to study architecture and Roman history. This would actually prove to be a great thing later in his life because without the mechanics and building knowledge he learned in Rome, he never would have been able to complete the Dome. Life has a way of working out. 

Ghiberti finished the bronze doors in a short 20 years. He was only 23 years old when he started. Fast forward and the doors were up. Ghiberti began working on a second set of doors. These doors were were so amazing that they replaced his original doors (which were moved to the north side of the building). Michaelangelo said that these new doors were fit to be “the gates of paradise”…and thus they were known. 

So this brings us back to the dome. In 1418, another contest was held in Florence for who would be the lead architect. In the end, having learned their lesson on ties, Brunelleschi “won”-but Ghiberti was appointed co-leader and paid the same wage as Brunelleschi and was promised equal credit in the completion. This didn’t fly with Brunelleschi…so he basically faked illness for months so that Ghiberti would have to focus solely on the dome and make engineering decisions and be forced to admit that he couldn’t do it. Once this happened, Brunelleschi magically was cured and began leading the project again. We call this phenomenon “McKinney-ism” in our house. Haha in fact when I told Kegan this story his response was “that’s awesome…good for that guy!” Haha I rest my case.

The Dome really is an amazing feat of engineering. Over 4 million bricks were used in the construction. Pulley systems were invented and patented for this job. Bricks were laid in a herringbone pattern to minimize the weight on the dome. He used chains to connect the ribs of the dome to minimize the pressure on it from “hoop stress”. Architectural issues that wouldn’t be documented with formulas for another two hundred years . So egotistical jerk or not, no one else could have done this. And when you’re the best and the smartest, are you really being cocky? Or just honest? 🙂

After the Piazza al Duomo, we continued walking through town. Passed this little slice of heaven. A literal wall of chocolate. Flowing like a waterfall. Talk about Gates of Paradise. 🙂
    
   
  

 Everything I read said that the local street food and local blue collar food was a Lampredotto sandwich. Oh. And Lampredotto is sliced up cow stomach. Ha

It was okay… But we also got a Burria sandwich which I think was beef. It was amazing. Best thing I’ve eaten in Italy. 
   

We were making really good time through Florence so we decided we had time to check out the Uffizi Gallery since we were walking by it and Norah was being good.

I could spend hours talking about paintings in this museum but I’ll spare everyone 🙂 Here are a few highlights:

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

  
Leonardo De Vinci’s  Anunciation, one of his earliest works .

The Medici Tribuna- the center of what started the Uffizi Gallery. Originally, the Medici family created this room as a way to display their most valuable art for the public to see. These days you can’t even walk in because the marble mosaic floors can’t withstand the weight of so many visitors. 

 Piero Della Francesca’s Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino. He was painted from the left because he lost his right eye in a tournament where he also broke his nose . Apparently in a very bad way judging from the painting. 

We saw lots of graffiti art done around the city based off of these famous works.   

A faun (or satyr) boy. Norah liked his ears.
   

 I wanted to include this little face because it’s a good reminder that history is only history as we know it and we trust others to tell us. Up until the 1940s, if you would have toured this gallery you would have been told that this was the earliest known work of Michaelangelo. Now, we know that his “The Head of the Faun” has never been found and this is not it…but it’s a good reminder that what we know now to be truth can change tomorrow with another discovery of history. 

I wouldn’t have included this sculpture but when we walked in Norah said, “Look daddy, it’s Mamma” I mean, I do normally lay around the house like this …so I guess I can see where she’s coming from 🙂   

   Raphael’s Portrait of Pope Leo X

 I find this painting amazing to look at. Photos can’t begin to do it justice. He painted this to play with textures and that is exactly what is so amazing- oil painting on wood and it looks like you could run your hands over the red velvet, feel the soft silk, the thick red tablecloth… Unbelievable talent.
  ….and lastly, my personal favorite from the entire collection. 

Bronzino’s Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante    

  Morgante was a common performer in the Medici court in the mid 1500s and he was one of the favorites of the court. He had a privileged life as far as dwarfs of the time went…but he was still effectively there for entertainment. He was forced to parade naked to demonstrate his “deformed body” and there is even record of being forced to fight naked with a monkey for the court’s amusement. 

However, the painting shows him in a very noble manner. Bronzino created this painting to settle an argument over which form of art was more noble- painting or sculpture. He obviously defended painting and set out to prove that painting could be beautiful no matter the subject matter, that painting could show multiple viewpoints just like sculpture (hence the front and back perspectives) and that painting could show the lapse of time (one side is before the hunt and the other shows the kill- Margante was a trained night hunter for birds)

The painting was just restored in 2010 because it was found to be indecent and painted over for hundreds of years. Only recently have we been able to see this in all of its glory 🙂

We promised Norah ice cream for being so good for 3 hours while I slowly perused every painting and sculpture in the gallery. 

  
She picked vanilla. Who’s child is this? Ha

That brought us to the Piazza Della Signoria. So so so much history in this square ….  

The Palazzo Vecchio. They used to hang people over the roof of this and let them dangle above the streets. I’m not so opposed to bringing this kind of Justice back. 

One time some people got the bright idea to overthrow the Medici…they plotted the murders of the two top brothers at the time. They attacked them while they were on their way to church but they only successfully stabbed one to death, the other managed to escape to their house across the square to safety. Needless to say, this didn’t end well for the would-be coup-ers and by the end of the day they found themselves slung over the top of this building as a warning to any who dare plot against the most powerful family in Florence. 

The first Medici- Cosimo the Elder, was even imprisoned here with plans for death basically because he was too popular and threatened the arostocracy. 
The Loggia dei Lanzi 

 The Medici lions guarding the statues of the Loggia dei Lanzi. These are the original lions, of which all other lion statues like this are based. One of the pair is of ancient origins and a sculpter cut it away from the rest of its background, then another sculpter copied it and created a second for the Medici gardens. They’ve been here since the late 1500s
   
    
    
 In 1498, they even burned a preacher here! Although, I’m kind of in agreement. A marble plaque on the ground marks the exact spot. Girolamo Savonarola was a preacher who preached heavily against the vanities of life- anything that might encourage one to sin. Mirrors, cosmetics, books that were amoral, excesses and riches. He had such a following that he became sort of the ruler of the city. He was so popular that he convinced artists to give up their own works for his Bonfires of the Vanities because if they didnt, his followers would make their lives miserable. I would hate to think how many great paintings, sculptures, etc were lost forever due to those crazies. In fact, give me the match I’ll do it myself 🙂 

  
Our last major stop for the day was the Church of Santa Croce with Donatello’s crucifix and Michaelangelo’s tomb.  
    

We crossed back over the river to the south side of the city where our rented apartment is. The bridge we crossed gave us a beautiful view of the river Arno through the city as well as the Ponte Vecchio bridge .

  
  Norah didn’t make it, so we stopped for lunch.  
A variety of bruschetta

 
Salami

   
Ravioli with sage butter

   
Tortellini with creme and ham 

We had a very relaxing night enjoying the apartment and discussing how this was an amazing place to vacation but that there was no way we could live someplace like this. So far, Ravenna was our favorite but it has been nice to see so much of the history I’ve read about Florence in person. We have one more day in Florence. Will post about that soon.