Ciao, Firenze! Hallo, Switzerland!

I am writing this from our hostel room in Interlaken, Switzerland. After a long day of train travel, we are finally here.

I wanted to wrap up our time in Florence before talking about that, though.

On our second full day in Florence, we woke up with a plan. We would try to check out the Santa Maria dei Fiore cathedral. We got into line, and waited about a half hour before we were able to get inside. While the dome was cool to see, there wasn’t really much of anything else to see inside. So if I had realized that beforehand, I would probably have given it a pass. We did try to get into the crypts, though, because that seemed interesting, but realized we needed to go get tickets for that. We went to the ticket office in a building next to the cathedral, waited in line, got tickets, changed our mind about the crypt and got into line for the bell tower. After about 25 minutes of waiting, a worker told me we couldn’t bring our bags in. I wish there had been clearer signage about that because we had already been waiting and now we had to leave the line to store our bags. I got a little frustrated and decided to skip it all, lol. We headed over to the Uffizi galleries instead.

The Uffizi galleries were neat! I was excited to see Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and some pieces by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, and Raphael. I always enjoy when I can flex the muscles my art history classes in college built. 😜

After giving the Uffizi galleries a good wander, we decided to go find some food. We walked over to the Mercato Centrale. There’s an outdoor market where people sell leather goods, clothes, trinkets, artwork, etc. and then there’s a food hall inside a huge building. It definitely seemed popular! We walked around a bit checking out all the food options. I went for fish & chips, while Kiley went for chicken wings. It was fun people watching here.

After our hunger was satisfied, we headed over to the Museo Leonardo da Vinci, which was a museum mostly about da Vinci’s inventions and machines. It was fun to spend a little time here, and there were some interactive exhibits. It was a little kitschy and a little janky, but it did entertain us for a while. He was truly a Renaissance man! And possibly a war profiteer, but we won’t get into that, lol.

By this time, we were ready for a break so we headed back to the airbnb to hang out. After a few hours of resting, it was close to sunset so we walked over to Piazzale Michelangelo for a nice view overlooking Florence to watch the sun set. A ton of people had the same idea, but luckily we were able to find a decent vantage point.

Day 3

Kiley wanted brunch so we went to a place called Rooster. It was just opposite the corner from where we had super delicious pizza the other day, so the route was familiar. We had a great breakfast – a stack of pancakes and eggs for me, while Kiley had pancakes and bacon. Kiley also got a mimosa and I had an aperol spritz. I would probably prefer if it was made with sprite or 7-up instead of soda water, but it was still good!

Now, it was time to walk off our pancakes and the alcohol. We wandered over to the Opera Duomo Museum, which was right behind the cathedral, and it contains many artifacts and actual pieces of artwork from the cathedral. For example, it has many original statues whose copies now reside on the cathedral itself. We could also see another Pieta that Michelangelo sculpted, this one for his own tomb! So while I didn’t get to see the one in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, at least I could see this one. We also saw the original bronze doors that were intended for the Baptistery. Very neat. I enjoyed this museum a lot, and while it was busy, it wasn’t super crowded so I could look at things and get my fill before moving on.

After that museum, we decided we weren’t finished museum-ing it up, so we headed over to an area near the Ponte Vecchio, and stopped by the Museo Galileo, dedicated to Galileo himself. They have a wonderful collection of scientific devices and equipment from the 14th to the 17th century – telescopes, old maps and globes, devices that measured temperatures, barometers, and other things related to alchemy, astronomy, and meteorology. Some things were really cool to look at, and there was an hands-on area where we could play with copies of some of the machines and see how they worked. I do wish the interactivity had more of a presence throughout the entire museum rather than just one area at the end, though. But worth checking out if you’re into that kind of stuff.

After finishing up at Galileo, we decided to start the walk back to the airbnb, with a pit stop at the oldest pharmacy in the entire world – Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. This place has existed since 1221! So what we envision as a typical pharmacy today is not what this place was, but at the same time, it sort of was? Their thing was more fragrances and herbal remedies rather than typical medicines we see today. But it was interesting to see! Very fancy inside. Neat to check out all the scents. We couldn’t stay that long though, because all the scents were becoming overwhelming and we would have gotten headaches! I don’t know how the employees there deal with it every day. Maybe some vaporub under their noses or something.

That pretty much wraps up our time in Florence! I didn’t realize this would be so long, so I will recount our trip to Switzerland in another post… but it’s getting late. More later…