This was a big day. I let the girls sleep until about 8:30AM, knowing we had plenty to do and had an early morning start. Our first stop, the Mercato Centrale (Central Market). The market is filled with fruit and vegetable vendors. It’s beautiful to see all the foods. There are also odd fruits I have never seen, gooseberries I haven’t seen in years, candied fruits and vegetables, including candied peppers, and spices. The merchants are under one big tent, and the stands look to be somewhat temporary and somewhat permanent. Over one building is a mall filled with several vendors selling meats of all kinds, cheeses, spices, breads, sandwiches and more foods. We bought some fruits, bread and sandwiches. Sarah and I stopped at a café and got caffe – I got a cappuccino that was absolutely delicious. (I'm writing this a few days later and still dreaming about that cappucino.)
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| Centrale Market...dried fruits and vegetables. |
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| Spices. |
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| Fruits and vegetables. |
After dropping off our food, we headed to the Duomo, again, a short walk. The Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore is one of those sites you cannot miss even if you tried. It is in the heart of Florence and the façade of the place is an unusual design of white and green marble. The top is the famous Brunelleschi designed dome, which we actually didn’t see from below until we circled around the cathedral. The dome was the largest ever built since Rome’s Pantheon. Next to the cathedral is Giotto’s tower known as the Campanile, a 270-foot bell tower. You can climb the tower (it has no elevator) of 414 steps. We passed on that. And also next to the cathedral is the Baptistery, with its famous bronze doors. Lorenzo Ghiberti designed one set of bronze doors, with biblical scenes. Ghiberti used mathematical laws to create illusion of receding distance.
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| Me and Catalina in front of the church...you can see the dome in the background. |
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| Bronze doors of the Baptistery. |
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| Campanile (tower) to the right. You can climb 420 steps to the top. No thanks. |
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| Duomo-closeup of the dome. |
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| Duomo - this building is massive. |
The majority of the famous works from these places mentioned above, are housed in a separate museum called the Duomo Museum. We saw the Michelangelo Piéta (the one where he used himself as a model); we saw lots of Donatello sculptures and many other amazing works. Gaby was particularly interested in seeing the relics (old bones encased in ornate structures).
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| Michelangelo's other Piéta. I was so thrilled to see this upclose. |
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| Front of San Lorenzo church - Michelangelo spent 4 yrs designing a front that was never executed. |
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| Gaby climbing the front of the church. |
We went back to our apartment for lunch of pizza and fruit, then after a short siesta, we headed toward the Church of San Lorenzo. More amazing paintings, a couple of sculptures, more Donatello works, this time, ornately carved pulpits. I didn’t hear the nun at the front tell me no photos, no video, as her accent was so thick. So I snapped away at a couple of items before I got a talking to by two separate nuns. One gave me quite a scowl. We checked out the church, including the altar that has a dome showing the exact arrangement of the heavens on July 4, 1442. We saw Donatello’s grave then headed out.
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| ouch |
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| big mouths |
We next landed at the Leonardo DaVinci museum, though Sarah decided to sit this one out. It is really a reacreation of DaVinci’s “inventions” brought to life. There were wooden recreations throughout and a room of mirrors that looked like you were endless once you stepped inside and shut the mirrored door. That was cool. The inventions were okay. I liked the room with the painting recreations.
We stopped by a church that Gaby had visited on her own called the Santissima Annuziata and drew for a while. We entered the courtyard only, as there was a mass going on (and which I made a shortvideo of). Still, the courtyard walls had some fascinating murals for us to look at. Some nice, foreign-speaking woman gave us her camera to snap a picture of her in the courtyard. Gaby took the picture and the woman said something to Gaby (probably thanks), and then we headed back to the apartment.
Despite all we did in one day, we still have a little energy to go out in the evening. We headed to a piazza that had music – tonight it was a DJ and video was playing on the wall. I saw a few shots of Celia Cruz, so I was guessing this was some sort of Spanish music night. I felt very out of place here–where there were plenty of young, thin and pretty Italians congregating. They all seemed so grouped together and having a good time, jubilant in their company with one another. The women were pretty dressed up, far more than we were. Sitting below and away from the beautiful Italians were small groups of what looked like families, some with small children. It seemed they were waiting for something, hanging out and picnicking on the cement benches. After one very expensive drink, we called it a night.
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