October 12, 2025–Final Notes From Florence, Italy

Tomorrow morning we fly out of the Florence airport via Charles De Gaulle to Atlanta.  We have been in Europe for three weeks and that is a long time. I only have the bare minimum of clean clothes at my disposal.  I’m all set with clean underwear and socks, but I have worn all of my jeans and leggings a few times. No use being persnickety at this point.  You either have to get up and get dressed in something, or stay in bed all day.  Pick your poison.  (And yes, I know we could have had laundry done by one of the hotels.)

Florence is yet another beautiful Italian city.  It was a center  of medieval European trade and finance, and is considered by many to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance.  There are over sixty museums in Florence, but we only visited two of most famous: the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia Gallery, mainly because I wanted to see the Botticellis at the former and Michelangelo’s David at the latter. My favorites are Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and Michelangelo’s David. Which ones do you find most appealing?

And Michelangelo’s David:

Florence is also known for its many bridges.  The city is divided by the Arno River, and its bridges are a large part of its identity, most famously the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest and most recognizable bridge, lined with shops since the 13th century.   Our hotel is right on the Arno River, so we can see many of the bridges from our room.  The first picture is of the Ponte Vecchio where all the shops are, and the second picture is of Ponte Santa Trinita, which is named for the Santa Trinita Church you can see in the background. Ponte is Italian for bridge as you may have guessed.

The other night we walked across the Ponte Santa Trinita for dinner, and Doug ordered a steak with a side of tagliatelle (the long flat ribbon pasta).  The waiter seemed pretty disgusted by the entire idea and said in a rather sneering manner, “Pasta with steak?  You’re just like the French!”  I guess he didn’t really care for the French people or their food choices. Or Americans, for that matter.

As side note about the Renaissance in Europe, Shakespeare set thirteen (out of thirty-eight) of his plays in Italy.  Scholars think he did this because Elizabethans were fascinated by the Italian culture, political intrigue, family strife, and palace plots.  One of the other reasons might have been that he was able to criticize the ruling class in England by couching it in Italian settings, thus avoiding the displeasure of the monarchy.  For instance, “Romeo and Juliet” is set in Verona, “Julius Caesar” in Rome, “Othello” in Venice, and part of “All’s Well That Ends Well” in Florence.  

And what would a blog about a European city without a cathedral? The largest one in Florence is the Duomo di Firenze. The first stone on the cathedral was laid in 1294 and it took 140 years to build.

All of the streets in Florence are really crowded with tourists and it can be fairly overwhelming at times. My biggest pet peeve is people who are obsessed with looking down at their cellphones while walking down the sidewalk, or who stop right in the middle of the sidewalk to send a text or take a selfie. They are always crashing into innocent bystanders. How is that enjoyable for anyone involved?

And so another trip, another blog. I enjoy writing them most days, but I do find it difficult to choose what pictures to put in, which facts are interesting and which are too trivial or boring, and how much griping I can do without people thinking I’m curmudgeonly. Hope I got the perfect balance this time. Until we meet again, arrivederci!