Scott Barronton (00:00)
There are some cities in the world that instantly pull you in the moment you arrive. Florence wasn't one of those cities for us. In fact, when we first arrived in Florence, we honestly wondered had we made a mistake. We came into the city during the middle of the holiday weekend, and Florence felt absolutely packed. There were huge tour groups everywhere, scooters weaving through the crowds, people shoulder to shoulder around the major attractions.
And the light in the middle of the day bouncing harshly off all the stone buildings made everything feel even more chaotic. Normally, when we visit an Italian city, one of our favorite things to do is to wander. We'll head down the side streets, get lost a little bit, and usually discover quiet piazzas, local restaurants, or neighborhoods that feel authentic and alive. But Florence didn't really work that way for us. Every turn seemed to lead to more crowds.
And honestly, that surprised us. but this episode isn't about why you should avoid Florence, because over the next few days, we started figuring out how Florence actually works. We learned the times of day when the city became enjoyable. We found the places that locals seemed to escape to. And once we stopped trying to experience Florence the way social media tells you to experience Florence.
the city slowly started opening up to us. So today we're talking about how we found the parts of Florence we really loved and how you can experience Florence without letting the crowds completely overwhelm your trip.
Speaker 2 (01:37)
We're Scott and Melissa, The Sunshine Travelers.
Speaker 1 (01:40)
We're all about exploring the world and sharing the journey with you. Whether you're a seasoned traveler, dreaming of your next adventure, or just here for the stories.
Speaker 2 (01:48)
No matter where you are on your travel journey, we've got first-hand experiences, tips, and plenty of inspiration from some of the most amazing places on Earth.
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So buckle up and get ready to travel with us.
Scott Barronton (02:05)
So one of the things that completely changed our experience was that we realized how different Florence felt depending on the time of day. And I think this is something that we typically stay, stay in somewhere overnight, don't just go for the day, but I mean we really struggled with that. And so it really did help to figure out not only where to go eventually, but how different it felt depending on the time of day.
Our apartment was a few blocks away from the Florence Cathedral, most people call it the Duomo, which at first felt like, my gosh, when we first arrived, like this is a huge mistake because it we really were in the middle of the chaos. Although it was cool to like walk out your front door, I guess you would call it, because we were in an apartment upstairs, and look to the left. And my gosh, there was this duomo that you had like always seen in pictures.
But then when evening came, we realized that the city started to change. A lot of day trippers, cruise passengers left the city center. The streets definitely became quieter. I mean, a lot of the shops, of course, did close in the evenings, And funny enough, our little neighborhood that we thought, we're really staying right in the tourist area.
was really a neighborhood that came alive at night. And so it definitely felt more local and much more relaxed.
I think we kind of realized that this wasn't a city where you just wandered around randomly all day long, hoping to stumble into hidden gems around every corner. And we had experienced that in Bologna. So we kind of had this in our mind. Siena was that way, Bologna was that way, right? but Florence, the restaurants, the bars, all of the social areas were seemed to be kind of clustered together a little more intentionally. So instead of wandering aimlessly
We started approaching Florence just a little bit more strategically. We'd visit the major sites early or later in the evening, would get in, experience them, and then move back out into those quieter areas. And honestly, once we started doing that, I think the city became dramatically more enjoyable for us. Yeah, and one of the things that I wanted to mention is also I think because Florence is a whole lot larger.
And it's not like you can, you know, hop on a metro or take public transportation from one place to the other. So if you're walking between these spots, you're already covering a lot of ground, which can make it a little bit more challenging. And so of course, we still did most of the iconic Florence experiences. Of course, right? we wanted to see and do these things. So we climbed Ruscianelli's Dome at the Florence Cathedral.
we visited the inside of the church. We walked across Ponto Vecchio. We visited Michelangelo's David at the Galleria de Academia. I also, because it was included in our ticket, climbed Giotto's Bell Tower as part of the cathedral. And I left Scott behind on that because I didn't do that because me and Heights aren't very good friends and I struggled a little bit in the
Duomo climb the day before. Yeah, and we had done lots of these. and I wouldn't say that it was the best one. anyway, so but so yeah, so we did those things and so then where we
And so, yes, we did those things that we knew in Florence that were kind of iconic, that we I think at the end of the day would have been disappointed had we not.
I also want to say, Melissa, we've encountered a lot of heat on social media about our views and opinions on Florence as well. You wanna talk about that for just a second? Yeah, so I've just shared. you know, hey, we're we're we've really struggled with this city, some of the things that we've talked about. We couldn't just wander from place to place and really find things. we struggled because let's stop and talk about that for just a second because I think that's an important piece.
So in these other cities, you you find a side street, you go down it, and there's now new restaurants, maybe new cafes, new shops, right? And there's some level of that in the first little sections surrounding the major tourist areas. But once you get outside that first or second street, you're no longer rewarded for doing that. Like we walk
Know, half a mile down one of the streets and never encountered anything else except for more streets crossing. Enclosed places that were closed. we actually tried this a couple of times. One time across the river, away from I guess where the Pity Palace and we would enter the gardens, thinking we would find some things. I had looked up some things even online and
looking for maybe some leather shops or just something that was maybe off the beaten path. And we absolutely found nothing. A photo booth, a lobster roll place that we happened to have one, just like it on Amelia Island. And that was really it. So and you can only wander that far when you're like, okay, like we feel like we're going in the middle of nowhere before we head back. And then you know, once we headed back, yes, we ended up
popping into a place and finding a couple of things and then finding some of the viral sandwich places that we're gonna talk about. But it was just, I think you can only do that for so long. And then you're just like, am I am I actually gonna find something? Yeah. I do want to talk about one of the things that we found and this came from if you listen to the episode where we talked to Federica.
She told us this, but we didn't quite understand exactly what she was trying to tell us. But we found that there are actually three versions of Michelangelo's David in the city, right? So that was one thing that we found from from wandering around and discovering. So you've got the one in academia. There's one up Piazza Michelangelo. Now it's brass, but looks exactly the same, but it's just made out of
bronze or brass or something like that. I think bronze. And then there's one in a piazza down near Pontavecchio. Do you remember the name of that piazza? I don't right off the top of my head, but that is actually the original location of the original David. it's right behind the Uffizi gallery. Yeah. So they took the original David, moved it into academia and then
There's now a replica, an exact replica, I must say, that's right there in that plaza. Scott, it's actually the Piazza della Signora. Yes. Yeah. And so that was one of the rare times that actually rewarded us. And I do want to allude back to the tips that Federica had given us when we in the episode where we talked about Macs Adventure, because she did make the comment, and Scott said we didn't really understand. She did make the comment, yes, you can pay all that money to see.
the David, the original David, or you could sit in the piazza and you could have a drink and you could spend the same money and you could look at it. And so now we know this is what she meant. And so we actually stumbled into that piazza. Well we did intentionally go. I said I wanted to go to that particular piazza. Yeah. Let's talk about that piazza for just a minute because one of our most memorable moments from the trip was actually in that
Piazza della Signora. And we were there, having breakfast at this French restaurant. And you wanna talk a little bit about that? well yeah so we saw some people near the statue who were in like I would say costumes. Almost like you would think of old
medieval type costumes. And you said to me, I read about these guys. They were the guards, but their costumes almost look like we would think of jesters or something like that. Well, not long after that, we started hearing drums playing and they're actually doing a processional that I guess is supposed to mimic something like the changing of the guard. So we asked our waiter
about it and he said, yes, now it's really just ceremonial. They do it once a month. and this happened to be the first Sunday of the month and it was going to take place. So we were just really in the right place at the right time to see this ceremonial procession where they come out with the the drums and they they actually brought out a cannon. They actually brought out a cannon. They have it on wheels. They actually drag it.
they shoot it just for like to mimic, right? But it does have the loud sound, which could be like when you're not expecting that, it almost like takes you off guard. So that was a really neat experience. And what was so interesting about that was it really didn't have anything to do with this is our to-do list of Florence, had nothing to do with like where we're gonna choose a restaurant, anything that we saw on social media.
For example, the first Sunday of the month, if you eat at this particular cafe, you might experience that. No, it was completely spontaneous and just one of those things that was lucky. And I think it's because it's something that they don't do regularly. Mm-hmm. Right. Or there there's so much time in between when they do it. And you mentioned this was ceremonial and definitely ceremonial because it's a bunch of old guys that are in these costumes and
So they're they're not those real guards. I don't know what the name of those guards are. Somebody'll tell us what it is, but those those are highly trained, like mercenary style guards that I think they're replicating their. But it was a really neat experience. Melissa had her picture made with some of the guards. Like they came down from the platform they were standing on and they were taking pictures with everyone. But it was nice because
Yes, there were people there. but it wasn't overly crowded. Yeah, I think it's just something a lot of people don't know because like I said, it's this particular day once a month at this particular time. So I feel like that was like one of the first moments that kind of started changing Florence for us. another huge turning point was getting outside of the center of the city. we did a cooking class in the hills overlooking Florence with Christina and Paulo.
And honestly, I think that experience changed our entire perspective on Florence as a city. we got above Florence all the way away from the crowds, and we just really started to enjoy our time there. Yeah, I think one of the things that we learned based on that is a lot of the local people, that's where they live, right?
They live outside the city. They have this view. Now they didn't have a direct view of the city, which some houses might. They had a view of the hills, but even Frederica told us when they spend their winters there. I don't know exactly where they live, but you know, how much they enjoyed it. We talked to one shop owner and he was like, as soon as I close the shop every day, I'm on my moped and I'm heading to he called it a village or a town, nearby. So I think it's it's really
escaping that. and so maybe working that in to to have some kind of experience where maybe you decide I'm not going to stay in the city center in Florence. I'm going to stay outside and come in to do those things so that I have a little bit of a reprieve of that. Or I do a cooking class like this on on Chesareena. Now we're not going to go into a lot of details about that because we talked about it a couple of episodes ago.
where we talked about three food experiences that we have done on this trip that have been just absolutely phenomenal. So go take a look at that. we will put a link to this in the show notes, but it's Cesarena that we booked it through and they have cooking classes all over Italy. It was an absolutely phenomenal evening where we were like, okay, this is fantastic.
And I think that reminded us that sometimes in places like Florence, you have to intentionally create that space away from the busiest parts of the city, meet the locals, kind of slow down a little bit, and that's when you start to enjoy it. Another place that we really liked was the Mercado di Sant'Ambrosio. So that Sant Ambrosio neighborhood, in and of itself.
was just a little quiet neighborhood away from the city center. Not far, we walked there from from our apartment. but it just it felt very different. Had a much more local feel to it. The market there is very different than the market in the city center. you know, you had instead of souvenirs and leather and tchotskis and stuff like that. now you had
vegetables and fruits and handmade goods that people were selling. And then if you went into the market, they had lots of stalls where they sold meat and fish that that people would come and buy their dinner for that evening. Well and also we could have almost like a little snack at the counter there. And we kind of watched the locals were ordering
a drink, having little small bites. they had some little like sandwich type things and pastries. And then we also watched them because we went to the market a little later, we watched them they were starting to like put a few things on on trays And the coolest thing about this is we literally just stood at the counter
And then just kept ordering a few things, a few things. And then when we were finished, then he said, okay, you had this, this, and this, and then you paid. And so that was really cool because I feel like you felt like you had a more of a local experience. You didn't make a reservation and then have to sit down and order. It was just very casual. and so it's just interesting that some of these experiences.
That maybe while not unique to Florence, definitely unique to Italy, are standing out more than we saw the Duomo, we climbed the dome, we saw Michelangelo's David. While all those things are fantastic, if we had limited ourselves to we have this checklist, we would have missed the things I think that we're telling you that we are remembering the most. And the next one is probably my absolute favorite besides the cooking class that we did.
was we went over it looked like there was like a I don't know if it was like an artist market or we wandered a little bit further past that St. Ambrosio and it was actually like a row of antique stalls, which is just like my love language. I just love that. I love that at home. I love that when we travel and it was booth after booth of
antiques and we probably stayed there what would you say Scott like over an hour easily if not more you know looking at things and saying how could we scheming how could we take this back look at this neat thing they have I did find one souvenir from that because I just felt like it would be so special is this one man was selling its prints that I've had in the past but it was its prints that they used to
print and make copies of and it has the place labeled and people used to buy them to like show here's where I've been and things like that and he was selling them for like two euros a piece so I was looking through the stack of them and it was places that we'd already been in this trip mainly places in Tuscany so it was just a neat souvenir but I will say for me personally I told Scott like this had thank you for like less spending the time doing this.
Because it filled my bucket so much. I was just like, I'm enjoying this, rather than I'm seeing the same leather shop, I'm seeing the same chain store that I've seen in every other city. This was something unique to Florence that I was really enjoying.
Well, so one of the things you said earlier when we were talking about this is we discovered that in Florence you need to be a little bit more intentional about researching and finding things and then trying to go and find those specific places. And I think that has to do with that, hoping that when you turn the corner you're gonna stumble onto something really cool and neat and different.
just because we found our experience was that's not how Florence works. Yes, and no. Let me clarify that a little bit. When we I think you need to research specific areas, but not say, I want to try to find a leather shop specifically for this, because that was one of our issues. I Yeah, and you keep saying
find a leather shop. But that's not what we were looking for. We were trying to find a leather craftsman, right? Someone who actually makes the leather goods and products. But what we were finding was just shop after shop of leather goods that might have gotten from China. We don't know. Mm-hmm. And the one kind of like even though we had researched online, the neighborhoods where you might find them.
was kind of where we just completely struck out with shops at all. We did find one lady and unfortunately she didn't have the right you wanted a camera strap and she didn't have the right things to make that to put on that. but then also like I had seen a bag earlier in the trip in a town in Tuscany, and it just looked and felt a lot more authentic than what I was seeing. And so I was like, okay, maybe if we go
outside of this, we may find in something like that. So I would say, because it's twofold. Don't have something in mind specifically that you're trying to look for, but definitely have an area in mind where there might be some things open because we kind of struck out on both ends. And on the flip side of that, I think that was the other thing too. If you have like I want this particular food in mind, I think that was a struggle for us too.
when we would just when we would just like walk through and say, okay, this looks good. But not, okay, I'm in the mood for this kind of meal. We also unfortunately struck out on the leather school this time. I think that sort of used to be like a hidden gem option. And unfortunately I think it's one of the few authentic craftsmen that you'll find or crafts
collective that you'll find in Florence and it's very, very busy. Unfortunately, they also weren't like working on anything right then too, but they were overwhelmed with people at the time. And because we unfortunately had a ticket, well not unfortunately we had a ticket, but we had a timed entry for David's Michelangelo. So we couldn't like wait around. And it was like the they were very, very busy. I also felt like it was very, very expensive
Like yes, you think, okay, I'm gonna pay more because this is authentic and they're making it right here. But from what I saw, it was just like very, very expensive.
One of the other things that we did to try to find some maybe quieter experiences in Florence is to find the outdoor spaces like the gardens, 'cause there's several gardens in Florence. And we ha I'll be honest with you, we had very mixed opinions on the gardens. And we'll talk a little bit about why our opinion was that way because
Some of you might be scratching your head saying, There's fantastic gardens in Florence. And yes, they may be, but not while we were there. So once again, remember, this is our experience that we had. And I think Bobolee Gardens was probably our biggest disappointment out of them all. If we had had to pay to get into Bobolee Gardens, we would have been probably irate by the time we left.
there's very extensive renovation work that's happening right now, and almost every major section is hidden behind construction fencing. So, yes, there's a few paths that go from the top of the gardens down to the bottom, but that's about it. Everything else, the grottos, the the fountains that are in the middle section, they're all closed off. You can't get to them, you can't see them. There's construction fencing in there.
And honestly, it just it it detracted from the gardens and that experience. Yeah, and I do want to talk about the other gardens. I had two things that I wanted to add before I forget. First of all, we asked for recommendations about the gardens. Federica at the winery had said that Bardini Gardens was her favorite, to not miss that. And that we were very lucky that we would be there at the perfect time to visit the Iris Garden, which is only open
For three weeks in the spring when they're blooming.
During our visit at our cooking class, Paulo had told us that Bulbalee Gardens was absolutely their favorite. See, they could walk to the top of it from where they live and then they can walk down and just enjoy that. And they said that was their favorite. So we asked two locals for their recommendations. and then before I finished talking about the gardens, the second thing I wanted to say is if you've listened to the podcast for any length of time, you know that Scott and I pretty much
rave on almost every destination that we go to. We give you tips, we rave on this. So I wanna just say like we're not saying this stuff, especially if you're a new listener, we're not saying this to like be negative and like rail on Florence or anything like that, because typically we just like, like I said, rave about stuff. But we wanted to share that our experience in a very honest way was a bit disappointing at this particular time.
So let me get back to the garden. So we did go to the Gardino del Iris, which is the Iris Garden. unfortunately, they are, I think they must have had some crazy weather in Florence or something right before we hit because we had seen these beautiful irises blooming everywhere in Tuscany. We had seen the wisteria blooming everywhere. They had literally just opened the iris garden and a lot of the flowers were already like.
seem to be wilted. I will say of all them that we visited, because we did Boboli, the Iris Garden, Bardini and the Rose Garden, I would say I would rank this Iris garden at the top though. Yeah. I think Bardini, the the wisteria wasn't blooming. And so you just had that covered walkway that the wisteria covers. There wasn't anything else blooming in that garden. And
Yes, I think it could be nice and it could be that the time of year that we visited, it just wasn't a great experience and that's okay. Like you're not gonna hit a home run on everything. And so just know we were there in kind of the beginning of May, and it just wasn't spectacular. So we're not being negative on it, it's just the time that
think the timing of when we were there, it wasn't this place that we've we've heard about. And, I I'll give an example. I think a lot of people also remember things from like 15, 20 years ago before social media started making some of these spots just blow up with with wall to wall tourist and people wanting to get their Instagram photos and stuff like that.
But my niece had sent me a note and she said, Florence is so magical or something like to that effect and I was like
Yeah. I will say another like unique experience that when we were walking to the Iris Garden, we ran across like a Sunday morning, they were having like a car show and they had some really cool like newer but then like really vintage things that you would think of. Like these are vintage Italy, antique cars. Really old Alpha Romeos and So that that part was really cool.
And so here I come back to another experience that isn't these famous things about Florence, right? It's not the famous gardens. It wasn't, it was this very cool car show in the middle. I must say it's it was in Piazza Michelangelo too.
And so if you were only saying, I'm going to this place, this place, this place, and if we'd said, no, we have to hurry and get to the Irish Garden, and then we have to hurry and get here, and hadn't just I mean, we didn't spend a long time there, but if we hadn't taken a few minutes to enjoy that, or taken a few minutes to enjoy the row of the antique shops because we had to rush to the next thing.
So once we found these kind of almost hidden gems for us, these little events that were happening, taking the time to linger in that. And because like as you're noticing, as you're listening, these are the things that have more the most memorable. So let's finish up on the gardens real quick. And I think our recommendation was we found the rose garden was was our favorite of Boboli, Bardini and the
Iris garden. Out of all of those, the rose garden next to Bardini was probably our most favorite. and we thought that that was and it's free by the way. Bardini you have to pay to get into. and that might have been part of our letdown with Bardini as well. But this rose garden, free to get into. It's a beautiful rose garden. There's
some little cafes that are right around it. You can get a spritz and grab a table and sit right there in the garden and enjoy the views, walk through the gardens. in my experience roses tend to bloom longer, have a longer blooming period than things like irises and stuff like that. So I would suggest that you put that rose garden
on your list is kind of that quiet place outside the city center to escape some of the noise. There's still gonna be people that come through there. There's still gonna be tour groups that go through there. You you're not gonna get fully away from that. But it was a much quieter, calmer place than the rest of Florence for us. Yeah. And then just to kind of wrap up the as far as the gardens, let me circle back to Bobley. So of course it was very, very crowded.
It was we didn't have to pay simply because it was the first free Sunday. Fortunately, we came in from a back entrance from Bardeini because the line to get in the Pity Palace and the Boboli was astronomically long. The biggest issue was, like Scott alluded to earlier, so much of it was closed. The whole area where Neptune's fountain was was closed.
And you literally couldn't even see it, but behind like a little bit of scaffolding, the whole entryway was closed. They were doing construction of a lot of the grottos. So really the only area that I I enjoyed was at the very top. they have an area that overlooks those hills, the Florentine Hills that we had been to for the cooking class, and then there's a pink building there and they have a that it's a beautiful garden. That was honestly the only part that I'll that I had enjoyed.
unless you have s anything else you want to say about the gardens, one of the things that we also noticed about Florence is just how heavily social media has shaped the way that people experience this city. this was very visible in like these gelato shops and sandwich shops that have become famous on TikTok and
other social media platforms and the lines to get to these can be absolutely unbelievable. we were like have zero interest in that, yes, we will sometimes post pictures of our food in places that we go, but we're not chasing these social media famous places as a part of our travels.
And we walked by these places and we would see people standing there with tripods trying to capture honestly the exact same sandwich reveal that thousands of other people have already, hundreds of thousands of other people have already posted onto social media. And it just made us question like, are they really experiencing Florence?
Or are they getting pictures that hopefully they can convince you that Florence is this wonderful place and true about anywhere, right? But definitely we saw this a lot in Florence. And one example was, and I alluded to a little bit earlier, after we, you know, crossed Ponte Vecchio, we looked around a few things, we kind of we did wander onto a street and found a little sandwich shop. It was time to eat.
And we were just like, okay, let's just eat here. It actually ended up being, I think, one of the best sandwiches that I ended up having in Italy. we sat down, we both ordered a spritz, we finally ordered a sandwich. He actually sliced the meat right there. And I mean it was just fantastic. While we were there, like one other couple I think came into the
and and ate and it was just you know it wasn't crowded. It was we got to enjoy a meal. And after we left that we walked up the street a little bit and we actually ran across one of the sandwich shops. The piazza was full of people standing there eating. maybe having a place to sit, like on the side of the fountain standing there eating. So when then we saw this huge line and and honestly I do not
I intentionally do not like research, we're gonna go try to eat at this place and this place and this place because honestly it works out to be you can't get in, there's a huge line, and there's 10 places that are just as good or better. It's just because this place showed up on social media. So this particular one has cutesy names for the sandwiches. The sandwiches were the same price as the one place that we paid to sit down, but then you've got to take you've got to wait in this long lawn, you've got to get your sandwich.
And then you've got to just stand up and eat it, which if you're walking around Florence all day, I don't really care to do that. You need a break, you need a toilet in a restaurant that you've, already paid for that you can go and use their bathroom. and so it's just so much more of an enjoyable experience to see what looks good for you instead of trying to say, Okay, I ate this sandwich. The other thing I wanna say about these sandwiches or these sandwich shops is a lot of them
'Cause then they have to make the things so fast because they're so crowded. You'll see so many of them where they're pre made sandwiches. And this guy made our sandwich to order.
I think that would probably be one of our biggest Florence recommendations. So one, do the cooking class because it was excellent and you interacted with people who live there. And so you get a little bit more than just seeing something. You it's a true experience. but if you see those massive social media lines, keep walking. Just just keep walking.
Federica told us go one street over, head down a quieter alley. Now, I'm gonna warn you is our experience in Florence was that don't go too far because once you get a street or two outside of that busy center, there's nothing. but go find the cafe where locals are actually sitting and enjoying themselves. And I think in a foreign country, one of the ways to do that is listen to
what language the people that are in there are speaking. If you don't hear any of the local language, there's a chance that that's not a local shop. but when we started trying to just find those places where the locals are and doing the experience with locals, Florence became such a more enjoyable place once we got outside of that
That city center in the middle of where everyone else was gathering. One of the other, I guess, kind of ironic experience food experiences that we had in Florence, which is kind of opposite of what we usually say, I would typically say, We're right near that duomo. I am not eating anything right around there. but when we arrived on our first day, we also we had stored some luggage and some things.
For during our walk by the train station. So we took our things to the apartment and then we were gonna go back and retrieve them, but we were hungry and it was time to eat. We had been wanting a like the sheet pan pizzas, the thick crust pizzas that you sometimes see in Italy. We walked by a place that was right by the duomo. We looked in and it was like, you know what? Let's just do it. Like it is what it is at this point. Let's just do it. I don't have to look up, I have 50,000 reviews, I don't have to look up that's popular.
Funny enough, we were in there ordering. They had the proni chills, which is like a rattler that we love, that you can't always find. Well, I turn around and coming up the stairs from like this downstairs area, he's bringing out like fresh, like a whole huge sheet pan of fresh pizza. So again, you see sandwiches, you see pizzas that they ended up heating up. This was absolutely fresh. Scott, I think this was some of the best pizza that we had in all of Italy. Yeah. It was really good.
So don't always think like, I mean, like just kind of look and observe. It was a place where we could just like get it really quick and then there was some chairs there and we could sit and eat it. So don't always think that, I've got to go far away. Just kind of observe, like Scott said, observe who's getting it, observe who's eating it, observe the quality. And it might actually turn out to be contrary to what even what we sometimes believe, some of your best meals.
Well, let's talk about the besteca. So the famous Florentine steak. we definitely wanted to experience that while we were in Florence. And so we made reservations at this place called Tretoria dell'Oste And I'm gonna tell you it's probably a very touristy place. You have to have the reservations. the people who were eating there, I think, were mostly tourists. but
It's one of those famous Florentine steak places that you do see. we thought the food there was really good. the service was really good. and then later we had this that Florentine steak again, at a much more local feeling restaurant that was near our apartment. And while both meals were excellent, I think the atmosphere of the local restaurant ended up being
much more our style than the one at the Tratoria.
So one of the things about the Tratoria dell'Asta that I don't want you to be surprised, like if you go there, is we made the reservation. Well, we looked it up on Google how to get there. We walk there. We go into the place that's at the address.
And we're like, we have a reservation. They're like, no, that's that's the other restaurant down the street. And so they took us like three restaurants down, to Tretoria del Asta, so the same place. and when we said, we have the reservation, they said, okay, and they took us to the restaurant that was in the middle. So this particular restaurant, just know that
evidently they've grown over time and they've acquired more and more space in the buildings next to them. And so now this restaurant spans across what was probably three restaurants previously. Yeah, and it makes more sense now. We were really confused when we were booking it 'cause we were like, do we do this one? His brother had actually recommended, yes, it actually is good. You need to go to this location.
it was just really confusing. So come to find out, they're all like Spot said, right there together. So don't let that throw you. But the food was really good. So once again, touristy, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't go there because it's really popular for a reason. They make really good steaks. Well that and the fact that people post about it on social media. Yeah. So two things I wanted to mention before we wrap this up.
And one of them is that there's a lot of things in Florence that we didn't do. So you're gonna say, well, you missed the Pity Palace. well, you missed the Uffizi Gallery. you didn't do all these things. Florence is a city like Rome or Paris or London, but there's no way that you're gonna see or do everything. So we basically prioritized as far as buying tickets and making concrete plans, the things that we thought we would like to see and do most, the things that we felt like we'll be disappointed if we don't.
do these things. We knew the weather would likely be nice, not too hot. And so we wanted to do the museums we wanted to do, the church, and then make sure that we had time to at least explore some of these gardens, walk around, go to the markets. And then the second thing is you definitely need to plan ahead for tickets to those things that you want to see. Scott had bought the tickets you have to for to if you want to climb that Brucianelli's dome.
That's the one that's hardest to get. Make sure you look up like how many, how far in advance you need to book it. Also for the academia as well. So making sure that you do plan. And what I would say is make sure you kind of look to see what days are certain things closed. Like the church is not going to have the same hours on Sundays. The market is closed on Sunday. So making a list of those things, looking at your opening and closing hours.
and then purchasing your tickets when they become available.
I think what Florence ultimately taught us is that not every city will grab you and pull you in immediately. In some places that we've been to, we'd fall in love just automatically right from the start. But Florence, it took a little bit more effort on our part to reach that. But once we learned how to experience it, we figured out.
how the city works, the times to avoid the crowds, the places that locals seem to gather, and the quieter spaces that get you away from the busiest streets. Then we started seeing a completely different side of Florence, one that we actually enjoyed and liked. So if you visit Florence and your first reaction is that it it is a little overwhelming, don't panic. Just slow down, get outside the busiest areas for a while.
Visit these markets that we talked about, go sit in the garden, explore in the evenings versus the middle of the day, and really find the places where the city is just a little bit more open and it's easier to catch a breath. Because Florence wasn't a city that instantly welcomed us. It was a city that we had to learn how we needed to experience it.
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