Italy

A proper day in Florence

B Byrd

— 3 min read
A proper day in Florence
The Ponte Vecchio.

On Thursday we made it properly into the old city centre of Florence and to our planned museum from earlier — the Leonardo da Vinci Interactive Museum. We couldn't get a time slot for the museum till 5:15pm, so spent a few hours just wandering the city and seeing some sights.

Off the bus and into the square.
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A wall/waterfall of chocolate at the Venchi store.
View from the Ponte Vecchio bridge.
On the Ponte Vecchio. It looks like only jewellers and high-end watch shops can afford a place on the bridge now.
Ponte Vecchio in the background.
Raincoat and ponchos conveniently purchased the night before (except for J's, which we already had), after we saw the weather forecast for Florence!
A rainbow!
A very old pharmacy.

The Leonardo museum was fantastic and truly interactive. The eight-way mirror room was the boys' favourite thing. I most enjoyed building bridges. A liked seeing all the machines and the fact that so many actually "worked" (as well as the huge variety of da Vinci's works).

Left to right: tank, hang glider, giant crossbow, dive suit, mortar.
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J in the mirror room.
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A building bridges.
My biggest uncollapsed bridge.

After leaving the museum (at closing time — seems to be our habit), we headed for dinner at the pizza place we'd unsuccessfully tried at the start of our time in Florence (it was closed that first night and we'd ended up at a kebab place). This time — success!

The pizzas were very good (Neopolitan... Naples style), but I think our pizzas in Naples remain our favourites. This may in part be our flavour selection; we once again ended up with spinach (or something like it) on one of our pizzas. No one was a fan.

The Rustichella: Tomato sauce, mozzarella, fontina, gorgonzola, sausage, spicy salami, grana padano dop.
Poverty and Nobility: Mozzarella fior di latte, grana padano dop, sausage, friarielli.

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