Florence
Espresso
Espresso in a bookstore tastes better.
Todo Modo, Via Dei Fossi, 15
Happy 4th of July y’all. Hope you’re grilling something on our behalf because Italy doesn’t do barbecue. Today was the day of the Duomo, which also meant a day of climbing stairs.
To start out, though, we visited the Santa Croce Church near the Duomo. This was primarily known as the final resting place of a few of Florence’s and history’s greatest thinkers and doers: Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and (kinda) Dante. Bryan found it particularly troubling that Galileo was buried here, as he was basically excommunicated by the Church in his lifetime. They later thought it would be good to claim him as their own after they figured out he had some good ideas.
In addition to the roster of famous people, we also found a statue of Liberty that was curiously similar to our Lady Liberty in New York. It’s still not clear after reading the history of the Statue of Liberty whether there was a direct influence or not, but the date of creation predates some of the groundwork for the French statue by a few years (and the bronze description in the Church was quick to claim credit for inspiring the more famous successor). In any case it was a nice reminder of the place we call home, and called for a selfie.
Yennie had previously noticed a School of Leather located adjacent to the church (in fact they’re directly connected), so we took the long way around and eventually found ourselves staring into a working workshop of leathermakers. The school was literally in the shadow of the Santa Croce church, and housed what looked like tens of people from around the world learning how to make fine leather goods. From the signs it seems the school went back at least 60 years, and had visits from a number of people that were really important in the 90’s, like Ted Kennedy and Princess Diana, and that guy from ER (not George Clooney). We took the opportunity to buy some leather gifts for our loved ones, and at the same time got free engravings made on the spot!
After that it was full on Duomo-time. There are basically five separate areas to visit in the square all related to the Duomo. Having a Firenze card really came in handy as we were able to bypass what seemed like a substantial line for the Cupola climb, as well as getting into the Museum and the adjacent Bell Tower without having to pay again. Each was at least 400 steps to the top, made harder by the fact that the stairwells were clearly intended for small numbers of people to go up and down at any given time. Come on 15th century architects, why didn’t you think to design for all these tourists?
At the top of the Cupola we saw a breathtaking fresco of Revelations – complete with images of devils causing mayhem, flaying humans apart and putting flaming torches up their bums 🔥. No thanks. Of course there were some lovely saints there as well. The Bell Tower / Cupola are similar once you’re at the top and probably don’t both need to be seen unless you’re completionists like we are. The views at the top of both were quite instructive given how long we had been walking to the individual sites: now we could go to the top and see how all the city’s landmarks were located. It definitely made us feel like visiting this last was a solid decision given we now had more context where everything was.
After our climbing we needed a break: enter La Giubbe Rosse, a primo kitsch fantasy located near downtown Florence. The bar was frequented by Italian futurists back in the day, and nowadays served up stiff drinks for a reasonable price.
On our way back to the hotel, we found a café-slash-bookstore that we really liked called Todo Modo – we stopped in for a quick espresso and peace’d. Too many Italian books.
To cap off the evening, we knew we had to pay America a tribute by eating some steak. We decided Buca Lapi, which was as corny as it was delicious (both highly). Definitely not the cheapest meal, and honestly we preferred the other steakhouse we went to earlier, but still a reasonable meal.
Negroni and hot hot Bloody Mary
Kudos to the Italian bartenders that know that using real tomato juice makes for a tasty drink.
La Giubbe Rosse, Piazza della Repubblica, 13/14r
