How Not to Do Florence
In less than 48 hours. You can’t do Florence in less than 48 hours. What was I thinking?
The truth is, I was thinking like an American. When you know how far away places like Italy are, you want to see and do as much as possible. I understand the feeling, I just wish I could convince us (Americans) not to travel like that! You’ll come home from your vacation needing another vacation and you might have missed some of the special parts of wherever you’re visiting.
Regardless, when I planned our spring break trip, I decided we could do Amsterdam and Tuscany in a week. An undeniably amazing trip, but I’m sure we missed out on properly exploring these incredible places.
Our jam packed schedule in Florence, to kick off the Italian leg of our trip, went a little something like this:
Day 1
We landed in Florence at 5pm from Amsterdam. A tiny airport compared with Schiphol, which made it ridiculously easy to find our tram. On that night, our itinerary had us checking into our Airbnb and heading up to Piazzale Michelangelo to watch the sunset. Romantic, right? Well, sort of.
Here’s how it actually went down:
Check into our Airbnb on Via Lambertesca. Cross the Ponte Vecchio for the first time without even realizing what we were doing. Walk through San Niccolo to head up to Piazzale Michelangelo - we were early for sunset, and getting hangry. So we stopped at a cute, albeit touristy, little intersection for a glass of wine and a snack. Enoteca Bevovino did the trick.
hello, gorgeous
From there, we walked up and oh boy. We did not consider the time of year, but it must have been the last day of classes for university because there were a TON of kids with bottles on the stairs waiting for sunset. Well, we took in the view and decided we were pooped and needed more food. Walked along the Arno and wandered into Santa Croce. I wanted to find the perfect place for dinner, but we were hangry and Michael was cranky, so we ended up in Le Carceri which was LOVELY. I think they forgot to put in our order, so we had finished a whole bottle of white wine before we got our pasta. Not a problem - we were in no rush. I had a tasty pasta dish with baccala and Michael had ravioli. We called it an early night and headed to our Airbnb to rest up.
Day 2
The itinerary called for the Uffizi, Boboli Gardens, and exploring. We did those things, though likely not in the order the itinerary called for.
We got into the Uffizi at 10am and spent a few hours there and were truly awed by the masterpieces. We could have stayed all day. From there, we wandered to Mercato Centrale for lunch and grabbed a few bites upstairs (including tripe - not my favorite, but we had to try!). Downstairs, we picked up some aged parmesan, wine and grappa. Wandered the windy roads, got some Aperol spritzes (obviously), took a pit stop at the Airbnb to enjoy our adorable balcony and some parmesan and limoncello. Then I forced Michael to go to Boboli Gardens with me. Our tickets to the Uffizi covered the Uffizi, Boboli Gardens, and Palazzo Pitti. We didn’t really do the Palazzo, but we did wander around the gardens a bit. Again, hanger hit. We got some gelato.
we are influencers
he’s the best influencer
For dinner, a couple of friends of mine who had studied in Florence during undergrad recommended Osteria delle Tre Planche - a tiny restaurant known for its use of truffles. The restaurant was booked full, but the manager was very kind and told us to check back in. We wound up getting a booking at like 9pm. Oh dear. Time to fill! We walked up towards the restaurant - no short journey. My feet were blistering, we were so hungry, the signs that this all could have broken down were piling up. It was a Wednesday. We did end up finding a cute spot with wonderful staff - Bottega di Pasticceria - that served us wine and potato chips. Michael was in heaven. You will come to learn that from this trip onwards, Michael is SMITTEN with white wine and potato chips. Once it was time for us to get to the restaurant, I was shocked that Michael actually ordered something with truffles. We shared beef fillet tartare with quail egg to start. I had ravioli with truffle and Michael had fried veal with truffles. A delicious and pricey meal. Oh, and I love my friends who recommended this spot - but the clientele reflected exactly who they were when they fell in love with this restaurant when they studied abroad in Firenze nearly a decade earlier - college students from Long Island. And don’t forget, it was the end of term, so there were lots of them!
Day 3
Had to see our pal, David, first thing in the morning. I was not really excited about visiting Galleria dell’Accademia, but man was I wrong. There are not appropriate words to express how impressive the David is in person. We checked out of our Airbnb after our stop at the museum and found our way back to the airport to pick up our rental car.
Next stop, Chianti!
I would change a number of things about how we visited Florence - the timing, to start - both time of year and amount of time. But the 36ish hours we spent in Firenze were remarkable and I’ll never forget them.
