Firenze, la Fior di Italia

Bistec a la Fiorentina

Memory has begun to fade, but I'll do my best to do justice to lovely Florence.  After a very pleasant Eurail trip from Rome, we arrived in Florence and walked through the center of town to our hotel, Hotel Monna Lisa. This lovely little boutique hotel is really more like staying in a well-to-do family's townhome than a proper hotel. It's a calm oasis in the middle of Florence with furnishings that are unique and shabbily genteel, and a lovely atrium in the breakfast room with a view to the back garden.  Florence was my favorite city in Italy on my first trip, and this jaunt only confirmed my preference. I love Florence.  The cobbled streets, choc-a-block with chic shops, art gallerys, churches and museums are a pleasure to stroll through and the myriad food options are all amazing.  I could spend endless afternoons wending my way around.  This trip, we got more of an inside scoop from Mom and Dad's neighbor, Amy, who was studying abroad while we were there.  She introduced us to two of the best gelaterias in Florence, Carapina and Grom, which were so good that we made sure to go at least once a day while we were there.  I highly, highly recommend the crema di vin santo at Carapina, but everything was excellent. For dinner, Amy took us to Il Gatto e La Volpe for excellent pizza, pasta and some of the best house made balsamic vinegar ever - if you go, definitely try to pack some home, it's amazing. Another night, we took a bus to the residential part of Florence and had one of the biggest steaks I've ever seen - the waitress brought it out for Dad and I to approve before we ate it. You have to love bistec a la fiorentina - more meat than an American can handle!  I took Mom and Dad for the prerequisite trip to the top of the Duomo, where we had beautiful views out over the city.  The one-armed-bandit photo I took of me and Mom is one of my favorite from the trip.

Mom and me, from the Duomo

The Uffizi Gallery remains one of my favorite spots in the world.  If I could curl up in a chair with a good book in the gallery overlooking the Arno, with it's lovely whitewashed ceiling and delicate hand-painted detailing, surrounded by Boticellis and the watery sunlight streaming through windows that have begun to weep with age, I might be happy forever.  It has to be one of the world's most impressive collections of art, but it's also just a beautiful space in the world, and oddly cozy in its own way.  From the Uffizi, we took a stroll through the Piazza della Signorina and made a stop at Rivoire for the famous hot chocolate -- possibly the best in the world, if you ask me. Our art tour of Florence ended with Michelangelo's spectacular David.  The statue always makes me wonder about the boy who inspired it and the sculptor who was so fascinated by him; David and his Goliath seem the lesser subjects of the work.

You cannot leave Florence without some retail therapy, so we tried on gloves in every color of the rainbow in the leather market, bought chocolates for Dad, lovely ruffled opera gloves and a python clutch for me, and introduced Mom to the wonders of Missoni scarves. A return trip to Bartolucci secured wooden music boxes for Niels, Cordi, and Ronin, plus a fair bit of entertainment for all of us 'adults' as we wandered through the shop testing them all out. There are endless joys behind the tiny shop doors and through the alleyways of Florence. Rome was charming and not to be missed, but if you have one stop to make in Italy, perhaps in all of Europe, make it Florence - you will never regret it.

Rome, if you want to...

After a summer filled with PSA scans and surgeries, bad boyfriends and yucky prerequisites, the Mackh family was ready for a break. We decided the eschew our normal, lovely Thanksgiving for a vacation abroad. Mom almost didn't let us go because she was sure that my MBA-stressed brain couldn't handle it, but we did all right. I decided that Italy was the most digestible, and Rome and Venice were still on my list of places that I need to see, and soon. I also thought my history-buff dad would LOVE Florence and all the glories of ancient Rome, so off we went.

I was so pleasantly surprised by Rome. I feel as though with the Vatican at its heart, Rome has a tendency from the outside to seem immense, as though its reach is endless and one would become lost there. While the city does have modern-day sprawl to it, the heart of it operates like a bustling village. I suppose it helped that we were there in the shoulder-season, but really Rome was lovely, welcoming, and easy to meander through. Our first day, we didn't make it much farther than a late lunch and the Piazza del Popolo before jet-lag won, but it was still great fun. And we had this amazing torta di ricotta with dark chocolate shavings on top that, in itself, was worth the price of the flight. We got a little lost in the park, as we wended our way back to the hotel, but who's complaining? The moon was full and the storm clouds made the perfect Gothic backdrop - very Ides of March, heavy with foreshadowing (don't worry, we made it home).

On our second day, we tackled the Vatican, which was beautiful. Work never quite goes away, so I was madly text messaging my peer from the top of St. Peter's, which must be sacrilege, but I made it out, so perhaps all is forgiven. The Sistine Chapel, is swathed in low-light loveliness and hushed whispers. It is hard to imagine the years it took to perfect each gesture and symbol in the intertwined figures. Surfeit with art, we wandered back through Rome to the Piazza Navona and had a late, late snack in a cafe there. About halfway through the meal, a Chaplin-style clown set up shop in the center of the piazza, making fun of all comers. He was hilarious and soon had the whole crowd rolling with laughter. It was idyllic, and so not the way that Americans spend their evenings...just lovely. After our snack, we wandered through the Pantheon, which has been a temple to so many faiths, and listened to musicians playing in the piazza outside. I could truly live in a city with this type of culture. After the obligatory coin toss and wishes and the lovely Trevi Fountain, we ate dinner at Colline Emiliane, near our hotel and the Piazza Barberini. Everything was excellent, but the show stopper was my dessert: torta di ricotta, laced with amarena cherries, and crowned with a crumbly top...seriously one of the best desserts of my life; I must try to figure out how they made it.

Day three was all about Ancient Rome. We walked from our hotel to the Victor Emmanuel memorial, with it's amazing views of the city, and then went on to Colosseum. It did rain on us a bit, but the interplay of the storm clouds, shot through with the occasional rays of sunlight, did tremendous things for the ruins. It is amazing to think of the culture (and mayhem) that emanated from this tiny locus of Roman life. After Ancient Ro

me, we wandered through Trastevere on a somewhat fruitless search for restaurant that one of my friends recommended, and listened to part of the Mass in Italian in the local church. After a long walk back to our neighborhood, we had a yummy dinner at a local family restaurant and crashed early in preparation for our train to Florence in the morning. All in all, I really loved Rome and would go back again in a heartbeat. The people, history, and food were all amazing. We had an absolutely lovely time.