Rome (and Florence) Day Four: Naked Statues, Giant Churches, Old Bridges…and the Best Pasta I Ate in Italy

*My travel recaps from our trip to Rome were deleted due to an issue with my previous blog server; I still had all the text from my daily summaries and I’m slowly going back, adding relevant pictures to those travel logs, and reposting them to my new website.*

When we came up with the idea to visit Italy, we planned to spend three days in Rome and two days on the Amalfi Coast. In the end, the logistics of moving between locations felt like too much to manage – juggling luggage, organizing trains, and cramming days full of visits to all the major sites. Also, it’s not exactly balmy in Italy at this time of year, even along the Southern coastline. But…we had a free day and needed to decide what to do with it. We were tempted to head to Venice, but high-speed train tickets for that distance (almost 4 hours each way) were pricey and, due to unusual tides, most of the canals were actually empty! Also, while we’re good at packing a lot of sightseeing into a single day, it felt like we would be short-changing the Venice experience to only have a few hours to tour the city. We considered Pompeii (all those bodies frozen in time are morbidly famous) and Naples.

In the end, we settled on Florence. It’s a 90-minute train ride from Rome and felt very “doable”. Unlike the rest of our trip, I had nothing prepped before we went (we only settled on this destination morning of). I knew Michelangelo’s statue of David was there…and that’s about it.

We didn’t set an alarm but woke up early which worked perfectly. We were on the train by 7:00 am and were eating cannolis and sipping cappuccinos on the streets of Florence by 9:15. It was a drizzly day and we wore our raincoats but, for the most part, the weather held! We made a beeline for the Gallerie dell’Accademia – where the statue of David is located – to get tickets. John saved the day on this one. We joined a manageable-looking line to get in, but after the doors opened…nothing happened. The line wasn’t moving. At all. John left me waiting in line to investigate and managed to figure out we were in a line for people without tickets (correct) and every 15 minutes or so a handful of people would get let in to buy tickets (at that rate we would be waiting for hours), but we could go to a different spot about 100 feet away and purchase timed tickets. He did that and we were able to wander the streets for 20 minutes until our specified entry time – and then walked right in.

Neither of us was prepared for the size of the world’s most famous statue! It’s huge and the focal point of the museum. David was sculpted in the early 1500s out of a piece of discarded marble. We spent a long time looking at it from all angles, and then toured the rest of this relatively small museum (because I had done almost no research – and had left my AirPods at the hotel and wasn’t listening to Rick Steve’s audio guide – I missed the fact this museum also contains famous musical instruments, including the world’s oldest piano)! After our time spent by David, we toured the rest of the museum in under an hour.

For hundreds of years David stood in Palazzo Vecchio, but damage from weather and rowdy locals led to its relocation into a museum; there are two other copies of the statue and we saw both of them while in Florence.

After we finished at the museum, we started strolling the streets.

Just out of view is a HUGE lineup to get into the church.

Again, my lack of research was a bit of a liability. I knew there was a famous church but had no idea of the scale! Santa Maria del Fiore is the third largest church in the world (after St. Peter’s in Rome and St. Paul’s in London) and was the largest church in Europe when it was completed in the early 1400s. It has a gorgeous – and unique – exterior; like St. Peter’s, entry is free, but you have to pay to go up into the dome. We stood in line for a while, but the line wasn’t moving very quickly and it was starting to rain. I felt a bit aimless at this point (I like having a bullet point plan for the day and had nothing of the sort in Florence). I knew there was another, lesser-known, church nearby that had paintings by Michelangelo. So, we went over there…only to discover another line and an entry fee. By now I was in full Dither Mode. What to do?

We went to a famous piazza and saw a functional carousel.

While at the Gallerie dell’Accademia we saw a plaster cast of a famous sculpture sometimes called The Kidnapping of the Sabine. It refers to a Roman myth about men carrying out a mass abduction of women from neighbouring towns. In this sculpture, a man and his wife are being separated as she is carried off by a Roman. The marble statue is in a giant square, along with all sorts of other Renaissance-era art (including a copy of David where the original once stood).

We wandered by the Uffizi Gallery, arguably the most famous spot in Florence and one of the most-visited art museums in the world. We walked by the entrance and happened upon some artists working in a little nook; we bought a little watercolour from one of them for €15. He was happy for us to take pictures while he worked and the whole experience was delightful.

Next up we strolled across the Ponte Vecchio which literally means Old Bridge. And it is old – dating back to 123 AD. It was the only bridge that wasn’t destroyed during World War II as the Germans retreated (and systematically destroyed all bridges as they went) – apparently by direct order from Hitler. Originally housing labouring class workers, it is now the place to buy fancy jewellery and art. Rolexes and diamonds were everywhere! By the end of the day, we had walked across four bridges in Florence, but this was the most memorable by far. Before moving on, we stopped for our daily gelato. Good, but not as delicious as my two favourite spots in Rome.

We made our way up the hill across from the Arno River (much nicer than the Tiber!) to Piazzale Michelangelo. This lookoff was built back in the 1800s when Florence was the capital of Italy. There is a giant bronze copy of David near the parking lot. It gives incredible views of Florence and, again, was worth the climb even though we got a bit lost along the way.

On our way back down the hill we stopped at a tiny restaurant that was packed with locals. The waiter – an older gentleman – was charming in all the right ways and recommended the penne with duck. This was, without question, the best pasta (and meal) I had in Italy. We had planned to try for a Florentine steak, but didn’t realize a proper Florentine steak has to be at least 3 fingers thick (it’s like an American T-bone). The smallest cut we could have purchased was 1.2 kg. Hmmm. No thanks. John did opt for a different cut of steak and says it was one of the best he has had in his life. This restaurant was absolutely charming and, again, very reasonably priced for such high-quality food.

We wandered back across the river and contemplated going into the church again (but the line was still long). We went to the LEGO store, visited a famous boar statue (random!) that is supposed to bring good luck, and I bought a colourful spoon as a souvenir from our time in Italy. I was back to feeling a bit aimless without a clear itinerary.

We passed by the giant church again and debated climbing the dome, but it was pretty expensive.

Then I remembered reading about Florence’s wine windows – little rounded windows that were used in the 1600s during an epidemic, and then popularized by nobles who were allowed to sell their own wine to locals – without any taxation – from these windows.

While use petered out over the years, they came back into popularity during COVID, as a way to serve wine (and food, including gelato) in a socially distanced fashion. While they’re hidden in plain sight, I hadn’t actually seen any throughout the day. We made our way back across the river to a neighbourhood – and restaurant (Babae) – specifically known for housing a wine window. And there it was! We actually ended up spotting others that looked abandoned along the way, too. So cool!

By this point it was almost 5:00 pm, so we headed to the train station, hopped on a high-speed train back to Rome and were back in our hotel before 8 pm. We knew it was one of our last chances to see things at night and made our way to the Piazza della Rotunda and the Pantheon. Seeing a city at night never fails to impress.

This time we got to see the bronze doors closed and could better appreciate their enormity. We wandered around the columns and the whole time we were serenaded by someone singing operatic pieces. It was a snapshot of our Roman experience. Ancient architecture and art converging at the same time. We briefly discussed waking down to St. Peter’s Square, but it had started to rain and we weren’t wearing the right clothes. Breaking a cardinal rule of childhood, I opted for dessert before dinner.

Once again, it was excellent. And for supper? McDonald’s. I’m actually glad we made this choice; when we were in Paris our ONLY bad culinary experience was McDonald’s (it was late and we were desperate). I can unequivocally say: McDonald’s in Rome was 1000x times better. I almost never eat McDonald’s, but at the end of a rainy walk home, it hit the spot and was conveniently located about 2 minutes from our hotel.