Florence felt very different from Venice. It probably isn’t fair to say we had culture shock after 2 ish days in Venice before coming here, but it kind of felt like that. 

The crowds felt more frantic, the heat more stifling. The streets felt less maintained. There were fewer doggos wandering the streets with their owners. Again, I think starting off our trip in Venice might have disillusioned us a bit. 

We dropped off our stuff after checking in at Hotel Unicorno—once again, a pretty well situated hotel. This was a proper hotel, so compared to the tourist house in Venice, it felt much more spacious and had more of the amenities we were accustomed to. 

The sidewalks are way too small to properly walk on in Florence. It reminded me of Paris’ sidewalks! We often found ourselves walking on the roads with the cars. I guess that’s the thing with older cities that built their roads for mixed use back in the days.

Our first stop in as Florence was the Uffizi Gallery. We saw really spectacular pieces of art in real life including “the Primavera”, “the birth of Venus” and “the Medusa”. There were entire rooms dedicated to showcasing pieces of work from Da Vinci or Botticelli. The amount of walking was killing me again given we had spent all morning travelling (we actually took a flight from Venice to Rome, to transfer to Florence. So it was a long morning of airports). At one point I heard an older gentleman ask his party at the Uffizi “and how many pieces of artwork by women have you seen here today?” To which his group replied “none.” That made me realize women were largely underrepresented in the painting profession at that time. And many weren’t given the luxury of being able to pursue this. A bit of a downer but I’m glad I caught this man asking this question. 

I did have to take a break at the cafeteria at the Uffizi. I got asked if we wanted to sit down or take it to go, and I definitely wanted to sit. Later on, S pointed out there was a price difference of several euros for every menu item if you sit down 💀 Whoops. 

After a lot of art, we went to the San Lorenzo Market (il Mercato Centrale Firenze). I wanted to take a look at the leather market. Weirdly enough, all the stalls there made me reminisce about Hong Kong as the scene felt so familiar. I ended up buying a scarf because I was getting cold. 

We also went to the food hall at Mercato Centrale. We had dinner reservations but I really wanted to try a lampredotto: a Florentine dish made out of the fourth stomach of cattle. I was never one for eating organs, but I’ve heard about lampredotto prior to our trip. The most famous stall at the market was closed for the day, but we did find another fairly well rated stall that sold it too. In my opinion, while the stomach was well flavoured and tender, it still tasted a bit too much like organ for me. Glad I tried it though! 

After the market, we walked towards the Officina Profumo Farmaceutica Di Santa Maria Novella. This is known to be the oldest pharmacy in the world and mainly sells perfumes and skincare products. The inside was gorgeous! I had wanted to buy a small bottle of perfume but realized it was more than €200 for their smallest size and I couldn’t bite the bullet. Still a neat place to have visited! 

It was then finally time to head to our reservation at Trattoria Zà Zà. There was a line even for people with reservations. Despite the establishment taking up a good part of the block it resided on, they were completely full. They had a walk-in line, but I’m not sure how fruitful it was for those folks. Nonetheless, people chose to try to wait to dine here. 

I have to say though — other than their antipasto platter, I didn’t like their food. We ordered their chicken in truffle cream sauce and their wild boar sauce pappardelle, and both of those were way too salty. Like so salty it got kind of gross and made our mouth feel weird. Their fried zucchini flower was fine. A bit disappointing given how popular this place seemed! 

After dinner we stopped by Antica Gelateria Fiorentina and the man who worked there was so nice! We asked him for a recommendation and he did his best. He also let us try a sample first before we committed. And then also gave us samples of the hazelnut gelato. I get why. It was amazing. We would’ve come back for it if we had any time left during our stay in Florence! 

We then headed back to our hotel because we’d have to wake up at 6AM the next day so we can take a train to Pisa! 

Somehow we managed to wake up in time and made our train. The ride there, I took a nap in the fairly comfy train seats. I didn’t know this would be a luxury (spoiler alert: I’d have to stand the whole train ride back to Florence a few hours later). 

Pisa is quite small. We walked about 20 minutes from the train station to the famous leaning tower! Along the way, we even got to see a real life Keith Haring mural!

It was comical to see everyone raise their palms to pose with the tower. And I immediately started to pose as well and had to resist the urge to high five everyone with their palms outstretched.

It was a bit surreal to see the tower up close. So strange that it’s actually leaning! It’s always just been a fun fact I’d read about. I never really thought about actually visiting! 

After taking some pictures, we went to a cafe to break our fast. Italians like sweets in the morning with their coffee.

I’m more of a savoury person so after the cafe, we walked to a convenience store and I straight up bought a packet of smoked salmon and mortadella and ate it on the streets.

We also waited till a well-known bomboloni place opened their doors and got 2 fresh bombolonis. They were delightfully light! We got a Kinder bueno one and a ricotta one. I loved the ricotta one more! But highly recommend overall going to Bombolo in Pisa for a sweet treat! 

We later took the train back to Florence and during the ride back, an old man and lady didn’t realize they had to validate their tickets before getting on the train. They learned from a nice Italian girl (they asked her the question) that if they were to get caught, it’d cost €60 as a penalty per person. So at one random stop, they hurried off and did a quick ticket scan. For some reason, I was so worried they would’nt make it back on the train in time. Eventually I caught the couple on the security camera (they show different security cams on the train screens from time to time) and I’m glad I will live knowing they did indeed make it back on the train. 

I had to quickly stop by our hotel before heading to our next stop: the Duomo. Again, I had to make sure my knees and shoulders were covered before we visited a place of worship and I had shorts and a tank top on for Pisa. Though it turns out they weren’t quite as strict here as they let folks in even in shorts.

When S first asked if I wanted to climb the Duomo as we were planning our trip, I was like “yeah that sounds fun! We can do it.” I didn’t take into account that we would’ve been doing multiple days with 20k steps daily prior to the Duomo. While the 463 steps don’t sound like a big deal, when your legs are already seizing up, your back’s been hurting for days, and you woke up at 6AM for a morning Pisa day trip, it suddenly sounds a lot more daunting. 

We did it of course, and at one part of the hike, you see the inside dome at a much closer angle than other churchgoers. I have no idea how they managed to make and then maintain the art up there. It’s huge!! 

The top of the dome led us to beautiful views of Florence. It was nice seeing all the red tiled roofs across the city! We were also surprisingly high up! 

Our tickets for the hike up the Duomo also came with some other things we could access but we opted to skip those since we were pooped. Okay I was pooped. But you know what I could use? A shot of espresso! So we went to Vivoli Gelato for their famous affogato! 

There was a long line up when we got there and S graciously offered to wait in the sun for us. We got our 2 cups of affogato eventually and it was truly delicious. And also well needed after a long day! 

I even took a quick nap after the affogato so I could really charge up. And then we headed to Ponte Veccio! 

I was eager to take a look at the shiny stuff for sale on this medieval bridge! Lining the entire bridge were jewelry shops. However, mostly everything was out of my price range and I couldn’t justify splurging on precious stones out of the blue. 

Instead we took a walk around and got some bubble tea instead. Earlier, I saw someone holding a Yifang bubble tea cup and I had a craving for it. Luckily, San Tea House was there to save the day! I had a strawberry green tea and S had a Hong Kong milk tea. Though the milk tea wasn’t nearly strong enough to be considered HK milk tea, it was still a welcomed comfort. 

We walked and sat around the city some more as we waited for our dinner reservations. This night we chose a restaurant that served Florentine steak: Antico Fattore. 

I didn’t expect them to bring out the whole hunk of meat with a little paper that stated the weight of the t-bone. I gave them a thumbs up and they put it over the fire and served it back to us with some potatoes we had also ordered. Dinner was great but we got really full finishing the steak. Delicious though! 

We walked back home and along the way stopped to check out “Chinatown”. Which was sadder than Montreal’s tiny Chinatown. Florence’s was like maybe 10 scattered stores?? 

The next morning, we woke up early to eat our hotel’s free breakfast. We couldn’t make use of it the day before since we left too early for Pisa. I must’ve eaten like 8 eggs. I love eggs and usually have 2 a day for breakfast. And I didn’t get to have them for the last 4 days. So I had to make up for lost time. 

Then we took our luggage across the uneven cobblestone roads to take the tram back to the airport. It was super simple and I’m glad public transport was quite easy to understand in Florence. Oh and also, I had to hit up a pharmacy in Florence because I was getting the worst hay fever. I was fine in Vancouver, but Italy has been making my nose run pretty badly. Glad I caved and got some allergy pills so I can stop sounding like I’ve got the plague during our trip.