Firenze Trip – Getting Acclimated

Continued from: Firenze Trip – Getting There

My wife had booked us into one of the oldest hotel in Florence, the Plaza Hotel Lucchesi which opened its doors for the first time in 1860.

Conveniently located not far from the center of the town, it overlooked the River Arno, and the 10-year-old renovations enhanced the ambiance of this 164-year-old hotel.

As we were taking showers from our long travel day, I realized that this was the very first time for me to travel to Europe and not be working.  Over my 35-year career, I had been to Europe 47 times (of which 31 trips were to Amsterdam) but each time it was either for teaching or for work.  This was going to be a new and freer experience for me not having to temper my pleasure with the knowledge of work to be done.

Florence was established in 59 BCE by Julius Ceasar.  This was an old, old city.  And its streets showed its age.

I was used to walking the more “modern” streets of a simply 750-year-old Amsterdam but many of these roads had been laid out over 2,000 years ago.  As we set off to explore our surroundings, I noticed cars and motor scooters noisily bouncing up and down on the cobblestones.  I figured they must go through quite a few sets of shock absorbers.

I had been forewarned about the streets and sidewalks I would be walking on and so took two pair of well broken in shoes.  One was a pair of comfortable Sketchers and the other a pair of running shoes.  I had been embarrassed many years ago in Amsterdam when a young boy looked down at my running shoes and exclaimed, “Look Dad, an American.”  As it turned out, that was not to be repeated as what my generation used to call “ten-a shoes” were worn by just about everyone.  Now they were fashionably in style!

I took two pair to alternate days as I knew we would be walking quite a lot.  In fact over the eight days we were there, I racked up over 117,000 steps and my wife racked up even more as I often say, she takes petite steps.  I also thought with two pair that if we got caught in the rain, the wet pair would have a day to dry out while I wore the other pair.

We set out from the hotel in search of some lunch.  I had previously asked our concierge if there were any good restaurants nearby to which he proclaimed, “oh there are so many.”  He was right.  We crossed the River Arno and came across a little café with outdoor seating where I had the first of what would be many delicious meals (more on that later).

We then hiked up to Piazzale Michelangelo where we were told we would have stunning views of the town.  Along the way, we caught a glimpse of one of the few remaining sections of the old city walls…

… before reaching the top where we indeed did have a great panoramic view.

The summit is named for the bronze replica of that most famous Michelangelo work, David.

Of course, we had to do that touristy thing of taking a selfie.

Our goal on this first day was to stay awake as long as we could before going to bed.  After losing seven hours and getting very little sleep on the plane, this has always been the challenge I faced traveling to Europe.  I told my wife we needed to stay awake until at least 8:00 PM.

We continued exploring before returning to our hotel in the afternoon.  Later, we decided to venture up to the rooftop bar for a pre-prandial drink.  We found it deserted and very windy but no doubt an outstanding spot in warmer weather.  There was also a swimming pool which my wife discovered by putting her hand in the water that it was not heated.  Not that night but on another, we returned to the rooftop after dark to get some great photos of the night scene.

Thwarted for a rooftop drink that first day, we made it down to the lobby bar where we had a nice glass of wine along with a complimentary snack of olives, coated peanuts, and crackers.

After a big lunch and late afternoon snacks, we had a light dinner of sandwiches in our hotel room before turning in at 7:30 (we almost made it) which to our bodies was 30 minutes past midnight, based on the Central Time Zone we had left from around noon on Monday.

Thus ended our travel day and first day in Florence.  But rather than continuing with a chronological day-by-day accounting of our 8-day trip, I thought I would organize my tale into a few categories: museums, sights, day trips and of course, food and wine.  However, for those who based on this series of posts, may choose to travel to Florence, there is one important detail I need to share.

The international cellphone plans my wife and I each had would allow us to use our domestic cell and data plan in Italy but with a charge of $12 per day.  Since this $96 would nearly exceed the monthly cost of each of our phones, we decided we both did not need this and so I left my phone on airplane mode the whole trip.  I was, however, able to use WIFI in the hotel or wherever it was available (restaurants and museums).

Before we set off from the hotel, I would route us to our destination using Apple Maps and then take a screenshot on my phone.

Even though we had a very nice foldout map, using it on our walk would clearly mark us as tourists. But by occasionally looking down at my phone, I figured I would look like everyone else walking down the street.  And we decided not to use my wife’s map app live on our walk, as it would rapidly run down her phone battery which she needed to be able to take photos.

Well basically using this approach, but for two exceptions, we got lost everywhere we went.

      To be continued…