Florence April 9, 2014. The food issue.

April 6.  Our guidebooks identified several smaller churches with masterpieces.  These have only Sunday tourism and, as it turned out, they were in use for worship.  We started with nearby Santa Michele Visdomini.  Too busy.  We made it in to Ognisanti by waiting for a mass to end and rushing in.  We checked out the Ghirlandaio  St Jerome (not exceptional, attribution questionable) and had just come upon Giotto's crucifix (spectacular) when the church began to close.

We never made it to Santa Trinita.  We'll try next week.

We stopped by a temporary market at Piazza Santa Maria Novella.  Local wines, cheese, honey, olive oil, meat, and some bread.  We bought a small piece of wine-finished pecorino.

Bruce went on to the Ethnographic Museum.   It began with an exhibit on anthropological science a century ago.  Phrenology was big.

We went a little further out for dinner, this time a real family restaurant, Osteria dei Pazzi.  The waiters and patrons kissed each other, there were a lot of children, and the chef joined the diners next to us.  Very fresh salads; very tasty pork; very large servings. We made the mistake of ordering the menu, ie, the prix fixe, which also included a pasta dish.  Too much..  We notice the poster showing where the olive oil was sourced.

4/7  Today was a lazy day.  As it was beautiful and warm out, we treated ourselves to a long lunch at Za Za on a piazza (pasta with meat sauce, seafood risotto with dessert, after dinner drinks, and espresso).

We visited the Badia Fiorentina, founded in 978, in the afternoon.  (It is only open for 3 hours in the late afternoon on Mondays.)  Badia means abbey and this one is functioning.  It was founded Benedictine but is now home to the Fraternity of Jerusalem.  If you are curious, its site explains:  "At the heart of the  Catholic Church,  the Jerusalem community consists of two religious institutes of brothers and sisters whose vocation it is to provide an oasis of prayer, silence and peace in the 'desert' of modern cities."  It was founded in 1975 (yes 19).

The cloister had a series of frescoes on the life of St Benedict.  The frescoes were not so great, but they had the sinopias (the outlines) also.  It was interesting to see them together.  Sadly, our pictures were duds and the net has no better.

The ceiling is wonderful

It has the second tallest, and the most attractive, campanile in Florence.

The main reason most tourists visit is for this apparition of the Virgin to St Bernard by Fillipino Lippi:




4/8  We finished up the Bargello, viewing  ceramics made by the various della Robbias, the armory, and the Donatello room (bust of a young man).

• Particularly interesting are the pieces submitted by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi for the competition for the doors to the Baptistery.  The entries had to depict the sacrifice of Isaac.  Guess the winner? 

    Later, we went to San Lorenzo for a short stop only to be told that it was closed.  As we thought we had close to an hour, we protested.  It appears that Italy went on daylight savings March 30 and we never noticed.  This time shift explains why museums seemed to close earlier than expected, churches were unavailable (see above), and the dinner crowds which come out after 8:00.  This is obviously a real vacation.

    We finished the day at our favorite local restaurant, I Ghibillini:  lasagne, pasta filled with pecorino and pear with walnut sauce.  We are both becoming quite fond of cantucci (almond biscotti) with vin santo (dessert wine)  You dip the cookies in the wine.