Breakfast at this hotel is a hoot. The first day at the super coffee machine that makes any concoction imaginable gave me a cup of frothy milk and one teaspoon of strong coffee...I think it was running low on something. But JM was able to make it work for a good cappuccino. Did you know that cappuccino is only to be had in the morning? Then it's proper to have the espressos and other fancy blends. If you ask for a cappuccino in the afternoon you get funny looks. But this hotel gives a wide variety of goodies to choose from starting at 7:30 until 9:30 each morning.
There are many different yogurts, white and whole wheat breads and a fancy toaster...butter and many jams to choose. Fresh fruit and a very cool orange juice machine. It's huge and gleaming stainless steel just like the toaster and the snazzy coffee maker. You simply put your glass under the spout and hit the "2" button. Two whole oranges roll into the machine which automatically cuts and squeezes the juice out of the oranges and into your glass. YUM! There is also a large bowl of fresh fruit cut and an assortment of pastries. All this is in addition to a nice selection of meats and cheeses, hard boiled eggs, and various cereals. The B&B in Rome provided that nice sandwich as a take along picnic lunch. And the hotel in Assisi gave us hot scrambled eggs as part of breakfast. But I think the Florence breakfast was the most complete and also featured the open terrace and garden which is so beautiful in the early morning.
So the rest of the morning and afternoon we spent wandering the area around the Duomo and managed a bit of shopping. We found a wonderful papery store with hand blocked stationery, including notepaper with very beautiful illuminations, paper replicas of Pinocchio, place cards and bookmarks...it was very hard to choose, but I managed to find a few things. We visited a similar store in Assisi, but that shop was run by the actual artist who did the printing. This shop in Florence has sister stores in New York, Palm Beach and Melbourne.
I left Jeff to take more steps than I was willing to...I saved my steps for our short Piazza Walk and Arno Tour later. We met at a shop near the Effuzi Museum at about 6:00. There were 13 of us including a group of four women from Leeds, UK, on holiday. They were very busy and had booked all kinds of cooking excursions and mountain drives in addition to this River tour. As we walked through the piazza with Ahmed, our guide, a large orchestra of teenaged players was rehearsing in the statuary area. It was fun to hear their bits and pieces of what their performance would be at some future time. Nothing was posted nearby giving details, but we hoped we'd have a chance to hear them. Of course, if JM recognized what was going to be played, he started singing, softly, as Ahmed was talking to us over the music.
We continued our walk down to the river and expected to see two or three nice boats, or one large boat for our outing...but NO. There was one little man with one pretty old looking gondola type flat bottomed wooden boat! He said we didn't need another boat, this one would do just fine...or something like that. At any rate there was no other boat in sight! And so he placed each of us in this dingy little dingy and away we went...no motor, just his long, long pole to push us down the river while Ahmed stood in the bow talking to us as we slipped under the Ponte Vecchio and down under another bridge or two. The whole "cruise" lasted about 40 minutes or less and was probably overpriced, but it was fun and we realized how much we missed sailing and the Sea Princess! We had prosecco to celebrate one of the Brits birthday...
We stopped and had pizza and pasta for dinner...no other options in this town...at a nice little outdoor cafe with no cover and no gratuity. Some restaurants charge one price for sitting outside, a little less for sitting inside, and yet less if you sit at the bar. It's a good idea to ask if there's a difference...for some there is not.
On our way back we encountered the orchestra, playing their program. They were very good and I even recorded one song, and I hope it transfers well for you to see and hear. (Sorry, it didn't.). This was a very nice day! Of course, any day with live music is a very nice day for us!
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