Last day in Florence

Today we started out with a visit to the San Marco museum, which was quite interesting. I fixated on the schematic for the beautiful chairs they have throughout the museum:


I guess I'll have to try to make one of these some day, when I have a workshop again.

On the way to the museum there is a very cool little bike shop called Cicli Sergio Bianchi. If you look carefully, you will see a lot of bikes in Florence with his head badge. I couldn't help wandering in and checking out some of the bikes. One of my favorites was this lugged city bike, complete with sewn leather grips and a sprung Brooks saddle. Pretty stylish.






Next it was off to another item on the culinary tick list: Trattoria Mario next to the central market. This is another unostentatious place with wonderful food:




What can I say, other than that it was delicious, simple and wonderful. I guess I need to either learn how to cook like this or find a new metier and move to Florence!

After lunch we wandered over a bridge to the other side of the Arno for another fruitless and feeble hearted attempt at shopping. Then it was gelato time near the Bridge of Overpriced Jewels, and on to the Uffizi. There was no line at the Uffizi and we walked right up to the hallowed halls that I last visited when I was five years old. I remember my feet hurting a lot and feeling very resentful that the parents were dragging me through yet another european museum. It feels satisfying to inflict the same torture upon my progeny now. I'm sure we didn't spend as much time as Kenji though. Halfway through, we took a little break in the rooftop café, where Alex ran around the chairs amidst coos of "Ciao Bello!" despite the fact that he was eating candy that he would periodically drop off the floor. The rest of us ate biscotti and drank espressos or mint water



Finally, we went on a mission to find something nice for Chloe. After a few stores it became obvious that the same purses were getting sold from every store, so I went off in search of an artisanale leather store (Pelletteria Artigiana, 3 Via Guelfa) I had seen on the first day. Here, we finally found Chloe a beautiful, well made and non-ubiquitously available purse. We had a few problems with our stupid bank cards, as usual, but managed to get enough cash out to get a simple last dinner in Florence of pizza and a bottle of Chianti!