Florence is a golden city. Honey golden.
A potter we met (whose nook of a studio sent Margaret dreaming of leaving grad school and moving to Florence) told us that this was one of the first colors used on ceramics in the region.
We stayed at a
lovely, peaceful apartment near Ponte Vecchio, an above-ground piece of the enclosed passageway that the Medicis constructed in order to reach the Uffizi. We discovered that we had to reach the museum outdoors.........but it was lovely outside.
And just about as cold inside! Here is Nick, wearing his coat for the first time in months.
We spent a good deal of time craning our necks, looking up: at ceiling frescoes, at the gorgeous blue sky, at the hillside. Here Margaret is, looking the wrong way - she had been searching for what Michaelangelo called the Gates of Paradise the whole trip.
Found them.
We got a chance to rest our weary necks with a lesson in
pizza and gelato making, which has radically changed our philosophy of pizza. Here we are, being converted.
We loved being outside in the clear, crisp cold, surrounded by our beautiful golden city. At Palazzo Pitti....on our morning runs up into the hills and down by the river....
we stumbled upon beautiful nooks and hidden surprises: delightfully rotund statues....
Solemn, grand statues....
....film projections onto a church....
....a sudden glimpse of the soft, rolling hills of Tuscany.
We wandered, were chilly, and took frequent breaks in search of hot drinks and hot pizza.
