Our train to Florence left at mid-morning, so before we left, we decided to go for a walk along the Tevere towards St. Peter's. We hadn't been anywhere near the Vatican in our trip, since we weren't interested in seeing the church or the large crowds! The walk along the river was nice, though, and we got to see the Ponte Sant'Angelo with the sculptures by Bernini & his studio. When we got back, we walked over to the bus stop and made our way up to Termini. It was much easier this time, because we'd learned which streets to walk on that had non-cobbled sidewalks! (An important factor when dragging a suitcase, even a tiny carry-on, behind you!).
We waved goodbye to our neighborhood - it was the perfect place for us to stay! Not super crowded like some of the other popular areas for tourists, but still lots of stuff to do at all hours. Tons of good restaurants serving local cuisine and a nice cafe a few blocks away we went to every morning! Really loud on weekends, but it just reminded us of New York. The train to Florence was really nice - when we'd come to Rome from Bologna, a lot of the time was spent in tunnels, but most of the trip to Florence was above ground, so we got to see the pretty countryside. And we took advantage of the snack car!
We got to Florence about an hour and a half later - amazed at how fast the trains were, even though we knew they were going to be fast before we came. From the minute we stepped outside of the train station, the city definitely had a different vibe than we'd felt in Rome. I think we heard more English during the 20-minute walk between the train and our AirBnb than we had the whole time we were in Rome! The apartment we picked was definitely in a part of town closer to the main tourist attractions than the one in Rome, so it made sense in retrospect. When we were picking a place, we were between staying in the Santa Croce neighborhood and Oltrarno...we went with Santa Croce, but we might have felt less in the thick of the sites if we'd stayed a little farther into the Santa Croce neighborhood. Anyway, our apartment was lovely and our host was super nice! After we dropped off our bags, we went to find lunch and had super delicious panini (our first Italian sandwiches!) a block from Santa Croce.
Full of tasty food, we headed over to a place we were super excited to visit - San Miniato al Monte, a monastery on the other side of the Arno. It was about a 25 minute walk, but we got to see a lot of the city. We had perfect weather again, which we had basically every day of the trip.
The monastery sits at the top of a hill and the climb was fairly steep! Most of the tourist crowd dropped off at the Piazzale Michelangelo, but we continued on because we wanted to see the ancient monks chanting and buy some monastery honey!
It was definitely worth the climb! It was beautiful, and we got there at the perfect time to see the pretty late-afternoon sun. We'd originally planned to be there at sunset, but we got there a few hours earlier and I'm glad we did, because the sun was already going behind the mountains when we left! We ventured into the monastery and down into the dark basement, where they were just starting an evening service. The monks looked about as old as the monastery, which is the oldest church in Florence (I think it was built around 1100AD). It was cool to see, but we couldn't stay for the whole thing because we wanted to go in the gift shop before it closed!
We knew we wanted to buy honey, but we didn't realize there would be so many types! And although I could understand and get by just fine in Italian, I don't know super specific tree and flower names...so we just picked a jar that we thought looked nice! It turns out that we got chestnut honey, and chestnut honey is a very uniquely Italian honey - especially from northern Italy! We didn't learn that until we got home, but it has a super unique flavor that's kind of smoky and unlike most other honey I've ever had. Apparently it's often eaten on cheese and bread, rather than put in things to sweeten them. It's really, really good and I'm glad we accidentally got it!
We even managed to see the full moon rising over the Arno and the mountains to the east! On our way back, we went to our first Italian grocery store - it was amazing! The produce was so cheap, and so was the cheese and bread and...pretty much everything. (Why is food so expensive in this country??) We got some cheese, meat, fruit, and bread and just had dinner in our living room. We were going to wake up early the next day for our day trip, so we didn't want to stay out late eating. We had a really nice balcony but had to close the doors once it started getting dark because there were too many mosquitoes! Not exactly what we expected in early October...but overall, we had a great first half day in Florence!
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