We wake up early today, and step out into bright sunshine and 26 degree heat, and go in search of breakfast. Over Danish pastries, we discuss our plans for the day. A visit to the Profumu Farmaceutica di Santa Maria de Novella, originally home to an infirmary in a Dominican monastery, which has, over the years produced perfume for Caterina de’ Medici, become an apothecary’s shop (opening to the public in 1612), to what it is now, a most beautiful home to a pharmacy and perfumery. We enter a paradise of ornate rooms with painted ceilings, into the pharmacy’s perfume shop, where displays of old bottles hug the walls.
As we expect, the perfumes are expensive, way beyond our price range, but we look and explore anyway, wandering from room to room, sniffing scents and soaps, examining the displays of bottles, old mixing paraphernalia, lists of ingredients and the artworks on the walls and ceilings. One of my particular favourite sounding mixtures is Pennywort Compound, which claims to have an ‘aesthetic’ effect on cellulite; and the Pausadonna, which – and its name speaks for itself – claims to aid the menopausal symptoms.
We emerge from this display of opulence and claims of cures into the street, and head for the Piazza della Signoria, which is crowded with tourists. We’re here because we’ve made the decision not to visit the two main galleries – the Uffizi and l’Accademia – because we’re time stretched, so we’ve come to Florence’s main square instead, once the site of Savonarola’s Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497, where thousands of pieces of art, cosmetics , musical instruments and even books – including the works of Dante and Ovid – were burned in a warning against immorality, sin and temptation. After Savonarola’s execution, the Palazzo Vecchio, which overlooks the piazza, welcomed the triumphant return of the Medici family and the rebirth of the Renaissance. The piazza is also the home to copies of many famous statues, including Michelangelo’s David, which was placed outside the Palazzo as a sign of rebellion against Medici tyranny. I’m not sure of the year that happened, but this David is impressive anyway, and beautiful.
In fact the whole square is full of wonderful sculptures, and we’re particularly taken by the Nettuno, erected in 1575 to celebrate Medici fortune at sea. To our left, is the Loggia dei Lanza, an open air art gallery with yet more impressive Renaissance sculptures. It’s almost impossible to take it all in, but we sit on the steps inside the Loggia for a while, soak in the atmosphere, and then decide to move on. We’re on a mission to try what are alleged by some to be the best sandwiches in Florence. So we get up, press our way through the crowds of tourists, towards lunch.
We see the queues before we see the two sandwich shops, one on either side of the Via Neri. This is the Osteria All’Antico Vinaio, (http://www.allanticovinaio.com/it/) which Kat discovered via YouTube. We take our place in the queue that’s on the shady side of the street, and wait, eagerly discussing what we might eat, despite the fact that we can’t see the menu yet! But we’ve heard about the sandwiches, made with schiacchiata all’olio, a flat bread special to Tuscany. As we wait – and the queue moves quite quickly – we watch a man carry piles of this bread to and fro between shops, and the smells of warm bread and preserved meats fill our nostrils. It’s only midday, but we were up early, and we’re made extra hungry by this assault on our senses.
Finally we’re in the shop, where our orders are taken quickly and served with ultra efficiency – I’ll admit it’s all a little too frenzied for me, and I exit the shop as quickly as possible once we’ve got our sandwiches, which are monsters, and an absolute steal at five euros each. We take our first bites – Kat has decided on a mix of porchetta, truffle cream, fiery pesto and roasted vegetables; and I’ve decided to try the Speck ham, Parmesan cream, porcini cream and scamorza cheese. Our first bites are heavenly. I’ve never eaten a sandwich like it. They’re ridiculously good, each bite full of flavour. We swap regularly – and we get moved off the street by patrolling police officers who tell us we can’t eat near the shop, presumably because it gets blocked so easily. So we eat and walk and savour the food and the atmosphere, and observe that most people passing us by on the street have sandwiches clutched in their hands.
We walk towards the River Arno and Ponte Vecchio, the major bridge in Florence. A bridge of shops, it was, in the thirteenth century, home to butchers and fishmongers, but it was decided – because of the noxious stench and concentrated rot – to house the city’s jewellers there instead. Apparently it was the only bridge spared from bombings in WW2, because Hitler couldn’t bear to destroy its beauty. And so it is now the most famous bridge in Florence, and, naturally, a massive tourist trap. Of course, being tourists ourselves, Kat and I don’t care. We ascend the arch of the bridge, occasionally stopping to look in a particularly beautiful shop, and finally get to a place where we can take photos of the Arno and the other bridges we see from this one.
We spend a little time admiring the view, then decide to go in search of gelato – it doesn’t matter that we’re still rather full from our sandwiches – we’re in the birthplace of gelato and it’s rude to not try as much as possible! As Jenna Evans Welch says in Love and Gelato (2017): ‘So… Italian gelato. Take the deliciousness of a regular ice-cream cone, times it by a million, then sprinkle it with crushed-up unicorn horns.’ We need to prove this assertion to ourselves, one flavour (or two!) at a time.
We head back the way we came, to the Via dei Neri, and find the Gelataria dei Neri, recommended as one of best gelataria in Florence. Again, the queue isn’t too bad, and moves quickly. I pick peach – I’ve never had peach gelato before, and it’s gorgeous – and pair it with fig and ricotta, because fig is my favourite fruit. I can’t remember what Kat has, but they’re equally delicious concoctions. By now it’s around three pm, so, gelato cravings satisfied, we decide to wander back to our hotel and have a rest before going out to dinner.
Tomorrow we’re taking the train for a day trip to Venice. Kat’s already booked first class tickets, and I’m excited and terrified in equal measure. Like Rome, Venice is a bucket list destination for me. Why I’m excited is obvious; why I’m terrified isn’t so much. Examining my feelings, I can say admit that I’m scared I’ll be disappointed. Add the fact that I get super anxious about travelling to new places, and I think I understand it. Partly to allay my fears, we decide to go to the station we’re travelling from tomorrow, in order to check it out, and to see how long it takes to walk there from our hotel. Turns out the Santa Maria Novella station is only ten minutes walk away, max. It’s an uncomplicated place. My worries about finding it difficult to discover what platform we might be travelling from disappear, because they’re all there right in front of us. I feel a little better. We have a little look around the station shops, then go to eat dinner.
We’ve decided to eat pizza tonight, and are visiting the Pizzeria da Michele, which serves Neapolitan style pizza. It’s very close to our hotel – like everything else – and we stop on the way to have a drink in a trattoria. I feel quite drunk after two glasses of a delicious house white, and so we go to eat. The pizzeria comes highly recommended and is one of a small chain across Italy, including one in Rome, where some of Eat, Pray, Love was filmed. Weirdly perhaps, there are two restaurants in Japan. We sit in the outside area. It’s very hot but the Italians have an interesting way of cooling their patrons down – with a very fine mist of water. It’s a bit weird at first, being sprayed, but you get used to it, and it’s refreshing. The menu is pretty small, and most of the pizzas are vegetarian, except the calzone, which has salami on it. We both decide to order the doppia (double) mozzarella, which also has pecorino cheese and basil in the mix. When it comes we have to laugh – at only nine euros, they are absolutely enormous, edges hanging over the plates. They’re cheesy and gooey and utterly delicious. We eat what we can, savourin every decadent mouthful, until we’re almost bursting and can’t eat any more. Full and satisfied, we pay up, and go back to our hotel room and prepare for tomorrow’s adventure.
Tales From the House of Words and Memory 