A Month In Florence

This week we finally settled down in Florence. We’re going to be here for the rest of October, so we don’t have to rush to do everything in 2 days. This week we did lots of exploring the center, and saw a bunch of interesting things. I also saw lots of activities that I want to do in the upcoming weeks. 

Even though it’s only been a week, there have been so many things we’ve seen in Florence. The main thing we’ve seen is churches. There’s a church about every 3 blocks here. We only went inside of 1 so far, Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze, but I’m sure we’ll go in many more over the next month. Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze felt more like a graveyard than a church. There were tombs all over the walls and floors, and Galileo is even buried there. The Duomo is my favorite church we’ve seen from the outside though. I like it because of how big it is, and how big the dome is. Another thing we’ve seen a lot of is statues. If you go to Piazza della Signoria you can easily see more than 20 statues in less than 5 minutes. We walked down the road that the Uffizi is on, where they have statues of lots of important historical figures like Galileo and Da Vinci. I liked looking at all the statues more than looking at all the churches, but the churches were still amazing because of all the artwork and sculptures inside.

 The Arno is a big river that runs through the middle of Florence, and we walked over it multiple times. Some of the bridges were cool, but the river itself was disappointing. The water level is really low and it's really murky. One thing I really enjoyed doing was going to Piazzale Michelangelo. It was a long uphill walk to get there, but it was worth it. You can see all of Florence from up there. I was amazed by how tall the Duomo really looks compared to the rest of the city. I didn’t really think it was that tall until we went to Piazzale Michelangelo.


 I expected to see/visit most of those things, but one thing I was surprised to see was the filming of Masterchef Italia. One morning we saw them setting something up in Piazza di Sante Croce, and we decided we would come back later. When we came back they had a bunch of different kitchen setups that said Masterchef. The next day we came back and there were more trailers and cameras. The new season of Masterchef doesn’t come out until December, but I’m going to try and find that episode. Even though we saw all these cool things, there is still more to do.

With about 3 weeks left in Florence, we have time to do so much. The one thing I really want to do is climb up the Duomo. I think it would be a really great view from the top because of how high it is compared to the rest of the city. I also really liked climbing the tower on Baseler Münster, and that was so much shorter than the Duomo. There are some places I would like to go back to for food too. Last week we went to a restaurant where I had potato tortellini with meat sauce, and it was delicious. I hope that we can go back there at least one more time before we leave. We also went to this really good gelato place twice last week. Even though we’ve already been twice, I still want to go back. I got the dark chocolate and banana flavors both times, and they mix really well. It tastes exactly like a chocolate covered banana, and it is delicious. Those are the things I want to do for sure in Florence, but there are also some day trips I think would be fun to go on. If we could, I would want to take a day trip to Rome because I really liked it when we were there in 2018. I also need a new A.S. Roma jersey because I’ve almost outgrown the one we got last time. I already replaced my Fiorentina jersey from 2018, and gave the smaller one to my sister. Another day trip I think would be fun is going to Pisa. We also went to Pisa in 2018 and I had some of the best dairy free gelato I’ve ever had. Gelato isn’t the only reason I want to go back. I would also like to see the leaning tower of Pisa again. Overall there are a lot of activities I want to do over the next month.

Even with all these activities to do, this will be a nice relaxing month. I’m glad we don’t have to rush everything into 1 or 2 days and we don’t have to be on a train every other day. We’re going to be doing a lot of school work since we are staying in 1 place, so I hope we can find time to do everything else. I’m excited to see what we can do with a month in Florence.

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