Firenze!

If you aren’t hungry as you sit down to read this…you will be when you're finished! This week we embraced the food and history of Florence! We learned to cook homemade pizza, pasta and gelato. We attended the finale of the European Gelato Festival atop the Michelangelo Piazzale. Taylor became a true Italian and felt the wind on his face as he test drove a red Ferrari down the famous Viale Niccolo Machiavelli. We toured two important museums, the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Vecchio. And we topped it all off by visiting Florence’s famous Il Porcellino (“piglet”), a bronze boar fountain that is visited by tourists to ensure a return to Florence.

Logan pointing an example of the endless displays of delicious treats in the windows as you walk the streets of Florence.

The Uffizi Gallery boasts the greatest collection of Italian paintings anywhere, featuring works by Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo. I was particularly looking forward to Botticelli’s painting, The Birth of Venus. 

People wait in lines up to three or four hours to get into the museum. We made a reservation two weeks ahead, were given an arrival time, and we walked into the museum with all the other people smart enough to reserve a spot in advance. To be entirely honest, I’m not a huge fan of roaming museums and looking at walls and walls of artwork. There was so much beautiful art that it would have taken months to really appreciate all of it. We made our way through the U-shaped museum exploring room after room of classic Italian art. Originally a Medici wedding gift intended to hang over the bed of its honeymooners, The Birth of Venus, was an incredible sight that appropriately attracts the largest crowds in the museum. 

The tour ends at a large terrace that brings its visitors up close to the Palazzo Vecchio spire (clock tower). If museum-goers choose, this is a great place to grab a cafe, rest one’s legs and enjoy the view.  

Thanks to a great recommendation from my brother, Lauren, both Taylor and I recently read the latest Dan Brown book, Inferno. The story takes place in Florence and ignited in us a fire of excitement for many of the major sights here. One of those sights is the Palazzo della Signoria (aka Palazzo Vecchio), which is only two blocks from our flat. 

Every evening we take a stroll into the Piazza della Signoria in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Logan insists on saying “ciao” to every police officer in sight, and then we fill up our water bottles at the Publiacqua (a fountain provided by the city with delicious, cold, filtered water; both still and carbonated are available). The Palazzo Vecchio's courtyard is open to the public without a museum ticket. We walk through it each night as it's one of Logan's favorite things to do.

The Palazzo Vecchio's courtyard is open to the public without a museum ticket. We walk through it each night as it's one of Logan's favorite things to do.

Where we get water each night at the Publiacqua.

The Palazzo Vecchio is a castle-like fortress that acted as the Town Hall in Renaissance times. It’s large spire dominates the piazza beneath. It later became the private palace of the Medici family, whose lavish tastes and deep pockets fanned the flames of the Renaissance. In the Palace, both a museum as well as the active Town Hall, you can tour the old apartments lined with amazing artwork and sculptures, and you can walk through the Grand Hall (Salone dei Cinquecento), which is stunning. 

In the Grand Hall, or Hall of Five-hundred, there is a painting by Vasari titled The Battle of Marciano where he painted a tiny, hidden phrase, “Cerca Trova,” which means, “Seek and you shall find.” It is believed that Vasari is referencing a missing painting by Leonardo Da Vinci from 1505, The Battle of Anghiari. There remains an ongoing study to locate the missing da Vinci painting. It was originally in this Grand Hall, and the theory is that the current wall may have been built over da Vinci’s painting and it may remain in a small space of air behind the Vasari fresco. Researchers are, unfortunately, limited to their search because they must preserve the Vasari fresco which is painted directly onto the Grand Hall’s wall. The history and secrets of this city continue to fascinate us. 

Vasari's fresco, on the right, is where "Cerca Trova" is hidden.

Another Inferno-inspired item on display here was Dante’s death mask…which is actually now believed to simply be a cast of his face from a statue that stood by his tomb, and not his actual death mask (made from his corpse). 

Dante's "death mask"

Now, onto the food! Both Taylor and I took a five-hour cooking class this week. We did it separately, because entertaining Logan for a five-hour class didn’t appeal to either one of us. The tour began at 10am and started with a trip to the Mercato Centrale to get the fresh ingredients for our class. Taylor quickly made friends with a recently-engaged American couple traveling from outside of Washington D.C., Chad and Lara. At my class I found myself chatting with a sweet Australian woman named Deb who was traveling with her family but nobody else wanted to take the class with her. 

After the market, we settled into the cooking school kitchen for a lesson that included hands-on making of tiramisu and fresh pasta. We also enjoyed bruschetta with a variety of different toppings including an artichoke tapenade, truffle cream, fresh tomatoes with balsamic reduction, and tuscan bread with garlic and extra virgin olive oil. We drank wine while learning how to make our own pasta dough, roll it out, and cut it for pappardelle pasta and ravioli. They showed us how to make a homemade bolognese sauce and a butter sage sauce for the ravioli. Needless to say we both left class extremely full of amazing Italian food, and excited to try these recipes on people we love when we return to the states!

We met up with Taylor’s new friends, Chad and Lara, for some drinks and gelato a few nights after Taylor’s class. They were in town for a few more days, and they decided to join us at another cooking class. We didn’t want Logan to feel left out of all the cooking fun, so we included him in a three-hour pizza and gelato class that we all attended together. We took this class on a night in between our other classes. We were thrilled that Chad and Lara signed up to attend with us.

Logan loved playing with the piles of flour on the table and spreading it all over himself and Taylor. 

We made homemade pizza dough and decorated our individual pizzas. They demonstrated the gelato-making process, making us the base for all creamy gelato, creme di latte. They also made chocolate flavored using cocoa powder. It was heaven! Logan ate his entire bowl of gelato himself! Who knew children liked ice-cream so much?

Making our pizza dough, next to Lara and Chad.

Lara and Chad show off their pizzas.

We heard from Chad and Lara that there was a Gelato Festival in town. Can you imagine how incredibly excited I was to hear this?! The next morning we headed up to Michelangelo Piazzale to get our fill of the Italian dessert! We bought one Gelato Pass for 7-euro which included five “tastes” of gelato, a shake, and a packaged ice cream taco. Thankfully we shared the Gelato Pass because each “taste” was a full, albeit, small cup of gelato. 

I can hardly contain my excitement as we wait for the Gelato Festival to open.

Apparently, this festival was the finale to a gelato making competition going on through Europe. This meant we were likely tasting some of the best gelato the world has to offer! Each contender was showing off their best flavors. You could choose which five you wanted to taste in exchange for your tickets. Beginning with our favorite flavor and ending with our least favorite, we tried: berry cheesecake (made with fresh ricotta and Philadelphia cheese, almonds and berry sauce), Nutella, pistachio, coffee (with actual fine grinds in it and toffee pieces), and vin santo (sweet holy wine) with biscotti. 

After gorging ourselves on gelato, we were cruising around the Piazzale and discovered a couple of Ferraris sitting at the parking lot entrance. Evidently they were available to rent for a short amount of time. The opportunity to drive a Ferrari, in Florence, no less, was not something Taylor could pass up. So, he got to check that off his bucket list: driving a Ferrari in Italy. Off he went in a gorgeous red Ferrari 458 Spider down Viale Niccolo Machiavelli. Ironically, Dan Brown mentions this area in Inferno, “Viale Niccolo Machiavelli has been called the most graceful of all Florentine avenues. With wide S-curves that serpentine through lushly wooded landscapes of hedges and deciduous trees, the drive is a favorite among cyclists and Ferrari enthusiasts.” After his drive we were able to take some family pictures in what Taylor would like to believe will be our next family vehicle!

Finally, Logan loves to visit the “piggy,” or Il Porcellino. The Florentine tradition holds that visitors to Il Porcellino put a coin into the boar's gaping jaws, with the intent to let it fall through the underlying grating for good luck, and they rub the boar's snout to ensure a return to Florence. While we’ve been by it half a dozen times, we found ourselves there this week at a time when there weren’t dozens of people crammed in front of the swine statue, trying to get a quick rub of the snout. It turns out Logan is going to have some good luck and return to Florence someday!

This week we indulged in the culture of Florence. We cruised the streets of our city and enjoyed learning more about the history and food of the Tuscan region. For those of you who are itching to go make homemade Italian food…here is a little treat for you! Arrivederci!