A whirlwind visit of Florence

Today I met with my brother-in-law's sister, Linda, who came to Florence for the morning from Siena before heading off to Bologna. We scheduled to meet at 10:30AM at the Museo di Storia della Scienza. I was hoping that my tessera (card) for the "Amici degli Uffizzi" would be accepted, but the man at the biglietteria (ticket counter) told me that the museum is private and so he didn't accept it.

Living in Florence :: A whirlwind visit of Florence

Normally, even in private museums, they give me a little discount because I'm also a resident in Florence, but he didn't offer me anything. We walked up to the first floor to begin the visit. We only had the paper guide that they gave us, so we read their summary of the room and looked around. We were both very impressed with all the instruments and medical apparatuses, but we didn't understand everything we saw.

When we left the museum, we went to La Rinascente to have a drink on the rooftop terrace. We sat down in the shade and waited for the cameriere (waiter) to come and when he looked in my direction I motioned him to come and take our order. "Arrivo," (I'm coming) he said grumpily. We waited some more and when he came back out, he headed to two other tables who arrived after us. When he disappeared again, I asked Linda if it'd be OK if we left and we did.

We went to Osteria Belle Donne for lunch early. It was five to noon and they weren't even open yet. We had to eat early because we wanted to visit Florence a little more and I had to catch a bus to go fuori Firenze (outside of Florence) at 2:30PM.

After lunch we walked briskly up to Piazzale Michelangelo, where I took the picture shown above. We were exhausted and overheated by the time we made it up the small collina (hill).

We took the bus back down to the train station and walked to the front of Santa Maria Novella church. I had heard that it had impalcatura (scaffolding) in front of it, but I was shocked to see that the entire facciata (façade) of the church was completely covered.

I left Linda so she could go to see the Duomo and I could catch my bus. It was fun to run around Florence, but the number of tourists seems to have doubled from just a few weeks ago. It was a little hot outside and when I got on the bus to go to San Casciano, I almost fell asleep.

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