Adriatic Trip, Day 5: Florence

Saturday, June 14, 2025

Following breakfast at our hotel, we met up with our local guide and were taken on a tour of the Uffizi Gallery, a large museum with an enormous collection of art, including some well-known classics such as Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.

Following our tour, we walked the Ponte Vecchio bridge across the Arno River. A walking bridge, Ponte Vecchio also supports the enclosed walkway used by the Medici rulers to travel between their palaces safely. Today, it is a bustling and touristy commercial district, lined with stores selling jewelry and souvenirs.

Once across the bridge, we made our way to Palazzo Pitti, the newer of the Medici palaces. The palazzo is now a museum, and we were hoping to see the extensive formal gardens behind it. But unfortunately, the gardens were accessible only with admission to the museum, which we weren’t inclined to do.

After a bit of wandering around on that side of the Arno, we crossed back on the Ponte Vecchio and had a late lunch near the Uffizi. We then went to the Galileo Museum, which highlighted the many Italian contributions to a wide range of scientific fields.

We returned to our hotel to relax for a bit, and started to hear thumping noises suggesting perhaps a band playing outside. So we went out and followed the sound, only to encounter a parade of musicians and others in medieval dress marching in the direction of the calcio storico field. Apparently, the games are accompanied by a good deal of pageantry as well, with each of the teams and their supporters identified by their team colors. The prize for winning the tournament is a cow, and we also got to see the cow as it walked past us down the street. The parade was a lot of fun, and the costumes were gorgeous.

Our evening activity was a private tour of the Duomo museum led by our local guide. The Duomo is the cathedral in the center of Florence, and the museum displays and protects significant artifacts such as the doors to the baptistry (the ones on the actual baptistry are replicas). One thing that struck me was the intentional distortion of the proportions of some statues that are intended to be viewed from a much lower perspective. Their features are exaggerated vertically so that they look normal when viewed as intended. Michelangelo also exaggerated the features of David, which was originally meant to be placed atop the Duomo.

After the museum tour, we grabbed a very informal late dinner by stopping by one of the many All’Antico Vinaio sandwich shops. They feature a large variety of enormous sandwiches on focaccia bread. Kenna and I ordered one cut in half to share. It was delicious and about the right amount of food.

This article is part of a series about our recent trip to Italy, Greece, Albania, and Croatia. To see the introductory article in the series, click here.