Join me in Florence, Italy! (What to eat, see and do!)

Good morning! Welcome back to my channel. It is about six o'clock in the morning and I am headed to Florence, Italy to help my daughter, who's going to be going to school there, find an apartment. So we are taking the train to Nantes and this time I got smart. I am bringing a small carry-on for one week. That's it! I have learned my lesson so we'll see if this works. See you there! The last few summers we've traveled on trains, I've brought huge American suitcases on the train, which is a horrible idea. So this time I'm getting smart. I love this little train station. It's the cutest thing. It is a one-room train station but it is not open in the morning. Hi! Good luck! See ya! I must say our little carry-on bags fit perfectly right at our feet in the train. I love this train ride because you can see a lot of the beautiful countryside and agricultural fields, vineyards. It's just really beautiful, especially this time of day with the sun coming up. It just was so peaceful and lovely. And then about an hour later we arrived at our stop. Okay, we've arrived in Nantes and now we need to get ourselves to the airport. And here there's a little bus so we're gonna check it out. This could be the bus. It has a plate on it and it's leaving. It's leaving. Well, we missed the bus so we're just gonna sit here and wait but there is a handy little bus that should take us to the airport. The bus only takes about 20 minutes. A quick drive through town over the Loire River and then you end up at the Nantes airport. We boarded our flight for Paris and we were off. It's only about an hour flight from Nantes to Paris so it's a quick flight. We landed in Charles de Gaulle, found out where our flight was going to Florence. It was a little bit delayed but that's okay. There's plenty of shopping and things to do at the Paris airport including shopping for French macarons, one of my favorite things to do. And then we had time for a little bit of lunch before we got back on the plane and headed to Florence. It's only about 20 minutes from the Florence airport to the center of the city and we had been traveling all day and we were starving so we were looking forward to getting into town and having our first Italian meal. Oh this looks totally delicious. How could we resist pizza as our first meal? This looks so delicious. It's also one of the quickest meals so if you're really hungry in Italy jump into a pizzeria because the pizzas come out quick and fast. We had a wonderful night's sleep and now it's time to go find coffee. Early morning is my favorite time in Florence because there are a lot of tourists around, the streets have been cleaned, there's a freshness to the city, you see people going to work or going out, little shops are opening and it's fun to peek inside. One of my favorite piazzas is the Piazza della Repubblica which is right in the center of the city. It's a beautiful square and there is a fabulous little coffee spot that we've been to in the past that we made our way to. If you are tired and hot and walking around Florence make your way to this place because it has the comfiest seats, a shady little terrace with the most fantastic view of the piazza. So we settled in to order breakfast and I'm telling you it was really a luxury. I'll be honest it's a little bit pricey but we were there just for some pastries, orange juice and they make a really awesome iced cappuccino. I love anything pistachio so I cannot help myself when I'm in Italy and because it is so hot I've got my iced cappuccino and orange juice. This is the pistachio cream in this pastry and it looks totally delicious. I have to try it. Yeah. Then to work off all of our pastries we took a little stroll towards the Duomo. It's really amazing to see kind of normal size buildings in comparison to the scale of the Cathedral of Florence as well as the Duomo. This whole complex is so beautiful and is such a pretty walk. It's really amazing when you can see just how big and massive these buildings are and how many people come through here every year. It still was pretty early in the day so there weren't that many tourists but this area can become totally packed. Now walking in this area of Florence you really have to be careful because there are bikes coming at you from every direction, cars that will be zipping down the streets and the cars treat humans like pigeons. They just keep going until you move out of the way so I really recommend staying on the sidewalks. You'll be safer there. Now during our little walk through town we spotted All'Antico Vinaio. This is the sandwich shop that you've probably seen all over TikTok, all over Instagram so we decided we had to get in line and see if it was worth all of the hype. This whole process works like a well-oiled machine. As you'll see behind the counter there's a bunch of different ingredients and you can choose from different sandwiches that they have already or you can design your own. They use these big slabs of amazing focaccia bread that they cut into half and fill with the most delectable ingredients and then they just wrap it up in the paper and off you go. I decided to design my own. I did prosciutto, a little bit of pesto, tomato, mozzarella and that just looked so good and then you just go up to the counter and pay and out you go. It's kind of this funny thing because you have to navigate through the crowds with this huge sandwich in your hands and I'm glad we went early because as soon as we left you could see the crowds beginning to form. You always know you're getting close when you see people walking down the street with these huge sandwiches. Look at that. Buon appetito! Now funny enough a lot of people choose to just sit right there on the street eating the sandwiches on the sidewalk. That didn't seem so appealing to me though so we just decided to hoof it back to our Airbnb, pop it on a plate and dig in. And of course it was totally delicious. I'll be honest this is a messy sandwich to eat especially with the crispy focaccia so I think it's best enjoyed in private away from the crowds. We spent the afternoon exploring a few more neighborhoods. All right then I had to get a haircut because my hair has been such a mess and I haven't found a place in France. I don't know it's feeling very La Dolce Vita. What do you think? It might take some getting used to. That's very glamorous. And then around the corner we ran into a wine window. These are little windows that are all over Florence mostly in the city center that date back hundreds of years. They were a way to sell bottles of wine and avoid the tax and they're still in existence today. You can knock on the little door and buy a glass of wine and it's perfectly fine to drink it in the street as long as you don't block any businesses. I think it's a little early for wine even with my glamorous hairdo. It's finally cooled off. It was 100 degrees today and we are looking for a place for dinner and we found a little spot just down the street from our airbnb that looks like they have some amazing pastas. We are going to try that. One of the types of pastas that you can find in this part of Italy is something called pici pasta. It's a hand-rolled pasta much like a thick round noodle and one of the sauces that's traditional to serve it with is cacio e pepe which is the black pepper and cheese sauce. It's creamy, peppery, fantastic. Hi guys, good morning. Today it is 100 degrees outside so I traded my very glamorous hairdo that I had yesterday for a slick back. I either look like I just got out of the pool or I'm ready for my ballet recital but my daughter is like both my daughters really are queens of the slick back and she just had to have it. See look there she is. Doesn't she look gorgeous with her slick back? Okay so we are walking through the beautiful square that includes the Tuomo and the cathedral. I really want to go inside but this trip is really about getting my daughter situated so we have a ton of errands to do and figure out and I'm going to go here when I come back to drop her off because she's going to be settling in with her roommate and they're not going to want me hanging around so I'm going to get all my sightseeing and when I come back. But today we had some work to do so I wanted to find out where the Apple store was in case she needed any repairs, the pharmacy. The local pharmacy also had one of these little pharmacy vending machines which is great if you need something when the pharmacy is closed. Then we also went and looked at a few language schools because I really want her to be able to learn Italian and then took a trip through the leather neighborhoods. There is so much leather for sale in Florence it's crazy and you can find it for about any budget from the very accessible to the very luxurious to something in between. One of my favorite places in Florence for lunch is this place it's called the Mercato Centrale and it is an amazing market of all kinds of amazing things to eat. Just take the escalator up and there you'll find all of the different eateries. It is a plethora of choice it's really a little bit overwhelming so I suggest doing a full lap before committing. Once you decide on what you feel like eating the next hardest decision is where to sit. This place is constantly packed so if you see an empty table grab it. My daughter ordered this amazing looking pesto pasta with olives and cheese. Now it's my turn I'm gonna go get the pizza. I think if I had to choose a last meal it would be pizza. I don't know maybe it's my Italian heritage but I could eat pizza for every meal. Once you order your pizza you see them make it and then they put it in this amazing oven and it's done in like a few minutes. That thing must be so hot. A little drizzle of olive oil for a finishing touch and then it was time to give it a try. Look at this I got a vegetarian pizza and it looked amazing. And the thing that made this pizza so amazing was the crust. It was like the most delicate lightest crust and the best way to eat it really it was just to fold it in half and then on my way out I saw what I'll be doing in September when I come back. Look at this it's a cooking school. Doesn't this look amazing? Wow this looks like such fun. I'm gonna have to come back and do the cooking classes. This looks amazing. What is this? This is the name of it if anybody wants to come do this and tell me how it was. It's right in the center of the market. It's this cool cooking school. This looks amazing. Next time. And then just to show you it is worth going downstairs because this is where they have all of the different food products for sale. This looks like a great place for gift items or things that you want to bring back to the states. Yum. What is this? Truffles. You like truffles? I do. Delicious. Thank you. Now I either need a nap or a coffee. I can't decide. Well neither was in the cards because my daughter spotted Melrose Vintage. This is this amazing vintage store that we stumbled upon the last time we were here in Florence and it's pretty amazing. If you like vintage shopping the prices are great and they have such an amazing selection. They also had a lot of like funny American things like Levi's and cowboy boots and things like that. But then you can also find very Italian things especially in the way of their coats and jackets and so that was fun. So we spent some time roaming around there and then I literally almost fell into the next shop because the stairway was right off the sidewalk and if I wasn't paying attention I might have just tumbled down these stairs. But I was in need of a new pair of shoes because my feet were killing me and I found these little numbers. Aren't they cute? The thing that is amazing about these shoes is the leather is so soft. It's like butter and then the sole has this beautiful memory foam to it. I like walking on air. I love these shoes. They're the best. Now we have just cooled down and we are heading out right now to dinner to a place that's supposed to have a really fabulous view. So it's hidden in this little alley and at first you're not really sure exactly where you're going but then you'll come upon it and at the top of this boutique hotel is the most charming little restaurant that has the most incredible view of the Arno River and the Ponte Vecchio, the oldest bridge in Florence that dates back to 1339. This restaurant has very little tables so it is best to My daughter got like a pasta with vodka sauce. I got this delicious chicken with a creamy lemon sauce. It's super delicious. It tastes a lot like a chicken piccata. Awesome. And for dessert we had what they called their secret recipe Italian cheesecake which was the most fantastic thing. It was light and custardy and so delicious and then of course we also had to have a tiramisu as we've been trying just about every restaurant's version. Well that was totally delicious. Now it time to walk home and work all this off. That cheesecake was the best cheesecake I think I've ever had in my life. See you tomorrow. The next morning we spent the day walking around the city and getting to know all of the different neighborhoods. I love walking in Florence. I think it's the best way to see the city and make sure you look up because there is always something interesting to see. Like look at this gorgeous building and the old frescoes that are still there. It's just amazing to me that a city like this does not paint over that. They preserve the history for everybody to see and I just think it's so great. Then to escape the heat we decided to visit a few museums. I really thought it'd be fun for us to visit the Gucci Museum. The museum is housed in a historic palazzo and the ground floor is where the boutique is and upstairs is where the museum is. It's really interesting to see archival pieces from the 1960s, iconic pieces from the 1990s. This twosome reminded me of my parents from the 1970s. I feel like they had outfits that look similar to this. One other thing that's really interesting though in this museum because Florence is known for its leather is just to see the incredible leather and suede on display. Look at this. How supple and sumptuous does that look? There was a room devoted to all of the scarves and they were all framed which was really interesting because you could get up close to them and really appreciate their detail. The designs were just fantastic. There was another room devoted to athletic wear. I found it interesting that Gucci was one of the first luxury brands to develop an athletic shoe and there on display is their first shoe from the 1970s. Look at that. But the real showstopper was the purse collection. Look at this. There is a Gucci bag in just about every color and every style. My daughter and I of course had to go through and pick our favorites. The shelves and floors were backed with mirrors so it really gave you the impression that this display was stories high. I feel like I'm in Barbie's closet in the dream house. Then not to be outdone Ferragamo also has their museum that you can visit which I found totally fascinating as well. There was a wonderful display that showed how much Hollywood factored into the success of Ferragamo in the United States. He became the go-to shoe designer for celebrities like Lana Turner, Katharine Hepburn, and a very young Audrey Hepburn. Look at how young she was there. So beautiful. In addition to the celebrities he also designed shoes for the actual movie studios as well and you can see all of these different shoes that factored so prominently into these films. And one thing that was so interesting we learned is that he made shoe forms for every celebrity. So you can go into a room and see the forms for people like Marilyn Monroe and how small her feet were or Ingrid Bergman or of course Sophia Loren and I think that's what made his shoes so comfortable is they were really custom designed for these celebrities. An old Hollywood pup. He would be so into this place. The other thing that made his shoes so comfortable is that Ferragamo studied the female anatomy especially the foot and so he really spent a lot of time working on the engineering of each shoe in each style to know how it should move for the utmost comfort and there's a whole room dedicated to this and it is really fascinating. Then it was time for lunch. One thing that I noticed this trip to Italy which I haven't seen in other trips that I've taken is this new thing that they're doing on the menus where you open the menu and you see all of these numbers in red there and that corresponds to the back of the menu where they tell you all of the different allergens or if you know you can't eat certain things. I found that so helpful. My daughter ordered this amazing pasta carbonara and I wanted to try the lasagna which was this individual portion baked in a crock. It was so delicious but if you head to this restaurant you must try their tiramisu. It was the best one we had the entire trip. It was so fantastic. Amazing texture. Amazing balance of flavors. A plus plus. And while you're walking around the city be on the lookout for these vintage photo machines. They're super fun and they always have a crowd so you may have to wait in line and basically what it is are these old photo machines from the 1950s that an Italian artist I think or a photographer found and had them all restored and started to collect them in parts of Eastern Europe and other parts of Europe and then reinstalled them on the streets of Florence and you'll see them here and there and they are all loaded with the original chemicals and the original photography process from the 1950s. So your pictures will have like a vintagey old school vibe but now they're just fun souvenirs. They are very very popular but for two euro you can jump into one and get a fun picture. Every time we went by there was a line and we didn't feel like waiting because it was so hot. So if you go and get one tag me on Instagram. I'd love to see your pictures. And then just down the street from the little photo machine is a fabulous museum we found called the Museum of Illusion and inside are all these cool optical illusions. This is so cool. Look I'm in a cartoon. They have these fun rooms set up where you can take photographs one of which was like an upside down room and then you take your picture in it and when you rotate it it looks like you're hanging from the ceiling. It was really fun. Yesterday we had a very productive day. We found lots of cute apartments. We put an offer in on one of them so we feel like we've done our work and now we're just spending the day sightseeing and looking for a great place for dinner. One site we decided to visit that day was the Bargello National Museum. This is really a fun visit not only for what's in the museum but the architecture is fantastic. It is such a beautiful building and we just had fun roaming the different rooms and galleries. It houses an impressive collection of renaissance sculpture which is always beautiful to view but we also had fun looking at all of the different decorative arts. There's an incredible collection of pottery that was fun to look at and a beautiful collection of jewelry that was also fun to see. Glassware and just it was an incredible place to just take in all of the beautiful art and architecture but then the weather changed. Finally a rainy day in Florence. It's cooling everything off and we decided a really fun activity would be to go make perfume. So Florence and Italy in general is really known for their perfume and I found a fun tour on the Get Your Guide app that said you could go and take a class on perfume making and make your own scent. Let's try it. Once inside it was fun to see all of the different bottles of essential oils representing all kinds of different scents. I wasn't really sure where we were going to begin and it looked a little bit overwhelming at first but the instructor was great and she picked just a selection of scents and we were to pick a base note, heart note and some top notes and given all of these different essential oils we were to pick our favorite and then in between the scents there was a little thing of coffee beans and you were to just take a little whiff of that and that would neutralize your nose so you could smell other things and then you just wrote down your favorites and then the instructor went and created the recipe. So the recipe is how many drops for each scent she was going to put in to create our unique perfume. And in a few minutes you get this little bag presented to you. It's very efficient. Look at that, it's refreshing. Tonight we are going for some homemade pasta. My dad sent me this little video, this Instagram reel about this place that makes their own pasta in front of a window and you can watch it during the day. So we went and did that and it looks pretty good. So I ordered some homemade raviolis that were filled with potato and covered in a Tuscan meat sauce. That looks really good too. Let's share. The thing that is so amazing is the meat sauce. It's so good. I was savoring each bite to make sure I had enough ravioli for all the meat sauce. And then of course we had to have some dessert so we ordered a panna cotta with a mixed berry compote and of course some more tiramisu. And I'm telling you the thing we all fought over was the panna cotta. It was so good. If you are headed to Florence I would definitely make time to go to Il Grande Nutti. It was fantastic. On our last day in Florence we decided to venture across the Arno river to check out the other side of Florence. You can cross via the Ponte Vecchio bridge and there you will find all kinds of beautiful gold and jewelry. It can be a little bit touristy and crowded depending on the time of day. This was early in the morning so there weren't that many people yet but this bridge can become really packed. So if that isn't your thing I would highly recommend just walking along the river to the other bridge, the one that's just next door, and crossing that because there weren't a lot of tourists on that bridge at all and you can cross a lot quicker. Once on the other side you'll find really beautiful streets, charming little restaurants. There was a cooking school that was going on that was fun to see. But the real attraction on this side of the river is the Pitti Palace. This is the largest museum complex in Florence. I would recommend going to this palace early so that you can start with the Boboli Gardens which are at the top of the palace. You'll avoid the crowds and it's also great to go when it's not too hot in the day. I'll say the nice thing about this garden is it's up high so it's really cool especially in the beginning of the day. Look how gorgeous! The gardens were built for the Medici family and it's the perfect example of an Italian style garden that inspired many of the European courts. The garden is really big and unless you're really up for it you may not want to explore all of it because some of the paths are pretty steep and some are pretty flat but the signs will tell you that. After already doing so much walking after our seven day trip through Florence we didn't think we were up for these very steep inclines so instead we took the flat path instead. This is a very lovely stroll. You don't want to be too strenuous. Before heading inside the palace to view the collections be sure to stop and pause for a minute to appreciate the incredible view of Florence. Just look at that Duomo. It's amazing. Our favorite part of the Pitti Palace was the fashion and costume museum. It was really fascinating. It houses a collection of over 6,000 objects that all have to do with fashion from gowns from the 18th century all the way up to the present day. It's really well done the way the museum is laid out. It takes you through chronologically so you really can understand what was going on in the society and how that affected women's fashion through the ages. It was really well done and we just really enjoyed it. I would highly recommend it. Okay we are headed for our last big meal which I think I probably only have one left in me but we couldn't come to Florence and not try the Florentine steaks. They're legendary. All over Florence you will see these restaurants that serve the Florentine steaks. They'll have these huge refrigerators out front showing you the cuts of meat. A lot of them will offer menus which will include the steak, potatoes, and a few other things. We chose this one. It included a kilogram of steak, roasted potatoes, a salad, and wine which I think was a good value for two people since we were sharing a cold drink. Look at that. That is fantastic. Perfectly seasoned, juicy, delicious. Well we have had a fabulous time here guys for sure. I don't think I could eat another bite although I did save some room for one last treat. A little pistachio gelato is never a bad idea especially with this heat. See you next time. Ciao!