A day in Florence, Italy 🇮🇹 | Travel Guide | Top things to do, see and eat!

I'm sorry to say this but if you want to see a city in a day you're gonna have to wake up early. The benefit of that is no people around. The downside of that is is you drink probably a bottle and a half of wine last night and you're kind of hungover. But here we are. Welcome to Folia Florence and let's see what we can get done. One of the unfortunate things is when you wake up this early is nothing is open besides Starbucks. So that's how we're gonna start our day. It's not very Italian I know but coffee is life. Very cliche typical American thing to do. So I don't know if you count this as the first meal of the day but we had to stop off at Starbucks because like we said earlier it's really the only thing that's open here in the morning and there's only two of them in Florence. Here we're gonna go with the panel chocolate and a croissant and I don't even remember what I got. Just some fancy looking coffee. So I got a caramel macchiato. So the the thing is we do live in Italy so it's not like we get this every day. So where we are the closest Starbucks is like 40 minutes so this is a treat. Yeah we're not tourists we live here we don't see these very often except of course one of the last videos that we did was Milan Starbucks but there aren't many in Italy. That was a fancy one. That was nice that was nice that's true. Now that we got some caffeine in our system first things first you're in Florence so you're gonna have to see some museums. Where are we going first? The Uffizi which is a museum that I've been trying to see twice now since we've came here before and we I don't think we need tickets today. The one thing to keep in mind is that if you go on a Monday it's probably going to be closed. A lot of the stuff is closed here on Mondays. We'll talk more about that later but first up the Uffizi. Also pro tip wear very very good shoes. This is definitely a very walkable city and it's not very even city considering how old it is. So definitely wear very comfortable shoes because you'll be walking a lot. Yesterday alone for half a day we were here we walked 20,000 steps not even exaggerating. And we got here actually around noon so that 20,000 was about eight hours. So even if you're a cheapskate and you don't want to pay for any of the museums one of the really cool things is because a lot of these buildings are really really old and the architecture is just absolutely stunning you're going to see art everywhere you go. There's even an area inside of the city that has a lot of the statues that you'll find at the Galleria or the Uffizi. If you don't want to pay for those you can go see them outside and there's a lot of people around them but they're still really cool to see. But all of these buildings like this one here just beautiful beautiful architecture and you'll just see that everywhere in Florence. Also for such a big and pretty touristy city I'm very surprised to see how clean it is. Like they seem to be cleaning the streets pretty regularly. So usually this piazza would be super crowded you probably have at least 500 people. Another benefit it's 8 a.m on a Sunday look at that. I think there's six people here. Yeah so other than a few of the people just kind of cleaning up around here and taking the garbage and stuff like that we're basically the only people here so this is the best time to get photos. The David statue actually used to be right here the original one but I guess they realized probably keeping it outside all the time wasn't good for the condition of it so they actually moved it into the museum. You have to see it at the Accademia Galleria but this is a replica. It's pretty good. It's about the exact same size so if you don't want to go into the museum and you want to see what it actually looks like perfect replica right there. Okay I love their attempt at giving directions here but it says here the entrance to the museum is on the opposite side of a porticus. Now I'm not from ancient Rome so I don't know what a porticus is so we're just going to have to wander around after we got our tickets to see if we can find it. Even if you're not a huge fan of museums this museum literally has something for everybody and I would highly highly recommend you check it out. There's a lot of famous artworks that you can only find here and artists you'll probably recognize. That museum is huge so definitely you need to spend probably at least two good hours there. Like we rushed and I'm pretty sure we didn't see everything. What did you think? I thought it was pretty cool. I mean these are probably one of the few places you're actually going to be able to see a Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Da Vinci. I mean they had everything. I mean they had other famous paintings. It's just you can go on and on the sculptures, the art, like the religious aspects of it. It was just it was beautiful. Just like she said earlier with the streets bring good shoes because we saw a lot of people who had like nice shoes on and stuff like that. Don't recommend that for a large museum. Right outside of the museum is the Ponte Vecchio bridge and you'll see it because it's right near the river. This is probably one of the more iconic landmarks here in Florence so we definitely recommend checking that out. That's where we're headed now. We're going to try to see if we can get out of the rain now. Yeah so it's one of this probably one of the best spots right down to take a picture in front of it. If you go inside you can walk through the bridge but it's mainly now just jewelry stores. So if you want to buy some jewelry a lot of it is local. We're not huge jewelry people but we just kind of we're going to check out what they have. And another thing you can go the other way and you can go to the Piazza Michelangelo to get a beautiful view. We are on our way now to the very very famous sandwich shop here in Florence. Many claim that this is the best panini you can get here in Florence and we are about to see it because we had a really good one yesterday at the central markets and I'm very curious to see if this one's going to be better or worse. So we actually got lucky and I see there's like literally only five people. If you look up online usually the line can be up to like an hour long to wait for the sandwich shop and I literally see like six people. So we got this huge sandwich here for nine euro at I guess Florence's best sandwich place. There's all these cold cuts. There's a lot of things that we couldn't read when we were looking at the menu I gotta be honest. But let's give this a shot. I can smell it all the way here just to let you guys know like I can smell it. It's amazing. I think I smell the truffle. There's definitely truffle there. You gotta get like one good bite with the sauce and everything in there. The cheese. The best part was the fact that we didn't have to wait. I think we waited for a minute. Like you can see now in the background there's nobody there. It is on a Sunday 10.41. That's the time to come here I guess. Yeah this is amazing. This is huge. I mean everything is extremely fresh too. You're watching them make it right in front of you. Nothing's pre-packaged. The focaccia I saw the people still bringing it fresh from the bakery. So it was literally like baked probably like 20 minutes ago. Oh yeah. When I was doing research for this trip I kept seeing this show up on everyone's list. So I mean usually I try to avoid super cliche places, but this sandwich look at this. This looked too good to too good to pass up. Not to pass up. I don't know. I still need more coffee. I'm trying to see where to get the perfect bite. Wow the truffle. The truffle it doesn't overwhelm the sandwich, but it definitely adds to it very well. There's so much meat and whatever topping this is. The condiment. Wow. Would I recommend you come to this place? Yes. It is worth the hike. 10 out of 10. Normally when we travel we're always looking for good reviews for restaurants so we don't waste our time. But I think we're actually having a hard time finding a bad place. So I don't even think you really need to look up the reviews of places. Just kind of go with your gut. Because everything so far has been pretty amazing. Also the portion sizes here are just huge. Like that was one sandwich and we're both kind of pretty full already from that one thing. So I'm not gonna lie I didn't know this thing even existed like three months ago. But again when I was doing the research I came across the Cafe Avogadro. And this restaurant it's called something else but it's still the same concept. Essentially they scoop in a cup a bunch of gelato around and then they put an espresso inside. I'm not sure how to eat or drink this. Let's see. Oh wow. It's very delicious because the way it holds up the espresso and the sweetness of the ice cream it gives to the coffee. It's really good. I guess this is the original frappuccino right? It's very good. Coffee and ice cream. Oh my god. Right? This is the best way to eat ice cream and the best way to have a coffee at the same time. It's kind of a weird thing to do in the wintertime because it's really cold outside. However we're inside and if you're not going to be standing around outside this is definitely the way to go. Especially in the middle of the day right after that museum that sandwich. This is the best pick-me-up. So we're in front of the third place for the sandwiches now and honestly I don't know how many more sandwiches we're going to be able to eat but this one smells the best hands down. I think it's the white truffle sauce that they put on these things. Probably not as famous as the other place that we just went to but this is what we're going to try right now. You can smell this place I think like a block down. It's a religious experience. After the museum when you try something like this how anybody could go vegan or vegetarian because this will crush that right away. But also it doesn't help the fact that how many steak places there are especially in Florence. Here it's like porchetta, steak everywhere. So not to say you can't find those kinds of restaurants but it's difficult. It's difficult and you're probably not going to want one if you come here and try something like this. From all the places we've eaten the sandwich from this is not a focaccia bread. Just looks like a regular baguette and by far this is the most expensive. For this sandwich it was 11 euro, but by far I think this is the freshest. Let's see just the porchetta. Look at that skin by itself. Okay very smoky. I'm trying to get the perfect bite on this before Vernon steals it. If there's one rule that you have to have seen so far since you since we've been here is definitely get porchetta at least once. Okay let's go. The truffle with the porchetta it's like a match made in heaven. I'm not exaggerating. Florence has the best food we've had so far. We have to go to Bologna next though because I heard that's the food capital of Italy. Sorry I have so much porchetta in my mouth. I heard that Bologna is the food capital of Italy and honestly those are some pretty big shoes to fill because some of the food we've had on this trip so far is incredible. So just to show you this is the same square three hours later. So waking up early and you beat definitely you beat the crowds. So we went from six people to probably like 600. Next we went to check out the Palazzo Vecchio. It's like a grand set from a movie but it's actually real. Imagine this you're walking into this fortress-like palace where once the powerful Medici family roamed. This isn't just any old building this is a place where secret passages are actually hidden behind artwork. Rumor has it that one of da Vinci's own paintings is hidden behind one of these walls. Would you be impressed if I could paint something like this? Let's see. Can I do it with this? No. What do you think about the palace? It's the least favorite of the ones that we've been to so far because it's probably the most amount of walking for the least amount of exhibits. Because everything is so grand and a lot of the places just like will have this giant painting and a huge beautiful ceiling. But for 17 euro I mean I think if you're here maybe for more than a day I would check it out but if you're here just solely for one day I would probably skip it. It is beautiful if you're into like art and architecture and furniture design this place was phenomenal. But anyway after all that looking at art I got a little thirsty so let's go look for some windows if we can find some because that's another thing to do in Florence is the wine. There was 20% chance of rain and of course it has to start raining a little bit and a little pro tip see the little cute cobbled streets they become extremely slippery when you walk on them so do be careful because they're not even and they're extremely slippery. One of the cool things to do in Florence is get wine from a window which is essentially a hole in the wall in this case this is definitely something unique only in Florence and I mean the wine is delicious it's a little more expensive but I think it's more of like a novelty thing to do but I think you gotta at least you gotta go get at least a glass of wine from one window. Yeah so the way that that works is that you just knock on the window you tell them what kind of wine you want they tell you the price you pay for usually with card and then they just hand it right back to you through the window so it kind of makes for a cool photo and a cool experience. To get inside the cathedral the line was probably about an hour long so we decided to skip it and just enjoy it from the outside. Rumor has it that in Florence we have the oldest perfume store that was initially started by monks I think in the 12 or 1300s don't quote me on that but we're gonna see if we can find some nice perfume there. It feels like a proper museum you know what this feels like like you know when you play a video game and it's like uh you go inside like the sort like the potions place oh yeah yeah like this that's what it feels like an alchemist yeah making some sort of magic potion which I guess colognes can be if you smell good enough. Oh my god that smells amazing you think tobacco Tuscan tobacco wouldn't be good but it is very good. So here when you buy something they have a virtual cart so you just tell them what you want and they add it to this and once you're before you leave you pay and you pick up all your stuff which is pretty unique very different. What did you think about the perfume store? Uh it was it smelled amazing like every single room was amazing basically everything was the same smell in different forms so the body washes the colognes the candles etc the potpourri they had this really cool art exhibit inside of there which I think was pretty trippy just like like a light show but with flowers and stuff everywhere it was pretty awesome though. And we did manage to secure quite a few goods so I'm very happy I'm curious to see what people will think about this perfume. Yeah it's definitely outside of my comfort zone to wear they have a variety of items you can buy for different price ranges so I think you should definitely check it out if you're visiting Florence because it's such a unique experience and honestly even if you don't buy anything go there because it's just each room honestly feels like a museum and you don't have to pay anything to go inside you can just go and check it out. And one of the really cool things is the lady said that I think it was the the perfume that you got oh yeah was one of the original perfumes that they were making uh not in the 1200s but like in the 1500s so for the Medici family I think for his wife yeah so I bought the perfume that was originally made for her the original formula 500 years ago which sounds crazy to me. It's amazing because when you think about it right Chanel number nine is like 115 years old or something like that this is like four or five hundred years old. So what we're doing next is we're actually going to check out the monastery next door to the perfume store so this is actually uh I think as far as I read this is the monks that started the original perfume store back 800 years ago so we're going to check out actually you know where they worshipped and where they lived it's so far it's like a huge beautiful monastery I think it's seven dollars seven euros to get in. Next it was time to check out the most famous sculpture probably in the world and I do recommend you get tickets ahead of time for this. As you walk up to see David you can see other Michelangelo's unfinished works. He famously once said every block of stone has a statue inside of it and it's the task of the sculptor to discover it. So the cool thing about the David is that it's actually right at the beginning of the museum so if you don't have a lot of time you don't want to stick around but you want to see the David it's not going to take that long. Honestly that was probably the craziest museum to get into and just to kind of navigate it's not very intuitive to see all the exhibits you kind of have to walk back to see all the other art pieces and we saw a ton of people to go in there just to see the David and it's 20 euros it's the most expensive museum and the smallest museum and the most hectic so this morning maybe we got lucky because we went to the first one at around 8 15 in the morning. This one obviously we're going much later in the day so we expect there to be more people. There's not a whole lot to see and this is the most expensive museum that we saw so far. It's cool if you definitely have David on your bucket list to check off but if you don't think that it's worth it then maybe this one might be a skip. And also for all the museums I highly recommend you reserve stuff ahead of time go on the main website for Florence and just reserve all the tickets and you get like a time slot to go because this stuff sells out like that especially famous ones like that. We're in January and there were slots already sold out definitely booked in advance. Also remember a lot of stuff is closed on Mondays. I also did read online though that if you want to get a good view of like the city don't climb the Duomo because you only see the tower and just kind of like the back end of the tower. Climb the tower because that way you get much better views and you actually get to see like the famous Duomo so pro tip. After a long day of walking around still hitting 20,000 steps you can't avoid it. The one thing you cannot leave Tuscany you cannot leave Florence without trying is the Bistecca Florentina or Florentine steak and we are about to get that for dinner. So we just walked into the steak place and sat down Really really nice so far. I think that the most jealous person here at this place is probably that husky that's sitting behind me. He can smell it. I know because we can smell it so he definitely can and it's just this intense flavor of steak and he's probably thinking please I wish somebody would just drop something already. When you open the menu first thing Vernon sees is Japanese beef even though we're in Tuscany. I think the funny thing is though it's like you have all these pictures of cute cows on the wall and I low-key feel bad but I also feel the smell the meat. I feel bad but I also feel hungry so. Fish? No. Please don't be one of those people that gets seafood at a steakhouse please. This is what you want. This right here. If you really don't know what to order they even did what's famous with a big red arrow. The famous grilled Florentine T-bone steak. So it's about 70 bucks a kilo and it's never a kilo so it's about 1.2 which will be about 84 euro. So that's not too bad and this is for like two three people like this is a lot of meat. I honestly wish we were more hungry because we were looking at like at the appetizers and different sides and they have so many amazing Tuscan dishes from like different cheeses to the meats to the boar. They have this chicken liver pate but we are just like not that hungry so I think we're just gonna go with like a side the kilo and a half of steak almost and some type of red wine. Vernon is doing all the picking. I don't think we'll have space for dessert. Whenever you have the Florentine steak there's no way there is just no way there is space for dessert. Something we didn't know even though we've had Bistecca Florentine in the past usually we get it with the Chianti wine but the guy highly recommended we get it with a Sangiovese. So we ended up getting this wine here Mastro Gianni. He definitely was excited about the year here so 2014. Yeah so this is definitely going to be something special. There's some fattiness in the steak and that's one of its specialties but he stated that if you have a wine that has Sangiovese grapes in there it's really dry and it helps balance out the fat in the steak. Vernon is literally making me suffer because he got some fancy wine but you're supposed to pour it out and wait 10 minutes and I still have to wait three more minutes to drink this wine. So this is torture. This should be reported as torture. Let's see what Vernon thinks it tastes like. Oh yeah so it's like once you drink it and it goes down there's an aftertaste and then you wait like five seconds later and there's an even another aftertaste. It's very smoky afterwards. Really good. I think the guy definitely made a good choice for us with the steak so 10 out of 10 for sure. So far the presentation of the steak 10 out of 10. Oh it's so crispy look at that. Oh my god it's amazing but we're not savages. We did get some grilled vegetables you know to balance out over a kilo of meat. So one of the things you'll notice this is basically rare. The guy didn't ask us how we wanted the steak and that's how we like to keep it here in Italy. We don't ask what the types are. They don't ask us what type of steak we want. They just make it one way which is basically rare and we appreciate it. Chefs knows best. So the steak super buttery super soft. We've been to some good steakhouses and this is this is up there on that list. I would say probably top three. I've never been to a steak place that did a excellent job cutting all the meat off the bone and I don't know what the Italians think of this but every time we have a quarantine steak which is a t-bone I grab I save the bone and if I have space left and I just go crazy. If we're home we actually will bring this back to our dog and he will go absolutely crazy for this. We supervise him for like 5-10 minutes as he chews on the bone and if Vernon tries to take away the bone he goes absolutely crazy. Like he goes super like wolf mode. It's adorable because he's a corgi and he's like 18 kilos so it's not very threatening. So I gotta say one of the things that this place does really really well is hospitality. They are super accommodating and one of the things that they threw in here at the end of our meal is limoncello. This is probably one of the few alcohols that I can drink straight up like this. It's amazing. We survived the dinner and I feel like shit. The thing is after a steak after that much meat you never feel great especially for two people. 1.2 kilos of steak is a lot, but overall this was definitely I think the best meal we've had in Florence. Your thoughts? I'm so full right now. Honestly the one thing I am grateful for besides the amazing city of Florence is the weather because it's not raining right now and we are going to be able to walk off as much of this as possible in the next hour and a half. But the food was incredible, the service was excellent. This was probably one of the best restaurants we've had service in here in Italy. Also let's just take a moment to appreciate the views we got from our hotel. Just wow. We couldn't end this video without sharing at least one more restaurant that you need to check out when visiting Florence. If you ever seen the Flaming Pasta this is the restaurant that you want to check out. The food in this restaurant overall was delicious. It's not every day you get to see a giant cheese wheel get set on fire. They do this table side with each order. This restaurant is hidden away on the sides near the train station and I highly recommend you book this place at least a week in advance. We really hope you enjoyed today's video and definitely stay tuned for more Italy adventures. Ciao!