Dear Friends, after a leisurely start on Wednesday, we were driven by
Gianluca & Tanya up into the hills to visit the home of an extremely
eccentric Englishman, Frederick Stibbert, who was an incredible collector. He
bought three villas in a row to house his magnificent purchases of paintings,
tapestries, furnishing, armour, stained glass & fans. We have never seen
anything like it. He had the villas redesigned in a lavish fashion and
fortunately on his death, left everything to Florence.
Then we had decadent cakes – some of us had very rich hot chocolate at a
lovely café where people are known to eat every day, made us think of Café
3460, chatted with Tanya and set off to explore the Medici Town Hall building.
What a wonderful place that is, with so much to see. We were tired and hungry by 2pm, so Tanya left us and we
ate at one of her favourite restaurants, a little place downstairs. It wasn’t
as good as the previous lunches, but it was a different experience. We walked
back home, ordered tea & coffee and I went to bed & stayed put. Wes
went walking and exploring, much to my delight.
Wes posing
before the badly placed modern art in our sitting area.
This morning, after breakfast, we met Tanya at the Uffizzi and spent 4
wonderful hours there including a tea break. We saw works by many early painters
including Botticelli, da Vinci & Michelangelo. We were treated to a special
viewing of the Vasari Corridor, the Medicis secret walkway from Palazzo Vecchio
to the Pitti Palace. The Corridor is hung with self-portraits by all the famous
artists of note and we were the only ones there at the time. We stopped for
lunch at an indoor/outdoor cafe where Wes had spaghetti and Tanya & I had
spinach & cuttlefish. During lunch a fight broke out in the piazza between
some druggies and a trader who had lost his temper with them. Tanya was
embarrassed, but we were interested to see how everything and everyone stopped
to watch this battle, which was eventually sorted out by the local police. Then
we walked to a new gelataria, where we had rose petal flavoured gelati!
The rest of the afternoon was in the Boboli Gardens and the Pitti
Palace, where we absorbed culture and history until our heads were spinning. As
we walked back to our hotel, we invited Tanya to join us for a drink at
Procacci, a small wine bar which has been on site since 1885. We sampled three
different reds and swapped travel stories.
Tomorrow we have a rest from Tanya and she from us, as we will be driven
to Siena, where we will spend the morning, returning to Florence at lunchtime.
So many people told us we should go there, and we are obeying their wishes. I’ll
be in touch again before we leave for Rome on Sunday.
Our
bedroom in the palazzo
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