Florence

It is amazing what trains zipping around at 300 km/h make possible. Florence is far enough away from Rome that it seems outside the boundaries of the typical day trip but, in practice, it is a bit over 90 minutes away. Compared to more local tours, where you can waste that much time picking up passengers from a dozen hotels in a crowded minibus, it is a pretty elegant option.

Our first order of business is to head directly for the Ponte Vecchio as our trip coordinator has been raving about the chocolate croissants we stumbled across the last time we were here. We also take a few sfogliatella, a lobster tail looking pastry popular in this part of the country. Thumbs up on the former. The latter I can probably live without.

Florence is a breathe of fresh air after Rome (quite literally, as there are np piles of garbage slow-roasting in the summer sun here). It is still way too crowded for my taste, and there is construction everywhere, but it just feels less chaotic.

We spend the morning on a walking our of the old city. This is something new for all of us and we have great guide pointing out things we completely overlooked when we were here on our own, like the monuments for the 1993 bombing, where the city was bombed to the ground in WWII and then rebuilt and, most importantly, a few places the locals like to eat.

The tour ends at the Accademia Gallery, where a nonstop parade of “influencers” line up for some quick selfies with Michelangelo’s David before rushing off in search of more “look how glamorous my life is” content for Instagram. We take a few ourselves but need way more work on our poses if we’re ever going to make it big.

For lunch we stop first at the lampredotto stand our guide pointed out. It is a classic street food here, made up of stewed cow’s stomach (just the fourth stomach though as that, apparently, is the USDA Prime one) on a roll. It is better than it sounds but remains, shall we say, an acquired taste. Nick, to his credit, gets back in line for another while we head off in search of something a little less adventurous.

Our final stop is the Uffizi Gallery. It is as overwhelming and mentally exhausting as it was the first time we saw it but I feel like I absorbed a bit more walking through it again. Perhaps after another fifty times or so I’ll finally get a handle on all of the priceless art gathered here and the fascinating history around it.

The return train whisks us back to Rome right around dinner and a final bit of time in the city. We’ll be right back at the station in the morning, bags in tow, heading to our final destination near Sorrento. Hotels are lights out expensive anywhere near the Amalfi Coast this time of year so we found an apartment just a few train stops away that should give us a good base to slow down a bit and enjoy our last few days in Italy.