Our Last Day In Florence

Sadly, today was our last day in this lovely small city.  We have had the best time here, with too many wonderful surprises to count!

Our day started with another early morning visit to Florence's central market.  We have been three times, and seem to find something new each visit.  Today we browsed through the outdoor vendor market,  a jumble of Italian leather goods, scarves, clothes and souvenirs.  I was really there to buy a linen blouse that I'd spotted a couple of days ago--it's been so warm here that I've run out of cooler clothes!  Here's a picture of the outside market:

We had absolutely nothing planned for today, so we just strolled around some areas that were new to us, and we ended up finding the ancient wall of the city, again.  This part of the wall has a very large arch, with a H-U-G-E wooden door.  I think this is the biggest door I've ever seen:

On the "outside" part of the wall there was a traffic round a bout, and it was crazy busy, with cars zipping right through that arch.  There was also a very interesting statue:

As we walked through the arch we noticed a painting above that huge door, I wonder how many 100's of years old it is?

This area of Florence seemed to be very upscale, with some really large homes with beautiful gardens. This is much different that narrow streets in the other parts of the city, and we enjoyed strolling around, taking it all in.

We had been looking for a spot for lunch, and after a lot of walking and looking, settled on a small trattoria with indoor seating, unusual for us, as we always go the the sidewalk cafe type!  David had a small pizza, and I had a bowl of Ribollita--or Tuscan Bread soup.  It was really good!

After lunch we just wandered along, and soon found ourselves back across the river.  We window shopped, cruised a couple of department stores, and picked up a few gifts to bring home.  We even found Pinnochio!

We stopped for a "rest our feet" break, and shared a scoop of chocolate gelato with espresso poured over--now that's a yummy pick me up!

Since we're leaving tomorrow for Rome, we decided we'd better mosey back toward the apartment to get packed up and ready to go.

But we had one more lovely surprise!  We just happened on a large gathering of wine producers from the Chianti region.  They were set up in a large piazza, and for 2 euros each they gave us a nice wine glass, and we could taste wines from many different vintners.  There were probably 25 vendors, so we spent an hour or so tasting several different wines.  They also had olive oil tasting--and we had some really good ones.  We bought a bottle of Chianti and two small bottles of olive oil.  Here's a picture of David, really enjoying his wine tasting:

 There we quite a few others enjoying the wine, too:

We slowly made our way back to the covered bridge and sat at a small sidewalk bar to enjoy one more pre-dinner drink in Florence.  We relaxed for almost an hour, talking about how much we'd enjoyed fabulous Florence.  We both agree it's been the high-light of our trip.

We were back to our apartment by 7, just in time to enjoy "our" wonderful garden spot for one last evening glass of wine.

We're now packed and ready to catch the morning train to Rome--and more great adventures!