Day 19: Sunny Firenze

Trip

Italy 2024

Location

Florence 🇮🇹

Date

September 11, 2024

Firenze is our old friend of a city. It’s our fifth time visiting. We mixed some old and new things in our schedule, so not to just always do the same thing. Contrary to Monterosso, where we can say we’ve found the best addresses and don’t need to explore further, Firenze is quite a bit bigger and we will need a lot more than four previous visits to be able to say we don’t need to explore anymore.

We started with the well-known with Coffee at 📍Caffè Ditta Artigianale, a discovery from our last visit in the city. We varied our order and discovered they have what is now our third best cinnamon roll. We followed that with our usual breakfast at 📍Obicà.

We then continued on to the 📍Giardino delle Rose (rose garden), 📍Piazzale Michelangelo and, all the way on the top of the hill, the basilique 📍San Miniato al Monte. A mix of flowers and stunning views on the city, along with the oldest church in the region, dating back to the 11th century. All sights we know well and enjoy.

For good or ill, we ended the day in full discovery mode. Spoiler alert: it was both good and ill. We first had apéro at the Loggia rooftop bar overlooking our favourite spot in the city. The cocktails were good, but it’s better to reserve ahead of time as they are quite busy. We managed to get ourselves a comfortable spot. It’s definitively going to be a spot we comeback to. Dinner on the other hand went the other way. The 📍Antico Ristoro di Cambi came recommended for the quality of its bistecca. Not only were we not served the bistecca alla fiorentina we ordered, instead being served a costata. Both are steaks but the costata has a straight bone instead of the T bone of the bistecca, doesn’t have the filet and is usually less marbled. We also were never served wine despite ordering it 3 times, were served the wrong sides and starters. While the steak was good and probably what saved our evening from total disaster, we finished the night by walking to our favourite gelato in the city for a revenge treat before returning home to pack our bags.

It’s disappointing that our last meal in the city was less than optimal. That’s the price of exploring, sometimes you get the best discovery, like a new source of cinnamon rolls and other times you are seated next to a crowd of Americans bragging about how stone they were at different times in their business travels, with a server that seems to have an aversion to delivering the food you ordered. We still got a pretty good success rate in our adventure overall.