Florence...?

My goodness, well we're already in Berlin and look where I'm up to with this blogging business. Oh dear.
We've already left Italy! After 7 beautiful months.
And there's been so much to share with you all, but so little internet with which to do it. I've got a lot of either catching up or skipping over to do, perhaps a little bit of both, a compromise. Pictures always help. Let's see how it goes.


Way back weeks ago we visited Florence, city of bell ringers. We rented a tiny studio apartment in a converted convent and spent four days visiting museums. Museums and churches full of oversized toes and undersized penises, ghouls, goblins, and violent escapades.

First up - Jim and Ness outside Galileo's house on the hill above Florence way back when it was summer and hot and Finn took off with them for a holiday.
I carried this image around jealously in my mind as we wandered ...imagine if it was hot...

View across the cemetery back over Florence from the top of the hill.

With Finn's church behind us.
Finn's church because this is where a big lot of the inlaid floor designs he constructed came from.

This church was amazing, very different in both layout and decoration from any other churches we've visited (all zodiac symbols and not a crucifix in sight). And yes, incredibly beautiful inlaid marble floors and detailing. 

Back in the city...

The baptistry.
(From Finn's summer series.)

Monsters in the baptistry.

The cathedral.

Skeletons and ... 

...fishy goblins in the cathedral dome.

The cathedral bell tower.

A freshly severed head outside the Uffizi gallery.
(Benvenuto Cellini's Perseus holding the head of Medusa.)

With Giovanni da Bologna's Rape of the Sabine alongside, and a bit of bludgeoning going on in the background.

Not the inlay we saw, but very similar to a room in the Bargello museum we weren't allowed to photograph that had inlaid wood so incredible it caused Finn to exclaim 'Holy fuck nuts' in admiration.

Always looking for ideas to bring home for future renovations, this ceiling particularly captured Finn's attention. With our basement conversion in mind, we pondered frescoed, mosaic, coffered...

Or maybe like this...

...or this? I like this one.
Want to come help paint?

On our last night we had dinner at a trattoria recommended to us by our apartment owner, and it was really nice. 

We started with this, but we can't remember what it was made out of, spinach or cavolo nero, but we do remember it being delicious. And a bowl of cavolo nero and polenta soup, also delicious.

Finn with giant bowl of complimentary spicy fish soup.
A 'little present' from our friendly waiter.

For mains Finn had an absolutely melting oxtail stew and I had this Christmas rabbit.
Rabbit cooked with chocolate, nuts, and candied fruit. Pretty full on and not what I would ever think to do to a rabbit, but fun and yum to try.

Our waiter was friendly, helpful, tall, and handsome, reminding us a lot of O. H. O'Connell. At the end of our meal, when we were full to bursting and declined all offers of dessert, instead of the bill he brought us a wedge of flourless chocolate cake, another of his so called 'presents'. A meltingly amazing treat we could barely squeeze in, but did.




In the end it didn't feel like enough days. We spent so much time visiting museums that I left feeling I'd hardly got a handle on the city itself. My impressions were of a city of rather bland, brown, heavy buildings, but I suspect most places will feel a bit like that after six months in Venice wonderland.

30 December 2011