Florence to Rome Day 9
April 21, 2011
AJ perfected his slick Smartcar maneuvering and creative parking as we zipped around Florence for a couple hours of sightseeing before we had to move south to Rome. This is the way to see the city! Rent a smartcar, enter your sightseeing wishlist into a Tomtom navigator and away you go! We headed up along Michelangelo Avenue to reach the most famous view of the city from Piazzale Michelangelo which sits high up on a hill and allows views of the river below and the entire city with the largest brick Dome in the world, Duomo, the terracotta rooftops of the tightly packed city center, and the peaks and domes of many other masterful works of Renaissance architecture. In the center of the Square sits the replica of Michealangelo’s David which gave us our quick Statue “Fix” since I had already seen the real thing and we just didn’t have time to waste in never ending lines at Academia.
It was a divine day for walk… or maybe we shall call it a hike… so we headed next to the Boboli Gardens, the extreme expanse of skyscraping hedges and dirt-gravel paths leading to endless mini squares with statues, fountains and ponds. Along the way, our senses were delighted with the scents in the lemon tree garden, the fairytale view of Tuscany off the back side of the Gardens which is reached by a procession of upward pathways and stairs of dirt, gravel and stone. We imagined the important political conversations that could have taken place in these gardens as important Imperials would stroll through these gardens or ride through the wide gravel paths on their horses.
We also explored the Fortress that surrounded the palace and gardens. This was why the Medici family survived with such power for so long! Their grounds were protected by a fortress than meant business! Nobody was going to try and infiltrate this structure.
With tears in our eyes, we waived farewell to our Smartcar and Tomtom, and to the city of Florence. We boarded a train for Rome and…. We slept for a while to recharge from the afternoon hike through history.
We arrived in Rome in the evening… with only enough time to get dinner and a small show. The show of choice?... the Coliseum! Our hotel was luckily only a fifteen minute walk from this Roman Engineering Masterpiece. Along the way, we stopped at Le Clemintina, a family run Hosteria for some dinner. The owners of this little joint were serving the guests with cheery pride and we could tell they had been doing the same, day in and day out for years. The menu had some fun small portion items so we got to try several things for a only small hit to our wallet. We tried their tempura battered veggies and whitefish. We munched on diced potatoes that were herbed and fried to perfection. We had a nice spaghetti basilico with red chili olive oil, and also delicious tapas sized saltimbocca prepared on skewers and sautéed. We had a half bottle of Chianti Classico that upgraded from “not great” to “mediocre” after about twenty minutes of breathing time. We then finished off dinner with an absolutely divine Chocolate Soufflé very similar to our Chocolate Boudino at Jasoh. The chef kindly brought out an additional strawberry tort gratis and said hello to us as fellow restaurant owners.
The Coliseum was beautifully lit up and we enjoyed the juxtaposition of this massive age old structure with hectic traffic and hordes of partying young people on the streets and going in and out of bars and clubs down below. To the top left of this photo, you can see a rooftop restaurant that caught our eye. We were too curious to not go into the five star hotels that housed it and see if we could check it out. The concierge kindly obliged and directed us up to the top floor to speak with the Matre De about the menu and scope out the view of the Coliseum from a unique bird’s eye perspective.
Tomorrow we will try and fit in as many sights we can as Rome has so much to share!
No comments:
Post a Comment