The Scroop's European Holiday: Day 36 Florence:

We wake up this morning around 7:30 but this is our second time. We got the 4am wakeup call when an alarm decided to sound outside in the street for about half an hour. Unfortunately we are still having no luck with the early morning noise. We are going to wander around this morning and try to see the things we haven’t got around to seeing yet, the Uffizi, Piazza Santa Croce, the statue of David and the Duomo Museum and Cathedral. We start off by walking to the Uffizi via the Ponte Vecchio and do the walk under the raised path built to allow the king to wander Florence without having to mix with the rabble below. We get to the Uffizi and go to the entrance to get a ticket. The very unpleasant lady at the desk informs us that it will be 44 Euro to get in. The kids have to pay 11 Euro each because the live outside Europe. Kris and I think old paintings are a bit of a bore and at 44 Euro we continue walking. We head to Piazza Santa Croce, made famous by the Florence game of Calcio Storico. This is a very violent game of no rules football played between teams representing there area once a year. It’s not on today of course, but we just want to check out the Piazza. We get there and see this incredible Church at one end. The exterior is one of the best we have seen yet with amazing carvings in the huge timber doors and the marble facade and better still there is virtually no one here!! We head around the corner and see an entrance. They are only charging 10 Euro for all of us to go in so we grab some tickets. The inside of this church is incredible. As we are wandering around we realise that this is the church that houses the tombs of Michelangelo, Machiavelli and Galileo to name a few. The gear in this church is beyond comparison and we think it has surpassed the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur in Paris. We walk out of there pumped and head across the Piazza toward the Accademia where the statue of David resides. Most things in Florence are pretty close to each other so walking around is relatively easy. We get to the Accademia and the queue to get in goes around the corner. We decide that the 300 replica statues of David we have seen so far on most street corners will suffice and keep walking. We grab some lunch close to home and when we are finished we head up to the apartment to google some restaurants. We want to try and find a place that dishes up more traditional Tuscan food for dinner as opposed to the touristy rubbish they dish up around the main attractions here. We see a couple of restaurants on the net so we head back out to see if we can find them and check out what the menu looks like. The first one we come across looks fantastic. We figure a good sign to a traditional restaurant is that the menu is only in Italian with no English translation. The restaurant is closed at the moment as it closes between lunch and dinner but a bloke that works there helps us out by translating the menu for us. We reckon it sounds a bit of alright so we make a reservation and leave looking forward to tonight. Now we are off to see the Duomo museum with the tickets we got the other day. This museum proves to be a winner with heaps of amazing sculptures. Kris and I both like the sculptures and the architecture side of all these old places and for 22 Euro we got to walk to the top of the Duomo the other day as well. Heaps better value than the Uffizi we reckon. We get out of the museum and head over to the Duomo Cathedral which is free to get in. There is always a massive queue at the entrance of this place but because it is 10 minutes from closing there is no queue, awesome. The Duomo is a massive highlight for us so we walk in all excited and.......the bloody things a dud!!!! We look around and it’s stark, lifeless, no paintings on the ceiling, apart from the dome section which you can’t access due to it being roped off. We get ushered out 10 minutes later but we feel that’s all the time we needed to see this thing anyway. The facade to this building is incredible, amazing and you get the feeling that when you get inside you are going to see something special. I said to Kris, it’s like picking up a chick in a hot dress with this awesome cleavage hanging out and you’re thinking, yeah baby and you get her home and she whips off her bra and there’s noth’n!!!! Never mind, we missed out on some things today but we feel what we did see made up for it 10 fold. We head home and get ready for our big Tuscan dinner. We get moving for our 10 minute walk to the restaurant named Il Latina. We walk around the corner into the street the restaurant is on and BANG, there is like 50 people all standing outside the front door. We walk down and I ask some Italian women if they have a reservation or are they just waiting to get in. She responds in Italian so I’m none the wiser. A bloke is standing there at the entrance happy as Larry checking off reservation names and inviting them in. We are at the back of the bunch at this point and it looks like it’s going to be a while before we get in. I’m waving my hand like a crazy man trying to get his attention without luck. I look back to see where Kristine is and she’s not there??!! I then hear the man from the restaurant say “Yes, Kristine, 4, come in” I’m thinking “someone has stolen our reservation” but in fact Kristine had muscled her way to the front and before you know it we are being shown to our seat. Even though there was a huge crowd outside the restaurant is packed. There are no menus and there is a big 2 litre bottle of Chianti wine on the table. We get served entrees within minutes (we haven’t ordered anything) and it’s a mix of meats, cheese, salad and some other stuff I’ve never seen before. The waiter says to drink the wine and we only charge for what you drink. We do exactly that and we start eating. When we are done with that the waiter tells us what’s up for grabs in the next course and we chow down again. The waiters aren’t dressed like waiters and actually, it feels more like we are in someone’s home. People come and go and people are seated next to strangers, it’s fantastic. We have an awesome meal and finish up and the owner, some old Italian bloke, comes around to our table and the waiter just sort of tells him what we had for dinner, he looks at our bottle of wine and guesstimates how much we have had and then he just starts scribbling stuff down on his invoice book like he’s pulling it fair and square out of his clacker. We are willing to pay anything really so we don’t really care what the cost is but at the end of the day it was pretty cheap. Apparently this family have been running this restaurant for 100 years this year and they have pretty much been doing it the same way all that time. It’s about a quarter to ten as we get up to leave but we have just as much trouble getting out as we did getting in because there is still a huge crowd waiting to get in. This has been an absolute treat for us tonight and was exactly what we wanted. Although the meal was good, I’m not going to say it was the best meal I have ever had but it was definitely one of the best experiences I’ve ever had.