Recon Day

Saturday, June 20, 2015
Our flight landed at 9:30am in Munich with our departing flight to Florence leaving at 10:55. Seemed a little close but we made it with time to spare. After we were in the air our lovely Italian stewardess brought us some food.

(onboard meal: shrimp and salmon)

We were grateful for the food, the food we had this morning was a croissant on our United flight. With no time to get food between flights, this was delicious. 

An hour and a half later we are in Florence. We looked for but did not find the stereo typical Italian taxi drive - uni-brow, Mario looking, heavy Italian accent - instead we get Sven. Our driver dashes us off to our Florentine villa for the week, Loggiato Dei Serviti.

 

The photo below shows the receptionist area inside our hotel.

Not having any real plans today, we take off on free style exploring. First we do a little recon of the area. We walk through the busy part of Florence, the obvious starting point is the Duomo, since its three blocks from the hotel.

   

  

(The "Duomo")

You can tell you're in the tourist area when the road is lined by designer named stores. This day was devoted to getting the lay of the land and just general orientation and walking the streets of Florence.

 

(crowded streets of Florence)

We made our way past all the stores and found the Arno River. By now we turned our attention to getting some true Italian cuisine, pizza.

(the Arno river with Ponte Vecchio in background)

Before leaving the hotel we asked the clerk about food, he insinuated that we would not find anyone serving food until 7:30pm, it was 6:00pm we were hungry and found a nice sidewalk cafe, Osteria dell Agnolo.

This was a great little place to grab a bite and people watch as we rested. Lunch for both of us with sodas was about 20 euros, not bad but not a deal. Refreshed and fed, we were now ready to go back to the hotel. Some of the sights we saw on our way back to the hotel.

(Hari Krishna's performing in the street)

(the view of the Duomo from the street in front of our hotel)

We have been awake since friday morning with no real meaningful sleep. We needed a good night sleep before our first official day in Florence.