Travel Talk Tuesday: September 9, 2021- Florence, Italy

okay good evening everyone welcome to travel talk tuesday it is september the 7th 2021 and uh gosh i cannot believe we're in the ninth month of this year it's just so crazy and amazing but uh luckily things are opening back up and and all over the world travel's getting back to somewhat near a new normal let's say and uh so we're kind of looking forward to that i'm flying on thursday night to uh tomorrow thursday night to that would be not tomorrow the day after tomorrow on thursday night to go to dallas and we have a travel and adventure show over the weekend in dallas and um that means that we're promoting our tours for a bunch of people coming into a convention center looking for uh travel opportunities for 2022 and beyond so charlotte and i will be there promoting those on saturday and sunday and then on monday of next week i get on a plane and fly to rome and we begin two tours we begin a villa tour in volterra italy and then about a week and a half after that we have a uh the best of italy tour that begins in rome works its way up through tuscany to venice over to the lake como in the mountain areas foothills alps and to milan so we're doing all that and then i'm doing a little exploration trip after that charlotte's coming over to meet me and we're doing a little exclamation tip after that down to the amalfi coast uh the island of iskia and the island of capri and uh sorrento so we'll be back home finally around october the 22nd uh so i think i shared with you guys last week that uh my passport expires uh um a little bit too late so i'm having to do a um a quick trip to dallas uh earlier and get an appointment there with the state department at the passport agency in dallas on a friday morning to get my passport renewed in person so i'm thankful that i got that going because otherwise i wouldn't be traveling well tonight we are talking about a portion of tuscany is basically what i call the capital of tuscany and doing my research earlier today i was reading my guidebook which i wrote a few years ago about italy and i re and i read that uh florence was the capital of all of italy up until the late 1800s and i had totally forgotten about that and i was talking just a few moments ago with leslie here about trying to remember uh one of the artisans in uh in florence and could not for the life of me recall his name because i hadn't talked about him in two years now but now i'm getting back on track so we're ready to go so tonight we're talking about florence i was there with my family uh in july of this year and we spent i just did a day trip but i made a point to make a video recording of all of the events that we had during the day and visiting the attraction so we began up over the city at the piezel michelangelo overlooking the city and worked our way all the way down to the duomo and the academia museum so i'm going to share that with you for the moment and then um and then we'll talk a little bit about all of the attractions and events that we we had there so let me share my screen back here again and here we go i'm gonna stop it in a few minutes and explain to you my uh my meal for this evening as well so look at that hey david mcguffin here you can probably tell that we've arrived in ferenze in florence uh we're up on piezoel michelangelo and it overlooks the city from up here the river arno is below me uh you can see the duomo right back here so we're going to take a walk through the city center along the arno river across the old bridge the ponte vecchio to the public square and then to the duomo so i hope you enjoyed this look around today of this favorite renaissance city known as florence or in italian foreign people so this viewpoint that we are at right now is called the piazza michelangelo it was constructed here in the late 1800s 1873 or so uh because at that point florence was going through an evolution and a remodeling and uh so this was built up there and there was a statue a bronze statue of a replica michelangelo's david that was brought up there as well and uh so we're taking the beginning of our trek down walking down to the arnold river from the field so this is the nice little pleasant walk downhill but going up i think we're going to take a taxi on the way back because it is quite a hike is a gentleman who was the architect of making this remodeling of all of florence and that tower you saw was and you'll see here again is a tower that was part of the medieval walls fortifying all of florence that went all the way through there little hint you can see uh here behind me is the duomo and then if we look up across the city of florence you can see this little hamlet in the hill right up here it's a fiesole and it's a nice little escape especially in the heat of the summer to uh go up there to either by taxi or by bus and uh visit a little town have dinner take a picnic and you could have a picnic in the gardens so it's pretty cool to do that that's pie right here in the hamlet here let me stop it just a second and explain to you a little bit about what uh what i'm doing for my meal tonight last week i spent a lot of time showing you some cooking lessons and classes and everything but uh today i'm just going to show you what we're preparing i love to go to tuscany and have this meal of a t-bone steak uh some kind of vegetables and tonight we're having asparagus and also uh facioli or beans we call them cannellini beans but let me show you the steak i got so believe it or not my my local grocery store was able to order this in and cut it up for me so that's about a two and a half pound steak a little bit more than one kilo it's what we get in in tuscany so four of us are going to eat that tonight so leslie and stephen and charlotte and i are gonna be chowing down on this and that steak you can see has the uh the sirloin part of the steak here and the tenderloin part of the steak here the uh so uh that's what we're going to be cooking along with along with some roasted asparagus this recipe comes from francis may's book under the tuscan sun and it's it's really nothing i'm gonna broil it in the oven or roast it in the oven and it's got salt and pepper a little olive oil on it and then uh the last thing i have is uh i've got those on the stove and cooking for a while and we can't even see it but uh you want me to well we can't we can't move the camera but it's uh fragile the canal only white beans and lots they smell good right now so that's what we're doing as far as the dining goes and then i think i've shared this wine with you guys before in the past but it's uh it's brunella de montacino it's a total uh 100 sancho daisy wine this is a kirkland brand which is very affordable and it's a wonderful vintage 2014 so that's what we've opened up and we're going to be having with dinner dinner tonight as well okay let me go back to uh getting this thing going here on our walk in florence this is the ponte vecchio the old bridge that bridge is uh constructed in 1340 believe it or not and it's been standing ever since the upper stories date from the 17th and 18th century and uh there were residents up there and this this bridge was uh inhabited by first of all tanners and leather makers and then by the time the renaissance era came along it became inhabited by gold and silver smiths who had their residence up top as well and uh so now it's the bridge where you can go and buy anything gold silver uh pretty expensive stuff but yet very authentic stuff in florence it's right on the river arno so here we're looking upriver [Music] you notice the houses of other shops people really live in those shops prime rent territory and that's looking down river benvenutolini was a master goldsmith he made rings and jewelry and he worked in a shop right here on this bridge in the ponte vecchio and so they put this statue here because this whole bridge was a place where gold and silversmiths worked and made jewelry but it's more important because you see this fence and you see some of these locks around here when i fir back back in the 1990s before you were born this fence was loaded with locks and the story goes that one time there was this young italian boy who didn't have much money at all but he did have a lock that went on the door of his uh little apartment where he and his parents live and so he brought the lock down here with his girlfriend and he said i don't have any money but i'm going to put this lock on here and lock it up and it's going to assemble that my love is locked up in your heart for you the entire time and so he put a lock on here locked it through the key in the in the waters that would never come off again and so that's how the tradition of these locks began and then a few years back you read this sign what does this sign say what's that say really or not allowed so you can't put locks on them anymore because there are so many you about scared me to do with that gas somebody had broken their problems hey you couldn't breathe yeah i know now you put them somewhere else besides here so uh like you saw them up up on the uh up on the hilltop the piazzelle so that's where their people are putting lock that's a shame they took off the first one that the boy put on there and it didn't it would have been cool wasn't it because of the weight of those locks yeah i thought that was about on this bridge on a lot of bridges yeah like the one in paris right they're on in paris as well why they have that i see one there because they broke the law if somebody said screw it i'm not gonna do it right okay so who's the guy you're gonna see him in a minute i'm gonna show you another another statue okay we're now in the uh courtyard of the uffizi gallery or the ufc of the medici family the offices of the medici family and down here beyond that is the main square piazza della signoria and the big fortress of the medici the medici fortress right here normally this place is crowded like crazy because uh of entrances into this big gallery here let me pan around which is some of the most famous renaissance paintings in all the world are up here in this gallery gallery now they have them outside and there's not even a line anywhere for them to get in here hartley again i've seen more tour groups here in florence today small little groups okay so this is crazy so this sandwich shop is written up a few years back in a magazine as being the best sandwich shop in all of italy and uh it's probably every tourist in florence is here right now which isn't very many but look at them lined up in a queue to get this sandwich see these girls just bought one over here see what's so great about it here you go here's somebody opening one up at this shop a roasted pork sandwich you can get them everywhere all over italy this is one of my favorite gelatory is especially in florence as you will need and we were actually able to sit down in the shop uh after we bought our ice cream and sat down and had it with nice and cool conditions and then just a few blocks from there is the galleria academia which is the home for the famous statue that michelangelo chiseled out herrera marble of david these are uh prisoners uh the prisoners and there's some unfinished works by michael angelo it's kind of left laying around because it was going to be a decorated tomb of a pope and that never happened so he never completed these prisoners there but it's interesting because you could see how michelangelo envisioned everything and just began chiseling and after a bit of chiseling a body evolved this statue was in 1503 i believe and it was his second major work the first being the pieta which is in rome that does i'm peter's basilica the statue here you're looking at is the original statue of david and it stood for 375 years outside in the main square of florence by the alice and it wasn't until 1873 that it was finally brought into this area out of the uh so you can think of three to eighteen seven three a couple of times outside speaks very highly of wherever you want [Music] uh this is the san lorenzo leather market it's right at the corner of the san lorenzo church which is the uh the family church of the medici family the great rulers of the of that of florence who brought it out of the middle ages into the renaissance and um here if you've ever been to florence you can see there's only a few kiosks up on this line shoulder shoulder uh with these kiosks sticking up and also with people packed in between buying all kind of leather goods from coats boots belts purses uh change purses it was so pleasant being here in july of 2021 because they were a very huge tourist this is uh marcato centrale the central market and uh on the first floor every day the ground floor every day except for sunday farmers your addicts come in sell their wares okay and then on the second floor is a big big food hall wonderful place you can go to work and get anything lillian what you having for lunch try the hamburgers as alien has here ketchup and uh everything ever it looks like it has two buns where is the burger oh got cheese up okay good you like it yeah good baby you know why it's called burger you're here doesn't it and then back to the main church square in town this is the duomo or the basilica sacramento santa maria the flower and this church was um construction started on this in the late 1300s and the dome was finally put up there let me check my notes here uh 150 years later it was uh actually the dormer was construction began in 1296 and the dome was finally put up there in 1518. by brewery and so this is uh one of the most beautiful churches that i have ever seen you can tell that as beautiful as it is on the outside the dome really makes it different because this guy brunelleschi was commissioned to put a dome up but the people of florence built the cathedral a hundred pictures beforehand without a top on it but clearly someone will come along one day and [Music] and uh so lo and behold he did and that's what it is it's a dome within a dome and that dome is uh just fantastic because inside you can actually climb up and there's spiral stairs in between the two domes there's about us at least at the bottom there's about a six foot disc distance at the bottom but as you go up you have to keep you have to keep leaning over and over and over as you go up to the top portions of it and it's held together with a series of uh chains and timbers and bricks and serpentine patterns and everything and um so it's a pretty unique feat and uh after that michelangelo built a dome on the uh church of saint peter's down in rome and uh then our capitol building here in the united states is modeled after that same dome along with saint paul's cathedral and london and many other domes all because brunelleschi took time to figure out how to duplicate what had been done in the roman era with the pantheon there in rome okay so we're going to finish up this with a little bit of my vintage tour uh of the best of florence that we found back in 2014 and uh my videographer and editor at that time and producer at the time was abby austin whitaker and i'll give her credit for that because this is just classic of what what i love to do when i'm in florence we were in tuscany a few days ago and we were actually driving from volterra up to florence and i decided to go a little bit off the beaten path we had a wine tasting experience a couple of days before in volterra and one of the wines was a chianti classico wine so i thought well you know since we're driving up there why drive on the highway let's go on the small road the chianti road and we'll drive through the county region we went off really off the beaten path because i got off the paved road even and we went on this dirt road way up the hills up through the vineyards we were right in the heart of the chianti region then went on our way on to florence up above florence there are two opportunities to see a cityscape scenic overview one of them is where all the tourists go to psl michelangelo i really like to venture a little further up beyond the psl michelangelo and visit the church on the hill called san migniato almonte from there it's quiet there's maybe 20 people or so up there and you have another grand fantastic view and overlook of the city without all the hubbub of tourists and buses and cars and everything going by the florence metro area is quite large but if you just can uh concentrate on the historic city center you actually could walk from the arno to say the academia which are the two extremes of things you want to see probably in just strolling in 30 minutes walking at a david mcguffin pace you can do it in 15 but uh you don't really want to do that but it's very compact and that's why i i really really enjoy being in florence so we're going to walk down here to a couple of the markets hit the duomo [Music] let's go take a look around the leather mark here at san lorenzo it's a great place to go and get goods like some leather goods coats belts shoes purses and make sure you barter here because prices are soft and you could talk them down to a certain extent those people have idea [Music] oh yeah well it looks nice he does a good job of us let's see i'll still wear that belt yeah i have a brown one and a black one i think i'll go for the casual [Music] because the belt from italy is adjustable now he says a personal belt [Music] hey i got a great belt from florence my goodness no dickering at all the duomo is actually the cathedral of florence it's called santa maria del de la fiore saint mary of the flowers and it was built in the middle ages and then kept right at the beginning of the renaissance with the dome built by brunelleschi which is a big feat because nothing like that dome had ever been built from the time of the greeks and romans for over a thousand years it's possible to climb to the dome and bell tower but they're all step and there's at least 416 to the tower and more to the top of the dome so if you get energetic and one of you just say you already had it yesterday from the pizzelle michelangelo right on the agenda of every tourist in florence is to have an opportunity to take a look at michelangelo's grand statue of david we use a local guide that i've discovered gosh 15 years ago or so and her name is apollo and she has a such a wonderful perspective a wonderful personal perspective on the artwork that we see our music will concentrate on david on michelangelo's work and what i would like to do with you is trying to understand why michelangelo is and why david isa has always been top number one statue of the world let's go and have a look at the first one he's making such a stupid mistake in making the hand and face bigger than they should is it by chance that exactly these two opposite parts are bigger or does he want to emphasize that with his hand he can kill the giant and with the other face he's doubting to kill [Music] what i like about paula is that she cuts away from the dryness of facts and kind of gives a visual perception and lets you make decisions and she makes it personal to everybody so that's why i like as a guy here you'll see that tomorrow as you go through the artwork as well now let's see if you paid attention yesterday oh dear okay look at the painting i want you to tell me isn't that before or after david i'll ask chapter because they're twisted very clear okay after david [Music] it's not just a dry commentary it's more of here's maybe what the artist was thinking or what do you think what do you see in the statues what are you getting from that what do you think the artist was thinking and uh so it it it's a person more personable uh any more introspective uh view of the artwork [Music] spending the night in florence really makes a big difference to your experience there are a lot of tour groups that come in for the day and leave if you stay the night and you have a leisurely dinner somewhere and then you come back say at 8 30 9 o'clock 10 o'clock walking down the streets of florence it's a totally different city the streets are lit up there's very few people out there if there are is the locals the shops are still open and it's a different way to see and explore florence and that's why i i really really enjoy being in florence because you can if you have a hotel right in the city center which we do then uh 10 minutes in any direction you're right in the heart [Music] hey okay well i hope you uh got a little perception of florence uh i know some of you are actually those of you are watching on zoom i know you've all been to florence with me and at other times and on facebook as well so i hope you understand and can recollect those great times that we've had together there uh that kind of ends travel talk tuesday on florence for tonight next week we're going to deal with uh the next major city up to the north is venice and we were there i'm going to share my experiences being in venice uh just a few months ago in july as well one really really major thing is that um charlotte and i got to take a gondola ride uh we don't do that too often but we took one and had two wonderful gondoliers and we were on the waterways of the grand canal without anybody no traffic or anything because of the lack of tourism and uh so uh i look forward to sharing that with you next week as well uh so until next week i think we're finished up we'll see you later ciao have a good evening bye

2021-09-11 12:21

Other news